by Harper Lin
Granny Undercover
A Secret Agent Granny Mystery Book 2
Harper Lin
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
GRANNY UNDERCOVER
Copyright © 2017 by Harper Lin.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
www.harperlin.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
All Books by Harper Lin
A Note From Harper
About the Author
Excerpt from “Sweets and a Stabbing”
One
I never thought I’d discover a murder while inspecting peat moss.
It’s not that I’m unused to violent death. After all, I’ve caused enough of it in my day. It’s just that peat moss and near decapitation have never been associated in my mind. Rather, I think of suburban gardens. As for decapitation, I associate it with less pleasant parts of the globe. I guess I just need to have a more open attitude about the world.
I’m Barbara Gold. Age: seventy. Height: five-five. Eyes: blue. Hair: gray. Weight: none of your business. Specialties: undercover surveillance, small arms, chemical weapons, Middle Eastern and Latin American politics. Current status: retired widow and grandmother.
Addendum to current status: realizing that retirement can be a lot less boring than I feared it would be.
So I was standing in the Cheerville Gardening Centre, trying to figure out what variety of peat moss I needed for the flower bed I was planning, or even if I needed peat moss at all, when I happened to overhear an interesting conversation.
“Happened to overhear” may be a bit misleading. I heard two women whispering in the next aisle, and I immediately tuned in. Whispered conversations were always the most interesting conversations, even if they happened in a place as banal as the Cheerville Gardening Centre.
“Centre,” not “Center.” The place had an English theme, complete with a fake Big Ben sticking out of the roof and portraits of fox hunts on the walls. I suspected no self-respecting Englishperson would be caught dead going into a place with such décor.
Anyway, back to the whispered conversation coming from a pair of gray-haired ladies, one in her late sixties and the other well into her eighties.
“After what happened to poor Archibald, I can’t bear to use hedge clippers anymore,” said the younger one. The fact that she said this in a fearful whisper is what caught my attention.
The older woman’s voice also dropped to a whisper. “What happened, exactly? All I heard was that he cut himself.”
“Oh, if it were only that,” the younger woman said in an eager sotto voce. “He was pruning his hedges, getting ready for the lawn show, when he hit some sort of knot in the wood or something. The hedge clippers sprang back on him, cut his forehead, and then dug into his neck. He was nearly decapitated.”
“You don’t say?” the older woman replied. She sounded thrilled. Not thrilled that Archibald, whoever he was, was dead, but thrilled she was getting a juicy bit of gossip.
The younger woman continued in a whisper. Despite their advanced age, neither of them seemed to have any problems with their hearing. Their ears had probably been sharpened by a lifetime of whispering juicy tidbits about their neighbors.
“Yes, nearly cut off. They found him on his lawn, simply covered in blood.”
“Oh dear. I suppose someone else will win in the topiary category this year,” the older one said.
I immediately knew dear old Archibald’s death hadn’t been an accident, but murder. Hedge clippers had a safety switch. If you didn’t keep a button on the handle pressed down, the clippers turned off. Lawn mowers had the same thing. This was to prevent accidents from getting any worse. Thus, if the dead topiary champion had really slipped and cut his forehead with the hedge clippers—an unlikely event in the first place—he would have let go of the switch and wouldn’t have been able to nearly decapitate himself. Hedge clippers were specifically designed so accidents like that could not happen.
Of course, there was always the possibility of suicide, but I found that doubtful. There were easier ways to kill yourself than decapitation, and I’m not sure even the most determined man bent on annihilation could keep the safety switch pressed as hedge clippers sawed through his neck.
So the far more likely explanation for the world being short one gardener was that he was murdered.
The two ladies were moving away, pushing a shopping cart filled with seed packets and a pair of metal watering cans with scenes of English country cottages painted on the sides.
After abandoning my shopping for the moment, I tailed them to the checkout, but their conversation had turned to other things. Once they had made their purchases, I followed them out of the Cheerville Gardening Centre and noted the license plate of their car. I probably wouldn’t need it, but any intel could be useful intel. Then I strolled back into the building to finish making my purchases. After I had done that, I would pay a visit to the police chief. I found myself whistling a happy tune. There was something satisfying about getting involved in a murder case. It made me feel young.
But the murder would have to wait an hour or so because I was on a mission. I’d had a lot of tough missions in my life—Kandahar, Medellín, Mogadishu—but this was one of the toughest. It was beyond my training, beyond even my secondary skill set. I was entering a dangerous, unknown territory fraught with peril.
I was taking up gardening.
Heading back to my shopping cart, or “shopping trolley” as it was labeled—apparently, that was what they were called in England—I examined the contents. Trays of various types of flowers ready for transplanting into my garden? Check. Plain watering can with no embarrassing image on the side? Check. Trowel? Check. Pruning shears? Check. Gloves adorned with a blindingly-cheerful floral print? Check. One copy of Gardening for Numbskulls? Check. Was the copy of Gardening for Numbskulls buried under all that other stuff so no one saw it and laughed at me? Check.
I thought I had everything, but did I need peat moss? I had heard somewhere that you needed peat moss for a garden, although to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t even sure what peat moss was made of. I could recite the chemical makeup of plastic explosive at the drop of a hat, but peat moss? No idea.
Gardening was something I’d never had time for, or even an interest in, during my career. James and I were always being called away on missions. We never knew when we’d have to leave or how long we’d be gone. It would have been impossible to maintain a garden. How we ever raised our son, Frederick, without him turning into some basket-case alcoholic is beyond me. My parents did much of his parenting for us, something I’d always felt guilty about, although Frederick had never held it against us, bless his heart.
But now, my life was radically different. No more infiltrating enemy bases. No more hunting down narcotraffickers. No more blowing up illegal weapons factories. These days, I was living a quiet, peaceful life in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood in a quiet, peaceful town. I wouldn’t have be
en caught dead in a place like Cheerville if my son and his family didn’t live here. Once I retired and James passed, I realized I wanted to be near them. The town was still frightfully dull, however.
“Thank God for murder,” I muttered.
“May I help you, madam?” someone asked from behind me.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Whirling around, I saw a young man of about college age dressed like an English butler, complete with bowler hat.
“Is there something you require?” he asked in an English accent.
Cheerville Gardening Centre took its English theme way too far. All the employees were dressed like the servants in Upstairs, Downstairs—or Downton Abbey for you youngsters—and they were all actually English. Most were young, and I think the management must have hired every single English student from the local university to work there.
Getting over my surprise and irritation at having been sneaked up on—and hoping he hadn’t heard that bit about murder—I asked, “I was wondering if I need peat moss. I’m planning a flower garden, you see, as well as sprucing up a few bushes in my front lawn, but I’ve never done this sort of thing before. Do I need some peat moss?”
“Ah, yes, madam,” he said with the kind of courtesy no one under thirty ever uses unless they’re paid to. “Peat moss is most efficacious in adding nutrients to the soil and helping it to retain water. I suppose your garden has not been tended for some time?”
“Not since I’ve owned it.”
“I see. Then it would be best to enrich the soil as much as possible. Might I suggest some growth pellets as well?”
“Growth pellets?”
“Concentrated pellets you put under the plant. They’re made of condensed nutrients that will help your plants grow. If you’re starting a flower garden this late in the season, it might be a good idea to use them if you wish to have a proper display by summer. They also help the flowers survive being transplanted, which is a shock for any plant.”
“Oh, I see. How do I get them under the plants?”
The kid’s serene expression faltered, and a smile tugged at the sides of his mouth. It took him a moment to recover. He’d never make it as a butler at a fine country estate.
“You need to dig a hole for each plant in your bed. Your flower bed, that is.” I thought this clarification rather insulting and was tempted to give him a karate chop that would snap his clavicle. “Make it slightly larger than you need. Put the growth pellet at the bottom, then some peat moss, then the flower with most of the soil from the pot. Then add a bit of peat moss around the sides to fill it in. Would you like me to pick out a basic gardening manual? There’s one called Gardening for N—”
“That’s quite all right, thank you,” I said, grabbing a bag of peat moss and adding it to my cart. It weighed twenty pounds, and my back twinged as I put it in, but I wasn’t about to allow this rude little boy a chance to help me again.
I hate not being in the know. In my line of work, not knowing something could get you killed. It certainly got a lot of my coworkers killed. I’d have to spend some time with the book and plant the flowers tomorrow once I knew what I was doing. Hopefully, they’d last that long. I wasn’t sure they would, but I’d have to risk it.
I got out of the Cheerville Gardening Centre with no further humiliation and left Big Ben in the dust. As I drove back home through Cheerville’s leafy, orderly streets, I started thinking about Archibald’s grisly encounter with the hedge clippers. Why would someone choose such a nasty murder weapon? Was it because Archibald was a gardener, and the murderer wanted to make a point? Or perhaps it was a spur-of-the-moment killing, and the hedge clippers were the nearest thing to hand. Also, why were those two acquaintances of his assuming he had died by accident? Wouldn’t the police have launched a murder investigation for such an obvious case?
My pulse was pounding. This was far more interesting than transplanting petunias or daffodils or whatever I had just bought. I didn’t even know the names for most flowers. I simply picked out what I thought looked nice.
“Thank God for murder,” I repeated out loud.
And cats.
I had never pictured myself growing old in a snoozy suburb, caring for a cat and pottering around a garden, but life had thrown me too many curveballs for me to be incapable of rolling with the punches. Even mixed metaphors didn’t bother me anymore.
Dandelion was there to greet me, as she always was. She’s a lovely little tortoiseshell kitten I had picked up a few weeks earlier while casing a pet shop. The young man who ran the shop was a local drug dealer who I suspected had been involved in a murder, and I had gone to the shop pretending to be interested in buying a kitten. I ended up leaving with Dandelion and several clues that helped me crack the case.
As soon as I opened the front door, Dandelion scooted out from under the sofa and shot straight for the door, hoping to get outside. My reaction time was still good enough to get the door closed behind me, but I worried one day she’d be too fast for me, or I’d squash her in the door. My grandson, Martin, would never forgive me. I would never forgive me. More to the point, Dandelion would never forgive me.
That cat yearned to go outside, which was why I had decided to start a garden—so that Dandelion would have a jungle where she could pretend to be a tiger. I’d already bought some netting to put around the fence so she couldn’t slip out, but without a garden inside, it would look like Stalag 17. Dandelion would just have to wait until the garden was ready before I could let her safely play Queen of the Jungle.
“Good afternoon,” I said as she crawled up my pant leg. This was another of her habits. I’d lost enough pairs of panty hose to her little claws that I’d learned to wear pants most of the time.
Taking advantage of her nearness as she hung on my leg, I scooped her up, endured several scratches from her tiny claws, and locked her in the kitchen. There was no way I could move all my gardening purchases out of the car without her shooting out the front door like a furry little meteor.
I brought in the Gardening for Numbskulls book and the tools then set the flowers on the front porch and watered them. Water leaked out the holes in the bottom of their little plastic boxes, making an unattractive puddle on my porch. By this time, Dandelion was mewling piteously and scratching at the kitchen door.
“Coming! Once I’m done, I’ll feed you, and we can settle in for a cup of tea, all right?” I called. More quietly, I added, “Oh dear, I’ve reached the ‘old lady who has conversations with her cat’ phase. And now I’m talking to myself! I’ll be pushing a shopping trolley down Main Street and muttering to myself before long.”
Clamping my mouth shut, I opened the kitchen door and watched a tortoiseshell blur fly for the front door, veer off at the last moment when it became obvious the door was closed, and disappear under the sofa.
I opened a tin of cat food and made myself a cup of tea, already thinking about the murder I’d heard about. The thought got me so excited I almost didn’t notice Dandelion munching contentedly from her bowl.
Within a few minutes, I’d settled down with a cup of tea in front of my computer and was scanning through the recent death notices in the Cheerville Gazette. There being so many retirees in Cheerville, it took some time to get through, but eventually, I found what I was looking for.
Beloved father and noted gardener Archibald Heaney of 67 Terrace Lane, Cheerville, died by accident at his home on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 12, in his garden in Cheerville. He was 84. A leading topiary expert, past president of the American Topiary Society, and contributor to its magazine Green Art, Mr. Heaney was well known throughout the Cheerville community for his work promoting gardening and for his prize-winning displays at his home. He was also past president of the Cheerville Gardening Society and an active practitioner of yoga at the Cheerville Senior Center.
Born August 13, 1932, he was a veteran of the Korean War, where he was decorated with the Bronze Star for valor, and worked as a mechanical engineer at Boeing
for 35 years before retiring. His wife, Dorothy, preceded him in death in 2007. He is survived by their daughter, Ellen, and sons, Andrew and Chris. Memorial services will be held at Cheerville Methodist Church this Friday at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to the Fresh Air Fund.
I bit my lip. The obituary told me very little. It didn’t even tell me what “topiary” was. A quick internet search informed me it was the art of cutting bushes into various decorative shapes.
That switched on a lightbulb in my head. I’d seen Archibald’s home. Once, when out shopping in my first month in Cheerville with my daughter-in-law, Alicia, we’d passed a large home with a spacious front lawn. At least a dozen bushes had been cut into the likenesses of animals or strange geometric shapes. Alicia had pointed it out to me and said it was a local landmark. We’d passed it again later that year to see the Christmas lights. Good old Archibald had put on quite a show.
I scanned through the police pages and didn’t see any mention of a murder investigation, although that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. It was strange, though, that there hadn’t been any rumors of one. My reading group was full of gossips, and there hadn’t been a peep about someone getting sliced open with hedge clippers. You’d think that sort of thing would make the rounds.
Dandelion leapt onto the keyboard, walked in a tight circle, and lay down, turning into a fuzzy, comatose blob. The screen displayed several pages of the Cheerville Gazette before freezing on one. In the box at the top of the screen where you type the URL address, the letter M repeated over and over. Dandelion had stepped on the Caps Lock, and her chin was resting on the “m” key.
“Never mind, Dandelion. I’m done with the computer. It’s time to pay a visit to my friend at the police station.”
