Janet Evanovich - Plum Spooky

The Pine Barrens is a heavily forested area covering a little over a million acres of coastal plain across south Jersey. The soil is sandy and the trees are pine mixed with oaks that have managed to survive the occasional fire. Hundreds of acres are uninhabited, unless you count blueberries, and cranberries, and the stubborn, hardscrabble folks known as Pineys who live and work there. There are also hundreds of antique shops, bed and breakfasts of varying quality, and dirt roads that go nowhere. Plus, there’s the Jersey Dev il. The Pacific Northwest has Sasquatch. Loch Ness has Nessie. And the Pine Barrens has the Jersey Dev il.

Diesel left the post office, walked to the car, and slid in behind the wheel.

“Well?” I asked.

“Gail Scanlon comes in on no fixed schedule and gets her mail. Sometimes she’s in once a week. Sometimes they don’t see her for six months. Her box was emptied yesterday, but no one saw her come in. The post office boxes are around a corner from the counter.”

“Did you get a description?”

“Slim, average height, long black hair, early forties, eccentric.”

“What does ‘eccentric’ mean?”

“They didn’t elaborate. But she must really be out there for them to call her eccentric. This isn’t exactly the center of sane.”

“Did they know where she lived?”

“No. One of the guys said she was a citizen of the world. And the woman next to him said she was a nymphomaniac.”

“Sounds like your kind of woman.”

“Yeah, she has potential.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we go home and regroup.”

DIESEL WAS REGROUPING on the couch, watching Seinfeld reruns, and Carl was sitting beside him.

“This is going too slow,” I said to Diesel. “You’re supposed to be the big-deal super bounty hunter. Why aren’t you doing something?”

“I am doing something. I’m waiting.”

“Waiting isn’t good. I hate waiting. Waiting feels like doing nothing.”

“I have Flash watching the Sky Social Club. And every ten minutes, I go to the window to see if the cloud of doom has rolled over Trenton, signifying Wulf’s presence.”

“Nothing personal, but I don’t care about Wulf I need to find Martin Munch.”

“I know how Wulf works. Right now, he’s involved in a project that involves Munch, and they’re joined at the hip. If we find one of them, we’ll find both of them. If we don’t find them until after Munch has served his purpose, we’ll find Munch with his head screwed on backwards.”

I cracked my knuckles and gnawed on my lower lip. I didn’t want to find Munch with his head screwed on backward. I felt my cell phone buzz at my hip, and I checked the readout. Morelli.

“I have a problem,” Morelli said.

“No kidding.”

“More than that. I just got home, and Anthony is missing, and there’s a naked woman in my bed.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. Can you get over here? I need help.”

“I’m on my way.” I disconnected and grabbed my bag. “Gotta go,” I said to Diesel. “Morelli needs help with a naked woman.”

“I didn’t know you were into that,” Diesel said.

“It’s not a party. It’s a problem. I’ll be on my cell if you notice the cloud of doom hanging over my apartment building.”

Ten minutes later, I walked into the disaster area that used to be Morelli’s living room. It was littered with empty beer cans, fast-food wrappers, and discarded socks, shoes, and underwear. Crumpled pages ripped off a yellow lined pad were scattered across the floor. A rumpled pillow and balled-up quilt were pushed to one end of the couch.

Morelli smiled when he saw me, and I got warm inside and smiled back. He was still in work clothes. Dark jeans and boots. Cream-colored sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. Gun on his hip. He had a garbage bag in one hand and a can of air freshener in the other.

“I thought your mother was coming over to clean?” I said to him.

“She was here this morning. This is afternoon trash.”

“What’s with all the crumpled pieces of lined paper?”

“Anthony decided he should write a book about his life.”

“Because why?” I asked Morelli.

“He thinks his life is fascinating. He’s calling his book ‘Love Your Inner Jerk.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Morelli said, “but it can’t be good.”

I helped gather beer cans and food wrappers and stuffed them into the garbage bag. I left the underwear for Morelli. I wouldn’t touch the underwear with a big stick.

“Doesn’t Anthony have a job?” I asked.

“Not this week. He took the week off to get his act together.”

“Looks to me like he’s spreading his act all over your house.”

“This is nothing. You should see what I’ve got upstairs.”

“The naked woman?”

“Yeah. She won’t leave. She says she’s waiting for Anthony to come back with pizza.”

“So when he comes back she’ll leave, right?”

“He’s been gone for almost two hours. For all I know, he could be gone for two days. It’s happened.”

“Did you try telling her to leave?”

“Yeah. She told me to take a hike.”

“You’re a cop. You probably drag naked women out of bedrooms all the time.”

“Almost never. And this is my bedroom. And this woman was brought here by my married brother. I’m supposed to be keeping him in line. If this gets back to my sister-in-law and my mother, I’m in big trouble. And even worse, if I lay a hand on this bimbo, she could scream rape or police brutality or God knows what.”

“So you want me to get rid of her for you.”

“Yeah.” Morelli grinned at me again. “If you did that one thing for me, I’d be nice to you. Really nice.”

“And then what? Would I have to be really nice to you?”

“No. You could walk away. Adios. Sayonara. Good night.”

I’d heard this before. Once Morelli got rolling, no one walked away. No one ever wanted to walk away. Morelli naked was a force of nature. Of course, I could have him keep his clothes on, but that might feel weird.

“What about your brother?”

“I’ll lock the doors.”

“Hasn’t he got a key?”

Morelli dropped the garbage bag onto the floor and stuffed his hands onto his hips. “Are you going to do this for me, or what?”

“Sure. Do you know her name?”

“All I know is she’s naked, and mean as a snake.”

I climbed the stairs, knocked on Morelli’s closed bedroom door, and pushed it open. There was a naked woman in his bed all right, and she was mad. She was sitting up with her arms crossed over her huge breasts and her eyes narrowed. She had a lot of overpro cessed blond hair in a teased-up rat’s nest. She was early forties, with tanning-bed skin one step away from a carcinoma epidemic. Her lips had been inflated by someone not especially good at it. And she had a spider tattooed on her arm.

“Now what?” she said.

“You’re in my boyfriends bed.”

“He said he wasn’t attached. Are you some crazy bitch jilted girlfriend?”

“Nope. I’m the current girlfriend. This house belongs to Joe Morelli, and you’re waiting for his worthless married brother, Anthony.”

“Are you kidding me? Anthony told me this was his house.”

“Anthony’s house is about a quarter mile away and his wife is living in it.”

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? And what’s Anthony doing here anyway? He had a key and everything.”

“His wife kicked him out, and he’s stuck here until she decides to take him back.”

“So he sort of isn’t attached,” she said.