Plum Spooky

THREE

CADMOUNT IS a sleepy little town on the Delaware River a few miles north of Trenton. It looks quaintly historic-a bunch of big, white, clapboard houses with black shutters and yards shaded by oak and maple trees. Lydia Munch‘s retirement home was a sprawling single-story redbrick structure. The architect had enhanced the entrance with a portico and four white columns in an attempt to make it look less like a retirement home. The result was that it looked a lot more like a funeral parlor.

I parked in the visitor lot, and we shuffled into the lobby. The walls were a pleasant pale peach, and the floor was covered in dove gray industrial pile carpet. It was a relatively small area, large enough to accommodate the reception desk manned by two green-smocked women, a uniformed security guard old enough to be a resident, and a couple wingback chairs for tired guests.

I asked for Lydia Munch and was directed to a lounge in her wing. I‘d already done this drill twice before, but no one seemed to remember me, and the rules and directions were precisely repeated. They would tell Lydia she had a visitor, and Lydia would meet us in the lounge. Diesel and I moved toward the corridor leading to the lounge, and one of the green-smocked women called after us.

“Excuse me,” she said. “There‘s a monkey following you.”

We turned and looked down at Carl. We‘d forgotten he was with us.

“Go back to the car,” I said to Carl.

Carl looked at me with his bright monkey eyes. The eyes dimmed down a notch, and he blinked.

“Don‘t play dumb,” I said to him. “I know you understand.”

Another blink.

“We don‘t allow monkeys,” the woman said.

Carl flipped her the finger and took off down the corridor toward the lounge.

“Security!” the woman shouted, waving her hand at the old man at the door. “Expel that monkey.”

The security guard looked around. “What monkey? I don‘t see no monkey.”

Carl scampered down the length of the hall and swung through the door to the lounge. A murmur went up from the room when Carl entered, a woman screamed, and something crashed to the floor.

Diesel and I followed Carl into the lounge and found a little old lady who looked like Mother Goose pressing herself into a corner. A little old man with his pants hiked up to his armpits was scrabbling after Carl. The little old man was trying to smack Carl with his cane, but Carl was too fast. Carl was scurrying around, avoiding the cane, jumping on tables, knocking lamps to the floor, climbing up the drapes. He jumped onto Mother Goose‘s head, leaned over into her face, and gave her a kiss on the lips.

“He frenched me!” Mother Goose said. “I‘ve been Frenched by a monkey.”

Diesel grabbed Carl by the tail, lifted him off Mother Goose, and held him at arm‘s length, where Carl meekly dangled like a dead opossum. The old man took a swipe at Carl with the cane but missed and tagged Diesel. Diesel held Carl with one hand, and with the other, he snatched the cane away from the man and snapped it in half.

“I need mouthwash,” Mother Goose said. “I need a tetanus shot. I need a Tic Tac.”

“I‘m looking for Lydia Munch,” Diesel said.

“Two doors down on the right,” the man told him. “Apartment 103.”

Diesel thanked him, and we trooped out of the lounge with Carl riding on Diesel‘s shoulder. Several residents were in the hall. Lydia Munch was among them. Easy to recognize Lydia. She was five-foot-nothing and had the same curly strawberry blond hair and freckled skin as her grandson.

“What‘s the ruckus in the lounge?” she asked. Her eyes focused on Carl. “Is that a real monkey?”

“Yep, it‘s a real monkey,” I told her. “And this big guy is Diesel. He‘d like to talk to you about your grandson.”

“Martin? I don‘t know what to say about him. I haven‘t seen him since Christmas. I know he‘s accused of stealing something where he worked, but it‘s hard to believe. He‘s such a nice young man.”

“I need to find him,” Diesel said. “Do you have any idea where he might be staying?”

“He has a house in Trenton. Other than that, I don‘t know. There‘s not a lot of family left. His mother and father were killed in a car wreck five years ago. He doesn‘t have any brothers or sisters. The rest of the family is in Wisconsin. He was never close to any of them.”

“Friends?” Diesel asked.

“He never mentioned any. It was always hard for him, being so smart. He didn‘t go through school with kids his own age. And then he had that whole Star Trek thing where he dressed up like Mr. Spock. I told my daughter to get him help, but she said it was just a phase. And when he took the job at the research center, he was working on something secret that he couldn‘t talk about. He was real excited about it. He worked all the time on it. Weekends and nights. I thought he should be going out with girls, making some friends, but he said everyone he met was boring.”

“Did he ever mention someone named Wulf?” Diesel asked.

“No,” she said. “I would have remembered.”

Diesel gave Lydia a business card. “I‘d appreciate a call if you hear from Martin.”

I looked over at the card. It said Diesel, and below that was a phone number.

“Very professional,” I told him.

Diesel nodded adios to Lydia, took my hand, and pulled me down the hall toward the back door. “They were a Christmas present from one of my handlers. He said I had to stop writing my phone number on people‘s foreheads.”

“Handlers?”

“The guys who move me around.”

“So you can follow the cosmic dust?”

Diesel opened the back door and pushed me through. “Very funny. Keep in mind not everything I say is bullshit.”

“What would you say is the bullshit percentage? Twenty? Thirty?”

“Thirty might be low.”

We circled the building and jumped into my Jeep. I cranked the engine over, and an animal control van rolled into the lot just as we were leaving.

“Now what?” I asked Diesel.

“Did you thoroughly search Munch‘s house?”

“Lula and I walked through the rooms and looked in closets and drawers. There wasn‘t much to see. The house was empty. No clothes, no food, no toothbrush in the bathroom.”

“Maybe we should take a second look.”

I made the trip back to Trenton in less than thirty minutes. Traffic was non ex is tent at midday, and I didn‘t get a single red light. Diesel took credit for this, but I thought his claim might register a ten on the bullshit-o-meter. Then again, maybe not.

I turned onto Crocker and immediately saw two cop cars and an EMT truck angled into the curb in front of Munch‘s house. I did a slow drive-by, turned at the corner, and stopped at the entrance to the alley. There were two more cop cars parked with lights flashing halfway down, plus a crime lab truck, an unmarked cop car, and what looked like the medical examiner‘s meat wagon.

“This doesn‘t look good,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel stared down the alley. “Call your boyfriend and find out what happened.”

I crept forward, parked just past the alley, and dialed Morelli.

“Is there something going on in Martin Munch‘s house on Crocker Street?” I asked him.

“A call came in reporting two women and a monkey doing a B amp;E;,” Morelli said. “One of the women was fat and black and stuffed into not nearly enough green spandex, and the other was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. I don‘t suppose you were in the area?”

“Who, me?”

“Shit,” Morelli said. “Where‘d you get the monkey?”

“What monkey?”

“Fine. I don‘t actually want to know. Fortunately, it‘s not my case. I have a nice, sane, multiple gang-slaying to work on.”

“What happened?”

“The usual. A bunch of kids shot each other.”

“No. What happened at Munch‘s house?”

“A uniform responded to the call. He looked in the windows and tried the doors and was on his way back to his car parked in the alley when his attention was caught by a pack of vultures sitting on a white ‘91 Cadillac. The car was parked one house down from Munch‘s. Long story short, there was a body in the trunk.”

“And?”

“Unidentified male. Not Munch. No bullet holes or stab wounds. Bucky Burlew pulled the case, and since the guy‘s head was facing in the wrong direction, Bucky‘s thinking his neck was broken. Ordinarily, I wouldn‘t know any of this, but I was supposed to meet Bucky at Pino‘s for lunch. This is half-price day for meatball subs.”

“Did you get a sub anyway?”

“Yeah. I went with Joe Zelock. He‘s in town with those naked male dancers. He‘s their token heterosexual.”

Zelock used to be a Trenton cop. He rose in the ranks, went politico, and got busted for acting in a porno film. Somehow, he got himself onto one of those reality talent shows. He didn‘t win, but he got a gig with a traveling Chippendales-style dance troupe. Word on the street is that he‘s making okay money. Of course, some of it gets stuffed into some pretty strange places, but I guess a little disinfectant spray, and the money‘s as good as any other.

I disconnected and told Diesel about the dead guy.

“Did Morelli say there was anything unusual about the victim?”

“Like what?”

“I‘ve seen Wulf‘s handiwork. He likes to break his victim‘s neck. Nice and neat. Doesn‘t get blood on his clothes. He uses an ancient Chinese technique that only a few men have ever mastered. In fact, it‘s said you have to be born with the Dragon Claw.”

“What‘s a Dragon Claw?”

“Wulf can channel energy to his hands and use them to burn a brand into flesh. When he uses his hands to kill, he also inflicts a perfect print of his hand on the victim‘s neck.”

I felt the blood drain out of my brain, my vision went cobwebby, and bells clanged in my head.

Diesel reached over and put his hand to the back of my neck. “Breathe,” he said.

His hand was warm, and the warmth radiated out to my fingertips and toes and everyplace in between.

“Are you okay?” he asked me. “Your face turned white, and I felt your blood pressure drop.”

“Too much information. I didn‘t need to know about the Dragon Claw.”

Diesel smiled wide. “You‘re such a girl.”

“I‘m going to take that as a compliment.”

“I need to crash,” Diesel said. “I was brought in from Moscow last night and I‘m beat.”

“Where do you want me to drop you?”

“Take me home.”

“You have a home?”

“Take me to your home. I‘m staying with you.”

“Oh no. No, no, no.”

“Give it up,” Diesel said. “It‘s not like you can kick me out.”

“You are not staying in my apartment. Where will you sleep?”

“I‘ll sleep with you.”

“Never happen. No way. Forget about it.”

“You‘ll come around. Anyway, I want your bed, not your body.”

“Really?”

“No. That was a flat-out lie.”

“Get out.”

“Honey, kicking me out of your car won‘t change anything.”

I pointed stiff-armed. “Out!”

Diesel heaved himself out of the Jeep. “Do you want me to take the monkey?”

“Yes.”

Carl hopped out of the backseat onto Diesel‘s shoulder. I suspected they‘d both be in my apartment waiting for me when I returned to night, but at least I wouldn‘t have driven them there. Sort of a hollow victory, but it was the best I could manage. I took off, and from my rearview mirror I could see Carl give me the finger.

I reached the corner and blew out a sigh. I couldn‘t do it. I couldn‘t abandon Carl. I hooked a U-turn to retrieve the little guy, but Diesel and Carl had disappeared. Poof.