Plum Spooky

  “Who owned the car?”

  “It was Scanlon‘s car.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Only Munch at this point. Personally, I can‘t see Munch breaking Scanlon‘s neck. Munch is a lightweight, and his background shows no martial arts training. I know he smashed a coffee mug into Scanlon‘s face, but I think if he wanted to kill Scanlon, he would have shot him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, but you don‘t want to know.”

  “The handprints on his neck? Connie heard about it over the radio.”

  “The ME has no idea how the burn was inflicted. He thinks it‘s probably torture.”

  “Speaking of torture, we‘re supposed to go to my parents‘ house for dinner to night.”

  “I have to beg off. My brother Anthony got kicked out of the house again, and he‘s moved in with me for a couple days. He‘s all bummed, so I said I‘d go bowling with him.”

  “You‘re kidding!”

  “Last time he got kicked out of the house, he went on a six-​day drinking binge and got arrested for attempting to bribe a female traffic cop, Shaneeka Brown. Anthony said he was just trying to get a ride home. Shaneeka said the barn door was open and the horse was out to pasture, looking to get ridden.”

  With the exception of Joe, the Morelli men were a sad lot of drunken bar-​brawlers who cheated and lied and gambled away every cent they made. They were also drop-​dead gorgeous and charming and managed to marry women who stuck with them.

  “Anyway, I promised my mom I‘d keep a lid on Anthony until his wife decides to take him back,” Morelli said.

  “Why did she kick him out?”

  “I think it had something to do with the horse.”

  “Maybe you need to take him to a vet.”

  “I‘ll add that to the short list of fun shit to do. Gotta go.”

  “The dead guy‘s name is Eugene Scanlon,” I said to Connie. “Munch‘s supervisor. The one he took out with the coffee mug. Let‘s run a profile on him. Maybe it‘ll lead me to Munch.”

  Connie punched Scanlon into her computer, and twenty minutes later, I had seven pages of information.

  “I can go deeper,” Connie said, “but it‘ll take a day or two.”

  “This is a start,” I told her. “Thanks.”

  I drove back to my apartment and blew out a sigh at the sight of Diesel‘s bike still in my lot. It wasn‘t that I didn‘t like Diesel. It was that he always created large problems. And honestly, I had no idea who he was or if he was crazy. He made Ranger look normal by comparison. And Ranger wasn‘t nearly normal.

  I skipped the elevator and trudged up the stairs in penance for eating doughnuts. I paused for a moment outside my door and listened. The tele vision was on inside. This generated a second sigh on my part. I plugged my key into the door and walked in on Diesel and Carl sitting side by side on the couch watching a war movie. Men were dying all over the screen, arms and legs exploded off bodies, blood and guts everywhere.

  “That‘s disgusting,” I said to Diesel. “What on earth are you watching? I don‘t get the allure of war movies.”

  “It‘s a guy thing,” Diesel said.

  “Apparently, it‘s also a monkey thing.”

  Diesel remoted the tele vision off. “Yeah. Guys and monkeys have a lot in common.”

  “You were right about the branded handprint. The victim‘s name is Eugene Scanlon, and he was Munch‘s boss. He was found in his own car.” I handed Diesel the seven pages Connie had printed out for me. “Here‘s some background on Scanlon.”

  Diesel read through the pages and returned them to me. “Fifty-​six years old. Single. Living alone. No arrest history. Some credit problems. Originally from Baltimore. Graduated from BU and got his doctorate at Stanford. Nothing in there about his research.”

  “Connie‘s still digging.”

  “I‘d like to look at his apartment, but for the next couple hours it‘ll be crawling with police. We‘ll go in to night.”

  “You will go in to night.”

  “We will go in to night.”

  “You can‘t make me.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “You don‘t scare me. I know you‘d never hurt me.”

  “True, but I have ways.”

  “Magic?”

  “Muscle,” Diesel said.

  “You‘d physically force me to go with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “It‘s more fun when you‘re along. And you make it diffi-​cult for Wulf to zero in on me.”

  “Let me guess. This is about cosmic dust, right? Our dust mingles together, and Wulf gets confused.”

  Carl gave me the finger.

  “Carl‘s tired of hearing about cosmic dust,” Diesel said. “It‘s getting old.”

  “Then maybe you want to explain the whole zeroing-​in phenomenon to me.”

  “It‘s not a big deal. You know how sometimes you walk into a room and get a creepy feeling that you‘re not alone? Or maybe you‘re looking for a guy, and you get this feeling that he‘s in the coat closet, so you open the door, and there he is. It‘s like that… but Wulf and I operate at a higher level.”

  “Why do I make it difficult for Wulf?”

  “When I‘m with you, some of my chemistry changes, and it becomes more difficult to trace my sensory imprint. At least, that‘s the theory. I‘m told it has to do with sexual attraction and expanding blood vessels. There‘s more, but the expanding blood vessels is the good part.”

  I‘d never actually seen Diesel‘s blood vessels in all their expanded glory. I had a feeling it was a spectacular sight. And just the thought of it scared the bejeezus out of me.

  “As long as they don‘t expand too much,” I said to Diesel.

  “Your loss,” Diesel said.

  “Anyway, I can‘t go with you to night because I promised my mom I‘d be over for dinner.”

  “Sounds good. We‘ll eat dinner with your parents, and then we‘ll check out Scanlon‘s apartment.”

  History was repeating itself. As always with Diesel, I was going down as the big loser in the power struggle.

  Stephanie Plum 14.5 - Plum Spooky

  FIVE

  POT ROAST, SPAGHETTI with red sauce, roast chicken, kiel-​basa and sauerkraut, meat loaf, minestrone, stuffed manicotti, baked ham, pork chops with applesauce, lasagna, chicken paprikash, and stuffed cabbage stretch in a time line from my birth to this afternoon, pulling together my Hungarian and Italian genes, forever binding together food and parental love.

  Dinner at my parents‘ house is always at six, it‘s always served at the dining room table, and it‘s always good. To my mother‘s dismay, my current lifestyle isn‘t nearly so civilized. Left to my own devices, I eat standing over my kitchen sink when I get hungry, and my culinary expertise relies heavily on peanut butter and white bread.

  My parents live in the Chambersburg section of Trenton. Their house is small and narrow, cojoined on one side with an identical twin differing only in paint color. There‘s a minuscule front yard, a slightly longer backyard, and in between is a small foyer off the front door, living room, dining room, and kitchen, with three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The bath is far from luxurious, but it has a window that opens to the roof over the kitchen. This window was my escape route all through high school whenever I was grounded. And I was grounded a lot.

  We were all seated at the dining room table—Diesel, Carl, my mother, my father, and my Grandma Mazur. My Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents when Grandpa Mazur bought a one-​way ticket to God‘s big theme park in the sky. Grandma buys her clothes at the Gap, her sneakers at Payless, and her Metamucil at the supermarket. She has short gray hair, and more skin than she needs.

  “Isn‘t this nice,” Grandma Mazur said, setting the green bean casserole in the middle of the table, taking her place opposite me. “This feels just like a party. Can‘t hardly remember the last time Diesel was here. It feels like ag
es. And anyway, it‘s always a treat to have a handsome man in the house.”

  My father stopped shoveling slabs of pot roast onto his plate, his lips compressed, and his eyes fixed on his knife as if he was contemplating carving something other than cow. He mumbled a few unintelligible words, his color returned to normal, and he moved on to the mashed potatoes. This happened at least five times during a normal eve ning meal with my father and grandmother. He thought my grandmother was a trial.

  I was sitting to my father‘s left, and Diesel was next to me. My grandmother was to my father‘s right and Carl was next to her. My mother was at the other end of the table. My father looked up in search of gravy and for the first time spotted Carl.

  My sister, Valerie, has a flock of kids who regularly visit with my parents, and as it turns out, size-​wise it‘s a fairly easy transition to go from kids to a monkey. Carl was sitting in my niece‘s booster chair with a white napkin tied around his neck.

  “There‘s a monkey at the table,” my father said.

  My mother looked at my father and looked at Carl, and then she belted back something I suspected was straight whiskey cleverly disguised as ice tea.

  Grandma spooned some green beans and applesauce onto Carl‘s plate. “Stephanie‘s babysitting the little guy,” she told my father. “His name is Carl.”

  Carl‘s attention was fixed on his beans. He picked one up, smelled it, and ate it.

  “Do you want pot roast?” Grandma asked Carl.

  Carl shrugged.

  Grandma put a slice of pot roast on Carl‘s plate and added mashed potatoes. Carl‘s eyes lit up at the sight of the mashed potatoes. He grabbed a handful and shoved them into his mouth.

  “We don‘t eat mashed potatoes with our hands,” Grandma said to Carl.

  Carl stopped eating and looked around. Confused. He rolled his lips back and did a forced monkey smile at Grandma.

  “We use our fork,” Grandma said, holding her fork for Carl to see.

  Carl picked his fork up and looked at it. He smelled it and touched a prong with his boney monkey finger.

  Grandma scooped some potatoes up with her fork and ate them. “Yum,” Grandma said to Carl. “Good potatoes.”

  Carl stuck his fork into his potatoes, raised a glob to his mouth, and the potatoes slid off the fork onto the floor. “Eeee!” Carl said.

  “Don‘t worry about it,” Grandma said to Carl. “It happens to me all the time.”

  Carl took a second shot at it with the same result.

  “Maybe you want to skip the potatoes,” Grandma said. Carl‘s mouth dropped open, and his eyes went wide with horror. He shook his head no. He wanted his potatoes. He very carefully, very deliberately raised a forkful of potatoes to his mouth and at the last minute… disaster. The potatoes dropped onto the floor. Carl threw the fork across the room, jumped onto the table, and ran off with the bowl of mashed potatoes.

  There was a collective gasp from everyone but Diesel, who obviously required more than a monkey stealing potatoes to make him suck air.

  Diesel scraped his chair back and stood. “I‘m on it.”

  Moments later, Diesel returned with Carl and the empty potato bowl.

  “Who would have thought a monkey could eat all those potatoes,” Grandma said.

  Carl stuck his tongue out and gave Grandma the raspberries. “Brrrrp!” And then he gave her the finger.

  My grandmother gave Carl the finger back. My mother took another belt of what ever amber-​colored liquid was in her water glass. My father had his head bent over his food, but I think he was smiling.

  “Carl needs a time out,” I told Diesel. “Put him in the bathroom upstairs.”

  Grandma watched Diesel leave the room. “He‘s a big one,” she said. “He‘s a real looker, too. And he has a way with monkeys.”

  It was almost eight when I finished helping my mom with the dishes. Diesel was in the living room with my dad, slouched in a chair, watching a ball game. Carl was still in the bathroom.

  “Time to go,” I said to Diesel. “If we stay any longer, I‘ll eat more pineapple upside-​down cake.”

  “Will that be a bad thing?”

  “It will be tomorrow when I can‘t zip my jeans.”

  Diesel smiled and looked down at my jeans, and it was clear he wouldn‘t mind if I couldn‘t zip them.

  “One of us has to get Carl,” I said.

  Diesel hauled himself out of the chair. “I guess that would be me.”

  He ambled off, and moments later, he called from upstairs. “Got a problem here.”

  I found Diesel standing in the doorway to an empty bathroom.

  “Where‘s Carl?” I asked.

  “Don‘t know,” Diesel said, “but the window is open. It was closed and locked when I put Carl in here.”

  I went to the window and looked out. No Carl.

  “I used to escape through this window all the time when I was in high school,” I said. “What are we going to do?”

  “We‘re going to check out Scanlon‘s apartment.”

  “What about Carl?”

  “Easy come, easy go,” Diesel said.

  “Maybe you can sniff him out. Look for his ectoplasm or something. Follow his sensory imprint.”

  “Sorry. I don‘t do monkeys.”

  “Well, that‘s just peachy. That‘s fine.” I threw my hands into the air and stomped off to the stairs. “Don‘t help. Who needs you anyway? I‘ll look for him myself.”

  Diesel followed after me. “I didn‘t say I wouldn‘t help. I just said I didn‘t think I could tune in to monkey ectoplasm.”

  I stopped at the front door and yelled that I was leaving. “Thanks for dinner,” I said.

  My mother came to the door with a bag of leftovers. “Here‘s for lunch.”

  My grandmother was with her. “Where‘s Carl?”

  “He went on ahead,” I told her. “We‘re going to catch up with him later.”

  We slowly drove around the block but didn‘t see Carl.

  We parked and walked a four-​block grid, including alleyways. No Carl.

  “Are you getting anything?” I asked Diesel.

  “Yeah, I‘m getting tired of walking around looking for a wiseass monkey.”

  “I feel responsible. Susan trusted me to take care of Carl until she came home.”

  “Honey, Susan‘s never coming home. She just dumped her monkey on you.”

  “You don‘t know that for sure.”

  “True. I was putting myself in Susan‘s place.” He draped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. “Here‘s my deal. If you snoop around Scanlon‘s apartment with me, I‘ll come back and look for Carl in the morning.”

  “Deal.”

  Connie had listed Scanlon‘s address as 2206 Niley Circle in Hamilton Township. I was familiar with Niley Circle. It was part of a large town house condo complex off Klockner Boulevard. I found the complex and parked in the lot. Diesel and I got out and studied the cluster of narrow town houses in front of us. Easy to find Scanlon‘s, since the door was sealed with yellow crime-​scene tape.

  Diesel ripped the tape off and opened the door.

  “How did you do that?” I asked him. “How did you just turn the knob and open the door?”

  “I don‘t know. It‘s a gift. I can flush a toilet without touching the little lever, too.”

  “Really?”

  Diesel grinned down at me. “You are so gullible.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “You‘re scum.”

  “It‘s okay,” Diesel said, planting a kiss on the top of my head. “It‘s cute.”

  We were standing in a small foyer in the dark. This was a two-​story town house, so presumably, there were stairs somewhere, plus furniture and a kitchen and all the things one ordinarily finds in a home. Unfortunately, I couldn‘t see any of them because it was pitch black. I felt Diesel leave my side, and I could hear him moving around the room.

  “Can you see where you‘re going?” I asked h
im.

  “Yep. Can‘t you?”

  I blew out a sigh. “No.”

  “Maybe you need to eat more carrots or blueberries or something.”

  I took a couple steps forward and fell over a large unseen object. Diesel crossed the room, picked me up, and set me on my feet.