Wicked Business (2 page)

“Maybe he got it off Reedy. Maybe he snatched it out of his pocket.”

“I took a look at Reedy, and he didn’t have pockets. He was only wearing boxers and one sock. I guess he could have had the key stuck up his nose or inserted south of the border.”

I took hand sanitizer out of my purse and squirted it onto the key. Diesel cut across a couple streets, found Lafayette, and turned toward Marblehead.

“Are we done?” I asked him.

“If we were done, I’d be on a beach in the South Pacific. I thought we’d go back to your house so you can finish your soup and I can do some research on Gilbert Reedy.”

CHAPTER TWO

Diesel peeled off Pleasant Street and wound around the
historic area of Marblehead
, following narrow streets designed for horses and foot traffic. He turned onto Weatherby Street and parked in front of my little house. The clapboards are gray, the trim is white, and there are two onion lamps on either side of my red front door.

Glo was sitting on my stoop with her black sweatshirt hood pulled up and her canvas messenger bag hugged to her chest. She’s single, like me. She’s four years younger, an inch shorter, and she’s the counter girl at Dazzle’s. Her curly red hair is chopped into a short bob, and her taste in clothes runs somewhere between Disney Princess and punk rocker.
Today she was wearing black Uggs, black tights, a short black skirt, and a black, orange, pink, and baby blue striped knit shirt under the black sweatshirt. She stood when she saw us, and her face lit up with a smile.

“I was afraid you’d never come home, and I’d be stuck out here forever,” she said.

I looked up and down the street. “Where’s your car?”

“It’s back at my apartment. It’s leaking something.”

“How’d you get here?”

“My neighbor was passing through and dropped me off. I thought you were making soup this morning.”

“There was a temporary change in plans,” I told her.

Diesel opened my front door, Carl rushed into the house, and we all followed him to the kitchen, where Cat 7143 was perched on a stool. Cat is shorthaired, tiger-striped, has one eye and half a tail. Glo rescued Cat 7143 from the shelter and gave him to me. It said Cat 7143 on his adoption paper, and he’s been Cat 7143 ever since. Cat jumped off the stool, sniffed at Carl, and walked away in disgust. Carl flipped him the bird and claimed the stool.

“Put the hex on anybody lately?” Diesel asked Glo.

Glo set her messenger bag on the counter. “No. I tried to put a happy spell on my broom, but it didn’t work. He’s still cranky.”

Glo’s read the entire Harry Potter series four times and has aspirations toward wizardry. A couple months ago, she
found
Ripple’s Book of Spells
in a curio shop, and she’s been test-driving spells ever since. I like Glo a lot, and she’s an excellent counter girl, but she’s a disaster as a wizard.

“What kind of soup are you making?” Glo asked, looking into my pot.

“Vegetable with beef broth and noodles.”

“Are you putting any exotic herbs in it? I have some powdered eye of newt with me.” Glo rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a small jar. “And I’ve got lizard eggs, but they might be expired. I got them on sale.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll pass.”

I took the little key out of my pocket, set it on the counter, and went to the sink to wash my hands.

“Omigosh,” Glo said. “It’s the Lovey key. I didn’t realize you were the one who bought the sonnets.”

“I didn’t buy sonnets,” I told her. “I found the key. Technically, Carl found it.”

Glo picked the key up and squinted at it. “If you look real close, you can see the
L
inscribed in the middle of the vines. It’s absolutely ancient, and Nina at
Ye Olde Exotica Shoppe
said it might be enchanted. It goes with a little book of sonnets. I was saving up money to buy the book from Nina, but someone beat me to it.”

I tied my chef apron around my waist and looked over at Glo. “I didn’t realize you liked poetry.”

“Nina let me read some of the sonnets. They’re so romantic. And some of them are totally bawdy.”

“Nothing better than a bawdy sonnet,” Diesel said, helping himself to a bagel.

I couldn’t imagine Diesel liking a sonnet, bawdy or otherwise. I thought Diesel was more of a limerick kind of guy.

Glo returned the key to the counter. “Nina told me the sonnets were guaranteed to inspire lust, and I thought they might come in handy. You never know when you might want to inspire lust in someone, right?”

I glanced over at Diesel and thought I’d rather have a charm that helped me
ignore
lust.

“I want to do some research on Gilbert Reedy,” Diesel said to me. “Is it okay if I use your computer?”

“Sure.”

“Who’s Gilbert Reedy?” Glo wanted to know.

“Dead guy,” Diesel said. “Took a swan dive off his fourth-floor balcony this morning.”

I set the dining room table for three. I was serving soup and fresh baked bread for lunch. Oatmeal cookies for dessert.

Diesel ambled in from the living room to join Glo and me, and Carl hopped onto the fourth chair.

“Chee?” Carl asked.

“No,” Diesel said. “It’s soup. Remember when you had the meltdown over mashed potatoes? Soup is worse.”

Carl gave him the finger, jumped off, scurried into the
kitchen, and returned with a bowl. He set the bowl on the table and scrambled onto his chair. Too short. He could barely see over the table. He jumped down, ran to the closet, and came back with his booster chair. He climbed onto the booster and smiled his scary monkey smile at everyone. Hopeful.

“Isn’t that cute,” Glo said. “He wants soup.”

I’d seen Carl eat, and I agreed with Diesel. I didn’t think soup was a good idea. I put a slice of bread into Carl’s bowl and spooned a little broth over it. Carl pointed at my soup and pointed to his bowl. He wanted more.

“Not gonna happen,” Diesel said.

Carl threw his bowl onto the floor and glared at Diesel. Diesel blew out a sigh, plucked Carl off the booster seat, carted him to the back door, and pitched him out.

“What if he runs away?” Glo asked.

“Lucky me,” Diesel said.

“He’s not going to run away,” I told Diesel. “He’s going to stand out there in the rain until you let him come in, and then the whole house will smell like wet monkey.”

There was some scratching at the door, the lock tumbled, the door opened, and Carl stomped past us into the living room. He turned the television on, surfed a couple channels, and settled for the Home Shopping Network. We all rolled our eyes and got busy with our soup.

“Did you find anything interesting on Reedy?” I asked Diesel.

“He taught Elizabethan literature. He was single. Originally from the Midwest. Drove a hybrid. Forty-two years old. No indication that he was exceptional in any way.”

“Boy, that’s impressive,” Glo said. “Do you have to buy into a search program to find that kind of stuff?”

Diesel mopped the last of his soup up with a crust of bread. “No. It was on his Facebook page. He also had a blog where he wrote about finding a book of sonnets that was said to have magical powers.”

Glo went wide-eyed. “I bet he was talking about Lovey’s book! Is that where you found the key? Was the key on Gilbert Reedy?”

“Maybe,” Diesel said. “Maybe not.”

Carl walked into the dining room and mooned Diesel. It lost some impact, since Carl didn’t wear pants and his business wasn’t new to us.

“Dude,” Diesel said. “That’s no way to get dessert.”

Carl snapped to attention. “Eep?”

“Cookies,” I told him.

Carl jumped onto his booster seat, sat ramrod straight, and folded his hands on the table. He was a
good
monkey. I gave him a cookie, and he shoved it into his mouth.

“Manners,” Diesel said to him.

Carl spit the cookie out onto the table, picked it up, and carefully nibbled at it.

“I should probably go home,” Glo said when we were done with lunch. “I have to do laundry, and my broom
might be lonely.” She carried her plates into the kitchen, shrugged into her sweatshirt, and hung her messenger bag on her shoulder. “Thanks for the soup and cookies. I’ll see you tomorrow bright and early.” She left by the back door, and a moment later, she returned. “I don’t have a car,” she said. “I forgot.”

“No problem,” Diesel said. “Lizzy and I were going out anyway. We can take you home.”

I raised my eyebrows at Diesel. “We were going out?”

“People to see. Things to do,” Diesel said.

Twenty minutes later, we dropped Glo off. Another fifteen minutes, and we were parked in front of Gilbert Reedy’s apartment building. A plywood panel covered the shattered fourth-floor patio window. It was the only evidence that a tragedy had occurred. The body had been removed from the pavement. The police cars and EMTs were gone. The crime scene tape was gone. No CSI truck in sight. Rain was still sifting down.

Diesel got out and opened my door. “Let’s look around.”

“You look around. I’ll wait here.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Diesel said. “We’re partners.”

“I don’t want to be a partner.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to live with a monkey.”

It was a valid point, so I unhooked my seatbelt and followed him into the lobby. I stepped back when he went to the elevator.

“Whoa,” I said. “Where are you going?”

“Reedy lived in 4B.”

“You’re going to break into his apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s against the law. And it’s icky.”

Diesel yanked me into the elevator and pushed the 4 button. “It feels like the right thing to do.”

“Not to me.”

“You’re the junior partner. You only have a fifteen percent vote.”

“Why am I the junior partner? I’m just as powerful as you are.”

The elevator doors opened onto the fourth floor, and Diesel shoved me out into the hall. “In your dreams.”

“You can find empowered people, and I find empowered objects. That seems pretty equal to me.”

“Honey, I have a whole laundry list of enhanced abilities. And let’s face it, you make cupcakes.”

I felt my mouth drop open.

Diesel grinned down at me. “Would it help if I said they’re really great cupcakes?”

“You’ve eaten your last.”

Diesel wrapped an arm around my shoulders and hugged me into him. “You don’t mean that.” He removed the crime scene tape sealing 4B’s door, placed his hand over the dead bolt, and the bolt slid back, demonstrating one of
the laundry list abilities. Diesel could unlock
anything
. He turned the knob, we stepped into Reedy’s apartment, and Diesel locked the door again.

It was small but comfortably furnished, with an overstuffed couch and two chairs. Large coffee table, loaded with books, a few pens, a stack of papers held together with a giant rubber band. Flat screen television opposite the couch. Desk to the side of the smashed patio door. We peeked into the kitchen. The appliances were old but clean. Small table and two chairs. Coffee mug in the sink. There was one bedroom and one bath. Nothing extraordinary about either.

“What are we doing here?” I asked Diesel.

“Looking for something.”

“That narrows it down.”

We migrated to the bookcase by Reedy’s desk. He had a wide-ranging assortment of classics, some biographies, some historical fiction, and a large poetry collection that took up an entire shelf. Lovey’s book wasn’t in the collection. I went to Reedy’s bedroom and looked around. No book of sonnets. No sonnets in the bathroom or kitchen.

“Nothing seems out of place,” I said to Diesel, “but I don’t see Lovey’s sonnets.”

“CSI has already gone through here collecting prints and whatever they think might be useful,” Diesel said. “I don’t see a cell phone or computer. I guess they could have taken the book, but it doesn’t seem likely. They’d have no
reason to believe it was important. It’s more likely the killer took the book.”

I walked to the coffee table and stared down at a Shakespeare anthology that had to weigh at least fourteen pounds. The cover was faded. The pages were dog-eared and yellow with age. A lined legal pad had been used to hold a place in the book. I flipped the book open and scanned the page.

“Reedy has this anthology turned to one of Shakespeare’s sonnets,” I said to Diesel. “And he’d taken some notes on it. He copied the line
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines
and he wrote
Key to Luxuria Stone
and underlined it twice. And then farther down the page he has a list of professional papers and books. Lovey’s book is the last on the list.”

Diesel looked over my shoulder at Reedy’s notes. “
Luxuria
is Latin for
lust
.”

“You can read Latin?”

“Superbia, Acedia, Luxuria, Ira, Gula, Invidia, Avaritia. The seven deadly sins. That’s the extent of my Latin.”

“Do you think Reedy was killed because he was researching the Luxuria Stone?”

“People have chased after the stones for centuries, going on nothing more than blind faith that the stones exist, and they’ve done some horrific things to get them. It wouldn’t surprise me if Reedy was the latest victim in a long history of victims.”

We went silent at the sound of someone trying the
doorknob. There was some scratching and jiggling. A pause. More scratching and jiggling. Another pause. Someone was trying to pick the lock and not having any success. Diesel went to the door, peeked out the security peephole, and turned back to me, smiling.

“It was Hatchet,” Diesel said. “It looks like he’s leaving.”

Steven Hatchet is a soft lump of dough with red scarecrow hair. He’s sworn allegiance to Wulf, dresses in full Renaissance regalia, and is off-the-chart crazy. He’s in his late twenties and is the only other human known to have an ability similar to mine. Supposedly, we can sense energy locked inside common objects. At first glance, it sounds like fantasyland to be able to do this, but I don’t imagine it’s much different from a farmer using a divining rod to find water underground. Although honestly, I’m not sure I believe in divining rods.