“I don’t think Rutherford knew about the diamond,” I said.
“Can you glaze those things faster? We have a lot of ground to cover today,” Diesel said.
“Do you have a game plan?”
“I want to talk to Nergal. I have the skull with me.”
“And after that?”
“No plan.”
“So that doesn’t seem to be a lot of ground.”
“I’m working on it.”
I finished my tray, cleaned my area, and asked Clara if she had anything else for me to do.
“Nope,” she said. “It’s a slow Monday. You might as well take off.”
We stepped out of the bakery, and I looked around. “Where’s your car?” I asked Diesel.
“It’s the little black one,” he said.
“That’s a Porsche 911 Turbo. What happened to the last car?”
“It got swapped out. I parked it in front of your house last night, and this morning it was gone, and the Porsche was parked there.”
“How do you know it’s yours?”
“My cars always have similar license plates. ‘DD0000.’ Or some variation.”
We drove the short distance to the hospital and found Nergal in his office.
“We brought you something,” Diesel told him.
“I hope it’s cupcakes.”
“Sorry, no cupcakes,” I said.
“It’s something dead, isn’t it?” Nergal said. “What is it with you people? You’re like the death squad.”
This from the man who decided to be a coroner.
Diesel pulled the skull out of his battered brown leather backpack and put it on Nergal’s desk.
“I didn’t have room to bring the rest of him home with me,” Diesel said, “but this is probably all you need. We think he’s Palgrave Bellows.”
Nergal leaned forward and took a closer look at the skull. “The real Palgrave Bellows? That’s pretty cool.”
I nodded in agreement. “We found him in a cave.”
Nergal put his hand on the skull, and his eyes got wide. “Whoa! This guy is nutty.”
“What’s he saying to you?”
“He’s saying that it all makes sense. That it’s all fallen into place. That he knew the power was within him. That he was de
stined to become the demon Mammon. And now he’s going to eliminate all disbelievers and rule the world. That he’s sure the crushing pain in his chest is Mammon being reborn in his body.” Nergal removed his hand from the skull. “Personally, my money’s on massive heart attack over the Mammon reborn theory.”