Janet Evanovich: Plum Spooky

“No wonder he‘s sweating.”

Lula pulled to the curb in front of the office. “Tell Connie I got a shopping emergency, and I‘ll see her tomorrow.”

I waved Lula off and went in to see Connie.

“Anything on the police bands about the body in the car on Crocker?” I asked her.

“Not much. I heard the call go in. At first, I thought it was just another body in a car, but then I caught a conversation from one of the EMS guys. He said the victim‘s neck was broken, and he had two handprints burned into his neck.”

Crap. Diesel was right.

“Has the dead guy been identified?”

“I haven‘t heard anything.”

I told Connie about Guzzi and Lula‘s shopping emergency. I took a couple candies from the jar on Connie‘s desk and speed-dialed Morelli‘s number on my cell phone.

“Yeah?” Morelli said.

When Morelli left my apartment at five-thirty this morning, he was in jeans and an oversize blue-and-white striped shirt from the Gap. His black hair was still damp from the shower, a month overdue for a cut, curling around his ears and down the nape of his neck. The memory was warm and sexy down low in my stomach, resurrected by the sound of his voice.

“I want to know the latest on the guy in the trunk,” I said to Morelli.

“I‘ll get back to you.”

I was halfway through Connie‘s candy jar when Morelli called back.

“We have a tentative ID on the guy in the trunk. His name is Eugene Scanlon, and he was Munch‘s immediate boss. Scanlon ran the project at the lab. Something to do with ions and magnets.”

“Who owned the car?”

“It was Scanlon‘s car.”

“Any suspects?”

“Only Munch at this point. Personally, I can‘t see Munch breaking Scanlon‘s neck. Munch is a lightweight, and his background shows no martial arts training. I know he smashed a coffee mug into Scanlon‘s face, but I think if he wanted to kill Scanlon, he would have shot him.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, but you don‘t want to know.”

“The handprints on his neck? Connie heard about it over the radio.”

“The ME has no idea how the burn was inflicted. He thinks it‘s probably torture.”

“Speaking of torture, we‘re supposed to go to my parents‘ house for dinner to night.”

“I have to beg off. My brother Anthony got kicked out of the house again, and he‘s moved in with me for a couple days. He‘s all bummed, so I said I‘d go bowling with him.”

“You‘re kidding!”

“Last time he got kicked out of the house, he went on a six-day drinking binge and got arrested for attempting to bribe a female traffic cop, Shaneeka Brown. Anthony said he was just trying to get a ride home. Shaneeka said the barn door was open and the horse was out to pasture, looking to get ridden.”

With the exception of Joe, the Morelli men were a sad lot of drunken bar-brawlers who cheated and lied and gambled away every cent they made. They were also drop-dead gorgeous and charming and managed to marry women who stuck with them.

“Anyway, I promised my mom I‘d keep a lid on Anthony until his wife decides to take him back,” Morelli said.

“Why did she kick him out?”

“I think it had something to do with the horse.”

“Maybe you need to take him to a vet.”

“I‘ll add that to the short list of fun shit to do. Gotta go.”

“The dead guy‘s name is Eugene Scanlon,” I said to Connie. “Munch‘s supervisor. The one he took out with the coffee mug. Let‘s run a profile on him. Maybe it‘ll lead me to Munch.”

Connie punched Scanlon into her computer, and twenty minutes later, I had seven pages of information.

“I can go deeper,” Connie said, “but it‘ll take a day or two.”

“This is a start,” I told her. “Thanks.”

I drove back to my apartment and blew out a sigh at the sight of Diesel‘s bike still in my lot. It wasn‘t that I didn‘t like Diesel. It was that he always created large problems. And honestly, I had no idea who he was or if he was crazy. He made Ranger look normal by comparison. And Ranger wasn‘t nearly normal.

I skipped the elevator and trudged up the stairs in penance for eating doughnuts. I paused for a moment outside my door and listened. The tele vision was on inside. This generated a second sigh on my part. I plugged my key into the door and walked in on Diesel and Carl sitting side by side on the couch watching a war movie. Men were dying all over the screen, arms and legs exploded off bodies, blood and guts everywhere.

“That‘s disgusting,” I said to Diesel. “What on earth are you watching? I don‘t get the allure of war movies.”

“It‘s a guy thing,” Diesel said.

“Apparently, it‘s also a monkey thing.”

Diesel remoted the tele vision off. “Yeah. Guys and monkeys have a lot in common.”

“You were right about the branded handprint. The victim‘s name is Eugene Scanlon, and he was Munch‘s boss. He was found in his own car.” I handed Diesel the seven pages Connie had printed out for me. “Here‘s some background on Scanlon.”

Diesel read through the pages and returned them to me. “Fifty-six years old. Single. Living alone. No arrest history. Some credit problems. Originally from Baltimore. Graduated from BU and got his doctorate at Stanford. Nothing in there about his research.”

“Connie‘s still digging.”

“I‘d like to look at his apartment, but for the next couple hours it‘ll be crawling with police. We‘ll go in to night.”

“ You will go in to night.”

“ We will go in to night.”

“You can‘t make me.”

“Of course I can.”

“You don‘t scare me. I know you‘d never hurt me.”

“True, but I have ways.”

“Magic?”

“Muscle,” Diesel said.

“You‘d physically force me to go with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It‘s more fun when you‘re along. And you make it diffi-cult for Wulf to zero in on me.”

“Let me guess. This is about cosmic dust, right? Our dust mingles together, and Wulf gets confused.”

Carl gave me the finger.

“Carl‘s tired of hearing about cosmic dust,” Diesel said. “It‘s getting old.”

“Then maybe you want to explain the whole zeroing-in phenomenon to me.”

“It‘s not a big deal. You know how sometimes you walk into a room and get a creepy feeling that you‘re not alone? Or maybe you‘re looking for a guy, and you get this feeling that he‘s in the coat closet, so you open the door, and there he is. It‘s like that… but Wulf and I operate at a higher level.”

“Why do I make it difficult for Wulf?”

“When I‘m with you, some of my chemistry changes, and it becomes more difficult to trace my sensory imprint. At least, that‘s the theory. I‘m told it has to do with sexual attraction and expanding blood vessels. There‘s more, but the expanding blood vessels is the good part.”

I‘d never actually seen Diesel‘s blood vessels in all their expanded glory. I had a feeling it was a spectacular sight. And just the thought of it scared the bejeezus out of me.

“As long as they don‘t expand too much,” I said to Diesel.

“Your loss,” Diesel said.

“Anyway, I can‘t go with you to night because I promised my mom I‘d be over for dinner.”

“Sounds good. We‘ll eat dinner with your parents, and then we‘ll check out Scanlon‘s apartment.”

History was repeating itself. As always with Diesel, I was going down as the big loser in the power struggle.

POT ROAST, SPAGHETTI with red sauce, roast chicken, kiel-basa and sauerkraut, meat loaf, minestrone, stuffed manicotti, baked ham, pork chops with applesauce, lasagna, chicken paprikash, and stuffed cabbage stretch in a time line from my birth to this afternoon, pulling together my Hungarian and Italian genes, forever binding together food and parental love.