Maltese Vulture Murder Read online

  Again…it's not a disguise if it looks or sounds like a disguise. Yeesh. Who were these people?

  "Okay." I turned around. "There are some ostriches playing kickball over there." I pointed to a corner. Was that a human head they were kicking? "And I think there are some scenarios with pigeons growing hydroponic marijuana"—I really needed to talk to the twins about that because the pot looked real—"next to it."

  "We'll look around," Mr. Moon squeaked in a falsetto voice two notches above a eunuch soprano.

  "Great." I kept my eye on them as I pulled out my phone and texted Randi to find out her status.

  There was no reply. Maybe they were on a buying run. Farmers always had stillborn animals they could pick up, or maybe the zoo lost a rhino.

  The men wandered the shop, looking either in awe or horror from one diorama to the next. That was weird. What were they doing in here if they were repulsed by the product? It wasn't like they were normal.

  "So"—I tried to engage them—"where are you visiting from?"

  They certainly weren't from around here. Maybe they were on their way to Burning Man?

  "We're antiquers," the big man said. His voice was rumbly like a volcano, but more normal than Mr. Moon's. He looked at his partner, then back to me. "From out East."

  Did they think that explained it?

  "You guys just passing through, then?" I asked.

  Who's There was about forty-five minutes off I-80, the main artery that connected East and West. Not just a quick stop. However, a lot of small towns had antique shops to lure in tourists, so maybe they were somewhat legit.

  "Yeah," the big man thundered. "Sure." He and his partner split up, each of them taking one side of the room.

  "Well, holler if you need anything," I said with a wave before going to the stool by the front door to sit.

  If these guys were shoplifters, they weren't getting past me, mostly because sneaking out with an ostrich under their shirts would be pretty noticeable. And in spite of Mr. Sun's size, I got the feeling that neither man could really handle themselves in a fight—something I was trained to do.

  They were definitely looking for something. The two men studied each and every piece. What was I going to do if they actually decided to buy something? I dialed Randi's number and waited. It went to voicemail.

  Now what? I didn't know how to access the register, and I didn't want to take a check if the ladies didn't accept them. Maybe I could take their number to give Randi later. That seemed like a solid idea.

  Mr. Moon was crouched down, looking up underneath the skirts of two penguins dressed as Vegas showgirls. Ick. Surely he knew they wouldn't have, well, you know, on display. Hmmm…did the twins know the sex of the animals they stuffed? I mean, sure, a cow or a wolf would be easy, but a bird?

  Maybe they had someone from the zoo look them over? Or maybe they didn't worry about it, leaving a dead penguin in a cross-dressing sort of purgatory.

  Mr. Sun shook his head from across the room, which seemed to be Mr. Moon's signal to join him. Both men walked right past me and out the door without saying a word. Rude. I followed them onto the porch and watched as they went out to their car, a white sedan. Only after they drove away did I chastise myself for not taking pictures. There was no way anyone was going to believe this.

  "What do you want?" Ronni shouted out the window as their van pulled up.

  "Merry!" Randi got out, ran up the steps, and hugged me. "Good to see you!"

  "No it isn't!" Ronni grumped as she stomped past me into the house.

  "Your door was unlocked," I said. "I wanted to return your lemonade pitcher."

  "That's so nice of you!" Randi beamed.

  I followed her inside, pointed out said pitcher, and mentioned the two men who had just left.

  "I don't know who they were." Randi shook her head. "We don't do a lot of walk-in business. Maybe they'll come back tomorrow."

  "Go AWAY!" Ronni shouted from the other room.

  "I have to go anyway," I said as I waved and went out to my car.

  It was only when I got home that I realized I didn't ask about penguin sexing. Oh well. Another time perhaps.

  * * *

  Rex texted, saying he had to work late. Officer Kevin Dooley, our village idiot, had turned in last month's paperwork without filling it out. Rex was making him stay until he got it done. Unfortunately, that punished my husband too. I asked if he'd found anything at the twins' house, and he responded with a one-word message, No.

  Kevin Dooley was my husband's cross to bear. The guy was a second-rate mouth-breather I'd known since kindergarten, when he'd eaten two jars of paste on his first day. And while he didn't eat paste anymore (in front of me, at least), he was never seen without his arm elbow-deep in a bag of some junk food. It didn't surprise me in the least that he'd screwed up again.

  Leonard barked at the back door when I got home. He'd taken to wanting long walks recently, and since it was a gorgeous summer day, I decided why not? I hitched the leash to his collar and turned to see Philby blocking our route to the door.

  She looked meaningfully at Leonard's leash, then at me.

  "We've been through this." I sighed. "Cats don't go for walks."

  But Philby was having none of it, as she narrowed her eyes and growled.

  "I don't have a harness for you!" I said.

  I felt a little bad about that. Rex had suggested I get one, but I kept forgetting, leading to this showdown every time I took the dog for a walk. Leonard, for his part, was still a bit afraid of the cat and seemed to see this as an intrusion on his quality time.

  "I'll order a harness." I wondered if they made them in XXL. Philby's shape was like a balloon with legs.

  RRRRROWWWRRRR!

  The Hitler cat wasn't having it. Great. Leonard began to whimper, and I needed to figure this out. An idea struck, and I was pretty sure Philby wasn't going to like it.

  GRRRRRRRR… Philby snarled as we walked down the street, Leonard on his leash, Philby in my goddaughter (and Kelly's toddler) Finn's old baby harness. Strapped in front of me with her hind legs dangling, she looked like a werewolf baby who resembled Hitler.

  She grumbled and squirmed as if she were on fire.

  "This is what you wanted," I reminded her.

  At least she didn't look ridiculous, walking a huge dog while an angry cat was strapped to her chest. We got some strange looks, but I ignored them, hoping that this would be enough to make Philby think twice next time I walked Leonard. Humiliation was an emotion all cats seemed to understand.

  We took off toward the elementary school and its playground at the end of the block. As I reached the building, a horde of little girls swarmed me before I realized that two of them were my Kaitlyns.

  "Hey!" I waved as I was engulfed by sticky hands and squeals.

  "That's Philby!" one of the Kaitlyns said to the others.

  "You know her?" a girl I didn't recognize asked. I wasn't sure if she meant me or the werewolf baby.

  "Of course." The other Kaitlyn beamed. "This is our Girl Scout leader, Mrs. Wrath!"

  Every set of eyes turned toward me, and a hush fell over the group. Exactly what had my troop been saying about me?

  "I didn't know they had cats in Girl Scouts!" a tall girl said reverently.

  The first Kaitlyn nodded. "We have four pets! Two cats, a dog, and a toddler."

  That's when the crowd noticed Leonard for the first time. Every girl but one swarmed the delighted dog as he gave kisses and wagged his tail.

  A strikingly beautiful girl with olive skin and hazel eyes studied me carefully, but said nothing. She seemed older than the others and a little familiar, even though I was kind of sure I'd never met her before.

  "What's your name?" I asked as the other girls drove Leonard into an excitable frenzy.

  "Nadia." The girl's eyes were unnervingly staring into mine.

  "What grade are you in?" I pressed.

  "Fourth. Like Kaitlyn and Katelynn. I'm in their class
."

  The girl couldn't take her eyes off of me, which made things a bit awkward. It was as if the other girls weren't there at all and it was just the two of us.

  "Are you really a Girl Scout leader?" she asked at last.

  I nodded. "That's right. Would you want to join our troop?"

  I'd barely finished the sentence when Philby spotted a squirrel and wiggled furiously to get to it. I held her firmly as I adjusted her straps to oh-my-god tight. Then I turned back to Nadia, but she was gone.

  The other girls had moved on from petting Leonard and were now racing around the playground, playing tag. Nadia wasn't with them. I signaled to the nearest Kaitlyn, who came over.

  "Where's that girl I was talking to?"

  Kaitlyn's expression told me she was confused. I needed to be more specific.

  "Nadia, the girl in the yellow dress. She's in your class."

  The girl frowned. "I don't know any Nadia."

  "Yes, you do. She was right here, talking to me."

  Kaitlyn shook her head. "There was no girl here with a yellow dress on. Are you getting Alz-hammers?" With that, the girl rejoined the others, running and laughing, her long brown braids flying.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Back at home, after unharnessing the feline fuhrer and removing Leonard's leash, I heated up some leftover pizza and sat at the kitchen table, wondering if something was seriously wrong with me.

  First, I'd seen…well, something, twice out of my kitchen window. Then I had a conversation with a little girl up at the playground just now, who didn't exist. What was happening? Was I losing it?

  To be honest, it was only a matter of time. A lot of ex-spies went crazy in the end. One woman who retired just about the time I started at the CIA moved to Antarctica with the dream of selling bikinis to orcas. A guy I'd worked with in Mongolia retired and became a break-dancer in Sweden, where he married a hamster named Joyce.

  No one really knew why these things happened, but the main theory was that this was the result of the stressful life of a spy. That or boredom. We never did find out if either of these was the case. It could've been from the fumes of markers made in Russia (they use gasoline in the manufacturing process, so avoid Sharpies that make you dizzy), or maybe it just took a crazy person to join the CIA in the first place. Who knew?

  Maybe Mr. Sun and Mr. Moon were part of my imagination too? What was in that cake we had? LSD? I hoped not. That stuff messed you up. The CIA used to use it decades ago in an attempt to make people see things that weren't there. It was forbidden these days, but other nations had used it on me more than once.

  The CIA gave it up right after this guy broke in at the Farm—the training place for new agents—and got the chemical into our water supply. Because we'd had fried chicken for lunch that day, for the rest of the afternoon, until our instructors found out what was going on, twenty-three recruits walked around scratching at the ground, thinking we were roosters. We were so convincing that the whole class got an A in Disguise.

  Kelly had brought the cake. She'd never lace it with psychedelic drugs. No, the girls hadn't acted out of the ordinary. The problem was me.

  Had I been drugged? There were drugs that affected you through your skin. Touch the wrong handrailing or use the wrong toilet paper and you could find yourself thinking you were playing miniature golf on Jupiter with Eleanor Roosevelt. My mind reeled back to what I'd been doing that the girls hadn't.

  Nellie Lou! Was there something on the deceased vulture? I was the only one who'd really handled it. And the twins thought strange things were going on in their shop. Was the taxidermied bird covered in a narcotic? Maybe I shouldn't have kissed her so much the next morning when Rex wasn't looking.

  I needed to know. After grabbing the bird from my locked bedroom, I set it down on the table and studied her. After snapping on my dishwashing gloves, I went over every inch of feathers and skin, looking for who knows what. Powder? I swiped the bird with my fingertips, but there didn't appear to be anything on them.

  Oils were perfect for spreading toxins through contact with skin. And if that was the case, it would be absorbed into my bloodstream even faster. I sat back in my chair and screamed.

  Philby was sitting behind the bird, her head poking out like the vulture had a cat head attached to it.

  "Holy crap!" I put my hand on my chest, as if that would still my pounding heart. "Philby! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

  The cat replied by coming around and sitting close to the bird. She sniffed it gingerly, and I had an idea. If Philby came into contact with it and acted bizarrely, maybe I was on to something. Now, how could I get her to touch the bird so she'd get dosed? Oh sure, it was wrong to hope your cat came into contact with LSD—but this was educational. Once she came into contact, I'd watch her to see if she acted weird.

  The trouble would be that Philby acted like that most of the time. Even though she was predictable in many ways, she was, after all, a cat. A creature who would come tearing around the corner as if chased by wolves, then stop suddenly, give me a withering look, and trot away as if nothing had happened.

  My cat was working her way up to the bird's googly eyes, when she froze, drew back suddenly, hissed, and ran away. That was interesting. Normally, the cat's next move would be to tear into the bird, destroying it utterly. Our attic was loaded with taxidermied animals she'd destroyed since the twins had been giving us dead things doing stuff. The saddest loss was a classroom diorama of ducklings wearing wigs and ironic T-shirts that said things like Fowl Play and What the Duck?

  But my cat didn't attack Nellie Lou. Something had frightened her. Something on the bird.

  Philby wasn't afraid of anything, and that included the mailman, the giant doofy dog Leonard, or Ronni. She could face down Satan himself and send him running away in tears. But now, she was afraid of a dead vulture.

  It was as if she was confirming what I'd already suspected. I'd been drugged by a deceased bird of prey.

  Martini jumped up onto the table and approached. But instead of dropping onto her back and falling asleep, her eyes grew wide and her tail fluffed out. She stalked the bird as if it was prey. Like her mother, she started sniffing. When she reached Nellie's purple bald head, she yowled and ran away.

  Leonard came in to see what the commotion was and possibly to celebrate the fact that it wasn't because of him. His reaction was quite different. Our super gentle giant bared his teeth, and he lunged for the bird. I barely snagged her off the table before he claimed it with snapping jaws.

  Now I had a problem. Leonard, being a Scottish deerhound, could stand on his hind legs and put his paws on my shoulders. Racing up the stairs, the dog on my tail, I barely managed to shut the door between us.

  I placed Nellie Lou on top of our wardrobe.

  Leonard whimpered at the door, and I knew I needed to find a very high spot for Nellie until I could get Dr. Soo Jin Body—our medical examiner—to study it. And it would need to be in one piece.

  There was a very tall bookcase in our room that would be perfect. The problem was, the top shelf was out of my reach and spinning while spewing molten lava. No problem, I'd just run out to the garage to get the stepladder. I opened the second-story window and eased myself over to the downspout before shimmying down and landing on the grass, which appeared to be teeming with dung beetles in Vegas showgirl headdresses (I especially liked the one that looked like a chandelier).

  Um, why did I do that? Why didn't I just go out the door? Ah. Right, I was hallucinating. Good thing Rex didn't see me, because he took issue with the dangerous and, in many cases, stupid things I'd done. This would bring the number up to 37 and a third.

  Dusk had fallen, and it was getting dark. Where had the afternoon and evening gone? Oh. Right. Drugs. I'd probably been staring at that damn bird for hours. Now…what was I doing in the driveway?

  The stepladder. I went into the garage via the side door. We had a strange setup because we had two entrances to the small building. One from
the alley behind and one from the driveway in front. The previous owner had installed two large doors on either end of the building for whatever reason, and each one had their own remote. I'd always wondered if the lady who used to live there had been a spy, or career criminal.

  Rex liked it. He thought the alley was the fastest way to leave. I preferred the driveway, so we split the two remotes.

  My minivan was parked right in front of me, but Rex's black SUV was gone. Which was good because it was a tight space and I'd struggle to get to the stepladder—especially now that the walls were actively bubbling while singing showtunes from Cats. It was especially nice that the walls sang in three-part harmony. I walked around my van, and around the lump lying on the floor to snag the ladder, skidding briefly across a grease spot that turned into a sting ray and swam away. Then I walked back around the body and…

  Body? It was pretty dim, but I could make out a man's body lying on the floor, eyes open to the ceiling. The chest was not rising and falling. Why was there a dead guy in my garage?

  Oh! Right! The drugs. This wasn't real, but I poked him with my shoe, just to make sure. He felt real, but then again, so did that Nadia girl on the playground. Nope. I wasn't taking the bait this time. LSD wasn't going to make me look like an idiot! I'd had experience! I'd been a spy chicken!

  Instead I took the stepladder into the house by crawling on my hands and knees up the purple polka-dotted deck stairs. In the kitchen, Philby was explaining string theory to Leonard, who wore a strapless ball gown and took copious notes, while Martini was passed out on her back, wearing black patent leather fetish wear.

  Somehow, I dodged the sharks swimming in the dining room and the velociraptors who were on the couch watching TV in the living room (these hallucinations were taking a dark turn), before making it upstairs to my bedroom, where I installed Nellie Lou on top of the bookcase.

  * * *

  "Merry!" Rex's voice seemed to flutter over my head.