by Harper Lin
Actually, it was equally my problem. Liz was a friend, and the definition of “friend” is that you share their problems.
Assuming she’d share with me.
I really needed to have a long heart-to-heart with her away from Cheerville’s bumbling police department.
That would have to wait because who came into the reception hall but Cheerville Chief of Police Arnold Grimal, his belly straining at his dress shirt like the prow of some very poorly designed ship. The kind that sinks on its maiden voyage. His slack face had a put-upon look to it. Solving murders was well above his skill level. He took one look at me, groaned and muttered something unprintable, followed by “Of course she’s here.”
He proceeded to ask Liz and me all the same questions as his officers then got on the radio for a while, speaking to his patrol cars. With the help of some neighboring police forces, they had set up a net around town, blocking off all roads. But none of the cops had stopped a vehicle with two men in it. They had stopped and questioned everyone, and the only people they had seen were locals who were known to them. No strangers, no suspicious characters. They had searched every vehicle and had come up with no weapons.
So either the killers had gotten away before the dragnet was put in place, or they were still hiding somewhere in Cheerville.
Either option seemed possible. Checking Google Earth on my phone, I saw a road passed right by the stretch of woods where the killers had beached their rental boat. All they had to do was bolt through about two hundred yards of woodland to the road, where they could have left their getaway car on the shoulder or perhaps had a third person waiting for them. It would have only been a matter of minutes before they were on the highway and headed away from Cheerville.
Or they could have stayed in town, waiting for their next chance.
“So did the staff at the marina give a good description of who rented the boat?” I asked Grimal when he got off the radio.
He stared at me. “What?”
“Did the staff at the marina give a good description of who rented the boat?” I asked in slow, clear English. Any time I tried to speak to him at anything above a third-grade level, he’d stare at me like I was speaking Swahili.
I actually do speak some Swahili. You need to if you want to make deals with East African arms dealers in exchange for their giving up the location of terror cells. But I digress.
Grimal waved a dismissive hand. “Hardly anything. Middle-aged white guy. About six foot. Wore a hat and sunglasses, so they couldn’t get any more of a description. The guy had to provide picture ID, a driver’s license, but we ran it and it’s a fake. They didn’t even notice the second perp. The people at the marina are a bunch of idiots.”
“Takes one to know one,” I muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.”
Grimal turned to Fiona’s body, which was still draped over the table, her face buried in the wedding cake. The second and third layer leaned over her like the famous tower in Pisa. The bride and groom figures had fallen off the top and lay snapped in half on the floor.
Poor Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. Their wedding was ruined.
Well, at least they weren’t here to see it.
A loud honking of several cars sounded outside. Grimal got on his radio.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
An officer’s voice crackled over the air. “The wedding party, sir. They just showed up.”
Grimal turned beet red. “You didn’t go to the church to warn them off?”
“You didn’t tell us to, sir.”
Grimal groaned and rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m telling you now.”
“You want me to go to the church?”
“No, intercept the wedding party! Get rid of them!”
He put his radio down and shook his head. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”
“I know the feeling,” I said.
Grimal glared at me for a moment then turned to Liz. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill your wedding planner?”
Liz shrugged. “Unsatisfying honeymoon?”
Grimal turned redder. “I’m serious.”
“I have no idea. I never imagined someone would want to kill her.”
That was the first thing she had said since the murder that I fully believed.
Grimal hitched up his pants. His belly made it so they were constantly slipping. “Well, ladies. I’ll take it from here. How about the two of you go home?”
“All right,” Liz said, trembling a little, her voice wavering. “I think I need some time to recover.”
“I’ll be in touch if I need to speak with you again,” Grimal said gently.
I put a reassuring arm around her, and we left the reception room. We passed through the hallway connecting to the front entrance. We could see the flashing lights of a parked police car coming through the open doorway, but for a moment we were alone.
As soon as we got out of sight of the police chief, her back straightened, and her voice came out level, businesslike.
“That bullet was meant for me,” she said.
“I know.”
She stopped. We turned to face each other. She gave me an appraising look.
“I know you know,” she said.
“And I know you know that I know,” I replied. “Now that we know so much about each other, care to enlighten me as to who would want to take you out with a professional hit?”
Liz sighed, leaning against the wall, her eyes taking on a faraway look.
“I… it’s not your problem,” she said.
“That’s not how friendship works.”
“If they came for me once, they’ll come for me again.”
“I’ve been shot at before,” I told her.
“I know. You even got hit a couple of times. In the gut and in the thigh.”
“How did you… oh, right.” My clothing usually hid that wound. Of course, she’d seen me without clothing.
“Look, I can’t pull you into this.”
“That bullet came as close to me as it did to you. And then when they opened up, they were spraying the whole room. They didn’t mind if I got taken down.”
There was also the possibility that first shot had really been meant for me, and the guy was just a bad shot, or glare from the sunlight on the window had made our images unclear. Maybe. The hit seemed too professional for them to make such a mistake. I couldn’t dismiss the possibility, however.
In the end, it didn’t really matter. I’d investigate this until I got the gunmen.
Liz paused for a long moment. “I’m going to need to get a motel. Can you do me a favor? Could you get a room under your name? I’ll pay you back.”
I waved away this idea. “You’re staying with me. It will be safer if we stick together.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. Go out to your car and wait for me. I’ll be along in a minute.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to have a chat with the so-called law in this town.”
Liz headed out to the parking lot while I turned back to the function hall.
When I got there, I saw a sight that nearly made me lose my sanity.
Grimal was eating some of the cake. He didn’t even have the decency to eat from one of the upper layers. Oh no, he was actually eating from the very same layer into which the wedding planner had landed. He was eating from the other side, not actually around her head, but the mere fact that he was eating it at all made me want to find a nice, cozy mental safe space and stay there for about fifty-four years.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” I moaned, leaning against the doorway.
Grimal looked up, fork halfway to mouth, a guilty expression on his saggy face, a bit of frosting on his chin.
“I’m hungry. I have to keep my sugar levels up to keep my brain sharp.”
“Your brain is never sharp, and it’s only ten in the morning. Didn’t you have breakfast?”
“Yeah, but now it’s time for second breakfast.”
“I thought only hobbits had second breakfast.”
“Call it brunch, then.”
“I call it unutterably horrifying. Isn’t this interfering with a crime scene?”
“The CSI guys already took pictures.”
“Ugh.” I turned away as he took another forkful.
“So who’s trying to kill you?” Grimal asked.
He knew a bit about my past. Once when he tried to interfere with my investigation into one of Cheerville’s endless string of murders, he got a good talking-to by the director of the CIA. Now he walked on eggshells around me, all the while hoping to embarrass me enough to drive me out of town.
He had failed every time. Hinder me? Yes. Annoy me? Yes. Irritate me? Oh, yes. And now he was sickening me.
But his question brought up a quandary. Grimal, being Grimal, would only see the obvious solution, that the bullet had been meant for me. He wouldn’t suspect Liz at all, even though she had told him she had been standing right behind Fiona and was only saved by suddenly bending over. Grimal was blind to that. I had been in the room; therefore I must be mixed up in it somehow.
Should I enlighten him?
Had better not. Until I had a good heart-to-heart with Liz, I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Getting Grimal involved would only muddy the waters. If I needed him, I could always bring him in later. He was accustomed to being late to every investigation.
“I don’t know who shot through that window,” I said in all honesty. “I’ll be looking into it.”
“Now, wait a minute. I’m the law around here.”
I tut-tutted in my best Disapproving Grandmother tone. “Really, young man. Your investigative skills are no better than your table manners.”
I left him sputtering over his stolen cake. As I walked out of the wedding venue, there was a spring in my step. Nothing like a murder investigation to liven up a wedding.
FOUR
Liz and I sat in my living room, drinking chamomile tea as Dandelion, my tortoiseshell cat, engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Liz’s shoelaces. We had been silent for a time, each lost in our own thoughts. Since Liz seemed reluctant, at last I broached the subject that was on both our minds.
“That seemed like a professional hit,” I said.
“Not too professional,” Liz said, taking a sip from her tea.
“True. They had a pistol, not a rifle. With a proper sniper’s rifle, or even a high-end hunting rifle, they could have fired at you from the woods on the opposite shore.”
“But then they wouldn’t have been able to use a silencer.”
“Was that important?”
“Apparently,” Liz said. “They didn’t want to attract attention. Nobody around the lake shore even noticed them until they grounded their boat. The small sound the silencer made couldn’t be heard over the sound of the motor, and the pistol was hard to see.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It was plenty clear to me.”
“That’s because it was pointed at you.”
“True enough. Any firearm you’re on the wrong end of takes on the dimensions of a cannon.”
Liz grinned. “You’d know.”
I took a sip from my tea and didn’t reply.
Liz grew serious and went on. “Whoever did it, they wanted to keep witnesses to a minimum. A rifle would have attracted attention and would have been harder to conceal on the way in and out of the job.”
“If they didn’t want to attract attention, they shouldn’t have hired a boat. That left witnesses.”
“That’s why I don’t think they’re full professionals. Perhaps they were in a hurry too. Maybe they only learned where I’d be at the last minute and had to improvise.”
“And getting you at home in the middle of the night would be too dangerous. I presume you’re a gun owner. And you probably have a nice burglar alarm. Maybe even a booby trap or two?”
Liz didn’t bite. “I have a pair of Dobermans. Dandelion probably smells them. That’s why she’s attacking my shoes like she’s a lion and my sneakers are a pair of wildebeests.”
“She does that to everyone. But let’s not get off track. I want to help you, Liz, and I have the resources to do so. But to help you, I need you to level with me.”
“What do you mean?”
Liz put on an innocent face. It was about as convincing as the innocent face my grandson, Martin, uses when I find the cookie jar inexplicably lighter than when I left it.
Actually it was a lot more convincing than Martin’s big-eyed, innocent look. She had an expert poker face. A professional poker face, one might say. But I had already suspected she was more than a simple artillery observer and decided to call her bluff.
“Professional hitmen don’t go after US Army veterans,” I told her.
“Semiprofessional,” Liz corrected.
“And artillery observers, while highly qualified in their field, don’t generally know much about assassins.”
Liz got a wry smile. “Neither do retired government contractors. What did you say you did again?”
She had me there. When she had seen me in my birthday suit, she’d noticed a bullet wound a couple of inches to the left of and a little below my belly button that I’d gotten in the Sinai. I tried to explain it away as laparoscopic surgery, but I could tell she knew exactly what it was. I had another wound on my upper thigh, earned in El Salvador.
Matching Purple Hearts. They always look better in a pair.
“Never mind about me,” I said. “I’m not the one who got shot at.”
Liz’s face darkened, and she looked out the window. “They’ll try again.”
“Like I said, you can stay here.”
Liz shook her head. “I can’t get you involved.”
Involved in what? She obviously didn’t want to tell me. At least she wasn’t playing innocent anymore. I was starting to get somewhere.
“They nearly shot me trying to shoot you. If they knew you were going to the lakeside and when, then I’m sure they know where you live.”
“I’ll hide out in a motel or something.”
“If you disappear, then they’ll try to get you through one of your friends, like me. It wouldn’t take much sleuthing to find out who I am and where I live. Whatever their skill level, these people are obviously determined. I bet the only reason they didn’t hit you at your house is because you’re entrenched and have a defensive perimeter.”
The military term made her look at me curiously. I gave her a little nod. I wasn’t allowed to reveal my old job, but I didn’t think the CIA could complain about a simple gesture, right?
“So just what kind of ‘government bureaucrat’ were you?” she asked.
“The kind with the skill set to help you, even if my hair is gray and I have more wrinkles than a week-old Kleenex during flu season. I don’t suppose you were really a forward observer, eh?”
“I was a forward observer,” she said somewhat defensively.
“A very forward observer. Look, Liz, you can’t tell me and I can’t tell you, but we can work together. Stay here with me. We’ll go to your house and pick up a few things. To stay safe, call the police and tell them you remember a few details you didn’t mention. Have them meet you there. The presence of a squad car will be an added deterrent to your unwelcome friends. Then we’ll get rid of the cops, who—believe me—are useless anyway, and come back here.”
“We might get tailed.”
“I’ll handle that.”
A slow smile spread across Liz’s face. After a second, it was reflected in mine.
“This is going to be fun,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” I replied.
We both laughed.
“Call the cops,” I told her. “We’ll drive separately to the mall and leave your car there, and then drive to your house in my car. Less of a chance they’ll recognize it.”
“OK.”
Once Liz had di
tched her car at the Cheerville Musical Mall (“Shop ’til you drop. Bippity Bop!”), we drove together to her house.
She had to give me directions. While I had been friends with her for nearly a year, I had never been to her place. I hardly found that surprising. Liz was a woman with things to hide.
She needed to hide a little less if she was going to survive to her wedding day.
“So who’s after you?” I asked. Might as well be direct.
Liz sighed and looked out the window at the quiet, leafy little town where she thought she could live a peaceful life. Fat chance. That hadn’t worked for me either.
“I really don’t know. I’m serious, Barbara. It could be any one of a number of people. Or groups.”
“Sounds like you had an eventful career.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, her voice heavy.
“Could it have something to do with Rick?”
“I doubt it. They would have waited for the wedding otherwise. Rick is a grunt. A wonderful, heroic grunt, but no more of a target than any other soldier serving overseas. No, this is all on me.”
“Does Rick know of your career in the… whatever you were in?”
“A little. Not much. Not much I can tell him.”
“And not much you can tell me,” I added. “You’re going to need to think, Liz. You said you retired a couple of years ago. Assuming that’s true, who would still be gunning for you?”
“It is true. I am retired. But there are plenty of people who want me dead. For purposes of revenge, mostly.”
“Revenge can simmer for a long, long time. I’ve been on the receiving end of that more than once.”
“Well, in that case, our friends in the boat could be from a dozen different organizations.”
I looked at her sidelong. Was she CIA? NSA? BATF? The government had a whole alphabet soup of organizations poking sticks into hornets’ nests worldwide. And sometimes their operatives got stung.
I got the impression that she wasn’t holding out on me any more than her former employers required. That was a problem. If she didn’t know who was after her, it would be a thousand times more difficult to track them down before they struck again.
Liz directed me to a quiet cul-de-sac. Hers was the house on the end, with a good field of view down the street for three hundred yards. A high wooden fence enclosed her backyard. I saw trees beyond, a strip of forest that she could hide in if someone attacked her house. It was as good a defensive position as you could hope for in a middle-class suburb.