Plum Spooky

  “I have the Subaru tagged.”

  I could feel Ranger smile. He saw the humor in his obsession to keep me on his radar screen.

  “Does Diesel know?”

  “Hard to tell what Diesel knows.” Ranger pulled back a little and looked at me. “Diesel has superbad enemies, and the people he chases aren’t normal. You need to be careful if you partner with Diesel.”

  “He popped into my apartment, and I can’t get rid of him.”

  “You could move into Rangeman until he leaves.”

  “That’s going from the frying pan into the fire.”

  The smile was back. “In some ways.”

  “Anyway, he feels like a brother.”

  “I’m sure he would love that description,” Ranger said.

  Grandma Mazur opened the front door and looked out. “Stephanie? Is that Ranger with you? Is that your truck?”

  “I have to go,” Ranger said. “Try to stay out of trouble.” He kissed me on the forehead, jogged back to his car, and took off.

  Grandma came to see what was going on with the truck. “Who’s this?” she said, looking inside at Elmer.

  “This is Elmer,” I said. “He was nice enough to bring me home when I got stranded in the Barrens.”

  “He’s a cutie,” Grandma said. “He don’t look too old, either.”

  “I got most of my original teeth,” Elmer said.

  “We got a lot of lasagna,” Grandma said to him. “We kept it warm for Stephanie. You’re welcome to come have some lasagna with us.”

  “That would be real nice,” Elmer said. “I’m starving.”

  I looked back at the house and saw Diesel standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

  “I had to buy more Pepto-​Bismol,” he said when I reached him. “You’re giving me an ulcer.”

  “I have a lot to tell you.”

  “What’s with the sweatshirt? It looks like someone took a scissor to the bottom of it.”

  “Munch was trying to get it off me, but it didn’t work out.”

  Diesel grinned. “You kicked him in the nuts again, didn’t you?”

  “It’s my signature move.”

  He looked beyond me. “Who’s the guy with Grandma?”

  “Elmer. I flagged him down after I escaped, and I bribed him to drive me home.”

  “Elmer? And he’s from the Barrens?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Honey, you didn’t bring Elmer the Fire Farter home with you, did you?”

  I glanced back at Elmer. “He didn’t say he was the fire farter.”

  Diesel hooked an arm around my neck and hugged me to him. “This is why I love you.”

  “Everyone sit down,” my mother said, setting the tray of lasagna in the middle of the dining room table. “Frank,” she yelled to my father, “come to the table.”

  “I already ate,” my father said.

  “You can eat again. Stephanie is here with guests.”

  My father heaved himself out of his chair. “The big one isn’t a guest. I don’t know what he is.”

  “He’s like a member of the family,” Grandma said.

  My father looked down the table at Diesel. “Heaven help us,” he said.

  Grandma poured Elmer a glass of wine and gave him a slab of lasagna. “We got red sauce for the lasagna, too,” she said, passing the gravy boat to Elmer.

  “This looks good,” Elmer said, digging in. “I can’t remember the last time I had a meal like this.”

  Diesel ate some lasagna and leaned close to me. “This is filled with cheese and hot sausage. I hope Elmer isn’t lactose intolerant. He’ll burn his truck down on the way home.”

  At the other end of the table, Elmer was shoveling the food in.

  “He doesn’t look lactose intolerant,” I said. “He’s putting extra grated cheese on his lasagna.”

  My father was swiveled around in his seat, trying to see the tele vision. He was missing a Seinfeld rerun.

  “It was real nice of you to bring Stephanie home,” Grandma said to Elmer. “Do you live in the Pine Barrens?”

  “Yep,” Elmer said. “It’s the best place on earth. It’s filled with interesting people, and you don’t hardly ever see any of them.”

  “I go to Atlantic City once in a while,” Grandma said, “but the bus don’t stop in the Pine Barrens.”

  “Too bad,” Elmer said. “We got some good things there. Antique stores and such.”

  Grandma gave him a second helping of lasagna. “Do you have a job?”

  “No. I’m retired. It’s hard for me to keep a job on account of I have an affliction.”

  “What kind of affliction?” Grandma wanted to know.

  “I can’t talk about it,” Elmer said. “It’s unmentionable.”

  Diesel and I exchanged looks.

  “Oh boy,” I said.

  “Are we done yet?” my father asked.

  “We haven’t even had dessert,” Grandma said. “Hold your shirt on.”

  Elmer scraped his chair back. “I might have to use your restroom.”

  “It’s at the top of the stairs,” Grandma told him. “I’ll get the coffee started.”

  Elmer climbed the stairs, and moments later . . . BAROOOOM!

  “What was that?” my mother asked. “It sounded like an explosion.”

  Diesel pressed his lips together, and his face turned red.

  “I appreciate the effort you’re making not to laugh,” I said to him, “but you’re going to burst all the blood vessels in your head if you keep holding it in.”

  “I can’t believe you brought the fire farter home,” he said. “Couldn’t you have gotten a ride from the Easter Bunny or Sasquatch?”

  “You should have been taking better care of me. It’s all your fault. I got kidnapped by your cousin. I’m lucky Martin Munch doesn’t have me pinned to a board like a frog in biology class.”

  “You’re right,” Diesel said. “I should have done a better job of protecting you. But that said, I would have thought twice about getting in a truck with the fire farter.”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I forgot about the fire farter. I was stressed.”

  Elmer came back to the table, and Grandma trotted in with coffee and half an apple pie. She served the coffee and pie, and Elmer reached for the cream and farted.

  Broomph!

  Flames shot out of Elmer’s ass, set his pants on fire, and ignited the upholstered seat on the cherrywood side chair. Elmer jumped up and dropped his pants, drawers and all.

  “Holy crap,” my father said. “That smells like the slaughter house burned down.”

  My mother downed a glass of wine and poured herself another. And my grandmother leaned forward to get a better view.

  “Don’t get to see this every day,” Grandma said.

  Diesel dumped a pitcher of water on the chair and stomped on Elmer’s pants.

  “Excuse me,” Elmer said. “The sausage was spicy.”

  “That was a pip of a fart,” Grandma said. “I’ve seen people fart fire on YouTube, but I never saw anyone do it that good.”

  We got Elmer outfitted in one of my father’s old work pants, Diesel gave him fifty dollars, and we sent him back to the Barrens.

  “GOT MY MONEY’S worth out of that fifty dollars,” Diesel said, loading the laundry basket into the back of the Subaru. “I got to see a guy fart fire.”

  I cut my eyes to him. “You were impressed with that?”

  “Hell, yeah. I can’t do it. At least, not without a Zippo lighter.”

  “Maybe Elmer had a Zippo lighter.”

  “I don’t care how he did it. It was an excellent fart.”

  We got in the car, and Morelli called just before we reached my building.

  “I’ve had the strangest feeling all day,” he said. “Like something awful was happening. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. How about you?”

  “I’m better than okay. Anthony gets his stitches out tomorrow, and then he’s going home. His wif
e is taking him back. I’m not sure why.”

  “She loves him.”

  “Yeah, well, I love him, too, but I don’t want to live with him. Although, I have to say we had fun yesterday. We watched the game, and it was almost like he was human. What did you do?”

  “Blew up a fuel depot, stole twelve rockets and made off with them in a stolen van, got kidnapped by a maniac, and had dinner with a guy who farted fire.”

  “That would be funny, but I’m worried it’s all true.”

  “It’s been a long couple days.”

  “Did he really fart fire?” Morelli asked.

  “Yeah. Set his pants on fire and burned my mother’s dining room chair to a crisp.”

  “Wish I’d seen it,” Morelli said.

  “Men are weird.”

  “Cupcake, we’d all like to be able to fart fire.”

  “Gotta go.”

  “Love you,” Morelli said.

  “Me, too,” I said. And I hung up.

  Carl was in the kitchen, feeding cereal to Rex, when we got home. Carl would drop in a Fruit Loop, Rex would rush out of his can, stuff the Fruit Loop into his cheek, and rush back to his can. Carl would repeat the drill.

  “Cute,” I said. “Carl has a pet.”

  “Either that or he’s fattening him up for the kill.”

  “Do monkeys eat hamsters?”

  Diesel shrugged. “They eat pizza with pepperoni.”

  Mental note: First thing tomorrow, take Rex to stay at parents’ house for duration of monkey visit.

  I told Diesel about the cement-​block house in the woods, and I repeated my conversation with Munch.

  “There’s no point looking for the house,” Diesel said. “Wulf will move Munch. And we’ve caused him sufficient aggravation that he’s probably in the pro cess of moving the whole operation out of the Barrens.”

  “He can’t do that overnight. Munch said he had four BlueBec rockets sitting on pads.”

  “A rocket that size can be trucked out fairly easily. Most of its weight is in fuel. I just don’t know why we aren’t seeing it. I suppose he could camouflage a single rocket if he put it in a stand of pines. And he might even be able to hide an antenna array. What we should be seeing from the air is command central. He needs a place to house his men, track his rocket, plant his transmitter. And he’d need a generator. Why aren’t we seeing all that?”

  “Maybe you’re looking in the wrong part of the Barrens?”

  “No. Everything he does is in the same area. I know Banger Road and Marbury Road.”

  “Apparently, they have everything in place to send up the sounding rocket, except for the barium. They’re waiting on the barium.”

  “I talked to Cuddles. He said it would be in late tomorrow.”

  Stephanie Plum 14.5 - Plum Spooky

  TWENTY-THREE

  I OPENED MY eyes and looked at my alarm clock. It was seven A.M. and the phone was ringing. Diesel reached across me and answered it.

  “It’s for you,” he said, handing me the phone. “It’s the Batcave.”

  “This is Gene in the Rangeman control room,” a guy said. “I’m going to patch you through to Hal.”

  A moment later, Hal came on. “I hope I’m not calling too early,” he said, “but a new monkey just showed up, and he’s wearing a scarf.”

  “What kind of scarf?”

  “It’s a scrap of material tied around his neck. Like decoration. Like you see on a dog sometimes. It’s made out of hippie material.”

  “Tie-​dye?”

  “Yeah. Real bright colors. Like what you see in the house here.”

  “Hang on to him. I’m on my way.”

  I returned the phone to the nightstand. “Hal said a monkey just showed up.”

  Diesel was already out of bed, getting dressed. “I heard.”

  “How could you hear?”

  “I have good ears.”

  “I was talking to him on the phone!”

  “I can’t find my shoes,” Diesel said.

  I took clean jeans and underwear from the laundry basket and headed for the bathroom. “Under the coffee table. Just like always.”

  “We’ve been living together too long,” Diesel said. “I’m not the man of mystery anymore. Your mother washes my underwear, and you always know where my shoes are.”

  “You’ve never been the man of mystery. Ranger’s the man of mystery.”

  “Then who am I?”

  “You’re Diesel.” And just being Diesel was more than enough.

  DIESEL AND I had breakfast sandwiches and coffee to go. Carl was in the backseat of the Subaru with a breakfast sandwich and a bottle of water. Our hope was that Gail had managed to tie a scrap of her skirt around the monkey’s neck and set him free. And that somehow we could get the monkey to lead us back to Gail. We’d brought Carl along as translator.

  “This is going to be embarrassing,” Diesel said.

  “What?”

  “Talking to a monkey in front of Ranger’s man.”

  “How about if I tell Hal we need to talk to the monkey in private?”

  “I know Carl seems rotten enough to be human sometimes, but I’m not completely convinced he understands anything we say.”

  “He can play Super Mario,” I said to Diesel.

  “Yeah, but he can’t win. Mario keeps dying.”

  Carl tapped Diesel on the shoulder. Diesel looked at Carl in the rearview mirror, and Carl gave Diesel the finger.

  “I’m just saying,” Diesel said to Carl.

  An hour later, we were on the dirt road that led to Gail Scanlon’s compound. It was early morning, and the Barrens felt benign. The sun was shining. It was in the midseventies. And there was no sign of the Easter Bunny, Fire Farter, Sasquatch, or the Jersey Dev il. Diesel drove into the clearing and parked close to the house, next to a black Rangeman SUV.

  Hal came out of the house and met us in the yard. “I’ve got the new monkey in the cage,” he said. “It’s still got the scarf around its neck.”

  We all walked to the cage and peered inside.

  “The scarf looks like Gail’s skirt,” I said. “I saw the monkeys before Carl set them loose, and I can’t remember any of them having a neck scarf.”

  “He doesn’t look very smart,” Diesel said. “He’s not even giving me the finger.”

  “Can monkeys do that?” Hal asked.

  Carl gave him the finger.

  “Cool!” Hal said.

  “So what do you think?” I said to Carl. “Can you get the monkey to take us to Gail?”

  Carl looked at me and shrugged.

  Hal opened the door to the enclosure, and Carl went in and sidled up to the monkey with the scarf. Carl picked something off the monkey’s head and ate it.

  Diesel gave a snort of laughter.

  “It’s a social ritual,” I said. “And you have no room to laugh. You were gobstruck by a guy who farted fire.”

  “No way,” Hal said.

  “Swear to God,” Diesel told him. “Fire came out of this guy’s ass like a blowtorch. I saw him burn down a chair.”

  “Jeez,” Hal said. “I’d give anything to see that.”

  “Stop the planet,” I said. “I want to get off.”

  Carl did some chee chee chee and some whoo whoo whoo with the scarf monkey, and then they scampered out the door and ran away into the pine forest.

  “Boy, he sure took off,” Hal said.

  I nudged Diesel. “Okay, big boy, let’s see what you’re made of. Smell him out.”

  Diesel grabbed my hand and pulled me into the woods. “I suspect that was sarcasm, but as it happens, I have a highly developed sense of smell.”

  “Like a bloodhound?”

  “Yeah. Or a werewolf.”

  “Are you a werewolf?”

  “No. I have it on good authority werewolves aren’t real.”

  “What about the Easter Bunny?”

  “His name is Bernard Zumwalt, and he’s originally from Chicago.”
/>