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  MARDI GRAS MURDER

  a Merry Wrath Mystery

  by

  LESLIE LANGTRY

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  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2022 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

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  "You're joking." Kelly's eyebrows went up. "Please tell me you're joking and we aren't seriously considering taking a bunch of little girls to Louisiana for Mardi Gras."

  "What's wrong with that idea?" I asked as we lay plastic tarps wall-to-wall on the floor. "They're in fifth grade now. It would be educational for them to see a different part of the country…try some new food and culture…take a swamp tour to see alligators…"

  Kelly stopped taping the plastic sheets together. "Alligators? How is it possible that you've made this trip even more dangerous?"

  I waved her off. "Thousands of tourists do that every year and almost no one dies."

  My best friend and co-leader gave me one of those looks. "Almost? You want those kinds of odds with our troop?"

  Hmmm…now that I thought of it, I wondered if there was a hotline phone number I could call to warn Louisiana about Betty? Something like their hurricane warning system perhaps?

  "Look," I explained as she went back to sealing the plastic to cover the carpet, "it's not my fault the school has spring break so early that it coincides with Mardi Gras."

  "It's the school district's fault?" Kelly shook her head. "And I was just about to nominate you for Responsible Leader of the Year."

  I almost dropped my roll of duct tape. "What? That's a thing? I want it!"

  Kelly has been on me for years about my alleged lack of responsibility. Stop teaching kindergarteners how to throw knives…no, we can't train second graders in sniper camouflage techniques at day camp…of course we shouldn't teach third grade girls how to make plastique using everyday items…no, there isn't a badge for identifying all terrorist groups listed in the CIA World Factbook.

  Seriously, Kelly was such a wet blanket sometimes.

  I threw my arms in the air. "The girls love stuff like that! What kind of leader would I be if I didn't prepare them for life in the real world?"

  "You're preparing them for a life of black ops and wet work," Kelly said evenly.

  "What if they ever want to travel to Syria or Chechnya?" I countered. "Knowing how to fend off an attacker with a sparkly princess unicorn barrette is far more responsible in my opinion."

  Maybe I could get Betty to hack into the Girl Scout Council's mainframe to make me a shoo-in for this Responsible Leader award.

  "This is a terrible idea." Kelly shook her head. "I'm tempted not to go with you."

  My stomach dropped. How could I possibly do this without my responsible, grown-up, former ER nurse co-leader? Who's going to be there for alligator bites?

  Kelly continued, "Of course, then you'd have to find someone else, which would serve you right."

  "There's Rex," I thought out loud. "Or Riley, or Soo Jin, I guess. Maybe Ron and Ivan would go." Hmmm…my Chechen brothers-in-law might be a good option as far as protecting Louisiana from my troop. And while they could be a pain in the butt, they were fun…

  Kelly read my mind. "That would be more fun than you deserve."

  "How about Hilly?" I pulled out my cell phone. "You know what? You're right. Hilly would be great on this trip!"

  Hilly Vinton was a friend and colleague, who was also a CIA assassin. Of course she's not a CIA assassin—the CIA doesn't have assassins because that would be illegal.

  Okay, now that I've gotten past the disclaimer…Hilly totally is an assassin. Kelly never really warmed to her because Hilly embraced my ideas and even taught the girls how to kill a man with one finger. Well, we practiced it on dummies, not real people, because that would be wrong.

  I thought for sure I had her with this idea, but Kelly didn't budge. She looked nervous but seemed to be sticking to her refusal. Time to bring out the big guns.

  "Maybe Robert, could go with me?" I asked innocently, knowing bringing her husband and daughter into the mix would change her mind. "He'd probably love a break, and you and Finn would be alone together for a week for bonding."

  Kelly blanched. Her little girl, my goddaughter, was in her terrible toddler phase with a capital TERRIBLE and was driving Kelly crazy with her Kim Jong-un-sized tantrums. Personally, I was impressed with the decibel range the tiny human could produce.

  Most people don't know this, but the Soviets experimented with this kind of thing as a torture mechanism. They locked innocent people in a room with a screaming toddler for two hours. Every single one of them confessed to stuff they hadn't done, just to get out. Of course, then the Soviets sent them to gulags for the crimes they didn't really do.

  "I'll do it," Kelly said finally. "But not because of my daughter, but because I would be worried sick about the girls."

  I did an endzone dance in my head. "Okay, so now we have to put plastic on the walls." I pointed to the beige carpet. "Because if we aren't careful, it'll be impossible to get the red out and I'll have to repaint the walls."

  Kelly sighed. "We never should've agreed to paint valentine-themed bird houses."

  I was inclined to agree. "But we already told them yes. We even pinky swore."

  The pinky swear was an absolutely unbreakable bond. It ranked right up there with CIA nondisclosure agreements and absolutely any promise made in Turkmenistan on Lifetime Promise with No Backsies Under Pain of Death Day. Yeah, it's as scary as it sounds, but they do have a nice festival with deep fried Ding Dongs, so it's worth going at least once.

  My name is Merry Wrath, and I used to be a field agent for the CIA, until the Vice President "accidentally" outed me on CNN when I was embedded with the Chechens. After surviving a mad dash across several unfriendly countries and narrowly avoiding an armed chicken, I moved back to my small, Iowa hometown of Who's There, where my best friend decided we should start a Girl Scout troop.

  In fact, we were getting ready for a troop meeting at my old house, which was across the street from the
house I now shared with my husband, Rex. Currently, six elderly hermits we'd found at an old scout camp were staying here. But even if no one was in residence, I'd still keep the house because it was where I hid all of my CIA toys, like exploding tampon boxes and packs of gum where the sticks of gum were actually heat-seeking missiles.

  "Why aren't we setting this up tomorrow?" Kelly wondered.

  "Because we can since the ladies are out of town, visiting Disney World," I explained. "And tomorrow morning I have to take Philby to the vet." I pointed to the wall. "You missed a spot."

  "I don't get it." Rex shook his head when I informed him of our plans. "Why do you think it's a good idea to go to Mardi Gras with your troop?"

  "You don't have to worry about them," I insisted, hoping it would be true.

  "I'm worried about New Orleans after Hurricane Betty," Rex said.

  "She's not that bad," I lied. Of course she was. The kid was terrifying.

  Rex scratched behind Philby's ears. My obese cat who resembled Hitler was demanding attention, like she always did by smacking his arm whenever he stopped. "What's the purpose of this trip? Mardi Gras is hardly appropriate for little girls."

  After almost messing up with Kelly, I'd come up with a better argument. "Ava wants to visit our sister city—Who Dat. It's in Louisiana, so I thought we'd hit Baton Rouge and NOLA. Have them experience Cajun and creole culture. We don't have anything like that here in Iowa."

  It was true. Louisiana was an eclectic and diverse state with French, German, Spanish, Italian, Cajun, and Creole heritage, culture, celebrations, and food. In Iowa, mayo was our most exotic condiment. Instead of alligators and swamps, we had pigs and cornfields. The closest thing we had to voodoo was when the Methodist Altar Committee once tried to bring Mavis Winter's kitten back from the dead. They were actually doing chest compressions on the altar, and it turned out the cat was just sleeping. But the Lutheran Ladies for the Wholesome have referred to them as Those Methodist Voodoo Satanists ever since.

  "And," I continued, "it's educational since Betty is obsessed with Huey Long—that extremely crooked Louisiana governor from almost one hundred years ago. We can visit the capitol building where he was assassinated."

  Rex stifled a smile. "Okay, okay. Just don't let her bring that kind of thinking back here. The last thing I need is to investigate the mayor's right-hand kid on corruption charges for taking bribes from the Pork Producers."

  Yay! Now I just had to brief Ava on the plan she knew nothing about. Ava was our town's eleven-year old mayor. My troop's go-getter who dreamed of running a major international insurance company someday, she was beyond ambitious and as tough as they came.

  The girl had been mayor for a few months now and was doing a pretty good job. She'd doubled Rex's budget and made three of the five councilpersons cry. Her rival, town councilman Jeff Dodd, threw everything he could at the girl in hopes of intimidating her, but nothing worked. That was mostly due to her unflappable nature, but also due to her chief of security and unofficial black ops leader, Betty.

  Betty was the troop's troublemaker, and she was awesome. This kid was going to make one kickass CIA Director someday, probably before she was thirty. The problem was, you couldn't be that badass and just coast on it.

  Her parents had been thinking of sending her to boarding school in Texas, but Ava had granted a charter to Carole Anne's pet project – Helpful Hands & Tentacles—a sort of Welcome Wagon for aliens. For years Carole Anne had insisted she'd been kidnapped by sentient beings from outer space, who, foregoing the usual probing, taught her instead to play the bassoon. She wasn't half bad and could pull off a mean Pink Panther Theme at parties.

  Ava secured Betty's stay by hiring Betty's dad, Roderick, as the town's Director of Garbage Collection at twice what he was making as an appliance salesman. Some town council members questioned the move, considering that Roderick had no experience whatsoever. But Ava announced that anyone against the idea obviously hated puppies, and she won.

  Huey Long, the most corrupt and popular Louisiana governor of all time, would be proud. And so was I.

  I just didn't tell Kelly that, because as far as I was concerned, I was up for the possibly not real Responsible Leader of the Year now, and I wasn't taking any chances.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "How did they get it on the ceiling?" Kelly asked as she stood on a stepladder during the meeting the next day.

  "It's impressive," I admitted. Especially considering that the girls were short and my ceilings were fairly high.

  "Mrs. Wrath?" Inez asked, holding her birdhouse with red paint covering both hands.

  No matter what I've said to the girls over the past six years, they insisted on calling me Mrs. Wrath, despite the fact that I was now actually Mrs. Ferguson. And before that, I was really Ms. Wrath. But you have to pick your battles with kids, so I stopped correcting them years ago.

  "What is it?" I grabbed a rag covered with so much paint that it looked like it had been used at a serial killer's barbeque cookout.

  "Ava says we're going on a trip. Is that true?"

  Eight pairs of eyes turned toward me. Until recently, I'd had ten girls in my troop. In the last month, Hannah and Caterina moved away. It was a huge blow, since those two girls were the sweetest kids on the planet and they really balanced the troop dynamic. Now I just had the four Kaitlyns, Betty, Ava, Inez, and Lauren—who could've started their own mafia branch.

  That's right. I have four Kaitlyns. Actually, I have four Kaitlyns with the same last initial. To make matters more confusing, they all have moms named Ashley and the girls look exactly alike.

  "We're visiting our sister city," Ava announced what I'd told her last night on the phone. "Who Dat."

  "What's a sister city?" Lauren asked.

  "What does Who Dat mean?" one of the Kaitlyns added.

  "I'll defend all of you from alligators." Betty turned to look at me. "I might need a gun."

  Kelly climbed down from the step ladder. "A sister city is a town in the US, or in another country, that's similar to ours. And Who Dat is kind of how they say 'who's there' in Cajun, which is a culture you'll find in Louisiana."

  The girls turned to me.

  "She's right," I said. "Our spring break coincides with Mardi Gras this year, so I thought we could check out Louisiana."

  The girls immediately pulled out their phones and began typing.

  "Mardi Gras is a party." Inez eyed me dubiously. "It looks like an adult party."

  "Pretty beads!" two of the Kaitlyns cried out in unison. "How do we get those?"

  Kelly narrowed her eyes at me. "We buy them for you, of course."

  I guess I hadn't thought that all the way through.

  "Who Dat has a zoo!" Lauren shouted. "And they have an aviary!"

  My troop had recently been asked to participate in some brainstorming to add an aviary to the Obladi Zoo—our local zoo.

  "See?" I pointed out to Kelly. "It's even more educational than I thought."

  "What's the angle?" Betty rubbed her chin.

  "Angle?" Uh-oh.

  "Yeah," she said. "There's lots of places we could go for spring break but you picked this place. Why?"

  I put on my most innocent expression. "It has our sister city, and a zoo with an aviary, and we can go to Baton Rouge to see the state capitol building where Huey Long was gunned down."

  "I'm in," Betty said immediately.

  "They have a king vulture!" Inez cried out. "Maybe he's related to Mr. Fancy Pants!"

  The girls crowded around her phone.

  "Is something wrong with his eyes?" Lauren asked. "They look funny."

  If you've never seen a king vulture, you are missing out. The raptor looks like it was doodled by an unhinged toddler on a sugar bender while under the influence of LSD. With a bald black and purple head, googly eyes that seem to go in two different directions, a bright orange beak, and a yellow wattle, they don't look real.

  "The eyes look weirder than normal?" I ask
ed as I joined them.

  Sure enough, something was off about them. It was as if the vulture was looking at two different things and thinking two different thoughts at the same time.

  "Must just be a bad photo angle," I said finally.

  "I need to talk to the mayor of Who Dat," Ava announced, "to set everything up properly."

  Kelly gave the girls the dates and a permission slip to take home and get signed.

  The next morning, Kelly called first thing.

  "You're not going to believe this, but every single girl has turned in her signed permission slip."

  "What? You're kidding!" The process of getting a permission slip signed by a parent was a legendary hassle on par with photographing the Loch Ness Monster waterskiing with a yeti in drag. Parents of elementary school kids are notoriously busy (or lazy), and getting permission slips from them was the most exhausting part of my job as leader.

  "I guess they are all eager for the girls to go," Kelly reasoned.

  "Eager to get rid of them, more likely," I added.

  Kelly sighed. "As much as I hate thinking of it that way, you may be right. At least there's only eight girls going."

  Yeah, our eight scariest girls. Louisiana had no idea what was about to hit them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Welcome to Who Dat!" A young blond man in a top hat wearing a sash that read MAYOR stood in the middle of the road, shouting at us as a marching band began to play "When the Saints Go Marching In."

  I stopped the large, ten-passenger van I'd rented at the airport. We were just outside of town limits when we encountered what appeared to be a cartoonish stereotype of the entire town turning out to meet us.