Janet Evanovich - Plum Spooky

“Eep!”

I CAME AWAKE tired. Flat-out exhausted to the point of being barely able to breathe. Too tired to open my eyes. Someone was talking to me, but it sounded like they were underwater.

“Just let me sleep,” I said.

“Steph!”

I opened my eyes and looked at Diesel.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

“No. I feel like death. Where am I?”

“In your apartment.”

“Oh yeah. I knew that.”

I was stretched out on my bed, Carl was watching from the dresser, and Diesel had his hand wrapped around my wrist.

“What are you doing?” I asked him. “My wrist burns.”

“I’ve got a cold pack on it,” Diesel said.

He took his hand away, and I saw he’d been holding a face cloth filled with crushed ice on my wrist. Under the face cloth was a red welt in the shape of a hand. Wulf’s hand.

“He burned me!”

Diesel put the ice pack back on my wrist. “It’s not a bad burn. It’ll fade in a couple weeks. Leave the ice on for a little while longer, and then rub some Bactine on the burn.”

“I think I missed a chunk of action. The last thing I remember, I was in my kitchen, and Wulf zapped me. I’m getting fed up with the zapping thing. That was the third time. How does he do it?”

“It’s not difficult. It’s a parlor trick. Like bending spoons.”

“Can you do it?”

“Yes. And you can, too, with a stun gun.”

“How long was I out?”

“Probably ten to fifteen minutes. He had you over his shoulder like a sack of flour when I pulled into the parking lot. He dropped you when he saw me, and he vanished behind a flash of light. I have to admit, I don’t know how he does the vanishing thing. It’s new. I think it’s a little over the top with the light and the smoke, but that’s Wulf. He’s always loved the dramatic.”

“He said Munch was moping around, thinking about me, and wasn’t productive, so he came to get me for Munch.”

“That makes my skin crawl. I don’t want you out of my sight until we resolve this.”

“Oh great.”

“You’re supposed to be relieved because big bad Diesel is going to protect you.”

“I appreciate the thought, but I like to think I can protect myself.”

Diesel pulled me to my feet. “Don’t get carried away with the strong female thing. Wulf isn’t normal. And I don’t know how to break this to you, but you have no self-defense skills beyond kicking a guy in the nuts.”

I was standing, but I wasn’t feeling especially stable. “I can’t feel my legs,” I said to Diesel.

“You’ll come back faster if you walk around.”

I took a step forward and went down to my knees. Diesel scooped me up and carried me to the foyer, with Carl scuttling behind him. Diesel shifted me to his shoulder, grabbed my bag, and opened the front door.

He looked down at Carl. “Stay here and keep away from the pay-per-view stations.”

“If you’d give me a moment, I could walk on my own,” I said.

“We don’t have a moment. By the time we get to Strunchek, you’ll be fine.”

He carried me to the elevator, across the lot, and loaded me into the Subaru. I had feeling in my hands and feet, but my ass was pins and needles.

“What did you find out from Eugene’s supervisor?” I asked Diesel.

He took the wheel and drove out of the lot. “Not much. He wouldn’t talk about the project. Said Eugene never talked about property in the Barrens. He knew Eugene had a sister in Philadelphia and a sister somewhere else, but that was all. He knew even less about Munch. He said Munch was brilliant but hard to keep focused. It sounded like Munch might have been on his way out. What about Lu Kim?”

“I got even less from her.”

All traffic lights were green, so we made Strunchek’s condo complex in record time. I swung my legs out of the Subaru and walked a few steps. My ass had stopped tingling, and everything seemed to be in working order.

Strunchek answered the door with a can of beer in his hand. He was in his midthirties, had badly cut brown hair, a body gone soft, and bloodshot blue eyes. I was guessing that before starting on the beer he’d done some preliminary weed.

“Getting ready for the ball game,” he said. “What can I do you for?”

Diesel gave him a business card that just said DIESEL. Nothing else. Not even a phone number. Strunchek took the card and looked confused. Probably wondering what the heck DIESEL meant.

“We’d like to talk to you about Eugene Scanlon and Martin Munch,” Diesel said.

“Martin Munch. It’s always about Martin Munch. I hate him. The only good thing he ever did was break Scanlon’s nose with his coffee mug.”

Diesel and I exchanged glances and stepped inside.

“You want a beer?” Strunchek asked.

“Sure,” Diesel said. “What’s the deal with Munch?”

“Lousy prima donna. Boy genius. Big whoopitydo. We’re supposed to be working on a sensor for the gizmo.”

“Magnetometer?” Diesel asked.

“Yeah. I do all the grunt work, and Munch is all the hell all over the place. He’s designing grids and he’s researching wavestrengths. Has nothing to do with our end of the project. Our end of the project is too boring, too small for the boy genius.”

Diesel took his beer and chugged it. “What about Scan-lon? Didn’t he keep Munch’s feet to the fire?”

“Scanlon’s loving it. Scanlon’s encouraging Munch. And then, like this isn’t insulting enough, all of a sudden only Scanlon can see Munch’s research.”

“Do you know what that research involved?” Diesel asked.

Strunchek gave Diesel another beer. “Not entirely. We were part of HAARP, and Munch was pulling in data from them. In the beginning, he was just looking at it, saying it was interesting, and then he got into it. He was generating computer models of the power grid, and half the time I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. I’m an engineer. Munch is Fred MacMurray inventing flubber.”

“Do you know what the fight was about between Scanlon and Munch?”

“I know this sounds crazy, but it was like they were arguing over a wolf. I only caught the end of it. It was after work hours, and I came back for my wallet. I’d got to the gas station and realized I left my wallet on my desk. I walked in and heard them yelling. I don’t think they knew I was there. Scanlon said the land was his, and there was no place for the wolf. He said the wolf was overstepping his bounds and would ruin everything. He told Munch the wolf was out, and if Munch didn’t like it, his runty little ass would be out of a job.” Strunchek drained his beer can and got another. “That was when Munch clocked Scan-lon with the coffee mug and left. Munch was sensitive about his runty little ass. You could call Munch an asshole and a whoremonger, but you didn’t make cracks about his size.”

“Do you know where Scanlon’s land was located?” I asked Strunchek.

“No. That was the first I’d heard of it. I didn’t talk to Scanlon any more than I had to. And he didn’t show a lot of interest in talking to me.”

“Munch was caught leaving with the magnetometer,” Diesel said.

“Yeah, that was a lot of nerve. It was a prototype. It had the sensor in it that I redesigned.”

“What about his computer?” Diesel asked. “Did he clean out his desk?”

“No. He never came back. Scanlon went through the desk and had the computer wiped clean.”

“Thanks,” Diesel said. “We appreciate your help.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay for the game? I got a lot more beer.”

“Some other time,” Diesel said.

We buckled ourselves into the Subaru, and Diesel made a phone call.