Tricky Twenty-Two (Stephanie Plum 22)

“Cellar’s locked. Stuff gets stored there.”

“Who has a key to the cellar?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. A bunch of people. Gobbles had a key. Professor Pooka has a key.”

“Why Professor Pooka?”

“He’s our faculty advisor. Some of the fraternities have house mothers, but we got a house dude.”

“I guess that’s on account of you’re sexist,” Lula said.

“It’s on account of the last house mother enjoyed the parties too much and got pregnant, so we got assigned Pooka.”

“Does he live here?” I asked.

“No, but he stops in every day to check on things. What’s your deal with the cellar?”

“We’re meter readers,” Lula said. “We gotta check on the gas and water shit.”

“I think the meters are outside. Just walk around the house. I think they’re in the back.”

“I told her they’d be in the back,” Lula said, “but Stephanie here thought they were in the cellar.”

Lula and I exited the house and walked around outside.

“There’s no windows or doors in the cellar,” Lula said. “We’ve been all around the house and there’s no cellar windows.”

“I want to check in with Julie Ruley but according to the schedule I have she’s in class until eleven.”

“That’s good because it gives us time to go see Pooka and get the key to the cellar.”

“What’s with this cellar obsession? It makes no sense that Gobbles would be hiding in the cellar. He doesn’t even have a second exit.”

“He could have a secret exit. There could be a secret tunnel that goes to the restaurant on M and Hawthorne.”

“That’s a long tunnel.”

“Well, I got a feeling. I’m extra perceptionary that way. I just know things. Sometimes I wake up at night and I think it’s gonna rain, and it almost always does.”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah, not everyone’s got a talent like that. I could be a weathergirl on television. The hell with Doppler and all that shit. If I say it’s gonna rain you could go to the bank with it.”

“Okay, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Pooka again. At the very least he should be able to tell us who Gobbles hung with.”

We hiked to the science building and took the elevator to the third floor. We shared the elevator with six other women who looked like students. The elevator doors opened at the third floor and the women rushed out and down the hall to the biology lab.

“Guess the wonder kid is at work,” Lula said. “I think the wonder part is how he gets anything done what with all the women ogling him.”

Pooka’s office door was closed. I rapped on it and someone yelled, “Go away!”

“That sounds like Pooka,” Lula said. “Hey, baggy pants,” she yelled back. “Open the door.”

The door was wrenched open and Pooka glared out at us. “I’m busy.”

“How busy could you be in those pajamas?” Lula asked him.

Pooka looked down at his pants. “These aren’t pajamas. These are dhoti.”