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  MAP SKILLS MURDER

  a Merry Wrath Mystery

  by

  LESLIE LANGTRY

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  Copyright © 2018 by Leslie Langtry

  Cover design by Janet Holmes

  Gemma Halliday Publishing

  http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  The girl was sound asleep, tucked in her bed, surrounded by stuffed animals. She looked so peaceful. Like an angel. And still, I knew that when she woke up, it would be like poking an outraged wolverine with bedhead.

  "Wake up!" Five little girls standing around me screamed in unison.

  The child leaped out of bed, landing in a defensive stance, a hammer in her right hand. Where had that come from?

  "Betty!" Carol Anne, the girl's mother, chastised.

  She looked like she thought the girl would hit one of us. I wondered what waking her up for school must be like. Then again, Carol Anne believed she'd been kidnapped by aliens on seven different occasions (aliens who'd taught the woman how to play the bassoon), so who knew what passed for normal in this family?

  "What's happening?" Betty shouted as she let the hammer fall to the floor.

  "Kidnap Breakfast!" the five girls screamed.

  "What's a kidnap breakfast?" Betty asked.

  We'd only picked up the four Kaitlyns—who'd all spent the night at one house—and Ava, so far. We still had six more stops to make.

  The five girls looked at each other curiously.

  "I don't know," Ava said. "But it's fun!"

  The girls cheered as we collected Betty in her jammies and made our way outside to the van. It was a warm, July night. Actually, it was three o'clock in the morning, and we had more girls to get before dawn.

  "Love your pj's," Betty said as she passed me by.

  Kelly laughed. Clad in a normal pair of plain blue pajamas, she labored under the impression that my Dora the Explorer jammies were…well, weird.

  "I like Dora," I sniffed defensively for the fifth time this evening.

  The girls rode with me to Lauren's house, as Kelly followed in her van. When we had all twelve girls, we'd need the other vehicle, since my co-leader didn't like my idea of stacking the girls like bricks in the back.

  "Mrs. Wrath?" one of the Kaitlyns asked from the back seat.

  No matter how many times I protested, the girls still called me "Mrs." They seemed to think that marriage status wasn't as much a justification for the prefix as just being "older than cancer," as Inez so politely informed me.

  "What?" I asked as I maneuvered the car through a dead intersection.

  "What are we gonna do when we get to your house?"

  "What do you want to do?" I said absently. I wasn't totally sure I knew where Lauren lived. Her family had moved a week before, and I was distracted by the maps app on my cell.

  The girls didn't answer because they started bickering about what that answer should be. I wasn't really paying attention, but words like handcuffs and hemlock floated toward me.

  The only house on the block with its porch lights on turned out to be the right place. We unloaded the girls, reminding them to keep quiet. Lauren's mother met us on the front porch and led us inside.

  A giant German shepherd approached us, and the girls squealed, gathering around the beast, who immediately dropped to the floor, exposing his belly.

  "Girls!" Kelly whispered loudly.

  With a collective groan, the kids got up and followed us down the hallway to the little girl's room.

  The door opened with a soft creak, and once the first two girls entered, the lights went on and loud death metal music blared from speakers on both sides. I was vaguely aware of something hurtling toward my head, as a tennis ball on a string smacked my forehead.

  Lauren sat up, aiming a ping pong ball gun at us. This girl had been prepared. A true Girl Scout. I liked it.

  "Lauren!" her mother, Bobbi, cried out. "I told you not to set your traps tonight."

  The girl nodded as if it was perfectly normal for a bunch of her friends to appear in her booby-trapped room in the middle of the night.

  "Yes you did. But that seemed suspicious. So, I decided not to follow that directive."

  Kelly narrowed her eyes at me.

  I shrugged. "What?"

  "This is your doing," she mumbled.

  My name is Merry Wrath, and I used to be a spy for the CIA, until the vice president "accidentally" outed me. Since that humiliation, I came back to my hometown of Who's There, Iowa, and started a Girl Scout troop for something to do. After two years with this troop, I was proud of how far these fourth graders had come.

  They didn't originally know I'd been a spy, but after some unusual exploits, they'd figured it out. Now these kids embraced everything related to espionage. Despite Kelly's accusation, I was pretty proud of them. Just the week before, Inez and Caterina turned an American Girl doll into a pipe bomb that spewed tiny rubber balls. I'd like to think I had a hand in that—even if I'd tried very hard to convince my co-leader that I hadn't.

  "Can we see the snails?" Ava and one of the Kaitlyns asked in unison.

  Lauren's house was home to the largest collection of snail paraphernalia in North America, second in the world to a 101-year-old man in Japan. And his collection was different in that all the snails were real, live snails.

  "We don't have time for that," Kelly said. "We have to get the Hannahs, Emily, Inez, and Caterina still."

  Lauren walked out with us without questioning what was going on—as if she was kidnapped in her pajamas every day. She and Betty climbed into Kelly's car, and we headed off to pick up the rest of the girls.

  "Donuts!" the girls shrieked when we pulled into the parking lot of the local donut shop.

  They flooded out of the vans and into the store. As I walked in, several senior citizens, who'd been sitting at the tables inside, looked at each other and without speaking, got up and walked out.

  The next few moments were an experiment in madness as each girl called out their favorite donut, simultaneously. Kelly finally calmed them down with the Girl Scout quiet sign—an amazing tactic that worked every time. One by one, each girl announced to the terrified teenager behind the counter, which donuts she liked.

  The kid behind the counter, wearing a name tag that read Reggie, looked like he'd rather be tied to a tree and swarmed by ravenous squirrels. His Adam's apple bobbed nervously as he tried to fill the order.

  I was kind of worried about him, truth be told. The boy was short and so skinny I could practically see through him. Obviously, he didn't eat here. For a moment I wondered why? Was the doug
h poisoned? Were there rats in the kitchen? My spy-dy senses weren't tingling, so maybe he was just allergic to gluten.

  Kelly and I ordered the donuts and paid for them. We collected the boxes from the counter and took everyone back out to the vans and then on to my place.

  That was where things got sticky—literally and figuratively. Turned out the girls didn't want to eat the donuts they'd picked, preferring the ones that others had chosen instead. Kelly and I stood back, ready to eat whatever was left. Once the crowd backed off, we found four crullers surrounded by sprinkles and crumbs.

  "This is better than what I thought would happen," I said as I devoured my second donut.

  Kelly nodded, finishing off her first. "I think it went well."

  The whole kidnap breakfast thing was an idea we'd found online. While the troop didn't technically meet over the summer, we tried to come up with something fun to do. One summer it was a trip to Washington, DC. Another year we had a pizza party at the local pool.

  And one time we went to a chinchilla farm. Only too late did we discover that the girls had been planning to free the nervous little rodents. Fortunately for us, the animals were so terrified, they huddled together until the farmer scooped them back up.

  That was the last time we let Betty and Lauren pick our activity. In fact, that was why Kelly and I decided to come up with something on our own. We were surprised that the parents had no problem waking up and letting us into their homes in the middle of the night.

  My cats, Philby (who, through no fault of her own, looked like Hitler) and her kitten Martini (who resembled Elvis), lay in the middle of the sea of girls, who pet them with sticky hands.

  I didn't understand why my cats loved these kids so much. Once at a lock-in, they dyed Philby's white fur pink. As if realizing I was thinking about her, Philby shot me a look of contempt before nibbling on a bit of leftover blueberry donut. Narcoleptic Martini fell asleep standing and sort of fell over onto her side.

  "Okay, ladies!" Kelly clapped her hands in a two-three-two pattern.

  The girls dropped what they were doing and returned the clap. That was a trick Kelly and I also learned online. Between that and the quiet sign, I wondered if we were grooming the troop to be soulless zombies.

  But I'd never tell my co-leader that.

  "Who wants to play a game?" I shouted.

  A cheer erupted that probably woke the rest of the town of Who's There as the girls formed a circle around us. After regaining our hearing, we started the girls on a game of Frog Detective, where one girl was a detective, one was a frog, and the others were all flies. The detective went to another room while the rest decided who's who. When she returned, she stood in the middle of the circle, trying to figure out who the murderous frog was. Meanwhile, the frog was secretly sticking her tongue out at various girls in the circle, "killing" them. They collapsed in death spasms, which with some girls was a bit over the top. The detective had to figure out who the frog was before all the flies were dead.

  It was a twisted game. And one of my favorites. If only in the field I could've taken out targets by sticking my tongue out at them. Sigh.

  "Come on," Kelly whispered as she dragged me into my kitchen. "We have to get ready for the craft project."

  Kelly Albers had been my best friend since elementary school when she helped me take on a bully and discovered that I didn't care that she called me an idiot. When I came back to Who's There to sulk, she was the one with the idea to help the elementary school down the block from my house by forming a Girl Scout troop.

  I still haven't figured out if I should be grateful or unforgiving.

  Kelly was a nurse at the local hospital, married to Robert, with a baby girl named after me. Her name was Finn. My real name was Fionnaghuala Merrygold Czrygy. When I was outed and my name was all over the news, I took my mother's maiden name and became Merry Wrath—a name that was much easier to say and spell.

  I stared down at the glue, glitter, construction paper, and scissors that littered my breakfast bar.

  "Are you sure about this?" I asked. "Remember the last time we used glue for something?"

  Several months ago, in January, we'd decided to make angel ball ornaments. The idea was to cover a Styrofoam ball in glue and dip it into a bag of white feathers. Somehow the girls got confused or were overly enthusiastic and managed to get the glue all over their arms and hands.

  The troop resembled molting chickens. Contrary to popular opinion, some types of glue are not easy to remove. And since I chose a cheap glue that bonds like cement in an ice storm, it was February before the last girl was de-feathered. Kelly blamed me, but the girls loved it. If their parents even noticed, they didn't seem to mind.

  "This"—Kelly held up a popular brand—"is the good glue. Now help me set up the table outside."

  We dragged two six-foot-long tables and twelve folding chairs out to the backyard. Being that it was July in Iowa, the temperature was in the 80s. I suppose you're wondering how a single woman like me happens to have two folding tables and a dozen chairs?

  Because Kelly said I needed them. In hindsight I think it was fair to say I was tricked.

  After five minutes we realized that we were outside and the girls were unsupervised inside, and we raced back to the living room.

  "Who put lipstick on Philby?" I cried out.

  My fat feline führer glared at me with bright red lips, blue eye shadow, giant clip-on earrings, and her hair formed into spikes. Martini was nowhere to be seen. Smart kitty.

  "We did makeovers!" Hannah the First said.

  "We were just about to do Martini, but we can't find her." The second Hannah pouted.

  "Looks like we arrived just in time," Kelly said. "Come on, girls! We're going to make paper-bag masks in the backyard!"

  A roar went up, and in seconds the room was empty save for one pissed-off cat. That's when I noticed she was wearing tiny high heels. Where did those come from? Probably one of those American Girl dolls the girls were always talking about.

  Why American Girl dolls? Were there Paraguayan Girl dolls? Uzbeck Girl dolls? And if there were, it was a devious idea for global domination. Those things were more than $100! I knew this because I'd already bought three for my goddaughter, Kelly's daughter, Finn. Granted, as a toddler, she was a bit young—but I figured I'd stock up ahead of time in case something happened to me. Then she'd remember her godmother fondly as the woman who spoiled her rotten.

  I managed to remove the shoes, lipstick, and earrings before Kelly screamed for me from the yard. Philby stormed off, still wearing the eye shadow and spiked hair. I wondered if Martini would laugh at her mother when she saw her. Oh yes, cats laugh. How do I know? Because mine laugh at me all the time. It's a subtle form of feline human shaming.

  Kelly shouted for me to bring paint and markers. I shuddered, but brought my stash. The girls swarmed like flesh-eating beetles.

  "How's it going?" I asked my co-leader.

  "Okay," Kelly said, but her expression told me she was worried. "It's a good thing we are using safety scissors. Inez started pruning your weeds, and Ava cut the branches off of one of your shrubs."

  "They're not weeds…" I grumbled. "I don't have weeds."

  "What would you call those?" Kelly pointed at a bed of blooming thistles that stood three feet tall.

  Of course, I had weeds. I wasn't much of a landscaper. My fiancé, Rex, who lived across the street, had an immaculate lawn. He enjoyed working outside. I enjoyed watching him. His sweaty biceps and six-pack abs were definitely a bonus.

  "That's my Salute to Scotland." I sniffed. Now I could never take those thistles down. It seemed like a bit of a win and a lose.

  "And the milkweed?" Kelly pointed at a bunch of plants bearing pods as large as my pets.

  "I'm waiting to see if they produce alien copies of me and the cats."

  She pointed at the branches of the large tree in the middle of the yard. "And those?"

  Twenty-four dead birds hung from the
branches from fishing wire. My future sisters-in-law were taxidermists. They presented Rex and me with one stuffed bird for each month we'd known each other. I was just glad they didn't ask me how many months that was. I never was very good at sentimental math.

  Philby was pressed up against the kitchen window, paws pasted to the glass. She hated that we didn't bring the birds inside for her to attack.

  "Ronni and Randi made them for us. Seemed rude not to hang them up."

  Kelly rolled her eyes. "You're so weird."

  "What was I supposed to do? They're going to be my family in December."

  To be honest, the twins thought they were my family already. Since I'd met them, they…well, Randi (Ronni didn't like me or anyone—I think she was a tad prejudiced against anything living) had presented me with several taxidermied animals, including a giant Maine Coon cat in mid-leap that Philby used as a scratching post. It was a good thing she was declawed.

  I'd kept the cat, and a crow named Sigurd doing stand-up comedy, but the rest of them were presently locked up in my guest room. And since it was still riddled with bullet holes from an incident a while back—no one ever went in there.

  "What the…" Kelly's exclamation broke into my reverie.

  Ava, one of the Hannahs, and Inez were watching Betty dig up my Salute to Scotland.

  "Hey!" I shouted as I raced over. "Where'd you get that spade?"

  Betty shrugged. "I thought I'd look for buried bodies in your yard."

  I narrowed my eyes. "I don't have any bodies buried in my yard." At least, none that I knew of. And I didn't think I had a shovel like that. But then, I was clueless most of the time.

  The spade hit something that didn't sound like dirt.

  "Whoa! I think I found a casket!" Betty tossed the spade, which narrowly missed me, and got down on her knees.

  The other three girls leaned over. I joined them. Betty was brushing dirt off what looked like wood. She'd gotten about two feet down in the dirt. I grabbed the spade and started thrusting it into the dirt to find the edges.