Wicked Business Page 2

  Glo returned the key to the counter. “Nina told me the sonnets were guaranteed to inspire lust, and I thought they might come in handy. You never know when you might want to inspire lust in someone, right?”

  I glanced over at Diesel and thought I’d rather have a charm that helped me ignore lust.

  “I want to do some research on Gilbert Reedy,” Diesel said to me. “Is it okay if I use your computer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who’s Gilbert Reedy?” Glo wanted to know.

  “Dead guy,” Diesel said. “Took a swan dive off his fourth-floor balcony this morning.”

  I set the dining room table for three. I was serving soup and fresh baked bread for lunch. Oatmeal cookies for dessert.

  Diesel ambled in from the living room to join Glo and me, and Carl hopped onto the fourth chair.

  “Chee?” Carl asked.

  “No,” Diesel said. “It’s soup. Remember when you had the meltdown over mashed potatoes? Soup is worse.”

  Carl gave him the finger, jumped off, scurried into the kitchen, and returned with a bowl. He set the bowl on the table and scrambled onto his chair. Too short. He could barely see over the table. He jumped down, ran to the closet, and came back with his booster chair. He climbed onto the booster and smiled his scary monkey smile at everyone. Hopeful.

  “Isn’t that cute,” Glo said. “He wants soup.”

  I’d seen Carl eat, and I agreed with Diesel. I didn’t think soup was a good idea. I put a slice of bread into Carl’s bowl and spooned a little broth over it. Carl pointed at my soup and pointed to his bowl. He wanted more.

  “Not gonna happen,” Diesel said.

  Carl threw his bowl onto the floor and glared at Diesel. Diesel blew out a sigh, plucked Carl off the booster seat, carted him to the back door, and pitched him out.

  “What if he runs away?” Glo asked.

  “Lucky me,” Diesel said.

  “He’s not going to run away,” I told Diesel. “He’s going to stand out there in the rain until you let him come in, and then the whole house will smell like wet monkey.”

  There was some scratching at the door, the lock tumbled, the door opened, and Carl stomped past us into the living room. He turned the television on, surfed a couple channels, and settled for the Home Shopping Network. We all rolled our eyes and got busy with our soup.

  “Did you find anything interesting on Reedy?” I asked Diesel.

  “He taught Elizabethan literature. He was single. Originally from the Midwest. Drove a hybrid. Forty-two years old. No indication that he was exceptional in any way.”

  “Boy, that’s impressive,” Glo said. “Do you have to buy into a search program to find that kind of stuff?”

  Diesel mopped the last of his soup up with a crust of bread. “No. It was on his Facebook page. He also had a blog where he wrote about finding a book of sonnets that was said to have magical powers.”

  Glo went wide-eyed. “I bet he was talking about Lovey’s book! Is that where you found the key? Was the key on Gilbert Reedy?”

  “Maybe,” Diesel said. “Maybe not.”

  Carl walked into the dining room and mooned Diesel. It lost some impact, since Carl didn’t wear pants and his business wasn’t new to us.

  “Dude,” Diesel said. “That’s no way to get dessert.”

  Carl snapped to attention. “Eep?”

  “Cookies,” I told him.

  Carl jumped onto his booster seat, sat ramrod straight, and folded his hands on the table. He was a good monkey. I gave him a cookie, and he shoved it into his mouth.

  “Manners,” Diesel said to him.

  Carl spit the cookie out onto the table, picked it up, and carefully nibbled at it.

  “I should probably go home,” Glo said when we were done with lunch. “I have to do laundry, and my broom might be lonely.” She carried her plates into the kitchen, shrugged into her sweatshirt, and hung her messenger bag on her shoulder. “Thanks for the soup and cookies. I’ll see you tomorrow bright and early.” She left by the back door, and a moment later, she returned. “I don’t have a car,” she said. “I forgot.”

  “No problem,” Diesel said. “Lizzy and I were going out anyway. We can take you home.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Diesel. “We were going out?”

  “People to see. Things to do,” Diesel said.

  Twenty minutes later, we dropped Glo off. Another fifteen minutes, and we were parked in front of Gilbert Reedy’s apartment building. A plywood panel covered the shattered fourth-floor patio window. It was the only evidence that a tragedy had occurred. The body had been removed from the pavement. The police cars and EMTs were gone. The crime scene tape was gone. No CSI truck in sight. Rain was still sifting down.

  Diesel got out and opened my door. “Let’s look around.”

  “You look around. I’ll wait here.”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” Diesel said. “We’re partners.”

  “I don’t want to be a partner.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t want to live with a monkey.”

  It was a valid point, so I unhooked my seatbelt and followed him into the lobby. I stepped back when he went to the elevator.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Where are you going?”

  “Reedy lived in 4B.”

  “You’re going to break into his apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s against the law. And it’s icky.”

  Diesel yanked me into the elevator and pushed the 4 button. “It feels like the right thing to do.”

  “Not to me.”

  “You’re the junior partner. You only have a fifteen percent vote.”

  “Why am I the junior partner? I’m just as powerful as you are.”

  The elevator doors opened onto the fourth floor, and Diesel shoved me out into the hall. “In your dreams.”

  “You can find empowered people, and I find empowered objects. That seems pretty equal to me.”

  “Honey, I have a whole laundry list of enhanced abilities. And let’s face it, you make cupcakes.”

  I felt my mouth drop open.

  Diesel grinned down at me. “Would it help if I said they’re really great cupcakes?”

  “You’ve eaten your last.”

  Diesel wrapped an arm around my shoulders and hugged me into him. “You don’t mean that.” He removed the crime scene tape sealing 4B’s door, placed his hand over the dead bolt, and the bolt slid back, demonstrating one of the laundry list abilities. Diesel could unlock anything. He turned the knob, we stepped into Reedy’s apartment, and Diesel locked the door again.

  It was small but comfortably furnished, with an overstuffed couch and two chairs. Large coffee table, loaded with books, a few pens, a stack of papers held together with a giant rubber band. Flat screen television opposite the couch. Desk to the side of the smashed patio door. We peeked into the kitchen. The appliances were old but clean. Small table and two chairs. Coffee mug in the sink. There was one bedroom and one bath. Nothing extraordinary about either.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked Diesel.

  “Looking for something.”

  “That narrows it down.”

  We migrated to the bookcase by Reedy’s desk. He had a wide-ranging assortment of classics, some biographies, some historical fiction, and a large poetry collection that took up an entire shelf. Lovey’s book wasn’t in the collection. I went to Reedy’s bedroom and looked around. No book of sonnets. No sonnets in the bathroom or kitchen.

  “Nothing seems out of place,” I said to Diesel, “but I don’t see Lovey’s sonnets.”

  “CSI has already gone through here collecting prints and whatever they think might be useful,” Diesel said. “I don’t see a cell phone or computer. I guess they could have taken the book, but it doesn’t seem likely. They’d have no reason to believe it was important. It’s more likely the killer took the book.”

  I walked to the coffee table and stared down at a Shakespeare anthology that had to w
eigh at least fourteen pounds. The cover was faded. The pages were dog-eared and yellow with age. A lined legal pad had been used to hold a place in the book. I flipped the book open and scanned the page.

  “Reedy has this anthology turned to one of Shakespeare’s sonnets,” I said to Diesel. “And he’d taken some notes on it. He copied the line Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines and he wrote Key to Luxuria Stone and underlined it twice. And then farther down the page he has a list of professional papers and books. Lovey’s book is the last on the list.”

  Diesel looked over my shoulder at Reedy’s notes. “Luxuria is Latin for lust.”

  “You can read Latin?”

  “Superbia, Acedia, Luxuria, Ira, Gula, Invidia, Avaritia. The seven deadly sins. That’s the extent of my Latin.”

  “Do you think Reedy was killed because he was researching the Luxuria Stone?”

  “People have chased after the stones for centuries, going on nothing more than blind faith that the stones exist, and they’ve done some horrific things to get them. It wouldn’t surprise me if Reedy was the latest victim in a long history of victims.”

  We went silent at the sound of someone trying the doorknob. There was some scratching and jiggling. A pause. More scratching and jiggling. Another pause. Someone was trying to pick the lock and not having any success. Diesel went to the door, peeked out the security peephole, and turned back to me, smiling.

  “It was Hatchet,” Diesel said. “It looks like he’s leaving.”

  Steven Hatchet is a soft lump of dough with red scarecrow hair. He’s sworn allegiance to Wulf, dresses in full Renaissance regalia, and is off-the-chart crazy. He’s in his late twenties and is the only other human known to have an ability similar to mine. Supposedly, we can sense energy locked inside common objects. At first glance, it sounds like fantasyland to be able to do this, but I don’t imagine it’s much different from a farmer using a divining rod to find water underground. Although honestly, I’m not sure I believe in divining rods.

  We took one last tour of the apartment, and Diesel scooped up the anthology, the pad, and the folders.

  “You can’t take all that stuff,” I said. “That’s stealing.”

  “Think of it as borrowing,” Diesel said. “Someday I might bring them back.”

  Diesel locked the door and stuck the crime scene tape back in place. We took the elevator to the lobby and ran into Hatchet carrying a chain saw.

  “Does Wulf know you’re playing with power tools?” Diesel asked Hatchet.

  “My lord only knows I will get the job done. He cares not how. You and your slut need not know more than this.”

  I felt my eyes narrow, and I listed a couple inches in Hatchet’s direction. “Slut? Excuse me?”

  Diesel slid an arm around my shoulders and eased me far enough back so my fist couldn’t reach Hatchet’s nose.

  “It’s not a secret,” Diesel said. “Everyone knows Wulf is looking for the Luxuria Stone.”

  “And we will succeed,” Hatchet said. “We have the sonnets, and we will shortly secure the key.”

  “Why didn’t you get the key when you took the sonnets?” Diesel asked.

  Hatchet’s face flushed red. “It was an oversight.” He turned on his heel and marched to the elevator.

  “He’s going to cut a hole in Reedy’s front door with the chain saw,” I said to Diesel.

  “Not likely,” Diesel said. “It’s a metal fire door. If Hatchet wants to get in, he’s going to have to go through the wall.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was pouring rain by the time we got back to my house. We kicked our shoes off in the mudroom and padded sock-footed into the kitchen. Diesel took a couple cookies from the cookie jar.

  “You could have defended my honor back there when Hatchet called me your slut,” I said to Diesel.

  “I was enjoying the moment. I’ve always wanted a slut of my own.”

  Carl wandered into the kitchen. He’d been sleeping on the couch in the living room, and he had bed-head monkey fur all over. He scratched his stomach and eyeballed Diesel’s cookie. “Eee?”

  I gave Carl a cookie and turned my attention to the anthology and the folders Diesel had placed on the counter. The first folder was labeled General History of the SALIGIA. The second folder contained a thesis called The Myth of the Luxuria Stone by someone named Carl Stork. Plus a shorter professional paper, also by Stork. Both works by Stork were written in 1943. The third folder held a collection of stapled pages, scraps of paper, and articles cut from journals and newspapers.

  “Most of the stuff in this folder is relatively recent,” I said to Diesel. “Some handwritten notes. A newspaper piece about a museum exhibit that opened last week. An article reprint about Salem witches.” I pulled the witch article out and started reading. “Holy cow. This article is about Miriam Lovey being suspected of witchcraft. It says she disappeared before she could be brought to trial. She was fifteen years old at the time.”

  “Any mention of sexy sonnets?”

  “No. But she was accused of inspiring inappropriate desires in men.”

  Diesel took the article from me and read it for himself. “The whole witch trial thing makes my nuts crawl.”

  “Boy, I’m really glad you shared that with me.”

  “Don’t you have an equivalent body part that’s shriveling even as we speak?”

  “No. But I’m getting nauseous.”

  My doorbell bonged, and someone started pounding. BAM, BAM, BAM! I opened the door and Hatchet charged in, sword drawn.

  “Hand it over,” he said, “or I will smite thee down.”

  “You’ve gotta lose the Renaissance thing,” Diesel said to Hatchet. “You sound like an idiot.”

  “You mock me now, but there will come a time when you will bow to my sire, and to me as well.”

  Diesel didn’t look worried about bowing to Wulf and Hatchet. “There’s a reason for this visit, right?”

  “You have what is rightly ours. We have the book, and the key is part of the book.”

  “What key?” Diesel asked.

  “You know very well. The Lovey key.”

  “Nope,” Diesel said. “Don’t have it.”

  “You lie. You were in Gilbert Reedy’s apartment ahead of me, and you took the key.”

  “How do you know?” Diesel asked him. “Maybe the police took the key. Maybe the key doesn’t exist. Maybe Reedy swallowed the key, and they’ll find it during the autopsy.”

  “I know because I have powers,” Hatchet said. “I sense these things. I smell them. I see visions. And besides, I looked in the kitchen window just now, and I saw the key lying on the counter.”

  “Finders keepers,” Diesel said.

  Hatchet’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets and his face got blotchy. “It will be ours!” he yelled. “My master commands it. You will give me the key or all will die!”

  He raised the sword, took a step toward me, and Cat flew through the air and latched onto Hatchet’s face.

  “YOW!” Hatchet shrieked, dropping his sword, batting at Cat.

  Diesel grabbed a handful of Hatchet’s tunic and lifted him off the floor. “I’ll take it from here,” Diesel said to Cat.

  Cat disengaged from Hatchet’s face, gracefully landed on the floor, and flicked away a clump of Hatchet’s hair that was stuck in his claw.

  Diesel carted Hatchet at arm’s length to the open door, pitched him out, closed and locked the door.

  BAM, BAM, BAM. Hatchet was hammering on the door.

  Diesel opened the door and looked down at Hatchet. “Now what?”

  Hatchet had a bunch of cat scratches and punctures that were beginning to ooze blood. “I think I left my sword in your living room.”

  Diesel retrieved the sword, gave it to Hatchet, and closed and locked the door again.

  “Have you ever thought about getting shades on those kitchen windows?” Diesel asked me.

  “Shades cost money.”

  “Ma
ybe I should spend the night here. Make sure you’re safe.”

  “Not necessary. I have Cat.”

  My clock radio went into music mode at 4:15 A.M. Still dark out. Cat was asleep at the foot of the bed. No rain slashing against the window. All good signs. I dragged myself out of bed, took a shower, and got dressed in my usual uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers.

  The floors throughout the house are wide plank yellow pine. Some very, very old. Some new. The ceilings are low. The walls are old-fashioned plaster. The windows are wood, with small panes. The kitchen is far from high tech, but perfectly functional, and it feels cozy. I have my pots and pans hanging from hooks screwed into ceiling beams over my little work island.

  I started coffee brewing, poured some kitty nuggets into a bowl for Cat, and gave him fresh water. I ate a small container of blueberry yogurt while I waited for my coffee, and reviewed my day.

  It was Monday. That meant I would make all the usual cupcakes, plus an extra forty-five strawberry for Mr. Nelson’s weekly lunch meeting at the boat club. And Clara would need help with the bread, because Mr. Nelson would also want forty-five pretzel rolls. My afternoon and evening were open, but I had a feeling Diesel would fill the empty spaces.

  I poured the brewed coffee into a travel mug, added a splash of half-and-half, stuffed myself into a sweatshirt, and grabbed my purse. Diesel had taken the Lovey key and Reedy’s papers with him, but the Shakespeare anthology was still on the counter. I stared at the anthology and thought about Hatchet and Wulf . . . that they might be lurking in the dark somewhere between me and my car, waiting to snatch me.

  If I’d let Diesel spend the night, he would have protected me against all sorts of drooly, knuckle-dragging, bloodsucking monsters. Problem was, who would protect me from Diesel? Diesel was six foot three inches of mouth-watering, heart-stopping male temptation. He was annoying, charming, pushy, practically leaking testosterone, and he always smelled great. He also was off-limits. According to Diesel, if two people with exceptional abilities do the deed, one of them loses all their special skills, and there’s no way to tell which one will lose. It’s a total bummer, because if I could be sure it would be me, I’d be happy to make the sacrifice. Unfortunately, if it was Diesel and I had to save the world all by myself, I’d be up the creek without a paddle.