Macho Man Murder

by Leslie Langtry

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  MACHO MAN MURDER

  a Merry Wrath Mystery

  by

  LESLIE LANGTRY

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  Copyright © 2020 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.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY LESLIE LANGTRY

  SNEAK PEEK

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  CHAPTER ONE

  "Hello, Asma." The Chechen strongman grinned evilly, something that's very hard to do when you're a 5'4", pasty white man in clothes that are at least two sizes too small, sitting in a lawn chair, wearing a hat that says Pirates of the Caribbean—Walt Disney World. It wasn't even my lawn chair. The man had actually brought his own and settled in next to the driveway.

  My Girl Scout troop and I had just returned to my old house, conveniently located across the street from the house I now shared with my husband. I wasn't ready to deal with someone from my past after a very frenzied pool party. One of the Kaitlyns nearly drowned during a bet to see how long she could hold her breath underwater—she broke the pool record. Lauren somehow managed to smuggle in ten frogs, which she dumped in the pool next to a couple of ultra-nervous soccer moms. And Betty managed to take control of the speaker system, where she screamed, "Shark! Run for your lives!" before I disengaged her from the system and literally carried her back to our picnic table.

  Kelly, my best friend and co-leader, had taken Kaitlyn to the hospital, and we'd been booted from the pool after the frog/shark incident and were back at my place to await the parent pickup. Somehow, I'd managed to cram nine girls and myself into a van that seated seven. Oh well. It was only a five-minute trip because everything is only five minutes away in Who's There, Iowa.

  Once the girls disembarked, they formed a circle around the Chechen strongman, out of curiosity and to set up a defensive perimeter—something we'd worked on recently during a rather dull seminar on sewing.

  Lauren turned to me. "You have asthma?"

  "My brother has asthma," Inez added.

  "What's asthma?" Hannah asked.

  "It's where you can't breathe, but you don't die," Betty said confidently.

  Hannah nodded thoughtfully. "So it's a superpower."

  Right now, I was wishing I had superpowers. Enough to send this bastard back to his own continent. Preferably in pieces.

  "What are you doing here, Wally?" My heart was pounding through my chest.

  How did he find me? Were the other gang members here? His presence triggered me into a very vivid memory of a night in a bar in Chechnya, where I was undercover, when CNN came on the bar's ancient TV and outed me as a CIA spy.

  The man tsked. "You were very hard to find, Asma."

  "She doesn't have asthma!" Ava shouted, her little arms folding over her chest. My defiant one—Ava's goal in life was to be the CEO of an insurance corporation. It's all she'd wanted to be since she was five, when she wanted to be a Muppet.

  Wally looked confused. "What does she mean?"

  I turned to my ten-year-old girls, hoping they would leave. "A-S-M-A. It's a Chechen name."

  "Your cover!" Betty slammed her fist into her hand. She looked Wally up and down. "Should we take this guy out for you? I sharpened my snorkel into a pike on the way home."

  Wally's eyebrows went up.

  "Absolutely not," I said. "In fact, the meeting is over. Could you girls stay outside and wait for your parents? And Betty, hand over the snorkel please." I did this not to disarm the girl but to arm myself.

  "But…" Betty started.

  "Now," I insisted.

  The girls grumbled but sat down in the grass as I motioned the man toward the front stoop.

  "Let's go, Wally." I opened the door and ushered him inside.

  This was a huge breach in protocol because Kelly or I were always on hand to supervise pickup. But this man was extremely dangerous. I wasn't sure if he was armed, and I didn't want the girls caught in the crossfire.

  Once inside, my mind was on the Colt .45 pistol I had under the couch. Could I get it in time? If not, he was a short guy. I could probably throw him through the plate glass picture window if I had to. Of course, then my window would be broken, and getting a new one in this small town, thirty minutes from Des Moines, took a week at best.

  Instead, I settled for interrogation. "What are you doing here, Wally?"

  The man smiled as he spoke in his broken English. "I have job for you."

  "A job? What are you talking about? I'm done with that life."

  Wally got up and walked around my living room, running a finger over the dusty TV. The tyrant tut-tutted. "You betrayed us. Should I call you by your real name—Finn? Well, Finn, this is revenge."

  I sighed, mostly because he was a bit of a neat freak. He used to make us clean our secret compound twice a day. We finally talked him into employing a maid when he insisted that the spotless, art deco chandelier wasn't spotless enough. Ron had torn it out of the ceiling, thrown it against a wall, and vanished for three days. That convinced Wally, and he had hired a deaf, mute washerwoman from Grozny. Her name was Bitsy, and I had liked her. She really had a knack for polishing my knives.

  "How did you find me?" I asked while I wondered if she'd be interested in relocating to America. I could use a maid, what with having two houses, two cats, and a Scottish deerhound.

  The Chechen sat down on the couch, kyboshing my idea of retrieving the gun. I still had the one taped inside the oven. Maybe I could offer to make him some French fries or a frozen pizza. The trick was remembering to take the gun out before turning the oven on. I'd lost two guns that way, making it a very expensive lesson.

  "It was not easy." The man shook his head. "I tell you that."

  In other words, I wasn't going to find out how he'd tracked me down.

  I s
hrugged in an attempt to seem nonchalant, even though I was freaking out inside. This man was a Chechen terrorist, and I'd spent a year undercover with his organization—longer than I had with Carlos the Armadillo in South America.

  "I'll get some vodka, and we can discuss this like adults," I said as I started toward the kitchen.

  "No!" Wally said sharply. "We discuss now!"

  I froze. I still had Betty's snorkel shiv in my hands. Was I fast enough? I'd been out of the biz for a while. My skills might be rusty.

  It's strange to be menaced by a man named Wally. That wasn't his real name. His real name was Aslan—which means lion and was far more intimidating. But Wally had labored under the delusion that Wally was a very sexy American name. After several months embedded with his gang, I eventually regretted lying to him about that.

  I sat down in a chair next to the sofa. "I'm not doing anything for you. I told you, I'm not a spy anymore."

  "You will." Wally grinned. "We have incentive."

  "There's no incentive on this planet that would make me do anything for you," I snapped.

  He slammed his fist onto my badly put together Ikea coffee table. I was impressed that it held up under that.

  "You will do what we want, or your husband will die very painful death."

  Rex? I gagged. "How do you know I have a husband?" I sputtered.

  "He works at police station. We are watching." Wally looked around. "I cannot believe he lives in this terrible dump."

  So he didn't know we lived in Rex's house across the street. That was something at least.

  I decided to play this a different way. I sneered. "You have nothing. He's so well guarded that you'd never get close. We have warriors called the Sheriff and the Iowa State Police who look out for him," I lied.

  Wally frowned. "Does not matter. Either by bomb at station or shooting him when he is driving his car. We will get him. Does not matter if anyone is protecting him. They cannot watch him all day and night."

  My heart dropped to my shoes. Maybe I could get Rex into Federal Witness Protection? Riley, my former CIA handler, had briefly worked for the Feds—and still had contacts there—before setting up a private investigation agency here in town.

  "Honestly, Wally." I threw my hands up. "Why are you trying to get me to do something for you?"

  His eyes darkened, and he scowled. "You think it easy for me when we saw you on CNN? I had mole in my gang! Me!" He thumped his tiny chest. "You made me look bad. The others made fun at me every year at Chechen Strongman Annual Picnic and Sack Race! They say, 'Wally, the man who didn't know he had American spy. Wally, the man who was idiot to be fooled in such a way. Wally, the weirdo with two belly buttons…'"

  My eyebrows went up. "You have two belly buttons?"

  The man snapped, "It does not matter! You owe me, and I get revenge!"

  Nothing I said was going to matter with this guy. He was going to get his way, and nothing I said would change that.

  "What is this job?" Maybe it would be something small like chastise the other strongmen for teasing him or find him a surgeon to deal with the belly button issue.

  Wally's evil grin returned. "You will kill Riley Andrews."

  Gulp.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kill Riley? The man I'd worked with for, well, my entire career at the CIA? Oh sure, I'd threatened to many, many times over the years. But actually murder him? No way. He was a friend. A colleague. And you don't kill your friends or colleagues.

  "You have deadline," he said. His English had improved since I'd last seen him. "Do not care how you do it. We want his body in three days." Wally held up four fingers. Apparently, his English hadn't improved as far as numbers were concerned.

  "And," I said, "if I don't do it, you'll kill my husband—Officer Kevin Dooley."

  Wally frowned. "That is not his name."

  Well, it was worth a shot. I'd known Kevin Dooley since kindergarten, when he was into eating paste (Elmer's was his favorite). Now a policeman (and village idiot) who worked under Rex, the mouth breather had upped his game to eating junk food, mostly from my house/car/grocery bags.

  I tried a different ploy. "I can't do it, Wally. Not in that time frame. I need at least two weeks."

  Wally's face went purple with rage. "Do you think I am stupid?"

  Yes, I did.

  "No! This is badly named, very small town! You have four days!" This time he held up three fingers.

  I shook my head. "I need more time than that. I need time to plan, gather the equipment, surveil him. It'll take at least ten days."

  "No! You have five!" He didn't hold up any fingers, so I had no idea what he meant. Wally got to his feet and walked to the door.

  "Five days!" He pointed at me. "One hour more, and we kill your husband!"

  And with that, he was out the door. I was hot on his heels to see him get into a silver pickup truck and drive away. That's when I realized that the girls were gone. Hopefully they'd been picked up by their parents, instead of by some random serial killer with convenient seating for ten.

  I went back into the house, and after texting a couple of the Kaitlyns to make sure they got home okay, I made a phone call to the only person I knew could help me out.

  "Merry!" The woman had picked up on the first ring. "I was just thinking about you!"

  "Hilly," I said, bypassing the usual pleasantries. "I need your help."

  "Okay," she said.

  This was followed by a knock on the door. I opened it to find the CIA assassin (who's not an assassin because the CIA doesn't have assassins) standing on my stoop, phone to her ear.

  My jaw dropped all the way to the floor, hitting my knees and ankles on the way (metaphorically speaking, of course).

  "What…? How…?" I sputtered as I grabbed her arm and pulled her inside.

  She looked confused. "I told you I was just thinking about you."

  I slammed the door shut and locked it. "On my front porch?"

  She shrugged. "Well, duh. Where else would I think about you?"

  Hilly Vinton was (not) an assassin with the CIA. (I'm literally required to say that the CIA doesn't have assassins). Quirky and smart, the tall, athletic brunette had some interesting hobbies, from beetle breeding to messing around with gene-splicing Crispr technology.

  "What did you need?" She settled on the couch right where, a few moments ago, a Chechen mob man had directed me to kill one of my best friends.

  I wasn't quite sure what I needed. After all, I'd called her on impulse, but now that I thought about it, how could Hilly help me, aside from killing Riley for me?

  "Did you know," Hilly said, "that this town is crawling with Chechens? I spotted two of them getting gas about ten minutes ago, and I'm pretty sure I spotted one driving away from your house. Is Who's There like a sister city to Grozny? Or maybe Urus-Martan? I liked that place. They had good ice cream."

  "Yes," I said. "Wait, you had ice cream in Urus-Martan? Where?" I shook my head to clear it. "Never mind. I don't really care about that. I need your help. That's why I called you."

  She followed me into the kitchen, where I poured us each an extremely healthy dose of wine. After gulping it down, I poured myself another. Thank God it was after four o'clock. I tried to keep from drinking before then—a rule I'd broken many times.

  "So what's up?" she asked with a grin. "And can I stay here again?"

  "Sure," I agreed. "But wouldn't you be a bit more comfortable at the Radisson?"

  Hilly shook her head. "Not really. I'm kind of over hotels. They don't seem to like it when I knock off one of their guests."

  She had a point. And she seemed to be waiting for me to answer her question.

  "That was Aslan. He's the Chechen strongman whose gang I infiltrated. If I don't kill Riley, he's going to kill Rex."

  "I remember him!" She slapped the counter of the breakfast bar. "That's right! You were with them when you were outed!" Hilly began to giggle. "Man, you should've seen the look on your face when t
hat CNN broadcast came on, naming you as an American spy. That was awesome!"

  "What?" I gasped. This was the first I was hearing that someone had seen me. "You were there? Why didn't you help me? I had one hell of a time getting out of that country!"

  Hilly shook her head and waved me off. "No, I wasn't there. The Agency had cameras in that dive bar. That clip of your face going kind of white and ashy and then you trying to sneak out of the bar is priceless. It made the top ten CIA bloopers reel. I've seen it maybe fifty times."

  "The CIA filmed my downfall???" I screamed.

  I'd been out for a few years now and had no idea they had footage of the most dangerous event in my career. The whole mess had started when the US vice president was mad at my father, a powerful US senator. He had his lackey "accidentally" reveal my name and likeness to the media. Within hours it was all over CNN, airing at the exact moment that Wally and his crew (which included me) were in a dive bar watching CNN. Wally had a thing for CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer, and the bar was the only place in town that had cable.

  My name is Fionnaghuala Merrygold Czrygy, and I was a field agent for the CIA. That is, until I was outed. After a generous settlement from the US government, I changed my name to Merry Wrath (my mother's maiden name) and came home to Who's There. For a long time, nobody knew who I was. But word had started trickling out, and I was pretty sure a few of my Girl Scouts knew. Well, at least Betty did.

  Hilly cocked her head to one side. "You didn't know? Riley's the one who forwarded it to everybody."

  "Riley did that?" My brain promptly exploded. After a few moments of grinding my teeth, my outrage morphed into an icy calm. "Forget I needed you. I really am going to kill him after all."

  "Great!" Hilly got up and pulled car keys from her pocket. "I'll get my bags. Can we get dinner at Oleo's? I'm starving."

  She walked out the door before I could answer. Okay. Greasy cheeseburgers from the best joint in Iowa…then I'd kill Riley. It made good sense. After all, who kills someone they've known for more than a decade on an empty stomach?