Wicked Business

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was eleven-thirty, and there were no customers in the shop. Clara and I were done baking and starting final cleanup, and Glo poked her head through the doorway.

“That scary woman is back,” Glo said. “The one who feels like Darth Vader. She wants to talk to Lizzy.”

“Deirdre Early?” I asked.

“Yes!”

Early’s glossy black hair was perfect, swept back behind one ear. Her makeup was dramatic and flawless. Her red knit suit was probably designer, but I didn’t know which one. Her demeanor was ice queen.

“We have a problem,” she said to me. “I’d like to speak to you in private.”

“I’ll help Clara,” Glo said, escaping into the kitchen.

I kept the counter between us. “What did you want to talk about?”

“You’re still assisting Diesel, even after I warned you.”

“I’m not assisting him,” I said. “We’re partners.”

“Oh please, look at you. You bake cupcakes. You’re nothing more than a minion, like that idiot Hatchet.”

“Is there a point to this?”

Her eyes dilated black. “The point is that you have a choice to make. You can be my minion or you can die.”

“Diesel wouldn’t be happy about either of those choices.”

“When I get the stone, Diesel will be enslaved to me.”

“And Wulf?”

“Wulf as well. Every man and woman on this planet will desire me to the point of insanity.”

Oh boy, I thought, she was nutty as a fruitcake and probably a homicidal maniac.

“You seem like a reasonable person,” I said to her. “Why don’t you let me give you a box of cupcakes, on the house, and you can go home and think about all this. I mean, you might not want me as a minion. I’m not that good at subservience.”

She put her hands palms down on the glass display case and leaned forward, eyes narrowed, face totally drained of color. “Make your choice. My minion or death.”

There were assorted bagels on a tray on the top shelf of the case and the bagels under her hands were vibrating.

“Well?” she said.

The bagels were dancing, rattling against the tray.

“Would you mind stepping back?” I said. “You’re disturbing the bagels.”

The bagels weren’t the only things getting disturbed. I was completely freaked. Early was emitting so much energy I was sure my hair was standing on end.

“I demand an answer,” she said, raising her voice, her teeth clenched. “I command you to give me an answer now.”

She pounded the countertop when she said now, and Zzing… a bagel jumped off the tray and flew the length of the display case.

“Jeez Louise,” I said to her. “You need to relax. You’re leaking energy. You’re going to self-combust if you keep going like this.”

Clara came into the shop. “Is everything okay out here?”

“Leave this room,” Early said. “This is a private conversation.”

“Excuse me? I own this room,” Clara said.

“I will not tolerate insolence,” Early said, her voice a notch below a shriek. She grabbed a heavy glass jar off the counter, threw it at Clara, and hit her square in the forehead. Clara crumpled to the ground, and I went after Early, smacking her on the side of the head with a baguette. She growled and reached for me, and I threw a cherry cheese Danish at her. The cheese Danish caught her mid-chest, leaving a gooey splotch on her suit jacket.

“This is a St. John,” Early said, wild-eyed. “You do not do this to a St. John Knit!”

Glo ran out of the kitchen with a ten-pound sack of flour. “I’m pretty sure I’ve enchanted this,” she said, shoving the flour at me. “Hit her with this, and she’ll turn into a rock. And then we can bury her, or throw her in the ocean, or something.”

I pitched the sack of flour at Early, it hit her in the head, broke apart, and flour spewed everywhere.

“Stand back,” Glo yelled to me. “Don’t get any of the flour on you, or you might turn into a rock, too.”

I jumped away from Early, and Glo and I hid behind the counter, peeking over the top to watch the transformation.

Clara was next to us, kneeling behind the display case, looking ashen with a gash in her head that was dripping blood.

“What the…” Early said, taking stock of her St. John Knit suit.

She was covered head to toe with flour, but she wasn’t a rock.

“I was in a hurry,” Glo said. “I might not have done it exactly right.”

Early wasn’t moving. She just kept staring down at her suit. I looked at her more closely and realized her eyes were darting around.

“I don’t think she can move,” I said to Glo. “I think you made her like a rock.”

“Bummer,” Glo said. “What should we do with her? I guess we could still throw her in the ocean.”

I looked over at Clara. “We should get Clara to the hospital.”

“Get her out of here first,” Clara said. “I’m not leaving my bakery unprotected with Nutso here in the front shop.”

“Nutso looks to be stuck in one spot,” I said to Clara.

“Yes, but the frickberry hasn’t come in yet,” Glo said. “So this might not last forever.”

There was flour everywhere, and I wasn’t taking chances with it, so I snapped on rubber gloves and went over the entire room, including Deirdre Early, with the Shop-Vac.

“How are you holding up?” I asked Clara.

“I’m okay. Get me a towel so I don’t spew blood everywhere.” She looked down at her arm. “My arm is killing me. It feels like I twisted it when I fell.”

Glo got a towel for Clara, and I put the Shop-Vac away and rolled the hand truck into the front shop. We loaded Early onto the truck, I rolled her through the kitchen, out the back door, and set her in the parking lot. Aside from not being able to move, she seemed in pretty good shape. She was making low growling sounds and rolling her eyes, but that was about all she could do.

We walked Clara out to Glo’s car, I locked the shop, and Glo drove us to the hospital. I called Diesel on the way and told him what had happened.

An hour later, the gash on Clara’s forehead was getting sutured together, and her broken arm was in a soft cast.

Diesel was slouched in a chair in the waiting room, paging through a copy of Sports Illustrated. He looked up when Glo and I entered from the treatment area. “How is she?”

“She’s going to be fine,” I said. “She’s going to have a major headache for a while, and unfortunately she got a hairline break in her arm when she fell.”

“I drove past the parking lot on my way here,” Diesel said. “Early was still there, looking like a statue. Maybe you want to put a bagel in her hand and stand her on the sidewalk by Dazzle’s front door.” He looked at his watch. “How much longer do you think this will take?”

“No more than an hour,” I said.

Glo pulled a bunch of magazines out of the rack on the wall. “I can stay with her and take her home. I don’t mind waiting. I haven’t read any of these.”

Diesel and I left the hospital and got on 1A south to Boston.

“Do you think Deirdre Early is Anarchy?” I asked Diesel. “She’s flat-out crazy, and she has a horrible temper. She got mad in the bakery, and the bagels were dancing in the display case. She’s like Poltergeist Woman.”

“I like the thought. It would be a huge pain if there were two crazy, power-hungry women after the stone.”

“Plus Wulf.”

“Yeah. Don’t want to forget Wulf. What did he say to you this morning?”

“You knew I talked to Wulf?”

“I have Wulf radar. Little alarms go off in my brain when he’s near. I get a cramp in my ass.”

“He was following Anarchy, and I stumbled onto him when I walked out of the house. He said Anarchy has targeted me since she didn’t have any luck recruiting Hatchet. That’s why I thought Early could be Anarchy. Early said either I was her minion or I was dead.”

“We need to move faster through these clues,” Diesel said. “There are too many players, and they’re holding too much power, and they’re all postal.”

Forty minutes later, we were on Beacon Hill trying to get to Joy Street. Joy Street was another of those places you can’t get to from here in a car. Every street was one way going in the wrong direction. Diesel finally found a parking place on Mt. Vernon, and we walked a block to Joy. We walked the entire length of Joy and ended on the corner of Joy and Beacon.

“I’m not getting anything,” Diesel said. “Joy is like any other residential street on the Hill. Expensive homes. Affluent residents. Nothing out of the ordinary for Beacon Hill. I was hoping to find something relating to the ‘selfless’ part of the riddle… like a church.”

I had the riddle written on a note card. “Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give Joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them,” I said.

It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky. Joy Street had been sunny when we arrived, and we were now standing in shade.

“We’re in the shadow,” I said. “The sun is going down and Joy Street is in shadow. Could this be the shadow of Joy?”

“It could be, but it still doesn’t get us anywhere. For the most part, the shadow is coming from the State House. And the shadow keeps changing. The sun moves across the sky and the shadow moves with it. The pinnacle of the dome will point to at least a half dozen addresses by the time the sun sets.”

“If the shadow in the second part of the riddle comes from the State House, maybe the first part of the riddle refers to people in public office. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give Joy when they speak.”

“That’s a stretch,” Diesel said.

I grabbed him by his hand and pulled him after me. “Come on. Let’s look at the State House.”

“What’s with all the enthusiasm to save the world all of a sudden?”

“I’m motivated. People want to kill me. I figure if I find the stupid stone, I can get on with my life.”

“So it’s not about the world… it’s all about you?”

“Yeah. I don’t actually care about the world. And I don’t always recycle, either. Sometimes I throw my yogurt cups in the garbage.”

“Shocking,” Diesel said.

He answered his cell phone and stared down at his shoe while he listened. He gave his head a small shake, as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to hear what someone was telling him.

“I’m on it,” Diesel said. And he disconnected.

“Well?” I asked him.

“Sandman ran away again.”

We were across the street from the Boston Common, and Diesel looked out at the park.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Diesel said.

“You’re going to look for Sandman?”

“Yeah.”

“What about saving the world?”

“This won’t take long.”

We crossed the street and took the footpath to the Frog Pond. When the weather turns cold, the Frog Pond is flooded for ice skating. When the weather is warm, the Frog Pond is turned into a wading pool. Today was in between seasons and the Frog Pond was closed. We walked past the Frog Pond to the bandstand and found Sandman sitting on the steps, soaking up the day’s last rays of sun.

“Hey, Morty,” Diesel said. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” Morty said. “Just living the good life.”

“Everyone would feel better if you were living the good life at your son’s house.”

“My son’s a weenie.”

“We’re going to take a tour of the State House. Why don’t you come with us.”

“Is it a caper?”

“Yeah.”

“What about my baloney sandwich? Will I be back here in time for the food truck?”

“I’ll make sure you get a baloney sandwich.”

“Okay! I’m in.”

We retraced our steps through the park, hiked up Beacon Street, and then we hiked up about a million steps to the front of the State House. We followed signs to the visitors’ entrance to the right of the main gate. The door was locked. No one around. The State House was closed to visitors on Sunday.

“No problem,” Diesel said.

He moved his hand along the door, the locks tumbled, and he opened the door.

“This is the State House,” I said. “You can’t break into the State House!”

“I’m not breaking in,” he said. “The door is unlocked.”

“Oh boy,” Morty said. “This is good. Nothing like a little B &E to get your blood pumping.”

We walked in and looked around. Empty.

“There’s something going on in here somewhere,” Diesel said. “I can hear activity.”

I stood very still. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s because I’m the one with the heightened senses, and you’re the one…”

Diesel stopped in mid-sentence.

“And I’m the one who makes cupcakes?”

“Honey, there’s nothing wrong with making cupcakes.”

“You are so not going to see me naked.”

“You haven’t seen her naked yet?” Morty said to Diesel. “What’s with that? How long you two been together? Maybe we need one of those man-to-man talks. I would have nailed her by now. I got a way with women. Once they see I can bend a spoon, they’re all over me. It’s like taking candy from a baby. So, what are we gonna steal this time?”

“We don’t know,” I told him. “We’re scouting.”

We walked to the left, past the bookstore, and stopped at the elevators.

“Going up,” Diesel said, pushing the button.

I stepped back. “No way. This is as far as I’m going. We can come back tomorrow when the building is open.”

“I thought you were motivated.”

“I’m not motivated to go to prison!”

The elevator doors opened, and Diesel pushed me in. “You worry about rules too much.”

“She reminds me of my son,” Morty said. “Uptight fussbudget. I love him, but I’m not gonna lie to myself. He’s got problems. And he’s not even good-looking, like me. I don’t know how he ever found a woman to marry him. I guess it’s what they say… there’s a lid for every pot.”

We stepped out of the elevator at the second floor, and it was clear the noise was coming from the back of the building. We walked through the Hall of Flags toward the Great Hall. The glass doors to the Great Hall were open and the hall was being prepared for a party. Round tables seating eight each were set around the perimeter of the room. They were draped in red linen tablecloths and decorated with candles and flowers. Two bars were manned by bartenders in white shirt, black tie, and black slacks. Two carving stations were being prepared by chefs in silly hats and white chef coats. And two long buffet tables were getting stocked with a mountainous shrimp display, too many steaming chafing dishes to take a count, an artistic arrangement of breads, salads, sauces, pickled vegetables, exotic sliced fruit, smelly cheese, and smoked salmon.

“That’s some spread,” Morty said, “but I don’t see no baloney.”

A guy in a white chef coat came up to us. “You look like you’re lost. You must be from the agency.”

“Yep,” I said. “The agency sent us.”

“Doors are open in fifteen minutes, and I’m short. You can get changed downstairs. You know the drill, right? You’ve done this before?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Lots of times.”

He checked Morty out. “He looks kind of old.”

“I’m old as dirt,” Morty said, “but you should see what I can do with a spoon.”

The guy in the chef coat shook his head. “Sky-high unemployment, and this is the best they could send me.” And he hurried away.

“Now what?” I said to Diesel.

“We go downstairs and get changed. If we look like waiters, we won’t stand out, and we’ll have access to the building.”

“How do we get downstairs?”

“There’s a bunch of fancy-dressed waiters coming from the door over there,” Morty said.

Fifteen minutes later, we were dressed in white shirts, black bow ties, and black slacks, and we were back in the Great Hall. Morty and I looked halfway decent. Diesel looked like a Chippendale’s dancer ready to burst out of his clothes.

Men in black tie and women in cocktail dresses were entering, smiling, talking, looking for their tables. The wait-staff was circulating with glasses of champagne and hors d’oeuvres on silver trays.

“When this hall gets filled with people, no one will notice if we leave to do our thing,” Diesel said. “Grab a tray and blend in until then.”

Morty got a tray of stuffed mushrooms. “Look at this,” he said. “Would you take something that looks like this from a stranger and eat it? I got a new rule since my time living in the park. I don’t eat food that’s brown.”

“Don’t let him out of your sight,” Diesel said to me.

I trailed after Morty. He offered his mushrooms and I offered chicken on a skewer. Neither of us had a lot of takers. People were going directly to the buffet table and taking seats.

“It’s like I got cooties,” Morty said. “No one wants one of these crapola brown things. Not that I blame them. I feel like I’m serving goose turds. And look at this party. What a bunch of stiffs. There isn’t anybody here under eighty. They should be passing out Metamucil shooters. These people are falling asleep, and they’re not even talking to me. I bet I could liven it up.”

“We don’t want it livened up. We’re just waiting for a signal from Diesel to sneak out.”

“I used to be the life of the party,” Morty said. “Did I tell you about the time I bent three spoons at once? I was crafty about it, too. I don’t move my lips or anything.”

Oh dear God, I thought. Where the heck was Diesel? Five more minutes of Morty, and I was going to be stretched out under a buffet table.

I rearranged my meat on a stick and realized voices were raised two tables down from me. Everyone was focused on one of the women at the table.

“Look at her spoon,” someone said. “It bent all by itself.”

A collective gasp went up and attention turned to the man next to her.

“It’s a miracle!” one of the women said. “Another spoon just bent.”

“It’s a trick,” someone else said. “They must be trick spoons.”

I looked over at Morty. His face was red, his eyes were narrowed to slits, and he was sweating.

“I’ve got one, too,” someone yelled.

“Me, too!”

“I’m hot, baby,” Morty said. “I’m back! Morty Sandman’s still got it. It’s a record! No one’s ever bent more than four spoons at once. Boy, I feel like a million bucks. I bet I could bend every spoon here.”

Diesel appeared out of nowhere and ushered Morty out of the hall.

“What’s the rush?” Morty said. “I was just getting started. I was on a roll.”

“If you kept bending spoons in there, they’d clear the place out and call in an exorcist.”

We kept our trays in case we ran into security, and we walked to the front of the building.

“I did some research while you were serving,” Diesel said. “The shadow on Joy Street is for the most part thrown by the dome in the front of the building, so I think we should start by looking at the dome. It sits over the Senate Chamber on the third floor.”

We took the elevator to the third floor and Diesel led us into the Senate Chamber. The Chamber walls were painted brick and there were busts of famous people stuck in niches. Above this, on the fourth floor, was gallery seating. And above everything was the dome, decorated in a sort of star-burst pattern with an elaborate wrought-iron chandelier hanging from the middle of it.

We walked around the room, reading plaques and examining the sculptures. We looked up at the dome. No frescoes. Very simple artwork.

“There’s a cupola on the top of the dome,” Diesel said. “There has to be a way to get up there. Usually, there are steps winding up. I’ve been to the top of lots of domes in Europe. Usually, the steps wind along an interior wall. In this case, what we’re seeing must be a false ceiling and not actually the skin of the dome.”

I didn’t consider this to be good news. I was a little claustrophobic, and I didn’t like heights all that much, either.

We went up to the fourth floor and walked through the gallery areas. We looked down at the Senate seating. We looked up at the dome.

“This is dumb,” Morty said. “You don’t know what the heck you’re even looking for. I could have stayed at the party and bent spoons.”

“Jeez Louise,” I said. “Will you give us a break with the spoons already?”

“You’re getting a little snippy, missy,” Morty said. He looked at Diesel. “That’s what happens when they don’t get enough satisfaction, if you know what I mean.”

“Hey, I’m doing my best,” Diesel said, “but she has issues.”

“I do not have issues,” I said. “You’re the one with the issues. You’re the one who has to save the world. Am I all that hot on saving the world? No, but I’m being a good sport about it. You could at least recognize that. You could say, Wow, Lizzy, thanks for helping me out.”

“Maybe it’s that time of the month,” Morty said.

“Hold me back,” I said to Diesel. “I’m going to kill him.”

“What else?” Diesel asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“What else is bothering you?”

“I don’t want to go up in the dome.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Diesel said.

“So I don’t have to go up?”

“Yeah, you still have to go up, but you can whimper like a little girl if you want.”

I left the gallery and walked the hall that ran around the outside of the room. There were windows looking out on Boston, and between the windows were murals. Some of the murals were of farm scenes. Some were military, showing battles of the Revolution. Some were of statesmen. They all had appropriate quotes written in fancy script worked into the art. I stopped to look at a mural depicting a farm scene, and the quote took my breath away. Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines.

Holy cow. It was the line from Reedy’s Shakespeare anthology.