Merry Wrath Mysteries Boxed Set Volume III (Books 7-9) Page 26

  The girls were going to be very angry. As they were no shrinking violets, I was guessing it wouldn't be tears as much as plans for revenge. That was something I'd have to head off at the pass. There was nothing worse than my girls wreaking havoc on society.

  I walked around the wreckage, feeling terrible. This was my fault. If we had just left the coins where they were, this might not have happened.

  How was I going to explain this to my girls? How was I going to explain it to Rex?

  Somewhere in the back of the barn, metal clanged against metal. I reached for a gun…that I'd been too stupid to bring. Crap.

  I'm sure the smart voice in my brain told me to stay put and call the police. Most people have the devil and angel voices. In addition to the nice and evil me's, I had the smart and idiot voices.

  And right now, the idiot voice was really pissed off.

  Thankfully, the door opened quietly and the hall lights were on. If I had to, I could also use my flashlight as a weapon as a club, or I could blind an attacker briefly.

  All the doors stood open…but one. Still, I cleared each room on my way to the end. There wasn't any point in not doing so, and whoever was there was either in the last room or had fled through the back door.

  For a moment, I pulled up short. What if this guy stole my van? I hadn't left my car keys in the van, had I? A quick pat down proved that I did in fact have my keys. That was a relief. I continued sweeping the rooms while I tried to remember what metal objects I'd seen here last time.

  In the corner, I spotted a large wrecking bar and snatched it up. The heavy iron bar was rusty in some places. It didn't matter because I had something to work with now.

  There'd been a lot of tools and implements. Sharp and rusty tools that would be a bad idea to run up against with nothing but a wrecking bar. Still, I pressed on because…idiot voice. Whoever was in here had trashed my float.

  It seemed like an eternity before I reached the final door. I quietly pressed my ear against it. Someone was moving around in there. I'd have to get the drop on them. There were two ways I could do this…wait for them to think I was gone and open the door, or burst in, flashlight blazing.

  I could still go home. I could get into my van and wait to see who came out. That would be more comfortable, and I did have a stash of s'mores supplies in there. That was my smart voice talking.

  The idiot voice won out. I grasped the doorknob and turned quickly as I blew into the room, screaming and waving the crowbar. My flashlight lit up my vandal, and I froze.

  A big dog sat there, cocking his head to one side as he stared at me. He didn't seem at all intimidated by my menacing stance and scream. Where was his owner? Was he the one who trashed my float and then for reasons unknown shut his dog into this room?

  I walked the perimeter, searching behind boxes and cabinets, but there was no one there but the dog and me.

  "Hey, boy." I held out my hand for him to sniff and was rewarded with a big, sloppy kiss.

  No collar. The dog was clean and groomed but had no identification. I wasn't sure what kind of dog it was. Maybe a mutt. He had scruffy, wiry fur and when he stood up was huge.

  He wagged his tail. I wasn't quite sure if he was a he or she. For now, it didn't matter. I left the room and went out through the back door. Nothing. If someone was here, they were gone now.

  What should I do about the dog? A cold, wet nose pressed against my hand, and I jumped. Two big eyes stared at me mournfully. I could leave him here. Maybe he was a local pet—a farm dog who roamed at will. The vandal could've encountered him, shoved him into a room, and closed the door before trashing the float.

  I couldn't leave him trapped here, so I let him out and then walked back to the main area of the barn. He'd probably run back home.

  The dog was waiting for me, sitting there and wagging his tail.

  "How did you get in here?" I wondered aloud. I didn't remember him passing me, but then I was a bit preoccupied. Or he could be a twin dog. Were there twin dogs?

  I opened the door and pointed outside. "Go."

  The dog got to his feet and trotted out the door. I shivered in the cold early morning air. At least the flatbed was okay, and Kelly took the costumes home, so there was that. We could just march in the parade and hand out candy that way. I'd have to figure that out later.

  I turned off the lights and closed up the barn. After suppressing another shiver, I decided I'd be better off in the van. Upon opening my door, the dog came out of nowhere, muscled past me, and settled into the passenger seat.

  "Out," I demanded.

  I was rewarded with the thump of a wagging tail. He wasn't going anywhere.

  "Go home." I pointed to the general outside area.

  The dog lay down on the seat, which was difficult considering his height. He laid his head on the dash and sighed. Maybe he didn't live around here? If he had, we would've seen him before and my troop would've adopted him. In my experience there wasn't anything a dog liked more than a bunch of sticky girls swooning over him.

  Which meant he didn't live around here. I couldn't very well kidnap someone's dog, so with regret I sucked it up and called Rex.

  * * *

  "Why were you out here?" Rex asked as he walked through the barn with me on his heels.

  "I've already told you three times," I said.

  "Tell me again. Maybe I'll believe it this time."

  I said nothing.

  Rex shot me a look that I recognized as his patience was running thin look. "Merry, why would someone come here, destroy your float, and leave their dog? There must've been something they were looking for."

  There's no greater dilemma than having your fiancé shake you down for intel. If I told him about the coins, he'd be furious that I hadn't told him before. If I didn't tell him now, there was still going to be a reckoning, just a delayed one. But that might be too much for Rex to take.

  "There were these coins," I said. "The girls found them, and I forgot to tell you about them." I lied on the off chance that Rex wouldn't be mad at cute little girls.

  "Where are they now?" was all he asked.

  "Back at my place. I'll give them to you as soon as we get home."

  Rex looked disappointed. I'd lied to him and interfered with an investigation. Seemed like a deal breaker to me. I hoped it wasn't.

  Officer Kevin Dooley joined us, his hand up to the wrist in a bag of donuts. "We checked all the farms in the area. No one has a dog like this."

  As if on cue, the dog trotted in and sat at my feet. He stared up at me, and I couldn't help but rub his ears.

  "What's going to happen to him?" I asked.

  Rex sighed. "Well, in about four hours, we can take him to the animal shelter."

  "No!" I shouted a bit too loudly. "I mean, don't do that. He's obviously someone's dog."

  "It's a Scottish Deerhound," Kevin said, spitting powdered sugar as he spoke. "That's an expensive dog to lose."

  Wow. Kevin made an observation. Sure, it was sugar assisted, but still. Good for him.

  "He probably has a microchip," Rex said as he turned to me. "The shelter can scan him. Until then, I guess I'll take him home with me."

  I stared at him. "You don't know anything about this dog!"

  Rex looked me in the eye. "I love dogs, Wrath. He'll be fine. But you and I are going to talk later. Got it?"

  "But I just—" I protested.

  He cut me off. "I know. You meant well." He ran his hands through his hair. He was really frustrated. "But you kept valuable evidence from me. We have a killer on the loose, and I need to find him immediately. But I can't do that if you're hiding important clues."

  All I could do was stare. I opened my mouth to say something and then closed it. My gut twisted uncomfortably, and I could feel heat rising in my face. I'd never been this upset before. And it was all my fault. Had I delayed the murderer's apprehension? My selfish motives caused me to steal evidence. Oh wow. I sucked.

  Unaware of my inner dialo
gue, my fiancé escorted me to my van and watched me leave to make sure I was really going. I drove home, took a shower, got dressed, and waited. After much self-chastisement, I set those feelings aside.

  In a few hours, Kelly would be up, and I'd have to tell her about the float. The float that was completely trashed because I'd taken the coins. All that hard work went out the door, and we only had a matter of days before the parade. Kelly was going to freak out.

  To be perfectly honest, that scared me more than dealing with Rex later.

  * * *

  Mom and the cats joined me a couple of hours later. Philby trotted over to me and then stopped. She sat down and started yowling.

  "She's mad at you for something," Mom said as she ran her fingers through her perfect hair. Even first thing in the morning there wasn't a hair out of place.

  Martini trotted into the room with Mr. Fancy Pants' feather in her mouth. Philby swatted at it, but her offspring held it firmly before collapsing onto her side and furiously gutting the feather with her hind legs. She gripped it between her front paws and passed out cold.

  Philby gently slid the feather out of the younger cat's grasp and raced down the hallway with it.

  "Your cat thinks she's attacking a bird." Mom nodded. "She doesn't realize that's just one feather of thousands on a much bigger bird. Probably a vulture."

  I stared at her. "How do you know that?"

  "I grew up on a farm, kiddo. You know that. We had buzzards all over the place. And I had a cat when I was a kid."

  "I didn't know you had a cat when you were little!"

  Mom shrugged. "I guess I forgot about Smithers."

  "You named a cat Smithers?" Seemed like an odd choice for my mother.

  She nodded absently and made a cup of coffee before she started making breakfast. She magically pulled eggs and bacon from the fridge—something I didn't even know I'd had in there—and began cooking.

  "Are you going to tell me where you were in the middle of the night?"

  "How did you know about that?" I gaped.

  I shouldn't have been surprised. Mom always knew when I'd snuck out of the house. She'd always be waiting for me when I got back. She didn't lecture me, just made me feel like I was human sludge. You never want to disappoint a pretty person. It feels twice as miserable.

  I filled her in. On everything. She listened patiently as the eggs and bacon sizzled in the skillet. My stomach growled loudly. It had been a long time since she had cooked for me.

  "Merry!" She seemed shocked. "That's very dangerous!"

  I stared at her. "You do know that I was a spy…right? That I was in the field for years in all kinds of dangerous situations."

  She nodded. "Yes. But that was for work. This is different."

  "How is this different?"

  "Because you didn't take me."

  Mom tossed some shredded cheese onto the eggs, and my stomach did backflips out of pure joy. I put cheese on everything. Even on my cheese.

  My cell buzzed.

  I answered it. "Kelly. I was just about to call you. We have a problem with the float."

  * * *

  "Noooooooooo!" the girls screamed in unison.

  Kelly had the parents bring the kids to the park to meet. The parents were told to stay and help us figure out what we wanted to do, but they mostly sat in their cars and stared at their phones.

  "This kind of thing can happen," Kelly soothed. "We have a couple of options."

  She looked at me but could tell something was up. I wasn't jumping in anytime soon.

  "One." She held up a finger. "We can try to throw something together on short notice. Two, we can just march in the parade in our costumes. Or three, we can just call it off."

  This idea was met with outrage. We'd won the 1st place trophy twice. Our title needed to be defended. And we couldn't do that without a float.

  "We could steal one," Betty suggested.

  "Or buy one." Lauren nodded. "I've got three dollars and fifty-two cents."

  "But Booty Call is buried at the barn!" Ava cried. "Can we dig him up and bury him here?"

  "What are we going to do, Mrs. Wrath?" Caterina, my quietest Scout, had separated from the crowd and was standing in front of me.

  "What do you think we should do?" I asked.

  "I think the murderer destroyed the float," she said.

  I nodded. "I think you're right."

  "We can't let him get away with that," the little girl said defiantly.

  My whole attitude changed. I'd never run from a fight before. Even when chased through dirty Bangkok alleys by a dozen children armed with butcher knives.

  I got to my feet and held up my hand with the quiet sign. The girls stopped talking and turned to me.

  "I say we go for it."

  A huge cheer erupted from the girls, and they started dancing around.

  "You picked the hardest option," Kelly said quietly. "The parade is in two days. And the farmer has rescinded his offer for us to use his flatbed."

  "Then I'll get a new one and stay up and work on the skull in my living room, all night long," I insisted.

  The girls cheered again—possibly because I was going to do all the work.

  "I don't know about that," Kelly said. "This is a good time for a lesson in how we don't always get what we want."

  I shook my head. "I'm not going to let the girls down. No way. Not if I can pull this off."

  Kelly sighed. "You'll need a miracle."

  "I've got all the supplies, and I have a large living room. One miracle coming up."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Which was how my mother found me, sitting in the middle of the living room an hour later, stuffing tissue paper into a giant, misshapen chicken wire skull. She grabbed a handful of tissue and sat down next to me.

  "Do you need some help?" she asked.

  "I'd love some."

  It turned out that my mother was a master at shaping and stuffing chicken wire. Over the years, I'd realized there wasn't a single thing she couldn't do.

  "Where'd you learn how to do that?"

  She smiled. She wasn't even bleeding. I looked at my bandaged fingers.

  "I was the chair of the homecoming float committee all four years." She pulled more tissue out of the box.

  "Was Stan on that committee?"

  Mom gave me a look. "Yes. He was. But we didn't work together."

  "Did he harass you?" I was looking for a reason to take out Stan-Call-Me-Stan.

  She sighed and put down the tissue paper. "He was creepy. Always hitting on the girls. I was the only one who punched him."

  Wait…what?

  "I need every detail," I insisted.

  "It was a few months after our disastrous dates. He kept hanging around me, making all kinds of obnoxious innuendo, and I punched him in the face."

  I stared at my ladylike, diplomatic mother. I didn't know she had it in her. But I was glad she did.

  "What happened then?"

  She shrugged. "He never spoke to me again. In fact, after word spread, there was an abundance of Stan punching. Every time he so much as talked to a girl, she clocked him. It was a good deterrent."

  How I wished I could go back in time and see that. Oh sure, everyone wants to use time travel for good—killing Hitler, ending slavery, stopping the Kardashians from global domination—but I wanted to see my mother haul off and hit Stan-Call-Me-Stan Coombs.

  "Do you have a trailer?" she asked, indicating that this conversation was over.

  "We had one, but it fell through." The farmer, Oliver Barnes, had told Kelly he didn't want any part of this "dead witch thing."

  Philby climbed into my mother's lap and fell asleep while Martini batted crumpled tissue paper around inside the skull. The kitten was smacking it so hard it actually shot out of one of the eyeholes. She looked just as surprised as I was.

  We continued to shove tissue paper through the little octagons in the wire. Every now and then the wire stabbed my fingers. My mother ne
ver had that problem. She wasn't bleeding at all. Which was good because I'd used up all of my Dora the Explorer bandages.

  "What about the murder?" Mom asked as she grabbed a new bundle of tissue.

  "Okay," I agreed. "We can discuss that." And if Rex didn't like that, tough.

  "I was thinking about what you said you'd found in the barn. Can I see the coins?"

  The coins! I'd said I'd hand them over to Rex but hadn't. On the one hand, that was bad because he was going to be mad at me. On the other hand, it gave me a few more moments with them. I got up and went to my room, returning with the four gold coins in a plastic baggie. I handed them to my mother.

  "I've seen these before…" Mom studied them, turning the bag over in her hands. "Wait! I know! They had these on display at the Smithsonian last month."

  I stared at her. "You saw them there?"

  She shrugged. "It was a gala fundraiser for the UN. I was on the committee. I remember these because they were so unique. They only had four on exhibit."

  I took the bag from her and held it up. The sun slanted through the window and reflected off the gold onto the wall, creating a flicker of light. Martini jumped on it, killed it, and went back into the skull, where she slap shot another crumpled tissue ball.

  "Early Mesopotamian," Mom said. "One coin is worth a fortune. I wonder if they're real…"

  "There wasn't anything about a theft of coins there?" I asked.

  Mom shook her head. "No. I'd have remembered that."

  My fingers closed around the coin. "So, if they are real, what's really at the Smithsonian? Decoys?" That would explain why it wasn't in the news.

  My mother stuffed a few more tissues. "Do you think the dead woman was involved?"

  I had no idea what to think. "If she was, she didn't work alone. I can't imagine a furniture store clerk as an ancient relics thief."