Janet Evanovich: Wicked Business

“Television.”

Diesel tipped his head back and looked up at a shattered slider, leading to a postage-stamp-size balcony on the fourth floor. I looked up, too.

“I know of only one person who can channel enough energy to leave a burn mark like that on someone’s neck,” Diesel said.

“Wulf?”

“Yes.”

“So you think Wulf pitched Reedy through the window and off the balcony?”

“Everything points to that, but it would be out of character for Wulf. Wulf likes things neat. And this is messy. I can’t see Wulf throwing a guy out a window… especially in the rain.”

“That would be more you ,” I said.

“Yeah. That would be more me .”

I scanned the crowd on the other side of the crime scene and spotted Wulf. He was standing alone, and he was impeccably dressed in black slacks and sweater. He didn’t look like a man who not so long ago threw someone out a window. His hair was swept back, and his dark eyes were focused on me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

I felt Diesel move closer, his body touching mine, his hand at my neck. A protective posture. Wulf nodded in acknowledgment. There was a flash of light, some smoke, and when the smoke cleared, Wulf was gone.

“He’s been doing the smoke thing ever since he went to magic camp in the third grade,” Diesel said. “It’s getting old. He really needs to get some new parlor tricks.”

Diesel and Wulf are cousins. They’re related by blood, but separated by temperament and ideology. Diesel works as a kind of bounty hunter for the regulatory agency that keeps watch over humans with exceptional abilities. Wulf is just Wulf. And from what I’m told, that’s almost never good.

“Now what?” I asked Diesel. “Are you going to tell the police?”

“No. That’s not the way we do things. Wulf is my responsibility.”

“Whoops.”

“Yeah, I’m behind the curve on this one.”

I saw a flash of brown fur scuttle past me, and Carl crawled under the tarp that screened the body.

“I thought you locked him in the car,” I said to Diesel.

“I did.”

“What the heck?” someone yelled from the other side of the tarp. “Where’d the monkey come from? He’s contaminating the crime scene. Somebody call animal control.”

Diesel slipped under the tarp and returned with Carl. We hustled back to the car, we all got in, and Diesel took off down the street.

“He’s holding something in his hand,” I said to Diesel. “It looks like a key.”

Carl put it in his mouth and bit down. “Eeee!”

I traded him a mint, and I took the key. It was sized to fit a diary or journal, and it was intricately engraved with tiny vines and leaves.

“Is this yours?” I asked Diesel.

“No. He must have picked it up off the ground.”

“Maybe he got it off Reedy. Maybe he snatched it out of his pocket.”

“I took a look at Reedy, and he didn’t have pockets. He was only wearing boxers and one sock. I guess he could have had the key stuck up his nose or inserted south of the border.”

I took hand sanitizer out of my purse and squirted it onto the key. Diesel cut across a couple streets, found Lafayette, and turned toward Marblehead.

“Are we done?” I asked him.

“If we were done, I’d be on a beach in the South Pacific. I thought we’d go back to your house so you can finish your soup and I can do some research on Gilbert Reedy.”

Diesel peeled off Pleasant Street and wound around the historic area of Marblehead, following narrow streets designed for horses and foot traffic. He turned onto Weatherby Street and parked in front of my little house. The clapboards are gray, the trim is white, and there are two onion lamps on either side of my red front door.

Glo was sitting on my stoop with her black sweatshirt hood pulled up and her canvas messenger bag hugged to her chest. She’s single, like me. She’s four years younger, an inch shorter, and she’s the counter girl at Dazzle’s. Her curly red hair is chopped into a short bob, and her taste in clothes runs somewhere between Disney Princess and punk rocker. Today she was wearing black Uggs, black tights, a short black skirt, and a black, orange, pink, and baby blue striped knit shirt under the black sweatshirt. She stood when she saw us, and her face lit up with a smile.

“I was afraid you’d never come home, and I’d be stuck out here forever,” she said.

I looked up and down the street. “Where’s your car?”

“It’s back at my apartment. It’s leaking something.”

“How’d you get here?”

“My neighbor was passing through and dropped me off. I thought you were making soup this morning.”

“There was a temporary change in plans,” I told her.

Diesel opened my front door, Carl rushed into the house, and we all followed him to the kitchen, where Cat 7143 was perched on a stool. Cat is shorthaired, tiger-striped, has one eye and half a tail. Glo rescued Cat 7143 from the shelter and gave him to me. It said Cat 7143 on his adoption paper, and he’s been Cat 7143 ever since. Cat jumped off the stool, sniffed at Carl, and walked away in disgust. Carl flipped him the bird and claimed the stool.

“Put the hex on anybody lately?” Diesel asked Glo.

Glo set her messenger bag on the counter. “No. I tried to put a happy spell on my broom, but it didn’t work. He’s still cranky.”

Glo’s read the entire Harry Potter series four times and has aspirations toward wizardry. A couple months ago, she found Ripple’s Book of Spells in a curio shop, and she’s been test-driving spells ever since. I like Glo a lot, and she’s an excellent counter girl, but she’s a disaster as a wizard.

“What kind of soup are you making?” Glo asked, looking into my pot.

“Vegetable with beef broth and noodles.”

“Are you putting any exotic herbs in it? I have some powdered eye of newt with me.” Glo rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a small jar. “And I’ve got lizard eggs, but they might be expired. I got them on sale.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll pass.”

I took the little key out of my pocket, set it on the counter, and went to the sink to wash my hands.

“Omigosh,” Glo said. “It’s the Lovey key. I didn’t realize you were the one who bought the sonnets.”

“I didn’t buy sonnets,” I told her. “I found the key. Technically, Carl found it.”

Glo picked the key up and squinted at it. “If you look real close, you can see the L inscribed in the middle of the vines. It’s absolutely ancient, and Nina at Ye Olde Exotica Shoppe said it might be enchanted. It goes with a little book of sonnets. I was saving up money to buy the book from Nina, but someone beat me to it.”

I tied my chef apron around my waist and looked over at Glo. “I didn’t realize you liked poetry.”

“Nina let me read some of the sonnets. They’re so romantic. And some of them are totally bawdy.”

“Nothing better than a bawdy sonnet,” Diesel said, helping himself to a bagel.

I couldn’t imagine Diesel liking a sonnet, bawdy or otherwise. I thought Diesel was more of a limerick kind of guy.

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.”