Wicked Appetite

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Diesel opened the downstairs door to Mark’s apartment, and we all trooped upstairs into the living room. Mark had only the bare essentials for furniture. A couch with a quilt draped over the back, a side table with a table lamp, a flat screen television set into a shelf system. Every other space was taken up with gnomes crammed into an eclectic assortment of glass-fronted display cases. China gnomes, plaster gnomes, wooden gnomes, bejeweled gnomes, paper gnomes, books dedicated to gnomes, intricately carved marble gnomes.

Carl rushed up to one of the cases and stared at the gnomes. “Eee?”

“Gnomes,” I told him.

He tapped on the glass, but the gnomes didn’t do anything. He frowned and tapped harder. He looked up at Diesel.

“That’s as interesting as it gets,” Diesel said to Carl.

Carl moved on to the open shelves around the TV and stopped in front of a bobblehead gnome. He carefully touched the head with his fingertip, and the head bounced and jiggled. He looked at it more closely and touched it again. More vigorous bouncing. He grabbed the head, and it came off in his hand.

“Eep!”

He set the head back on the spring, but the head fell off and rolled onto the floor. Carl looked up at Diesel.

“Broken,” Diesel said.

Carl thought about it a beat, gave the headless gnome the finger, and kicked the head across the floor.

The gnome collection extended into the dining room and then gave way to stuffed rabbits. Big rabbits, little rabbits, pink rabbits, fluffy rabbits. Every kind of imaginable bunny. They were all stacked up in a jumble in the two far corners of the room.

Carl carefully skirted the two piles and moved into the short hall that led to the bedroom, on his best behavior after the gnome beheading.

“Mark has some strange collections,” I said to Diesel. “Locks, gnomes, and stuffed rabbits. It’s like he indiscriminately decides to collect something.”

We started to follow Carl, and we both stopped at the same time.

“What the heck is that smell?” I asked, hand over my nose.

“Animal,” Diesel said.

“Dead?”

“No. Alive.”

“It must be Bigfoot.”

There was a single bedroom at the end of the hall. I let Diesel go first, since he was the indestructible half of the team, and I hung back.

“Oh man,” Diesel said. “You have to come see this.”

I crept up behind him and peeked into a room filled floor to ceiling with cages housing slinky, sleek-coated, beady-eyed ferrets.

“This is a strange man,” Diesel said. “He could have chosen stamps or coins or bottle glass, but he decided to collect ferrets.”

Carl looked mesmerized. He was in the middle of the room, his arms at his sides, knuckles resting on the floor, eyes wide as they went cage to cage.

“I think it’s safe to assume Mark didn’t inherit a ferret,” I said to Diesel.

“I can’t see him inheriting a gnome or a bunny, either. My money is still on the lock collection. Let’s see what’s in the kitchen.”

At first glance, the kitchen looked cluttered but normal. At closer inspection, it became obvious all the bottles and tins were filled with olive oil. Virgin olive oil, slut olive oil, olive oil infused with herbs.

“At least this is healthy,” I said to Diesel.

“Only if you eat it. I don’t think collecting it does much for you.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught something streak across the floor.

“Did you see that?” I asked Diesel.

“What?”

“Something ran through the kitchen.”

There was a scratchy, scurrying sound, and a ferret popped up on the counter behind all the bottles of oil.

“Maybe he kept one as a pet,” I said. “Maybe he… yow!” A ferret was climbing up my pants leg and another ran over my shoe. “The cages in the bedroom were closed, weren’t they?” I asked.

“They were, but I’m guessing they aren’t now.”

We got to the bedroom just as Carl was releasing the last ferret.

“Bad monkey,” Diesel said, pointing his finger at Carl.

“Eee?”

Diesel scooped up a small black ferret. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we’re going to have to get the ferrets back in their cages.”

They were running between our legs, and rolling around like balls. “They’re having a good time,” I said.

Diesel snagged another one and stuffed it into a cage. “Yeah, I wish the same was true for me. Help me out here. Mark isn’t going to be in a cooperative frame of mind if he comes home and finds out we did the Born Free thing with his ferrets.”

I caught one, but it squished out of my hands. Something crashed in the kitchen, and Diesel and I froze for a moment before I took off at a run. “I’m on it.”

The kitchen was alive with ferrets. They were chasing one another up cupboards and over countertops, knocking over bottles of olive oil. A large tin had tipped, and olive oil was spilling down the side of the counter and pooling on the floor. The ferrets were lapping it up and skating through it, tracking olive oil everywhere. The entire kitchen floor was slick with it.

There was a giant crash in the living room. I stepped out to investigate and went flat on my back in the oil. It took a couple beats to catch my breath, and then I crawled hands and knees through the dining room toward the living room. Bunny stuffing was scattered across the dining room, mixed with the oil. And I suspect a ferret or two might have relieved itself in the excitement, because the dining room wasn’t smelling great and there were a lot of raisins on the floor. One of the large display cases had been tipped over in the living room, and I was looking at a lot of dead gnomes.

Carl was flattened against a wall, his hands over his eyes.

I was still on all fours, and I saw Diesel’s boots come into my line of vision. His hand hooked into my jeans’ waistband, he hoisted me to my feet, and he looked me over. His first reaction was a grimace and then a smile.

“You’re a mess,” he said. “And you smell like a bad zoo.”

“Have you seen the kitchen?”

“No, and I don’t want to. The disaster in the dining room was enough for me. From the amount of oil you’ve got in your hair and soaked into your clothes, I’m guessing there was some spillage in the kitchen.”

“Do you remember when the tanker Exxon Valdez broke apart in Alaska? It was like that.”

“Here’s the new plan,” Diesel said. “There’s no way we’re going to round up the ferrets. We’re going to sneak out like thieves in the night and never tell a soul what happened here.”

“Works for me.”

Five minutes later, we were in the Porsche and on our way to Marblehead. Diesel had the window rolled down, and Carl was holding his nose in the backseat.

“As soon as we get you out of this car, I’m turning it back to Gwen,” Diesel said. “My advice to her will be to push it off a bridge.”

“I must have crawled in something going through the dining room. I think the ferrets were doing the nasty with some of the bunnies.”

“Honey, you smell bad way beyond the nasty.”

I closed my eyes and slumped back in my seat. “Can we review what’s happened here? In the interest of saving the world from a hellish future, we’ve got some poor woman talking nonsense, we’ve blown a man’s house to smithereens, and now we’ve totally trashed another man’s apartment. And if that’s not enough, we’ve acquired a cat with one eye, and a monkey.”

Diesel looked at me. “Your point?”

I blew out a sigh. “I don’t have a point. My life is out of control. Everything was looking so good a couple days ago, with my own house and a terrific job. And now everything’s facaca.”

“Your life isn’t out of control,” Diesel said. “It’s expanded.”

I rolled the concept of an expanded life around in my head for a couple miles, and by the time we parked in front of my house, I was almost buying it. The Spook Patrol was back on the sidewalk, cameras and Spook-detection gadgets at the ready. I stepped out of the car, everyone rushed up to me, and everyone gasped and fell back.

“Smells like ecto-slime,” one of the Patrollers said, holding his ghost gizmo at arm’s reach, pointing it at me.

“It had to be a really nasty spirit,” another guy said. “Like a level five.”

Spookmaster Mel spotted Carl getting out of the SUV. “What’s with the monkey?”

“We’re babysitting,” I told him.

The gizmo guy wanded Carl with his ghost-o-meter. “No demonic possession registering.”

“Maybe you need new batteries in that thing,” Diesel said, opening my front door, shoving Carl into the house.

“So what does he do?” I asked Diesel. “Does he use a kitty litter? Do we need monkey diapers?”

Carl looked at me and gave me the finger.

“He uses the bathroom,” Diesel said.

I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I wasn’t excited about sharing my bathroom with a monkey.

Cat 7143 strolled into the living room and went into killer cat mode when he spotted Carl. Arched back, bushy tail, hair on end, bloodcurdling growl.

Carl went rigid, eyes wide. “Eeeep!”

“Be nice,” I said to Cat. “This is Carl. He’s a houseguest.” I turned to Carl. “This is Cat 7143.”

Carl took a cautious step forward and smiled his insane, scary-monkey smile at Cat. Cat hissed and slashed at Carl, and Carl scampered up Diesel’s leg and hunkered down on his shoulder, digging his boney monkey fingers into Diesel’s shirt.

“You’re going to have to deal with this,” I said to Diesel. “I have to take a shower.”

Diesel swung Carl down off his shoulder. “No problemo. Let me know if you need help. I’ve been told I’m good with soap.”

I thought about rolling my eyes, but I’d been doing a lot of that lately. I also refrained from sighing, grunting, or doing what I really wanted to do, which was take him up on his offer. I ran upstairs, stripped, and decided the clothes were unsalvageable. I found a garbage bag under the sink, stuffed the clothes into the bag, and tossed the bag out the second-floor window. The bathroom instantly smelled better. Huge relief. The smell wasn’t originating with me.

I stepped into the shower and let the water beat down on me. It took every drop of hot water in the house and a lot of shampoo to get the oil out of my hair. I did a fast blow-dry, got dressed in clean jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and I went in search of Diesel.

I found him talking on his cell phone in the kitchen. Cat was hiding somewhere, and Carl was sitting on one of the bar stools. Somewhere toward the end of the shower, I was overwhelmed with a craving for chocolate. Now that I was in the kitchen, the quest for chocolate occupied my entire brain. I snatched three bars of baker’s chocolate from the cupboard and cracked one open.

“As much as I would like more muffins, we don’t have time for baking,” Diesel said, eyeing the chocolate.

I shoved some chocolate into my mouth and put the other two bars in my jeans pocket. “I’m not baking. I’m eating.” I looked around. “I need fudge and marshmallow. Make a list. We need to go to the store. Costco. We can buy cases there, so I won’t run out.” I broke more off the chocolate bar and nibbled at it. “And I really need some Snickers bars. A couple cases of those. Are you writing this down?”

“You’ve got gluttonitis again,” Diesel said. “I’ve got the charm on me, and it looks like it’s leaking out to you.”

“I do not have gluttonitis. That’s ridiculous. I’m just making a food list. Suppose there was a hurricane, and I didn’t have any Snickers, and the stores ran out? What then?” I opened a jar of peanut butter and ate it with my finger between munches of chocolate.

“Stop eating,” Diesel said.

I swooped a big glob of peanut butter onto my finger. “Mind your own beeswax.”

I had the finger with the peanut butter almost to my mouth, and Diesel grabbed my wrist.

“I’m asking you to stop,” he said. “If you don’t listen to me, I’ll make you stop.”

My eyes were narrowed, fixed on the peanut butter stuck to the end of my finger. I wanted the peanut butter bad. “Let go,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel put his mouth to my finger and sucked the peanut butter off.

“Hey, Mister Jerk,” I said, “that was my peanut butter.”

And then it hit me. Heat. And a rush so strong it almost knocked me to my knees. His mouth had been warm and wet, and there was some tongue involved.

“Jeez,” I said on a whisper.

He was inches from me, our bodies barely touching. His eyes were dark and serious, and his hand was still wrapped around my wrist. For a long moment, I was sure he was going to kiss me, but the emotion changed in his eyes, and he pulled back.

“We need to talk to Mark,” he said.

“Un-hunh.”

The corners of his mouth tipped into a small smile. “Are you hungry?”

I nodded.

“For chocolate?”

I gave him my squinty-eyed eat-dirt-and-die look. He knew perfectly well what I wanted. “I’m hungry for everything,” I said.

Diesel grinned wide. “I like the sound of that.”

“Can you read my mind now?”

“Honey, it doesn’t take magic to read your mind on this one.” He gave me a kiss on the forehead and released me. “Let’s roll. Wulf is out there on the hunt. I can feel his energy polluting my air space.”

The Spook Patrol jumped to attention when we exited the house. One of the guys shoved his gizmo at Diesel, and Diesel snatched it from him and threw it across the street.

“This is getting old,” Diesel said. “I’m about done with the Spook Patrol.”