Plum Spooky (Stephanie Plum 14.50)

I drove across town, parked in front of Munch‘s house on Crocker Street, and we all piled out of the Jeep.

“This here‘s a boring-?ass house,” Lula said. “It looks like every other house on the street. If I came home after having two cosmopolitans, I wouldn‘t know which house was mine. Look at them. They‘re all redbrick. They all have the same stupid black door and black window trim. They don‘t even have no front yard. Just a stoop. And they all got the same stupid stoop.”

I glanced at Lula. “Are you okay? That‘s a lot of hostility for a poor row house.”

“It‘s the monkey. Monkeys give me the willies. And I might have a headache from all that medicinal whiskey.”

I rang Munch‘s doorbell and looked through sheers that screened the front window. Beyond the sheers, the house was dark and still.

“I bet he‘s in there,” Lula said. “I bet he‘s hiding under the bed. I think we should go around to the back and look.”

There were fifteen row houses in all. All shared common walls, and Munch‘s was almost dead middle. We returned to the Jeep, I rolled down the street, turned left at the corner, and took the alley that cut the block. I parked, and we all got out and walked through Munch‘s postage-?stamp backyard. The rear of the house was similar to the front. A door and two windows. The door had a small swinging trapdoor at the bottom for a pet, and Carl instantly scurried inside.

I was dumbstruck. One minute, Carl was in the Jeep, and then, in an instant, he was inside the house.

“Holy macaroni,” Lula said. “He‘s fast!”

We looked in a window and saw Carl in the kitchen, bouncing off counters, jumping up and down on the small kitchen table.

I pressed my nose to the glass. “I have to get him out.”

“Like hell you do,” Lula said. “This here‘s your lucky day. I say finders keepers.”

“What if Munch never returns? Carl will starve to death.”

“I don‘t think so,” Lula said. “He just opened the refrigerator.”

“There has to be a way to get in. Maybe Munch hid a key.”

“Well, someone could accidentally break a window,” Lula said. “And then someone else could crawl in and beat the living crap out of the monkey.”

“No. We‘re not breaking or beating.”

I rapped on the window, and Carl gave me the finger.

Lula sucked in some air. “That little fucker just flipped us the bird.”

“It was probably accidental.”

Lula glared in at Carl. “Accident this!” she said to him, middle finger extended.

Carl turned and mooned Lula, although it wasn‘t much of a moon since he wasn‘t wearing clothes to begin with.

“Oh yeah?” Lula said. “You want to see a moon? I got a moon to show you.”

“No!” I said to Lula. “No more moons. Bad enough I just looked at a monkey butt. I don‘t want your butt burned into my ret i nas.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “Lotta people paid good money to see that butt.”

Carl drank some milk out of a carton and put it back into the refrigerator. He opened the crisper drawer and pawed around in it but didn‘t find anything he wanted. He closed the refrigerator, scratched his stomach, and looked around.

“Let me in,” I said to him. “Open the door.”

“Yeah, right,” Lula said. “As if his little pea brain could understand you.”

Carl gave Lula the finger again. And then Carl threw the deadbolt, opened the door, and stuck his tongue out at Lula.

“If there‘s one thing I can‘t stand,” Lula said, “it‘s a show-?off monkey.”