The Housewife Assassin Gets Lucky

by Deborah Coonts

  “So, here’s what’s happened with Mystery Woman during the past half-hour,” Emma begins.

  Babylon London security footage appears on Arnie’s computer screen. In it, two men get into the elevator.

  “I recognize one of them,” Ryan says. “That is Sheik Mohammed Ben Halabi. He’s Aziza’s uncle.”

  Oh...Hell.

  “The other is the club’s manager,” Dominic informs him. “Nigel…Thingamabob.”

  “Ahern,” I remind him. Suddenly, I exclaim excitedly, “Oh, my God! Mystery Woman joined them by the elevator!”

  “So, that’s the bird I’m to intercept?” Dominic murmurs. “Well, well! She’s quite tasty.”

  But of course she’d appeal to him: Tall, dark, and beautiful, she’s just his type.

  Then again, every woman north of eighteen and south of sixty would fit that description.

  She’ll soon notice him too.

  Hey, better him than me.

  “Ha! She told the other man to take a hike so that she can go up to the suite with the sheik,” Jack notes.

  “Too bad the club’s security doesn’t have audio,” Ryan mutters.

  “No kidding,” I murmur. “Still, you can see the tension between her and the sheik.”

  “From the looks of things, he’s giving her an earful,” Ryan agrees.

  “But she’s holding her own,” Dominic says. Intrigued, he adds, “Look at how she leans against the wall as if she’s toying with him.”

  In your dreams.

  “The elevator stopped at the penthouse floor,” Abu points out.

  “If she found Aziza’s body, why would she have taken him to see it when she hasn’t even notified the police yet?” Emma wonders out loud.

  “The only logical reason is that she doesn’t want to cause an international incident,” Ryan reasons.

  “We may not be able to hear what’s happening, but her actions speak volumes,” Jack counters. “In the first place, she shooed away the club’s manager before he could see what had happened up there. Also, she already knows the sheik. If she told him about the body, he isn’t acting as if he’s upset about his niece’s death. For that matter, neither is she. And remember: other than Donna, Abu, and me, Mystery Woman was the last person to go in and out of the suite.”

  We all think about this for a moment. Finally, I say, “Jack’s right. She’s our prime suspect.”

  “Emma, any luck with Interpol about Mystery Woman?” Ryan asks.

  “Not yet,” Emma admits.

  “At least we’ve got one bit of decent news,” Ryan continues. “I’ve heard from our contact at MI6. We should have the autopsy results in a few hours. In the meantime, Emma and the SigInt team are reviewing the photos of the talisman and the tattoo to determine if either or both are part of a cipher.”

  “Arnie, have you been able to hack the key cards?” I ask.

  Choking on a chip, Arnie mumbles, “I’m back on it…as soon as I finish my cod.”

  Ryan sighs then declares, “In the meantime, Donna, you and Jack should scrub Aziza’s apartment in Oxford. She may have left a clue as to whether you actually retrieved the intel, and what it pertains to.”

  “We’ll leave now.” Jack looks at his watch. “It should take us about two hours to get there.”

  “I’ll text over the address. It’s off campus. Word of warning: Aziza has a roommate—another student. Her name is Roxanna Marmaduke. Apparently, it’s been a convenient living arrangement, but the girls weren’t close. From Roxanna’s Facebook and Instagram pages, she looks to be quite the party animal.”

  “If so, and since this is the weekend, she may be out on the town. That would make it easier for us to let ourselves in, and to get out quickly,” I reply.

  “That would be fortunate,” Ryan agrees. “But if she’s home, perhaps Jack should divert her while you go in for reconnaissance.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” Jack assures him nonchalantly.

  Ah, here we go—payback for Dominic’s little peck.

  “I’ll bet you can,” I mutter.

  Jack’s smirk indicates he’s heard me.

  “I’ve texted you Roxanna’s social media links so you can ID her. Break a leg, folks.” Ryan rings off.

  The text hits my phone a nanosecond before it reaches Jack’s.

  Nonchalantly, I open it and find myself staring at the woman in question. The arm holding the camera is extended in such a way that the shot is angled from high above her face, giving viewers a bird’s eye of her more than ample breasts, squeezed tightly into the hot pink lace push-up bra peeking out from the tight blouse tied at her waist. As with most selfies, she purses her lips, hollowing out her already sky-high cheeks. Her auburn hair falls straight and long below her shoulders.

  When my eyes shift in his direction, Jack tries to hide his grin by heading toward the closet. “What you’re wearing is okay to play cat burglar, but I’d better change.”

  He takes a pair of skinny gray jeans from one hanger and a black, fitted blazer from another. I drop onto the bed and watch as he strips off his shirt for a fresh one—a crew neck tee shirt that hugs his massive chest.

  I whistle appreciatively. “I’m sure Roxanna will be duly impressed.”

  He shrugs as he steps out of his loafers. “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Too bad Dominic isn’t tagging along. It sounds right up his alley.”

  “He’ll have his hands full with Mystery Woman.”

  “Better him than me,” Jack says as he pulls on his jeans and zips up.

  “Why do you say that?” I ask.

  Tucking his shirt into his pants, he replies, “Because, unlike me, he enjoys playing the raven. I take your viewpoint: it’s an unpleasant but sometimes necessary part of our jobs.”

  Jack is extending an olive branch.

  My way of taking it is to roll off the bed, reach for his jacket, and hold it out so that he can slip his arms into it. Afterward, I smooth it over his shoulders.

  Honestly, this is wasted action since his response is to take me in his arms to pull me back onto the bed with him.

  I don’t fight it. Instead, I lean into his embrace.

  And I plunge into his kiss.

  But when he starts to shrug off his jacket, I sigh, then whisper, “We can’t, Jack. Not now. Work before play, right?”

  He groans but pauses. Finally, he nods. “Okay, then. But when we get back—”

  I interrupt him with a kiss that seals my promise:

  It will be worth the wait.

  Jack and I drive slowly by the two-story red brick Tudor townhouse shared by Aziza and Roxanna before parking a few blocks away.

  Their home is on Walton Cres, one of Oxford’s many narrow streets that snake around the city’s colleges. Except for an occasional pop of color on a front door, the townhouses are indistinguishable. In Aziza’s case, the door is sky blue and solid wood with a peephole and a glass transom overhead.

  After getting out of our car, we walk back toward the house. When we reach it, we pause and lean in toward each other, as if engaged in a conversation. In reality, we’re assessing our covert entry options.

  Each townhouse shares a common wall with another. Narrow alleys separate four townhouses from the others on the street, forming a block. A side door leads from each house into the closest alley.

  A waist-high brick wall gives each home twenty or so feet of breathing room from the sidewalk. There’s a bit of a front yard, but the tall, thick box hedge that surrounds Aziza’s yard keeps prying eyes at bay. Still, separately, we peer deep into it. One interior light is on: downstairs, illuminating the large, front bay window.

  To enter the narrow walk to the front stoop, one must first open the ornate iron gate. The stoop’s light is on as well.

  Jack glances down at the screen of his cell phone. “Roxanna is at a nearby pub, with a couple of girlfriends.” He mutes a video posted just a moment ago on her Instagram page. It shows her mugging with two other gal pal
s. When some guy leaps into view, Roxanna shoves him away, annoyed. The other girls, laughing raucously, are egging him on as he chugs his beer.

  “Good,” I declare as I snap on a pair of nitrile gloves from the canvas Tesco bag slung over my shoulder that marks me as just another housewife walking home from the grocery store. “Keep monitoring Roxanna’s actions and play lookout while I go in. This should take twenty minutes, tops.”

  Jack nods. “Put your cell on buzz. If she leaves the pub, I’ll text you.”

  I do as he asks.

  We kiss before Jack crosses the street. Casually, he leans against a lamppost, as if waiting for a friend.

  As I saunter to the alley beside Roxanna’s house, he deflects a curious glance of a passerby by quickly turning his head and looks down at his cell phone, as if a call has just come in.

  The backdoor lock is easy to pick.

  The bright, narrow beam of my flashlight reveals a messy kitchen. Dirty dishes are in the sink. A small table holds the remains of a half-eaten breakfast: a plate sprinkled with crumbs, a coffee mug ringed with lipstick, and open mail.

  The bills are addressed to Roxanna. The few envelopes addressed to Aziza are left sealed. One is a bank statement. Another thicker envelope identifies Oxford University as the sender.

  A third envelope, the size of a greeting card, has her name written in box letters. There is no return address. I slip all the mail in the Tesco sack. Aziza has no use for it, but maybe Acme will.

  The light in the living room keeps me out of there. No need for someone to spot me through the window. Still, I take a quick glance. Mismatched settees flank a fireplace. Over it, someone has hung a poster of happy celebrity couples: Ryan Gosling and his wife, Eva Mendez, at the Oscars; another red-carpet photo of Justin Timberlake and his wife, Jessica Biel; and yet another of Prince Harry, taken during that celebrated first post-wedding kiss with the American actress, Meghan Markle.

  The poster’s headline, pocked with frowny faces, declares:

  * * *

  ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!

  * * *

  My path to the upstairs rooms is riddled with obstacles. A basket of laundry blocks the foot of the stairwell leading to the bedrooms above. Where the stairs take a turn, a pyramid of books is stacked high enough that one nudge with a heel could send them tumbling. A black lace bra dangles from the banister. Seeing it, I can only pray that all my harping about tidiness will deafen my eldest daughter, Mary, to the clarion call of messy roomies by the time she leaves for college next fall.

  The door closest to the landing is wide open, revealing a bedroom. The walls are painted cherry red. A mattress sits on a platform so low that it might as well be on the floor. You’d have to swim through a sea of clothes and accessories—fishnet stockings, booties, thigh-high boots, and six-inch heels—to get to it.

  A black-and-white mural-sized poster of the nineteen-fifties pin-up girl, Bettie Page, hangs over the bed. The iconic model is in a leopard bikini. Her breasts are barely contained by its halter-top. With hands raised above her head and entangled in her black tresses, she lunges to one side, straining the string holding the loincloth over the front of her bikini bottom.

  A penis-shaped vibrator large enough to satisfy King Kong’s lady friend sticks out from beneath a pillow. It’s labeled: SLICK WILLY

  Talk about pleasant dreams.

  Photos in frames of all sizes cover the top of the bureau. In them, Roxanna takes center stage. Sometimes she’s in the middle of a gaggle of giggling girlfriends. In others, she is entwined with some guy in a VIP booth at some lounge. In most cases, she and the men are glassy-eyed. Whereas one of her hands holds her cell phone’s camera aloft, the other is consistently poised in the international signal for FUCK YOU. The men mimic her gesture while keeping the other hand below Roxanna’s waist.

  I’m beginning to think that Roxanna is what the Brits would call a slag.

  The next door, also open, is a bathroom. The vanity counter on the left side of the sink is strewn with makeup, hairbrushes, neon blue and purple spray-on hair color canisters, and a flat iron.

  The other side of the sink’s vanity is empty except for a single hairbrush. There are a few dark strands in it. My guess: they belong to Aziza. I pull them from the brush and place them in a Ziploc bag that I’ve taken from the break-in kit in the Tesco bag.

  I open the medicine cabinet above the sink. A plastic packet of birth control pills has Roxanna’s name on it. A jar of KY Intense Woman’s Arousal Gel sits next to it, as does a 144-count box of condoms: Trojan Ultra-Ribbed Ecstasy.

  You’ve got to give Roxanna credit: she leaves nothing to chance.

  She also has a prescription for Erythromycin. So, she has Chlamydia? Yikes.

  I see no birth control pills for Aziza, but I may find them in her bedroom.

  I move down the hall to the final door. It’s closed, but it isn’t locked.

  Entering it, I feel as if I’m in a different apartment altogether. The room faces the front of the house. Modern furnishings counterbalance its traditional elements—tall double-hung paned windows, deep ceiling and floor molding, and beige and white trompe l’oeil wallpaper. The bed’s four coiled posts, lacquered in ebony, reach almost to the ceiling. The bed is covered in a white embroidered comforter and a mountain of pillows and sits high above the intricate Persian rug that covers the wide-plank bleached floor.

  The bedside tables, dresser, and a desk are also ebony. The surfaces are devoid of items, except for an elegant red leather-tooled Quran that sits on one of the bed stands.

  I put it in my pouch. One of the bed stand’s drawers is filled with rolled scarves. The other has rolled socks. The shelf below holds Aziza's schoolbooks: Computer Science. Physics. Trigonometry. The other bed stand’s shelf has back issues of Wired, PC World, Open Source for You, and Digit.

  Aziza was one serious lady.

  I check the drawers for false bottoms or a note taped behind them but find nothing. The same goes for behind and under the bed stands. I open the books and flip them over. Nothing falls out.

  I look under and around the bed. Again, I find nothing.

  Hurriedly, I put everything back and head over to the desk, which is centered against the middle window. It is simple in design: just three drawers that parallel the desk’s pristine surface. Also lacquered black, its coiled legs match the pattern of the bed’s posts. The drawers are locked but easy to break with the right pick.

  Pens and empty lined notebooks are in the left drawer. The right one contains a slim photo album. I thumb through it. Like Aziza, all the women in the photos wear hijabs—the Muslim headdress. Aziza looks a few years younger than the dead woman I found today. In all the pictures, she is smiling or laughing. Several photos have her and some of the other women with men who wear white keffiyehs. The drawer also holds a checkbook. I put it, along with the photo album, in my sack.

  A laptop computer is in the center drawer. Bingo! I put it in the Tesco bag and lock all the drawers again.

  I move to the dresser. One by one, I take out the drawers. Aziza’s clothes are folded neatly. Again, no false bottoms, and nothing taped to the drawers’ exterior sides.

  I’ve just checked Aziza’s closet for hidden compartments when I hear laughter, and then a door shutting.

  Damn it–Roxanna must be home!

  Slinging the Tesco sack over my shoulder, I tiptoe out of Aziza’s room and to the staircase. When I reach the landing, I figure out why Jack didn’t text me: his chuckle is easy to recognize.

  So is his voice as he says, “You say, you have a roommate? Did you meet her at university?”

  “Not exactly. We were introduced by…well, a mutual friend. She’s the shy type. Bookish, you know? He thought she needed someone who could look after her.”

  “Is he her boyfriend?”

  Roxanna snickers. “Hardly!”

  “So, she and you are close?”

  “If you’re asking if she’s ‘friendly,’ like
me, the answer is no,” Roxanna declares.

  She must be proving this because all of a sudden I don’t hear a peep out of them.

  Grrrr…

  “Is your roommate upstairs now?” Jack must be standing close to the stairwell because his voice is suddenly louder. I guess he figures I haven’t heard them yet. Ha! Even their silences speak volumes.

  “No. She’s working tonight,” Roxanna replies. “In fact, she’s rarely home these days.” In a babyish voice, she adds, “I’m here all by my little lonesome. But if you’re into threesomes, I can call a friend.”

  “Not necessary,” Jack assures her. “I’m into you.”

  Considering the next few quiet minutes, I imagine she’s rewarding him for that little white lie.

  “Let me show you my etchings. They’re upstairs.” Roxanna’s sensual simper promises to deliver much more than any Etch-a-Sketch can provide.

  “I’ll just bet they are.” Jack’s husky taunt elicits another giggle from her.

  “What? You don’t believe me?”

  “Lead the way,” he dares her.

  “First things first,” she purrs.

  Whatever she’s showing him now is demonstrated silently.

  Finally, Roxanna exclaims, “Well now…that will do just fine.”

  I hear footsteps on the staircase.

  Darn it, I’m now too far away to leap back into Aziza’s room. And since I don’t have time to pick the lock again, I duck into the bathroom.

  If Roxanna and Jack aren’t stomping up the stairs, they are slamming into walls like two rhinos in heat. They must have stopped at the threshold of her bedroom door because I hear a few moans before Roxanna growls, “In there, big boy! I’ll be right back.”

  She’s walking my way. I barely have time to hop into the bathtub and duck behind the shower curtain.

  I peek out in time to see Roxanna open the medicine cabinet and pull out the KY arousal gel. She also opens the condom box and pulls out a couple of condom packets. Pausing, she stares down at them and says, “Sod it!”