Plum Spooky [Abridged, Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD]

                                                       #1 New York Times besteller

                                                       #1 Washington Post  besteller

                                                       #1 Publishers Weekly besteller

                                                             #1 USA Today besteller

                                        Turn on all the lights and check under your bed.

                                           Things are about to get PLUM SPOOKY…

Trenton, New Jersey–based bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is the all-American girl stuck in an uncomfortable job, succeeding on luck and tenacity. On her current most wanted list: Martin Munch, a man whose body hasn’t made it out of the boy’s department at Macy’s but whose larger-than-life brain is the means to his business partner’s murderous ends. Usually Stephanie gets her man. This time, she gets Diesel, a bounty hunter whose special skills include tracking men and pleasing women. Now it’s up to Stephanie and Diesel to hunt down Munch through the Pine Barrens and face the legendary Jersey Devil—prowling above the treetops in the dark of night—and find a way to survive cranberry bogs, sand in their underwear, too many monkeys to count...and, of course, each other.

                               “Incredible amounts of fun.” —Booklist

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Plum Spooky. Copyright © 2008 by Evanovich, Inc. All rights reserved.

1

ONE

Sometimes you get up in the morning and you know it’s

going to be one of those days. No toothpaste left in the

tube, no toilet paper on the cardboard roll, hot water cuts

out halfway through your shower, and someone’s left a

monkey on your doorstep.

My name is Stephanie Plum, and I’m a bail bonds enforcement

agent for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. I live in

a one- bedroom, one- bath, unremarkable apartment in a

three- story brick box of a building on the outskirts of

Trenton, New Jersey. Usually I live alone with my hamster,

Rex, but at eight- thirty this morning, my roommate

list was enlarged to include Carl the Monkey. I opened

my door to go to work, and there he was. Small brown

monkey with long, curled tail, creepy little monkey fingers

and toes, crazy, bright monkey eyes, and he was on a

leash hooked to my doorknob. A note was attached to his

collar.

Hi! Remember me? I’m Carl and I belong to

Susan Stitch. Susan is on her honeymoon and

she knows you’ll take good care of me until

she returns.

First, let me say that I’ve never wanted a monkey. Second,

I barely know Susan Stitch. Third, what the heck am I

supposed to do with the little bugger?

Twenty minutes later, I parked my Jeep Wrangler in front

of the bonds office on Hamilton Avenue. At one time, the

Wrangler had been red, but it had seen many lives before it

fell into my hands, and now it was far from primo and the

color was motley.

Carl followed me out of the car and into the office, hugging

my pants leg like a two- year- old. Connie, the office

manager who looked like a big Italian Betty Boop, peered

around her computer.

Lula, the office file clerk and wheelman, stood hands

on hips. “That better not be what I think it is,” Lula said,

eyeballing Carl. “I hate monkeys. You know I hate monkeys.”

“It’s Carl,” I told her. “Remember when we busted Susan

Stitch for failing to appear? And remember her monkey,

Carl?”

“Yeah?”

“Here he is.”

“What are you doing with him?”

“He was attached to my doorknob with a note. Susan

went on a honeymoon and left him with me.”

 “She got a lot of nerve,” Lula said. “Where’s he go to the

bathroom? You ever think of that?”

I looked down at Carl. “Well?”

Carl blinked and shrugged. He looked at Lula and Connie,

curled his lips back and gave them a gummy monkey

smile.

“I don’t like the way he’s lookin’ at me,” Lula said. “It’s

creepy. What kind of monkey you got here anyway?”

Lula is a former ’ho, and she’s only moderately altered

her wardrobe to suit her new job. Lula somehow manages

to perform the miracle of squeezing her plus- size body

into petite- size clothes. Her hair was blond this week, her

skin was brown as always, her spandex tube dress was poison

green, and her shoes were four- inch, spike- heeled,

faux leopard Via Spigas. It came as no surprise that the

monkey was staring at Lula. Everyone stared at Lula.

I didn’t command that much attention in my jeans, girlcut

red T-shirt, gray sweatshirt, and inadequate swipe of

lash- lengthening mascara. Not only did I feel like a bran

muffin in a bakery case filled with eclairs, I was also the only

one not packing a gun. My eyes are blue, my hair is brown,

and my favorite word is cake. I was married for ten minutes

in another life, and I’m not inclined to repeat the mistake

anytime soon. There are a couple men in my life who tempt

me . . . just not with marriage.

One of those tempting men is Joe Morelli. He’s a Trenton

cop with bedroom eyes, and bedroom hands, and

everything else you’d want to find in your bedroom is top

of the line. He’s been my off- again, on- again boyfriend

for as long as I can remember, and last night he was onagain.

The second guy in my life is Carlos Manoso, aka Ranger.

Ranger’s been my mentor, my employer, my guardian angel,

and he’s gotten as intimate with me as a man can get, but

Ranger has never totally qualified as a boyfriend. Boyfriend

might suggest an occasional date, and I can’t see Ranger going

there. Ranger is the sort of guy who slips uninvited into

a girl’s dreams and desires and refuses to leave.

“What’s happening with Martin Munch?” Connie asked

me. “Vinnie’s in a rant over him. Munch is a big- ticket bond.

If you don’t drag his ass into court by the end of the month,

our bottom line won’t be good.”

This is the way things work in the bail bonds business. A

guy gets accused of a crime, and before he’s released back

into society, the court demands a security deposit. If the

accused doesn’t happen to have $50,000 under his mattress

to give to the court, he goes to a bail bonds agent and

that agent posts the bond for the accused for a fee. If the

accused doesn’t show up for his court date, the court gets

to keep the bondsman’s money until someone like me hauls

the accused back to jail.

My ferret- faced cousin Vinnie owns the bonds office on

paper, but he’s backed by his father- in- law, Harry the Hammer.

If Vinnie writes too many bad bonds and the office

runs in the red, Harry isn’t happy. And you don’t want a

guy with a name like Harry the Hammer to be unhappy.

“I’ve been looking for Munch all week,” I said to Connie.

“It’s like he’s dropped off the earth.”

Martin Munch is a twenty- four- year- old genius with a

doctorate in quantum physics. For what ever reason, Munch

went postal on his project manager, riding him like Man

O’War, breaking his nose with a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee

mug, knocking him cold. Moments later, Munch was caught

on a security tape as he left the research lab cradling a oneof-

a-kind monster cesium vapor magnetometer. What ever

the heck that is!

Munch was arrested and booked, but the magnetometer

was never recovered. In a moment of insanity, Vinnie wrote

a bond for Munch, and now Munch is playing hard to get

with his contraption.

“This is a white- collar guy,” Connie said. “He hasn’t grown

up in a crime culture. His friends and family are probably

horrified. I can’t see them hiding him.”

“He hasn’t got a lot of friends and family,” I told her.

“From what I can determine, he has neighbors who have

never spoken to him, and the only family is a grandmother

in a retirement home in Cadmount. He was employed at

the research facility for two years, and he never socialized.

Before that, he was a student at Princeton, where he never

got his face out of a book.

“His neighbors tell me a couple months ago a guy started

visiting Munch. The guy was a little over six feet tall, with

an athletic build and expensive clothes. He drove a black

Ferrari and had shoulder- length black hair and pale, almost

white skin. Sometimes Munch would leave with him

and not come back for several days. That’s the whole enchilada.”

“Sounds like Dracula,” Lula said. “Was he wearing a

cape? Did he have fangs?”

“No one said anything about a cape or fangs.”

“Munch must have come in when I was out sick last

week,” Lula said. “I don’t remember him.”

“So what was it?” I asked her. “The flu?”

“I don’t know what it was. My eyes were all swollen, and

I was sneezing and wheezing, and I felt like I had a fever. I

just stayed in my apartment, drinking medicinal whiskey

and taking cold pills, and now I feel fine. What’s this Munch

look like?”

I took his file from my Prada knockoff messenger bag and

showed Lula a photo.

“Good thing he’s a genius,” Lula said, “on account of he

don’t have much else going on.”

At five- feet- two- inches tall, Munch looked more like fourteen

than twenty- four. He was slim, with strawberry blond

hair and pale freckled skin. The photo was taken outdoors,

and Munch was squinting into the sun. He was wearing

jeans and sneakers and a SpongeBob T-shirt, and it occurred

to me that he probably shopped in the kids’ department.

I imagine you have to be pretty secure in your

manhood to pull that one off.

“I’m feeling hot today,” Lula said. “I bet I could find that

Munch. I bet he’s sitting home in his Underoos playing

with his whatchamacallit.”

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt for us to check out his house one

more time,” I said. “He’s renting one of those little tiny row

houses on Crocker Street, down by the button factory.”

 “What are you gonna do with the monkey?” Lula wanted

to know.

I looked over at Connie.

“Forget it,” Connie said. “I’m not babysitting a monkey.

Especially not that monkey.”

“Well, I don’t let monkeys ride in ...