Janet Evanovich - Plum Spooky

“He has them on all his fleet vehicles, and he puts one on mine because I sometimes work for him.” And because he cares for me… a lot. The caring is mutual, but Ranger, like Diesel, is out of my relationship comfort zone.

“So now what? Are we gonna go after Gail Scanlon?” Lula wanted to know.

“Yeah. I have a pretty good idea where she lives. We’ll start there.”

Lula had the map in front of her again. “You got an address?”

“Yup. It’s follow the dirt road.”

I TOOK ROUTE 206 to Marbury Road and turned left. Route 206 was a slower road than the Turnpike but more direct. Carl was happy in the backseat with a bucket of fried chicken parts. Lula had a bag of burgers and fries. I had a vanilla milk shake. I left Marbury Road, and my confidence level dropped. I was going as much on instinct as memory relieved when something looked familiar. I reached the dirt road and slowed. I didn’t want to create a dust cloud announcing my approach.

Lula peered through the Jeep’s small windshield. “Are you sure we’re in Jersey? This don’t look like Jersey to me. This don’t even look like America.”

“How much of America have you seen?” I asked her.

“In person or on tele vision?”

I crept around a stand of pines and saw the massacred faux bird bomb on the ground in front of me. Hooray. I was on the right path.

“This is as far as I got with Diesel,” I said to Lula. “We lost Gail Scanlon here.”

“You know how to get out of this hellhole, right?”

“Piece of cake.”

“I don’t like all these trees and no strip malls. It don’t seem normal.”

I followed the dirt road for a half mile and came to a fork. Both sides of the fork looked exactly the same. I got out of the car and examined the dirt like I was Tonto running point for the Lone Ranger.

“Well?” Lula asked.

I got back into the Jeep. I hadn’t a clue. “Left,” I said.

“Boy, you’re good,” Lula said. “I didn’t see nothing in that dirt.”

Carl was on his feet in the backseat, peering over my shoulder, looking worried.

“What do you think?” I asked Carl. “Left?”

“Eeep,” Carl said.

I took the left fork, and after a while, I came to another fork in the road. And then another.

“All I can see is trees and sand,” Lula said. “It’s like the end of the world. There’s no sidewalks. Where’s the cement? And I haven’t got no bars on my cell phone. What’s with that? I don’t like being without bars.”

I looked at my phone. She was right. No bars. I hoped Diesel wasn’t trying to reach me.

“Maybe we should turn around,” Lula said. “I’m freaking. These trees are closing in on me. I need bars on my phone.”

“The road’s too narrow to make a U-turn. I’ll turn as soon as it widens.”

“What if it don’t widen?”

“It’ll widen!”

Truth is I had no confidence it would widen. And I had no idea where I was. I was lost beyond being lost. My plan was to go forward and keep turning left, and eventually I thought it had to take me somewhere.

“I gotta go to the bathroom,” Lula said. “I shouldn’t of had that super-size soda. You need to find a gas station or McDonald’s or something.”

An hour later, I was still creeping along in the Barrens. No golden arches in sight.

“I’m gonna burst,” Lula said. “I gotta go.”

I came to a stop. “Pick a tree,” I said.

“What?”

“This is as good as it’s going to get. We’re lost, and we’re out of gas.”

“I don’t want to hear that,” Lula said. “It’s gonna get dark. I don’t like the idea of being here in the dark. It’s creepy. And the Jersey Dev il comes out at night.”

“There’s no Jersey Dev il.”

“I heard about it. It got wings. Big wings.”

Carl had climbed over the seat and was sitting hunched on the gearshift. Carl didn’t like talk of the Jersey Dev il.

“Are you sure we’re out of gas?” Lula asked.

I turned the key, but the engine didn’t kick over.

“I can’t believe you got me into a situation where we’re out of gas and there’s no restroom,” Lula said. “I’m going down this road, and I’m finding a place on my own.”

Lula heaved herself out of the car and set off down the road.

“That’s not a good idea,” I yelled after her. “You’ll get even more lost.”

“Roads don’t just go nowhere. Roads go somewhere. I’m following this road.”

I slid from behind the wheel and ran to catch up to her. I thought walking off was a dumb idea, but she had the gun with bullets in it. I didn’t get into a cold sweat over the Jersey Dev il, but I wasn’t crazy about the idea of Wulf finding me unprotected in the Jeep.

We walked for a half hour, and we were definitely losing light. Carl was close on my heels, wide-eyed and silent. Lula was two steps in front of me, huffing along. She suddenly stopped and cocked her head.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“What?”

“That flapping sound. Like something flying through the trees.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“I’m pretty sure it was the Dev il,” Lula said.

“The Jersey Dev il is folklore. It’s a bedtime story. And it’s not even scary. It’s supposed to look like a potbellied horse with wings.”

“Yeah, but I heard that the Dev il likes to eat plus-sized, beautiful brown-skinned women.”

“That’s ridiculous. Horses are herbivores.”

“This is a dev il horse. There’s no telling what it eats. And it could stomp you with its hooves. Or it could put a spell on you.”

The Jersey Dev il was starting to sound like Morelli’s crazy Italian grandmother.

“What we really want to worry about is the whine of a Ferrari engine.”

“Not gonna be a Ferrari on this road,” Lula said. “It’s full of big ruts. A Ferrari’d bottom out.”

She was right. This was both good news and bad news. Good news because I didn’t want to get run over by Wulf. Bad news because I was on the wrong road.

“I see something through those trees,” Lula said, heading off into a stand of pines. “I bet there’s a house over there. I bet it’s got a bathroom.”

“Be careful. Even if it is a house, you don’t know who lives in it. It could be a crazy person.” Like Wulf.

“I don’t care if they’re crazy so long as they have a bathroom.”

Ten minutes later, we were still walking through the pines, following a beam of light.

“This is like the enchanted forest,” Lula said. “I always think we’re getting somewhere, and then we get nowhere. Remember in The Wizard of Oz they had to walk through that forest and the trees were reaching out and grabbing at Dorothy? Or was that Harry Potter? Anyway, that’s how I feel. It’s like the trees got eyes and mouths, and they’re whispering about us. And their limbs are moving around like arms, and they’re clutching at us with hideous tree fingers.” Lula did a whole body shiver. “I’m telling you it’s like ghost trees. Like we’re in a ghost forest.”

“It’s the wind!”

“It don’t sound like wind. I know wind when I hear it. This is talkin’. The trees are watching us and saying things. I got a feeling going down the back of my neck that’s like a death crawl. If I had gonads they’d be so far up in my body they might never find their way back down.”

I didn’t need this. I was already freaked out on my own. I didn’t want to hear about trees talking. Bad enough we were lost beyond anything I could have imagined. The road was a distant memory behind us, and I was having flashbacks of news stories involving stupid hikers and skiers who’d wandered off the trail and were never seen again. And now she had me imagining talking trees. And the worst part was that the trees really did sound like they were talking.