Mud Run Murder

by Leslie Langtry

  "So what now?" he asked.

  "What do you mean?" I said darkly. "You are going to explain to Langley that you screwed up. That your book fell into the wrong hands. That I had nothing to do with all of this."

  "I'm not sure that's a good idea." Riley steepled his fingers.

  "For you, maybe. But for me, totally. You do realize that someone invaded my home to do who knows what. Your actions could've gotten me killed."

  How could I make him see that this was a huge mess? Riley had never done anything like this before. Who was this idiot in Rex's living room? Not my once loyal partner. This Riley was dangerous. This Riley wanted me to take the fall for his own stupidity.

  "Okay. Fine," he said.

  "What do you mean by that?" I asked.

  "I'll stay here and help you find out what's going on."

  My sarcasm went into overdrive. "Oh, thank you. That would be such a big help. What would I ever do without you…besides being blamed for something I didn't do, I mean?"

  "What's going on?" Rex asked from the doorway to the kitchen.

  "Why is your cat wearing a diaper?" Kelly asked from the front door. She checked out the bassinet and seemed relieved to find the baby in it.

  I really had to do something about my best friend thinking I was a bad babysitter.

  "Riley has finally decided to come out of hiding and join us," I said. "He's going to use all of his resources to find out what's going on. Isn't that right?" I turned to Riley.

  He grimaced. "Do I have a choice?"

  I shook my head. "No. You do not."

  Rex cleared his throat. "Well, I brought dinner from the new Italian place. I'm sure there's enough for four. I think we should sit down and have a little chat."

  Kelly waved us off. "I should get home. Thanks for watching her, Merry. I didn't realize you'd have Riley helping you."

  Through clenched teeth I said, "He just got here. He didn't help me. I did it all by myself." I explained the changing of the diaper and the feeding of the pears.

  Kelly looked unimpressed. Rex and Riley helped her pile everything into the car, and we watched as she drove away.

  Oh well, at least we didn't have to split dinner four ways now. I could fill Kelly in later on what an amazing babysitter I was. We walked back into the house and heard a fierce flurry of cat paws coming from the bathroom. Rex opened the door, and a proud, diapered cat strutted out.

  "Oh, yeah, and there's a mouse in your tub," I said.

  Rex took the now dead mouse out back while Riley and I got the food out, and I made my former boss swear not to tell Rex what had happened here either.

  As we ate, Rex filled Riley in on the stuff I'd just told him. He just went into more detail than I had. At least Riley listened. I would've spoken up a few times, but the garlic bread and ravioli were so good that my mouth was full the whole time. I needed to know more about this new Italian restaurant. I wonder if they'd set up a regular delivery.

  "The screenplay? You found a copy of the screenplay?" Riley asked. "I need to see that."

  Rex looked at me questioningly.

  "He wrote the book the script was based on," I muttered as I snatched up another piece of bread.

  Rex turned slowly to Riley. "You wrote the book? What is she talking about?"

  Riley stalled. My guess was that he didn't want Rex to think the same things I'd thought—that Riley had written a book about my life and was hoping to exploit it for his own financial gain. I waited to see what he'd say.

  "I wrote a book. About our time together in the field. It was all work stuff. And it was somehow stolen and made into this movie."

  I gave Rex a sort of I-don't-know-what-to-think-about-that look that hopefully told him I wasn't involved.

  "Can I see the screenplay?" Riley asked with the confidence of a man who didn't have a care in the world. It was a dangerous game, considering that Rex might just take offense to the idea that my former boyfriend was using me to become a best-selling author.

  "I suppose…" Rex answered. "They confiscated it but just shoved it into a desk drawer. I'll snag it and bring it home tonight. But you'll look at it here. It won't leave my house. And I'm taking it back tomorrow morning."

  What? Rex was going to help Riley? Riley didn't deserve that.

  Riley nodded. "Thanks."

  Rex said, "No problem."

  What was happening here? Was I the only one who thought I'd been screwed? And not in the good way?

  "But after dinner I want you to head over to Merry's house. She's going to walk you through what happened. I'm sure she's already ignored the caution tape." He gave me a look.

  I was going to deny it, but he was right.

  "She's in danger, and I want you to keep her safe."

  Okay, that was nice.

  "But my station is crawling with agents that I'd like out of my hair. I'm giving you three days. If you can't find out what's going on, I'm turning you in to your superiors."

  Ooh! Way to drop the hammer! I liked it!

  Riley thought about this for a moment while Rex and I continued to eat. It was taking a little too long. I was about to brain Riley with a chair when he finally spoke up.

  "Of course. It's the least I can do."

  The men shook hands, and Rex headed back to work. It was late, but he'd explained that with the CIA in town there was a considerable amount of paperwork that had to be done.

  Riley put the leftovers away and washed the dishes. I just stood and watched. I was still pretty angry with him. None of this selfishness was like Riley. He'd never sold me out before. Or maybe he'd just never had the opportunity or need to do so in the past.

  Had he always been like this? How could I have missed it? Up until an hour ago, I'd trusted my former handler with my life. Now I wasn't so sure. It made me wonder if I was a bad spy. That I'd missed all the telltale signs over the years. I couldn't remember him following me around with a notebook and pen or using a digital recorder when I reported in. From what I'd seen so far, he must've been taking notes because my memory wasn't that thorough.

  It could be that Riley was behaving like this for the first time. That he'd come up with the idea of writing the book, completely overlooking the fact that it was a terrible idea. Forgetting the fact that I'd be the first person the CIA looked at.

  Part of me wanted to grab the cats and run away until this was sorted. I figured I could take a vacation myself. Let Riley handle it all while my kitties and I sunned ourselves on an obscure, hidden-away beach somewhere. I wondered if cats could get sunburned.

  The other part of me though, the one that was far more logical, wanted to keep an eye on Riley. Stick to him like glue. Make sure he followed through with Rex's directive. Give him a chance to prove he wasn't a world-class jerk. And if he didn't shoulder the weight, I'd turn him in.

  I'd have to decide soon. The dishes were done, and Riley was standing there, staring at me. I guess I'd been in la-la land a little too long.

  I pulled my keys out of my back pocket. "Let's get this over with," I said as I pushed him out the back door.

  * * *

  "You shot my bed?" Riley stared at the guest room mattress, stunned.

  "Your bed? This was never your bed." Granted, Riley had the bad habit of dropping in and staying with me whether I'd wanted him to or not. But this wasn't his bed.

  Riley ignored me as he touched the splintered wood of the closet door. "And my closet?"

  "I shot up my bed and my closet," I insisted. Seriously, my Girl Scouts weren't this obtuse. "Wait, you've been here for a couple of hours already. How did you miss this?"

  He shrugged. "I stayed in the living room and watched you."

  "Gee, that's not at all creepy." I rolled my eyes.

  So I walked through the room, explaining everything to Riley—especially the part that I didn't understand about how the killer had gotten out. He wandered around, touching everything as he listened.

  "And you thought I'd killed him?" he asked.r />
  I nodded. "I'd seen you around and knew you were in town." Okay, so that's a lie. I suspected he was here, but I'd also suspected I was hallucinating. No point in telling him that though.

  Riley stuck his finger in one of the bullet holes on the bed. "You really thought I was under this bed and then fired?"

  "Why are you here, Riley?" I asked again.

  "You could've killed me!"

  "But I didn't. Quit stalling, and tell me why you thought showing up here would help you find who took your damn book!"

  Riley turned his gorgeous blue eyes on me, and his charm level shot up to fifty. But it wasn't going to work this time.

  "Alright." He held up his hands. "I thought maybe you'd taken it."

  "You thought what?"

  "I thought you'd taken the book. That somehow you'd found out that I'd written it and had decided to steal it."

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. "If I'd known you'd written a book about my exploits, I wouldn't steal it first. I'd kick your ass first. And then I'd destroy it, and then I'd kick your ass again. How could you possibly think I'd sold it to whoever?"

  He shook his head. "I didn't know what to think. I was starting to panic. You just seemed like the most logical first step."

  "I didn't know anything about it! How could I know you'd do something like that?"

  "I'm sure I told you that I'd always wanted to write a book," he said casually.

  My jaw dropped. "I didn't know anything about that! You never told me that. And even if you had, I'd never guess that you'd betray the Agency this way. Or me!"

  "I didn't betray you!" He got to his feet so that he could look me in the eye.

  "It never occurred to you that you'd get into trouble with this book?"

  Who was this guy? It was like I was seeing a whole new side of my former partner. He'd never told me he'd wanted to be a novelist. I'd have remembered that. And writing down classified information to publish just seemed like a rookie mistake. Not something Riley would do.

  But I was tired of arguing with him. The sooner we figured this out the sooner he'd go home and I could get ready for the mud run.

  "Uh-oh."

  "What is it?" Riley asked.

  "I have a Scout meeting in five minutes!"

  He frowned. "This is a weird time to have a meeting."

  I agreed. "We've got a mud run coming up the day after tomorrow, and we have a strategy session planned for tonight."

  I raced to the back door, followed by Riley. I ignored him as I came around to the front of the house and started heading up the street toward the school. How had I forgotten this? It was very important to the girls.

  "Mrs. Wrath!" The girls cheered as I came into the classroom where we held our meetings. We didn't usually have meetings in the evenings, but this was the night that the local Boy Scouts met here, so we had piggybacked onto that.

  "Mr. Riley!" they shouted.

  Kelly came forward to hug him. She'd change her tune when I told her what he'd done. Or maybe she wouldn't. She adored Riley. She probably thought Riley had done all the work in babysitting Finn earlier.

  "What's going on, ladies?" Riley turned his full charm on the girls. I had to admit—he was pretty good with them. He seemed more relaxed. He'd come a long way since the first time he'd met the girls—although part of that was my fault for planting candy in his jacket pockets.

  "We're gonna win the mud run!" Ava announced.

  "We murdered the Boy Scouts." Inez grinned.

  "Boy Scouts?" Riley asked.

  "I'll explain later. Okay, girls! Let's sit in a circle. We've got a lot to do and only one hour to do it."

  "Am I late?" Soo Jin Body stuck her perfect and flawless head through the door.

  I glared at Kelly, who shrugged. Great.

  I couldn't help but notice Riley's face light up as he saw her. I watched as the two greeted each other. I felt a little twang of…what was that…rage? Jealousy? That was ridiculous. Riley wasn't mine. In fact if he dated her, she'd be less interested in Rex. So why was I upset?

  Once everyone was seated, Kelly went over the rules for the race.

  "You have to be good sports," she said. "We can't let competition get the best of us."

  The girls nodded solemnly as if they were taking an oath to defend America. Maybe in their little brains they were.

  "I know I won't be there, but I expect a clean race and no cheating."

  Riley raised his hand, which I had to admit was kind of adorable. "What's a mud run?"

  The four Kaitlyns started talking at once. No, that's not right. They were making sense, but they were filling in each other's sentences like a freaky, four-headed Girl Scout.

  Soo Jin stood up and unrolled a large map that she clipped to the blackboard. She waited patiently for the girls to finish then stepped up.

  "I did a little surveillance yesterday." She turned to the map. "Here's the layout of the course."

  It was our local camp. The girls and I knew it well. She pointed at the entrance and moved her finger up the drive to the first lodge.

  "It starts here. They have a huge muddy field that we have to cross. It looks like the mud is at least a couple of inches deep. There's about fifty yards of the stuff before the first element."

  I stared in amazement. It never would've occurred to me that Dr. Body would sneak into camp and scope out the course. I couldn't help but admire her gumption.

  Kelly fidgeted uneasily. "Isn't this cheating?"

  Twelve little heads turned to glare at my co-leader, but Soo Jin smiled.

  "They had a huge campout this weekend. Two teenagers got hurt. The on-call doctor at the hospital came down with pneumonia, so I volunteered to go." She smiled. "And the course parallels the drive throughout camp, so I couldn't help but see the course."

  "Are the kids okay?" Kelly asked in her nurse voice.

  The coroner nodded. "They fell out of a tree. Only one broken arm. They're fine."

  "Go on!" Betty shouted.

  Our perpetually impatient kid, Betty was also our go-to for dirty work. She'd make a great spy someday. If they took junior agents at the CIA, I'd have recommended her already.

  Soo Jin made sure Kelly was satisfied before continuing. "The first obstacle is a set of ropes hanging from a wooden frame. You have to swing across—over more mud—to get to the other side. Then you run for about one hundred yards and hit the archery course."

  Ugh. Archery. The last thing I wanted was my girls near any sort of pointy missile.

  Kelly frowned. "The girls aren't old enough to do archery. They have to be in fourth grade for that."

  Dr. Body grinned. "They aren't doing archery there. They're putting on snowshoes."

  Snowshoes? Unless I'm wrong, snowshoes work best in snow. It was September—still warm, sunny days with no hope for snow anytime soon.

  "Once you have the snowshoes on, you have to walk across a balance beam—over more mud."

  I had to admit, I liked where this was going. And we had an advantage because we'd done a weekend at camp last winter, and the girls had done a little snowshoeing of their own. We knew how to put the shoes on. I was willing to bet that this was an advantage we would have over the other teams.

  "After the balance beam," Soo Jin continued, "we take off the snowshoes and run straight up the berm at the archery area and down the other side."

  Kelly interrupted. "You seem to have more information than someone who just drove through camp."

  That's my best friend—always worried we'll get busted for cheating. Once, in high school, we had "accidentally" found a copy of an algebra midterm. Turned out later that it wasn't much of an advantage—Mr. Beenk had been using the same test every year for twenty years. Parents had handed the test down to their kids for two decades. (He wasn't a very popular teacher). It still bothered Kelly though. She was going to turn herself in, but I'd stopped her by telling her that she'd be screwing over generations to come if she did that, and Mr. B would probably
be angry because he'd be forced to rewrite the test. Seeing how the man was sixty-five, she decided not to say anything.

  "Oh," Soo Jin said, "well, once I got home, I found one of the brochures for the contestants in my purse. Accidentally."

  I was impressed. And now I was glad the medical examiner was on our team.

  "Then we run another fifty yards to another mud pit with beams crisscrossed over it. We have to crawl beneath the beams, through the mud, to get to the other side."

  The camp was definitely going all out on this mud thing. Throw in some leeches and a few caimans, and I'd feel like that time I was in Nicaragua.

  "Next we run to the canoes, where three people get into each canoe and two people push and pull it over the grass."

  "That's not going to be easy," I muttered. "These girls can't pull a canoe filled with people."

  Soo Jin nodded. "This is one area where we're really going to need a strategy. The way I see it, there are ten girls and two adults." She pointed at me and herself. "With five people to a canoe, we're going to need everyone."

  "Could we disguise a pony as a girl? A pony could pull the canoe," Caterina suggested

  "What if we motorized them somehow?" Hannah Number One asked.

  "I think we should be taking steroids to pump up," Emily said softly.

  "Or," I interjected before they started plotting murder to tip the balance, "we could just make sure one adult is on each canoe. Then both canoes could have one adult pushing or pulling."

  "That's a great idea!" Lauren shouted. "Mr. Riley can come too!"

  The girls started shrieking, and if I didn't know any better, I'd say Riley looked touched to be included.

  "Mr. Riley," I said as I held my hand up in the quiet sign, "probably won't be there."

  "I'll be there," he said simply.

  The girls squealed, and it took a few minutes to quiet them down.

  "Well, we can talk about that later," I said quickly. The last thing I needed was Riley there when he was supposed to be solving our problem. "Please continue, Dr. Body."

  "After we've dragged the canoes, we'll come to a huge wall. The goal is to get everyone up and over the wall."

  "That's easy!" one of the Kaitlyns said. "We've done that a million times at camp."