Maltese Vulture Murder Read online

  "Cookie!" the four Kaitlyns screamed at once.

  Of course they wanted Cookie. Cookie was a horse they'd met at camp a few years ago. The head of the equestrian program happened to mention within earshot that the horse was pretty old and they were getting rid of it. She might as well have just said the words glue factory.

  That sent the girls into a tailspin, especially the Kaitlyns, who spent the next school year making Cookie drawings, Cookie stories, and even Cookie cookies. There wasn't a single meeting that year where we didn't hear emotional lamentations on Cookie's terrible fate.

  The girls talked about him at meetings, at special events, when camping, during snack time, and in the bathroom—pretty much all the time. The stories started out with him being sent off to the Arctic Circle to be eaten by penguins (apparently the aquatic birds turn to bloodlust when finding a horse stranded on an ice floe), to Cookie being gunned down in a place called Doo Doo World. Perhaps my favorite one was where Cookie became a mercenary, fighting alongside Basque Separatists in their quest for independence—eventually dying a hero's death.

  When we got back to camp the next summer, we found out that the horse was fine and that they'd decided to keep him after all. At that point, I wanted Cookie dead.

  "How about," Caterina, my quiet one, said, "Mrs. Fancy Pants?"

  Ava, the girl whose dream was to be a future insurance CEO, shook her head. "That's too confusing! I think her name should be Ms. Superstar Double Indemnity Unicorn."

  Betty glared at her. "What? That's not a good name!"

  "How about Cindy?" Hannah, the sweet one, said. "I've always liked Cindy."

  For a moment I thought we might have a winner.

  Inez rolled her eyes. "Too boring. How about Senorita Esmerelda Esperanza!"

  I raised my hand to vote for that one.

  Lauren said nothing, which was unlike her. The girl was a lover of all beasts. I was surprised she didn't have any ideas.

  "I think we should name her Penelope," Betty said.

  "Okay," I said in surprise. "That sounds kind of nice…"

  Betty interrupted. "Penelope Picklepoop."

  I decided to stop this name game in its tracks. "Uh, no. She stays Nellie Lou. And she can't be Mr. Fancy Pants's soul mate because she's dead and he's alive, which, as you know, means they can never…um…" My voice trailed off before I said something I'd have to explain.

  Kelly called the girls into the kitchen, and all of them went.

  But before she followed, Betty turned to me. "You're no fun anymore."

  "I am too fun!" I shouted as she disappeared. "I'm super fun! I'm so fun…"

  Kelly was standing in the hallway giving me a look that usually implied I was an idiot.

  "Are you joining us, or would you rather hang out here with Penelope Picklepoop?"

  "Me, and Nellie," I shouted for the girls to hear, "are going to have so much fun…you don't even know!"

  The dead vulture wobbled as I held the base. I grabbed her by the body just as she started to fall. The bird was attached to a peg that had come out of the base. I carefully fitted it back together and gave her head a rub.

  Kelly's eyebrows went up. "So, no cake for you, then?"

  I set the bird down and ran into the kitchen. I mean, come on. It's cake.

  "Mrs. Wrath?" Caterina asked.

  No matter what I did, these girls believed that if you were over the age of 16, you were a Mrs. And even though I was now Mrs. Ferguson, after marrying Rex, I was still (and most likely forever going to remain) Mrs. Wrath to them.

  "Yes?" I asked as I licked my fork. "Are you going to eat your frosting?"

  The girl shoved her cake-empty, frosting-laden plate toward me. "Do you think Mr. Fancy Pants is lonely?"

  It was like one of those moments when the record player needle is scraped across the rest of the record. Every head turned toward me.

  I shrugged. "I don't know. That's a good question."

  Ava jumped up from her chair. "I think we should make the zoo get Fancy Pants a girlfriend!"

  Lauren agreed. "I went to the zoo last week with my cousins. He looked sad."

  Hannah shook her head. "No one should be alone." A huge grin crossed her face. Little girls could do that, go from devastated to exhilarated in a split second. "I'll make posters!"

  "I'll talk to the newspaper!" Inez nodded.

  "What about talking to the zoo?" one of the Kaitlyns asked.

  "Let's have a car wash to raise money!" said another.

  Betty asked, "For what?"

  "To buy another one!" the third Kaitlyn added.

  Betty got it. "Okay. And I'll take the mayor hostage."

  "What?" My brain spasmed—most likely from frosting overindulgence. "Why would you do that?" Could she do that? I wouldn't put anything past this kid.

  She rolled her eyes. "We hold him hostage until our demands are met."

  A rousing cheer went up, and the project we'd planned to work on was quickly forgotten as the large sheets of paper we were going to use to make our own comic books were appropriated for a kidnapping schematic.

  Betty started drawing a map of town, with a direct route from Mayor Bill Jones's house to his office in City Hall. I picked it up and studied it.

  "That's an interesting route." I pointed at a line that ran through two alleys. "Why wouldn't he use the streets?"

  Betty snatched the paper back. "I don't know, but this is how he goes back and forth to work every day."

  "How do you know something like that?"

  The kid rolled her eyes. "I follow him, duh."

  Weirdly enough, that explained it for me. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't a huge fan of the new mayor. He'd moved here just before elections, and before he could decide which of the two grocery stores he'd go to, he'd run for and won the office of mayor.

  Oh sure, he was the only one running, except for a basset hound named Snuffy who had an impressive amount of write-in votes. But animals, while able to be mayors in other towns in Iowa, were not allowed to do so here. However, we didn't have any rules saying you had to be a resident here for any length of time, so the new guy won.

  FYI—I'd voted for Snuffy.

  Why didn't I like the guy? Well, for one thing, he was a bit stuck-up. It was obvious he was using his office as a springboard for higher politics. My dad was a senator from Iowa, something I hoped Bill Jones would never find out.

  And secondly, he made Rex's job a little harder. Mayor Jones stopped by the police station at least once a day to complain about how crime-ridden the town was, and that he was going to be the one to clean things up around here. It didn't matter that the biggest crime here, besides a murder now and then, consisted of nothing more than a few jaywalkers and litterbugs.

  Why couldn't he have moved to Bladdersly? That hellhole ten miles down the road had actual meth labs. Bladdersly (home of The Raging Bladders) was like an entire town being on the wrong side of the tracks. He wouldn't have been able to make a difference in that herpes sore of a town, but if he just cleaned up the overgrown city park or got the Raging Bladders to beat us in one football game, he'd be kind of a big deal.

  "No one"—Kelly snatched up the paper—"is kidnapping anyone. But I do think this could turn into something useful." She looked at me. "Isn't there a civics badge or something?"

  "Civics?" I giggled. "I haven't heard that word since I was nine. You're so old."

  Kelly sighed. "I'm the same age as you."

  "Yes." I snatched the paper back. "But I would never use an old word like civics." I turned to Betty. "And you think I'm no fun!"

  My best friend gave me a long-suffering look that I'd seen on her face for twenty-five years. I deflated.

  "I can find out," I said.

  Kelly sat at the table, turning to the girls. "Why don't we channel your evil genius for something good? We can meet with Dr. Wulf, the zoo director, and start a petition. You can do some research to find out how the zoo is funded. We just need to have a p
lan."

  "The plan is to buy a girl vulture and bring it here so they can get married," Lauren suggested. The others nodded.

  "I don't think we can go that far. The king vulture is on loan from the Smithsonian," I said. "He doesn't live here permanently. Someday, they will take him back."

  Ten little jaws fell onto the floor as twenty little eyes filled with tears. It was Cookiegate all over again. I prepared for wailing and gnashing of teeth.

  "That's what we can ask for!" Inez bobbed her head. "To keep Fancy Pants here forever!"

  A huge cheer erupted, with me yelling alongside the girls. I liked this idea.

  "Okay," Kelly conceded. "We need to do some research on that kind of thing. Get into two groups."

  A little Chinese fire drill occurred as Hannah and the four Kaitlyns sat at one end of the table with Inez, Caterina, Ava, Lauren, and Betty at the other. A flash in the corner of my eye got my attention, and I turned to check the window into the backyard.

  "Did you see that?" I asked.

  "See what?" Caterina stared at me.

  I walked over to the window and looked around. There was nothing there.

  "It must've been a bird flying by or something," I mumbled. But as I turned to walk away, it happened again.

  I raced over to the window and scanned my yard.

  "What did you see?" asked one of the Kaitlyns, and I looked down to see ten girls surrounding me, craning their necks to see outside.

  "It was…" What was it exactly? "A brownish blur."

  "Could be a robin," Lauren suggested.

  "Or a squirrel." Hannah nodded.

  "Squirrels are gray or black." Ava sniffed. "Not brown."

  "That's it," Betty announced. "I'm going out there. Cover me!"

  I was about to ask how, as I followed her out the garage door and into the yard. Technically, I didn't have anything to cover her with except for the cake fork I inexplicably still held in my hands.

  The yard was empty. We spread out, looking for a trace of…of what? The effects brought on by a sugar buzz? Reluctantly, I herded the girls back into the house, and once again, they took up their spots around the table.

  "What," Kelly asked as if none of this had even happened, "kinds of things do we need to research before we go see Dr. Wulf?"

  Betty raised her hand and began to speak. "That thing you said—find out how the zoo is funded?"

  Inez shook her head. "I don't know what that means."

  "Well," I said, "it's always good to do our homework before we start. We'd have to find out where the zoo gets its money. Is it a privately funded zoo? Is it owned by the city? The county?"

  Kelly nodded. "It's always good to go into a meeting knowing how things work. Would you guys like to try that?"

  The girls nodded.

  Hannah asked, "What do we look up?"

  "Like I said before"—Betty sighed—"if we kidnap the mayor, we can find this stuff out faster. I bet Mrs. Wrath has some torture stuff in her basement we could use."

  Lauren nodded. "We could set fire to his shoes while he's wearing them."

  "Or make him eat vegetables," one of the Kaitlyns offered.

  This idea was met with approval by all, including me, as I also considered vegetables to be excellent torture devices.

  Betty scowled. "If it doesn't involve battery cables, what's the point?"

  Kelly interrupted. "How about looking up how zoo animals are traded between zoos? And if the Smithsonian has ever given an animal it loaned out to another zoo?"

  "What's the Smithsonian?" one of the Kaitlyns asked. The others nodded.

  "It's like the national museum of the United States. And it's in Washington DC. Remember our trip there?"

  The girls nodded eagerly.

  "That's where we first met Mr. Fancy Pants!" Lauren said.

  I nodded. "Right. Anyway, the Smithsonian has a bunch of museums in DC for all kinds of things, from airplanes to paintings. And it includes the zoo."

  "Okay," said Hannah, "we'll do that."

  Kelly and I got up and backed away, hoping the girls would start discussing this without us, which they did. At ten years old, they were at that level where they were supposed to come up with ideas on their own.

  The kids chatted in their groups, with Lauren taking notes in her group, Hannah in hers.

  "This is amazing!" Kelly said softly.

  I agreed. "Yeah, we went from kidnapping the mayor to a real, workable plan. Nice job!"

  My best friend smiled. "Ever since I started working for Riley, doing background research for his office, I've been trying to think about how we could get the troop to do something like that."

  "Hey! How's it going over there?"

  Riley was my former CIA handler. He'd retired last year and opened up a private investigations firm here in town. A few weeks ago, I'd gotten him to hire Kelly as a researcher. She'd been a nurse for, like, ever but was burning out. Apparently this new gig was going well.

  "I love it. Riley's a good boss, and Claire is, um, great."

  My eyebrows went up. "What do you mean?" Claire, Riley's drop-dead gorgeous receptionist, was pretty cool, mainly because she tolerated Riley.

  "She's very quiet. And she seems to read minds. Always knows what kind of coffee I need for the day. And the other day, I was driving into work thinking I'd rather have an iced tea, and there it was on my desk waiting for me. Crazy, right?"

  "She's definitely psychic. My favorite donuts are always there when I stop by—as if she knew I was coming." Especially since Riley never ate sugar. "Any news on Riley's trunkful of Hostess junk food?"

  A couple of weeks ago, the health food nut, Riley, had a trunkful of unopened boxes of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and everything else made of sugary goodness. He never did tell me why he had them, and I'd used it as blackmail to hire Kelly. Because Riley only ever ate boring things like salads and grilled veggies, it was like seeing Santa in black leather and nipple clamps.

  Kelly shook her head. "I have no idea. He isn't eating them at work, and he still has like 0% body fat."

  "Okay," I said, "don't push it. We'll figure out what's going on soon enough."

  And I would get to the bottom of it. Riley and I had been a team for years, working in Japan, Russia, Paraguay—basically everywhere I went for several years, he was with me. This new, bizarre behavior kind of freaked me out.

  My gaze went to the table, where Betty was suggesting an elaborate blackmail and bribery scheme targeting city and county officials. She even had a plan to get rid of the mayor, replacing him with Snuffy. When the idea gained traction, Kelly sighed and waded into the fray.

  An idea formed in my head, and I grinned. Betty just gave me the perfect plan. Riley and his Hostess-mobile were going down. And I was going to benefit from a generous Twinkie Tax.

  I headed back to the kitchen for some more frosting. An insidious plan always required a judiciously applied sugar buzz.

  Always.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I tried to call Rex once the meeting was over, to see how it went with his sisters. But he wasn't answering. Maybe he was still there. And since I couldn't bear being out of the loop, I decided this would be a good time to return the lemonade pitcher they'd left behind at the picnic. After snagging it from the kitchen at my other house, I headed out.

  I opened the door to Ferguson Taxidermy and walked in. It was always a trip being in a place where dead animals frolicked in inconceivable ways. And it was always new. Randi said they sold stuff just as fast as they made it…mostly to clients in Japan.

  "Hello? Randi?" I called out as I walked past a group of badgers with monocles playing CLUE.

  There was no response. But the house was huge, and they'd come soon enough after hearing the bell. I set the pitcher on the counter and wandered around.

  In the corner was a life-size boat with two anteaters in yellow rain jackets and hats trying to haul in a net filled with surprisingly aquatic squirrels.

  "Randi?"
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  The bell went off, and I turned toward the door, thinking they'd just run out and had returned, only to find two men standing in the doorway, looking around as if they were about to be eaten by the tiger wearing a feather boa and tiara while driving a motorcycle, or the octopus with the handlebar mustache, making pizza.

  "Hi!" I waved, wondering if I should step up since the business was owned by family, half of whom didn't want to kill me. "The owners are out for a moment. Can I help you?"

  Both men turned toward me, and it took everything I had for my mouth to not drop open. One of the men was very tall and heavyset. He resembled a wall of flesh. Curly brown hair seemed to explode out of the top of his head, even though the sides were completely hairless. He was dressed fairly normally, but he had two very large hoop earrings in one ear and was wearing an eye patch.

  The other was half the first man's size and extremely skinny. His head was shaved, and he had a green goatee and the most bizarre glasses—with thick, green plastic frames and Coke-bottle thick lenses. They distorted his eyes, making them appear five times their normal size.

  My spy-dy senses were tingling, and I had the distinct impression that they thought these passed for disguises. Either that, or the circus was in town. Which would be awesome because I could eat funnel cakes and cotton candy all day.

  "I'm Mr. Sun," the giant said slowly. "And this"—he indicated the diminutive man next to him—"is Mr. Moon."

  Definitely fake names. I kind of wanted to lecture them on how to take on aliases that actually sounded real. But I didn't.

  "I'm Merry." I went to shake the man's hand, but he stepped back, a look of distaste on his face. I dropped my hand. "Are you looking for something in particular?"

  Now, why did I say that? I had no idea how to find anything here. Nor did I know how to take an order of whatever. There was a cash register on the counter next to the pitcher, but I had no idea how that worked. And the "creations" didn't exactly come with price tags.

  Mr. Sun spoke. "Something with birds, perhaps?"

  Mr. Moon nodded. "We like birds," he squeaked in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.