So I sat in the living room with the drapes drawn and security system on. Technically, I should have been in the lab to do this, but I was feeling pretty lazy. That’s right, I was a lazy assassin.
“Let’s see who our bad guy is today, Gin!” I announced in my game-show voice to no one in particular. (Insert embarrassed assassin here.)
Leonard Burns’s forgettable face glowered at me. Soon, it would be a dead face, if I had anything to do with it. Let’s see, busted for selling military secrets to Iran.
Who’s been a bad boy? You have, you have!
Apparently, Leonard, now to be referred to as “Vic,” had turned federal witness and got away with screwing over his country. For some reason, Leonard cheated death through the federal witness protection program by hiding out in my backyard. It took a while to find him, but Grandma had tracked him down.
Mental note: appreciate Grandma more. Maybe
send a card or flowers—just because.
Hmmm, currently employed with our local farm implement manufacturer as an engineer. Nice. Didn’t live far from me either, only two blocks away.
So the next morning, after taking Romi to school, I set my evil (dun, dun, dun!) plan in motion.
“Come on, Poppy,” I said cheerfully as I wrestled her into a harness, “we’re going for a walk!” By the way, have you ever tried to put one of those things on a dog? I swear they were designed by the sadist who came up with the straightjacket. And if you’ve ever had to put a straightjacket on someone, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, um, well, just take my word for it.
It was a gorgeous day for surveillance work. With the memorized address, my mirrored aviator sunglasses and baseball cap (I had other clothes on too), I’d look like anyone else taking a two-month-old pug for a walk. Poppy bounced beside me, seemingly happy with this particular interruption in her intensive napping schedule.
It only took a few minutes to find Vic’s house—without looking like I was trying to find his house, that is. It was probably not called a house as much as a palace.
In fact, I hadn’t realized I lived in such a nice neighborhood. The large, brick neoclassical monstrosity loomed three stories above me. Four fluted columns rose in front of the entrance to the top floor. The trim was oddly eclectic. How did you hide out in something that begged for attention?
Okay, I had to check the grounds. If he had a garden, I might get lucky and find rhubarb or rhododendron to poison him with and make it look like Li‘l Ol’ Leo just had an accidental hankerin’ to eat from his garden. But how did I explain snooping around?
A whimper at my feet gave me an idea. I bent down to scratch Poppy, surreptitiously unhooking her leash. There was no better excuse than chasing a runaway puppy.
There was one problem with that, however. I hadn’t factored in the complete lack of interest my dog had in doing anything more than sitting on the sidewalk.
“Go, Poppy! Go on, girl!” I whispered, nudging her gently with my foot. She lay down.
“Come on!” I whispered a little loudly. “This is your big chance! Make a break for it!” Poppy lifted her head to stare at me, eyes bulging, lips permanently etched in a sour look. She sneezed, then wiggled her curled-up tail.
Maybe I was getting somewhere. “That’s it! Go on! Check out the house! Look at those bushes! I’ll bet there’s a dead bird or something just as gross over there!”
Poppy rose to her feet, then yawned while stretching her front legs. I was impressed. I’d never seen her do more than one thing at a time before. She remained standing, looking to me for more encouragement.
“Good girl!” I said as she finally waddled off toward the house. We would need to work on that. I wondered if there was a disobedience class I could take. While Poppy traveled at speeds that would allow a paralyzed snail to catch her, I pretended to be fascinated by my watch. Out of the comer of my eye, I spotted her lying down beneath a shrub in front of the house. Okay, so not in the backyard, but I could still pull it off.
“Ginny!” Diego’s voice called out behind me, and I turned to see him get out of a black town car and walk toward me.
You would be glad to know I didn’t panic. I may have vomited a little in my mouth, but no trace of panic. “Diego? What are you doing here?”
“My client lives on this street.” He looked at the empty leash in my hands. “Did you lose your dog?”
“What? Oh! Yes! I was just looking for her.” To make it appear more realistic, I shouted, “Here Poppy! Poppy! Come here, girl!” I prayed that she wouldn’t hear me.
“What a darling pug!” Diego exclaimed as the puppy betrayed me by running up to us. Oh sure,
now
she ran.
Poppy wagged her rear end, no doubt delighted to be fondled by this gorgeous alpha male. Wish I knew what that was like. How pathetic was it that my dog got more action than I did? Before my brain registered what was happening, Diego scooped Poppy up in his arms.
“You’re so cute!” The little traitor squirmed with glee. “You say her name’s Poppy?”
“Yeah. I just got her.” Okay, I’d admit I was more than a little jealous of my dog. I snapped the leash onto her harness and retrieved her from his arms.
Diego smiled. “Sorry I didn’t call earlier. We had a death threat come in yesterday. You know, the usual stuff.”
“Oh. No problem. I’ve been too busy to notice,” I lied. Badly.
“So you live around here?” Diego smiled. He saw right through my clothes ... I mean lies.
“Um, yes. Two blocks away, actually.”
Diego squinted into the distance. “I can walk you home.”
“No,” I may have said a little too quickly. “Poppy hasn’t, you know, done what we set out to do.” Nice save. I still wanted to get a little surveillance done, and I wasn’t ready for him to see my house. My bed, yes. My house, no. Of course, I wasn’t exactly sure how to pull that off.
He looked down, then at me with a smile. “Seems she just took care of business.”
Damn. Poppy wagged her curly tail as best she could, next to a steaming pile of “business.”
So that’s how Diego ended up in my kitchen, with a diet pop and a smile. Under normal circumstances, I would have been thrilled. But somehow, it was too soon to have him in my house. Instead of lust, all I felt was weird. And not good weird either, but the walk in on your-father-naked kind of weird.
Diego looked at his watch. “I lost track of the time. Gotta run!” He stood, and I walked him to the door. Before I opened it, he kissed me lightly on the lips. Okay. The weird feeling was replaced with lust again. All circuits were back to normal.
“It was nice meeting you, Poppy.” He crouched to pet the wriggling, delighted pug. The whore. Diego stood. “How about I bring a pizza over one night and meet your daughter?”
“Um, okay.” I was still a little fogged up over the kiss.
“Tomorrow night all right?” Diego punctuated his question with a more passionate kiss.
“Yeah. Sure,” I think I responded.
Diego left and I slumped against the closed door, sliding down to the floor with my new competition for the Australian bodyguard’s affections. Poppy licked my hand, then curled up in my lap and promptly fell asleep.
I stroked her ears until she started snoring. “You know, I should pop a cap in your ass. After all, you blew every assignment I gave you today, and then you shamelessly threw yourself at my man.”
In her sleepy state, Poppy stretched and rolled over, exposing her fat belly to me, waiting for a scratch.
“I guess it’s a good thing I have a policy against killing animals.”
Poppy ignored me, clearly getting her beauty sleep so she could seduce my new boyfriend tomorrow night. For a two-month-old puppy, she seemed to have it all figured out.
CHAPTER NINE
“If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.”
—Martin Blank, Grosse Pointe Blank
After a much-needed cold shower and lunch, I plopped Poppy in her crate and headed out for a quick, two-block jog. I figured the neighbors might get suspicious if they saw me again with the puppy, so I altered my “disguise” a bit and left to make it look like a different woman in the throes of exercising.
Maybe I should mention that I hate jogging. I only ever did it once, at Ed’s request. He was a runner and wanted me to join him. After one minute, I nearly passed out. I just wasn’t cut out for it. I can sprint like an axe-toting maniac in a hockey mask, but I simply can’t jog.
Which is why I was completely out of breath when I got to Vic’s place (only two blocks away). After passing in front of it, I went around the block, looking for an alley or way to his backyard. No alley. And the foliage was too thick to see the back of the house from the yard behind. So I came around and crossed to the other side of the street, pausing across the street from Vic’s mansion.
Pretending to stop and answer my cell phone, I managed to use it to take a few pictures of the front of the house. I’d have to come up with a way to check out the grounds later. Maybe Dak would come over to watch Romi for me so I could do a little recon under the cover of darkness.
The driveway was clear, but the garage door was shut. There might be a Mrs. Vic at home, for all I knew. Glancing up and down the street, I tried to find a neighbor I might know. None of the houses or addresses looked familiar. What now?
There is a fine art to assassination. It isn’t like the movies where the hit man busts in, guns a-blazing. That just doesn’t work in real life. I try to learn as much as possible before I even begin. I know, booooring. What do you expect? This is reality, not some movie.
Back at home, an Internet search yielded some good stuff. Through his company’s Web site, I discovered that Vic was in the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. That made me smile. I enjoyed hitting Rotarians almost as much as I enjoyed waxing Junior Leaguers. Something about those stupid clubs makes me itch.
On Google, I found out that Vic has no Mrs. Vic and no little Vics. That’s good. Oooh! He doesn’t give to charity either! Score! I love that! If he gave to the Humane Society or something, that would bother me. Unless he left it in his will. You know, I always thought it would be a good idea for these foundations to set up a contract with us. That way, shortly after naming a charity in their wills, we could pop them. Everybody wins!
Okay, so I had a little information. I still needed to know more personal stuff. I went to my next professional source—the Kennedy Elementary Student Directory. The school district would probably disapprove of the directory’s use for this purpose, but Vic lived in the neighborhood, and maybe one of Romi’s friends lived nearby. I could pump the parents for info and no one would be the wiser.
I scanned the directory, looking at addresses first. I figured I could come up with just about any excuse to visit a fellow Kennedy parent, even if they had no connection to Romi.
Voila! I found one. And right next door, nonetheless. Yay! Looking at the header, I saw that it was even someone in Romi’s class. Bonus!
Damn. The victory was short-lived. Guess who the neighbor was? That’s right. Vivian Marcy. For once in my life, that woman had something I needed. I hoped the gods were whooping it up in Valhalla over that one.
Get over it, Gin. You have a job to do. Hey! Maybe you can find a way to make it look like Vivian killed him!
My day just got a little brighter. Now I needed a pretext. Vivian would get suspicious if I just showed up on her doorstep. What I needed was a very good excuse.
“Mommy!” Romi cried as she plowed into me after school.
I chatted with my daughter about her day as we walked back to the car. At home we went through our ritual, snack and backpack review. I pulled out a large envelope.
“What’s this?” I asked Romi.
“Oh. We’re s’posed to sell stuff. It’s for the playground,” Romi sputtered through a mouthful of cookies.
Great. School started two weeks ago and already we had to sell junk. I flipped through the booklet: candy, candles, calendars—all the “c” words were there. Was it just my imagination, or did kids have to sell a lot of crap (hey, another “c” word!) these days? The only thing I remembered selling in school was Girl Scout cookies. And I think in high school, the Future Farmers of America had sold oranges or something. Last year, Romi’s preschool had peddled junk in the fall and spring. I didn’t want to mess with it, so I just walked into the office and handed them a check for $100. It seemed a lot easier than ...
That was it! I grabbed the phone and dialed Vivian’s number.
“Hello?” Vivian sounded bored. Must be rough to break up a day of polishing your Tiffany jewelry by answering the phone.
“Vivian? It’s Ginny.”
“Who?” said the bored voice again.
I clenched my teeth. She knew damn well who it was. “Ginny Bombay.”
“Oh, Virginia,” she responded, with my full name, just to piss me off. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”