Mind-Bending Murder Read online

  The front door opened directly into the living room. I closed the blinds and curtains. Nice. Double blackout. It was still too risky to turn on the lights, but I had a flashlight and turned it on.

  Oh sure, I could've used the one on my cell, but it would drain my battery, and I'd need to call Carnack if the killer helpfully showed up. After I beat him to a pulp that is. Whoever was framing me would be in big trouble when I found them.

  The living room consisted of one very generic sofa, a coffee table with a remote on it, and a large screen TV. Well, he did work at Best Bye. I'd probably find all kinds of gadgets, which made me study the walls and ceilings. Maybe Tyson had security cameras.

  What was I thinking? This guy left his key in the mailbox. Still, I was very careful, checking for cameras as I went but never finding a single one. It was important to find out if there was something that stood out as the reason why Tyson was murdered.

  Things like this were usually blackmail material. Maybe this guy had photos of someone doing something they shouldn't. Or he had proof his employer was embezzling. You never knew what would be important. In Lithuania several years ago, I'd been hunted by a Mossad agent because I'd inadvertently picked up the wrong receipt in a restaurant.

  His name was Alexei, and he was pretty nice about things once he found out that, even though I was CIA, I really had thought I'd picked up my receipt for two tuna bagels with chips. Why did he need it so badly that he stalked me for a week? Because that receipt proved that he was cheating on both his wife and the Mossad with a Russian agent, which meant he could end up divorced and thrown in prison for treason. He turned out to be a nice guy. Even gave me a few Krav Maga tips.

  Another possibility was that maybe someone really hated him. There could be death threat letters lying around. Or he could be involved in the criminal underworld—although that seemed like a bit of a stretch. My point was that you had to look at everything, even if you didn't know what you were looking for. In fact, that was something they'd trained us on: looking for something that you could never imagine would be important.

  So I began to make a thorough search. First, I searched the back of the TV, which was mounted on a wall. Then I checked under the coffee table and behind and under the couch and its cushions. Nothing.

  In fact, there was nothing personal here. No photos or posters or tchotchkes. But then, he was a young guy, and either he didn't have much, or he just didn't care. The living room opened into a tiny kitchen with a small table and two chairs. I searched them carefully before moving on to the cabinets.

  This was where I'd probably run into trouble. Opening cabinets was a dicey move. People (like me) sometimes had crammed so much into them that things loudly shifted or fell out when the door was opened. I'd have to make sure the neighbors didn't hear anything.

  In fact, I went over and pressed my ear to the adjoining wall. It sounded like someone was either washing dishes or bathing a sink full of armadillos. You'd be surprised to know how much those things sounded alike. I'd once gone undercover with Armadillo Rescue in Mexico. By the way…never volunteer to bathe a bunch of armadillos. Trust me. They do not like it.

  I started with the fridge. There was a six-pack of cheap beer and a quart of milk. I guess he didn't eat here much—another single, young guy trait. After examining the contents, I checked the freezer. Two bags of pizza rolls, two frozen pizzas, and a quart of ice cream.

  The sink was next. There were no dirty dishes, and there were no recently washed dishes. He might've been a neat freak. Underneath the sink was an empty garbage can with a fresh bag in it. Someone must've been here. There was a bottle of glass cleaner, a bucket, and a couple of rags but not much else.

  The cupboards were basically barren. I found a frying pan, two Star Wars juice glasses, two dinner plates, and two forks, spoons, and knives. The pantry cupboard held four cans of tomato soup, five boxes of instant macaroni and cheese, a loaf of bread not yet broken into, and a new jar of peanut butter. This guy was really just starting out. It made it easy to search that way, but I still found nothing.

  As I walked down the short hallway, I once again noticed the lack of pictures. Not even a poster. You can tell a lot about a person by the art on the walls. I'd known a Finnish counterfeiter who displayed thousands of palm tree fronds on his walls. In Bogota, there was an art forger who collected those weird paintings of little girls with giant eyes. And in Okinawa, a Yakuza boss wallpapered his office in Barney the Dinosaur posters. Now he was an interesting case. Botan did some work on the side as a Barney impersonator for kids' parties—when he wasn't killing off rival gang members. He was very good. Always got high marks on Yelp.

  But Tyson Pancratz was a blank. So far I'd found absolutely nothing that could tell me about the kind of guy he was. If he were an ice cream, he'd be vanilla. If he were a paint color, he'd be beige. If he were a dog, he'd be a yellow lab. He'd be adorable, but he'd still be a dull, blank slate.

  The end of the hall had two doors—a bathroom on the right and a bedroom on the left.

  Just like everything else, both were barely stocked. There was one towel and a fresh bar of soap on the sink. The shower just had a bar of soap too. There wasn't even a bath mat. What kind of Neanderthal doesn't have a bath mat? The medicine chest had a bottle of aspirin, a toothbrush, generic toothpaste, a razor, and generic shaving foam.

  Tyson Pancratz was a mystery. A boring one, but a mystery nonetheless. I couldn't find a single thing that told me anything about his personality.

  I still had one last room to check. Hopefully, the bedroom would solve the mystery. I went straight to the closet and carefully opened the doors. My flashlight revealed five blue polo shirts, like the one I'd worn at the scene of the crime, five pairs of khakis, neatly pressed, and two pair of men's dress-casual brown shoes. There was something odd—all the clothes were hung up. What twenty-something did that?

  I closed the door and began searching the bed and single nightstand. I found a box of tissues, a small lamp, and a book that seemed strangely familiar. I held my flashlight up to it. It was Boats of the Midwest.

  The same book from the crime scene. Maybe I should've grabbed one from the crime scene. I stuffed it into my jacket and searched the bedding. Rex once told me that when they searched houses for contraband of any type, eighty percent of the time, it would be between the mattresses. Isn't that weird? I guess it's like people whose password is Password. Go figure.

  I was holding out hope that I'd find something there as I ran my hands between the mattress and box spring. But I didn't find anything. Not even a mattress tag.

  I was just about to pull out the book to examine when I heard a creak that sounded like it came from the kitchen. Turning off my flashlight, I dropped to the floor behind the bed, looking underneath it while attempting to slow my heartbeat.

  It could be that the neighbors had made a very loud sound that simply sounded like a creak once it passed through the wall. But then again, it could be an intruder. In my former business, it was always a safe bet to err on the side of intruder.

  To be fair, I was "technically" an intruder too. But I had business being here because I was investigating Tyson's murder to get myself off the hook. What was this guy's excuse?

  The light switched on in the hallway. What an amateur! You don't turn lights on! Everybody knows that! Yeesh!

  Footsteps came down the hall very slowly. Was it someone who'd seen me come in and had decided to investigate? Was it the real killer? Hopefully it wasn't the Bladdersly police. That was all I needed. I slid my hand around behind me to touch the .38 revolver I'd tucked into my waistband. Normally, that would be comforting, but now that I thought about it, bringing a gun may not have been the best idea. If I was arrested, fully armed and sneaking around the victim's apartment, it might look a smidge suspicious.

  On the other hand, if this was a bad guy, I didn't want to get into a shoot-out in the middle of the night, in the apartment of the man I'd allegedly killed. Looking at it
that way, there wasn't any option that this would end well.

  What the hell had I been thinking in coming here? Seriously, my inner spydy sense should have talked me out of this. Had I gone soft over the last few years I'd been out of practice? Was civilian life ruining my killer instincts? Was it all the sugar I was eating? Nope…don't go there, Wrath! Sugar was my favorite everything. It must be the gone soft thing.

  "Effie!" a man's voice barked, bringing me back to the present. "Effie! Where are you?"

  Effie? Who the hell was Effie? It didn't look like anyone else lived here. Hell, it barely looked like Tyson lived here. So who was this guy, and why was he shouting for a woman?

  That's when I heard purring as two green eyes peered at me beneath the bed.

  While I was flattered that this kitty liked me at first sight, she was also sort of ratting me out. I moved my hand to the cat, gently spun her around on the floor, and shoved her to the other side of the bed just as a man's legs entered the room.

  "There you are." Two arms reached down and scooped the cat up. "Let's go."

  I didn't let out a breath until I heard him walk down the hall. My heart stopped pounding when I heard him close the front door.

  Holy crap! That was close. It's kind of crazy how my mind went straight into danger mode when it was obviously someone who knew that Tyson had a cat and decided it needed rescuing. Gradually, I got to my feet and peered out the window, just in time to see a dark car disappear.

  I was almost done and didn't see any need to leave before I was ready. Slowly, hugging the wall, I made my way down the hall, dropping to my stomach as I reached the doorway to the living room.

  Peeking around the corner to make sure the guy hadn't just pretended to leave was smart (which was good because I'd really started to worry about the sugar thing). If it wasn't just a cat rescuer and this guy knew I'd been there and was waiting for me, he'd have his eyes trained on the level of an adult's shoulders. It wasn't a huge advantage, but looking at him from the floor would give me a few seconds to play with. You can't get complacent with these things. You had to assume the worst. Maybe the car that drove off belonged to the neighbor.

  He wasn't there. I let out a very long, deflating breath and shook it off.

  That left the basement. If there was one. Living in the Midwest, everyone had basements. It was rare, but sometimes a developer would chintz out and just build onto a slab. Which was a scenario that usually ended with torches, pitchforks, and a good tar and feathering.

  Iowans needed basements. Where else would we put the women and children when tornados blasted through the area? I say women and children because, in this state, they were the only sane people in a twister type situation. The men, and I mean all of them, usually stood on the porch and watched. It took a lot to rattle an Iowan, and tornados were a source of entertainment in a state where we literally watch the corn grow.

  If there was a basement, access was most likely through the kitchen. I was right. There was a very nondescript door in the corner opposite the table. I turned the knob and opened it. Stairs descended into a dark void. And it occurred to me that maybe the two duplexes shared a basement.

  Hugging the wall, I went down the stairs as quietly as possible. At the bottom, I waited for my eyes to adjust to see that, in fact, I'd been right. On the neighbor's side, there were endless boxes filled with all kinds of junk.

  But on Tyson's side, there were maybe a dozen, again generic, boxes stacked neatly against the wall. I was just reaching for the top box when the door on the other side creaked open and a light came on.

  "Yeah, I think it's down here," a gruff voice shouted. "Probably next to the chairs you and the kids sit in when we get a tornado."

  I eased back up the stairs as the neighbor descended, completely unaware that anyone was down there. Closing the door very softly, I tiptoed across the floor to the back door on the other side of the kitchen. Peeking out, I didn't see anyone. I let myself out and made it back to my car.

  As I was driving away, it seemed like something had been off about the place, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It wasn't the empty, generic nature of the apartment. It wasn't that his clothes were hung up or, in fact, that everything had been neat and tidy. It was something else in the back of my mind.

  It came to me so suddenly that I slammed on the brakes in the middle of Nixon Avenue. How had I missed that? It was so obvious! I really was losing my edge.

  The thing that was out of place was something that wasn't there. In my search of the entire duplex, I hadn't seen a single pet dish, litterbox, or any cat food.

  So what was Effie doing there?

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Merry?" Rex was waiting in the living room when I walked in carrying a plastic bag.

  "Hey, babe!" I said a little too cheerfully as I kissed him. Something was wrong. He held me at arm's length, studying me.

  "A call went out on the scanner." His eyes never left mine. He was looking for a lie. "Did you break into Tyson Pancratz's house?"

  "What?" I brushed him off. "No! Where would you get an idea like that?"

  "You were seen. An anonymous tip came in that a woman matching your description was at the duplex where the deceased lived."

  Who the hell had seen me? Had there been a neighbor out walking a dog or someone taking out the trash? I really needed to deal with losing my touch. And no, it wasn't the sugar. It will never, ever be the sugar.

  "Well, that's just crazy!" I laughed. "Why would I do that?"

  "Where were you, then?" Rex asked simply.

  "I stopped by the store," I lied.

  My husband's eyes shifted to the bag in my hands. "Can I see that?"

  "Of course!" I opened it, pulling out a package of Oreos, a bag of cat food, and three tins of tuna.

  You didn't think my gloves, jacket, and gun were in there, did you? I may be losing my touch, but I'm not an idiot.

  Rex's eyes came up to mine. "Merry, this is serious. Carnack warned me that Vanderzee is back in town and is probably going to call here any minute to see if you were home."

  I hated putting Rex's job on the line and felt a little guilty. "And you don't want to lie about it, right? Just tell him I was at the store."

  And I had been too. Last week. I always kept a bag of staples in my car for just such a purpose. And the great thing? We actually were out of cat food!

  My handsome husband ran his hands through his short black hair. "This isn't good. You're playing fast and loose with your alibis. It's going to trip you up."

  I took out the package of cookies and tore into them. "I don't want to get you in trouble, but I really was at the store…" Last week. It's important to be honest, and it counts even if you aren't honest out loud.

  "They have security cameras with time stamps," Rex said.

  I shoved a cookie into my mouth and started to chew. "I know," I said.

  And I did. I also knew that if I paid a little trip to the store, I could erase the digital recording of my not being there before anyone was the wiser.

  "If they have witnesses who saw you at the victim's house…" he started.

  "Why were they anonymous?" I countered. "Doesn't sound like something a credible witness would do."

  "You have to stop doing this," Rex said.

  "I'm not doing anything," I lied again, although technically, at that moment, I wasn't doing anything. "Besides, don't worry. I used to do stuff like this all the time." And if you follow up the lie with the truth, it cancels the lie out. Maybe the truth too, but I don't like to overthink it.

  Rex asked, "Did you know that they are looking for a murder weapon that matches that knife you've been hiding in the bathroom?"

  The cookie, en route to my mouth, froze in midair. "How did you know about that?"

  Rex evaded the question, which seemed fair since I was evading the truth. "It sounds a lot like that stiletto of yours. Do you still have it?"

  "Of course I do!" I marched up to the bathroom with my
husband hot on my heels. "It's right here!" I pointed to the back of the toilet where I kept it duct taped.

  Rex bent over and inspected the area. "No, it's not."

  I stepped up and looked. Sure enough, there were two empty strips of medical-grade tape hanging down from the back.

  The knife wasn't there.

  "Maybe I misplaced it," I said flippantly, even though I was starting to internally panic on my way back to the living room.

  Philby was furiously pawing away at the aquarium in an attempt to attack the golden poison frog. Rufus blinked sarcastically. It was a good thing the enclosure was steadfast and that the frog wasn't poisonous anymore, or I'd be in the market for a new cat. Hey, maybe I can get one that resembles Stalin this time!

  "You misplaced a stiletto from its hiding place behind the toilet," he said doubtfully.

  I shrugged. "I think I used it to unclog the blender the other day."

  Rex stifled a grin. "No, you didn't. Because I unclogged the blender."

  "Oh right." Had my knife been used to kill Tyson? Whoever was framing me was doing an incredible job. A++ to him. Until I found and destroyed him that is.

  Rex sat down on the couch. "If you're not going to clue me in on what's happening, I can't help you."

  I plopped down next to him. "I'll be fine. I've always come out of these things on top."

  "This time is different," my husband pressed.

  I snuggled against him. "I've been accused of murder before."

  He put his arm around me and held on to me tightly. "Not with this much evidence against you. You were found with the body. A pastor spotted you and Tyson going into the shed. Your knife may be the murder weapon, and now it's missing. There's a phone call where you threatened the deceased. And now people have seen you breaking into Tyson's apartment. Can't you see how this is adding up?"

  I sat up and looked out the window thoughtfully. "I suppose I'm going to have to break into the Bladdersly PD if I want to see what they actually have on me."

  Rex sighed. "You do realize that you said that out loud. To me."