Wicked Business

by Janet Evanovich

“Yep,” Glo said. “That’s what I meant.”

  “Eye of the tiger,” Anarchy said. “I like that.” She looked around. “Why am I here?”

  Clara bagged a loaf of multigrain and handed it to her. “You wanted bread.”

  “Oh yeah,” Anarchy said. “Thanks.”

  And she left.

  Clara closed and locked the door. “She’s completely lost it. I’d like to get her some help, but I don’t know where to begin.”

  “It’s a problem,” Glo said. “If you try to catch her with a big butterfly net like in a Three Stooges movie, she’ll only set it on fire.”

  The bell jingled over the front door, and Glo took a quick peek into the shop. “It’s Mr. Nelson,” she said. “What should I tell him?”

  “Tell him we’re very sorry, but a batch got burned, so he’s a little short this week. And give him as much as we have,” Clara said. “Make up the difference with bagels.”

  “Do you think she’d really burn my house down?” I asked Clara.

  “She burned her own house down. I think she’d burn anything.”

  I shoveled the cremated pretzels into a garbage bag and took the tray to the sink. “I can still smell burned bread and apron. It’s like it’s getting stronger. Now it smells like rubber burning.”

  BAROOOM!

  Clara and I froze.

  “Something exploded in the parking lot,” I said. “I hope it was Anarchy.”

  Clara opened the door and looked out. “Did you drive Diesel’s car to work?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to need a ride home.”

  I could see the giant fireball from where I was standing.

  “This isn’t good,” I said to Clara.

  An hour later, the fire trucks pulled away and we now had two blackened, twisted hunks of dead vehicle in the parking lot.

  “Lucky thing I parked on the street,” Glo said, looking out the door at the wreckage. “What did Diesel say when you told him his car was toast?”

  “He said he walked down the hill to the grocery store and got milk and cheese and cold cuts for lunch, but he’d like me to bring bread and a cheese Danish home.”

  “Nothing about the car?”

  “He mumbled something about calling his assistant.”

  The front door jingled again, and Glo hurried off. She returned to the kitchen minutes later with a large vase of cut flowers.

  “Someone sent me flowers!” she said. “I think it must be the bellringer.” She opened the card that was attached and read the message. “‘Roses are red. Violets are blue. I doth think thou is hot. I hope thou doth thinkest I’m hot, too.’”

  “Guess they aren’t from the bellringer,” Clara said.

  “No,” she said. “They’re from Hatchet. He’s nuts, but he’s sweet.” She put her face close to the flowers to smell the roses, and she shrieked and jumped back. “There’s a big spider crawling around in the flowers.”

  “Probably meant as a pet,” Clara said. She picked the vase up, carried it out to the parking lot, and set it next to the Dumpster. She came back inside and locked the door.

  Diesel was hands in pockets, looking out my front window. “I think she’s here with the car,” he said.

  “Your assistant?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what this latest one looks like.”

  “You still don’t know her name, either, do you?”

  Diesel grinned. “No. I keep meaning to ask.”

  She was pretty in a girl-next-door Miss America kind of way. Straight, shoulder-length, Jennifer Aniston blond hair, messenger bag hung on her shoulder, designer jeans, and a dressy little black jacket.

  I went out to her and extended my hand. “I’m Lizzy Tucker. I work with Diesel.”

  “Mindy Smith,” she said, shaking my hand. “I’m Diesel’s assistant. He requested two cars. My associate should be coming right away. She was a couple minutes behind me.” Mindy looked past me to the house. “Is Diesel here? I’ve never met him. I hear he’s incredibly handsome.”

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  “Three months. If I make it to six months, I’ll get a hardship bonus. He has a reputation for being a little difficult.”

  I looked back at the house and crooked my finger at Diesel to come out.

  “Was that him behind the curtain?” Mindy asked.

  “Yes. He’s very shy.”

  She hiked her bag higher on her shoulder. “Just goes to show how wrong rumors can be.”

  Diesel ambled out and Mindy sucked in some air. “Wow,” she whispered.

  “This is Mindy Smith,” I said to Diesel. “Your assistant. Her associate is coming shortly with the second car.”

  “Nice,” Diesel said.

  Hard to tell if he was talking about the cars or about Mindy Smith.

  “As you know, we try to get the best vehicles available,” Mindy said, handing Diesel the keys to a black Aston Martin. “I hope this will be all right. The second car is identical to this one.”

  “I can make do,” Diesel said.

  “The papers are in the glove box. I’ve made arrangements to have your previous cars towed from the bakery parking lot. And I have the two new cell phones you requested.”

  The second car eased to a stop behind the first car, and a woman who looked like a Mindy Smith clone got out. She flushed a little at seeing Diesel, and for a moment I was afraid she was going to do something awful, like curtsy to the king. Fortunately, she pulled herself together and simply smiled and gave Diesel the second key.

  “While you’re here, you can help me out with one more thing,” Diesel said.

  He ran into the house, and minutes later he came out carrying the painting wrapped in a sheet, the Duane bell, and the Motion Machine.

  “These need to be returned to their owners,” he said. “There was a plaque that needed to go back as well, but it was stolen by a crazy lady.”

  Mindy took the painting, and her clone took the bell and the Motion Machine. Both women looked like deer in headlights, not sure what to do but unwilling to ask Diesel.

  “Thanks,” Diesel said to the women. “Have a good trip.”

  I followed Diesel into the house. “Where are they going? And how will they get there?” I asked him. “They haven’t got a car.”

  “I guess they’ll go back to the office, wherever that is.”

  “You don’t know where the office is located?”

  “No. Never had to go there.”

  I looked out the window. The women were gone.

  “How? What?” I asked.

  “They’re very resourceful,” Diesel said.

  “Did they get beamed up or something?”

  “You don’t want to know. It would freak you out. Let’s say someone gave them a ride.”

  Good enough for me.

  “I’ve been instructed to defuse Anarchy,” Diesel said. “She’s made herself a sufficient nuisance to catch the attention of whoever makes these decisions.”

  “You don’t know who makes the decisions?”

  “I know some of the people involved. Their precise responsibilities aren’t well defined. It’s a blurry hierarchy.”

  “I have her cell phone number.” I handed her card to Diesel. “She gave me twenty-four hours to get the stone to her, or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “She’ll burn my house down.”

  “I’d hate that,” Diesel said. “I like this house.”

  Diesel had the two cell phones that replaced the ones that had drowned. He gave one to me, and he punched Anarchy’s number into the other. She didn’t answer.

  “Probably getting her hair done and a manicure,” I said.

  “Do you have an address?”

  “No. She said she was between addresses.”

  “No doubt.”

  “What all is involved in defusing someone?” I asked him.

  “I can block certain kinds of destructive energy.
”

  “Can you do that to Wulf?”

  Diesel shook his head. “I’ve never been sanctioned to try. There are people in high places who protect Wulf.” He looked at his watch. “I have an errand to run. Pack some sandwiches. When I get back, we’re going on a field trip.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I was buckled into the Aston Martin next to Diesel, and Carl was in the backseat. We’d been on the road for two hours, and I wasn’t happy.

  “This is a dumb idea,” I said to Diesel.

  “It’s a loose end that has to be tied.”

  “Yeah, but why do I have to tie it? Why can’t you tie it all by yourself?”

  “Where would the fun be in that? Besides, I can’t do this without you. I’m not going to all this aggravation only to bring home something worthless.”

  We were going back to Dartmouth to try to retrieve the half tablet Anarchy dropped in the tunnel. I couldn’t argue over the value of the tablet. If it could be deciphered, it would give us a head start on finding the next stone. At least it would give us half a head start. Anarchy still had the other half.

  The legend is that a tablet accompanied each stone and gave the name of another guardian family. It was the way families were able to find one another over the centuries if disaster struck.

  My problem was that I flat-out did not want to go back underground. And I thought this whole search-and-rescue mission smacked of wild-goose chase. What were the chances of finding half of a tablet in the endless, dark, confusing tunnels?

  “I wish you would stop sighing and harrumphing,” Diesel said. “It’s starting to creep me out.”

  “Well, excuse me, but this moronic mission is creeping me out. And I’m not diving into that pool of black water. I’ll wait at the end of the tunnel. You can bring the tablet to me if you can find it.”

  “We’re not going in that way. We’re going in the way we came out.”

  “It was a maze. We’ll get lost and die. And there were rats! Remember the rats?”

  “We won’t get lost. The tunnels were marked. We’ll be fine if we read the markings going in and going out. And I’ve taken precautions.”

  “What kind of precautions?”

  “Spray paint and rope.”

  “Oh boy.”

  We pulled into Hanover a half hour later. The sun had just set, but there was still lots of light. Students were on the move to and from dorms, going to eat, heading for the library.

  Carl was making restless sounds in the back, anxious to get out of the car.

  “What are you going to do with Carl while we’re in the tunnels?” I asked Diesel.

  “He’s coming with us. I have a leash.”

  “Eeep?” Carl said.

  I contemplated my life choices and wished I had something calming and comforting. Catholics have rosaries and things they can chant, but I was raised Presbyterian, and we have bupkis. I guess there’s prayer, but that takes some thought. Smoking would be another way to go. Smokers always look so happy when they suck on a cigarette. I might even be willing to risk lung cancer, but the wrinkly, oxygen-deprived skin issue is a big turnoff. And I’d hate to smell like my Aunt Rose, who died with a Marlboro Light hanging from the corner of her mouth. Although they tell me she died smiling.

  We found a parking place on the side street by the tennis courts and walked across Wheelock to the Sphinx. Diesel had his backpack filled with the rope and spray paint, and I had Carl. He was wearing his new harness, designed for a dog but it fit Carl just fine, and his leash was attached. We skirted the fire-smudged Sphinx on our way up the hill. The back door had been replaced and the small exhaust fan that was high on the back wall had also been replaced.

  There were students talking by the bike racks in front of our target dorm. We kept our distance and walked around the end of the three-building cluster. We stopped a short distance from the basement door and watched the activity. No one was on this side of the building. Good thing for that, because it’s hard to blend in when you’ve got a monkey.

  “Showtime,” Diesel said.

  We casually crossed to the door, Diesel opened it, and we slipped inside and quickly walked through the revolving wall to the trapdoor. I went down the ladder first, Carl followed, and Diesel came last, closing the hatch, plunging us into darkness.

  I felt something scurry across my foot, and in a flash Carl was off the ground and sitting on my head.

  I could hear Diesel pulling things out of the backpack. He switched on a light and handed it to me.

  “Put this on,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a headlamp. Hikers use them. It’ll give you hands-free light.”

  I put the headlamp on and watched while Diesel fixed one onto Carl.

  “Where did you find one to fit Carl?” I asked him.

  “Ace Hardware. They have everything.”

  Diesel put his headlamp on and attached a Maglite to the waistband of his jeans. He coiled a long length of rope over his shoulder and grabbed a can of fluorescent yellow spray paint.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Stay close.”

  Stay close was advice I didn’t need. As it was, I couldn’t get close enough. The only one more unhappy than me to be in the dark, dank tunnel was Carl. He was clinging to me with his monkey fingers curled into my shirt in a death grip.

  In some ways, it had been better to blindly follow Diesel in the dark last time. I hadn’t seen the spiders hanging from webs above our heads or the dirt sifting down from rotting support beams. When we came to a fork in the tunnel system, Diesel looked for the letter chipped into the stone marker, and he spray painted the walls at the entrance to the tunnel we were about to exit, to make sure we’d make no mistake on the way out.

  We came to the small chamber with the domed ceiling. No sunlight filtering through this time. The sun had set. Diesel moved through the room and took us into more tunnels.

  If I looked around Diesel, I could see something reflecting light at the end of the current tunnel. Quartz crystals, I thought. We’d finally reached the large domed room where we’d found Hatchet. The room where the stone and the tablet had resided.

  I stepped into the room and felt a sense of relief. It was still claustrophobic, but at least I wasn’t moving through narrow dirt tunnels.

  Carl looked around and slowly climbed down. He stood for a moment, testing the dirt-and-stone floor.

  “Eeh,” he said.

  We’d emerged from the tunnel marked W, now spray painted yellow. There were five tunnel entrances opening into the room. We knew from Hatchet that the N tunnel had been booby-trapped.

  Diesel went to the N tunnel and peered into the dark hole with his Maglite.

  “What do you see?” I asked him.

  “Nothing. No tablet on the ground that I can see. I’d say it’s around a twenty-foot drop.”

  The floor of the domed room was littered with small brown rocks the same size and shape as the Luxuria Stone. Mixed with the small brown rocks were chunks of crystal like the ones embedded in the walls and ceiling. I picked up a couple of the prettier crystal chunks and put them in my sweatshirt pocket.

  “She said she fell multiple times,” I told Diesel.

  “Let’s hope she lost the tablet on the first fall.”

  I went to the hole and looked in. “You might be able to drop down and only break one or two bones, but you have no way of getting out, other than wandering around for a couple days.”

  “I’m not going down. That’s the genius of my plan. Carl’s going down.”

  Carl’s eyes went wide open. “Eeeep!”

  “I brought rope,” Diesel said, slipping the coil of rope off his shoulder. “I figure we tie the rope to Carl’s harness, and we lower him down. When he finds the tablet, we bring him back up.”

  Carl was shaking his head no so hard I was afraid his eyes would pop out and roll around on the ground.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Diesel said to Carl. “I’l
l have a good grip on you. It could even be fun. You’ll get to see a new tunnel.”

  Carl gave Diesel the finger.

  Diesel tied the rope to the back of Carl’s harness, picked Carl up by it, and bobbed Carl up and down like a yo-yo.

  “Good to go,” Diesel said.

  “He looks worried.”

  Diesel hung him over the hole. “Nothing to worry about. What could go wrong?”

  “Eeeeee,” Carl said, descending into the abyss, holding tight to his harness, feet dangling, his mini-headlamp shining into the darkness.

  “Remember, you’re looking for the tablet,” Diesel called to Carl. “I’ll pull you up when you get the tablet.”

  I stood back a couple feet and manned the Maglite. I was trying to illuminate the ground below, but it was difficult to get the beam of light past Carl.

  “He’s on the ground,” Diesel said. “The rope went slack. I think he’s walking around. “Hey, Carl!” he called down. “How’s it going? Do you see the tablet?”

  “Chee,” Carl said, his voice very faint.

  Moments later, there was a tug on the rope. Carl wanted to come up.

  “Did you get the tablet?” Diesel asked.

  “Chee.”

  Carl had something in his hands coming up. Impossible to see what it was—my light was throwing shadows. Diesel lifted Carl out of the hole and swung him toward me. Carl had a dead rat.

  “Eeep?” Carl asked, holding the rat out for me to see.

  “Dude, that’s not a tablet,” Diesel said.

  Carl dropped the rat, and Diesel kicked it over the edge into the hole.

  “Back you go,” Diesel said, sending Carl down, down, down.

  “Eep,” Carl said.

  The rope went slack and then played out.

  “He’s walking around,” Diesel said.

  Diesel leaned over the edge to see better, and the dirt gave way.

  “Oh crap,” Diesel said, tumbling into the hole.

  WHUUUMP! Diesel landed on his back far below me.

  “Omigod,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I think I landed on the rat.”

  “As long as you didn’t land on Carl.”

  Carl jumped onto Diesel’s chest and gave me a big monkey smile and a finger wave.

  Diesel got to his feet and looked around.