Wicked Appetite - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,7
It was a patch of Salem that felt almost normal, untouched by ads for Frankenstein’s Laboratory, the 40 Whacks Museum, The Witches Cottage, The Nightmare Factory.
Salem was founded in the early 1600s and at one time was the sixth-largest city in the country and a thriving seaport. The Salem witch trials took place in 1692, and when Salem lost its prominence as a shipping and manufacturing center centuries later, it remained famous for one of the more bizarre episodes in American history. American ingenuity and the New England spirit of use-what-you-have-on-hand have turned Salem’s infamous history into a thriving tourist business. The resulting prosperity has also brought traffic, hordes of sidewalk-clogging pedestrians, and the largest collection of weirdos living in a small-town environment east of the Mississippi.
The light went green, Diesel motored down one block and parked across the street from a three-story brick apartment building. We left Glo in the car, and Diesel and I entered the building. We took the elevator to the second floor, and I followed Diesel down the hall to apartment 2C. Hard to tell why I was going along with this. Probably, it was in the vicinity of morbid curiosity, like stopping to see a train wreck.
Diesel put his hand to the doorknob and the door opened.
“How?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Diesel said, pushing into the apartment, closing the door behind us. “It’s just one of those things I can do.”
I was about to ask what else he could do besides open locks and pull power plugs on Unmentionables, but the apartment had me speechless. It was wall-to-wall food. Cases of peanut butter, SpaghettiOs, Froot Loops, Twinkies, Kraft Mac and Cheese, water-packed tuna, Cheez Doodles, Snickers bars, and cans of mixed nuts lined the walls. Bags of M&M’s, Reese’s Pieces, Peppermint Patties, butterscotch hard candies, malted milk balls, and Hershey’s Miniatures were piled on the coffee table. Plus, every available inch on the kitchen counter was filled with giant jars of mayo, pickles, ketchup, olives, marinara sauce, chocolate sauce, marshmallow goop, hot peppers, and cheese sauce. It was like someone had hijacked Costco. And neatly stacked in the center of the dining room table, like the crown jewels of the food horde, were six Dazzle’s bakery boxes.
I opened one of the boxes. “These cupcakes belong to Shirley More. She comes into the bakery every day precisely at ten o’clock and gets thirty-six cupcakes. Half are carrot cake with cream cheese icing and the other half are chocolate with pink butter cream icing and party sprinkles.”
“Yeah. Shirley’s a Glutton, and this is her apartment,” Diesel said.
“Okay, so she’s a little on the heavy side, but I don’t know if I’d say she’s a glutton.”
“I wasn’t referring to her eating habits. I was referring to her heritage. Shirley’s family has most likely guarded the Gluttony Stone for centuries. The way it’s been told to me is that there are seven deadly sins known collectively as SALIGIA. Envy, Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Lusty, Grumpy, and Sneezy.”
“I think some of those were dwarfs,” I said to Diesel.
“Maybe, but I’m in the ballpark. SALIGIA represents the first initials for the Latin names for the sins. Superbia, Avaratia, Luxuria, Invidia, Gula, Ira, Acedia. Anyway, the legend goes that there are seven SALIGIA Stones, each one holding the power of a different sin. If you combine the Stones in a single vessel, it’s possible to unleash their power and create hell on earth.”
Good grief. Just when I’m starting to roll with the Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt fairy tale, he throws hell on earth at me.
“Hell on earth would be a bummer,” I said to him.
“Yeah. Supposedly, for a thousand years the SALIGIA Stones were guarded by an arcane sect. Then something happened, there was dissention among the elders, and Grumpy took charge and distributed the SALIGIA to the far corners of the earth. Over the years, some were lost and some were bequeathed, and eventually no one knew who held the Stones. Now a rumor’s surfaced that the Stones have all found their way to Salem. Personally, I think it sounds like a low-budget movie script, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass, but Wulf is on the hunt for the Stones. And Wulf is my problem. So as it turns out, it’s now your problem, too, since you’re my ticket to the Stones.”
My eyebrows were up around my hairline. “Are you serious?”
Diesel shrugged. “I follow orders. And my orders are to stop Wulf from acquiring the Stones. Probably, no one cares