Wicked Business (4 page)

“The key!”
Hatchet said. “I demand that you give me the key!”

“I don’t have it,” I told him. “Diesel has it.”

He drew his sword. “Then I will take you hostage. And I will trade you for the key.”

“Hey!” Clara said to Hatchet. “What’s wrong with you? You can’t go around waving your sword in here. This is a bakery. Have some respect.”

“Yeah, and if you don’t behave, I’m going to get my broom, and he’ll give you a couple good whacks,” Glo said.

“Your broom is no match for my sword,” Hatchet said. “I’m a skilled swordsman. My aim is deadly true.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure my broom might be magic,” Glo said.

Hatchet paused for a beat. “How magic?” he asked.

“
Real
magic,” Glo said. “About as magic as a broom could get.”

Hatchet cut his eyes to me. “I will retreat for now, but I will be back. I will pounce when you least expect it. And I will conjure my own dark powers to battle your evil forces. Stand back now while I take my leave, and thou willst give up these cupcakes.”

He stiff-armed his sword in our direction, grabbed the tray of cupcakes, turned, and ran out of the kitchen. A car motor cranked over in the parking lot, and there was the sound of squealing tires on the pavement.

“He needs a pill,” Clara said.

Glo shouldered a cookie tray. “I think he’s kind of cute. He’s just a little misdirected. I might be able to find a spell to help him. I’ll have to look in
Ripple’s
tonight.”

Oh boy, as if Hatchet wasn’t crazy enough, now Glo was going to help him.

“What’s so special about this key?” Clara asked.

“It’s the Lovey key,” Glo said. “Remember how I was saving up money so I could buy a book of sonnets, but someone bought it ahead of me? Well, there’s a little key that goes with the book, and Carl found it and gave it to Lizzy. And the guy who bought the book, Gilbert Reedy, is dead.”

“His death was on the news last night,” Clara said. “They said someone broke his neck and threw him off his balcony.”

At one o’clock, Diesel showed up. He ambled into the kitchen, slung an arm around my neck, and kissed me on the top of my head.

“What’s that about?” I asked him.

“I like you.”

“And?”

“I’m hungry.”

“For lunch?”

“Yeah, that, too.”

“There are some ugly meat pies in the fridge. Sausage, beef with curry, and roasted vegetable.”

When a pie or a pastry didn’t turn out to be perfect and wonderful, we labeled them ugly and made them available for employee consumption. Diesel grabbed an ugly sausage pie and stood at the counter, eating it cold.

“I haven’t read through everything yet,” he said, “but a couple interesting things have turned up. Shortly after Reedy got the Lovey book, he joined a dating service. He chose four women from the service because he felt they were looking for true love.”

“How do you know?”

“I found a list in the miscellaneous folder. Reedy called them True Love Seekers and sometimes Key Seekers.”

“That sounds very adventuresome.”

Diesel went back for a second pie. “The list was scribbled on the back of a professional paper written in 1953 promoting the hypothesis that the stones holding the seven deadly sins were originally virtuous. Gluttony represented joy for all things. The bearer of pride had an industrious spirit.…”

“And lust?” I asked him.

“Supposedly the Luxuria Stone was originally the stone of true love. The author of the paper theorized that at some point in time, the stone was corrupted and turned sinful. There was an addendum to the paper speculating that a key might exist to find the stone.”

“The Lovey key!” Glo said. “I bet Reedy was looking for his true love.” She clapped a hand over her heart. “That’s so romantic.”

“Yeah, and he’s so dead,” Clara said.

Ten minutes later, I was out of my chef clothes, following Diesel to his car.

“I don’t understand why you feel compelled to talk to the four women,” I said to him. “It’s not like Reedy was in a relationship with any of them. How could this possibly help you find the stone?”

“It’s a place to start,” Diesel said. “I’ve got home addresses and work addresses for all of them. Cassandra McGinty is the first on the list. She lives in Lynn, and she waits tables at a restaurant in Salem. I called the restaurant, and they said
she doesn’t come in until four, so I thought we’d see if she’s home.”

Lynn is on the North Shore, south of Marblehead. It’s a diverse seaside town with a sketchy history and a hardworking population. Cassandra McGinty lived in a big clapboard house on the west side of Lynn. The house had been converted to apartments, and Cassandra’s was on the third floor.

I huffed and puffed up the stairs and stood back while Diesel knocked on the door. A woman with enormous breasts and short, punked-up white blond hair answered. She was early twenties, medium height, and slim except for her chest. She was wearing spike heels, tight jeans, and a spaghetti-strap tank top that showed a quarter mile of cleavage.

Diesel checked out the breasts and smiled, his eyes locked in at nipple level. “I’m looking for Cassandra McGinty.”

“Well, you’ve found her,” McGinty said, looking Diesel up and down.

I wanted to kick Diesel in the back of his leg to see if I could knock his eyes loose, but I’d kicked him yesterday and didn’t want it to become habit-forming. So I stepped around him and extended my hand.

“I’m Lizzy Tucker,” I said. “The stupid drooling guy is Diesel. We’d like to talk to you about Gilbert Reedy.”

“Are you cops?” she asked. “I heard Gilbert tried to fly off his balcony and it didn’t turn out so good.”

“Were you dating him?” I asked her.

“Gilbert and I met for coffee, but that was all. I don’t know if you saw Gilbert before he turned himself into a pancake on the sidewalk, but he wasn’t exactly hot.” She did another full body scan of Diesel. “And I like hot men.”

“Gee, too bad I don’t know any or I’d bring them around,” I said to McGinty. “Diesel here looks good, but he bats for the other team, if you know what I mean.”

“Lucky them,” McGinty said.

“We’re looking for a book of sonnets. It was missing from Reedy’s apartment.”

“He had a book with him when we had coffee. It was real old looking, and he read this lame poem to me from it. Something about a hot eye.”

“Do you remember anything else about the poem?”

“Yeah. I remember wanting it to end. Gilbert Reedy was the king of geeks.”

“He was looking for his true love,” I told her.

“Me, too,” McGinty said. “But I want one with a big package.”

We thanked McGinty for her help, trucked down the stairs, and got back into Diesel’s SUV.

“I might have been her true love if you hadn’t ruined it with that fib,” Diesel said. “I have all the requirements.”

“You were looking at her like she was a free pass to the Super Bowl. I was afraid you were going to step on your tongue.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Gail Danko was second on the list. She lived in a small, bedraggled bungalow a half mile from Cassandra McGinty. A black Sentra was parked in the driveway. It was showing some rust and a few good-size dents. A gray cat sat on the roof, enjoying the afternoon sun.

“Danko is a nurse, but she’s off on sick leave,” Diesel said. “Divorced. No kids.”

He knocked on the door, the door opened, and a short, round woman with a big fluffy white cat under her arm and her foot in a cast looked out at us. “What?”

“I’m looking for Gail Danko,” Diesel said.

The woman’s eyes glazed over for a moment while she took Diesel in. “Mmmmm,” she said.

Diesel smiled at her. “Why is your cat wearing pants?”

“She’s a national champion, and she’s in heat. We’re going to breed her tomorrow.”

The cat on the car gave a loud
YOWL
and the national champion jumped out of Danko’s arms and shot out the door.

“Miss Snowball!” Danko shouted. “Help! Catch her! She can’t get pregnant from that alley cat!”

In a flash, Snowball was out of sight, running as fast as she could in her cat diaper, the gray cat close on her tail. Gail Danko stomped onto her little porch with her plaster-coated foot and single crutch, but she clearly wasn’t going to catch Snowball.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Danko. “Diesel will track Miss Snowball down. He’s good at this. He has special tracking skills.”

“I don’t track cats,” Diesel said.

“Of course you do,” I told him. “You have that whole energy sensitivity thing. That’s why you’re the bounty hunter.”

“I can find
people
.”

“Are you sure you can’t find cats? Have you ever tried to sniff one out?”

“No,” Diesel said, “but Miss Whatever shouldn’t be hard to find. Speaking from the male perspective, they’re probably just around the corner in the bushes, trying to get her pants off.”

He disappeared around the side of the building, and Danko and I stood waiting.

“What happened to your foot?” I asked her.

“Bunion surgery,” she said. “I’ve been sitting with the stupid thing elevated for two weeks, doing nothing but eating. I was struggling with my weight before the surgery, and now I’m totally
fat
. And if that isn’t bad enough, Miss Snowball’s going to get pregnant with that trailer-trash tomcat.” There was some god-awful screeching and howling, and Danko stumbled back and put her hand to her heart. “My baby!”

“It might not be so bad,” I said. “She could be faking it. I mean, who hasn’t faked it once or twice, right?”

A moment later, Diesel emerged from behind the house with Miss Snowball. The diaper was shredded but still attached, her fur was standing straight out, and her eyes were almost popped out of their sockets.

“Was that you screeching and howling?” I asked Diesel.

“Princess wasn’t happy with hotshot’s foreplay technique.” He handed Snowball over to Danko. “I hope the cat you’ve got coming tomorrow knows what he’s doing.”

“We wanted to ask you about Gilbert Reedy,” I said to Danko. “I believe you dated.”

“We met for coffee, but he started wheezing after five minutes. Turns out he’s allergic to cats.”

“Did he say anything interesting in those five minutes?” I asked her. “Did he mention a key?”

“No. He said on his form that he had the key to finding
true love, but that was it. Hard to talk about keys and true love when you’re having an asthma attack.”

Diesel backtracked to Salem and parked in the lot of the public library. “Sharon Gordon is third on the list. She’s a librarian. Thirty-six years old. She lives with her mother. And her Facebook page says she likes Nora Roberts, s’mores, and penguins.”

“You can trust a woman who likes s’mores,” I said. “It’s the gooey factor.”

“Something to keep in mind.”

We entered the building and found Gordon shelving books in the children’s section. She was tall and slim, with brown hair pulled back in a clip at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a pale pink knit top, tan slacks, and flats.

She gasped when she turned and saw Diesel. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m used to seeing short people in this room.”

“We’d like to talk to you about Gilbert Reedy,” Diesel said.

“Are you police?”

Diesel picked a picture book about trucks off her cart and paged through it. “That’s a complicated question.”

Sharon pushed her cart forward and placed a book on a shelf. “I met Gilbert through a dating service. He said he was looking for true love.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “We went out a couple times, and I thought he liked me, and then this woman named Ann came along, and he got weird and dumped me.”

“Do you have a last name for her?”

“No. I don’t know anything about her.” She shelved another book. “I’ll tell you one thing, though—Gilbert Reedy was a very strange man. His area of expertise was Elizabethan England, but he was obsessed with an obscure poet from the nineteenth century. He had a little book of sonnets he could quote by heart. He was convinced it held the key to true love. Like it had mystical powers. And then one day last week, he called me up and said he didn’t need me anymore. That was the way he put it. He didn’t
need
me. Can you imagine? How am I supposed to interpret that? And he was babbling about Ann, Ann, Ann. And good triumphing over evil. And he should have seen it sooner.”

“What should he have seen sooner?” I asked her.

“He didn’t say. He was on a rant, making no sense. If it was anyone else, I’d think they were on drugs, but Gilbert Reedy wouldn’t have any idea where to
get
drugs. He was a total academic. It was almost like dating me was a science experiment.”

“Did he carry the book of sonnets with him?” Diesel asked. “Did you see it?”

“Yes. It was actually very wonderful. The sonnets were written by a man named Lovey, and the book cover was leather with hand-tooled almond blossoms scrawled across it. It reminded me of the Van Gogh painting. I did a little of my own research and found that Van Gogh and Lovey were contemporaries, so it’s possible Lovey copied the painting to decorate his book. Or it could just have been coincidence. The almond blossom has long been a symbol of hope. The book locked like a diary, and there was a little key that went with the book, but Gilbert never let me see the key. He said it was the last piece to the puzzle, and he kept it someplace
safe
.”

“What did he mean by the last piece to the puzzle?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” Gordon said. “He was always making statements like that and then jumping off to something else. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I kept going out with him. He was sort of a crackpot.”

“He read poetry to you, and he was searching for true love,” I said.

Gordon smiled and nodded. “Yes. He was a
romantic
crackpot.”

“Do you have any idea who might know something about the key and the puzzle?” I asked her. “Did he have any close relatives or friends that he might have spoken to?”

“I don’t think he had friends, and he didn’t talk about his relatives. He mentioned his grad student a lot. Julie. He was
her thesis advisor. He thought she was smart. He might have confided in her. And of course there’s Ann.”