Granny Undercover (Secret Agent Granny Book 2)

by Harper Lin

  I walked down the well-carpeted hall with its soothing colors, soft music, and bland paintings. I never thought I’d miss Kabul until I saw this place.

  Another young woman, dressed all in white like the one at the front desk, came out of a door and gave me a flat smile.

  “Are you lost, honey?” she asked in a volume more suitable for calling me from the other end of the building.

  “Are you trained to speak louder than normal?”

  To her credit, she didn’t skip a beat. “Yes, I am. Are you lost?”

  “I’m going to Seniors Yoga.”

  “That’s in the—”

  “Jockey Room, last door on the right,” I said, finishing her sentence.

  Her grin got wider. “Very good!”

  She walked down the hall toward the main entrance. She had said that like she was complimenting a three-year-old on his finger painting. Plus, she’d turned up the volume. Was she messing with me? Did she know I could break both her arms?

  Well, these days, breaking both her arms would probably throw my back out and leave me bedridden for a week, but I could still do it.

  Shaking my head, I went to the last door on the right, which was adorned with a brass sign that said Jockey Room in large, easy-to-read letters.

  I had been wondering why it was called the Jockey Room, and now I got the answer.

  Remember lawn jockeys? They were these little metal statues of black boys dressed up as jockeys. They had red caps and vests, white pants, and shiny black boots, and they held a lamp. People put them on their front lawns. Most weren’t caricatures, the faces looked natural, but they did seem out of place on the lawns of wealthy white families who knew no black people other than their servants.

  The story goes that they were made in honor of Jocko, George Washington’s nine-year-old stable boy who volunteered to hold the general’s horse during a storm one cold winter night. The general returned the next morning to find the boy frozen stiff, his hands still clasping the reins. To commemorate this show of loyalty, Washington was said to have made the first lawn jockey to adorn his front lawn at Mount Vernon. I have no idea if that was true, and I never really understood the point of lawn jockeys. It was just one of those odd things rich people did.

  I don’t know if the NAACP ever had a concerted campaign to get rid of lawn jockeys, or if Jesse Jackson ever led any protest marches through rich, white neighborhoods to make the residents throw out those bizarre and vaguely offensive lawn ornaments. I’m not sure the NAACP and Mr. Jackson even cared. They had enough on their plate as it was.

  In any case, during the eighties, the lawn jockeys started to disappear. By some unspoken agreement, people decided they were racist, and people didn’t want to be perceived as racist, least of all the racists themselves. Some lawn jockeys were given a coat of white paint on their faces in an attempt to make them socially acceptable, but that only made them more hideous, and even those soon began to disappear. By the end of the decade, you could hardly find a single one. A staple of suburban America had vanished, replaced by the equally grotesque but politically neutral garden gnome. I had always wondered what happened to the old-fashioned lawn jockey.

  Now I knew. The lawn jockeys had all come to the Cheerville Senior Center.

  They lined all four walls. There must have been almost a hundred of them, a diminutive army of outmoded political incorrectness. Some still had their covering of white paint, that last-ditch effort to make them socially acceptable, while on others, the white paint had started flaking off. Most, however, had their original black faces. They all stood facing inwards, holding out their lanterns as if to illuminate the Seniors Yoga class going on within their smiling circle.

  The yoga class looked as out of fashion as the lawn jockeys. Three tidy rows of Cheerville’s senior citizens stood on yoga mats, their legs planted at shoulder width and their hands raised in the air. The array of pink and yellow sweat pants was almost blinding. A healthy-looking woman in her forties stood in front. She was obviously the instructor. She was the only one who fit properly into her stretch pants.

  There seemed to be some sort of hierarchy in the class. The oldest all stood in the front row, perhaps so if they toppled over, the teacher could catch them. The younger ladies stood in the second row. The back row had only a few guys.

  I was wondering why all the guys were in the back row until the teacher called out, “Forward fold!” and everyone bent forward. Or tried to bend forward. Some almost touched their toes. Others just sort of leaned a little. The men barely bent over at all. They were too busy staring at all the behinds pushed out in front of them.

  Boys will be boys, even when they’re old men.

  “Aaaand, stretch!”

  Everyone inhaled and stood up straight, or as straight as they could. Withered arms and arthritic fingers reached for the ceiling. The faces looked serene. I’d heard yoga was good for meditation, and it certainly seemed like it was wiping these ladies’ cares away. The guys in the back row were getting some psychological benefit too.

  “Hello!” The yoga instructor greeted me in a chirpy voice. To her credit, she actually said this in a normal volume. “Take your shoes off and join us. There’s a spare yoga mat in the back row if you don’t mind sharing space with the guys.”

  I didn’t mind at all. If I was in the back row, they wouldn’t be ogling me every time I made a yoga move.

  Slipping off my sneakers, I took my place just in time to do another forward fold. Hip joints snapped and male eyeballs popped all across the room.

  “Aaaand, stretch!” the instructor called again.

  We stretched.

  Then came something called Warrior Pose, where you bend the front leg, stretch out the back leg, and put your body sideways while stretching out your arms horizontally. I’m not sure why it was called Warrior Pose, since it didn’t seem like a good pose for shooting or stabbing someone, but it was a decent way to stretch. Looking around the room, it appeared I was the only warrior in the crowd, except for a couple of men who looked like veterans of the Napoleonic Wars.

  Not all of the men in the room were aging perverts. The man next to me looked remarkably fit. Young too. He didn’t look a day over 65, although I guessed he was probably a bit older if he was hanging out with this crowd. He wasn’t even looking at the row of bottoms arrayed before him.

  He was looking at me.

  And smiling.

  “You’re new, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “None of us are new,” I replied.

  He flashed me a grin, showing a good set of teeth that were flawed just enough to convince me they were real. His hair was real too, and he had a full head of it. It was mostly gray, but I had long since stopped being picky about such things.

  “I’m Octavian,” he said. The last syllable came out somewhat strained as we did something called Tree Pose, which involved getting on one leg and resting the foot of the other below the knee. He nearly pitched over right into me. I got the feeling he wouldn’t have minded that at all.

  “After the Roman emperor?” I asked.

  “My father was a Classics professor.”

  “I’m Barbara. Pleased to meet you.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. The way he said it made me feel something I hadn’t felt in quite a long time. I tamped it down. I had a murder to investigate. I also had to maintain Tree Pose, which was more difficult than it should have been. I tried to remember the last time I had stood on one leg and couldn’t recall.

  Of course, I was doing better than everyone else in the room except for the instructor. There had already been several stumbles, and a few of the students weren’t even trying. They just stood there, which was probably wise on their part.

  The instructor grew serious, her features darkening from her previous calm.

  “Now, it’s time for meditation. All of you lie down on your yoga mats with your arms and legs spread slightly apart. Try to clear your mind and let your muscles relax. I
know we’re all thinking about poor Archibald—”

  At this point Octavian made a little grunting noise, like he’d been punched in the stomach.

  “So perhaps we could send good thoughts through the cosmos to that happy place where his consciousness now resides.”

  Everyone lay down on their mats. I followed suit, trying not to think about how many stinky septuagenarian socks had rubbed against its rubbery surface. I was hoping the instructor would say more about Archibald, but she only stood there looking sad. I glanced at Octavian. He looked pretty grim too. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and closed his eyes.

  Everyone else did the same, so I figured that was what I was supposed to do. This was the first time I had been to a yoga class. Karate and pistol practice were more my thing.

  In fact, the meditation turned out to be quite relaxing. Even though I had come late to class and had only done a few minutes of stretching and exercise, lying down on a springy yoga mat with a soft carpet beneath it, breathing deeply and slowly, in and out, in a quiet room, quickly put me at ease. With my eyes closed, I could even ignore the grinning stares of the lawn jockeys, which, I have to admit, made me a bit self-conscious.

  Yes, it was relaxing. So relaxing that one of the guys to my left started snoring.

  I opened my eyes and peeked, only to see Octavian looking at me.

  We both looked away then glanced back at each other. Octavian jerked his head in the direction of the snorer and flashed me another grin. I smiled back.

  Hmm, perhaps this wasn’t part of the class. I made a point of looking back at the ceiling and closing my eyes.

  We lay like that for several minutes, but I was no longer relaxed. I was wondering if Octavian was still staring at me. It had been a long time since I’d attracted that much attention from a man who wasn’t trying to kill me.

  You don’t know that for sure yet, I reminded myself. You’re on a murder investigation, remember, and right now, pretty much anyone who knew the victim is a suspect.

  When the instructor announced our meditation period was over and we could all get up and go, I smiled at Octavian and stepped over to talk with him.

  Just for the sake of the investigation, of course.

  “Are you a gardener?” I asked. I figured that would be a good question to ask someone who had known Archibald without it sounding like a pickup line. I didn’t want this gentleman to get the wrong idea.

  Octavian cocked his head and gave me a smile. “You know, no one has ever accused me of that before. The closest thing to gardening I ever did was mowing the lawn when I was a kid.”

  “Oh, I just figured, since you knew Archibald…”

  He stiffened. “Um, no. We were just friends. Did you know him from one of his gardening clubs?”

  “No. I’m fairly new to town, and I’m just getting into gardening. Everyone kept telling me to talk to him because he was such a local talent. I heard he even won awards.”

  Octavian rolled up his yoga mat and nodded. “He sure did. Pity you never got to meet him. A good man. Care for a drink?”

  The sudden change in subject was accompanied by a piercing gaze that made me feel put on the spot, although in a good way.

  “Um, sure,” I said.

  A “drink,” fortunately, didn’t involve going to some dive bar. My dive bar days are, thankfully, long over. Too many fights. Have you ever had a beer bottle broken over your head? It’s not a pleasant experience, I can tell you. Thank God I’d had my hair tied up in a bun. Otherwise, I would have needed surgery rather than just stitches.

  No, Octavian wasn’t the dive bar type, at least not on a first date, and he sure was acting like it was a date. This guy worked fast. He even paid for my strawberry apple smoothie at the senior center’s snack bar like he’d just ordered a two-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne.

  We made the usual small talk for the first few minutes. Octavian had moved to Cheerville when he retired, just like I had. He’d worked as a stockbroker in the city for most of his professional career and had grown tired of city life, so Cheerville was the obvious choice, once he no longer needed to be in the city for work. He did let drop that he missed some of the excitement, although you could “find some excitement locally.” This led to the casual mention that he was a widower, at which point I casually mentioned I was a widow. Just to keep the conversation on an equal basis, of course.

  Then the conversation took a sudden turn.

  “Do you like horses?” he asked. “Every little girl likes horses.”

  I laughed. “I haven’t been a little girl in a long, long time.”

  “Ah, but you’re young at heart. I can tell. Do you follow the Grand National?”

  I was vaguely aware that the Grand National was England’s biggest horse race and that it was coming up soon. I decided to fake an interest.

  “Oh, those horses are so beautiful! I don’t know much about the races, but they’re always fascinating to watch.”

  At this point, Octavian launched into a lecture about horse racing. Men love to show off their knowledge. Younger women call this “mansplaining” and cry sexism, but men do it to each other too. It’s not so much sexism as it is the modern version of primal chest thumping. I’ve noticed the amount of mansplaining is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of actual chest thumping the man in question gets to do. Dear old James, with his detonators and Third World insurgencies, hardly ever mansplained.

  Octavian had obviously never blown up a bridge or taken down a rogue government, because he mansplained quite a bit. At least he knew what he was talking about, unlike some of the guys at the shooting range. I loved enduring a lecture about firearms from some show-off half my age and then placing eight rounds in a tight cluster at the center of the target from fifty yards. The guy’s jaw would drop like he’d just tried to swallow a bowling ball.

  But I knew next to nothing about horses, so I nodded and made interested noises as Octavian taught me far more than I ever wanted to know. In the back of my mind, a little bell was going off. Horse racing meant betting, and betting meant debts. From the snippet of conversation I’d overheard, Archibald Heaney had a large amount of debt.

  “So which horse should I back?” I interjected.

  Octavian’s eyes lit up. “Ah! I’d pick Kentucky Pride for first place and Ghost of a Chance for second.”

  “Ghost of a Chance? That’s not a name that inspires confidence.”

  “Oh, he’s a sure one to place.” This set off a lecture about why his two picks were clear winners, even though the odds were against them. Most of his reasoning was spurious, based not on the horses’ past performances, but on some complex relationship between which horse had been in which races and at what starting gate. It all sounded like numerology to me.

  I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Octavian was going down in my estimation. You didn’t need to be a mathematical genius to know gambling was a fool’s game with the odds stacked against you. So many people fell into it, though, chasing some imagined streak of luck rather than rationally thinking about what they were doing. Octavian seemed like a nice man, so it bothered me to see that feverish gleam in his eye. I didn’t really want to think about why that bothered me so much.

  That little bell in the back of my mind was ringing louder now. Betting on horse races was illegal in our state and every neighboring state. Octavian, however, was definitely betting on the races. So where was he doing it?

  I knew how to find out.

  I looked around as if to be sure no one was listening, leaned forward conspiratorially, “unconsciously” moved my hand closer to his, and looked him in the eye as I smiled.

  “So where would a lady find a place to have some fun with the horses in this dull little town?”

  Four

  It didn’t look like much from the outside, just a plain shop front in a strip mall at the edge of town, set between a hardware store and an electronics outlet. A nondescript sign said Cheerville Social Club. A n
otice on the door said Members Only. The windows were shaded.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Octavian said, gesturing at the sign. “As a longtime member, I can vouch for you.”

  The background check the club ran on me would vouch for me too. When Octavian took my number after our little smoothie date at the senior center, he was quite particular about getting my full name. He’d also asked enough questions to know when I had come to Cheerville, where I had lived before that, and even my birthday. Not that he asked me how old I was—he was too much of a gentleman—but he did get the date of my birthday out of me.

  I know when I’m being interrogated. Enough secret agents have tried to do it to me that I have a sixth sense about such things, and those secret agents were far better at it than Octavian. Not that he was clumsy or obvious. If not for my training, I would have never noticed our two-hour-long conversation—yes, we took that much time over our smoothies—had been peppered with various questions that, when strung together, made a good profile of yours truly that pinpointed me among all the other Barbara Golds in the world. This “social club” wanted to make sure I wasn’t a cop or a reporter or even worse, some sort of self-appointed social campaigner.

  The fact that Octavian went to such pains to check on me indicated this was an organized operation. I suspected he had passed on the information to whoever ran this place for more detailed checks. This probably happened with all new members. Since I was here, it looked like I had passed muster.

  As Octavian knocked, I noticed a small security camera placed unobtrusively above the door.

  The door opened. A large young man who looked like he weighed about two hundred fifty pounds, all of it muscle, stood on the other side. Beyond him was a tiny front room with another door on the opposite wall.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Perry,” the guard said. This was not a doorman, I could tell. This was a guard.

  “Good afternoon, Lance,” Octavian said. “This is the guest I told you about.”