Wicked Appetite

CHAPTER TWENTY

I walked Glo to the door, and we looked down the hill to Mrs. Dugan’s yard, where a tow truck and police car were parked, lights flashing. Mel Mensher had joined the rest of his crew at the crash scene, and all was quiet at my house.

“Shoot,” Glo said.

“Faulty parking brake,” I reminded her.

Glo grimaced, got into her car, and drove away.

“I like her,” Diesel said, standing behind me. “She has imagination.” He slid an arm around my waist and rested his chin on the top of my head. “I like you a lot more. No logical reason for it.”

I thought it was great that he liked me, but it would be better if he knew why.

“I know why,” he said, reading my mind, his lips brushing against my ear, “but I’d jeopardize my standing as a macho jerk if I gave you a big gooey list of reasons. And if I was honest, it would lean heavy to smooth skin and soft breasts.”

“Unh.”

“Is that a good grunt or a bad grunt?”

“I thought you were reading my mind.”

“Sometimes your mind is a mess.”

“I was thinking your standing as a jerk is intact.”

His arm tightened slightly around me, and he kissed me just below my ear. “That’s a huge relief.”

The kiss sent a rush of pleasure humming through me, and I unconsciously murmured, “Mmmmmm.”

Good grief, I thought. Did I just make that utterly rapturous sound? Did I actually moan out loud? Over a kiss, no less. And it wasn’t even a hot kiss. The kiss had been almost friendly!

“I made that sound because I was thinking about cupcakes,” I told him.

“Sweetheart, you wish a cupcake could make you feel that good.”

I was speechless. I felt my mouth drop open and my eyes go wide.

Diesel grinned down at me. “On a scale of one to ten, how offensive was that remark I just made?”

“Seven.”

“I’m off my game. I can be much more offensive than that.”

Something to look forward to.

He turned his attention to the Spook Patrol at the bottom of the hill. “I think we owe them a favor,” he said, pushing me out of the house, locking my front door behind us.

“What kind of favor?” I asked. “I thought we didn’t like them.”

He took my hand and tugged me down the sidewalk. “They’re okay. They’re just doing their job.”

We walked past the cop car to Mel Mensher, and Diesel expressed his sympathy. “Too bad about your van,” Diesel said to Mensher. “How are you guys going to hunt spooks without it?”

“The tow truck guy said the damage was minimal,” Mensher told him. “And in the meantime, Richie went to get his wife’s minivan.”

“I have some information you might find interesting,” Diesel said. “Can I borrow your notepad and pen?”

Mensher pulled his pad and pen from his jacket pocket. “What kind of information is this?”

Diesel wrote something in Mensher’s book and handed it back to him. “See for yourself.”

Mrs. Dugan was standing on the other side of Mensher. She had her arms folded in front of her, watching the van get towed off her tree. She was in her seventies, with short white hair and a fireplug body. Her husband had passed on, and she lived alone with an obese beagle named Morty. Mrs. Dugan and Morty walked by my house twice a day taking their constitutional.

“Will your tree be okay?” I asked her.

“It’s got some bark peeled away, but I think it’ll be fine,” she said. “I couldn’t help but notice Ophelia’s cat came back. I saw him sitting in your window earlier today. Isn’t that nice. I was worried about him. It’s not like he’s a normal cat. What with his eye and all.”

“Do you know how he lost his eye?”

“No. Ophelia would never talk about it. She was very sensitive when it came to that cat.”

“Do you know his name?”

She thought a moment. “I don’t believe I do.”

I said good-bye to Mrs. Dugan, and Diesel and I made our way up the hill to my house.

“I thought Cat 7143 came from the shelter,” Diesel said.

“It did. But it turns out it was my Great Aunt Ophelia’s cat.”

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” Diesel said.

“Compared to the rest of my life these days… it’s not even a four on the one-to-ten wonder scale. What information did you give to Mensher?”

“I gave him Wulf’s Boston address,” Diesel said.

That got a smile out of me. “Does Wulf have a sense of humor?”

“He won’t have one about this.”

“Not at all?”

“The first time Mensher clicks off a picture, Wulf’s sphincter will get so tight his eyes will cross.”

We were almost at my house when Richie motored past us in a green minivan. He stopped next to the tow truck, and in the glare of headlights, Mensher and his crew off-loaded equipment from the broken van to the new minivan. There was a short discussion between Mensher and the tow truck operator, Mensher and his crew piled into the minivan, and the minivan drove away and disappeared around the corner.

“Off to Beacon Hill,” Diesel said.

“You threw them under the bus.”

“Yep.”

“What if Wulf does the burning claw thing on them?”

“They’d probably get a reality show out of it.”

“The last guy to get the burning claw also got dead,” I told him.

“Wulf won’t kill these guys. Unless he’s in a really bad mood. And even then, he’ll probably just maim one or two of them.”

“Oh great. Now you’re making me an accessory to maiming.”

“It’s not like it’s major maiming,” Diesel said. “It’s only a handprint.”

“That’s horrible.”

“You’re such a girl,” he said, smiling at me, like I was dumb but redeemingly cute. He pulled me the short distance to the Cayenne, opened the door, and motioned me in.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“We’re going to stop a potential maiming.”

Beacon Hill is a quiet, historic neighborhood in the heart of Boston. Streets are narrow and tree-shaded. Sidewalks are bumpy. Houses are pricey, ranging from shabby chic to totally renovated and opulent. Parking is impossible.

The Spook Patrol had somehow managed to snag the last legal parking place on the hill, and Diesel settled for a space that wasn’t so legal. He parked blocking a driveway one house down and across from the green minivan.

Months ago, when I first came to town, I took a walking tour of the area, so I knew we were on one of the more desirable streets. The houses were mostly Federalist style. Some were single-family and some had been converted to expensive multitenant condos and apartments.

Wulf lived in the middle of the block in a single-family, perfectly maintained example of a Greek Revival brownstone. The small, manicured front yard was bordered by a fancy black wrought-iron fence. Curtains were drawn, but a bar of light was visible in a second-floor window. The Spook Patrol was parked smack in front of the house.

“I don’t see Wulf’s car,” I said to Diesel.

“He has parking in the rear.”

“Do you think he’s home?”

“I know he’s home,” Diesel said.

“Do you have an ass cramp?”

“Big-time.”

Beacon Hill streets are lit by gas lamps. Not as efficient as halogens, but bright enough to watch the Spook Patrol guys organizing themselves. There were five of them, including Mel Mensher. There was Richie, a chubby guy I’d heard called Gorp, a Pakistani named Milton, and a skinny little guy no one ever talked to. Richie was on his cell phone. Mensher, Milton, and Gorp shuffled back and forth on the sidewalk, looking at the house through binoculars, taking readings with their ghost-o-meters. The skinny little guy hauled a camp chair out of the minivan, set it up on the sidewalk, and settled in with his computer.

Diesel and I were snug in the Cayenne, in a dark spot on the street between gas lamps and under the shade of an oak tree. After ten minutes of watching the Spook Patrol, Diesel slid an arm around me and nuzzled my neck.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Yes! Stop it.”

“The girls never said that when I was in high school.”

“This isn’t high school. We’re supposed to be stopping a maiming. And besides, the monkey is watching.”

Diesel stared out the window. “There’s no maiming going on.” He flicked a glance at the backseat. “And the monkey is sleeping. So what’s the problem?”

I sucked in some air. “You make me nervous.”

“I noticed.”

“I go into a panic when you get close.”

“Does that happen with all men or am I special?”

“It’s you.”

Diesel smiled, his teeth white against his usual two-day beard. “I like it.”

“It’s uncomfortable!”

“I could make you even more uncomfortable,” Diesel said, “but you’re off-limits to me. Unmentionables can’t join with other Unmentionables. There are consequences.” He ran his finger along the nape of my neck. “That’s not to say we can’t fool around.”

My heart jumped to my throat at his touch. “What sort of consequences?”

“One of us would lose all Unmentionable power,” Diesel said.

“Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Isn’t this typical. Every time I meet a great guy who actually has two eyebrows, he’s either gay or married. And now I can add Unmentionable to the list of unavailable men.

“No problem,” I said. “Just because you throw me into a panic doesn’t mean I would fling myself into your arms at the first opportunity. I’m perfectly in control of the situation.”

“Lizzy, you have no idea. My Unmentionable skills aren’t limited to opening locked doors.”

“Jeez Louse.”

“Yeah,” Diesel said. “I could make us fit together like a Chinese puzzle. Unfortunately, we have a job to do that requires both of us keep our skills.” A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “And it would be a shame if you were the loser and you started making lousy cupcakes.”

A light flashed on over Wulf’s front door, and we both turned our attention to the house. Mel and Gorp were standing on the small cement porch, instruments in hand.

“Guess they got tired of waiting,” Diesel said. “Looks like showtime.”

The door opened and Wulf appeared. He was in his usual black. Black shirt, black slacks. He looked at Mensher, and then his eyes moved left and locked onto Diesel’s Cayenne.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Can he see us?”

“Yes.”

“So he knows we set him up.”

“Yes.”

Mensher said something to Wulf, and Wulf didn’t respond. Wulf looked like he was sending death rays in our direction. Mensher pointed to the ghost-o-meter in Gorp’s hand, but Wulf paid no attention. Mensher took a step back, raised his camera, there was a flash when Mensher snapped a picture, and Wulf snatched Mensher by the neck with one hand and lifted him off the ground. Wulf had reached out so fast, it was like the flick of a lizard tongue snagging a bug from a tree limb.

“Yow!” I said, jumping in my seat, leaning forward. “Do something. He’s going to kill him.”

Diesel stayed relaxed behind the wheel, watching Wulf with an expression that was somewhere between mildly annoyed and mildly amused.

“He won’t kill him in front of me,” Diesel said. “Even if I wasn’t here, I doubt he’d kill him. Wulf has a code of ethics.”

Wulf released Mensher, and Mensher fell back on his ass with his hands to this throat. I was guessing Mensher would wake up tomorrow with a unique burn scar on his neck. Wulf swept past Mensher and Gorp, down the short sidewalk to the van. He walked behind the van, momentarily disappearing from sight. He circled the van, stepped back, and gestured toward it. A circle of fire raced around the van and the van exploded. Tires flew into space, a black cloud rose to the sky, and the van turned into a fireball.

Carl popped up in the backseat and looked out the window. “Eeep!”

“No big deal,” Diesel said to Carl. “Just a lot of flash.”

“Effective flash,” I said to Diesel. “It’s going to get rid of Mensher.”

“For the moment,” Diesel said. “Don’t underestimate Mensher. He’s like a dog with a bone. He might not know exactly how to categorize Wulf, but he knows for sure he’s not normal.”

Wulf calmly walked up the sidewalk and disappeared inside his house. Mensher and his team huddled together in front of the burning van. Fire trucks screamed from blocks away.

“We can go home now,” Diesel said, cranking the engine over. “The Wulf Show is done for the night.”

Twenty minutes later, Diesel pulled into a strip mall in Swampscott and parked in front of an all-night supermarket.

“We need food,” he said. “You cleaned us out when you were on your eating rampage.”

We slid out, locked the Cayenne, walked a few feet, and… beep, beep, beep.

“Tell me again why we have this monkey,” Diesel said.

“No one else would take him.”

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“Why can’t we put him in a basket and leave him on the Humane Society doorstep? Or even better, pack him up in a box and FedEx him to India. They love monkeys in India.”

“I thought you were friends.”

“I knew him in a previous life,” Diesel said.

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Diesel jogged back to the SUV, opened the door, and Carl bounded out.

“Do they let monkeys in the supermarket?” I asked Diesel.

“Put him in a shopping cart and make him sit on his tail, and people will think he’s a hairy kid. If anyone makes a remark, tell them you have rights and threaten them with a lawsuit.”