Wicked Business

“I’m not assisting him,” I said. “We’re partners.”

“Oh please, look at you. You bake cupcakes. You’re nothing more than a minion, like that idiot Hatchet.”

“Is there a point to this?”

Her eyes dilated black. “The point is that you have a choice to make. You can be my minion or you can die.”

“Diesel wouldn’t be happy about either of those choices.”

“When I get the stone, Diesel will be enslaved to me.”

“And Wulf?”

“Wulf as well. Every man and woman on this planet will desire me to the point of insanity.”

Oh boy, I thought, she was nutty as a fruitcake and probably a homicidal maniac.

“You seem like a reasonable person,” I said to her. “Why don’t you let me give you a box of cupcakes, on the house, and you can go home and think about all this. I mean, you might not want me as a minion. I’m not that good at subservience.”

She put her hands palms down on the glass display case and leaned forward, eyes narrowed, face totally drained of color. “Make your choice. My minion or death.”

There were assorted bagels on a tray on the top shelf of the case and the bagels under her hands were vibrating.

“Well?” she said.

The bagels were dancing, rattling against the tray.

“Would you mind stepping back?” I said. “You’re disturbing the bagels.”

The bagels weren’t the only things getting disturbed. I was completely freaked. Early was emitting so much energy I was sure my hair was standing on end.

“I demand an answer,” she said, raising her voice, her teeth clenched. “I command you to give me an answer now.”

She pounded the countertop when she said now, and Zzing… a bagel jumped off the tray and flew the length of the display case.

“Jeez Louise,” I said to her. “You need to relax. You’re leaking energy. You’re going to self-combust if you keep going like this.”

Clara came into the shop. “Is everything okay out here?”

“Leave this room,” Early said. “This is a private conversation.”

“Excuse me? I own this room,” Clara said.

“I will not tolerate insolence,” Early said, her voice a notch below a shriek. She grabbed a heavy glass jar off the counter, threw it at Clara, and hit her square in the forehead. Clara crumpled to the ground, and I went after Early, smacking her on the side of the head with a baguette. She growled and reached for me, and I threw a cherry cheese Danish at her. The cheese Danish caught her mid-chest, leaving a gooey splotch on her suit jacket.

“This is a St. John,” Early said, wild-eyed. “You do not do this to a St. John Knit!”

Glo ran out of the kitchen with a ten-pound sack of flour. “I’m pretty sure I’ve enchanted this,” she said, shoving the flour at me. “Hit her with this, and she’ll turn into a rock. And then we can bury her, or throw her in the ocean, or something.”

I pitched the sack of flour at Early, it hit her in the head, broke apart, and flour spewed everywhere.

“Stand back,” Glo yelled to me. “Don’t get any of the flour on you, or you might turn into a rock, too.”

I jumped away from Early, and Glo and I hid behind the counter, peeking over the top to watch the transformation.

Clara was next to us, kneeling behind the display case, looking ashen with a gash in her head that was dripping blood.

“What the…” Early said, taking stock of her St. John Knit suit.

She was covered head to toe with flour, but she wasn’t a rock.

“I was in a hurry,” Glo said. “I might not have done it exactly right.”

Early wasn’t moving. She just kept staring down at her suit. I looked at her more closely and realized her eyes were darting around.

“I don’t think she can move,” I said to Glo. “I think you made her like a rock.”

“Bummer,” Glo said. “What should we do with her? I guess we could still throw her in the ocean.”

I looked over at Clara. “We should get Clara to the hospital.”

“Get her out of here first,” Clara said. “I’m not leaving my bakery unprotected with Nutso here in the front shop.”

“Nutso looks to be stuck in one spot,” I said to Clara.

“Yes, but the frickberry hasn’t come in yet,” Glo said. “So this might not last forever.”

There was flour everywhere, and I wasn’t taking chances with it, so I snapped on rubber gloves and went over the entire room, including Deirdre Early, with the Shop-Vac.

“How are you holding up?” I asked Clara.

“I’m okay. Get me a towel so I don’t spew blood everywhere.” She looked down at her arm. “My arm is killing me. It feels like I twisted it when I fell.”

Glo got a towel for Clara, and I put the Shop-Vac away and rolled the hand truck into the front shop. We loaded Early onto the truck, I rolled her through the kitchen, out the back door, and set her in the parking lot. Aside from not being able to move, she seemed in pretty good shape. She was making low growling sounds and rolling her eyes, but that was about all she could do.

We walked Clara out to Glo’s car, I locked the shop, and Glo drove us to the hospital. I called Diesel on the way and told him what had happened.

An hour later, the gash on Clara’s forehead was getting sutured together, and her broken arm was in a soft cast.

Diesel was slouched in a chair in the waiting room, paging through a copy of Sports Illustrated. He looked up when Glo and I entered from the treatment area. “How is she?”

“She’s going to be fine,” I said. “She’s going to have a major headache for a while, and unfortunately she got a hairline break in her arm when she fell.”

“I drove past the parking lot on my way here,” Diesel said. “Early was still there, looking like a statue. Maybe you want to put a bagel in her hand and stand her on the sidewalk by Dazzle’s front door.” He looked at his watch. “How much longer do you think this will take?”

“No more than an hour,” I said.

Glo pulled a bunch of magazines out of the rack on the wall. “I can stay with her and take her home. I don’t mind waiting. I haven’t read any of these.”

Diesel and I left the hospital and got on 1A south to Boston.

“Do you think Deirdre Early is Anarchy?” I asked Diesel. “She’s flat-out crazy, and she has a horrible temper. She got mad in the bakery, and the bagels were dancing in the display case. She’s like Poltergeist Woman.”

“I like the thought. It would be a huge pain if there were two crazy, power-hungry women after the stone.”

“Plus Wulf.”

“Yeah. Don’t want to forget Wulf. What did he say to you this morning?”

“You knew I talked to Wulf?”

“I have Wulf radar. Little alarms go off in my brain when he’s near. I get a cramp in my ass.”

“He was following Anarchy, and I stumbled onto him when I walked out of the house. He said Anarchy has targeted me since she didn’t have any luck recruiting Hatchet. That’s why I thought Early could be Anarchy. Early said either I was her minion or I was dead.”

“We need to move faster through these clues,” Diesel said. “There are too many players, and they’re holding too much power, and they’re all postal.”

Forty minutes later, we were on Beacon Hill trying to get to Joy Street. Joy Street was another of those places you can’t get to from here in a car. Every street was one way going in the wrong direction. Diesel finally found a parking place on Mt. Vernon, and we walked a block to Joy. We walked the entire length of Joy and ended on the corner of Joy and Beacon.

“I’m not getting anything,” Diesel said. “Joy is like any other residential street on the Hill. Expensive homes.