Wicked Appetite (9 page)

I picked everything up and held it in my hand, one by one. The lipstick, compact, wallet, hairbrush, and pen said nothing to me. The instant the keys hit my palm, they radiated heat. I dropped them onto the table, and the heat went away. I picked them up, and they warmed my hand.

“Holy cow,” I said.

“That’s it?” Diesel asked. “The Stone is disguised as a key?”

“This is too weird,” I said. “It’s got to be a setup. How did you get the keys to radiate heat?”

Diesel took the keys from me and examined them. “Lizzy, you’re the only one who can feel the heat.”

Shirley had finished the turkey leg and was working her way through the Snickers bars.

“You inherited a key,” I said to her.

Shirley vigorously shook her head.

I took another look at the key ring. There were three keys and a ladybug charm on the ring.

“It’s the charm,” I said.

Shirley nodded. “Clam bake.”

I removed the ladybug from the ring and held it in my hand. It vibrated slightly and grew warm.

Shirley pointed to the photo on the end table. “Twinkies,” she said. And she counted off on three fingers. “Huey, Dewey, Louie.”

“I don’t like what I think she’s trying to tell us,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel fixed his eyes on the photo. “Three people got inheritances?” he asked Shirley.

Shirley nodded. “Beeswax.”

I looked over at Diesel. “Don’t tell me we have to collect more charms. One is good enough, right?”

“I’m on a learning curve,” Diesel said, “but I suppose to be safe we need all the charms.”

“Maybe Wulf doesn’t know about the other charms.”

“Hard to believe. Shirley had no knowledge of the Stone. She thought she had a keepsake ladybug. So we know Shirley didn’t leak information. Uncle Phil, on the other hand, probably knew. He divided the charms as a safety precaution and tried to scare everyone into silence with the threat of eternal bad luck. Wulf had to know about the uncle and the divided inheritance.”

“Do you have addresses or phone numbers for the people in the photograph?” Diesel asked Shirley.

Shirley shook her head.

“Names?” he asked.

“Maggie, Booger Slammer, Ice Cream,” Shirley said. She rolled her eyes and thunked herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand. “Mix Master, Matches, Nail File.” She squinched her eyes closed and tried again. “Candle, Piss Pot, Queen Elizabeth.” She opened her eyes and grunted. “Fruck.”

“They’re stepbrothers,” I said to Diesel. “Their last name is probably More.”

Shirley nodded. I’d guessed right.

“We need to keep your charm,” Diesel said to Shirley. “We need to put it someplace safe.”

“Good riddleness,” Shirley said, popping a Peppermint Pattie.

Diesel called a contact for information on Shirley More’s stepbrothers, and by the time we reached the Cayenne, Diesel had his answer.

“Leonard More is the stepbrother with the silver Camry,” Diesel said. “He lives in Salem. His brother, Mark, lives in Beverly. We’ll visit Leonard first. He’s a claims adjuster for an insurance company and should be home from work by five o’clock.”

Lenny lived in a medium-size colonial on a tree-lined street in north Salem. A plaque on the house proclaimed it to have been built in 1897. The Camry was parked at the curb when we arrived. A
FOR SALE
sign was stuck in a patch of sketchy grass in the front yard. Diesel found a space half a block away, parked the Cayenne, and we walked back to Lenny’s house.

“According to my source, Lenny’s recently married and recently divorced,” Diesel said. “He was a junior exec in a bank, got fired six months ago, and picked up the claims adjuster job at the end of March.”

Lenny answered the door in dress slacks and a rumpled dress shirt. He had a drink in his hand, his breath was hundred-proof, his eyes were bloodshot, his thinning, sandy
blond hair was mussed, and he was wearing a thick, spiked dog collar around his neck.

“Had a hard day?” Diesel asked him.

“Not necessarily,” Leonard said, “but things could pick up. What can I do you for?”

“I’d like to talk to you about your inheritance.”

“You and everyone else.”

“Who’s everyone else?” Diesel asked.

“My brother, for starters. And some cool dude who looks like he has real pain potential.” Lenny slurked down his drink and stared into the empty glass. “Uh-oh, all gone.” He turned and walked into the kitchen, and we followed.

“Do you know the cool dude’s name?” Diesel asked.

Lenny poured more whiskey into his glass. “Wolf. Is that a badass name, or what?” He blinked up at Diesel. “You want some hooch?” He squinted over at me. “You want some?”

“No,” I said. “But thanks. This thing you inherited, it was a ladybug, right?”

“Wrong. And I’m not telling anybody anything, because then I’ll have bad luck forever and ever.”

“That’s baloney,” I said. “No one can put a whammy on you and give you bad luck forever.”

“Hah!” Leonard said. “You didn’t know Uncle Phil. He was a scary kookadoo. He could give you the stink eye.” Leonard held one eye closed with his finger and looked at me with his other bloodshot eye. “And one time, I saw him turn a cat into a fry pan.”

Two days ago, I wouldn’t have believed that was possible, but now I didn’t know what to believe.

Diesel was handing me things off the kitchen counter. Egg timer, key ring, Ping-Pong paddle. I held each of them for a moment and gave them back. Spatula, pot holder, saucepan.

“What’s with the dog collar?” Diesel asked.

“It’s an accessory,” Lenny said. “Some men wear ties. I prefer a dog collar.”

“Fondle it,” Diesel said to me.

“No way!”

“It’s an accessory,” Diesel said. “Think of it like jewelry. He probably got it at Cartier.”

“Wrong,” Lenny said. “Petco.”

I reached out and touched the collar. Nothing. I touched his watch. Nothing there, either.

“Suppose I guessed the inheritance?” I asked Lenny. “Would that be okay?”

“It’s a free country,” Lenny said. “I can’t stop you from guessing. Anyway, you’ll never guess it, and even if you do guess right, you’ll never find it. It’s hidden and booby-trapped.”

Diesel opened an under-the-counter drawer and pulled out handcuffs attached to a heavy chain.

“Sometimes I’m a bad boy, and I need to be punished,” Lenny said. “I have more stuff in my bedroom if you want to see.”

“No!” I said. “Gee, look at the time. I have to go now.”

Diesel wrapped an arm around me. “We can take a couple minutes to check out the dude’s bedroom,” Diesel said. “I bet he keeps his inheritance in there.”

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” I said.

“Has Shirley seen your inheritance?” Diesel asked Lenny.

“Nope. Nobody’s seen it but me and good ol’ deader-than-a-doorknob Uncle Phil. And nobody’s gonna see it, either, because I can keep a secret. You can ask my wife. Oops, I mean ex-wife. She didn’t know about lots of things. And then when she found out, she turned into a real party pooper.”

“Did you tell her about your inheritance?” I asked.

“No. I told her about my paddle collection and my cyber slut. I thought she’d be excited, but she packed her bags and left.”

“Gosh, go figure,” I said, thinking I’d touched the Ping-Pong paddle, wondering if I had hand sanitizer in my purse.

“When did you start collecting paddles?” Diesel asked Lenny.

Lenny rocked back on his heels. “Five or six years ago. One day, it just came over me that I needed a good whacking. And now I can’t get enough of it.”

“Jeez,” I said.

Diesel leaned close, his lips brushing my ear. “At least it’s not fattening.”

If I had to make a choice between getting disciplined by the cyber slut or gaining a hundred pounds, I’d probably go with the cupcake obsession.

“We need to talk to you about the inheritance,” I said.

“Sure. What about it?”

“Where is it?”

“That’s for you to know and me to find out,” Lenny said.

Diesel and I exchanged glances. Lenny was snockered. Helpful for extracting information. Not helpful if he didn’t make any more sense than Shirley.

“Is it in the bedroom?” I asked.

“Used to be.” He looked into his glass. “Empty,” he said. “So sad.”

“He needs food,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “A half-empty bottle of Aquavit, a can of Crisco, and a rubber chicken. That’s it.”

“There’s no food in here,” I said to Lenny.

Lenny stuck his head in the fridge. “There’s a chicken.”

“It’s rubber,” Diesel said, looking like he was going to rupture something trying not to laugh out loud.

“Is that bad?” Leonard asked.

I looked around the kitchen. No bread. No fruit. No coffeemaker. No kitchen knives. No cookie jar. The lone metal spatula I’d tested was propped up in the dish drain. I now had new concerns about its use. I ransacked the cupboards and came up with a box of granola bars. I gave one to Diesel and one to Lenny.

“About the inheritance,” I said to Lenny.

“Can’t get it,” Lenny said. “It’s booby-trapped.”

“Yes, but you know how to disarm it, right?”

Lenny shoved half a granola bar into his mouth. “Nuh. Didn’t think of that. It was during the divorce, and the party pooper took the toaster, and so I got this idea that she was after my inheritance, so I hid it and booby-trapped it. I was doing recreational drinking at the time. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s a piece of junk.”

“Here’s the thing,” I said to Lenny. “It turns out your inheritance might be . . . enchanted.”

“Don’t care.”

“Of course you care. It’s a Gluttonoid.”

Diesel grinned at me and rocked back on his heels. “Gluttonoid. Boy, that’s a great name. How’d you ever come up with that one?”

Lenny slumped against the counter. “What’s a Gluttonoid?”

“It’s an object that turns people into gluttons. In your case, you’re a glutton for punishment. If we remove the object, there’s a good chance you’ll return to normal,” I told him.

“No more hanky panky spanky?” Lenny asked. “What if I’m a bad boy?”

“Dude, you’re freaking me out,” Diesel said. “Get a grip.”

“This is creepy. And I don’t like the whole booby-trap thing,” I said to Diesel. “Why don’t we let Wulf get this one? With any luck, he’ll blow himself up.”

Diesel looked at Lenny. “Tell me about the booby trap. Are we talking major explosion?”

“Not atomic,” Lenny said.

“Would it kill Superman?”

“You’d need kryptonite to do that.”

“Okay, how about Batman?”

“I don’t know. Batman is tricky.”

“So the let-Wulf-get-the-charm plan won’t work,” Diesel said to me. “Doesn’t sound like we can count on it to kill him.”

The house was around two thousand square feet. Living room, dining room, kitchen, powder room, mudroom leading to the back door. The bedrooms were obviously upstairs. Impossible to know if Lenny had gone to the dark side because of the charm, but going on the assumption that this was the case, I thought the charm most likely was in the house. Hard to believe any of this was real but even more difficult to believe the charm could leak onto someone without consistent exposure. And if I booby-trapped something in my house, it wouldn’t be in a high-traffic area. I’d want it out of the way, hidden from sight.

“Do you have a cellar?” I asked Lenny.

“Yep.”

“Did you hide your inheritance in your cellar?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“I’d had a lot to drink. A real lot. And I tried a bunch of different places before I settled. And it was a long time ago.”

“Your wife’s only been gone for three months,” Diesel said.

“She was a party pooper,” Lenny said. “Did I already tell you that? Anyway, you can look around the cellar if you want, but I’m not going. It’s scary down there. And I might have booby-trapped it.”

Diesel opened the cellar door and went down the steep, narrow stairwell. He got to the bottom and looked back at me.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what?”

“Are you coming down?”

“No.”

He was wearing jeans and a cream-colored cotton crew-neck sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. His teeth were white against his beach bum tan. And he was looking very big in the small cellar.

“There are some things I’d like you to hold,” he said.

“I bet.”

“I meant potential charm things.”

“I knew that. Are you sure it’s safe down there?”

He did arms outstretched. “No bad guys or obvious booby traps.”