Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich

children of her own. Only a one-eyed cat. And she could hardly leave her house to him.”
    My heart skipped a couple beats. “What happened to the one-eyed cat?”
    “I don’t know. I imagine he went to the animal shelter.”
    “Do you know any more about him?”
    “No. Your grandmother spoke to Ophelia from time to time, and she would mention the cat.”
    I made a little more small talk, then disconnected and watched Diesel some more. I offered to take another shift, but he declined.
    “More to the left,” I yelled out to him after a couple hours. “The pile is uneven.”
    He looked back to me. “You want to take over, Miss Picky?”
    “Just trying to be helpful.”
    “You can be helpful by looking through all the locks that are left.”
    My eyebrows went up an inch into my forehead. “Are you serious? There are still hundreds of locks. Maybe thousands.”
    Diesel cut the engine and swung down off the backhoe. “I’ve reduced the pile by ninety percent. I can’t cut it down any more than that. These locks have been pushed around for years. The lock charm isn’t going to be exactly where it was originally placed.”
    He was right. Problem was, I’d been going since four this morning, and I was running on empty. I walked to the edge of the remaining lock pile and began working my way through it, picking locks up, tossing them to Diesel, who pitched them across the room to the new heap of locks. After an hour, there were no more locks, I hadn’t come across a charm, and nothing had glowed or buzzed in my hand.
    “Now what?” I asked Diesel.
    “Now we go home. And tomorrow we have another conversation with Mark More.”
    It was a little past midnight when we parked in front of my house. The Spook Patrol was absent, and the street was dark and blissfully quiet. Diesel let us in and flipped the lights on. Cat 7143 was sprawled in the middle of the floor, feet in the air.
    “Omigosh,” I said. “He’s dead!”
    Cat’s good eye opened, his tail twitched, and the eye closed.
    “Sleeping,” Diesel said.
    I looked more closely at Cat. He had muffin crumbs stuck to his face fur. “Looks like he helped himself to dinner.”
    Diesel sauntered into the kitchen and stood hands on hips, surveying the carnage. “If Uncle Phil were here, he’d turn Cat into a waffle iron.”
    Every muffin had been sampled. Some more than others. And some were completely destroyed.
    “He prefers the muffins in the pink wrappers,” Diesel said.
    They were my favorites, too. Good to have my opinion verified, even if it was by a cat. I cleaned the kitchen, and when Diesel wasn’t looking, I ate the untouched muffin bottoms, since Cat had mostly eaten the muffin tops. I struggled up the stairs and collapsed onto my bed.
    “Are you going to sleep like that?” Diesel asked. “Don’t you want to get undressed? Do you need help?”
    “If I sleep like this, I don’t have to get dressed in the morning . . . which is only three hours away.”
    “It would be more fun if you put those little shorts back on.”
    “I’m not interested in fun. I’m interested in sleep. And you promised you weren’t sleeping here.”
    Diesel crawled onto the bed. “I lied.”
    I fluffed my pillow and pulled the quilt over myself. “If you touch me, I’ll hurt you.”
    “I’m hard to hurt.”
    “I’ll find a way. I’m motivated.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    We both groaned out loud when the alarm went off.
    “I need to get you a new job,” Diesel said. “One that starts at noon.”
    “I had that job. I like this one better. And
my
job would be fine if it wasn’t for
your
job.”
    I dragged myself to the bathroom, stumbled down the stairs, and started coffee brewing. I fed Cat and ate half a loaf of bread while I waited for the coffee. I scrambled four eggs and ate them with two more slices of bread. I had a second cup of coffee and caught myself pawing through the trash, looking for muffin bottoms. I yelled for Diesel, but there was no