Mud Run Murder

by Leslie Langtry

  I tried to focus on the trailers for the eighteenth sequel to this and the twenty-third prequel to that, but my mind began to wander. Who had killed the pizza nitwit? Had he stiffed someone? Was he in the Federal Witness Protection Program? No, that couldn't be right. The feds wouldn't give someone like that a job where they would be in the public eye that much. What if he was a bad guy—sent here to assassinate someone? Pizza delivery guy would be a great cover.

  Or maybe he was an undercover cop? He looked pretty young, but that would make him even better at it. But why would an undercover cop be in Rex's driveway? Was he being investigated? I was pretty sure the detective wouldn't like that. Besides, Rex was perfect in every way. There'd be no reason to send an undercover operative to deliver a pizza to him.

  At least it didn't have anything to do with me. I gave myself a little mental high five (I really liked high-fiving) and turned my attention back to the screen. The theatre was only about a quarter full, and everyone else was a lot closer to the screen than I. It was kind of like I was the supreme puppet master looking down on the peasants who would do my bidding. Maybe I should've gone for one of the horror flicks. The thought made me laugh.

  "Shhhhh!" An angry woman ten rows in front of me glared back at me.

  I shrugged and mouthed a little sorry. It was just the previews. It wasn't like the movie had started…oh wait. I guess it had. The spy guy was racing down the same alley as pictured in the poster. How much had I missed by daydreaming?

  Two guys jumped out in front of him, menacingly—which was pretty much the only way anyone jumped out at you in an alley. You never heard of anyone coming at you cheerfully under those circumstances. Been there, done that. Ah, the good old days.

  The spy on the screen was backed up against the wall. Oh wow. This was familiar territory for me. It would be fun to see how he got out of this one. Some of these movies were so ridiculous. The hero shoots a guy a mile away with a little handgun and hits his target with more accuracy than a sniper rifle placed up against the target's heart.

  Or he ran for forty miles without panting or sweating. Or he went thirty-six hours without eating, sleeping, or even sitting in a chair for a moment. And don't get me started on James Bond. If I ate and drank like he did in the books, I would die. Probably within the first twelve hours.

  In reality, spies were human just like everyone else—unless they were Russian. I was pretty sure Russian spies were soulless cyborgs. We bleed, get colds, feel fear, and occasionally think about running away and joining the circus (no one ever shoots the trapeze artist). The movie industry wasn't doing my industry any favors by making us look like superheroes.

  Who wrote these movies? Certainly not anyone with any experience as a spy. I thought you kind of needed some experience to write about espionage. How could you write a story about a spy without having once been a spy?

  Focus, Merry! You paid like $500 to see this stupid movie! I shook my head to clear it and, once again, looked toward the screen.

  Instead, my attention was drawn to a man several rows ahead of me. There was something ridiculously familiar about him. It was pretty dark though. Would I be able to use the light on my cell to see him better? No, that would probably make the woman in front of me implode.

  Argh! Now I was seeing things. That was it. I didn't know this guy. Give a spy a murder, and she'll give you a conspiracy to go with it. But then I remembered that this most recent murder had nothing to do with me. That made me ridiculously happy.

  The man turned his head to the side as he checked out one of the exits. A very spy move if I ever saw one. Wait…I knew that profile…but the hair was too short. It couldn't be. Could it?

  Riley? Was Riley here? Last I'd heard from him, he was on a job in the Middle East. And the only other times Riley had been here were when the Agency wanted him to look in on me. And not in the nice way.

  The man turned his head back to the screen, and I squinted into the murky darkness. There was no way I was going to figure out if my former boss was here. Not until the lights went up. Then I'd find out my imagination was running away with me. And it wouldn't be the first time that had happened either.

  An explosion rang out from the screen, and I saw that the man in the alley had fired his gun. Why did they have to make the sound so unrealistic? One of the assailants kicked the gun from the spy's hand with a noisy and silly roundhouse kick. Seriously? The roundhouse kick was absurd. You were extremely vulnerable in the time it took you to spin around, and as a result, you couldn't land your blow with enough force. And the impact of a foot hitting a face didn't sound like the crack of a snare drum. There was no sound at all. So why add any? Movies. Right?

  The spy jumped over a garbage can and rummaged through it looking for a weapon. Any weapon. I smothered a giggle because I'd once done that too. It was like that story I mentioned about being in Qatar and defending myself with a—

  Huh?

  The spy in the movie had fished something out of the can and began to defend himself with a wire coat hanger.

  I almost dropped my popcorn (thank goodness the pop was in the cup holder—that would've been an expensive tragedy). That was a strange coincidence. I guess a writer could've come up with that idea. But what were the odds? It would have definitely been a long shot.

  Ugh. Now I was seeing things in movies. I came here to get away from reality. Riley wasn't here, and this movie was just a movie. I settled back into my seat and took a deep breath. In spite of myself, I checked the guy in front. Still there.

  What had gotten into me? I was imagining my boss in the front row and was weirded out by a scene in a movie that echoed something that had happened to me. Was this what happened to spies when they retired? They started to see conspiracies around every corner?

  Again, I realized I was distracted and tried to focus on the movie. The spy was out of the alley now and stealing across the lawn of a huge mansion in the early twilight of the evening. Ha! I had had a case like that once.

  It was in Montenegro. I had infiltrated the home of a gunrunner with a fetish for all things Hawaiian. His house had been filled with palm trees. There had been about a foot of sand on the floor, and his security team had to wear Hawaiian shirts. This guy had even had an entire wall of ukuleles, and I'd ended up smashing a bright purple uke over the head of one of his guards. Maybe I should have started writing this down. I could write a screenplay that would represent my field realistically.

  The spy slipped through the door and was immediately greeted by a hallway filled with palm trees, the floor covered with sand.

  I'm pretty sure I stopped breathing.

  On the screen someone was coming down the hall (I heard the footfall of heavy shoes, which was ridiculous since the floor was covered with sand), so the spy ran into a room filled with tiki gods and…a whole wall of ukuleles. A security guard in a loud Hawaiian shirt came in, and I watched in shock as the spy bludgeoned him with a bright purple ukulele.

  When I thought I should write down my past adventures, it'd never occurred to me that someone already had.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I sat through the movie and watched scene after scene mirror past events of my espionage days. There, in Technicolor for everyone to see, was my encounter with a giant Chechen rebel with a spitting problem, the Hungarian poisoner who'd killed one of my contacts by giving him cyanide-laced bubblegum, and the rather embarrassing episode with an angry howler monkey in Guatemala.

  The room was spinning. Okay, it wasn't really spinning. Maybe I was spinning. In any event, I felt like I was going to vomit, scream, or start shooting. My career as a field agent was on this huge screen in my hometown! The only difference was that I was played by a man instead of a woman—which was kind of skeevy.

  Who had made this movie? Who had written it? And why?

  A new thought chilled me even more. Did the CIA think I'd spilled my guts to Hollywood? That was a huge no-no. Virtually all of these scenes were from cases that were still c
lassified. And yet, here they were for all of America to see.

  With blood pounding in my veins, I turned on my cell and did an internet search of the movie. It had just opened. Tonight. All across the country.

  The movie was unexpectedly shut off, and the house lights came up. The crowd started to complain as a middle-aged man came in and introduced himself as the manager. In a nervous voice, he explained that the film had been inadvertently destroyed, and we'd all get our money back. The man was sweating profusely. And he was lying.

  My eyes darted to the front of the theatre. People were already filing out toward the lobby, grumbling. The guy who looked like Riley wasn't there. I exited the movie theatre, but instead of getting my money back, ran to my car and locked myself in.

  "Maria," I said after I was able to call her number with shaking hands.

  "Merry," she whispered. "Call you in five." The call ended.

  I sat there in my car, staring at the poster on the front of the building. It took a little while to slow my breathing—I was badly shaken. A few minutes later, I watched the same sweaty manager take the poster down. After looking both ways he walked around the side of the building and tossed it into a dumpster.

  I waited until he'd gone back inside before I retrieved it and drove home at about eighty miles per hour (which, in a small town, means I was back at my house in two minutes). I was in the door and had unrolled the poster on the breakfast counter when Maria called back.

  "I just saw it!" I didn't wait for her to say anything. "For the first time in two years, I go to a movie. And see my whole career on the screen! What's happening?"

  "So you know…" Maria's voice had a hint of worry.

  "Just now! The manager shut it down halfway through and tossed the poster in the trash. I'm looking at it right now!"

  "So you didn't know," Maria said a little more confidently. Apparently, that was the answer she'd wanted to hear.

  I shook my head, even though she couldn't see me. "I had no idea! Who made this movie? And how? Those cases are all classified!"

  "I haven't seen it," Maria said. "But I guess the deputy director took his kids to see the matinee. The word has spread."

  It felt like I'd suddenly shrunk about five sizes. "The deputy director?" My voice cracked a little. "Why would he take his kids to that movie? It's PG-13!" Granted, kids are more mature these days, and maybe I'm overreacting, but it seemed like a bad decision.

  "Everyone's talking about it." She hesitated. "Everyone's talking about you."

  Why couldn't I just retire like all the other normal spies? You know, play golf or knit? One woman even joined the Somali pirates. Of course, no one had heard from her since…

  "It was just a random thing," I said. "I never go to the movies, and all the other movies looked stupid. It's pure chance that I was even there."

  My tingly spy-dey senses kicked in, and I started racing around my little ranch house, locking doors and closing curtains. Now where was my gun?

  "Merry!" Maria's voice reminded me that I was still on the phone.

  "Oh! Sorry!" I slammed the kitchen window shut and turned the lock.

  I'd need to buy a professional security system. I should've done so a while ago, but I thought my life was finally going to be wonderfully boring. I opened my laptop and started looking for local businesses that could hook me up.

  "Merry!" Maria sounded angry. "Have you heard anything that I just said?"

  "Um, sure," I lied. "But, maybe because I'm a little freaked out, you could tell me again?"

  There was a sigh of exasperation that I'd heard a million times before, mostly from Riley.

  "This is bad, Merry. They think you did it."

  "Did what?" I asked, my mind racing.

  "They think you leaked the intel. They think you wrote the screenplay or something. And, Merry?" There was a pause here as I imagined her looking around to make sure she wasn't overheard.

  "They're coming for you."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Once I regained the use of my voice, I asked, "Is Riley here? In Who's There?"

  Maria sounded confused. "What? No. Not that I'm aware of."

  "I thought I saw him in the theatre. I can't be sure. His hair was shorter. But I could swear it was him. Unfortunately, I lost him."

  I heard the clicking of computer keys. "No, he's still out of the country."

  She couldn't tell me where he was, and I was fine with that. I'd gotten her in trouble with her superiors more than once before.

  "Okay. Thanks for the heads-up. Any idea who they'll send?"

  "No. I'll text you from my personal cell when I know," Maria said quietly before hanging up.

  She was so amazing. I didn't warrant that kind of loyalty. Maria Gomez had helped me take my Girl Scout troop to Washington, DC in the summer. That alone qualified her for canonization for the next five lifetimes.

  So here's what I knew. Someone had told my life story to someone in Hollywood, and they'd made a movie out of it. I looked at the poster. Both Philby and Martini were sitting on it, looking at me meaningfully.

  "This is ridiculous," I muttered as I gave them each a little plate of tuna. "I can't figure out how this happened."

  The cats devoured the meat as if they'd hunted and killed it themselves, and looked to me for more, but I wasn't falling for it. I probably shouldn't have even given them that. Philby had a very sensitive stomach and could, at any time…

  The cat belched loudly before barfing on the poster-spy's face.

  "I know what you mean," I said as I got a roll of paper towels out and cleaned it up. "I feel the same way."

  The clock on the stove told me it was too late to call Rex. That was okay because I had no idea what I'd say to him. Telling him would be a violation of the confidentiality clause I'd signed when I'd retired. On the other hand, half the country had just seen part of, if not all of the movie, so we were sort of in a gray area.

  I picked up my cell and called Riley. He was the only person I could safely talk to.

  "This is Riley. Leave a message."

  I should've seen that coming. He was working. Bothering him was not a good idea. What was up with his doppelganger at the movie theatre? Maybe Riley knew about the movie—I looked at the poster—Spy Diary. It literally was a diary…mine. If I'd been allowed to keep a diary that is.

  It could have been that he was here to find out if I had leaked classified information. But why would I do that? Riley knew I wouldn't. I was a consummate professional. I'd never betray the Agency. Never. Plus, I didn't want some "cleaner" to show up on my doorstep with a pair of pliers and duct tape to remind me how confidentiality clauses worked. And yes, there is a guy who does that. His name is Rueben.

  Not knowing what else to do, I hung the poster on the fridge. I had to displace some Girl Scout Council info to do so. Staring at the papers, I realized I'd totally forgotten about a troop meeting in the morning. We were going to discuss some upcoming camp fund-raiser. Kelly had invited someone from the Council to join us.

  It had better not be Juliette Dowd. That low-level bimbo hated me just because she and Rex had dated once. No, Kelly was my best friend. She'd make sure it was someone else. The rest of the staff was awesome. Amazing really. First-rate professionals who made me wonder why they'd hired an angry woman like Juliette.

  With a yawn, I stretched and decided to hit the hay. Sleeping when I might be under surveillance didn't terrify me nearly as much as not being totally ready for a troop meeting. When it came to my girls, the CIA looked like declawed, narcoleptic kittens.

  * * *

  "Mrs. Wrath!" The four Kaitlyns slammed into me with a group hug. I had four girls named Kaitlyn in my troop. And they each spelled their names differently. And they all had brown hair and M as the initial for their last name. I never could tell them apart. It was an impossible task, like teaching a chicken to read.

  "Hey, guys!" I croaked as I was crushed between them.

  I had to put aside my worries
that the CIA would barge in and drag me off at any moment. Well, that and I'd surveilled the school three times before the meeting.

  "Okay, ladies!" Kelly held up her right hand in the Scout sign for silence.

  The Kaitlyns found their seats with the other girls. It always worked. I had no idea why.

  "This is Mrs. Conrad." She pointed to a smiling, thirtysomething woman in a green sweater and scarf covered in the Scout logo. "She's going to talk about the camp fund-raiser."

  The lady handed out flyers and said, "We're going to have a mud run at Camp Singing Bird this year! It'll be an obstacle course, and teams will be competing with each other to win the grand prize."

  Lauren's hand shot up into the air. "What's the grand prize?"

  Mrs. Conrad smiled. I liked her immediately. I liked all of the Council staff really. Except for Juliette, but there wasn't anything I could do about that. The rest of them were wonderful, warm, funny women. Adults, I got. Kids, I was still learning about.

  "The grand prize is a weekend camping trip to Camp North Star!"

  Oohs and aahs filled the air. Camp North Star was a big deal. Located close to the Mississippi River, that camp had more than most, with indoor/outdoor pools, a high-ropes course, climbing walls, zip lines, a lazy river to tube on, a mud pit with mudslide, and horses. Everyone knew about Camp North Star. And groups of all kinds wanted to go there for camping or team building…stuff like that.

  My troop of third-grade girls would do anything to camp at North Star, and I'd planned to take them next summer…if I could. It was hard to get in and usually booked one year out. But winning this competition seemed like an easy way to make it happen.

  "Well," Betty said matter-of-factly, "we're going to win."

  Mrs. Conrad nodded. "It wouldn't surprise me at all if you did!"

  I liked how she didn't patronize the girls. She took their interests seriously. That was nice. Maybe I should try that.