Janet Evanovich - Plum Spooky

WE SKIRTED A boggy area and stopped at the edge of a clearing. Not too far from us was a small, weathered house with a tin roof. A garden taken over by pumpkins sat to one side of the house. Beyond the house was a large caged habitat filled with monkeys. A long low shed was attached to the habitat. Carl wrapped his arms around my leg and wouldn’t let go.

“What’s with him?” Lula asked.

“I think he’s afraid of the monkeys.”

“No shit. There must be twenty monkeys in there.”

“I have a feeling this is Gail Scanlon’s latest cause. She probably rescued these monkeys from a lab or a zoo.”

“Don’t look like anybody is here,” Lula said.

We cautiously moved into the clearing and looked around.

“Those monkeys are wearing hats,” Lula said.

I moved closer and looked at the monkeys. Lula was right. They were wearing hats. Metal helmets held on by chin straps. A small antenna stuck up from the top of each helmet. They looked like some German monkey army left over from WWI.

There were no cars in the yard. No lights on in the house. Power lines ran through the woods to the house and monkey shed. It looked like there was a road leading out of the compound, just past the caged habitat.

“I don’t care about monkeys,” Lula said. “I care about a restroom. I don’t know who owns this place, but I’m using the facilities.”

She knocked on the front door to the house, and when no one answered, she tried the doorknob. Unlocked. We stepped inside and looked around.

“Anyone home?” I yelled.

No answer.

Lula used the bathroom, and I prowled through the kitchen and living area. The colors inside the house were bright, reminding me of Gail Scanlon’s clothes. There were lots of books lining the walls but no tele vision or phone. No computer. Basic pots and pans. Her appliances were old but ser viceable. A stack of mail addressed to Gail had been placed on a small desk. Notice of her brother’s death was on a kitchen counter. I didn’t see anything that would tie her to Munch or Wulf.

“I feel better,” Lula said, coming into the kitchen. “I feel like a new woman. I’ll feel even better when we get out of the enchanted forest. I’m gonna hotfoot it down the road on the other side of the monkey cage before it gets really dark and the Jersey Dev il goes on a rant.”

Sounded okay to me. The alternative was to go back the way we’d come, and I wasn’t sure I could retrace our steps.

“I don’t suppose you found a phone,” Lula said. “We could call a taxi if we had a phone.”

“No phone. And I still haven’t got ser vice on mine.”

We walked out of the house and froze. There were monkeys everywhere. The yard was lousy with monkeys in monkey helmets. They were shrieking and running in circles and jumping up and down. I heard Lula suck in air behind me.

“This here’s a monkey nightmare,” she said. “This is like that movie where birds were swarming all over the houses and crashing through windows and attacking people, only this is monkeys.”

Not exactly. These monkeys weren’t interested in attacking or swarming. They were interested in getting the heck away from the habitat. One by one the monkeys ran off into the woods. Only Carl was left, looking worried, standing by the open door to the empty cage. He had one hand on the door handle, and it was pretty obvious how the monkeys had gotten out.

“Think this is one of them born free things,” Lula said.

I thought it was more like one of those good thing I don’t have a loaded gun because I’d shoot myself things. I was supposed to look out for Gail’s animals, and now they were running loose in the woods. How was I ever going to get all those monkeys back?

Lula took off for the road. “I’m getting out of here before the monkey keeper shows up. I’m not paying for no runaway monkeys. I just used the restroom. I’m not responsible for this.”

Carl looked at Lula, and then he looked into the woods, where the monkeys had disappeared.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said to Carl. “Susan expects you to be waiting for her when she comes back.”

Carl gave me a thumbs-up and took off.

“Carl!”

“Maybe he needs a girl monkey,” Lula said.

I looked overhead. The sun was about to set. I didn’t have a lot of time to find my way out, but I didn’t want to leave without Carl. It wasn’t just that he was my responsibility. I liked Carl. Okay, so he was a pain in the ass sometimes, but he was my pain in the ass.

“I can’t leave Carl,” I said to Lula.

“Yeah, but you can’t stay, either. It’s gonna get dark, and we gotta get out of here. We haven’t got any phone ser vice, and there’s kidnappers and who knows what kind of lunatics in these woods.”

She was right, of course, but I had a sad stomach at the thought of Carl left all by himself in the woods. I called Carl one more time, and when he didn’t show, I reluctantly followed Lula down the road.

After ten minutes, Lula dropped the pace. “I can hardly see where we’re going. If it gets any darker, I won’t know if I’m on the road. Lordy I don’t want to wander off the road and have the Tree People get me.”

“If we can find our way back to the Jeep, we’ll be okay.”

“The Jeep’s out of gas.”

“Ranger will find us if we stay by the Jeep.”

“Yeah, but when?”

Knowing Ranger, he already had someone on the road looking for me.

“Hold on,” Lula said, voice low, eyes wide. “I hear that flapping again. Good golly, it’s the Jersey Dev il. I just know it’s him. He’s coming to get us.”

I heard it, too, but it didn’t sound like flapping. It sounded more like someone walking through the woods. The steps were evenly spaced, muffled by the dropped pine needles. Smosh, smosh, smosh, smosh. The walker was moving toward us.

There wasn’t a lot of cover. Our only option was some scrub brush bordering the narrow dirt road. I pulled Lula into the bushes, and we crouched and held our breath. Lula had her gun in her hand. The reality of Lula shooting is that she couldn’t hit the side of a barn if it was ten feet away. That’s not to say she couldn’t get lucky some day and actually nail someone. My biggest fear was that it would accidentally be me.

There was some weak light filtering onto the road. The smosh, smosh, smosh came closer, and a kid stepped out of the pines, onto the road. And then I realized it wasn’t a kid. It was Martin Munch dressed in baggy jeans, a gray sweatshirt zipped to his neck, and looking like a fourteen-year-old Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show. He was alone, appeared unarmed, and he was smaller than me. I liked the odds. I waited a moment longer, hoping he’d get closer, but he suddenly stopped and looked directly at me. He turned without a word and took off into the woods, running flat-out the way he’d come.

I ran after him, crashing through the scrubby underbrush, following his zigzag path around trees. He was fast for a little guy, clearly familiar with this patch of woods. I could hear him panting in front of me, and I could hear Lula thundering behind me. I saw light ahead. If it was a road, and he chose to take it, I could run him down. I wasn’t an athlete, but I was in better shape than Martin Munch.

He broke out of the woods, and I momentarily lost him. I reached the road and looked right. Munch was on an ATV. He hit the start button and roared away.

Lula burst out of the woods and bent at the waist. “I’m dying. I’m a dead woman. I need something. Oxygen. A lung. Legal drugs. Hell, any kind of drugs.”

I pulled her back into the pines. “Catch your breath while we walk. We don’t want to be here when he comes back with his partner.”