Janet Evanovich: Wicked Business

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 weigh 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.”