Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich Read Free Book Online

car missing, and he pulled in.
    “How do you always manage to get a parking place?” I asked him, halfway afraid that some unsuspecting car had gotten beamed up into space by an unknown entity.
    “Positive thinking,” Diesel said. “And I’m exceptionally lucky … usually.”
    “Usually?”
    “There’s been the occasional lapse.”
    Early’s narrow, three-story row house had a postage-stamp front yard that might have been amazing in the summer, but at present time was a tangle of dead vines and shriveled shrubs. The façade was dark gray stone. The roofwas gray slate. There were drapes on the windows with no light shining through. The door and wood trim were black.
    “Holy cats,” I said to Diesel, taking the house in.
    “Grim,” Diesel said.
    We walked to the front door, rang the bell, and a woman answered. She was movie star beautiful, with glossy midnight black hair cut into a short bob. She had long black lashes, and she was wearing bright red lip gloss. She was my height but much more voluptuous in a silky low-cut black shirt, tight black pencil skirt, and four-inch spike-heeled pumps.
    “Deirdre Early?” Diesel asked.
    “Yes,” she said. “And you?”
    “Diesel.”
    Her smile was small and didn’t reach her eyes. “Interesting,” she said.
    Diesel didn’t return the smile. “I’d like to talk to you about Gilbert Reedy.”
    “Poor man,” she said. “Would you like to come in?”
    We stepped into her foyer and stopped there. I could see her living room and dining room from where I was standing. Very formal. Oriental rugs. Fabrics were burgundy and gold. Dark woods. Crystal chandelier over the table.
    “I believe you dated Reedy,” Diesel said.
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “Briefly. He’s dead, you know.”
    “You have a lovely home,” I said to her.
    She flicked her eyes to me. “Thank you. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
    “Lizzy Tucker.”
    She studied me for a moment and turned back to Diesel. “Your move,” she said to him.
    “Were you looking for true love?” Diesel asked her.
    “Of course. Isn’t that everyone’s goal? Do you want true love?”
    “Not at the moment,” Diesel said.
    She looked at him from under lowered lashes. “Pity.”
    “And what about nineteenth-century poets?” Diesel asked Early. “Are you fond of them?”
    “With a passion. And you?”
    “Not so much.”
    “Hmm. I thought we would’ve had more in common,” Early said. “If you’ll excuse me now, I have a dinner engagement.”
    We left Back Bay, and we didn’t speak until we were on the 1A, heading home.
    “That was weird,” I said to Diesel. “The house was pretty inside but oppressive. And I had the feeling you knew each other.”
    “We’ve never met, but it’s possible she’s heard of me. And the negative energy you felt was from her. It was rolling off her in waves. If I stayed there much longer, I would have started bleeding from my ears.”
    “Omigod. Would you really bleed from your ears?”
    Diesel grinned at me. “No. I was exaggerating.”
    “Deirdre Early isn’t normal.”
    “Not even a little,” Diesel said.
    “I suppose we aren’t normal, either.”
    “The only normal people are people you don’t know very well.”
    “That’s a quote from a famous person,” I told him.
    “Yeah. I think it was either Andy Griffith or Yoda.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Diesel took me back to my car and I went straight home. I made a grilled cheese for dinner, cleaned the kitchen, and threw some laundry in the washer. I surfed through a bunch of channels on television and gave up. Diesel was in his apartment reading the Goodfellow diary, and I was finding that while I’d wished for a quiet night to myself, it wasn’t working. I couldn’t get my mind off Gilbert Reedy, Deirdre Early, Lovey, and the Luxuria Stone. It was all in a mix in my head, going round and round. I called Glo and asked how late the Exotica Shoppe stayed open.
    “Usually until nine o’clock,”