Wicked Appetite

CHAPTER NINETEEN

There were fire trucks and cop cars angled to the curb in front of Mark’s apartment building when we drove up. The downstairs door was open and hoses snaked out from the fire trucks, but the hoses didn’t look like they were in use. Firemen and cops milled around, and after a couple beats, I realized what I was seeing. They were chasing ferrets.

Diesel parked halfway down the block, we locked Carl in the car, and we made our way to a fireman holding an extinguisher.

“What’s going on?” Diesel asked.

“There was a small fire on the second floor. We put it out, and then we realized there were about forty ferrets running loose in the apartment. It took them two minutes to figure out we left the door open. We’re trying to catch them, but I think it’s hopeless. Those suckers are off on the great adventure.”

A ferret ran up the fireman’s leg, jumped from him to Diesel, catapulted itself off Diesel to the ground, and disappeared into the night.

“Tricky little devils,” the fireman said.

“Were any people in the apartment?” I asked him.

“No. Just the ferrets.”

We got back into the SUV and drove to More Is Better. No lights shining from the office. No cars in the lot.

“Stay here with Carl,” Diesel said to me. “I’m going to do a fast walk-through.” Five minutes later, Diesel jogged to the SUV and slid behind the wheel. “Nobody home.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“We go to Lenny.”

“It’s after work hours. Do you know where Lenny is living?”

“I had Gwen find him. He’s living with his cousin Melody.”

Melody lived in a small, lopsided, worn-out house in north Salem. The house didn’t have a historic plaque tacked to the front and the windows were circa 1970 aluminum, so probably the condition of the house couldn’t be explained away by age. We rang the bell and a frazzled woman in her late thirties answered the door. She had short, curly brown hair that had gone to frizz. She was medium height, plump but not obese, dressed in jeans and a too-big shirt. She had a baby in one of those baby slings attached to the front of her, a toddler hanging on to her pants leg, and two more kids who looked to be in the seven-to-eight-year range. It was hard to tell who was a girl and who was a boy. From the toddler on up, they all had pretty much the same chopped-off haircut and were wearing jeans and sneakers and T-shirts, none of which were pink.

“Melody More?” Diesel asked.

“Yuh.”

“Mommy,” the toddler said. “I gotta poop.”

“Not now,” Melody said. “Mommy’s busy.”

“But I gotta!”

“Stu,” Melody yelled. “Stu!”

A pleasant-looking thirty-something guy ambled into the living room. “Yuh?”

“Kenny has to poop.”

“Again?”

Melody turned back to us. “We’re not buying anything, and we already found Jesus.”

“We’re looking for Lenny,” Diesel said. “We were told he moved here after the fire.”

“I don’t let perverts into the house,” Melody said. “Are you a couple of perverts?”

“No,” I told her. “I’m a pastry chef.”

“How about him?” she asked, eyeing Diesel.

“I’m not sure about him,” I said.

“And the monkey?”

Diesel and I had forgotten about Carl. He was standing behind us on the front porch. He did his best to smile and do a finger wave.

“Goggy!” the toddler said. He clapped his hands and ran at Carl. “Goggy, goggy!”

Carl stumbled back, but the kid tackled him and hugged him.

“Eep!” Carl said, arms pinned to his sides, nose-to-nose with Melody’s toddler.

“Maybe he shouldn’t be hugging him like that,” I said to Melody. “He could have fleas or something.”

Melody snatched the kid up, and Carl gave me the finger.

Something crashed in another room, and Melody took stock of the kids next to her. “Who’s missing?”

“Mary Susan,” one of the older kids said. “And Kevin is getting a time-out in the attic.”

“Mary Susan?” Melody hollered. “What was that noise I heard?”

No answer.

“Remember when she broke the fish tank?” the older kid said. “And all the fishes were swimming on the rug and then they got dead.”

“I have to see what Mary Susan is up to,” Melody said to us. “I guess you can come in. Just don’t try anything funny with my kids, or I’ll cut your hearts out.” She turned to her oldest. “Get Uncle Lenny. Tell him he has company.”

So far as I could see, there were six kids and three adults living in a cracker box. Melody was like the woman who lived in a shoe and had so many kids she didn’t know what to do. Everywhere I looked, there were toys, kids’ books, stacks of baby clothes, sippy cups, and chocolate smudges.

Carl picked a Barbie doll off the floor and studied it. He touched the pointy breast with his finger. “Eep?” he asked, looking up at Diesel.

“It’s a doll,” Diesel said.

Carl poked the breast again.

“Give it a rest,” Diesel said to Carl.

Carl dropped the doll on the floor and flipped it the finger.

“I think he has repressed anger,” I said to Diesel.

“I’d like to see it even more repressed.”

Lenny came into the room and pulled up short when he saw us. “You two!”

Diesel was hands in pockets, back on his heels and smiling. Friendly. “How’s it goin’?”

“It’s goin’ okay. No thanks to you. You blew up my house.”

“It was an accident,” I told him.

“My whole life was in that house.”

“Including your paddle collection,” Diesel said.

Lenny grinned. “Okay, so I owe you for that. Good to get that monkey off my back.”

“Eep?” Carl said.

“Nothing personal,” Lenny said to him. “Figure of speech.”

Two dogs ran through the room and out the front door.

“There’s a lot going on in this house,” I said to Lenny.

“Tell me about it,” Lenny said. “It needs rubber walls.”

“Have you heard from Mark?” Diesel asked him.

“Not in a couple days.”

“If he wasn’t in his apartment, and he wasn’t at work, where would he be?”

“Here, maybe. I don’t know where else. I guess he has friends, but I don’t know them. We all got kind of weird after Uncle Phil died. Kind of pulled into our own obsessive worlds. Is there a problem with Mark?”

“It’s possible he’s with Wulf.”

“It turns out Wulf is scarier than Uncle Phil,” Lenny said. “I was a glutton for punishment, and I gave it up pretty fast.”

“Where did he take you?”

“I don’t know. He did one of those pressure point things, and I was out like a light. When I came around, I was in a big empty room. All it had was a folding chair, and Wulf sat in it most of the time while his crazy servant guy described his favorite tortures to me. When he got his tool kit out, I told him what he wanted to hear, and next thing, I was wandering around Pickering Wharf Marina.”

“What did the room look like?” Diesel asked him. “High ceiling? Paint color? Cement floor? Traffic noise? Windows?”

Lenny closed his eyes and thought about it. “High ceiling with exposed air-conditioning ducts. So it might have been in an industrial area. Walls were white. Ceiling was black, including all the ductwork. Floor was… I’m not sure. Maybe cement or tile. Not wood or carpet. I didn’t hear anything. No traffic. A phone rang once, but it was far away in another room. No windows.” He opened his eyes and looked down at Carl. “What’s with the monkey?”

“He adopted us,” I said.

“That was a bust,” I said to Diesel when we were back in the SUV.

“It was a long shot.”

“You’ve been following Wulf. Don’t you know where he lives?”

“Gwen tells me he’s staying in a brownstone in Boston on Beacon Hill. Wulf isn’t a small-town kind of guy. Wulf likes luxury and privacy.”

“Shouldn’t we look there?”

Diesel stopped for a light. “Wulf would never interrogate anyone in his personal space. And he’ll probably keep Hatchet locked down somewhere in Salem.”

“So how do we find Mark?”

Diesel shrugged. “Don’t know. When I first got involved in this, I thought Wulf had a road map to the Stones. Now I’m thinking he only had one small piece of the puzzle. Somehow, Wulf got a line on Uncle Phil and went sniffing after the rest of the More clan. I caught him following Shirley, so I concentrated on her. I thought we were trailing behind Wulf, but after we got the ladybug and the information about the two other inheritances, I’m guessing it was the other way around. Wulf probably snatched Lenny because we were in Lenny’s basement.”

“And then Lenny spilled the beans about Mark?”

Diesel shrugged. “Or maybe Mark was just the next name on Wulf’s list. For that matter, Mark might not be with Wulf at all. Maybe Mark just took off.”

Twenty minutes later, we were idling in front of Lenny’s house. The black Ferrari was parked at the curb, and Wulf stood on the sidewalk, watching Hatchet kick through house debris.

“They’re still here,” I said to Diesel.

“Not exactly,” Diesel said. “The Ferrari’s been moved. It’s not in the same spot. Wulf went somewhere and came back.”

“I bet if we sit and wait, he’ll lead us to Mark.”

“It’s not that easy. Wulf is a master at slipping away.”

“But we could try.”

Diesel pulled to the curb and parked behind an Econoline van. “We could try.”

The sun dropped to the tops of the buildings, the clouds glowed scarlet, and the sky darkened while we waited. When twilight deepened to nightfall, Wulf whistled to Hatchet. Hatchet stopped his search and made his way through the charred rubble, stirring up clouds of soot with every step. There was a brief exchange between Hatchet and Wulf that involved some kneeling on Hatchet’s part, and Hatchet got into the Ferrari.

Wulf turned, walked directly to us, and bent a little to talk to Diesel through the driver’s side window.

“You don’t need to waste your time following me,” he said. “I won’t lead you to him until I’m done with him.”

The corners of Diesel’s mouth twitched into a small, humorless smile, and he looked ahead to Hatchet sitting in the Ferrari. “You’re going to have to get your car detailed,” he said to Wulf.

Wulf flicked his eyes to his car and back to Diesel. “That’s so not funny,” Wulf said. He looked over at me, our eyes held for a moment, and he moved from the SUV to his Ferrari. There was a flash of light, smoke swirled in the glare of Diesel’s headlights, and the Ferrari was gone.

“I hate when he does that,” Diesel said.

There were still no Spook Patrollers standing vigil at my house when we rolled in, but Glo was hunkered down on the front stoop.

“What’s up?” I said to her. “I thought you had a date.”

“It turns out he’s allergic to mushrooms. I met him at the restaurant and everything was going great until he accidentally ate a chunk of portabello in his salad and did projectile vomiting. And then after that, he got all swollen and blotchy and couldn’t breathe, so I took him to the walk-in clinic to get a shot, and then he wanted to go home.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah. Go figure. Anyway, I was in Marblehead, so I thought I’d stop in. I thought Diesel might be able to help me with my levitation spell.”

“Spells aren’t my gig,” Diesel said.

“Yes, but you’ve got special powers.”

Diesel opened the front door. “I don’t have special powers. I have enhanced abilities.”

Cat was sitting in the middle of the living room when we walked in. Carl did the scary smile and gave Cat a finger wave, Cat hissed at him, and Carl shrunk back and farted.

“Chill,” Diesel said to Carl.

“I’m hungry,” Glo said. “I didn’t get a chance to eat, what with the vomiting and swelling and stuff. Maybe we could order out for something.”

“I haven’t got a lot in the house,” I said, “but I could make you a grilled cheese sandwich.”

Glo’s eyes got big. “Grilled cheese would be awesome.”

“I could use a grilled cheese,” Diesel said.

“Eep!” Carl said. “Eep, eep.”

“Three grilled cheeses coming up,” I said.

I assembled the bread and butter and cheese, and Glo thumbed through Ripple’s.

“I found a different spell from the uppity one,” Glo said. “I have it marked here. The description says it’s helpful for moving difficult objects.”

“Have you read it out loud yet?” I asked her.

“No. I thought I’d wait and do it here where Diesel can do damage control. Sometimes my spells don’t turn out exactly perfect.”

I put my big fry pan on the cooktop. “What object are you going to move?”

“I thought I’d try something small. Like a glass.”

“No glass!”

“Bread? Cheese?” Glo asked.

“No. I’m using the bread and the cheese. I don’t want enchanted food.”

Glo looked around. “How about the toaster?”

“Sure. Do the toaster.”

“Light as air, listen well, rise to the command on words spriggam, barflower, my will be done.” Glo pointed her finger at the toaster. “Spriggam, barflower, my will be done. I command thee to rise.”

We all watched the toaster for a beat and BANG! The toaster burst into flames. Diesel pulled the plug and dumped it into the sink.

“I think it rose a little before it caught fire,” Glo said.

“It jumped when it exploded,” Diesel told her.

Glo threw her arms up in exasperation. “I don’t get it. I know I read it correctly.”

“You didn’t need powdered octopus suckers or anything, did you?” I asked her.

“No. It’s all right here in black and white.” Glo read the spell out loud again, following along with her finger. “Spriggam, barflower, my will be done.”

A shout went up from the street.

“Oh no,” Glo said. “Now what?”

We ran to the door and looked out at Mel Mensher. He was standing on my sidewalk, watching three other members of the Spook Patrol chase after the Spook Patrol van.

“It just took off,” Mensher said. “We parked it, and we all got out and started checking our equipment, and next thing, the van’s going down the street all by itself.”

The van jumped the curb at the curve in the road, bumped over Mrs. Dugan’s front yard, and crashed into her oak tree. The three Spook Patrol guys pulled up and stood hands on hips, looking at the van.

“Honest to gosh, it was an accident,” Glo said.

I pushed Glo back into the house and closed and locked the door. “The driver obviously forgot to put his parking brake on,” I said. “That’s our story, and we’re sticking with it.”

Diesel was frying grilled cheese when we got back to the kitchen. “And?” he asked.

“The Spook Patrol van took off down the street all by its lonesome,” I told him.

“Nice,” Diesel said.

He flipped a sandwich onto a plate, handed it to Glo, and put a second sandwich into the fry pan.

“You can cook,” I said to him.

“No,” Diesel said. “I can’t cook. I can make a sandwich if no one else is going to make it for me.”

“I bet I could find a cooking spell,” Glo said.

Diesel and I answered in unison. “No!”

Diesel gave the second grilled cheese to Carl, and I took over the fry pan.

“It really ticks me off that Wulf is going to get Mark’s charm,” I said to Diesel. “We should have been more aggressive with Mark. We let him slip through our fingers.”

“Roughing up Normals is frowned upon by the BUM,” Diesel said. “Especially if the Normals haven’t done anything wrong.”

“What about Wulf? Wulf kidnaps people and does who-the-heck-knows-what to them.”

“Wulf doesn’t work for the BUM. He has his own set of rules.”

“He killed a man. Why aren’t you ordered to capture him or something? Why are you only authorized to stop him from getting the Stones?”

“Wulf has friends in very high places. Beyond that, I can only assume there are circumstances that justify my orders.”

“You don’t look like a guy who would be good at taking orders,” I said, plating his sandwich.

Diesel fixed his brown eyes on me. “It’s a struggle.”

“Maybe I need to go to wizard school,” Glo said. “Someplace where I could take a course in spell recitation. Do you suppose there’s a wizard school? Maybe an online course?”

“Wizards aren’t real,” I said to Glo. “There are no wizards. And wizard school would be a big scam.”

“Criminy,” Glo said. “Just let me know how you feel.” She looked at Diesel. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know any wizards personally.”

“But do you think there could be wizards?”

Diesel finished his sandwich and put his dish in the dishwasher. “ Could be covers a lot of ground.”

“Well, I think there could be wizards,” Glo told him. “I bet Ripple was a wizard. And I bet the book is magical.”

Diesel got a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “Have you ever let Lizzy hold it?”

“No!” Glo scooped the book off the counter and handed it to me. “Do you feel anything?”

“It might be a little warm.”

“Is it glowing?”

“No, but it has a faint green aura.”

“What does that mean?” Glo asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m new to all this.”

We looked at Diesel.

“No clue,” Diesel said. “Not my area of expertise, but the grilled cheese was excellent.”

“So maybe someone put a whammy on my book, and that’s why the spells don’t work right,” Glo said. “Maybe there was some rival wizard, and he jinxed Ripple’s book.” She took her book back and shoved it into her tote bag. “I’m going to talk to Nina from the Exotica Shoppe tomorrow. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”