Janet Evanovich - Wicked Appetite

I opened the box of doughnuts and almost passed out. Boston cream, maple glazed, jelly, strawberry with sprinkles, chocolate, lemon pudding. I grabbed the Boston cream and devoured it. “Oh man,” I said. “Oh jeez, this is good.” My second doughnut was the maple glazed. “I bet I could eat all these. I bet I could eat them in record time.”

Diesel reached for the chocolate, and I sucked in some air.

“What?” Diesel asked.

“You took the chocolate.”

“There are two of them. We got two of everything.”

“I didn’t realize there were two. It’s fine. I’m good.” I finished the maple glazed and snatched the second chocolate out of the box.

“Ordinarily, I like a woman with strong appetites,” Diesel said, “but you’re downright scary. I’m afraid when you finish the doughnuts, you’re going to start gnawing on my arm.”

“Sorry. I panicked over the chocolate.”

Diesel handed me his phone. “I have the GPS working. Copilot me to Mark’s business address.”

I had the phone in one hand and my strawberry doughnut in the other.

“Turn left at the next street,” I told him. “And then go one block and turn left again.”

Marblehead is quaint. Salem is weird. And Beverly is a normal, hardworking town. Mark More lived and worked in a part of Beverly that was devoted to commercial real estate. Warehouses, light industry, a seafood processing plant. I followed the directions to a two-story redbrick cube of a building with a two-bay loading dock on one side. The sign on the front said MORE IS BETTER.

The sun was low in the sky and lights were on in what I assumed was the office. One car was parked in the lot. The bay doors were closed. Diesel parked next to the car in the lot, and we walked around to the street entrance.

“After seeing what the inheritance did to Shirley and Lenny, I’m almost afraid to go inside,” I said to Diesel.

“According to my assistant, Mark is the local distributor for Momma Jane’s Green Mints. So I guess we’ll find a lot of mints.”

“You have an assistant?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s his name? Where is he? Do you have an office?”

“Her name is Gwen. And I’m not sure where she is. And no, I don’t have an office.”

Diesel opened the glass-paned door, and we stepped into a small room with a desk at one end and a couple utilitarian plastic waiting room chairs at the other. A hallway led to the innards of the building. Somewhere down the hallway, we could hear machinery at work.

We followed the sound of machinery, stopped in front of an open door, and looked into the large warehouse. The floor was polished cement, the ceilings were high, and the walls were cinder block. The area was well lit. Cartons of mints, shrink-wrapped on pallets, were stacked along one wall. A forklift had been parked in front of them. A pile of what looked like assorted junk filled a corner on the opposite wall. The junk was one-and-a-half stories high and extended about a third of the way into the warehouse. Mark More was rearranging the pile of junk with the help of a backhoe. I recognized him from the street encounter with Shirley. He was average height, with light brown hair cut too short on the sides for his Dumbo ears. I guessed his age at late thirties. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t fit, either. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt, and he looked like he was concentrating hard on his job.

Diesel and I walked halfway into the room, and Mark spotted us and cut his engine.

“Can I help you?” he called out.

“We need to talk,” Diesel said.

Mark swung down from the backhoe and crossed to us.

“I hope this is about mints,” he said. “Because I’ve got a lot of them.”

“I’ve never heard of Momma Jane’s Green Mints,” I told him.

“They go to hotels and restaurants, mostly,” Mark said. “They’re the crummy little things they put on your pillow or have out in a bowl.”

“I’m interested in your inheritance,” Diesel said to Mark.

“From Uncle Phil? What about it?”

“I’d like to see it,” Diesel said.

“No can do,” Mark said. “Uncle Phil wanted it kept secret.”

“The object you inherited might be putting you in danger,” I said. “Has anyone else approached you about it?”

“Nope. Just you. And there’s no way it could put me in danger, except from Uncle Phil.”

If I looked over Mark’s shoulder, I could see the mountain of junk glittering under the overhead lights. It appeared that most of the pieces were silver or brass, with an occasional small splash of color. I left Diesel to talk to Mark, and I wandered closer, skirting the backhoe to get a better look at whatever was filling an entire corner of the warehouse. It took me a moment, but then I got it. I was looking at a mammoth collection of padlocks. Some were large, some were small, some were real, and some looked like trinkets.

I returned to Diesel and Mark, and from both men’s body language I assumed things weren’t going well.

“So,” I said. “What’s happening?”

“Your friend is a nutcase,” Mark said to me. “He thinks my inheritance is possessed.”

“I didn’t say it was possessed,” Diesel said. “Possessed implies that demons or other disincarnate entities have temporarily taken control of a body. I said the inheritance was possibly infused with a dangerous energy.”

“How about I infuse you with a bullet up your butt if you don’t leave,” Mark said. “I have a gun.”

“I’m curious,” I said to Mark. “This was the only address we could find for you. Do you live here?”

“Just about. My wife got the house and the dog in the divorce settlement, so I found a little apartment not far from here.”

“Is the divorce recent?”

“It’s been a couple years. She said I liked my collections more than I liked her… and that probably was true. I get a lot of satisfaction from my lock collection here. Lately, I pretty much eat, sleep, and dream locks.”

“Boy, that’s really interesting,” I said.

“Yeah,” Diesel said, cutting his eyes to the junk corner. “Interesting.”

“Well, I guess we should be moving on,” I said to Mark. “Sorry if Diesel was an annoyance. I’ll take him home and give him a pill.”

“I know Uncle Phil was weird,” Mark said, “but he wasn’t some voodoo guy.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Did you ever see him change a cat into a fry pan?”

“No, but I saw him change an opossum into a flowerpot. I could never figure out how he did it. It was Uncle Phil’s best trick. It was like one of those Vegas magicians making a school bus disappear.”

We said adios to Mark, let ourselves out, and climbed into Diesel’s SUV. Diesel drove half a block down the street, made a U-turn, and parked.

“Waiting for Mark to leave?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“Do you know what he inherited?”

“No, but I know where to start looking. If it’s a charm in the shape of a lock, it’s probably going to be at the bottom of the pile, since it would have been his first lock.”

“This could be fun,” I said. “I always wanted to run a backhoe.” I looked at my watch. “It’s going to be a long night. We should get some snacks to tide us over. Maybe a bucket of chicken.”

“Honey, you just ate ten doughnuts.”

“But what if we get stuck here and there’s no food?”

Diesel grinned at me. “Maybe you should let me hold Shirley’s ladybug.”

“You don’t suppose I’m turning into a glutton, do you?”

Even as I asked the question, I was thinking I should stock up on pork chops and graham crackers.

“A couple more days of carrying Shirley’s inheritance, and you’re going to have a snout and a tail,” Diesel said.