Plum Spooky

  “I know how Wulf works. Right now, he’s involved in a project that involves Munch, and they’re joined at the hip. If we find one of them, we’ll find both of them. If we don’t find them until after Munch has served his purpose, we’ll find Munch with his head screwed on backwards.”

  I cracked my knuckles and gnawed on my lower lip. I didn’t want to find Munch with his head screwed on backward. I felt my cell phone buzz at my hip, and I checked the readout. Morelli.

  “I have a problem,” Morelli said.

  “No kidding.”

  “More than that. I just got home, and Anthony is missing, and there’s a naked woman in my bed.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. Can you get over here? I need help.”

  “I’m on my way.” I disconnected and grabbed my bag. “Gotta go,” I said to Diesel. “Morelli needs help with a naked woman.”

  “I didn’t know you were into that,” Diesel said.

  “It’s not a party. It’s a problem. I’ll be on my cell if you notice the cloud of doom hanging over my apartment building.”

  Ten minutes later, I walked into the disaster area that used to be Morelli’s living room. It was littered with empty beer cans, fast-​food wrappers, and discarded socks, shoes, and underwear. Crumpled pages ripped off a yellow lined pad were scattered across the floor. A rumpled pillow and balled-​up quilt were pushed to one end of the couch.

  Morelli smiled when he saw me, and I got warm inside and smiled back. He was still in work clothes. Dark jeans and boots. Cream-​colored sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. Gun on his hip. He had a garbage bag in one hand and a can of air freshener in the other.

  “I thought your mother was coming over to clean?” I said to him.

  “She was here this morning. This is afternoon trash.”

  “What’s with all the crumpled pieces of lined paper?”

  “Anthony decided he should write a book about his life.”

  “Because why?” I asked Morelli.

  “He thinks his life is fascinating. He’s calling his book ‘Love Your Inner Jerk.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Morelli said, “but it can’t be good.”

  I helped gather beer cans and food wrappers and stuffed them into the garbage bag. I left the underwear for Morelli. I wouldn’t touch the underwear with a big stick.

  “Doesn’t Anthony have a job?” I asked.

  “Not this week. He took the week off to get his act together.”

  “Looks to me like he’s spreading his act all over your house.”

  “This is nothing. You should see what I’ve got upstairs.”

  “The naked woman?”

  “Yeah. She won’t leave. She says she’s waiting for Anthony to come back with pizza.”

  “So when he comes back she’ll leave, right?”

  “He’s been gone for almost two hours. For all I know, he could be gone for two days. It’s happened.”

  “Did you try telling her to leave?”

  “Yeah. She told me to take a hike.”

  “You’re a cop. You probably drag naked women out of bedrooms all the time.”

  “Almost never. And this is my bedroom. And this woman was brought here by my married brother. I’m supposed to be keeping him in line. If this gets back to my sister-​in-​law and my mother, I’m in big trouble. And even worse, if I lay a hand on this bimbo, she could scream rape or police brutality or God knows what.”

  “So you want me to get rid of her for you.”

  “Yeah.” Morelli grinned at me again. “If you did that one thing for me, I’d be nice to you. Really nice.”

  “And then what? Would I have to be really nice to you?”

  “No. You could walk away. Adios. Sayonara. Good night.”

  I’d heard this before. Once Morelli got rolling, no one walked away. No one ever wanted to walk away. Morelli naked was a force of nature. Of course, I could have him keep his clothes on, but that might feel weird.

  “What about your brother?”

  “I’ll lock the doors.”

  “Hasn’t he got a key?”

  Morelli dropped the garbage bag onto the floor and stuffed his hands onto his hips. “Are you going to do this for me, or what?”

  “Sure. Do you know her name?”

  “All I know is she’s naked, and mean as a snake.”

  I climbed the stairs, knocked on Morelli’s closed bedroom door, and pushed it open. There was a naked woman in his bed all right, and she was mad. She was sitting up with her arms crossed over her huge breasts and her eyes narrowed. She had a lot of overpro cessed blond hair in a teased-​up rat’s nest. She was early forties, with tanning-​bed skin one step away from a carcinoma epidemic. Her lips had been inflated by someone not especially good at it. And she had a spider tattooed on her arm.

  “Now what?” she said.

  “You’re in my boyfriends bed.”

  “He said he wasn’t attached. Are you some crazy bitch jilted girlfriend?”

  “Nope. I’m the current girlfriend. This house belongs to Joe Morelli, and you’re waiting for his worthless married brother, Anthony.”

  “Are you kidding me? Anthony told me this was his house.”

  “Anthony’s house is about a quarter mile away and his wife is living in it.”

  “How do I know you’re telling me the truth? And what’s Anthony doing here anyway? He had a key and everything.”

  “His wife kicked him out, and he’s stuck here until she decides to take him back.”

  “So he sort of isn’t attached,” she said.

  “He’s married! And he has five kids.”

  “Yeah, but she kicked him out.”

  I had the feeling this was going nowhere. Time to improvise.

  “Truth is, his wife would be better off if you took him off her hands,” I told her. “He comes home drunk all the time and beats her and the kids with a gravy ladle.”

  “Jeez,” she said. “That’s awful.”

  “And he can’t keep a job, so his wife has to work nights at the button factory,” I said.

  “I didn’t know they made buttons at night.”

  “She cleans up. Washes floors and toilets and stuff.”

  “Ick. That’s even worse than my job.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I work for a construction company. They’re all a bunch of assholes.”

  “You didn’t give him any money did you?”

  “I gave him money for the pizza and more beer,” she said.

  “Bad move. He probably bought a hooker with the money.”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t look all that lively when I was done with him.”

  “Yeah, but he’s a sex addict. Got a bunch of diseases. He wore a condom, right? I mean, you didn’t touch him or anything, did you?”

  That got her out of bed, hunting for her clothes. “I do not need any more diseases,” she said. She yanked black stretch pants over her ass and tugged a sweater over her head. “That prick had a lot of nerve misrepresenting himself. The more I’m thinking about it, the more steamed I’m getting.” She rammed her feet into four-​inch stilettos and grabbed her purse off the dresser. “He hasn’t heard the last of it from me, either.”

  She stormed out of the bedroom, stomped down the stairs, swept past Morelli and out the front door.

  “I’m impressed,” Morelli said to me. “How did you do it?”

  “We just had a heart-​to-​heart. You know, girl talk.”

  “Do I get to be nice to you now?”

  “No. Now you put on a pair of rubber gloves and take all the sheets off your bed and throw them away.”

  Morelli went upstairs with a new garbage bag, and I continued to pick up the downstairs.

  “Where’s Bob?” I called up to Morelli.

  “He’s tied out back. I had him at work with me, and I didn’t want him snarfing around in
the living room until I cleaned up.”

  Bob is Morelli’s dog. He’s mostly golden retriever, with a touch of Sasquatch. He’s big and goofy, entirely lovable, and he eats everything . . . chairs, table legs, whole hams stolen from the table.

  I let Bob in, and Bob rushed through the house, excited to be home, jumping around me like a rabbit. I filled his bowl with fresh water, and another bowl with dog crunchies, and Bob dug in. I tied off my garbage bag and set it by the back door. I was starting up the stairs to help Morelli when Anthony walked in.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Anthony said to me. “Haven’t seen you in too long.”

  Anthony, for all his faults, can be charming and hideously likable. He was carry ing a large pizza box and had his fingers hooked around a six-​pack of Bud.

  “Charlene,” he yelled up the stairs. “Come get your pizza.”

  “Jeez,” I said. “Bad news. Charlene took off.”

  “No big deal,” Anthony said, not missing a beat. “More pizza for us, right? Where’s Joe?”

  “Upstairs.”

  The front door banged open, and Charlene stormed in and pointed a nail gun at Anthony. Anthony partially turned to look at her, and she shot him in the ass. Bang, bang, bang.

  “That’s for the gravy ladle,” she said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” And she left, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Anthony and I were momentarily stunned, mouths open, bug-​eyed.

  “Fuck,” Anthony finally said. He dropped the pizza, and Bob galloped in and ate it.

  Morelli appeared at the head of the stairs. “Were those gunshots?”

  “Charlene came back and shot Anthony in the ass with a nail gun. She works for a construction company.”

  “Where is she now?” Morelli asked.

  “Gone.”

  Morelli jogged down the stairs and looked at Anthony’s backside. Blood was seeping through his jeans.

  “Shit,” Morelli said. “Why’d she shoot you?”

  “I don’t know,” Anthony said. “Something about a gravy ladle.”

  I ran to the kitchen and got a couple towels. By the time I got back to the living room, Morelli was dragging Anthony out the door to the car.

  Morelli owns an SUV, so Bob has a safe, comfy place to ride, but he keeps a Ducati in his garage for times when he needs to take his wild side for a drive. We loaded Anthony into the back of Morelli’s SUV and Morelli drove the short distance to St. Francis Hospital. The pain was setting in when we off-​loaded Anthony. He was white-​faced and sweating, and he was swearing in two languages. Morelli dragged him into the emergency entrance, and I parked the car in the parking garage.

  Okay, so I felt a little bad, but how was I to know Char-​lene would shoot Anthony over the gravy ladle? I mean, who would even believe it? A gravy ladle, for crying out loud. I had no idea where gravy ladle had come from. Baseball bat and tennis racket had horrified me, and then gravy ladle popped into my head. Maybe I was hungry.

  Morelli was slouched in a chair in the waiting room when I walked in. I took the seat beside him and sat with my bag hugged to my chest.

  “Will he be okay?” I asked Morelli.

  “That’s a complicated question. There’s a lot more wrong with him than a nail in the ass.”

  An hour later, Anthony got wheeled out facedown on a gurney ready to go home. He was wearing baggy hospital pajamas, and one side of his butt had a big bulge where he was ban daged.

  “He’s full of local anesthesia and happy juice,” the nurse told Morelli, “so he should be okay for the ride home. And he’s got a prescription for painkiller and antibiotic. And he’s got directions for changing the dressing once a day. Bring him back in ten days to get the sutures removed.” She handed Morelli a little bag. “Here’s his nails in case he wants to frame them.”

  I ran for the SUV and hustled it around to the emergency entrance. Morelli and a male nurse loaded Anthony into the back, and I drove us to Morelli’s house. Morelli dragged Anthony into the house and got him facedown on the couch.

  “Women,” Anthony said. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

  Bob sniffed Anthony and ran away. I was in pretty much the same frame of mind as Bob.

  “Gotta go,” I said. “Things to do.”

  Morelli walked me to my Jeep. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me with a lot of tongue and desperation.

  “You’re leaving a sinking ship,” he said.

  “Think of this as a bonding time. And keep him tranqued.”

  Stephanie Plum 14.5 - Plum Spooky

  ELEVEN

  DIESEL WAS AT the dining room table working on my computer when I walked in. “What’s the word on the naked woman?” he asked.

  “I managed to get her out of Morelli’s bed, but she came back and shot his brother in the ass with a nail gun.”

  Diesel pushed back in his chair and smiled wide. “I’d ask for details, but they might be disappointing compared to what I’m thinking.”

  “It was a fiasco.” I got a beer out of the fridge and chugged half of it. “What are you doing?”

  “Prowling around on the Net. Trying to learn something about electromagnetic fields. Munch’s doctoral thesis was specific to atmospheric ionization, a subject about which I know zip.”

  I couldn’t see Carl, but I could hear Super Mario Bros. coming from the couch.

  “Has he been playing that all night?” I asked Diesel.

  Diesel stood and stretched. “Yep.”

  “And you’re okay with it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Boy I’m impressed. That’s so mellow.”

  “Actually I’m only hanging on until the battery runs down. I figure he’s got about two minutes left. And he doesn’t know how to recharge the thing.”

  And at that moment there was silence in the room.

  “Eep?” Carl said. He stood and looked over the back of the couch at us. He held the game player up for us to see. “Eeep.”

  “It’s dead,” Diesel said.

  Carl’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. He shook the game player and examined it.

  “Jeez,” I said to Diesel. “That’s tough.”

  “Easy for you to say. You spent the night with a naked woman, and I spent it with this monkey.”

  Carl threw the game at Diesel and tagged him in the back of the head.

  “This is getting old,” Diesel said, picking the game up off the floor. “I’m not as nice as I look. If I hear one more eeep I’m gonna open a can of whoop-​ass on the monkey.”

  “You’re frustrated because you can’t get to Wulf.”

  “That’s part of it.” His phone rang, and he answered and listened. “Be right there,” he said and disconnected.

  “Flash?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Wulf returned to the Sky Social Club. He’s inside. Let’s roll.”

  “What about Carl?”

  “What about him?”

  “I don’t want to just leave him here in this mood.”

  Diesel pulled a charger out of his pack and plugged it into the game. “I’m recharging this,” he said to Carl. “I’m going to plug it in, and when the red light turns green it’s good to go. Do you understand?”

  Carl shrugged.

  Diesel grabbed my hand and pulled me to the door. “We need to move.”

  FLASH WAS PARKED halfway down the alley. We slid to a stop behind him, cut our lights, and we all got out and stood looking in the direction of the Sky building.

  “He’s still in there,” Flash said. “His car is parked behind the building, and it hasn’t moved.”

  “Do you have any idea who’s in there with him?” Diesel asked.

  “I have my girlfriend watching the front, and from what we can tell, Doc Weiner is there with two lieutenants. Mostly, the club runs during the day and empties out at night.”

  The back door to the club opened, and Wulf walked out. Too dark for me to see more than his outline. There was t
he sound of his car door opening and closing. The Ferrari engine turned over, and Wulf backed out and drove away from us. We all scrambled to get into our cars.