Wicked Charms_ A Lizzy and Dies - Janet Evanovich Page 0,69

vault. I wanted to go home or back to the bakery. I wanted to be someplace that felt safe and happy.

“Just thinking about stealing the treasure makes me nauseous,” I said.

“You’re probably just hungry. I’ll buy you an ice cream cone when we’re done.”

I glanced at my watch. If we were going to do this we needed to get it done quickly.

“The bins look heavy,” I said. “How are we going to get them out of here?”

“The same way they got them in here. Hand truck. There’s one in the corner. It’s still got three bins stacked up on it.”

“Then what? We can’t truck them all the way to the Wessel House.”

“Call Clara and tell her to bring the van.”

Twenty minutes later we had all the bins, plus the hand truck, loaded into the van. Diesel locked the vault and the back door to the bank, and we took off.

“Where am I going?” Clara asked.

“We need to stash this somewhere,” Diesel said.

Clara stopped at an intersection. “We could put it in the speakeasy. There’s a second entrance in Gramps’s garage. No one would see us unloading.”

—

Diesel shoved the last bin into place against the bar. “It should be okay to leave these here short-term. I have other, more pressing problems.”

“Such as?” I asked him.

“Food. I’m starving. I need a burger. One of those fancy little meat pies isn’t going to do it.”

“I’ll drive you back to the bakery and you can get your car,” Clara said.

We filed out of the speakeasy into the short sloping tunnel that led to the one-car garage. Clara was parked behind the Rascal scooter.

“How does Gramps get his Rascal to the aquarium?” I asked Clara.

“Benita has a van with a hydraulic lift. And I hate to say this, but sometimes Gramps sets off on his own.”

“It doesn’t look like he’s home. There aren’t any lights on, and I didn’t hear anyone walking overhead.”

“He has a heavy social calendar,” Clara said. “He’s probably at the senior center cheating at cards.”

Ten minutes later Diesel parked his Porsche in a lot off Lafayette Street, and we walked the short distance to a pub.

“They better have ice cream here,” I said. “You promised me ice cream.”

“They have ice cream everywhere.”

We slid into a corner booth and ordered burgers, fries, onion rings, and beer.

Diesel waited for the waitress to leave before looking over at me. “Call Nergal and see what the deal is with Ammon. I’m sure he’s tapped in to hospital gossip.”

“Why can’t you make the call?”

“Nergal thinks you’re cute,” Diesel said. “He’s more likely to do something unpleasant for you.”

This was obnoxious but probably true.

“Hey,” I said when Nergal picked up.

“Let me guess,” Nergal said. “You want to know about Martin Ammon.”

“Yes! How did you know that?”

“Everyone wants to know. My mother called me.”

“Is he dead?”

“No. He’s in a private room with some idiot in a suit standing guard at his door.”

“Does he think he’s a dog?”

“A what?”

“Dog. Like, is he barking or anything?”

“I haven’t heard anything about barking. The information I got is that they’re keeping him here overnight for observation. He has a concussion.”

“Nothing unusual?”

“There’s a rumor going around that he was covered in pink rabbit fur when he was brought in, but that’s about it.”

I thanked Nergal and relayed the information to Diesel.

“So the stone isn’t on Ammon, and it’s not with Rutherford, and it’s not in the vault,” Diesel said. “My second-best guess would be the Marblehead house.”

“I see where this is going, and I’m not searching the Marblehead house until I’ve had my ice cream.”

“You can take your time with the ice cream,” Diesel said. “I think it will be just about impossible to search the Marblehead house without the distraction of a party and a fire. We’re going to have to find a way to make the stone come to us.”

“That shouldn’t be difficult. Ammon will get out of the hospital and retrieve the stone. All we have to do is snatch Ammon and rip the stone out of his demon hands.”

“Yeah. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Or we could snatch Rutherford,” I said. “He probably helped hide the stone.”

“Even better.”

The waitress brought our food, and we stopped talking and concentrated on eating.

“Anything else?” she asked when we were done.

“Ice cream,” I said.

“We have vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, tutti-frutti, butter pecan, and chocolate chip.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I want.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

Twenty minutes later Diesel was slouched in the booth, smiling at me. “You ate all that ice cream,” he said.