Free Wicked Charms by Janet Evanovich

trade this unpleasant monkey for the pieces of eight you’ve acquired and a small service from Ms. Tucker.”
    “Get serious,” Diesel said. “Keep the monkey.”
    “Here’s the deal. You are going to meet me at the Derby lighthouse in an hour. If you don’t follow instructions we’ll begin chopping off pieces of your monkey’s tail and mailing them to you.”
    “Eeep!” Carl said.
    The caller disconnected.
    “How awful!” I said.
    “Yeah. Hope they send it overnight. Monkey tail could get funky after a couple days.”
    “Do you think this guy is working for Wulf?”
    “No. This isn’t Wulf’s style. There’s another player in the game.” He looked down at the phone on the table. “Where did you get this?”
    “There was a guy following Clara and me around the aquarium, and I used him to create the diversion. There was a scuffle, the cellphone got dropped onto the floor, and Clara retrieved it.”
    “And the guy?”

    “He ran away. A guard ran after him but couldn’t catch him. It turned out the guy was taking pictures of all of us. Plus he took some pictures of the shark tank.”
    “I’m surprised the guard let you keep the phone.”
    “He was all done in from the chase. I think he was just happy to be rid of us. Unfortunately it’s a prepaid phone. No ID. No phone numbers on it. There’s nothing to trace.”
    “He wanted something else besides the coin pieces. He wanted a service from you. And I don’t think he wants cupcakes.”
    —
    The Derby lighthouse isn’t the traditional, narrow cylindrical lighthouse you see in all the calendars. It’s squat and square and made of whitewashed brick. It’s twenty-three feet tall and looks like it was built out of Legos by a six-year-old kid with no imagination.
    We reached the end of the narrow spit of land, and the red beacon on the top of the lighthouse began to flash every six seconds. The door at the base of the lighthouse was unlocked, so we pushed it open and stepped into a small, dark room. Diesel flipped the light switch, and we saw that the room was empty with the exception of a metal spiral staircase that led to the rooftop lantern room.
    The guy from the aquarium was standing at the top of the staircase. A burlap sack was at his feet, a nasty-looking semiautomatic was in his hand, and he had a booted foot on the sack, holding it in place while something squirmed inside.

    Diesel stood hands on hips, looking up at the guy. “I’m guessing my monkey’s in that sack.”
    “You guess right,” the guy said. “And if I get alarmed I might kick him over the side, so don’t try anything stupid. There’s more of the coin hidden here somewhere. As soon as I heard the poem the old man was blathering on about I had a hunch. A light to guide her by. That’s this lighthouse, right? I was thinking about the lighthouse even before I heard the poem because Peg Leg spent a lot of time here. When he was working as a cod fisherman he would sometimes tend the light during winter months. I was going to try a metal detector, but you’re even better. You’re the special person who’s got the power.”
    “How do you know about that? Someone’s a big blabbermouth.”
    “Yeah, word gets around.”
    “Does your hunch tell you where I should start looking?”
    “There’s nothing in here but walls and floor. Start with the walls, and do it fast. I haven’t got all day.”
    I ran my hands over the brick walls. I was on the third wall when I felt a vibration.
    “It’s here,” I said. “The third brick from the bottom.”
    “Dig it out,” the guy said.
    I looked up at him. “Do you have a power drill on you? Jackhammer? Nail file?”

    He tossed a medium-size screwdriver over the railing. “The jackhammer wouldn’t fit in my pocket. Get to work.”
    Diesel retrieved the screwdriver and chipped away at the mortar around the brick. After five minutes he was able to pop the brick out. The back was partially missing and the inside was hollowed