Macho Man Murder

by Leslie Langtry

  The two things I hadn't done was solve Wally's murder or figure out the story behind the comics. But I did bust Bitsy. So that was something.

  Ivan handed me an envelope with my name on it. The handwriting looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn't place it.

  "Wally said we had to give this to you," Ron said before the men were called away by their fiancées.

  I opened it slowly. When a bad guy gives you an envelope, x-ray it if you can. If you can't, hold your breath, open it slowly, and pray it isn't anthrax. Fortunately, it wasn't. I pulled out the sheet of paper.

  Ha ha, Finn! Joke on you! From Wally.

  My new cell phone pinged, so I stuffed the paper in the pocket of my shorts and found an email from Ahmed.

  Sorry I don't have more information on BB. But I did find this transcript from a call we listened in on in Chechnya. Sorry about that Chechen guy. Well, not sorry really. Send my two cases of cookies immediately.

  I opened the file and almost dropped my phone.

  "Are you alright?" Rex joined me with a piece of cake.

  I nodded and sat down, devouring the cake. It's amazing what a bit of sugar can do. My mind began racing, stretching pieces of red string between the images in my mind. The whole thing was coming together!

  I knew who killed Wally. And a memory from earlier this summer brought forth the possibility of who was responsible for Beetle Dork! I just wasn't sure I had proof. But maybe, if I got the right combination of people together, I'd have it.

  "I think we need to invite some more people to this party," I told Rex as I fumbled with my cell. "It's a good thing we have a lot of cake." I regretted saying that because it meant, with the guest list I was making, there wouldn't be much left. But that's okay. If I'd solved this, I was going to order a sheet cake every week.

  Within an hour, the house was crowded. Kelly and Riley set up a table outside. Dr. Wulf was there because Kelly wanted to make up for dropping the female vulture on her. She thought it was just a regular party and that the doctor would like cake. I let it slide.

  Hilly arrived at the same time Harold did, and they nodded at each other. Sheriff Carnack showed up with Deputy Grimes, who had a paperback Western shoved in his back pocket. I wasn't even mad at him. I was surprised, however, when the teen druids showed up.

  "Hilly invited us," Stewie said. "Hey! Cake!"

  The four teens slouched off to the cake table, where Randi sweetly gave them each a plate.

  I motioned for Hilly to come over. "Why did you invite the druids?"

  She shrugged. "I assumed you wanted me to."

  That made sense in the way that it didn't make sense. But then again, that was Hilly.

  Ivan and Ron ran over to the sheriff and crushed him in a hug. The big guy laughed out loud, even though I think he hadn't meant to. It was hard to be mad at those two. Their enthusiasm was infectious. And now that they were here and looking at green cards, I realized I'd need to find them jobs where they didn't test the limits of the law. But that was for another time.

  "Thanks for inviting me!" Harold said as he held a plate with four pieces of cake. "Did you want me to do a monologue or something?" He looked around. "I don't see any other form of entertainment. Oh. And it'll cost one hundred dollars per fifteen minutes."

  "That seems a little steep" was all I could think of to say.

  He shrugged. "Sorry. Union guidelines."

  "Well, I didn't bring you here to entertain us." I smiled.

  Rex walked over as Harold waddled away. "This is a strange party."

  "It's not really a party." I pulled up a lawn chair to sit down. I was getting tired. Not that I wanted to admit it.

  "You know who did it," Rex stated simply.

  I nodded.

  "And all of this is so you can divulge how it was done."

  I held up one finger. "And it has cake!" Every reveal should have cake. I cleared my throat and made an announcement. "I'd like everyone to come here. I've got something to say."

  The group formed a knot of people, and I had to insist they form a circle. I could see from the look in Riley's and the sheriff's eyes that they'd figured out what this was about.

  "I know who killed Wally," I said simply. I was still sitting in my chair but felt it would be more dramatic if I stood up, so I did. Exhaustion, and a small bit of pain, tried to intimidate me into sitting back down, but I wasn't having it.

  Dr. Wulf looked around nervously. "I thought this was a party. Should I even be here?"

  I nodded. "Why not?" And then I launched into my monologue.

  "Wally, Ron, and Ivan came here for one reason—to make me kill Riley or they would kill Rex. The problem was that Wally was the one who was killed."

  The druids stared at me. I guessed that this was the first time they'd heard about any of this, except for Kayla, who'd found out at the ice cream shop, from my troop.

  "Didn't Hilly do it?" Kelly asked a little too hopefully.

  "No," I said. "Hilly was the last person to see Wally alive, but she didn't do it."

  Rex couldn't resist. "Bitsy killed him. There's no other reason for her to be here."

  "I wish." I really did. "But Bitsy didn't kill him either."

  Kelly tried again. "Riley killed him to stop you from carrying out the ultimatum."

  I shook my head. "Again, wishful thinking. But no, he didn't kill him."

  Riley looked wounded. Good.

  "But he was at the crime scene," Soo Jin said.

  When had she arrived? I should've invited her, but I'd forgotten. I looked at Rex, and he gave me a tiny nod. He'd invited her. I needed to thank him for that later.

  I responded to the ME. "That's because he really did have a case. A comic collector in Des Moines had hired him to find out who B.E. Nuff was and what had happened to the copies of their comic's first printing."

  Riley spoke up. "I wondered what had happened to the copies. They were here. I followed a lead to the Cornhole but couldn't find the comics."

  "That's because they weren't in the dumpster—yet." I pulled my battered copy out and waved it around.

  Stewie almost fainted. "You creased it? Are you crazy?"

  Kelly asked her boss, "How did you know to go to the Cornhole?"

  He replied, "I found one of the books with a Post-it on it that said Dump at Cornhole."

  "Hilly, you're using Post-its now?" I asked. "Doesn't seem very assassin-ish."

  Hilly shrugged. "I forget things if I don't write them down."

  "Wait." Riley stared at Hilly. "You gave me the clue?"

  "Yes." I nodded. "Because Hilly is B.E. Nuff."

  There was a small satisfaction in seeing Riley blanche. "You're joking."

  Hilly beamed at me. "How did you know?"

  "At first I thought it was Harold." I motioned toward the rotund man, who froze with a fork halfway to his mouth. "And then I thought it was Riley. I thought he had taken the garbage bags full of the comics from my car at the hotel. I found his pen on the floor. But I think you planted that. You were the one in the hoodie."

  Hilly winked.

  "It had to be someone connected to the CIA. Only they would know about that disastrous event in Honduras. I'd hoped it was Bitsy, but one thing struck me. You called me Beetle Dork."

  The druids, who'd been staring open-mouthed at Hilly, now turned to me.

  "You're Beetle Dork?" Stewie was starting to perspire. From excitement. I think.

  Kayla looked confused. "Should we call you that now instead of Bird Goddess?"

  I held up my hands. "No. Please, no. I prefer Bird Goddess." I turned to everyone else. "Hilly is a beetle breeder. She loves them. Even the comic page numbers have little beetles. But I have no idea why she called me a dork."

  Riley was scratching his head. "If Hilly is B.E. Nuff, why dump the comics?"

  Hilly answered Riley, "It just wasn't fun anymore. Did you know it's hard work? I did all the story and the ink. By the time I got my author copies, I knew I didn't want
to do it anymore. So I threatened the publishers with pampering the poodle and got all the copies. It wasn't a huge print run. So stingy."

  The druids dropped to their knees around Hilly and worshipped her.

  Stewie looked up from the ground. "Does that mean we can't keep them?"

  Hilly laughed. "I've got them in the car. You can have them. You'll be the owners of the rarest comics on the planet. I'll sign them if you like."

  Stewie went into some kind of sweaty trance.

  "Think of all the money we'll make!" Mike said.

  "Maybe we can reimburse Bird Goddess for the dues?" Kayla suggested.

  The four looked at each other and said, "Nah."

  "Those dues are already paid," Heather said. "But I'm excited to be rich because I need to buy stuff."

  They got to their feet, and Stewie shrieked, "We can buy that hearse and pay for travel to all the comic cons!"

  Rex interjected. "This still doesn't solve the big question. Who killed Wally?"

  "Oh! Right! Wally did it. Wally killed Wally," I answered.

  Hilly held up a finger. "I helped."

  Riley's mouth fell open. "What is happening?"

  I tried not to look too smug. "Wally was dying of cancer. He only had a week or so left. My mole found a transcript that was intercepted." It would make Ahmed so happy to think he was a mole, even though he didn't deserve it. "Last spring, a doctor told Wally he had only a couple of months to live. So he came here to kill himself."

  I was pretty sure Ahmed had no idea how valuable that information had been. I wasn't going to tell him.

  "And I got an odd note." I pulled it from my pocket and passed it around. "He was mocking me. Wally told the guys to give it to me. He'd planned to set me up to take the fall all along."

  Kayla asked, "Why you?"

  "Because he thought he could frame me. I'd been spying on him for the US. I'm sure it wounded his pride and, if it was found out, ruined his reputation. And if I killed Riley too, that would just be the icing on the cake."

  Mmmmm…icing. I looked longingly at the cake. It could wait.

  Riley pointed at Hilly. "But you said she was the last person to see him alive."

  "She was. I believe that Hilly helped him, but I don't think she stabbed him."

  Hilly confirmed, "I just showed him where and how. He missed on the first try." She rolled her eyes. "Amateurs."

  Kayla was on a roll now. "Why the zoo? I heard them at Sugar Lips'. He proposed to her, and she said they were going to the zoo."

  I turned to Hilly. I had no idea about the zoo, and I had forgotten to ask her about the proposal.

  "That's obvious," Hilly said as she looked toward me. "I told him about you and the zoo and Wolfie. He told me he'd always wanted to see a red wolf. And because he bought me ice cream and proposed, I took him there. That bag you saw me with was just a few dog toys. I thought I should go back and get them before they were discovered."

  Dr. Wulf did not look too happy to find out that Hilly was sneaking into the zoo to give a Chechen terrorist playtime with one of the rarest animals on earth. I really owed her one.

  Kelly looked confused. "So…nobody murdered Wally?"

  I shook my head. "Nope. It was suicide."

  "Assisted," Hilly interjected, "suicide."

  I quickly chimed back because assisted suicide was technically still illegal. "I think Wally might've left some sort of note behind suggesting that, if something happened to him, I was the killer. He had hoped it would make me look guilty."

  "And when I saw that note," Hilly said (I did a little dance inside because I was right about the note), "I realized he'd used me to frame Merry. I couldn't let him do that. I had to draw suspicion away from you. So I blamed Ivan and Ron. Sorry about that, by the way."

  Ivan spoke up for the first time. "Wally was very sick."

  Ron nodded. "Very sick."

  I turned to them. "You knew?"

  Ivan said, "We knew that he was sick for long time. We did not know he planned to kill himself."

  "You should've told me!"

  "We did not want to bother you. You were helping us."

  "I have to ask," Sheriff Carnack inquired. "Why didn't Hilly just tell the police that Wally had killed himself? Why not destroy the note?"

  She shrugged. "I thought Ron and Ivan would kill Riley, Rex, and Merry if Wally turned up murdered. I thought everything was safer that way. I held on to the note in case I needed to show it to them. Maybe they would've refused to go through with Wally's plans if they knew he was trying to implicate Merry."

  "You would have killed my brother and sister-in-law?" Randi asked Ivan. She appeared to be stunned.

  "Why didn't you kill Merry?" Ronni shouted at Ron.

  He responded, "We did not have orders to do that."

  Ivan thought about this. "Or we forgot. But we would not kill Merry or Rex. We love Merry and Rex!"

  Randi kissed him on the cheek. Ronni scowled at Ron.

  Soo Jin asked, "Bitsy didn't kill Wally and wasn't involved with the comics. Why was she here?" She was so smart—she didn't even know about the comics, and yet she had figured things out. I silently prayed that she wouldn't leave if Eddie got the job in DC.

  I sighed. "No. She wanted to kill Wally, Ron, and Ivan. She also planned to kill Riley and me. Wally just beat her to it in his case. She was thrown off by the suicide and was trying to figure out what to do next."

  Riley nodded. "People lose it all the time in the CIA. She probably had a plan in place after killing those men in Greece. When Wally tripped things up by taking himself out, she didn't know what to do."

  I couldn't have said it better myself. But he wasn't going to hear that from me.

  People stood there, taking this in. Most of them looked at me, waiting.

  "That's all," I said. "If there's anything more, I don't know about it."

  The crowd broke into groups. Dr. Wulf was talking to Kelly, probably asking what was going on. Hilly had been dragged away by the druids, presumably to get the bags of comics. The sheriff and Rex were talking quietly off to the side.

  Riley looked a bit defeated. Whether that was because, yet again, I'd solved his case or the fact that Bitsy hadn't come halfway across the country to sleep with him, I wasn't sure. Probably both. He walked over to me.

  "You know, I found out how Bitsy jumped out of the window that night."

  My mouth fell open. "You did? I forgot all about that! How did she do it?"

  Riley smiled. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. "She'd rented the room right below her. She kept the window open and had a rope tied off to the side of the upper floor's window. I guess she'd planned for a quick escape."

  "Very good, Riley." I punched him lightly in the arm. "Now go and explain that to Rex, please."

  Riley squeezed my hand and then joined Sheriff Carnack and Rex. Maybe he wasn't so dejected after all.

  Harold lumbered over to me. "I told you I didn't create that comic."

  I nodded. "Yeah. Sorry about that."

  He looked mournfully in the direction Hilly and the Druids had gone. "I probably shouldn't have told Hilly that story."

  I froze. "You told her the story of what happened in Honduras?"

  "Yeah. I ran into her when I got out of the hospital in Tegucigalpa. She was in town to pardon the Pope."

  "You…you…" I stammered. "You know about the new guidelines? The euphemisms?"

  He rolled his eyes. "Of course. I keep up on the profession. I'm not a loser."

  Hilly joined us without the druids. If I had to guess, they'd all run home to put their copies in mylar bags. She put her hand on Harold's shoulder and handed him two comics.

  "You're giving me two comics?" His eyes bugged out.

  "You gave me the idea," she said.

  "I'm going to build a theater here in Who's There!" he intoned dramatically. "I'm leaving that slimy Bladdersly!" He hugged Hilly. "I've got to get these in mylar and find an auction house!
" Then he waddled away.

  What had I done? He was going to bring his awful acting abilities here? Would Who's There run me out of town for that?

  Hilly handed me four copies of the book. "For you. For solving the case."

  "Great," I deadpanned.

  "You don't look happy," Hilly said.

  "I have so many questions, but one sticks out. Why call me Beetle Dork?"

  She looked confused. "Because I love beetles! It's a compliment! Enjoy it!" And then she walked over to bury the hatchet with Ivan and Ron. And that's not a euphemism.

  EPILOGUE

  It took me a couple more days to fully recover. By then Bitsy had been arrested by the Feds, who handed her over to the CIA. I was pretty sure she was headed for prison. But since I hated her, and didn't care, I didn't follow up.

  Riley and Hilly promised to do what they could to get rid of the film of me leaving Chechnya. It was nice that he'd offered. We would have to have a conversation sometime where he would fill me in on anything else he'd done that I didn't know about. I wanted to patch things up between us. He did, after all, have my back at the Radisson.

  Soo Jin's boyfriend, Eddie Ruiz, made the cut from the first round of interviews to join the Secret Service in DC. Soo Jin was his biggest cheerleader, egging him on and encouraging him. She still insisted she wouldn't go with him if he got the job. I know it's terrible, but I'm hoping he doesn't make it. Yes, I'm a selfish person. Who's surprised?

  Harold put a bid on the old opera house in town the very next day. He didn't realize that he'd have to sell the comics first in order to get the money for the down payment. When he ran to my house in a panic, I covered him. As much as I didn't want to have him in charge of anything in my town, I felt bad for the way I'd treated him. I did insist that he work with the theatre director at the high school, though. I had no idea if he was any good but felt it would be better if a professional was in charge.

  Randi and Ronni married Ron and Ivan immediately. Jane Monaghan had warned them that there might be some issues with immigration, so they went to the courthouse and got things done. They told us after the fact.

  I made a huge banner and put it on their garage, that said Welcome To America From Chechnya—Please Don't Bomb Us. Ron, Ivan, and Randi thought it was funny. Ronni did not. She dropped off a very large diorama depicting the Nuremburg trials with armadillos. I was the ferret Nazi on trial. Don't tell her this, but I secretly like it.