An interesting range of emotions played across his face. "I can't give you classified information. I'm with a different agency." He looked pained.
"I get that," I said at last. "Did you know about the Fontanas?"
Riley looked around, but his goons were investigating the empty ropes where I'd been tied up.
"We never saw Pam. If we had, we'd have known she was really Kate."
I had my doubts about that, but decided to leave him his pride.
"It was a pretty good cover. Pretending to be two different people in the same town. Risky though."
Riley agreed. "This will change our investigation. That's for sure."
"I don't want to get you in trouble, but it'll drive me crazy if I don't ask."
A touch of amusement tugged at the corners of Riley's lips.
"Who did they work for? I thought Russia, but my gut tells me that's wrong."
"North Korea," Riley said softly. "Agricultural spies focused on corporate espionage. That's why we think they were here."
I looked at the obviously white couple as they were handcuffed by Riley's guys.
"North Korea? Seriously?" The Fontanas didn't look Korean, but that didn't necessarily matter. Asian countries in particular had, now and then, recruited Westerners for espionage.
Riley nodded. "You of all people should know they have a huge food shortage there." He gave me a wicked little grin. "Thanks for your help, Wrath. See you around."
I watched as he left. Over the door was a clock, and it reminded me that I was in the wrong place.
"Can I go?" I ran up to Rex and asked. "Kelly's going to kill me."
Then Rex did the unthinkable, considering he had a strict policy against any public display of affection while he was working. He pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. "I was so worried about you!" He released me. "Officer Dooley will drive you."
The ten-minute drive felt like ten days. Kevin and I never had much to say to each other. He offered me a sparkling water, and I accepted. I thanked him and jumped out the minute we arrived.
"Kelly!" I shouted as I ran up to our booth.
"Where have you been?" my co-leader hissed. "You've been gone for two hours!"
The last attendees were heading toward the exit, and troops were tearing down their tables. "At least I made it in time to help clean up."
I filled her in on my latest exploits, and her fury melted away. She told me to ice the bruises when I got home.
"You suspected Susan, didn't you?" Kelly said with a half smile. When she saw my confusion, she added, "I figured it out when you asked me if I'd told her about Rex."
"I still have no idea how she knew that."
Kelly rolled her eyes, "I figured that out too. You probably listed him as your next of kin on the paperwork you filled out at your first visit."
My jaw dropped. "I filled out paperwork?" I didn't remember that, but I must have. I sighed with relief. Susan was a good guy, and I felt bad for suspecting her.
"How did it go?" I watched as the four Kaitlyns packed up the food. How was it possible that they had éclairs left over?
Kelly grimaced. "It was fine until we declared war on Spain."
Betty! I looked for the girl and found her sitting in the bleachers, arms folded across her chest and scowling.
"It was during the Parade of Nations. Spain was behind us. Betty, Lauren, Inez, and one of the Hannahs turned around and faced the other troop, proclaimed their actions illegal, and declared war."
"We declared war on Spain?" My mouth dropped open. "I wish I'd seen that."
Kelly nodded. "Check YouTube later. Thirty or forty girls had their phones on, recording the whole thing."
"What did Spain do after France declared war?"
Kelly stifled a smile in spite of herself. "One of the girls came forward and declared that Spain's oppression of Catalonia was illegal. Then she joined our girls in facing them down. Their leader and I broke it up, but not before Betty threatened the girls with a guillotine. An actual guillotine made of cardboard. I don't know how she smuggled it in."
I sighed. "At least there won't be a weapons charge."
We packed up the vans and waited with the girls as they were picked up by their parents, one by one. As usual, all the Kaitlyns were picked up at once. Kelly and I said our goodbyes, and I made my way home.
The cats were waiting for me when I flung open the door. I gathered them into my arms for a big hug, even though they didn't know they'd been threatened by Mark Fontana. My cell buzzed, and Philby took that opportunity to escape.
Rex asked me to dinner. He said he had a surprise for me.
A few hours later, with a face full of concealer that Kelly had helped me apply, and my black dress (I'd only worn it once—so it was ok), Rex and I stepped into Syma's Greek Restaurant.
"Mom!" I ran to my mother and gave her a hug.
Rex grinned. "She wanted to surprise you."
"I heard you picked out a dress!" my mother said.
We were led to a huge table, even though we were the only people in there. Rex was about to protest, but the hostess had vanished. The three of us sat down at one end, Rex at the head and Mom and me on either side. That was bizarre.
If Mom noticed the black-and-blue jawline beneath my makeup, she didn't say anything. It was great to see her so soon. There's nothing that can cheer you up like your mother. What a nice surprise from Rex!
The waiter brought out a very expensive bottle of wine. He uncorked it and poured a little into a glass. I watched as Rex swirled it around, sniffed it, and then swallowed. He nodded at the waiter, who then proceeded to pour for Mom and me.
I didn't know he knew how to do that.
The waiter whispered something to my fiancé.
Rex frowned. "They told me the bill is already paid. Again. Just like the last time we were here. Judith, I can't allow you to pay for dinner."
Mom shrugged. "I'm not paying for this."
Rex and I looked at each other. What was going on? This was a setup if I'd ever seen one. And I'd seen plenty over the years.
"Then who is…" Rex started to say before his mouth dropped open.
"Rexley!" A loud, masculine voice boomed from across the room. This was followed by a squeal I think might have punctured my eardrums.
A very tall man with a shock of black mad-scientist hair and a very short, plump woman with dark hair came running across the room, arms open.
Rex barely had time to stand up before the giant man and tiny woman crushed him in their arms.
I turned to Mom, but she just winked back.
"What's going on?" I started, but was suddenly crushed speechless by the strange couple.
"Mom! Dad!" Rex stumbled. "What are you doing here?" He barely got the words out as the giant man shook my fiancé like he was a little rag doll.
Mom? Dad?
Mom! Dad! These were my future in-laws!
"This is our place!" The man laughed loudly. Very loudly. Was he under the impression we were deaf?
"We're paying for your dinner!" the woman screeched and crushed me again. My breathing stopped, which was what happened when all the air was forced out of your lungs. It was like being in a vise grip.
My mother had an amused grin, but I noticed she wasn't included in this assault.
The big man boomed, "You must be Merry!" The couple sat down.
Randi and Ronni appeared and joined us. That's when I noticed they looked just like their mother.
"Hello" was all I could think of to say.
Ronni scowled. Randi smiled and nudged her sister and then looked at me. She waited patiently for something.
Ronni fumed but lifted a badly wrapped package onto the table. She rolled her eyes and said very sarcastically, "This is for you, Merry."
The twins looked at me expectantly, so I opened it.
A giant, stuffed Maine Coon cat, poised to pounce on me, stared through glass eyes. At least, I hoped they were glass.
&nb
sp; "Oh!" I forced a smile. "Thank you! I love it!"
Philby was not going to love it. Did cats have nightmares?
"Thanks to Judy here," Rex's father said (my mother didn't even cringe, and she hated being called Judy), "we found out we're getting a new daughter!" He clapped me hard on the back, and my forehead almost hit the table.
I laughed out loud. Rex thought he was surprising me with Mom, but she was surprising us with Rex's family. He'd been outgunned.
"I'm Milli!" Rex's mom trilled. "And this is Bob! We're your new family!"
Everyone started chattering at once as waiters started bringing out food, family style. I let out a long sigh. I finally got to meet Rex's parents, and they seemed, well, sort of normal. I watched as the twins argued and Milli chattered away with Mom. Bob just sat there and grinned. They seemed nice. Weird, but that's what made them wonderful.
All of my life, I'd been an only child. And my career as a spy was, I had to admit, a bit lonely. Here I was, surrounded by a noisy, boisterous family. And it was everything I'd hoped it would be.
Rex squeezed my hand, and all of the strain of the past few weeks melted away. And even with his hot and cold sisters, and the fact that his dad would have to take on a different name when around Philby, I somehow felt like everything might be okay after all.
As everyone but Ronni (who grimaced throughout the whole dinner) chattered away, I couldn't help but grin like an idiot. Now I had everything—a wonderful fiancé, a big family, a troop of funny and smart little girls, my best friend and my goddaughter, and cats who looked like Hitler and Elvis.
Who could ask for more?
* * * * *
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* * * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leslie Langtry is the USA Today bestselling author of the Greatest Hits Mysteries series, Sex, Lies, & Family Vacations, The Hanging Tree Tales as Max Deimos, the Merry Wrath Mysteries, the Aloha Lagoon Mysteries and several books she hasn't finished yet, because she's very lazy.
Leslie loves puppies and cake (but she will not share her cake with puppies) and thinks praying mantids make everything better. She lives with her family and assorted animals in the Midwest, where she is currently working on her next book and trying to learn to play the ukulele.
To learn more about Leslie, visit her online at: http://www.leslielangtry.com
* * * * *
BOOKS BY LESLIE LANGTRY
Merry Wrath Mysteries
Merit Badge Murder
Mint Cookie Murder
Scout Camp Mystery (short story in the Killer Beach Reads collection)
Marshmallow S'More Murder
Movie Night Murder
Mud Run Murder
Fishing Badge Murder (short story in the Pushing Up Daisies collection)
Motto for Murder
Aloha Lagoon Mysteries:
Ukulele Murder
Ukulele Deadly
Greatest Hits Mysteries:
'Scuse Me While I Kill This Guy
Guns Will Keep Us Together
Stand By Your Hitman
I Shot You Babe
Paradise By The Rifle Sights
Snuff the Magic Dragon
My Heroes Have Always Been Hitmen
Have Yourself a Deadly Little Christmas (a holiday short story)
Other Works:
Sex, Lies, & Family Vacations
* * * * *
SNEAK PEEK
of the first Aloha Lagoon Mystery:
UKULELE MURDER
by
LESLIE LANGTRY
CHAPTER ONE
If anyone requests "Ukulele Lady," I'm out of here. I'm not going to do it. Not again. Not for the millionth time. Is that the only song tourists know? Yeesh. Please, tiki god of the Ukulele, don't let me kill a tourist today.
"'Ukulele Lady!'" a dumpy, middle-aged man in a Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt screams. He gives me a knowing nod with his balding head to indicate he's the only one in the room who knows true Hawaiian culture.
I hate him. I imagine bludgeoning him with my koa wood uke.
But I don't. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of koa wood? Well…I don't know either, but I'd guess it isn't easy.
Instead, I play the damn song—smiling as I imagine shoving his pineapple drink up his…
The crowd cheers as I perform. I know—it's not so bad having an adoring audience. But this isn't the audience I want. This is Judah Horowitz's bar mitzvah. One of the few gigs I could get in Aloha Lagoon.
My name is Hoalohanani Johnson. My mother, Harriet Jones Johnson, is a bit of a Hawaiian-obsessed nut. It's so bad that it's to the point where she believes she is the reincarnation of a Hawaiian princess and says that my name came from a dream from an ancestor god. In reality, it probably came from the bottom of a rum bottle.
To her endless annoyance, my redheaded, green-eyed mom comes from a long line of English ancestors and grew up in Kansas. Dad was a third-generation blond, brown-eyed German whose name was shortened to Johnson due to the inability to pronounce whatever the name really was. Neither of my parents had ever been to Hawaii until Mom and I moved here after Dad died.
I go by Nani. And I now live in Aloha Lagoon on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, with my mother, who now calls herself Haliaka and dyes her hair and eyebrows a ridiculous shade of black that does not look natural. I've never understood where my dark-brown hair comes from, but I look more native than she does. Always dressed in a muumuu, Mom wears hibiscus flowers in her hair and hangs out on my lanai, singing island songs all day and night, much to my neighbors' dismay. Sigh.
I finish my set, tell the crowd "aloha," and am cut off by the DJ who decides suddenly to play a gangsta rap song.
"Thank you!" Gladys Horowitz of Trenton, New Jersey, and Judah's mother, slips an envelope into my hands before running to the dance floor to shimmy disturbingly. Thirteen-year-old Judah hangs his head in shame.
I make my way through the crowd to the bar and order a decidedly un-Hawaiian vodka tonic.
"Here's the ten bucks I owe you." The bartender smiles, handing me money.
I gulp my drink, slapping an empty glass on the bar. "I told you, someone requests it every time." I take his money and head to my car. My shift in hell is over.
I did not study music at Juilliard for this. And no, Juilliard doesn’t have a ukulele program. I started with classical guitar, but once I discovered the ukulele, I developed an independent study program for the diminutive instrument.
And yet, here I am in paradise, playing gigs like this bar mitzvah and teaching fingerstyle ukulele to kids. My dream of being a ukulele virtuoso, hailed by critics and in demand as a performer, was rudely interrupted by reality.
Which means I'm a white outsider from Kansas in a state full of true, native Hawaiian musicians. They call me malihini—which means newcomer. Things are different from the mainland. Hawaii has many words to remind you that you don't really belong here.
I can't complain, because I get by. I have ten students—all from a local military base—play parties like today's or in a few bars on weekends, and am the regular musician at the Elvis-inspired Blue Hawaii Wedding Chapel. And my inheritance from Dad helps me keep Mom flush with hibiscus-flower leis and mai tais. But this is not the way I pictured my life.
My biggest problem is my competition. There are three native Hawaiian ukulele musicians on this island. They play the big luaus at the huge resort in this town. They teach and lecture at the local community college. And they play at all the holidays, official commemoration events, and in the two concert halls on Kauai.
They're good—real good. Alohalani Kealoha is a 50-year-old professor at Aloha Lagoon Community College. I probably know him better than I know the others—but even that qualifies as barely. As the only one of the Terr
ible Trio who's somewhat nice, he is actually fairly complimentary. His exact words? "Doesn't suck."
Then there's Kahelemeakua Lui, or Kua, as he's known locally. He's young—in his 20’s, I think. A serious child prodigy, Kua travels all over the world performing when he's not surfing here at home. He's a lot more open in his hatred of me—I've heard murmurs that he's afraid I'm better than him—something I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want me to know. I don't know him very well, but I've heard he calls me "that mainland pretender." Nice.
Last but not least is Leilani O'Flanagan. Only half Hawaiian, or hapa, she's a cutthroat 30-year-old musician who has a killer instinct and brutal temperament. I avoid her socially. If she thinks you're competition, she'll do anything in her power to destroy you. In fact, I've never heard anything nice about her. Rumor is she was raised by rabid badgers. The only nice thing she ever said about me had three expletives and an exclamation point. I have no idea if Kua and Alohalani hang out with her. I wouldn't.
Don't get me wrong. I've seen all three perform, and they're all brilliant. It would be beneath me (and 100 percent true) to say I wish they'd move away or die peacefully in their sleep of natural causes. Okay, so maybe Leilani could get eaten by a shark. That would be okay.
It's late afternoon when I toss my ukulele on the front seat of my car and head to the Aloha Lagoon Resort for a concert on Polynesian music. The bar mitzvah made me a little late, but I'm hoping I'll be there in time to see most of it.
Leaving my instrument in the car, I race into the concert just in time to see Alohalani performing with a group of visiting dancers from Tahiti. I grab a bottle of beer from the bar and settle in to watch. He's good. Better than good—Alohalani is probably the best I've seen since I'd moved here. Even so, I wish it was me up there playing the ukulele.
Motto for Murder (Merry Wrath Mysteries Book 6) Page 19
