Plum Spooky (Stephanie Plum 14.50)

“No. I can open a jar of marinara sauce, dial pizza, and I can make a sandwich.”

“Works for me,” Diesel said. “What‘s your choice for to night?”

“Sandwich.”

We worked our way through ham-?and-?cheese sandwiches, a tub of macaroni salad, and half an apple pie. We‘d just finished the pie when Diesel‘s phone rang. This was cause for concern because in the short time I‘d known Diesel, his phone had never rung for anything good. He didn‘t get social calls, family calls, or dinner invitations. It looked to me like only a few people had his number, and their calls were always work related.

“Yeah?” he said into the phone. He listened for a moment, told the caller he was on his way, and disconnected. “We have to hustle,” he said to me. “Flash is on Wulf‘s tail.”

I grabbed my bag, and we rushed out of the apartment and ran to the Escalade. Diesel took us out of the lot to Hamilton and headed for Broad.

“I had Flash watch the Ferrari,” Diesel said. “I knew Wulf would come back for it.”

I was familiar with Flash from previous Diesel visits. From what I could tell, Flash was a nice guy who did odd jobs and had no special talents other than the ability to tolerate Diesel. He was five feet ten, with spiked red hair and multiple piercings in his ears. He was slim and at first glance looked younger than his actual age, which I thought was probably early thirties.

We picked up South Broad and Flash called in.

“I‘m on the outskirts of Bordentown. I‘m betting he‘s going for the Turnpike,” Flash said and disconnected.

“He always goes south,” Diesel said to me. “I got hung up in traffic on Broad Street when I was following him, and I suspected he went to the Turnpike, but I couldn‘t catch him.”

Another call came in from Flash. “We‘re on the Turn-?pike going south. I can‘t imagine how fast he‘s going, but if I go any faster, my fenders will fall off.”

“You can go home,” Diesel said. “Appreciate the effort. I‘m a couple miles behind you. I‘ll take the Turnpike and ride for a while to see if I pick up on him.”

“To infinity and beyond,” Flash said.

We stayed at it for another twenty minutes before Diesel gave up and turned around.

“Wulf could be going to Atlantic City or any point in between,” Diesel said. “There are some goofball Unmentionables in the Pine Barrens, but I can‘t see Wulf getting cozy with any of them. We have two people working together in the scientific community, and one of them is dead and the other missing. I‘d like to know if either of them had property in south Jersey.”

“I don‘t remember seeing anything about property in south Jersey in either file.”

“Did Connie run Munch and Scanlon through all the programs?”

“No. Some of those investigations take days.”

“Then let‘s go to the bonds office and see if anything else came in.”

“The bonds office is closed.”

“We‘ll open it.”

“I hate this idea. You‘ll trip the alarm, and we‘ll get arrested, and I‘ll get fired.”

“To begin with, I won‘t trip the alarm. And even if I did trip it, the bonds office is armed with Rangeman security. Ranger isn‘t going to send you to jail.”

True, Ranger wouldn‘t send me to jail, but Ranger wouldn‘t be happy to find me engaged in breaking and entering with Diesel. And I suspected a face-?off between Diesel and Ranger would be ugly.

“Okay, but it‘ll be boring,” I said. “We could wait and ask Connie in the morning, and we could go back to my apartment and watch tele vision with the monkey.”

“No,” Diesel said.

“That‘s it? No? What about my vote?”

“This is why I‘m not married,” Diesel said. “Women make everything so friggin‘ complicated. And stop rolling your eyes at me.”

“You‘re staring straight ahead at the road. How do you know I‘m rolling my eyes?”