Mad Money Murder

by Leslie Langtry

  There was a tug on my hands and then nothing. I shook off the blow to my head and turned to see the shadow running away from me. I looked down. The hat was gone. And now, so was the shadow.

  A couple of hours later, as we ate our pancakes, I found Betty staring at me.

  "What happened this morning?" she asked as casually as if she was asking for the syrup.

  I responded with the same casualness. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Yes, you do." She pointed a fork at me. "Something happened. I heard you get up."

  The fork full of pancakes froze halfway to my face. "Did you follow me?"

  The child fixed me with a look. "No. I was dreaming that I'd won ten puppies. You don't leave bed when you have a dream like that. Everyone knows that."

  Ava agreed. "I was dreaming that I was running a major insurance company, and I got to ride Cookie to work every day."

  The other girls congratulated her.

  Ava had big dreams. My ambitious Scout, she dreamed of working in insurance for some reason.

  "Nothing happened," I lied. "I couldn't sleep, and so I just sat out here until sunup."

  "Right. If that's how you want to play it," Betty said sarcastically.

  "Yes" was all I could think to say.

  To be honest, I still couldn't wrap my head around what had happened. Why would there be some guy hanging around a Girl Scout camp in the off-season?

  Okay, now my mind swarmed with all sorts of terrible possibilities. Did I need to employ security measures? Were we safe? I really should've brought a shotgun. Maybe Betty brought one. I'd have to ask quietly after breakfast.

  Or was it something else? Was this someone trying to scare me off the case? One of Aunt June's suitors or Fancy Nancy?

  "I was thinking we'd try to find Ned this morning," Kelly interrupted my thoughts. "The camp ranger. I mean, it was great that Toad met us and all, but the girls are interested in trying the high ropes course, so I thought we'd ask if there's a facilitator in the area."

  "That's a great idea," I said a little too loudly and a little too quickly.

  Six pairs of eyes stared at me.

  At our old camp, the ranger always met us the first day, and if we wanted to do something, he made it happen. All Scout camp rangers must be like that, right?

  "Do you think it's odd that we haven't seen him?" Kelly asked quietly as the girls began chattering about puppies and Cookie. Or was it puppies and cookies?

  "He could be on vacation," I suggested. "Still, I'd feel a little safer getting in touch with him."

  "Safer?" Kelly's eyebrows went up. "You don't think we're safe here?" She looked around quickly.

  It occurred to me that, with the girls here, now would be a bad time to tell Kelly about last night. It also might be unnerving to her to think of me, a former spy, as worried.

  "I just don't know this place that well. I'm used to our camp." I hoped that would be enough to explain it.

  Kelly got up and went into the lodge, returning with the map of camp.

  "There's only one road into camp," she pointed out. "The bluffs are the border for most of it, but it does look like some private property on that side." She pointed to the woods behind the ropes course.

  "Does it show the ranger's cabin?" I asked.

  Kelly scowled. "That's strange. It looks like it's in the middle of the woods, just west of the road we came in on."

  I squinted at the map. "That is strange. And there's no trail on the map either."

  Back home, our ranger's house was the first place you saw when you pulled onto the property. In fact, you couldn't access any of the camp without driving past his home. That's where the gate was that closed the road every night.

  This was different. Almost as if Ned was some sort of hermit who didn't want to be around people.

  "Once we're done here, let's hike out to his cabin," I said.

  Kelly agreed. It took a little while to clean up five sticky girls who'd managed to get maple syrup all over themselves. Once we got everyone into clean clothes and backpacks, we lined up, ready to march.

  "What is happening with the investigation today, Mrs. Wrath?" Inez asked as we crossed a little bridge that went over the lazy river creek.

  "I need to see Virgil Jacobsen, the postmaster, and we have to go through the house again."

  "To find the other two clues!" Kaitlyn shouted.

  "That's right."

  "I kind of hoped that there would be a trail here in spite of the map." Kelly looked around. "We can't just wade into poison ivy."

  That was a good point. A massive meadow of the itchy stuff coated the way in. What was with a place where a woman had dangerous bugs as pets and the only way to get to the ranger's cabin was through a moat of poison ivy?

  "Girls," I said. "We are going to look for a trail. Betty, Inez, and Kaitlyn, you guys go right. Lauren, Ava, and I will go left. In five minutes, Mrs. Albers will whistle to bring us back. Hopefully we will find the trail. Okay?"

  "An adventure!" Inez cheered.

  "That's right. An adventure. But not too far. If it looks like there's nothing up ahead, just come back here, okay?"

  We split up with each group of three heading out in different directions.

  "Why isn't Betty with Lauren?" Ava asked.

  Lauren looked at me curiously.

  Because those two were dangerous together.

  "Because we should all mix things up now and then, just to get to know each other better."

  Lauren wiggled her eyebrows at Ava. "She must've read that in the guidebook."

  "Totally," Ava agreed.

  I didn't argue. Instead, we worked our way all the way to the road before turning back. We made it back to Kelly before she called us. The other girls had found a trail. We followed them to a spot on the other side of the tents we'd passed.

  We passed by one of the campsites with its four cabins. Once we came to the edge of the woods, we paused. Sure enough, there was a trail there, but it looked new. All the foliage had been cut away, but recently. Very recently.

  "How did you find this trail again?" I asked.

  Betty, Inez, and Kaitlyn looked at each other as if wondering what to say.

  "It was just here." Betty shrugged.

  I looked at her backpack. It seemed to have something heavy in it.

  "Hand over the machete." I held out my hand.

  She looked at me with an almost convincing innocence. "What's a machete?"

  "It's the thing you used to cut all this down to make a trail."

  The girl sighed and dropped her backpack to the ground.

  "Merry," Kelly said.

  "Hold on," I said. "Where did you get it? You didn't bring it with you."

  "Actually." Betty pulled the giant knife out by its handle. "I did. I had it rolled up in the sleeping bag."

  I shook my hand in front of her, palm up.

  "Merry," Kelly said. "I don't think you should…"

  Betty slapped the flat of the blade onto my palm just as I realized what Kelly was saying.

  "There's poison ivy on the blade, isn't there?" I didn't move, not even to drop the machete to the ground.

  "That's why I held it by the handle," Betty said.

  My brain finally caught up with my actions, and I set the machete down. At least I hadn't curled my fingers around it. But that didn't excuse my stupidity. I knew that you didn't touch something that had touched poison ivy.

  My palm began to itch badly. I wanted to scratch it but knew that would make it worse.

  "Come on," Kelly sighed. "Let's get back to the lodge. Who wants to do first aid on Mrs. Wrath?"

  Five hands went up quickly. The girls skipped all the way back, discussing methods of bandaging my head and setting my leg if it was broken.

  "It itches!" I whispered to my co-leader.

  "Don't touch it," Kelly warned. "Good thing I brought calamine lotion."

  Back at the cabin, after five minutes of washing and drying
my hands, Kelly examined my palm.

  "Not bad," she said. "I think we caught it quickly."

  As she smeared calamine lotion on my palm, I felt relief as the itching went down.

  "What on Earth made you do that? You know better."

  I nodded. "I do. I've just been distracted."

  "You really have. I don't know if it's a good idea to go back to Aunt June's house. You might accidentally free the golden poison frog."

  I changed the subject. "Why isn't there a trail to Ned's cabin? Doesn't that strike you as bad planning?"

  She leaned forward. "And to have it in the middle of the woods like that? I don't get it."

  "Was there a phone number for him?"

  "Just a walkie-talkie."

  I blew on my hand to help dry out the lotion. "Where are the walkie-talkies?"

  "I haven't looked for them. I didn't think we'd need them," Kelly said.

  "Hey." I looked around. "Where are the girls?"

  Outside, the girls were dousing the machete with lighter fluid. Betty had just struck a match when I shouted, "No!"

  Inez asked, "What?"

  Kelly caught up. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Sterilizing the blade," Ava said.

  "It's how you do a needle before you fish out a splinter," Lauren said.

  "Eeeeuuuuwwww!" the other girls squealed.

  I grabbed the handle of the machete and took it to the water pump. After I completely soaked it, Kelly came out with some wet wipes and finished off any chance the oil had of staying on the blade.

  "Oh, come on," Betty complained. "I was going to try out a new trick. The Blazing Blade of Death!"

  "Behtee Machetee!" the girls started cheering in unison.

  "Since you won't use our camp names," Betty Machete explained, "I'm going with that one."

  "What happened to Badger Tooth," I wondered.

  "When we didn't see her or the three dudes, we decided it was just a story. But Betty Machete is real."

  Kelly sat the girls down with a lecture on sharpened implements in the hands of fourth graders. I took the weapon inside and placed it on top of the upper cabinets. The girls shouldn't find it there, unless they formed a human bridge or something. Hopefully Betty couldn't poof seven feet in the air.

  "Alright, ladies, time to get your suits on!" Kelly announced.

  "Mud pit! Mud pit! Mud pit!" the girls began chanting as they went inside.

  "Mud pit!" the girls continued to scream in unison as we stood on the edge of a huge hole in the ground.

  Lauren gasped with glee, "It looks like a grave!"

  "Do you think it was one of those burial mounds?" Kaitlyn asked.

  Lauren nodded sagely. "An armadillo by the looks of it."

  "Or," I said as I tugged on the edges of my swimsuit, "it's just a hole full of dirt."

  Kelly arrived with the hose and aimed it right at the pit. The girls lined up behind a six-foot-high berm that was mostly made of mud. The general idea was to slide down the muddy side, landing in the pit.

  "I've changed my mind," I said.

  "The mud will be good for you." Kelly shook her head.

  Within minutes, everything was soaked, and five little girls were slapping mud all over each other. It didn't take long before they looked like mud golems with large eyes.

  "I can hold the hose," I offered.

  "Not a chance," Kelly shut me down. "Now get in there and let the girls cover you in mud."

  "You have to use the slide!" Ava shouted. At least, I thought it was Ava.

  Or was it Kaitlyn? It was hard to tell because the girls were already coated head to toe in a thick layer of mud. How did they do that so quickly?

  I climbed to the top of the berm and sat down. Mud squished around my thighs as Kelly took a picture of me. Great.

  "I'm sending it to Rex!" she shouted.

  I slid down the mudslide, landing on my rear end at the bottom of the pit. Five little girls loomed over me. I didn't stand a chance. Every time I managed to get to my feet, they slipped out from under me again. The girls seemed to have the magical ability to stay upright in the mud. Every time I came up, they slapped more mud on me.

  After a few minutes, out of breath, I clambered out of the pit. The girls seemed disappointed that their toy wasn't playing anymore. It didn't take long for them to turn on each other, although I did notice they went easier on each other than they had on me.

  Kelly was doubled over with laughter. Every time she tried to speak, she burst out laughing. I stood there, dripping mud, wondering if it would ever come off, while she took more pictures.

  "Priceless! Just priceless!" She slowly began to regain her composure.

  I was busy scraping the thickest layer off of my body. "I'm happy to help out."

  Kelly turned the hose on me, full blast. The ice water made me yelp, and I ran over to the outdoor shower heads, turned them on, and scrubbed. Eventually, slightly less muddy, I joined her back at the pit.

  "Hey, there are only four in there," I said.

  Kelly looked around. "Betty's gone."

  A poof of gray smoke went off, and Betty appeared, fully cleaned up, between us.

  "Stop doing that!" I insisted.

  "Where did you hide smoke bombs?" Kelly studied the girl's suit.

  "I don't want to break the magical code of silence," Betty said before running to the top of the berm and sliding back down into the mud.

  I shrugged. "Seems fair."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  "Ahhhhh," I moaned as I slid into the soapy goodness in Aunt June's claw foot bathtub.

  I'd gotten all of the mud off at the camp but still felt dirty. Sneaking away for a hot bath seemed just the ticket. And with Kelly and the girls making lunch and doing a craft at camp, there wouldn't be any distractions.

  This was the best decision I'd ever had in my entire life. Maybe I could take the tub back home with me. Why not? It was mine.

  So was the house and everything in it. The bathroom on the second floor had a window that looked out over the backyard and the Mississippi River. Sitting in warm, soapy water and staring at the river going by was insanely relaxing.

  I should keep the house.

  Wait, what? I didn't need three houses. I already had two. What would I use this for? Retreats? Huh. That wasn't a terrible idea. I guess I could rent it out. I imagined an artist or writer spending hours outside, staring at the sights of the bluffs and river.

  That was a lot of work. It wasn't worth it. I should just settle with Nigel's mystery client. But then I'd have to pack everything up. Aunt June wasn't a pack rat, per se…but she did have a lot of stuff—all of it interesting. Maybe Mom would join me. She'd know what to do. Judith Czrygy always knew what to do.

  And then there was the upstairs and its murderous menagerie. They definitely had to go. I was not going to end up like Aunt June—murdered by her own pets. My thoughts turned to Philby, Martini, and Leonard. If I kept the place, I could imagine Rex and me bringing the brood up here to relax. I did not need Philby stalking the deathstalker scorpion or Leonard eating the assassin caterpillar.

  Was that what I thought? That Aunt June's death was an accident? My mind reeled through the facts.

  Aunt June was found dead from a brown recluse spider bite, with a dead spider near her. Yes, there was a brown recluse in the enclosure upstairs, but they were native to the area, so it could make sense that one got in the house. Or bit her outside and came in on her clothing.

  Maybe it was the fact that I didn't like that the coroner had no experience and seemed a little too eager to declare everything as an accident to avoid a murder investigation. Maybe it was Basil's gossip about the three secret suitors. But something felt wrong about the whole thing.

  Then again, the sheriff and Dr. Morgan didn't think there was anything to it. And I'd had so many murders in my life over the last few years, it would make sense for me to think of this as a murder.

  If only they hadn't cremated he
r. If we had a body, I could probably get Soo Jin up here to help investigate. But I didn't have a body. I had ashes. Which left me at the mercy of those here, who hadn't investigated further.

  I turned on the spigot for a gush of hot water and lay back in the tub. It was so relaxing. I was getting a little sleepy. I turned off the water, leaned back once more, and closed my eyes.

  I was having this crazy dream about Princess Badger Tooth having a picnic with the three guys she'd killed—each one wearing a tinfoil hat—when a jolt woke me up. Did I hear a door slam? How long had I been out? The water was still warm but not hot anymore. I turned to reach for my cell, which was about two feet away, and froze.

  A tiny, bright yellow frog sat on top of the phone. He seemed to cock his head toward me as if he'd missed something interesting that I'd just said. He jumped to the edge of the tub, and I very slowly withdrew my arm.

  The golden poison frog was out. What was it that made him deadly? Oh, right. He secreted enough venom to kill ten men at once. And he was less than one foot away from me, looking like he was about to jump onto my face.

  Where was Betty Machete when I needed her and her Blazing Blade of Death?

  I'd stared death in the face before, from a coked-up and paranoid Estonian politician with a Bowie knife, who thought I was a kangaroo armed with a deadly banana, to a cheap and shoddy Ferris wheel ride in Turkmenistan that had popped off of its supports and started rolling downhill toward the interstate. And those experiences didn't make this one any less scary.

  The frog seemed to study me. Was he anticipating my actions? If I jumped out of the tub, would he have time to jump and stick to me? And did they stick to people?

  A sound downstairs caught my attention. Had someone put the frog in here to kill me? And were they still in the house to see that it happened, like they had with Aunt June? Well, I guess the good news was that I was pretty sure she'd been murdered. The bad news was that I'd only have the killer to say it to.

  Heavy footsteps came up the stairs. It was a man, definitely. So now I faced a dilemma. Did I avoid getting killed by the frog by not moving? Then the killer could get me by dropping a plugged-in toaster into the tub.

  Did I take a chance and jump out of the tub, risking poisoning by one of the most venomous animals on Earth, so I could defend myself against the killer with…