Plum Spooky (Stephanie Plum 14.50)

I watched Diesel walk away and I enjoyed the view. I had no intention of getting involved, but that didn’t mean I was blind to the masterpiece in front of me. Diesel was a big, solid guy who moved with seemingly effortless efficiency. Everything about him was in perfect proportion. And from where I was sitting, his ass looked like Little Bear’s bed . . . not too hard, and not too soft, but just right.

Diesel disappeared into the building, and I turned to Carl. “So,” I said, “how’s it going?”

Carl looked at me, shrugged, and went back to his game. A pickup rumbled past us. An old man shuffled out of the post office and walked down the street. I went to my cell phone to call Morelli, but we were in the middle of the Jersey Pine Barrens, and there wasn’t cell ser vice.

The Pine Barrens is a heavily forested area covering a little over a million acres of coastal plain across south Jersey. The soil is sandy and the trees are pine mixed with oaks that have managed to survive the occasional fire. Hundreds of acres are uninhabited, unless you count blueberries, and cranberries, and the stubborn, hardscrabble folks known as Pineys who live and work there. There are also hundreds of antique shops, bed and breakfasts of varying quality, and dirt roads that go nowhere. Plus, there’s the Jersey Dev il. The Pacific Northwest has Sasquatch. Loch Ness has Nessie. And the Pine Barrens has the Jersey Dev il.

Diesel left the post office, walked to the car, and slid in behind the wheel.

“Well?” I asked.

“Gail Scanlon comes in on no fixed schedule and gets her mail. Sometimes she’s in once a week. Sometimes they don’t see her for six months. Her box was emptied yesterday, but no one saw her come in. The post office boxes are around a corner from the counter.”

“Did you get a description?”

“Slim, average height, long black hair, early forties, eccentric.”

“What does ‘eccentric’ mean?”

“They didn’t elaborate. But she must really be out there for them to call her eccentric. This isn’t exactly the center of sane.”

“Did they know where she lived?”

“No. One of the guys said she was a citizen of the world. And the woman next to him said she was a nymphomaniac.”

“Sounds like your kind of woman.”

“Yeah, she has potential.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we go home and regroup.”

DIESEL WAS REGROUPING on the couch, watching Seinfeld reruns, and Carl was sitting beside him.

“This is going too slow,” I said to Diesel. “You’re supposed to be the big-?deal super bounty hunter. Why aren’t you doing something?”

“I am doing something. I’m waiting.”

“Waiting isn’t good. I hate waiting. Waiting feels like doing nothing.”

“I have Flash watching the Sky Social Club. And every ten minute

s, I go to the window to see if the cloud of doom has rolled over Trenton, signifying Wulf’s presence.”

“Nothing personal, but I don’t care about Wulf I need to find Martin Munch.”

“I know how Wulf works. Right now, he’s involved in a project that involves Munch, and they’re joined at the hip. If we find one of them, we’ll find both of them. If we don’t find them until after Munch has served his purpose, we’ll find Munch with his head screwed on backwards.”

I cracked my knuckles and gnawed on my lower lip. I didn’t want to find Munch with his head screwed on backward. I felt my cell phone buzz at my hip, and I checked the readout. Morelli.

“I have a problem,” Morelli said.

“No kidding.”

“More than that. I just got home, and Anthony is missing, and there’s a naked woman in my bed.”

“And?”