Janet Evanovich - Wicked Business

“This is a St. John,” Early said, wild-eyed. “You do not do this to a St. John Knit!”

Glo ran out of the kitchen with a ten-pound sack of flour. “I’m pretty sure I’ve enchanted this,” she said, shoving the flour at me. “Hit her with this, and she’ll turn into a rock. And then we can bury her, or throw her in the ocean, or something.”

I pitched the sack of flour at Early, it hit her in the head, broke apart, and flour spewed everywhere.

“Stand back,” Glo yelled to me. “Don’t get any of the flour on you, or you might turn into a rock, too.”

I jumped away from Early, and Glo and I hid behind the counter, peeking over the top to watch the transformation.

Clara was next to us, kneeling behind the display case, looking ashen with a gash in her head that was dripping blood.

“What the…” Early said, taking stock of her St. John Knit suit.

She was covered head to toe with flour, but she wasn’t a rock.

“I was in a hurry,” Glo said. “I might not have done it exactly right.”

Early wasn’t moving. She just kept staring down at her suit. I looked at her more closely and realized her eyes were darting around.

“I don’t think she can move,” I said to Glo. “I think you made her like a rock.”

“Bummer,” Glo said. “What should we do with her? I guess we could still throw her in the ocean.”

I looked over at Clara. “We should get Clara to the hospital.”

“Get her out of here first,” Clara said. “I’m not leaving my bakery unprotected with Nutso here in the front shop.”

“Nutso looks to be stuck in one spot,” I said to Clara.

“Yes, but the frickberry hasn’t come in yet,” Glo said. “So this might not last forever.”

There was flour everywhere, and I wasn’t taking chances with it, so I snapped on rubber gloves and went over the entire room, including Deirdre Early, with the Shop-Vac.

“How are you holding up?” I asked Clara.

“I’m okay. Get me a towel so I don’t spew blood everywhere.” She looked down at her arm. “My arm is killing me. It feels like I twisted it when I fell.”

Glo got a towel for Clara, and I put the Shop-Vac away and rolled the hand truck into the front shop. We loaded Early onto the truck, I rolled her through the kitchen, out the back door, and set her in the parking lot. Aside from not being able to move, she seemed in pretty good shape. She was making low growling sounds and rolling her eyes, but that was about all she could do.

We walked Clara out to Glo’s car, I locked the shop, and Glo drove us to the hospital. I called Diesel on the way and told him what had happened.

An hour later, the gash on Clara’s forehead was getting sutured together, and her broken arm was in a soft cast.

Diesel was slouched in a chair in the waiting room, paging through a copy of Sports Illustrated . He looked up when Glo and I entered from the treatment area. “How is she?”

“She’s going to be fine,” I said. “She’s going to have a major headache for a while, and unfortunately she got a hairline break in her arm when she fell.”

“I drove past the parking lot on my way here,” Diesel said. “Early was still there, looking like a statue. Maybe you want to put a bagel in her hand and stand her on the sidewalk by Dazzle’s front door.” He looked at his watch. “How much longer do you think this will take?”

“No more than an hour,” I said.

Glo pulled a bunch of magazines out of the rack on the wall. “I can stay with her and take her home. I don’t mind waiting. I haven’t read any of these.”

Diesel and I left the hospital and got on 1A south to Boston.

“Do you think Deirdre Early is Anarchy?” I asked Diesel. “She’s flat-out crazy, and she has a horrible temper. She got mad in the bakery, and the bagels were dancing in the display case. She’s like Poltergeist Woman.”

“I like the thought. It would be a huge pain if there were two crazy, power-hungry women after the stone.”

“Plus Wulf.”

“Yeah. Don’t want to forget Wulf. What did he say to you this morning?”

“You knew I talked to Wulf?”

“I have Wulf radar. Little alarms go off in my brain when he’s near. I get a cramp in my ass.”

“He was following Anarchy, and I stumbled onto him when I walked out of the house. He said Anarchy has targeted me since she didn’t have any luck recruiting Hatchet. That’s why I thought Early could be Anarchy. Early said either I was her minion or I was dead.”

“We need to move faster through these clues,” Diesel said. “There are too many players, and they’re holding too much power, and they’re all postal.”

Forty minutes later, we were on Beacon Hill trying to get to Joy Street. Joy Street was another of those places you can’t get to from here in a car. Every street was one way going in the wrong direction. Diesel finally found a parking place on Mt. Vernon, and we walked a block to Joy. We walked the entire length of Joy and ended on the corner of Joy and Beacon.

“I’m not getting anything,” Diesel said. “Joy is like any other residential street on the Hill. Expensive homes. Affluent residents. Nothing out of the ordinary for Beacon Hill. I was hoping to find something relating to the ‘selfless’ part of the riddle… like a church.”

I had the riddle written on a note card. “Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give Joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them,” I said.

It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky. Joy Street had been sunny when we arrived, and we were now standing in shade.

“We’re in the shadow,” I said. “The sun is going down and Joy Street is in shadow. Could this be the shadow of Joy?”

“It could be, but it still doesn’t get us anywhere. For the most part, the shadow is coming from the State House. And the shadow keeps changing. The sun moves across the sky and the shadow moves with it. The pinnacle of the dome will point to at least a half dozen addresses by the time the sun sets.”

“If the shadow in the second part of the riddle comes from the State House, maybe the first part of the riddle refers to people in public office. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give Joy when they speak .”

“That’s a stretch,” Diesel said.

I grabbed him by his hand and pulled him after me. “Come on. Let’s look at the State House.”

“What’s with all the enthusiasm to save the world all of a sudden?”

“I’m motivated. People want to kill me. I figure if I find the stupid stone, I can get on with my life.”

“So it’s not about the world… it’s all about you?”

“Yeah. I don’t actually care about the world. And I don’t always recycle, either. Sometimes I throw my yogurt cups in the garbage.”

“Shocking,” Diesel said.

He answered his cell phone and stared down at his shoe while he listened. He gave his head a small shake, as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to hear what someone was telling him.

“I’m on it,” Diesel said. And he disconnected.

“Well?” I asked him.

“Sandman ran away again.”

We were across the street from the Boston Common, and Diesel looked out at the park.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Diesel said.

“You’re going to look for Sandman?”

“Yeah.”

“What about saving the world?”

“This won’t take long.”

We crossed the street and took the footpath to the Frog Pond. When the weather turns cold, the Frog Pond is flooded for ice skating. When the weather is warm, the Frog Pond is turned into a wading pool. Today was in between seasons and the Frog Pond was closed. We walked past the Frog Pond to the bandstand and found Sandman sitting on the steps, soaking up the day’s last rays of sun.