Mind-Bending Murder

by Leslie Langtry

  There wasn't anything in the basement, so I went upstairs, bypassing the nave. A short hallway on the side proved fruitful, and I found an office with a desk and laptop.

  "We have Wi-Fi." Kayla appeared in the doorway. "That should be a major draw to new members."

  I turned on the laptop. "What's the password?"

  The first thing that came up was a video with flames accompanied by the audio of what suspiciously sounded like four teen druids screaming in agony. Stewie's head popped up with the flashlight under the chin trick, and he laughed maniacally—something made comical by his high-pitched, nasal voice.

  "Kayla," I repeated. "Password."

  "I am a great and powerful leader."

  "What?"

  She pointed at the monitor. "Write it all together. That's the password."

  I typed it in. "Is Stewie losing it?"

  "Nah," Kayla said. "He's just a bit full of himself now that we are all rich."

  "I guess all that money can change a person," I said as I opened up the browser and typed in a social media page. I could check and see if there was anything there about the missing pastor. Our police department had a Facebook page, so maybe the Bladdersly PD did too.

  I was greeted by a login request. I didn't know my login information. It was in a green Girl Scout notebook I kept on my nightstand.

  "You can use mine." Kayla reached over me and logged in. "You old people never remember these things."

  I couldn't argue with that because it was true. Once in, I pulled up Rex's page. He never used it. Mostly he had it because his sisters liked to use Messenger.

  This is Merry, not Kayla the Terrifying, I typed. Just wanted to let you know what's going on. I'm crashing with the druids tonight. Should be safe—it's not like people are beating down the doors to get in here.

  "Hey!" Kayla complained.

  I finished up with the message and checked to see if Vanderzee had ever made a page.

  Merry Wrath! Bladdersly's Most Wanted! Armed and Dangerous!

  I was sorry I looked. There was my photo on a wanted poster. I thought this was a bit over-the-top, especially the skull border around it. There was an appeal to call a hotline to report a sighting of me, but they'd forgotten to add the number.

  "That's you!" Kayla gasped.

  "Yup." I kept scrolling. "Bird Goddess/Murderer."

  There wasn't any information on Malone. Maybe they didn't update very often.

  "Thanks," I told Kayla. "I appreciate that. And by the way, can you tell Stewie and the others that no one is to know I'm here?"

  Kayla nodded. "I'll tell them you're on the run from killing that guy."

  "I didn't kill Tyson Pancratz." I sighed wearily. Seriously? My own cult thought I was a murderer?

  She looked disappointed. "Oh. That's too bad. It would've been cool to have a Killer Bird Goddess of Death. When we saw the Bladdersly paper, Stewie thought so too and started talking about ordering brochures that say that."

  I got to my feet. "Make sure he doesn't send them out, and I'll see what I can do about getting Kurt here as your recruit."

  She brightened. "Great! Well, Stewie and I have to go. We have a consumer ed final tomorrow. You'll lock up and blow out the candles?"

  I agreed, and once the two were out the door, I went to the nave and blew out the black candles. All 167 of them.

  Killer Bird Goddess. Yeesh.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I awoke with a jolt and checked my phone. Ten a.m. Not good. I needed to go see some people, and I'd wanted to start early. Popping some mint gum into my mouth as a sad substitute for brushing my teeth, I grabbed my bag and headed out of the room into the hallway.

  The sound of footsteps overhead stopped me in my tracks. Normally, I would've thought it was just the kids, but then I remembered that two of them had a final today. It was a school day. Kayla and the others shouldn't be here.

  Part of me wanted to defend the Chapel of Despair from invaders. I mean, I was part of the cult. But the other part of me wondered why anyone would break into a place like this. Had the police found me already?

  The sounds of two or more people coming down the stairs had me diving into the kitchen. After a quick glance around, I opted for hiding behind the counter that divided the kitchen from the hall.

  You probably think I should've picked a closet or cabinet. Both options would be wrong because there's no way out. At least from the counter, I could scoot one way or another around the long island in the center of the room. Having your back against the wall is a bad idea.

  It was a lesson I'd learned the hard way in Paraguay. A government official who was in league with the Russians was having a party at his place in the country, and I'd followed a large group into the compound, breaking away by the time they asked for invitations.

  I was in the office, rummaging through his desk, looking for concrete proof that he was helping the Russians target Americans, when I heard voices in the hallway. I ran over to the wardrobe with the intent of hiding inside.

  Little did I know, the foreign pastor was in there waiting for his mistress to sneak in for a quickie. I also had no idea he would need the wardrobe until I realized it was full of sex toys. The wardrobe door flew open, and I thought fast enough to jump out and say I was his erotogram.

  I began dancing, using dildos as batons, until I got to the door. Then I ran for my life. Later I found out that the foreign pastor was looking for me so that he could give me a big tip. Apparently, I did a good job. And Riley never let me live it down.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway, coming closer. I scanned the room, looking for all of my options. There was another way out to the hallway through the far corner of the room. It would take some serious sneaking to pull it off, but I should manage to get out.

  "Where?" a man's voice demanded.

  Were they looking for me or something else?

  "I don't know," came the barked reply.

  The voices sounded vaguely familiar. But it was the kind of vagueness that led me to wonder if it was someone in Bladdersly that I'd briefly met. Would I be able to hazard a glance without detection?

  "We have to find it!" the first man growled. "Check the back stairs!"

  There were back stairs? And "it"?

  They ran off in two different directions. I decided to stay put in case they were going to meet up here again.

  What was "it"? Was it connected with the murder? Were my druids in trouble? That was all I needed right now, for someone to be here snooping for something else. What if they found me? Would they try to overpower me to turn me in?

  Footsteps ran across the ceiling and out the front door. Seconds later, a car pealed out of the parking lot. I waited a minute or two more before standing up. I had enough on my plate, but if the Cult of NicoDerm was in trouble, I had to do something. These kids were idiots.

  But they were my idiots.

  The Opera House was run-down looking outside and not much better inside. The lobby was badly lit, and the popcorn looked like it had been there for months. The front door was open, so I went looking for Harold.

  "Breathe!" I heard him say. "Breathe from your diaphragm!"

  The doors to the auditorium were open, and I slipped inside, keeping to the dark, shadowy corner until I knew who he was talking to.

  Harold was standing in the middle of the stage, arms outstretched, wearing a Roman gladiator costume that looked like it would much rather be on anyone else. Flab oozed from every opening of the leather shirt he wore, and his extremely white and pasty legs gleamed through his sandals. At least the helmet covered his balding head.

  "I am!" Stewie whined next to him, also dressed as a gladiator. They looked like two different sizes of the same guy, except for the bright red hair that stuck out under Stewie's helmet.

  "You are not, or I would know," Harold said.

  "Why are we dressed like gladiators? I'm a demon from hell!" Stewie's voice squeaked on the last word, erasing any hope of gravitas. />
  "We are warriors!" Harold intoned dramatically. "If you want to command millions, you need to look the part!"

  "I just want to command maybe forty druids," Stewie complained.

  "Just try the line again. The way I told you." Harold nudged the kid with a wooden sword.

  "Fine!" he grumped. And then he held his sword aloft and announced in a wheeze, "Come at me, and find that death awaits!"

  Well, at least there were no jazz fingers.

  "That's better," Harold said, even though I was pretty sure it wasn't. "Now, a few more lessons and you'll be as good as I was back in my CIA days."

  Stewie took off his helmet, his sweaty hair plastered to the sides of his head. "You were in the CIA? For real?" His voice had a hushed reverence that I couldn't stand.

  I was in the CIA for years. Harold was in the CIA for, like, a minute. He screwed up his first assignment so badly that they fired him immediately. Only recently did I discover that he had moved to Bladdersly.

  He nodded solemnly. "I was. A master of disguise too."

  He had gone to a Central American dive to infiltrate a guerilla unit…dressed as an Arab. They saw through him immediately.

  "Really?" Stewie gushed.

  "You've heard of Merry Wrath Ferguson?"

  "Bird Goddess!" Stewie whispered.

  Harold placed a hand on his chest. "I taught her everything she knows."

  That was it. I stood up and, in a better theater voice than he had, shouted, "Harold! Stop lying to Odious the demigod!"

  Harold paled, but recovered quickly. "Merry! What a pleasure to see you here! I was just telling young Stewart here how well we worked together in the field."

  "Yeah. You were a total flop. You barely survived your first and only assignment. Stewie." I walked up to the stage, past rows of battered chairs. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm um…" The kid looked from Harold to me. "Taking lessons to be more menacing when we have hundreds of new recruits."

  He sounded defensive, and my problem really wasn't with him.

  "Good idea," I said, much to the kid's relief. "Can you give me a moment with Harold?"

  "I'll go. Time was up anyway." He turned to Harold and reached into a pocket, pulling out a couple of one-hundred-dollar bills. "Here's your fee. Next week can we dress like demons?"

  Harold plucked the money from the boy's hand and nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

  Stewie fled. I assumed it was to the dressing rooms to change, but I couldn't be sure.

  I joined Harold on the stage and snatched the money away. "You're charging a kid two hundred dollars an hour for lessons? And is he skipping school for this?"

  Harold took the money back, stuffing it down the front of his gladiator skirt. Yeah, I wasn't going to go after it there. "Half an hour. And he really has made progress."

  "That's wrong on so many levels."

  "No, it's not. They got the Beetle Dork comics rights and made a fortune. I'm in the Beetle Dork comics and got nothing. It's like my cut."

  If anyone should make money off of Beetle Dork, it was Beetle Dork, who happened to be me. But I didn't want the money, so I brushed it aside.

  I gave him a menacing glare. "Fifty is all you'll charge from here on out, or I'll waterboard you."

  He looked into my eyes and knew I was serious. "Fine. Why are you here, besides to ruin my life?"

  I'd almost forgotten. "We need to talk someplace private. This isn't the right place."

  Harold burst into spontaneous sweating. "So you can kill me? I'm only trying to make a living!"

  That brought me up short. "What? No! Just to talk! That's all!"

  Without a word, he walked backstage. I followed him to a dilapidated office, where he shut the door behind me. The room was covered with theatrical posters with some suspicious photo editing. I'm pretty sure he didn't star in Hamilton with Lin-Manuel Miranda, and yet there he was as Aaron Burr. His head was also superimposed on a young Hamlet, which premiered at The Old Vic in London. And most surprising, as the waif-like Maria in an LA production of West Side Story.

  Harold eased his bulk into a squeaky chair behind a splintering desk, and then he asked me what I wanted.

  He was still dressed as a gladiator. I did my best to block it from my mind.

  "You've probably seen in The Bladdersly Beard that I've been wrongly accused of a murder that happened next door."

  Harold scowled. "I never read the local rag! I have standards! I read The New York Times' Sunday Arts and Leisure section!"

  "Good for you." I eyed an enormous stack of The National Enquirer tabloids. "Like I said, I was accused of murdering Tyson Pancratz in that shed next door."

  "Tyson?" Harold was aghast. "Tyson Pancratz is dead? And you killed him?"

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten before proclaiming my innocence for the fiftieth time since the murder happened. "No, I didn't. And yes, Tyson is dead. Did you know him?"

  "Of course. He took a theater class I offered at the juvie detention center. He was a terrible actor." Harold sniffed. "Refused to breathe from his diaphragm."

  "Seriously," I interrupted. "Is that the only advice you have for kids?"

  "Of course not!" he snapped. "Sometimes I tell them to project from their diaphragm."

  In a minute I'd remove his diaphragm just to keep him from mentioning the organ again. Could you lose your diaphragm and live? I'd have to look that up because it might come in handy in a matter of minutes.

  "Tyson. You worked with him. Please continue." Could the diaphragm be removed using a rusty trophy that I was pretty sure Harold hadn't won? How did I know he hadn't won it? Because as far as I know, there was no such award as the obviously racist Best Depiction of Another Race or Gender at the Tony Awards.

  "He was a troubled youth." Harold shook his head sadly. "His struggle was real. An orphan. No family. Bullied and beaten by his peers. He had nowhere to turn but to a life of crime."

  "Is that true or are you making that up?" I asked.

  "I'm making it up." He studied my face. "Did you buy it? I'm told I can be very persuasive."

  "No." I was pretty sure he couldn't persuade a starving man to eat a sandwich. "So you think he was an innocent youth?"

  "Not really." Harold seemed to deflate. "He was a bad egg. Frankly, I don't know why I tried. It's just that money was a bit tight since the high school refused to work with me."

  "Why did they do that?" Besides the obvious reasons. "You got the money for this place contingent on working with kids!" Now that I'd said it, it did seem like a bit of a pipe dream.

  Harold gave a martyrish sigh. "I wanted to put on an authentic staging of Oh! Calcutta!"

  My mouth dropped open. "The show where everyone on stage is nude? The one where they sing about sex? What on earth made you think that would be okay?"

  "It's art," he sniffed. "You wouldn't understand. And neither did those Luddites."

  It may be one of the only things I'd ever heard of done right in Bladdersly. Maybe I should send my congratulations to Bladdersly High.

  "So," he continued, "I offered my services to the juvenile detention center."

  "And did you attempt to do Oh! Calcutta! there too?"

  Harold looked shocked. "Of course not! We didn't have enough people to fill out the cast."

  "Never ever, ever do that again." Yeesh! What was it with him and Stewie? Or maybe that was the problem. He was rubbing off on Stewie. Either that or Stewie was watching documentaries of cult leaders like Jim Jones.

  Harold promised. I made him pinky swear. If my girls have taught me anything, it's that the pinky swear is the hardest contract to ever break.

  "Did you see anything that night? Anything unusual? Me?"

  Harold seemed surprised. "Of course not. If I had, I would've told the police when they asked."

  "The police were here? What did they say?"

  "Well, that Vanderzee hates you with a passion," Harold said. "Like really, really, really hates you." He star
ed off into space. "Maybe he should try breathing from his diaphragm."

  I took several calming, cleansing breaths before responding. "Besides hating me, which is weird since I've never met the man, what did he want from you?"

  Harold continued. "He said that nice pastor, Malone, had seen you that night. Buddy really is a sweetheart. He's the one who got me the gig at the detention center."

  That caught my attention. "And what did you say?"

  He steepled his fingers. "I said that I knew you very well, that we had worked together, and that you probably did it, but no, I hadn't seen anything."

  I blinked at him for a full two minutes before talking myself out of torturing him. And I did it all while breathing from my diaphragm.

  I was leaving Harold alive and with his diaphragm intact when Rex called. I decided to take it.

  "Merry," my husband said. "This is crazy. Even for you. Come home, and we can deal with this."

  That was sweet. He wanted to help. But he couldn't. "I can't investigate from a jail cell. I need to be free to move around. Besides, I don't want this to affect you and your standing in the community."

  "Oh?" Rex asked. "You don't think that having a wife who's a suspect in a murder investigation, who's giving the impression that she's on the run, isn't going to affect my reputation?"

  "Does it?"

  I could literally hear him running his hands through his short, dark hair. "I don't care about that. This is a mess. Vanderzee is furious with Carnack for not arresting you. And I've been getting some strange calls from some kid named Hobbs who disguises his voice every time he calls. And I mean a different voice every time. He doesn't seem to realize his number keeps coming up and it's the same one."

  "That's Kurt. He's a bounty hunter." Why wasn't he calling my cell? Maybe I hadn't given it to him.

  Rex kept his cool. "A bounty hunter? So now they think you've skipped bail. This seems dangerous."

  "Only if my name is Kayla." I told him about young Kurt's aspirations.

  Rex was quiet for a moment. "Riley and Jane can handle the investigation. You need to come in."