Mint Cookie Murder

by Leslie Langtry

  He noticed!

  "I did! Kelly took me shopping." Maybe I shouldn't have said that. Maybe a grown-up goes shopping for furniture on her own.

  Detective Hottie shook his head. "I can come over later and fix it for you."

  Fix it for me?

  He continued before I could respond, "I've already gotten your statement so you don't have to go downtown. We'll take the body to the coroner now. We've documented everything, so you can clean up if you like."

  I nodded. "Okay. Can you tell me how he died?" I had some suspicions. From the way he fell, the bloody smears on the sidewalk, and the holes in the back of his coat, I knew he'd been shot. Small caliber, definitely. That's why he didn't die immediately. But I wasn't going to say anything because I'd read in my online research that men don't like women upstaging them in their own profession. Which was totally stupid, but I was trying to be a supportive girlfriend.

  "Looks like he's been shot." Rex said with a wink. "But I'm sure you knew that already." He squeezed my arm affectionately and headed for the doorway. He smelled good. Too good. And I remembered that he'd been shaving when I called him.

  "You smell good," I ventured. "Why were you shaving at seven o'clock at night?"

  "Oh yeah." He grinned. "I was getting ready to go out."

  "Did we have plans?" Oh crap. Had I forgotten? I should probably buy a calendar too.

  "No," he said simply. "An old friend is in town, and I was going to meet her for a couple of drinks. I'll have to reschedule now."

  Her? Did he say her?

  "I've got to get to the office," Rex said as he glanced at his watch. "I'll call you later, okay?" He kissed me on the cheek and headed out the door. I heard a loud, deep meoooooooooooow behind me. It sounded like a goat being castrated. And yes, I once had to help castrate goats as part of my cover. That's right. I can castrate a goat, but I can't put a coffee table together. Sad, right?

  "Hey, wait!" I called after him. "Aren't you going to take the cat?"

  "No," Rex called from the porch. "We don't know that it's the victim's. But keep it around just in case I need to interview him." He was gone before I could respond to that.

  "You said you wanted a cat," Kelly said from the couch. I turned and glared at her.

  "I was just thinking about getting a cat. I didn't mean it."

  The beast opened his other eye and gave me his full attention. It was unnerving.

  "He's got a Hitler mustache!" I pointed at the perfect, black rectangle below his nose and a dark patch on his head that looked like hair. "I can't keep a Nazi cat! I'm a Girl Scout leader. I need to have standards."

  Kelly shook her head and started scratching the cat's chin. He responded by purring again. "He does! How cute! Who's a cute wittle kitty-cat? You are!" Her voice sounded like a creepy little kid's. "He looks kind of like Charlie Chaplin with that hair too."

  I looked at the black spot on his head. "No. Chaplin's hair was parted down the middle. This cat's is parted on the side. Just like Hitler."

  Kelly hoisted the enormous cat onto her lap and smiled. "It doesn't matter—he's adorable. Not his fault the way his markings are."

  "Okay—so you take Adolf," I said. "He likes you."

  My best friend gave me an exasperated look. "My husband's allergic to cats. You know that." She stood up and put on her coat—a move the cat clearly protested by yowling loudly. "And don't call him Adolf. He doesn't like it. Come on. Let's go to the pet store."

  I stared at her. "You can't be serious."

  But she was. Ten minutes later we were standing in the feline aisle of the local pet store. I went along because I had no choice. What was I going to do? Throw the animal out? Not in front of Kelly. The truth was, I'd never had a pet before (well, except for a brief stint with a llama named Rooster when I was stationed in the Andes—but that's better left unmentioned). Both parents were allergic to anything with fur, and I wasn't interested in the kind that was hairless. Turtles, snakes, and lizards didn't scare me, but they didn't turn me into a mushy mess who wanted an animal to cuddle.

  "Rex is going to have drinks with a woman," I said as I played with a feathery cat toy.

  "I heard him say that," Kelly grunted, heaving a huge box of cat litter into the cart. It fell with a thunk to the bottom. Well, if it didn't work out with the cat, I could always tie it to the cat litter box and throw it into the river.

  "You don't think that's bad?" I asked, tossing the feather toy into the cart. "It doesn't sound good to me."

  Kelly rolled her eyes. "He told you about it, didn't he? He's not hiding anything."

  "Oh—he's definitely hiding something," I said. "He only mentioned it because I caught him."

  "You are so suspicious. Caught him doing what, exactly?" Kelly asked. "Investigating the dead guy on your porch?"

  "That is not my fault. Besides, it's my job to be suspicious. And by the way—why in hell did you call Riley? And since when are you calling Riley?"

  She shrugged. "Since he asked me to keep an eye on you. He can help."

  "Riley hasn't shown any interest in me lately—until something happened that might embarrass the agency. I don't want his help." I ignored the little twinge of sadness in my gut. Yes, it bothered me that Riley hadn't stuck around. But I was getting over that. Now he'd come barging back into my life, batting those blue eyes at me and kissing me when I least expected it, and I'd end up all confused again.

  We pulled up into the driveway with bags of stuff, got out of Kelly's car, and followed Dead Lenny's bloody stain up the sidewalk to the front door.

  "You should probably clean that up," Kelly said.

  "I want to look at it a little more closely," I responded as we went inside and dropped everything on the kitchen counter.

  "Well get out there and do it before the neighborhood starts a petition to run you out," Kelly said as she began to set up the litter box. It had a hood with a hole in the front of it. Like a little kitty hut, but for a giant cat with possible fascist dictator tendencies. I left Kelly to it and went outside.

  The police had towed the orange car away to check for evidence. Drops of blood began where the driver's side would've been. About halfway to the front door, he must've collapsed to the ground, because that's where the smearing started. I knew he'd been shot, and from the blood loss he probably had trouble walking. So why come here? Why me? It didn't make any sense.

  Kelly appeared with a bucket of bleach and a broom. She watched as I scrubbed the stains out. They didn't disappear completely. But at least it no longer looked like I was butchering people in my driveway. I couldn't imagine the neighbors liked that much. Hmmm…this might negatively impact my Girl Scout Cookie sales.

  We went back inside to find the cat sniffing around the litter box. He looked up at us for a moment, and deciding we weren't interesting, wandered inside the box. Only his tail stuck out through the hood. How did he fit his enormous bulk in there?

  "You'll have to take him to a vet and get him looked over," Kelly said as she gathered up her things.

  "I thought I'd wait, and maybe he'd just, you know, go home." The cat stuck his head out of the box and glared. I think he heard me. I knew nothing about cats. Were they into revenge? I'd have to do some research.

  "Don't wait. He could be sick or something," she said. "Call Dr. Rye. I've heard he's excellent."

  "Well, he's certainly not anorexic," I mumbled. This cat resembled a basketball that sprouted fur. He wasn't in shape. He was a shape…round.

  "I'll call the local shelter and see if anyone reported him missing. And the vet can scan him for a chip."

  "A chip? Like a tracking device? That's pretty cool. Where do they put it? Does it explode if the cat does something unsavory?" The idea of an embedded, exploding tracking device was kind of fun.

  Kelly ignored me. "There's no collar, so maybe he did show up with the dead guy. In which case—the cat is probably yours now. You should think of a name."

  "How about Kitler?" I suggested
.

  "Enough with the Nazi references. You'll hurt his feelings." And with that, she walked out the door.

  "I'm not going to name a cat that'll be leaving soon," I grumbled as I grabbed my laptop and headed for the couch. The animal had eaten all my pizza rolls and licked up every drop of ranch dressing. Great. My guess was he'd probably be in that litter box for a while. I had some time to look up the bastard who'd inconsiderately died on my front stoop.

  Lenny Smith had been busted under the CIA's watch with two other agents. I'd had nothing to do with his capture. He'd been an IT geek who worked at different times for all the big companies in Silicon Valley. No one seemed to notice how much he job-hopped. I guess that was normal in the field. It wasn't until Cy Stern, a colleague of mine who specialized in Asian languages, started noticing a lot of chatter by the Chinese about a mole in the IT industry.

  Cy was a great agent. He followed Smith all over Beijing and produced enough intel for the FBI to stage a little welcome home party for Lenny when he flew back to San Francisco. Unfortunately, Cy didn't get the credit because, you know, undercover crap and all. But trust me, he did all the heavy lifting.

  When I said Lenny was a geek, I meant it. A little, mousy guy with a beer belly and receding hairline, he wore Google glasses all the time and had a fashion sense lost somewhere in the late '80s. In spite of this, he managed the largest tech heist ever across five of the big companies.

  The last I'd heard, he was someone's "girlfriend" in prison. So how was he out and dead here in Iowa? The networks hadn't picked up the story yet. I was pretty sure Rex was keeping this in lockdown. He probably didn't tell anyone who he was.

  I should call him.

  "Merry?" Rex asked, picking up on the first ring.

  "Oh, hey," I tried to sound sheepish. "Sorry for the extra work tonight. Can you talk?"

  "Not really." There was a smile in his voice. "I rescheduled meeting my friend. This is going to take a while. Hold on a sec."

  Oh, no. I ruined his meeting with "her." So sad.

  "Sorry. I didn't want the guys to hear. I'm not releasing the name of the victim yet. Thought I'd give you a head start before the media started pestering you."

  Awww! What a thoughtful guy! "Thanks. Any chance you can avoid saying where the body was found?"

  "For a little while, at least," Rex responded. "I've called the Feds. They're sending their local guys over."

  "There are local guys?" I asked. I didn't think small-town Iowa had any agents, but I didn't mix well with the Feds. Most CIA employees don't.

  "Yeah. There's an office in Des Moines," he said. "They don't want the word out before they understand what exactly happened."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that until this happened, no one at the prison even knew Lenny was gone. They thought he was in his cell right up until the moment I called them, and I told him he wasn't there."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The doorbell rang. I thanked my adorable boyfriend, and he promised to stop by once he got off work to check in.

  "Riley," I said, my face falling as I answered the door. My former handler flashed his blue-eyed golden boy smile at me and stepped inside. He was wearing a white, button-down shirt with pressed khakis. And he was carrying a suitcase.

  "Hello, Wrath." Riley said as he shut the door behind him and set down the suitcase. "Guess what? I'm moving in."

  "What?" I stepped backward, shaking my head. "No. You aren't. You can go to a hotel. You can't stay here." A dead traitor shows up on my doorstep, and he thinks that's an invitation to play house?

  "You've got an extra bedroom," he said as he made his way down the hall. "The agency wants me to monitor you closely."

  "I don't work for the agency anymore. I don't know why I have to keep telling you that," I snarled.

  He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. You're still a person of interest. We still haven't explained Midori, and now you have dead traitors showing up at your house."

  Midori Ito, head of the Yakuza, had made an appearance as a dead woman in my kitchen a few months ago. We thought she'd been tied to another case at the time, but she wasn't. She'd been here for reasons we didn't yet understand. Riley and I ditched the body in Chicago, and she hadn't been found, but this was somehow considered my fault.

  "This is a bad idea, Riley," I said. "I've started sleepwalking with knives—you could end up stabbed in your sleep 40 or 50 times," I lied.

  "Okay, Lizzie Borden. I'll keep my door locked." He set his suitcase down on the bed and headed for the kitchen with me trailing behind him. He stopped dead in his tracks at the breakfast bar, and I plowed into him.

  "Whoa," he said. I followed his eyes to see the cat sitting in the middle of the breakfast bar, narrowing his eyes at Riley.

  "That's my new attack cat. I don't think he likes you. You should go," I said quickly.

  As if sensing my disapproval of the situation, the animal hissed. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

  Riley reached out, and the cat leaned into him, eyes closed and purring like a semi with a bad muffler. Now that was a real traitor.

  "I like cats," Riley said as the fat beast dropped and exposed his belly. Stupid cat! "What's his name? He kind of looks like Hitler."

  "He showed up when Lenny did. I've never seen him before, but Rex wants me to keep an eye on him."

  Riley frowned and ran his hands over the animal, who purred even louder. "Did you search him?"

  I stared at him. "Search who? The cat? Are you serious?" I was more pissed at myself than him. I'd seen animals used as everything from messengers to drug mules. Why hadn't I thought of that?

  Riley gave me a glance that intimated that maybe I was an idiot. I walked over to the "everything" drawer and pulled out a pair of latex gloves.

  "Okay," I said, tossing them to him. "Show me how it's done."

  "I am not doing a cavity search on a cat." Riley ignored the gloves. "Just check the litter box in a couple of days."

  There was no way I was doing that. No way. Not a chance.

  I changed the subject. "You can't move in here, Riley. This is my house. And I don't work for you. You have no rights here."

  Riley sat down at the breakfast bar. The cat came closer to him, purring so loudly I could barely hear. Great.

  "Tell me what happened with Lenny," he said.

  I sighed and sat down next to him. It took me about five minutes to tell him everything I knew…which wasn't a lot. The cat started rubbing all over Riley like the tanned blond with wavy hair was covered in tuna. Every now and then, the beast would stop and glare at me.

  "He doesn't like you," Riley said with something I interpreted as satisfaction.

  "The feeling's mutual," I said, glaring back as the cat ignored me.

  "Why? You told me you wanted to get a cat."

  Yes. I had told him that. "I wanted to get a nice cat. Maybe start with a kitten. I didn't want to inherit a possible double-crossing beast like this."

  Riley smiled at the animal. "It couldn't have been Lenny's. The supermax, ADX Florence in Colorado, didn't even know he was out. There wasn't enough time for him to adopt a cat."

  "Well, he made it from California to here in an orange hatchback," I said. "He could've picked up a cat along the way."

  "That's true." Riley nodded. "But according to prison officials, Lenny was at roll call this morning."

  "Maybe he could time travel. Maybe the cat's some sort of evil wizard," I suggested. I'd been reading a lot of science fiction lately and even binge-watched Battlestar Galactica in a marathon session that had me glued to the couch for a week.

  "Well, it couldn't have been Lenny at the prison. Not if he was here. They obviously made a mistake. Probably covering it up." He scratched the cat behind the ears. "Something's going on," Riley mused. "I think we need to get this kitty scanned."

  "That's what Kelly said."

  He nodded. "Dr. Rye is who she recommended." Riley started dialing his cell before I could a
sk whether Kelly was spying for him or if my kitchen was bugged. Either way, I was going to make sure he bought a couple dozen cases of Girl Scout Cookies.

  "I don't like it, Ms. Wrath," Dr. Rye said for the fourth time as he felt up my cat on the exam table. The 50-something veterinarian talked like a game show host with a loud, dramatic flourish at the end that for some reason made me hold my breath. And every now and then he would walk over to the wall, turn his back toward us, and shake his head. It was weird. But then, this was my first veterinarian. Maybe they're all like this.

  "Nope. I don't like it," he repeated gravely as if asking a giant board if there was a letter M and waiting for Vanna to make her move.

  I glared at Riley before turning to the vet. "You keep saying that. What do you mean exactly?"

  Dr. Rye looked over his glasses at me, arching his right, very scary bushy eyebrow. Maybe he kept gerbils in there. "He's obese. That's bad."

  "That's not why we brought…" I really couldn't name him Hitler. "…Philby here." I heard Riley snort behind me. I ignored it. "Can you scan him for a chip?"

  The vet nodded like a deranged bobblehead for a minute solid before leaving the room. He returned a couple of minutes later with a green, hand-held device and held it over the cat's neck.

  "There is something there." The doc frowned and began to feel around Philby the Fat Cat's neck. The beast did nothing. He'd behaved like an angel the whole time we'd been here. What a con artist.

  "I'm not getting a reading. Must just be an anomaly. If it was an identification chip, we'd have the info. He's got some sort of fatty buildup in his neck. That must be it."

  Riley stepped forward. "Thanks Dr. Rye." He lifted Philby as if the animal had always been his. The cat purred and would've probably snuggled up if he could've bent his midsection. However, it's impossible to fold a basketball in half, so Riley just had to settle for the idea that the cat liked him.

  "I want you to schedule a full checkup for Philby," Dr. Rye said before walking out the door and leaving us standing in the room.

  As I paid the bill, the nurse handed me a card for an appointment. I slid it into my back pocket and joined Riley and the cat in Riley's rented SUV.