Wicked Business (Lizzy and Diesel 2)

There was flour everywhere, and I wasn’t taking chances with it, so I snapped on rubber gloves and went over the entire room, including Deirdre Early, with the Shop-Vac.

“How are you holding up?” I asked Clara.

“I’m okay. Get me a towel so I don’t spew blood everywhere.” She looked down at her arm. “My arm is killing me. It feels like I twisted it when I fell.”

Glo got a towel for Clara, and I put the Shop-Vac away and rolled the hand truck into the front shop. We loaded Early onto the truck, I rolled her through the kitchen, out the back door, and set her in the parking lot. Aside from not being able to move, she seemed in pretty good shape. She was making low growling sounds and rolling her eyes, but that was about all she could do.

We walked Clara out to Glo’s car, I locked the shop, and Glo drove us to the hospital. I called Diesel on the way and told him what had happened.

An hour later, the gash on Clara’s forehead was getting sutured together, and her broken arm was in a soft cast.

Diesel was slouched in a chair in the waiting room, paging through a copy of Sports Illustrated. He looked up when Glo and I entered from the treatment area. “How is she?”

“She’s going to be fine,” I said. “She’s going to have a major headache for a while, and unfortunately she got a hairline break in her arm when she fell.”

“I drove past the parking lot on my way here,” Diesel said. “Early was still there, looking like a statue. Maybe you want to put a bagel in her hand and stand her on the sidewalk by Dazzle’s front door.” He looked at his watch. “How much longer do you think this will take?”

“No more than an hour,” I said.

Glo pulled a bunch of magazines out of the rack on the wall. “I can stay with her and take her home. I don’t mind waiting. I haven’t read any of these.”

Diesel and I left the hospital and got on 1A south to Boston.

“Do you think Deirdre Early is Anarchy?” I asked Diesel. “She’s flat-out crazy, and she has a horrible temper. She got mad in the bakery, and the bagels were dancing in the display case. She’s like Poltergeist Woman.”

“I like the thought. It would be a huge pain if there were two crazy, power-hungry women after the stone.”

“Plus Wulf.”

“Yeah. Don’t want to forget Wulf. What did he say to you this morning?”

“You knew I talked to Wulf?”

“I have Wulf radar. Little alarms go off in my brain when he’s near. I get a cramp in my ass.”

“He was following Anarchy, and I stumbled onto him when I walked out of the house. He said Anarchy has targeted me since she didn’t have any luck recruiting Hatchet. That’s why I thought Early could be Anarchy. Early said either I was her minion or I was dead.”

“We need to move faster through these clues,” Diesel said. “There are too many players, and they’re holding too much power, and they’re all postal.”

Forty minutes later, we were on Beacon Hill trying to get to Joy Street. Joy Street was another of those places you can’t get to from here in a car. Every street was one way going in the wrong direction. Diesel finally found a parking place on Mt. Vernon, and we walked a block to Joy. We walked the entire length of Joy and ended on the corner of Joy and Beacon.

“I’m not getting anything,” Diesel said. “Joy is like any other residential street on the Hill. Expensive homes. Affluent residents. Nothing out of the ordinary for Beacon Hill. I was hoping to find something relating to the ‘selfless’ part of the riddle . . . like a church.”

I had the riddle written on a note card. “Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give Joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them,” I said.

It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky. Joy Street had been sunny when we arrived, and we were now standing in shade.

“We’re in the shadow,” I said. “The sun is going down and Joy Street is in shadow. Could this be the shadow of Joy?”

“It could be, but it still doesn’t get us anywhere. For the most part, the shadow is coming from the State House. And the shadow keeps changing. The sun moves across the sky and the shadow moves with it. The pinnacle of the dome will point to at least a half dozen addresses by the time the sun sets.”

“If the shadow in the second part of the riddle comes from the State House, maybe the first part of the riddle refers to people in public office. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give Joy when they speak.”

“That’s a stretch,” Diesel said.

I grabbed him by his hand and pulled him after me. “Come on. Let’s look at the State House.”

“What’s with all the enthusiasm to save the world all of a sudden?”