Wicked Appetite (Lizzy and Diesel 1)

“It’s a doll,” Diesel said.

Carl poked the breast again.

“Give it a rest,” Diesel said to Carl.

Carl dropped the doll on the floor and flipped it the finger.

“I think he has repressed anger,” I said to Diesel.

“I’d like to see it even more repressed.”

Lenny came into the room and pulled up short when he saw us. “You two!”

Diesel was hands in pockets, back on his heels and smiling. Friendly. “How’s it goin’?”

“It’s goin’ okay. No thanks to you. You blew up my house.”

“It was an accident,” I told him.

“My whole life was in that house.”

“Including your paddle collection,” Diesel said.

Lenny grinned. “Okay, so I owe you for that. Good to get that monkey off my back.”

“Eep?” Carl said.

“Nothing personal,” Lenny said to him. “Figure of speech.”

Two dogs ran through the room and out the front door.

“There’s a lot going on in this house,” I said to Lenny.

“Tell me about it,” Lenny said. “It needs rubber walls.”

“Have you heard from Mark?” Diesel asked him.

“Not in a couple days.”

“If he wasn’t in his apartment, and he wasn’t at work, where would he be?”

“Here, maybe. I don’t know where else. I guess he has friends, but I don’t know them. We all got kind of weird after Uncle Phil died. Kind of pulled into our own obsessive worlds. Is there a problem with Mark?”

“It’s possible he’s with Wulf.”

“It turns out Wulf is scarier than Uncle Phil,” Lenny said. “I was a glutton for punishment, and I gave it up pretty fast.”

“Where did he take you?”

r /> “I don’t know. He did one of those pressure point things, and I was out like a light. When I came around, I was in a big empty room. All it had was a folding chair, and Wulf sat in it most of the time while his crazy servant guy described his favorite tortures to me. When he got his tool kit out, I told him what he wanted to hear, and next thing, I was wandering around Pickering Wharf Marina.”

“What did the room look like?” Diesel asked him. “High ceiling? Paint color? Cement floor? Traffic noise? Windows?”

Lenny closed his eyes and thought about it. “High ceiling with exposed air-conditioning ducts. So it might have been in an industrial area. Walls were white. Ceiling was black, including all the ductwork. Floor was . . . I’m not sure. Maybe cement or tile. Not wood or carpet. I didn’t hear anything. No traffic. A phone rang once, but it was far away in another room. No windows.” He opened his eyes and looked down at Carl. “What’s with the monkey?”

“He adopted us,” I said.

“That was a bust,” I said to Diesel when we were back in the SUV.