Wicked Charms (8 page)

“I’ll be excited when I have all eight and figure out what to do with them.”

“Do the two new pieces look like they fit with the piece we already have?” I asked Diesel.

“At first glance, yes.” Diesel pulled the pieces out of his pocket and handed one to me. “Does this do anything for you?”

“Yep. It’s vibrating.”

“Hold it up to the sun.”

I held it up, and Clara and I squinted at it. A small hole had been punched into the silver.

“Cool,” I said. “Very Indiana Jones.”

“I now have three pieces of the coin, and they each have a hole punched in them,” Diesel said.

I gave the piece of coin back to him. “I keep thinking about the poem Gramps recited. It seems odd that Peg Leg would have been so obsessed with it.”

“Gramps has complained about it so much that I know it by heart,” Clara said. “It’s a poem by John Masefield called ‘Sea Fever.’ It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized he had it wrong. The real line is ‘And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’ Gramps always said ‘a light to guide her by.’ ”

We dropped Clara off at the bakery, and Diesel and I drove the short distance to Kosciuszko Street for pizza. We got an extra-large pizza with extra cheese and extra pepperoni, and we took it to a table outside. We had a good view of the Derby Wharf and of the wooden frigate that served as a floating museum of Salem’s maritime history. The Derby lighthouse stood off in the distance at the end of the jetty.

“How did you manage to get into the shark tank?” I asked Diesel.

“I hypnotized the divers by showing them magical pieces of paper.”

“Fifty-dollar bills?”

Diesel sprinkled crushed red pepper on his pizza slice. “They held out for a hundred each.”

“Saving the world is expensive.”

“Yeah, I just hope this leads to something. We probably need all eight pieces to read the map that will take us to the stone. And we’re already down one of the pieces.”

“Maybe Wulf will give his piece back to us.”

“Maybe hell will freeze over. Wulf is psycho. He’s like an animal who gets on a scent and follows it with a bloodlust.”

“Jeez. He’s your cousin.”

“Insanity runs in my family,” Diesel said. “My Great-Uncle Gustav thinks he’s a fruit bat.”

“Is he?”

Diesel shrugged. “Not always. He looked pretty normal at my cousin Maria’s wedding.”

“Well, at least he’d be vegetarian.”

“True.” Diesel eyed the pizza. “Do you want the last piece?”

“No. I’m stuffed.”

Diesel reached for the pizza and a phone rang. Not my ringtone. Not Diesel’s ringtone. It was the stalker’s phone. I pulled it out of my purse and stared at it. The caller ID read
BLOCKED.
I put the phone on the table and pressed the
SPEAKER
function.

“You seem to have my phone,” a man said.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Names aren’t important. However, I do have something you might value.”

We heard angry chattering in the background. Carl!

“I’m willing to trade this unpleasant monkey for the pieces of eight you’ve acquired and a small service from Ms. Tucker.”

“Get serious,” Diesel said. “Keep the monkey.”

“Here’s the deal. You are going to meet me at the Derby lighthouse in an hour. If you don’t follow instructions we’ll begin chopping off pieces of your monkey’s tail and mailing them to you.”

“Eeep!”
Carl said.

The caller disconnected.

“How awful!” I said.

“Yeah. Hope they send it overnight. Monkey tail could get funky after a couple days.”

“Do you think this guy is working for Wulf?”

“No. This isn’t Wulf’s style. There’s another player in the game.” He looked down at the phone on the table. “Where did you get this?”

“There was a guy following Clara and me around the aquarium, and I used him to create the diversion. There was a scuffle, the cellphone got dropped onto the floor, and Clara retrieved it.”

“And the guy?”

“He ran away. A guard ran after him but couldn’t catch him. It turned out the guy was taking pictures of all of us. Plus he took some pictures of the shark tank.”

“I’m surprised the guard let you keep the phone.”

“He was all done in from the chase. I think he was just happy to be rid of us. Unfortunately it’s a prepaid phone. No ID. No phone numbers on it. There’s nothing to trace.”

“He wanted something else besides the coin pieces. He wanted a service from you. And I don’t think he wants cupcakes.”

—

The Derby lighthouse isn’t the traditional, narrow cylindrical lighthouse you see in all the calendars. It’s squat and square and made of whitewashed brick. It’s twenty-three feet tall and looks like it was built out of Legos by a six-year-old kid with no imagination.

We reached the end of the narrow spit of land, and the red beacon on the top of the lighthouse began to flash every six seconds. The door at the base of the lighthouse was unlocked, so we pushed it open and stepped into a small, dark room. Diesel flipped the light switch, and we saw that the room was empty with the exception of a metal spiral staircase that led to the rooftop lantern room.

The guy from the aquarium was standing at the top of the staircase. A burlap sack was at his feet, a nasty-looking semiautomatic was in his hand, and he had a booted foot on the sack, holding it in place while something squirmed inside.

Diesel stood hands on hips, looking up at the guy. “I’m guessing my monkey’s in that sack.”

“You guess right,” the guy said. “And if I get alarmed I might kick him over the side, so don’t try anything stupid. There’s more of the coin hidden here somewhere. As soon as I heard the poem the old man was blathering on about I had a hunch. A light to guide her by. That’s this lighthouse, right? I was thinking about the lighthouse even before I heard the poem because Peg Leg spent a lot of time here. When he was working as a cod fisherman he would sometimes tend the light during winter months. I was going to try a metal detector, but you’re even better. You’re the special person who’s got the power.”

“How do you know about that? Someone’s a big blabbermouth.”

“Yeah, word gets around.”

“Does your hunch tell you where I should start looking?”

“There’s nothing in here but walls and floor. Start with the walls, and do it fast. I haven’t got all day.”

I ran my hands over the brick walls. I was on the third wall when I felt a vibration.

“It’s here,” I said. “The third brick from the bottom.”

“Dig it out,” the guy said.

I looked up at him. “Do you have a power drill on you? Jackhammer? Nail file?”

He tossed a medium-size screwdriver over the railing. “The jackhammer wouldn’t fit in my pocket. Get to work.”

Diesel retrieved the screwdriver and chipped away at the mortar around the brick. After five minutes he was able to pop the brick out. The back was partially missing and the inside was hollowed out and stuffed with wadded-up cloth. Diesel pulled the cloth out, tipped the brick over, and two bits of the coin fell out into his hand.

“Bring the pieces to me,” the guy said. “Send them up with Miss Magic.”

Diesel handed the two pieces over, and I climbed the circular stairs, stopping when I was within arm’s reach of Carl and his captor.

I dropped the two pieces into the monkey-napper’s hand and reached for the burlap sack.

“Not so fast,” the guy said. “I know you have more pieces.”

“I have one more,” Diesel said. “Catch.”

Diesel tossed the piece up to the guy, and when he lunged for the piece of coin I reached for Carl. The guy snagged the coin, and I slipped the knot on the sack. Carl wriggled free and launched himself at the man’s face. Carl was screeching and the man was screaming and batting at Carl, ineffectively flailing his arms with the gun still in his hand. The gun discharged and time stood still for a beat when we all realized he’d shot himself.

Diesel whistled and Carl disengaged, leaping from the top of the stairs onto Diesel’s shoulder.

“Oh crap,” the guy said, looking down at his stomach, where a bloodstain was beginning to show.

His eyes rolled back and he crumpled, falling headfirst over the metal railing. There was a loud
crack
and a
thud
and then total silence. We rushed over to see if we could help, but he was beyond anything we could do. He was beyond anything
anyone
could do. He still had the gun in his hand, his head was mashed into his neck, and blood was pooling under him.

—

Nergal answered his phone on the fifth ring.

“So how’s it going?” I said to him.

“Pretty good. How’s it going with you?”

Diesel had laid the burlap monkey sack over the guy’s face and what was left of his neck, and I was trying not to look in that direction. “It’s going okay,” I said. “So what are you doing tonight?”

“Not much. Watching television.”

“Do you think you would be able to come out?”

“Are you having one of those
special-people
mixers?”

“Sort of.”

“Great. Where is it?”

“The Derby lighthouse.”

“That’s a terrific place for a party,” he said. “I’m not far away. I’ll be right there.”

“This is totally horrible,” I said to Diesel. “How are we going to explain this?”

“It’s either accidental suicide or death by monkey. I’m going to push for suicide.”

Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door, and Diesel went to answer it.

Nergal stepped in and handed Diesel a bottle of wine. “Am I late?” he asked. “Where is everyone?”

“It’s just getting started,” I said.

“Yeah,” Diesel said, “by midnight this place will be rocking.”

Nergal looked over at Carl, and Carl flipped him the bird.

“Does the monkey have enhanced abilities, too?” Nergal asked. “Is he a powerful wizard under an enchantment?”

“This isn’t Hogwarts,” Diesel said, unscrewing the cap on the wine and chugging some from the bottle.

Nergal caught sight of the body on the floor and the blood leaking out from under the burlap. “Uh-oh,” Nergal said.

“We have sort of a situation here,” Diesel said, lifting the burlap sack so Nergal could appreciate the fact that the head was basically sitting on the man’s shoulders.

“Whoa,” Nergal said. “This isn’t really a party, is it?”

“No, but we’re a pretty fun group.”

“I can see that,” Nergal said, approaching the body.

“We didn’t kill him,” I said. “We just found him like this. More or less.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Not yet.”

“Most people think of that first thing when they find a body.”

“Do you think you could touch him?” I asked, gesturing vaguely with my hands. “Do your thing?”

He hesitated. “This is very irregular. I usually do it with the police around. As a CSI.”

“Think of it as a secret mission,” I said. “For EAF.”

“What’s that?”

“The Enhanced Abilities Force.”

“Is that a real thing?”

“It could be,” I said.

Nergal went down to one knee and put his hand on the body.

“This guy died pretty pissed off.”

“He had a bad day,” I said.

Nergal tilted his head, as if he were listening. “I’m getting a lot of complaints about a monkey.”

“Way to go, Carl,” Diesel said.

“And he’s thinking he made a bad decision to go off on his own,” Nergal said.

“On his own where?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“That’s what I’m getting,” Nergal said. “And he wished he hadn’t shot himself.”

—

After we were done communing with the dead, we made an anonymous call to the police and left. Nergal wanted to go out for a drink, but I asked for a rain check. I gave him a sterile kiss on the cheek and thanked him for the wine. Diesel drove me back to the bakery so I could get my car, then he and Carl followed me home.

“There’s something I should tell you,” Diesel said when we were at my front door. “It could be a mess in there.”

I looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“I left Carl in your house today, so that’s where he was snatched. Probably there was a tussle.”

“A tussle?”

“Unless the monkey-napper had a bag of doughnuts, Carl wouldn’t voluntarily go into that sack.”

I opened the door and gasped. The house was a wreck, and Cat was standing his ground with his fur bushed out like a porcupine’s quills. He saw Diesel and me, and he relaxed.

The couch cushions were on the floor, and furniture was overturned. In the kitchen, canisters were emptied onto the counter with flour and sugar sifted out everywhere. Boxes had been torn open and emptied. Trash was spread across the floor.

“This was more than a struggle to get Carl,” Diesel said. “This was a search for the coin pieces.”

Diesel was still carrying the bottle of wine. I took it from him and chugged some.

“Let’s clean this up,” I said. “By morning this will be an ant factory.”

Two hours later, we had the kitchen scrubbed clean, and the wine bottle was empty.

“Hey, handsome,” I said to Diesel. “Let’s go to bed.”

Diesel grinned over at me. “You drank almost that whole bottle of wine.”

“I did. And it was yummy.”

“You might be a little snockered.”

“Not me,” I said. “I can hold my liquor.”

I sidled up to him, nuzzled his neck, and kissed him just below his ear.

“You smell delicious,” I said. “I could eat you up…all over, if you know what I mean.”

The grin widened. “My lucky day.”

I slipped my hand under his T-shirt and ran my fingers over his perfectly defined abs. “Mmmmm,” I said, dipping my hand inside his jeans. I heard him give a sharp intake of air, and I continued to explore uncharted territory.

“Am I doing okay?” I asked. “What I lack in experience I make up for in enthusiasm.”

“Had me fooled. It feels to me like you know what you’re doing.”

“I like these soft round things.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Listen, maybe we should go a little slower.”

I wrapped my hand around his joystick. “Going to warp speed, Captain. Brace yourself. We’re in launch mode.”