Janet Evanovich - Wicked Appetite

“Eek! Eek, eek, eeeeek!” Shirley said, charging into the bakery, waving her arms. “Boogie man ramma framma me. Icky poopy.” Shirley gave a shiver and made spitting sounds. “Pthu, pthu.”

“Something bad happened?” Clara asked.

Shirley nodded her head and gave herself a frantic pat down. “Grabby flabby big boys, bum, scooter pie.” Her eyes narrowed. “Slippery fur forest and brown Betty!”

“We don’t make scooter pies,” Glo said.

Shirley pointed to her crotch. “Scooter pie!”

A wave of nausea slipped through my stomach. “You were strip-searched.”

Shirley put her fingertip to her nose. “Beck.”

“Was it Wulf?” I asked.

Shirley nodded. “And peepee Snatch Bagger.”

“You should go to the police,” Glo said.

Shirley rolled her eyes and pointed to her mouth. “Snot gobble.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” Glo said, “but we could translate.”

I gave Shirley a cupcake to calm her down. “Language isn’t the biggest problem. I’m not sure the police can do anything with Wulf. Either he’s a figment of our imaginations, or else he actually disappears in a puff of smoke.”

Diesel strolled in from the kitchen. “The smoke is just theatrics. Wulf thinks it’s fun. The problem would be with containment.”

“What are you doing back at the bakery?” I asked him. “Did you know Wulf was here?”

“No. I knew food was here.”

“Wulf was here, but Glo hit him with a clove of garlic and scared him away. Or maybe he left because I told him you had Shirley’s inheritance.”

Diesel looked over at Shirley. “Shirley looks like she had a rough night.”

“More like a rough morning,” I told him. “Wulf came looking for the charm.”

“Was Wulf alone?” Diesel asked.

Shirley held up two fingers. “Nut sucker by Snatch Bagger.” She jumped around making slashing motions like she had a sword.

“I’m not getting an exact translation on this,” Diesel said.

Shirley stopped jumping and her eyes practically popped out of her head, spotting the monkey for the first time. “Jeepers!”

The monkey was sitting on a counter, stuffing his face with cupcakes. He realized everyone was staring at him and his mouth opened and a chunk of cake fell out.

“If the board of health sees this, I’ll be shut down,” Clara said. “It’ll be the first time in four hundred years the bakery was cited.”

Diesel rocked back on his heels and grinned at the monkey. “Carl?”

“Eep!” The monkey stood, squinted at Diesel, and gave him the finger.

“Looks like you know each other,” I said.

“Our paths crossed in Trenton,” Diesel said. “How did he get here?”

“Monkey Rescue,” Glo told him. “He was abandoned.”

“Figures,” Diesel said.

The monkey gave him the finger again.

“Does he do that all the time?” I asked Diesel.

“Not all the time.”

“I got him by mistake,” Glo said. “And now we don’t know what to do with him.”

“You could turn him loose and let him go play in traffic,” Diesel said.

Glo, Clara, and I looked horrified.

Diesel helped himself to a red velvet cupcake. “I’ll take him off your hands if Lizzy only works until noon. After noon, she’s mine.”

“Deal,” Clara said. “Just get him out of here.”

Diesel left with the monkey and a dozen mini cupcakes.

“I’m afraid your cupcakes aren’t ready yet,” I told Shirley.

Shirley shrugged. She didn’t care. She dusted off her hands.

“You’re done with cupcakes?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“Completely?”

She nodded again, rebuttoned her blouse, smoothed her hair down, and left.

“I know I should be happy for her, but she was my best customer,” Clara said. “I need twenty new customers to make up for the loss of all those cupcakes.”

Diesel strolled through the front door of the bakery precisely at noon. I was transferring the last of the lunch pies into the refrigerated display case, and Glo was waiting on two women. The women turned and stared at Diesel, and one gave the other a nudge with her elbow.

Diesel looked like he was used to the stares and nudges. He stood just inside the door, thumbs stuck into his jeans pockets, not smiling, not frowning. Waiting.

“Be with you in a minute,” I told him.

I changed out of my chef jacket, grabbed my sweatshirt, tote bag, a couple bottles of water, and a box of meat pies, and I returned to the front of the shop. I smiled at the ladies and waved at Glo.

Diesel put his hand to the small of my back and ushered me out the door. “That box smells like lunch.”

“We had some meat pies that weren’t pretty enough to sell, but were still okay to eat.”

“How’s your appetite?”

“Back to normal. And Shirley canceled her cupcake order. Apparently, everything gets back to normal pretty quickly once the charm is removed.”

Diesel was parked at the curb in front of the bakery. We both got into the Cayenne, and I noticed Carl was buckled into the backseat. Carl gave me a little finger wave and the scary-monkey smile.

“What’s going on with the find-a-home-for-Carl program?” Diesel asked.

I gave a meat pie to Diesel and one to Carl, and I took one for myself. “Glo’s trying, but it doesn’t look hopeful.”

“No surprise,” Diesel said.

“Eep!” from the backseat.

“I hate hearing Eep,” Diesel said, checking Carl out in the rearview mirror. “ Eep is never good.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Carl had meat pie all down the front of him and was carefully picking it out of his monkey fur with his little monkey fingers.

“No problem,” I said to Diesel. “He’s grooming.”

Twenty minutes later, we were in Beverly looking for Mark More’s apartment. We were close to the warehouse, in an area that was a mix of commercial and residential properties. There were small businesses at the sidewalk level on More’s street and apartments above. According to Gwen, More lived in one of those second-floor apartments.

“There,” I said to Diesel. “Number 29. He’s in the apartment above the dry cleaner.”

Diesel parked half a block away and locked Carl in the car. We took four steps, and Carl banged on the window.

“I think he wants to go with us,” I told Diesel.

Diesel turned and looked at Carl, and Carl shrunk back into his seat, hands in lap. We took four more steps, and Carl blasted us with the horn.

Beep, beep, beep!

“Jeez Louise,” I said to Diesel. “He’s going to have the entire neighborhood out on the sidewalk, and we’ll get charged with animal cruelty.”

Diesel walked back to the car, opened the door, and Carl bounced out.

“Behave yourself,” Diesel said to Carl.

Carl nodded his head and did the monkey smile. When Diesel turned his back to walk away, Carl gave him the finger.

“This isn’t a normal monkey,” I said to Diesel.

“Tell me about it.”

Diesel opened the downstairs door to Mark’s apartment, and we all trooped upstairs into the living room. Mark had only the bare essentials for furniture. A couch with a quilt draped over the back, a side table with a table lamp, a flat screen television set into a shelf system. Every other space was taken up with gnomes crammed into an eclectic assortment of glass-fronted display cases. China gnomes, plaster gnomes, wooden gnomes, bejeweled gnomes, paper gnomes, books dedicated to gnomes, intricately carved marble gnomes.

Carl rushed up to one of the cases and stared at the gnomes. “Eee?”

“Gnomes,” I told him.

He tapped on the glass, but the gnomes didn’t do anything. He frowned and tapped harder. He looked up at Diesel.