Wicked Appetite (Lizzy and Diesel 1)

Something to look forward to.

He turned his attention to the Spook Patrol at the bottom of the hill. “I think we owe them a favor,” he said, pushing me out of the house, locking my front door behind us.

“What kind of favor?” I asked. “I thought we didn’t like them.”

He took my hand and tugged me down the sidewalk. “They’re okay. They’re just doing their job.”

We walked past the cop car to Mel Mensher, and Diesel expressed his sympathy. “Too bad about your van,” Diesel said to Mensher. “How are you guys going to hunt spooks without it?”

“The tow truck guy said the damage was minimal,” Mensher told him. “And in the meantime, Richie went to get his wife’s minivan.”

“I have some information you might find interesting,” Diesel said. “Can I borrow your notepad and pen?”

Mensher pulled his pad and pen from his jacket pocket. “What kind of information is this?”

Diesel wrote something in Mensher’s book and handed it back to him. “See for yourself.”

Mrs. Dugan was standing on the other side of Mensher. She had her arms folded in front of her, watching the van get towed off her tree. She was in her seventies, with short white hair and a fireplug body. Her husband had passed on, and she lived alone with an obese beagle named Morty. Mrs. Dugan and Morty walked by my house twice a day taking their constitutional.

“Will your tree be okay?” I asked her.

“It’s got some bark peeled away, but I think it’ll be fine,” she said. “I couldn’t help but notice Ophelia’s cat came back. I saw him sitting in your window earlier today. Isn’t that nice. I was worried about him. It’s not like he’s a normal cat. What with his eye and all.”

“Do you know how he lost his eye?”

“No. Ophelia would never talk about it. She was very sensitive when it came to that cat.”

“Do you know his name?”

She thought a moment. “I don’t believe I do.”

I said good-bye to Mrs. Dugan, and Diesel and I made our way up the hill to my house.

“I thought Cat 7143 came from the shelter,” Diesel said.

“It did. But it turns out it was my Great Aunt Ophelia’s cat.”

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” Diesel said.

“Compared to the rest of my life these days . . . it’s not even a four on the one-to-ten wonder scale. What information did you give to Mensher?”

“I gave him Wulf’s Boston address,” Diesel said.

That got a smile out of me. “Does Wulf have a sense of humor?”

“He won’t have one about this.”

“Not at all?”

“The first time Mensher clicks off a picture, Wulf’s sphincter will get so tight his eyes will cross.”

We were almost at my house when Richie motored past us in a green minivan. He stopped next to the tow truck, and in the glare of headlights, Mensher and his crew off-loaded equipment from the broken van to the new minivan. There was a short discussion between Mensher and the tow truck operator, Mensher and his crew piled into the minivan, and the minivan drove away and disappeared around the corner.

“Off to Beacon Hill,” Diesel said.

“You threw them under the bus.”

“Yep.”