"Merry." Kelly frowned as she handed me the phone I'd left in the kitchen. "You got a message that the rattlesnake you ordered was denied because you didn't submit proof that you're a herpetologist?"
I snatched the phone. "Oh! That! I was, um, doing some research."
She folded her arms over her chest. "You tried to order a poisonous snake, for research?"
"Well, yes. Of course. Why?" Always throw it back in their laps if you can't think of a good reason for doing something…like trying to buy a venomous snake.
Kelly wasn't buying it. For a moment, I thought I was going to get a lecture, but then she relaxed and took out her phone. She was talking to Robert in seconds and chatting about things.
Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out how I was going to break in to the zoo to milk a snake. I've never done it, but I once saw a guy in Marrakesh milk an ostrich. Of course, if I go to the zoo, I have to see Mr. Fancy Pants, my adopted king vulture. In a way, he was my therapist. Unofficially of course, for the reason that he can't give advice other than a vulturish glare.
Then there was the small fact that the Obladi Zoo is closed for the season, and because of a lion attack in July, they've stepped up security. I used to have a key to the aviary. Okay, I had a stolen key. I visited all the time, taking the vulture Girl Scout Cookies.
Sadly, I didn't have any, and if I did, sneaking off to the zoo would take time away from the investigation. And Susan, my human therapist, was out of town for the holidays.
"Do you want any champagne?" Kelly appeared at my side. "Linda doesn't have any on hand, but I could run home."
I shook my head. "No. I need to keep a clear head from here on out."
Before I knew what was happening, my best friend crushed me in a bear hug. "I'm sorry this is happening, Merry," she said when she released me. "We will find him. I know we will. And next New Year's Eve we will have a huge party to make up for this."
"Next year, I'll be celebrating my one-year anniversary," I mused.
She put an arm around me. "You will. You'll be an old married woman by this time next year." For some odd reason, this made Kelly giggle. The giggles gave way to outright laughter. I was pretty sure I didn't want to know why.
Instead, I wandered back into the kitchen where Linda was about a third of the way through the puzzle. She was really good. I remembered a day in her class when she taught us how to do word-find puzzles, where you circle the word on a graph of letters.
Those were my favorite puzzles. The teacher kept a box of pages on her desk, and if you finished an assignment early, you could take one and solve it. Linda didn't believe in idle time in a classroom. She thought you should work the whole time you were there. But she didn't say it couldn't be fun.
My nerves were on edge, and I felt cagey, pacing throughout the kitchen as she worked. If I annoyed her, she didn't say anything. After an hour, Linda stood up and stretched. That was when I noticed it was getting late and she was getting tired. Part of me wanted to make her work until done. But I just couldn't do it. We needed her sharp.
"We should head out," I said slowly, waiting for her to stop me.
She didn't.
"We still have empty boxes in the puzzle," Linda said. "Some are filled with mostly vowels. Which means we're getting there."
"Are those numbers?" I asked as I looked over her shoulder.
"I think so, but I'm not sure. This is supposed to be a challenge. The bad guy doesn't want it to be easy. In the end, we may have to unscramble what's in the highlighted boxes."
"I can't thank you enough." My eyes were going a bit misty.
Linda patted my shoulder and looked me in the eyes, "It's going to be alright, Merry. You'll see. I'll call you in the morning."
As we said our good-byes and Kelly and I drove our separate ways, I wondered who would use this kind of method to torment me? But I was tired, and my brain was begging me to sleep, so I eased into the driveway and went inside.
My parents, as they'd promised, weren't there. They'd left a note saying they'd taken Leonard out and fed all of the animals. That was good, because it was one less thing for me to do. Philby tried to trick me into feeding her again by staring a hole through my head. She was very talented at angry, persuasive staring, and I gave up a can of tuna. Which caused Leonard to give me the begging eyes.
Dogs and cats have very different attitudes on manipulation. While Leonard tried to look sad and dejected, Philby used intimidation. Was that normal, or was it just my pets? I wondered. I unwrapped a cheese stick, and he swallowed it without chewing.
Getting ready for bed was a chore. It was hard to get undressed. If Rex turned up or someone wearing a sign that said he'd kidnapped my fiancé turned up outside my door, I wanted to be ready to go. So, I sat on my bed, fully dressed, and thought about what had happened today.
Someone broke into my van. A vehicle that I'd made very hard to break into. That nagged at me because it seemed like something a spy could do. I knew Linda would solve the crossword, but I wasn't too sure about Ted Weir. He'd shown promise at first, but it seemed to me that he'd dropped the ball on the ex-cons. Maybe I should cut him some slack. He's very young and new at this. And I needed all the help I could get.
Was it Harvey Oak? Prescott Winters III? Vy Todd? Had someone from Rex's past decided to take their revenge?
Or was it someone who was out to get me? If so, that was going to be a very long list. And I knew how to winnow it down. I texted Riley and told him to be at his office early in the morning.
We had a list of our own to investigate.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As I walked through the door in the morning, I noticed that my former handler had been busy. New furniture filled the room of his strip mall office. Two desks sat at opposite ends of the room, which seemed optimistic on his part since I'd turned down his offer of a job.
In the middle of the room were two overstuffed leather love seats, facing each other. On the ends were two leather wingback chairs. In the middle was a long, rectangular coffee table. Riley had obviously been shopping at Midland Furniture, the town's only furniture store. It was currently under new management after a rather disastrous turn of events back in October.
"Give me a minute." Riley held one finger up without taking his eyes off his computer monitor.
I nodded and sat on the sofa. That was when I noticed the gorgeous green plants and beautiful artwork on the walls. He'd really gone to a lot of trouble.
And then it hit me. Where did he live? He'd been here, setting up his private investigation business for a few months now. He couldn't be staying at the Radisson, could he? No, Mom and Dad would've said if they'd seen him there. But if he had a house, why didn't I know that?
Maybe because I didn't want to know. Riley had the bad habit of popping in and out of my life, sometimes to help me, and sometimes to drive me crazy. I'd kept him at arm's length, so it seemed legit that I'd made no effort to find out where he was staying.
I shouldn't be that way. We had a past. And we'd worked very well together. Sure, we'd had a brief romantic fling, but we'd been partners for years. And Kelly (who had Riley's number on speed dial) had told me that he was happy for me and Rex. I was being a selfish friend for not showing more interest in his life.
"Okay." Riley sat on the opposite couch and set a couple of file folders on the coffee table.
"Before we start," I said. "Where do you live?"
Riley arched his right eyebrow. "You don't know?"
I didn't have time for this. "No. I just wondered. I've been a little distracted this past year. Where are you staying?"
He wanted to tease me—I could see it in his eyes. But in the end, he didn't.
"I have a nice house at the opposite end of town from you. It's small, more like a bungalow. It'll make an amazing bachelor pad." He grinned, white teeth gleaming against impossibly bronze skin.
"Okay, I don't care anymore," I said tiredly. "What have you got?"
Riley laughed
. "I've talked to a couple of contacts, and there's a lot going on since I retired."
"Going on? What does that mean?" I was getting a little irritated with his usual theatrics.
He leaned back against the sofa. "There have been some developments in a few cases you've worked on. Bad developments."
I shrugged. "That's just the life of a spy. What's happened?"
For a moment I thought he wasn't going to tell me. Surely he knew me better than that. I once threw him through a plate glass window for teasing me. Okay, it was on the first floor, it was safety glass, and he'd landed in some nice, soft bushes, but still…
"I'll cut right to the chase." He opened the file, rotating it toward me, and the photos of two women made me jump.
No!
"Lana was traded to Russia in a spy swap a month ago," he started. "And Leiko Ito has escaped from a maximum security prison."
"You're joking," I said weakly as I picked up the two photos.
Lana, or Svetlana Babikova, had been a Russian agent I'd turned years ago. After I'd made my rather involuntary exit from the CIA, the agency hustled her out of Ukraine and brought her here for safekeeping.
In fact, Riley had brought the buxom bimbo to my house, thinking it was the safest place for her to hide out. But he'd been wrong. It hadn't been the safest place for anyone after her arrival. Needless to say, she was serving time in prison. Or so I'd thought.
Leiko Ito was the daughter of Midori—a ruthless Yakuza lady boss who, on more than one occasion, had tried to kill me. Naturally, the evil mob boss turned up dead in my house. And Leiko came after me and Riley for revenge. She had also been sent to a hardcore prison. A prison she'd managed to escape from. The Yakuza have a long reach.
"They must've skipped out of the country," I insisted. "Leiko is back in Tokyo, and Lana is probably rotting in a Siberian jail."
Riley shrugged. "We don't know. Both of them have disappeared. Gone underground. There's zero chatter about them anywhere. It's like they vanished into thin air."
"That's possible," I said slowly, staring at Lana's huge blue eyes and impossibly glossy blonde hair. "The Russians could've killed her for turning on them and hiding out here. Do we know what she thought of the exchange?"
He pulled a sheet from the file and read it. "According to her cell mate, Lana was thrilled about the exchange."
I frowned. "That doesn't make any sense." Nothing did.
"And Leiko? How did she break out?"
"The Yakuza got to the guards. Threatened three of them, which got them to cooperate. In fact, the reason we still don't know how she escaped is because these three men are too terrified to talk."
I slumped against the back of the couch and closed my eyes. It just wasn't fair. Here I was, ready to get married and start a new life, and now people I'd helped lock up were on the loose.
"My spy skills are getting too rusty to handle this," I groaned.
I wasn't fit for duty. Sure, I could still break in to places, and my fighting form wasn't that bad, but I'd been out of the game for three years. That's like four decades when you consider the constant changes in technology.
"It might not be them," Riley said. "Like you said, Lana is probably languishing in a Russian prison, and Leiko went back to Tokyo to get a grip on her vast Japanese enterprise." He picked up another sheet. "It looks like her businesses are failing at a rapid pace. She'd need to get home and straighten things out."
I buried my face in my hands. "This can not be happening."
Ex-cons, I was fairly certain, I could handle. A chop shop thief, a one-time murderer, and a drug smuggler? No problem. But two lethally trained harpies with a thirst for vengeance and some killer skills? I wasn't so sure.
After a moment, I sat up and took a deep breath. There was no time to panic.
"We need to know if there's anyone new in town—someone who seems out of place."
Riley agreed. "I'll check with the Radisson and the two other hotels in the area. Maybe my Fed buddies can scout the hotels in Des Moines."
I shook my head. "If they're in the city, they're at a safe house. Here, they'd be in a hotel."
"You say that like you think they are working together," Riley said.
"I hope that's not true. But we have to be prepared."
Riley studied the files, "If Leiko is here, she'd have a couple of her lieutenants with her. Shouldn't be too hard to find a small Japanese woman flanked by two or three giant Japanese men."
"And if it's Lana?" I asked.
He blew out a sharp breath and leaned back. "We might be screwed. She lived here. She knows where you live, where Kelly lives, and who's in your troop. One woman is much harder to track than three or four Yakuza."
Riley was right. Lana knew a lot about me.
"I'll move the animals to Rex's house and set up some major security measures." I thought for a moment. I'd need a pet sitter. Maybe Kelly knew someone.
"I'll get back to you once I've asked at the hotels." Riley closed the file with a snap. "Where will you be staying?"
"In my house. I know it better and have all my weaponry there." I ran through a mental inventory in my head. Guns, check. Knives, check. Flamethrower made from an Altoids tin, check.
He stood up and frowned. "I don't think that's a good idea."
I shrugged. "We have clues coming in. To me. I need to be where I can find them."
It was time to brief him. I told Riley about the clues, the three ex-convicts who might be suspects, Linda, and Juliette Dowd's break-in at Rex's house. He listened patiently and waited to speak until I was done.
"Rex was the one who arrested Vy Todd?" Riley gaped. "Wow. That was a huge deal."
"How did you know about her?" I asked.
Riley shrugged, "She's actually my second cousin."
"What?" I screamed. "How did I not know that? You were in Mongolia with me when we found out! You didn't say anything about it then!"
"I guess I didn't think it mattered. I'd only met her once or twice at family reunions. It's not like I knew her."
"You're related to her!" I shrieked. "We actually talked about this case when we were in that yurt!"
He grinned. "That's not all we did in that yurt."
I threw the only thing I had on hand, a pillow, at his head. He ducked.
"Okay," he protested. "I should've told you."
"You knew I was from Iowa!" I wasn't letting this go.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Not sorry enough. "You have some lovely floor-to-ceiling windows here," I mused.
Riley blanched, but only for a second. "I'll see if anyone in the family has seen her since she moved to Des Moines. It's a long shot, but maybe I can find something there."
"What am I supposed to do? You're doing all the legwork!" I whined. "I don't want to sit home and wait for Lana or Leiko to attack."
"I'd love to tell you that they're probably not involved, but…" His voice trailed off.
I narrowed my eyes. "But what?"
"Broke into your van without leaving a trace?" Riley whistled. "That's pretty sophisticated for your average criminal. Because I suspect you have some special security measures, like I do. And if you can't figure out how they got in…"
I stood, grabbed his arm, and dragged him out to the van. Unlocking the vehicle, I reached in and pulled out two flashlights, handing one to Riley. This was one thing I could do right now. He nodded and took the driver's side, while I took the passenger side.
We'd had training in looking for car bombs and that sort of thing. In the back of my mind, I wondered if we were chasing phantoms. Were we too eager to believe this had something to do with my past? It still could be someone local. My head was spinning with the possibilities, and I was angry that I wasn't any closer to solving this.
I needed something to do, and it didn't matter if it was busy work. Either this was a spy from my past or someone from my present. We might as well search the van. I started with the front passenger door, going over th
e mechanics with the flashlight. I'd installed a small alarm that would go off if the door was opened with something other than the factory-issued key. Tiny wires ran from the edge of the doorframe to the mechanism. They were intact. If someone had jimmied open the door, the wires would've been cut and the alarm would've sounded.
Next, I focused on the window. Turning the key in the ignition, I hit the controls that made the window move up and down. I'd installed a sort of gummy substance, whose chemical compound is classified, to make the windows stick just a bit before working. If the windows operated smoothly, the gummy substance was gone, and I'd know that someone came in that way. Nope. The windows stuck a bit. And I tried all four.
Inside the van, I ran the flashlight over every bit of leather on the door. There was a chance that someone got past my security and tore open the upholstery. The seams were all intact, and there were no holes.
I repeated this procedure on the other door, with the same results. Riley reported the same. We popped the hood on the car and together went over every single centimeter of the engine and other mechanics. This was where I was less qualified, but Riley assured me that nothing was out of place.
The snow on the ground was frozen hard, but that didn't stop us from lying down and studying the undercarriage. I was pretty sure they couldn't get into the van this way, but you have to check everything, no matter how tedious. Skipping steps makes for dead spies.
"The trunk?" Riley asked over the top of the van when we stood back up.
I nodded. This was a definite possibility because my security measures were lacking there. I remembered the day I worked in the garage to set things up. At one point, I was hungry and wandered into the house for some Pizza Rolls. I was pretty sure from there I got dessert, some wine, and never made it back out to the garage.
Under the gloomy, gray sky, Riley and I went over the tailgate.
"The thing is," I mumbled. "Going through the back of the van was a risk. Once inside, you'd have to climb over seats and reach over the headrest to place the clue."
Merry Wrath Mysteries Boxed Set Volume III (Books 7-9) Page 45
