“No black cloud. Also, no light beacon directing us to the missing piece.”
“I’d rather see a beacon directing us to fried dough.”
“Honey, I’d get you fried dough, but honest to God, I’m afraid you’d explode, and I’d have Lizzy guts all over the car.”
I made a big effort not to groan or sigh or grind my teeth, and I gave the two charms back to him. “Now what?”
“Now we go home and regroup. I’m hoping Mark will leave work, freak out when he sees his apartment, and call me.”
“I’m sort of afraid to go home. I’ll want to eat everything.”
“I won’t let you eat everything.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
Okay, I could relax. Diesel was in control. It would all be okeydokey. No worries. Just sit back and watch the world go by.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Go back. Go back.”
Diesel hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. “What?”
“You just passed a supermarket! I don’t have enough butter. And I need cereal. I want to make sure I have enough Raisin Bran. I mean, what if I ran out of Raisin Bran in the middle of the night? What would I do?”
Diesel thunked his forehead on the steering wheel. “I thought there was someone dead on the side of the road. Don’t yell out like that.”
“It felt like an emergency.”
Diesel eased back into traffic. “Raisin Bran is not an emergency.”
“Easy for you to say.”
The Spook Patrol was gone when we parked in front of my house. Probably off getting their gizmo fixed after Diesel pitched it into the road. I checked my mailbox and took out three bills and a letter from a publisher. I read the publisher letter immediately.
“Well?” Diesel asked.
“Another rejection,” I said, returning the letter to its envelope.
“Persistence,” Diesel said.
“Persistence,” I repeated.
Cat 7143 gave Carl the evil eye when we walked through the door, but he didn’t hiss or slash Carl’s chest open, so I figured that was a good sign. Carl played it safe and wrapped himself around Diesel’s leg until we made it to the kitchen, where he could scamper up a cabinet and sit on the top of the refrigerator.
I got my notebook out and turned to the tabbed section that held recipes in progress.
“As long as I have this opportunity at home, I’m going to work on my cookbook,” I told Diesel.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, being that you’re under the influence of Shirley’s glutton charm?”
“I don’t have a choice. My house is sagging.”
I thumbed through a couple pages and settled on biscuits. I wanted a savory biscuit, and I was working at selecting cheese and herbs. I went to the fridge and got milk, plus a pound of butter, a chunk of Vermont cheddar, a chunk of Emmentaler, and a chunk of Gruyère. I hauled a sack of flour out of the pantry and looked at the butter. There was only half a pound.
“What happened to the butter?” I asked Diesel.
“You took it to the pantry with you.”