Wicked Charms

by Janet Evanovich

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Diesel sauntered into the bakery a little before one o’clock. Clara had just finished scrubbing down her workstation, and I was bagging leftover muffins.

  “Give me a minute to change my clothes, and I’ll be ready to go,” Clara said to Diesel.

  Clara lives in the little apartment over the shop, so a wardrobe change was easy. Mine was even easier. I took off my apron and chef coat and stomped the flour off my sneakers.

  “Are you going to be okay here alone?” I asked Glo.

  “No problem,” she said. “I brought Broom to keep me company, and Clara will be back to help me close.”

  I followed Diesel out of the shop and stood staring at the bright orange Dodge Charger parked in the lot.

  “Yours?” I asked him.

  “Yep.”

  “What happened to the SUV?”

  “I don’t know. The cars come and go.”

  “That’s very strange.”

  “No stranger than anything else in my life.”

  Clara exited the building by her private entrance. She locked the door and walked over to us.

  “Gramps is at the Salem Aquarium today,” she said. “He has a day care lady who takes him there once a week.”

  The Salem Aquarium is a pleasant little public aquarium nestled in bustling Salem Harbor. It was built inside an old brewery, where the area with the boil kettles and fermenting tanks was nicely converted into coral reefs and shark tanks.

  We found Clara’s grandfather perched on a Rascal scooter, watching the sharks and stingrays. With a few long strands of thin white hair plastered to the top of his head, pink wrinkled skin hanging from a stooped bone structure, and a nose like an eagle’s beak, he looked like Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. He was wearing a dark blue velour tracksuit with the pants hiked up to his armpits. He wasn’t currently sucking oxygen, but he had a tank and face mask in his scooter basket just in case the need should arise. A small Hispanic woman was sitting on a bench a short distance away.

  Clara approached the woman.

  “Hi, Benita. How is he today?”

  “He asked me to marry him. He said he was feeling frisky.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “No way. The man would bury me.”

  “Hey, Gramps,” Clara said. “How’s it going?”

  “A little slow. Benita won’t marry me.”

  “Did he take his meds?” Clara asked Benita.

  “Yes, ma’am. If he didn’t take his meds he’d be hitting you with his cane.”

  “That’s a lie,” Gramps said. “I don’t hit pretty girls.” He pointed at Diesel. “I’d hit him a good one. He looks like trouble.”

  “These are my friends Lizzy and Diesel,” Clara said. “They want to ask you about Collier.”

  “Collier’s dead,” Gramps said. “Dead as a doornail. I suppose I miss him, but at least I don’t have to listen to that damn poem anymore. He insisted I memorize it. He brought me down to the harbor near every day before he disappeared and made me recite it. The man never read a book in his life but he was obsessed with that poem. ‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky / And all I ask is a tall ship and a light to guide her by / I must go down to the seas again, to the dazzling gypsy life / to the tern’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife.’ I’m sure the poem means something but damned if I know what it is.”

  “Did he ever tell you about the treasure he was hunting?” Diesel asked him.

  “Sometimes, but not much. Once he brought me back two pieces of a Spanish coin. He said to guard ’em with my life, and they’d bring me luck. And I guess they did because I made some money in my time. I invested in the stock market and made a fortune. Of course, I lost it all when I bought some swampland in Florida. But then I invested in GM. Started another fortune. Lost that. Lost another one to the dot.com bubble.”

  “Anything else?” Diesel asked, smiling, enjoying himself.

  “I produced a Broadway play in the sixties. Lost a bundle. It was made into a movie in the eighties and I made a bundle. Donated it all to this aquarium, so I could watch the sharks.” He pointed at the tank where a tiger shark swam around a prop treasure chest that was sitting on the sandy bottom of the fake sea. “I call that one Smiley,” Gramps said.

  “Where are the Spanish coin pieces now?” Diesel asked.

  “You’re looking at them,” Gramps said. “Collier was always going on about treasure chests, so I had one made, put the pieces of eight in it, and had it sunk there in the tank. You give people enough money and they most likely will do you a favor. Those pieces of eight are sitting at the bottom of the shark tank, protected by all that water and shark poop.”

  Diesel looked at the Rascal. “I like your wheels.”

  “Had it painted special,” Gramps said. “The ladies love it.”

  The Rascal was fire engine red with yellow and orange flame detailing.

  “I had it souped up,” Gramps said. “I can do fifteen miles per hour in this baby. Truth is, I don’t need it, but it gets me a lot of attention, and Benita has to run to keep up with me. I like to see her run. It makes her boobs bounce up and down.”

  —

  Gramps rolled off to look at the penguins, and Benita followed him. Diesel, Clara, and I remained behind at the shark tank.

  “The way I see it, the problem is all that water,” Diesel said, staring at the treasure chest resting on the bottom of the shark tank.

  “I’d think the problem would be the sharks,” Clara said.

  Diesel shook his head. “The sharks are tame. They’re well fed. They won’t bother me if I’m quick about it. The sign says the sharks get fed at three-thirty. That’s ten minutes from now. If I go in then it’ll look like business as usual. Especially if you two create a disturbance that takes everyone away from the tank.”

  Diesel left, and Clara and I started counting down ten minutes.

  “What about the guy standing in the corner?” Clara asked. “He’s been staring at us off and on for fifteen minutes. Do you know him?”

  The man was slim. Receding hairline. Looked to be in his early thirties. Dressed in a black long-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans.

  “Nope,” I said. “I don’t know him.”

  We moved into the next room and checked out the coral reef. The man moved with us. We walked back to the shark room, and he followed.

  “He’s definitely tailing us,” I said to Clara. “And he’s really bad at it.”

  There was a brief announcement over the public address system of feeding time at the shark tank, and a handful of people moved up to the glass. Two scuba divers carrying mesh bags full of dead fish splashed into the tank from above. One of the divers looked directly at me and nodded.

  “Showtime,” Clara said.

  I took a deep breath and told myself this was all part of the grand scheme of things and probably necessary in terms of saving the world. I turned, walked up to the guy dressed in black, set my hands onto my hips, and glared at him. “Why are you stalking me?” I yelled in his face.

  “Who, me?” he said, panic in his eyes.

  “You’ve been stalking me all afternoon.”

  “No. I swear. I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady.”

  I leaned forward and raised the volume. “What did you call me?”

  “Nothing. I swear.”

  Clara was beside me. “What did you call my friend?”

  “I might have called her ‘lady.’ ”

  Everyone was staring at us. Some people were hurrying from the room. Some were behind Clara, straining to get a better look at the crazy woman yelling at the crazy man. No one over the age of five was looking at the shark tank.

  “Security!” I shouted. “This man is following me and calling me disgusting names.”

  An elderly security guard came over to us. “What’s the problem here?”

  I cut my eyes to the shark tank to see one
of the scuba divers swimming down to the treasure chest and lifting the lid.

  “These women are crazy,” the man in black said. “They came up to me and started yelling at me for no reason.”

  “Did you or did you not call my friend a ‘lady’?” Clara demanded.

  “Yes, but—”

  “He admits it!” Clara said.

  “Is that so bad?” the security guard asked.

  “It’s the way he said it,” I said. “Sneaking up behind me and whispering ‘lady.’ ”

  “There was no whispering,” the guy said. “Honestly, I didn’t whisper.”

  I made a show of getting a shiver. “It was frightening.”

  Dear lord, I thought. Isn’t Diesel ever going to get out of the stupid shark tank! How long did I have to keep this thing going?

  “And I think he was taking pictures of us,” I said to the guard. “Up our skirts.”

  “You’re wearing jeans,” the guard said.

  “So we outsmarted him!” I said.

  “Check his cellphone,” Clara said. “See if there are pictures of us.”

  “No way,” the man said. “I have my rights.”

  I reached around him to his back pocket and searched for his phone.

  “She’s grabbing my ass!” he said.

  “Pervert!” Clara shouted, getting into the mix, shoving her hand into his other back pocket. “Pervert alert!”

  There was a lot of yelling and wrestling around, then the guy broke free and took off at a run with the security guard in pursuit.

  “Thank goodness he got away,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Clara said, bending down, picking a phone up from the floor. “But he dropped his phone in the scuffle.”

  I looked over her shoulder and saw Diesel and the other diver swim up and out of sight.

  “What a nightmare,” I said to Clara.

  The guard came back. He was red-faced, sweating, and out of breath. “Couldn’t catch him,” he said. “Sorry, but I see at least you got his phone. Have you checked for pictures?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’m sure he’s deleted them.”

  The guard took the phone and tapped the camera icon.

  “Nope, they aren’t deleted,” he said. “And he was for sure following you ladies…if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  He handed the phone to me, and I scanned through the photos. Pictures of me. Pictures of Clara. Pictures of Diesel. Pictures of Clara’s grandfather. Pictures of the treasure chest in the shark tank.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Clara and I met up with Diesel at the car.

  “Did you get anything out of the treasure chest?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Diesel said. “Two more pieces of the coin.”

  “You don’t seem very excited about it.”

  “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.”