Granny Undercover (Secret Agent Granny Book 2)

by Harper Lin

  Two

  Television and movies only showed you three types of cops—the streetwise tough guy who broke all the rules, the wide-eyed rookie with a heart of gold who usually got killed, and the grizzled old chief who did things by the book.

  Arnold Grimal, police chief of the City of Cheerville, didn’t fit any of these stereotypes.

  Arnold Grimal had had it easy. He’d always been a policeman in quiet suburban towns. I’d checked his background and discovered the only time he’d fired his gun on a call was to take down a rabid raccoon. To his credit, he did take it out in one shot. He’d been on the force for thirty years, and while he’d seen his share of robberies, drug addicts, and domestic violence, the vast majority of his career had been spent handing out parking tickets or directing traffic at the Fourth of July parade. I think I seriously upset his laid-back lifestyle when I discovered a murderer in my reading group. I know for a fact he nearly had a heart attack when the director of the Central Intelligence Agency called and told him to take me seriously.

  And now I had to ruin his day yet again.

  Police Chief Grimal was in his middle fifties, with a serious paunch that draped over his waistline so much I couldn’t see his belt. His hair was going thin on top, and he compensated by having one of those thick moustaches that went out of style in the seventies for everyone but policemen. His nose and cheeks showed faint red splotches that hinted at an overindulgence in the one intoxicating drug that was legal in the United States.

  Okay, I wasn’t being very kind. When he invited me into his office, his handshake was firm, and his breath smelled of Chinese takeout, not booze. Under his direction, the Cheerville Police Department ran efficiently, and there had been few inroads of crime like so many suburban areas had suffered in recent years. Grimal wasn’t a bad cop; he was simply a colorless man in a colorless job.

  Grimal closed the door behind him so we could speak privately.

  He sat down behind his desk, which was strewn with paperwork. One of those plastic nameplates set in a little brass holder uselessly informed guests who they were speaking to. The nameplate was one of those ugly brown ones that looked like it had been made in the eighties and had been sitting there ever since.

  “So how can I help the CIA this afternoon?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s not really a CIA matter, but I was curious about the death of Archibald Heaney.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, did you know him?”

  “Um, no, but some acquaintances of mine did.”

  “It’s a shame. He was an upstanding member of the community. Pity he didn’t reach out for help.”

  “Help?”

  “He committed suicide.”

  “Did he?” I replied, making a good impression of being surprised. “I thought he had an accident.”

  Grimal shook his head. “I’m afraid not. That would have been impossible with hedge clippers, anyway. There’s a safety switch that prevents that from happening. The only way he could have died was by deliberately holding down the switch.”

  “I see. So he held the switch as the hedge clippers cut into him?”

  Grimal inclined his head as if to acknowledge this was indeed unusual.

  “I’ve seen stranger things. The man had determination. He was a decorated war veteran, after all. The guy might have been quiet and unassuming in his old age, but that didn’t mean he still didn’t have grit when it counted.”

  “Does the county coroner agree with this assessment?”

  Grimal nodded and gestured toward his computer screen. “I got the report right here.”

  The way he said it didn’t make it sound as if I was invited to take a look myself. I decided on a different tactic.

  “So do you have any idea why he killed himself?”

  Grimal shrugged. “His health was in decline—arthritis and a heart condition, according to his doctor. Several of his gardening friends said he was worried he wouldn’t be able to keep up with his hobby because the arthritis was getting worse. Plus, he lost his wife a while back. The press is always focusing on teen suicide, and while that’s a major problem, it’s senior citizens who are actually more likely to kill themselves. They lose a spouse, their health starts to decline, and they can’t participate in the hobbies that keep them going. They lose hope.”

  This was followed by a short silence. I supposed it was my turn to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything. I had lost the dearest man in the world a few years ago and had felt adrift ever since. Moving to Cheerville had helped a bit, especially being close to my son, daughter-in-law, and lovely grandson, but I’d felt a bit useless. It was hard to switch from international operative to granny at the drop of a hat. That last murder investigation had really saved me from a growing sense of despair.

  And now, I was looking for another one.

  I didn’t need Grimal to explain to me the loneliness and black pit of depression that can come with old age. I’d been fighting it ever since James passed. But even in my darkest moments, I had never considered the possibility of ending it all. That was quitting, and while I understood the temptation, I simply wasn’t the kind of person who quit.

  Something told me Archibald Heaney wasn’t, either. He’d survived war, had a long career in a demanding field, and led an active retirement right up to the day of his death.

  I thought about that for a moment. Grimal may have been a sheltered small-town cop, but he was no fool. He didn’t buy the suicide story any more than I did, so why was he trying to convince me? And why cover up a murder? I couldn’t think of any reason why the police chief would want the local topiary expert dead, although I had to admit I didn’t know enough about either man to form any conclusions.

  What I did know was that I wouldn’t get any more satisfaction here. Grimal had clammed up. Archibald’s death had been a suicide, and that was the end of it as far as he was concerned.

  But it wasn’t the end of it for me.

  I thanked Grimal and made some sympathetic remarks about the poor old man I pretended to believe had killed himself, and then I said my goodbyes and left. I had some investigating to do.

  The first stop was the scene of the crime.

  Terrace Lane, as its name suggested, was a flat strip of land along the side of a long, low ridge overlooking Cheerville. It was prime real estate thanks to its lovely view over the treetops and historic town center. In the autumn, everyone came up here to see the colors. Around Christmastime, the elaborate light displays the residents of Terrace Lane put up were visible from many parts of town.

  I drove slowly, looking at the numbers on the mailboxes of the large Colonial-style houses. I needn’t have bothered. It was obvious which house was Archibald Heaney’s. As I passed a series of identical front lawns with the same flower beds and the same trophy cars parked outside the garages where everyone could see them, I came to a very different front lawn. It was bigger than most and had no flower beds. Instead, it had a variety of bushes and trees scattered around, all cut into elaborate designs. I saw a bear, a dove, an angel, a female figure, a shamrock, and some geometric shapes. A fresh bouquet of flowers leaned against the mailbox.

  I passed the house and parked a little way down the street. A couple of people were strolling down the street in the opposite direction, but otherwise, no one was around.

  Walking over to the lawn, I wondered which bush he had been working on when he came to his sticky end. Most likely, it was one of the ones that weren’t finished yet. Some were trimmed and tidy, while others had some stray leaves and ends of branches sticking out, marring the fine contours. Poor Archibald had died halfway through spring trimming.

  I went over to the bouquet. A card said “From the Cheerville Gardening Society. Rest in peace in the garden of paradise.” I imagined the deceased trimming bushes in heaven. I suppose that would be paradise for him. Of course, James was in heaven too, and his idea of paradise was blowing things up alongside Latina guerrillas toting Kalashnikovs. He always did like th
ose Latina guerillas a little too much. I wondered how those two visions of a perfect afterlife would work together. Would James blow up Archibald’s bushes? That hardly seemed fair.

  One of the unfinished bushes caught my eye. It was the shamrock, set by the side of the house between the wall and a high hedge that delineated his property from his neighbor’s. One half of the design was neatly trimmed, while the other still needed a lot of work. I surveyed the other bushes and found all were either fully trimmed or not trimmed at all. Only the shamrock was halfway done.

  Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, I walked across the lawn.

  I’m no expert on topiary, but on closer inspection, it was obvious that part of the shamrock had been finished, and part was left to be done later. A prizewinning gardener would probably finish the job, not leave a bush half done.

  Unless he never got the chance to finish it.

  Something caught my eye behind the bush. I had to edge around the giant shamrock to get between it and the wall, and I found myself in a narrow space between the house and the boundary hedge. The earth was mostly bare since it didn’t get much direct light, and the little grass that did grow in this hidden strip of ground was kicked up in places.

  I saw several footprints from two different pairs of shoes. There was also a tray of flowers in little plastic boxes, just like the ones I’d bought. It was sitting at an odd angle, and some of the dirt had come out of it, as if it had been dropped, not set down. It didn’t look like a place a prizewinning gardener would put a tray of flowers, anyway. I pulled out my phone and took some pictures.

  Then I noticed the wall of the house. A big patch right behind the bush had recently been washed. It was cleaner than the rest of the wall. A long garden hose wound around a metal coil hanging on the wall a few feet away told me how it had been cleaned.

  I examined the bush but didn’t see any obvious place where the hedge clippers could have slipped, no half-cut branch with a knot in it that could have made the power tool spring back and hit the topiary expert in the neck. No, this wasn’t an accident. And it didn’t look like suicide either.

  It looked like a murder someone was trying to cover up.

  I was standing where Archibald had been killed. There had been a struggle that had churned up the earth. Then the murderer killed him with his own hedge clippers before cleaning up the scene, getting rid of the spray of blood on the wall.

  But why? Why get rid of the blood if you didn’t get rid of the body?

  I suspected whoever had killed him had been known to Archibald. That was playing the odds—most murders were committed by people known to the victim—but also common sense. Someone had lured Archibald to the one place he could be expected to be using his hedge clippers, but was also out of sight of the street and the neighbors, and then killed him.

  Archibald had probably been holding the tray of flowers and dropped it immediately when he’d been attacked. I didn’t see any bloodstains on the tray, but it could have been cleaned by the hose too. Perhaps that was when he’d been cut on the forehead. Then, before he could defend himself or even bring up his hands—since there was no mention of defensive wounds to the hands or arms—the murderer had cut him in the neck. Perhaps they’d fought over the hedge clippers, hence the disturbed soil. The murderer had been stronger than Archibald, not that that narrowed down the type of suspect much. Archibald may have been relatively fit, but he was in his eighties.

  The murder scene told me something else too. Whoever had done it was an amateur. First off, they’d used a murder weapon that didn’t jibe well with the suicide idea. Plus, while they had washed the wall, they hadn’t obscured all the footprints. Whoever killed him had probably seen one of those cop shows talking about how blood trails can indicate angle of impact and all that, and worried the blood would suggest the cut had not been self-inflicted. That was debatable in any case, but an amateur might have felt concerned about such a thing.

  Not covering up the footprints was “a n00b move,” as my grandson would say. “N00b” was short for “newbie,” as in “neophyte,” a word I am certain has disappeared from the modern lexicon as much as the word “lexicon” has. Why “n00b” was spelled with two zeros was beyond me. Anyway, footprints were almost as good as fingerprints. A proper lab could tell quite a bit from a footprint.

  I did not have a proper lab, however, and with my vision the way it was, I couldn’t even study the footprints properly. I’d have to load the pictures onto my computer and enlarge them.

  The footprints had already told me something, however. Police Chief Grimal was not the murderer. He may have been an overdrinking small-town cop with an easy job, but he was no n00b. He was covering for someone else, not himself.

  Taking some photos of the wall and shamrock, I moved along the side of the house but didn’t see anything else interesting. The little alleyway led to a backyard. No topiary there, just some lawn furniture, a birdbath, and some flower beds.

  I was just heading back the way I came, edging around the shamrock again, when disaster struck.

  A car pulled up in front of the house. I ducked behind the shamrock and watched as a man and woman in their late forties or early fifties got out. They resembled each other, so I guessed they were related, not married. The fact that they both looked sad suggested they knew the victim.

  Luckily, I’d parked my car fifty yards down the street and on the opposite side, a regular precaution so the subjects didn’t suspect they were being watched. The pair walked up to the front door, and the woman produced a key and unlocked the door. Two of Archibald’s children?

  I caught a snatch of conversation.

  “You going to deal with the bank today?” the woman asked.

  “Yes.” The man sighed. “Dad’s finances are a mess, though. I have to call the credit card companies and provide proof he’s deceased.”

  “He really maxed out all of them?”

  “Cash advances. Why didn’t he tell us? We could have helped.”

  They closed the door behind them, and I heard no more.

  I peeked out from behind the shamrock, feeling like a naughty leprechaun, and saw the front blinds were down. Hoping they didn’t choose that moment to raise them, I hurried back to the sidewalk and strolled as calmly as I could back to my car.

  I drove away deep in thought. I now had a motive—debt. If our dear departed topiary man had maxed out his credit cards to get cash advances, it meant he owed someone big time and had obviously not been able to pay enough for the murderer’s satisfaction. Killing someone is a poor way to collect what you’re owed, though. More likely, the real reason Archibald was killed was that he was being put under pressure to pay, couldn’t manage it, and threatened to go to the police.

  Drugs? Unlikely. Organized crime? Perhaps. North Korean agents had infiltrated the American Topiary Society, intent on stealing our lawn decorating secrets for their own nefarious purposes? Well, that would certainly get me back in my comfort zone.

  So I had a possible motive, but I still didn’t have the reasons behind that motive, nor did I have a likely suspect. I knew almost nothing about the man and knew no one who knew him. The two ladies I’d eavesdropped on at the Cheerville Garden Centre seemed unlikely suspects, as did Archibald’s children.

  I only had a couple of other leads—his gardening society and his yoga classes. The murderer was most likely a member of one of those organizations.

  So of course, I needed to join both of them.

  Three

  The Cheerville Senior Center did not have an English theme and therefore had its “e” and its “r” in the proper order. It was a rambling one-story structure at the center of a spacious, well-manicured stretch of green bounded by woods. To one side stood a duck pond that glittered in the sunlight.

  Several bushes had been shaped into topiaries of kittens and children. There was one impressive sculpture of a little girl holding a balloon, her dress swirling around her legs as if blowing in the wind.
A slim branch served as the string of the balloon, a sphere of greenery making up the balloon itself.

  Oak and birch trees provided shade for the various white-painted benches that were scattered here and there. Only a few were occupied even though the parking lot was nearly full. Cheerville’s seniors weren’t the outdoorsy type. They came to the senior center not for a chance to enjoy nature, but to socialize with other aged locals and engage in the various activities put on by the staff.

  Or so I’d heard. I had never been to the Cheerville Senior Center or any other senior center. Like everyone else, I resented growing old, and I saw no need to be constantly reminded of it.

  Clucking my tongue in disapproval, I took a couple of turns around the parking lot, finally found an empty space, and parked. Feeling conspicuous in my running shoes, T-shirt, and sweat pants, I passed through the sliding glass doors, which whooshed open at my approach—presumably so that my decrepit body wouldn’t have to suffer the agonies of turning a doorknob—and entered the main lobby.

  The temperature inside was perfect. Relaxing, mentally-unchallenging music played at a low volume through a hidden sound system. In one corner, a pair of Cheerville’s elder generation snoozed on a pair of identical armchairs. Paintings of flowers and landscapes adorned the walls. I almost turned and ran.

  Summoning my courage, I approached the main desk, where a young woman gave me an unconvincing smile, the kind of smile required in employee manuals. She was dressed all in white like a nurse, but without an actual nurse’s uniform.

  “Where is the yoga class being held?” I asked.

  “Seniors Yoga is in the Jockey Room,” she said in a voice a little louder than necessary. I suppose she thought I was deaf. “Just take that hallway all the way to the end. It’s the last door on the right. It’s already started.”

  Thanking her, I set off, already irritated. Why did they need to call it “Seniors Yoga”? It was held in a senior center, so wasn’t that already obvious? Were they just trying to rub it in?