Mad Money Murder

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  MAD MONEY MURDER

  a Merry Wrath Mystery

  by

  LESLIE LANGTRY

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  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2020 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.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

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  CHAPTER ONE

  "What do you mean I've inherited a dead body?" I repeated into the cell phone.

  "It's not a body, kiddo," my mother said in her usual calm, measured tone. "They're cremains."

  "That kind of makes it worse," I insisted. "And technically, it's still a body."

  "Anyway," Mom continued, "the urn with Aunt June's remains arrives today, so make sure you are home to sign for it."

  "Why didn't they just send it to you?" I asked.

  "Because Aunt June left them and everything else to you. They just called me to get your address. You should expect a call from her lawyer soon."

  "So." I whistled. "There really was an Aunt June. And even though I didn't know her, she left me her cremains in her will."

  For years there had been a running joke in our family about the mysterious Aunt June. My grandmother would occasionally mention her to Mom, but no one else had ever met her, knew anything about her, or believed she existed. If we didn't know who'd said something interesting or done something unusual, it was attributed to Aunt June. Who said May comes in like a Methodist lime Jell-O mold and goes out like Catholic Tater Tot casserole? Aunt June. Who once rode a tricycle to Des Moines for a chance to meet Richard Nixon? Aunt June.

  And now an urn with the ashes of a folk saying Nixon lover was going to be delivered to my door at any moment.

  We ended the call, and I sat in the living room with my pets—Philby (a rotund, tyrannical cat who looked like Hitler), Leonard (a sweet Scottish deerhound who was terrorized by Philby), and Philby's daughter Martini (a narcoleptic cat on her best day who believed Leonard was nothing more than a scruffy piece of furniture to nap on).

  "What am I supposed to do with somebody's ashes?" I grumbled to the animals.

  Philby looked me in the eye, smacked me in the face with her paw, and farted. I guess that's what she thought about that.

  "Bobb," I said meanly.

  The fat cat closed her eyes and hissed so hard that she flew backward across the glossy surface of the coffee table, landing on the floor on her side. It took a while for the tick-like cat to right herself. Once she did, she glared at me and fled the room.

  I shouldn't have done that. Philby had once been owned by a man named Bobb who'd turned up dead on my doorstep a long time ago. Whenever you said his name, the feline führer had the same reaction.

  I was about to seek her out and apologize with albacore tuna when the doorbell rang. Glancing at the window, I spotted the delivery van in the driveway.

  An obnoxiously happy young man who couldn't have been any older than eighteen greeted me cheerily at the door with a big box.

  "Howdy! I'm Jason! Sign for this, please!"

  I signed, and Jason handed it over. It was so heavy that I nearly dropped it. I guess the ashes of an entire body would be heavy. Hopefully the box itself wasn't the actual urn.

  "Have a wonderful day, ma'am!" Jason saluted me for some reason before bouncing back to his van, where he saluted me once more before starting it up and driving away.

  "What are you so happy for?" I shouted at the receding truck. "This is a dead body! Show some respect!"

  A woman pushing a carriage in front of my house stared at me in horror.

  "It's not like I killed her. I didn't even know she existed until she was dead," I insisted before taking my body inside. At least, I didn't think I had.

  As a spy, you never really knew if one of your actions eventually led to an accidental death. It was just par for the course, and when I was in that line of work, I never thought about it.

  My name is Merry Wrath, and I used to be a CIA field agent. I say used to because, a few years ago, I was "accidentally" outed by the Vice President as a rebuke to my father, who is a senator. Back then I was Fionnaghuala Merrygold Czrygy—or Finn. The outing took place on CNN while I was undercover with a Chechen group. We all happened to be in a dive bar, drinking cheap, warm beer with dubious expiration dates, when the story broke. I barely made it back to the USA in one piece. When I did, the Agency gave me early retirement, a huge settlement, and proceeded to scrub all files of my existence.

  My parents were big deals in Washington DC, and I didn't feel like my life made sense there. So I packed it in, changed my name to Merry Wrath (my mother's way cooler maiden name), and came back home to the small town of Who's There, Iowa. My best friend, Kelly Albers, insisted we start up a Girl Scout troop, and we did. Surprisingly, many of my spy skills translated to working with a bunch of precocious little girls.

  After setting the box on the dining room table, I opened it. There was a letter inside addressed to me in shaky penmanship. I set that aside and pulled away what seemed like miles of bubble wrap to uncover the urn.

  It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. And I've seen Putin, shirtless, riding a bear. No, I'm not talking about the meme of that. He really did ride on the back of a giant bear. Shirtless. I'd been tailing him and a few members of the politburo for a couple of hours walking in the Siberian countryside—something I would never recommend that anyone do because it's freezing even in summer. After making some joke I couldn't hear to flunkies who could laugh convincingly on demand, he tore off his shirt, climbed aboard a passing bear, and rode off into the sunset.

  The urn was a sickly acid yellow peeking out between hundreds of tacky and fake jewels. Someone had given Aunt June a BeDazzler at some point. On the back were the words Hot to Trot in Heaven!

  Who was this woman? My family had believed she was just a figment of Grandma Wrath's imagination or an invisible friend triggered by dementia. But now I'd inherited the remains of someone who, in spite of having appalling taste in afterlife containers, seemed kind of fun.

  I unscrewed the lid and looked in, wondering if this was all some sort of elaborate hoax.

  It wasn't. The urn was filled with a greasy-looking gray ash. I slamme
d the lid back on and screwed it tight, turning my attention to the envelope, which contained a letter.

  Dear Finn, or Merry, or Whoever you really are,

  I was impressed that she knew both of my names. As for the Whoever part—I often wondered about that myself. Spies who go through a lot of intensive identities can go a little mad when they retire. They have an identity crisis of apocalyptic proportions as they wrestle with who they really were. I knew a guy who snapped in the end and insisted on going by Spanky the Wonder Bunny in retirement.

  I kept reading.

  You probably don't remember me, but I'm a friend of the family. It's funny how many people think I'm their aunt when, in fact, my first name is Aunt. Strange, right?

  That was one mystery solved. For years, we'd thought the woman was related. Turns out she just had a funny first name. Like Spanky.

  I've taken great interest in your career, both in the CIA and in Who's There as a detective. While impressive, you really should be careful with all those dead bodies, dear. Very germy and quite unsanitary.

  Yes! Someone actually thinks of me as a real detective! I might have to frame this. And she's not wrong. Dead bodies are germy. Too bad I'd never find out how she felt about cremains.

  I regret that you didn't get a chance to know me, but since I have all those pet spiders, people mistakenly believe I'm quirky. I'm actually as normal as the next woman.

  Pet spiders? That was pretty quirky, even for Iowa.

  I will cut to the chase. If you've received this, it means that I need your help. I need you to find out who murdered me.

  Okay, that's it for now! Thanks!

  Love, Aunt June

  I blinked and re-read the letter. Find out who murdered her? Maybe it was the spiders. And why did she write that's it for now? Did she plan to contact me from the grave? I thought about the Cult of NicoDerm, a local band of delusional teen druids who believed I was a goddess who could talk to birds. If they thought I got mail from dead people…which I guess I now kind of had…they'd never leave me alone.

  My cell buzzed. I didn't recognize the number. Most people wouldn't answer the phone under those circumstances, but I didn't get many calls. Besides, maybe it had something to do with Aunt June.

  "Ms. Wrath?" a stiff, masculine voice with a posh British accent asked.

  "Yes, that's me," I responded. "Actually, it's Mrs. Ferguson now."

  There was an irritable sigh on the other end that probably would've qualified the man for martyrdom. "This is Mr. Basil E. Hickenlooper of Hickenlooper, Hickenlooper & Hickenlooper. I am the attorney representing Miss Aunt Delilah June."

  Huh. It never occurred to me that June was her last name. I'd always thought it was her first name until moments ago. And even then, I'd assumed it was a middle name.

  "I just received the cremains and a letter from her," I replied. "Within the last few minutes."

  "Yes," Mr. Hickenlooper said tightly. "We know."

  "You do?" I ran to the window and looked out. There were no cars parked on the street and no Brit standing on the sidewalk, so I scanned the rooftops. Spies really liked rooftops. So did snipers. In fact, the CIA 101 training manual actually says If you are under threat, always avoid being within the vicinity of rooftops. It was sound advice, especially if you were in a certain, very snipey neighborhood in Bangladesh.

  "Yes," the man said. "I would like to meet with you as soon as possible."

  I was still studying the neighborhood. "Um, okay. Are you in Who's There?"

  "Good Lord!" the man cried out. "Of course I'm not! That would be dreadful!"

  Those were fighting words, but since I needed more information on the dead woman on my dining room table, I let it slide.

  "Where would you like to meet?"

  Basil continued, "Our offices are in Behold, Iowa. How soon can we expect you?"

  "I don't know. I've never heard of Behold. It's a weird name," I insulted breezily and consulted my phone.

  Iowa has ninety-nine counties, each one filled with small towns. I never understood why they didn't round up to one hundred. I would have. Actually, I think any sane person would have. Who says Alright, we have ninety-nine counties—whattaya say we call it at that? At any rate, I didn't know every town, and I didn't know this one.

  "You're three and a half hours away!" I squinted at my phone in hopes I might be wrong.

  Basil sighed. "Yes. It would be too inconvenient for me to come there, and you need to decide what to do with the house you've inherited."

  I blinked. "I inherited a house?"

  That wasn't great. I already had two. One was the house Rex, my husband and the town's police detective, and I lived in together, and the other was my first house across the street. I held my Girl Scout meetings there. I couldn't bear the thought of parting with it. Now I had another one?

  "Please meet me tomorrow at 3pm." He read off an address and hung up before I could say no.

  I did what any woman did in these kinds of circumstances. I called my mother. Again.

  "Merry?" Mom answered on the first ring. "Did you get the urn?"

  I told her about the cremains, the ugly urn, Aunt June and her weird name, and the fact that I now had to drive to the northeast corner of the state by tomorrow to meet with some snobby British lawyer.

  She laughed and apologized for doing so. "Sorry, kiddo. It's just a lot to take in."

  "What do you think?"

  "You should go, of course," Mom answered as if I'd just mentioned running to the store.

  "Mom." I shook my head, even though she couldn't see it. "She has pet spiders."

  "I'm not surprised. Wish I could go with you, but I'm helping with a gala for the Smithsonian." My mother was quite the social butterfly in DC. "Send pictures!" And with that, she hung up.

  Oh well. I guess when your mother tells you to drive halfway across the state to accept a houseful of spiders from a quirky sort-of relative who believed she'd been murdered, you really had no choice.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Behold, Iowa?" Kelly, my co-leader, asked with rising excitement. "We need to go!"

  "We?"

  My best friend since we were five had agreed to meet me for ice cream at Sugar Lips' Feeling Lucky House of Delights, a recent addition to our town founded by a woman who'd retired as a catalog copy writer for Victoria's Secret and Frederick's of Hollywood and named all of her confections after lingerie. She'd caused quite a scandal when she opened, but the ice cream was first-rate. What did I care if I was eating ice cream with names like Nude Pasties 'Nilla?

  At present, I was wolfing down today's special, the Triple Nipple chocolate shake, while Kelly noshed on the Is That A Banana In Your Pants banana split. Doris, the owner, was getting a little carried away with names, and if she wasn't careful, she'd bring down the righteous fury of the Lutheran Ladies Auxiliary. Those women had no sense of humor where sex was concerned and once got the "Use Your Potty" potty-training song banned from the Methodist day care center for being too slutty. The issue concerned the word butt.

  "Why triple nipple?" I asked as I studied the cup. "Who has three nipples?"

  Kelly pointed. "Because nipple rhymes with triple. I do like the three Hershey's Kisses topping off the whipped cream."

  "Yeah, me too," I said before popping all three into my mouth. After chewing, I continued. "But why are you excited about Behold, Iowa? I've never even heard of it."

  My best friend gave me an odd look. "One of the best Scout camps in the Midwest is there. Camp des Morts is supposed to be amazing! We can take the girls."

  "Whoa. I'm only going for one day to find out what I need to do to get rid of the house."

  Kelly ignored me as usual. "I'll call the troop and arrange everything. We can stay at the camp. The season should be over, with it being August and all, so it shouldn't be a problem."

  No way. "Kelly, I'm not staying there. I'm coming back tomorrow right after the meeting with the attorney."

  She paused, finger
s hovering over her cell. "You have to stay. You have to solve Aunt June's murder."

  "I don't even know if she was murdered. All I've got is an urn. I doubt there was even an autopsy."

  "You're being selfish," Kelly said. "Camp des Morts is the best in Iowa. Don't you want the girls to see that?"

  Of course I did. But this was the wrong reason to go. "What's so great about it? And that name!"

  Kelly wiped her lips on a napkin. "It's French, I think."

  "It means"—I pointed my straw at her—"Camp of Death."

  She smiled. "That explains it. It's perched on a series of bluffs. There are Indian burial mounds. And some say the surrounding woods are haunted."

  I gave her a look. "You want to take our troop to a place where they might literally chase ghosts, accidentally fall off bluffs, and desecrate Indian burial mounds?"

  Kelly thought about this. "Yes. I really do." And then she began making phone calls.

  There was nothing I could do but finish my shake.

  My cell rang. It was my husband, Detective Rex Ferguson.

  His first words were, "Did someone die?" He must've seen the urn on the table.

  "Yeah, about that. That's Aunt June. I've inherited her remains and have to go to someplace halfway across the state to meet with her attorney tomorrow to discuss what to do with her house and pet spiders."

  Kelly froze and slowly turned toward me, cell phone against her ear. "Spiders?"

  Rex paused for a second before asking, "Did you say you inherited a house full of spiders?"

  I responded to both my husband and co-leader. "Yeah. Apparently, she had pet spiders."

  Kelly looked off into the distance for a moment. I knew she didn't like spiders. She wasn't necessarily afraid of them, but she didn't like them.

  "I'm okay with that." And she went back to her phone. "All the more reason to stay at camp."