Take the Monkeys and Run (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #1) (16 page)

“Probably not a good idea,” said Colt. “While it might be unlikely, these creeps could be capable of finding her. Which brings up a good point. Maybe she should go with you.”

“No!” I screamed. Two hours in a twelve by twelve room with my mother and I’d be calling Elvis and Pug-Mug myself to come put me out of my misery. “No way, Jose! Colt, you know my mother—she’ll drive me crazy before the girls can ask ‘Where’s the ice machine?’ Besides, how do you suppose we even explain to her that she should come stay in a hotel room just five miles from her own condo? Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.”

“Fine,” he relented. “We’ll table that one for now.”

“You could stay at the Wildwood Suites in Herndon,” suggested Roz. “It’s not too far away, but it’s out of Rustic Woods.” I said that was fine. Colt asked me for his cell phone with a childish, guilty look on his face, still not offering an explanation. I took it out of his jacket pocket and handed it to him, frowning the whole time.

“I’ve got a couple of calls I need to make,” he said, not willing to look me in the eyes.

“Important business in Century City? Any other lies you want to run by me?” I asked.

“Not right now.” That was all he said as he walked out of the room with the phone. I heard his footsteps pound up the stairs.

Roz waited until he was out of earshot. “So his story about needing to go back to L.A. was a lie. Why?” she asked.

“Best I can figure, Howard must have said something to him to convince him to leave. They must have come to some sort of ‘gentlemen’s agreement.’” I said it out loud, but something about how they were both acting just seemed a little off. Or maybe a lot off. I was sure Howard was jealous that Colt had come to stay, and I supposed it was plausible that Colt might have agreed to leave in order to keep the peace, but the way everything was going down just smelled worse than rotten eggs.

Roz was at the kitchen counter making a cup of tea.

“You know,” she said as she poured the water into the cup, “Don’t you think it’s strange that there’s been nothing going on over at that house?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with crime scene investigations and . . . I don’t know . . . stuff,” she said, plunging the tea bag up and down. “Don’t you think there would be people—police, CSI, ATF, FCC . . . Geraldo Rivera, anybody—whoever cares about this stuff? Wouldn’t they be coming around, asking more questions, searching the premises for more evidence? It’s been oddly quiet since the last official car rolled out of here Saturday afternoon.”

She had a point. I hadn’t given it much thought. But common logic would lead even an ordinary civilian like me to think there would be more investigations, given the strange circumstances.

“There was the illusive Marjorie from the FBI,” I said. “Acting all PETA-like and asking me that question about Tito Buttaro.”

“See? Now that’s just plain weird. What’s the big secret?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ve never found a dead guy in a house full of dead monkeys before, so admittedly I’m a little inexperienced with the process, but you’re right. Something just isn’t adding up,” I said. Roz nodded her head in agreement.

“Don’t you wonder whose head that was you found?” she asked.

“Not really. I spend most of my time trying to forget what it looked like. Although, after today, my interest is rising.”

“I’m so curious I could scream.”

“That’s not the only thing that’s got me bugged,” I added. “Something’s up with Colt, too. He knows something he’s not telling us.”

Roz leaned in, the excitement of conspiracy glowing on her face. “Certainly, I don’t know him as well as you do to know about his quirks and such, but in my opinion, he was acting very strange. I happened to look out my window and see you two in the street—I couldn’t really see exactly what was going on, but then you screamed so I ran out. Colt was holding you up when I got there—we both walked you into the house and the first thing he did was grab your kitchen phone and run upstairs to make a phone call. He wasn’t on the phone long, because he was back down in less than a minute. I asked him if he’d called the police, assuming that’s what he’d done. He just shook his head no. He didn’t seem like he wanted to offer up an explanation, and I was more worried about taking care of you than I was about giving him the third degree. A few minutes later I suggested we call the police, but he didn’t say anything—sort of pretended he didn’t hear me.” We sat and sipped our tea in silence. I was going over the events of the last few days in my head and I assumed Roz was doing the same.

Monkeys from an animal testing lab show up mysteriously in my trees. No one gives me a reason why. Rotting human head and three dead monkeys found in the basement of a vacant house. No one gives a reason why. House vacant for thirty years. People afraid to give a reason why. Neighbors fleeing faster than Gloria Allred chasing down another celebrity lawsuit. Colt suddenly needs to leave town and, oh by the way, he won’t call the police when the Mafia threatens my life. Yup. Not my ordinary kind of week. I thought about the poor cat that really had been murdered. Some cat lover somewhere was missing their poor pet right now, not knowing it had met a grisly end. I looked at Roz. “Where did you put the dead cat?”

“We left it outside by the front door.”

“Still in the box?”

She grimaced. “Yeah.”

Knowing I would need to do something with the poor little fella, I got up from my chair. Roz followed me to the front door. We both gasped when I opened it. Right in front of us, the yellow tabby cat that we thought had been dead was lolling around lazily on the ground next to the box. Roz pulled the door closed behind us, while I stepped down for a better look. Upon closer inspection I could see he wasn’t lolling lazily so much as rolling drunkenly. His eyes were sort of glazed and glassy. “Roz,” I said, “I think he’s drugged!” I searched through his fur carefully. There had been blood on that note, and I wanted to know why. I found the reason soon enough. A small, raised, bloody spot, barely smaller than a dime. I had seen the same sort of welt left behind when our vet had given Indiana his yearly vaccinations. This cat had been given a shot of something, I was fairly sure. The question was, who was the perpetrator? Elvis and Pug Mug? Were they intending to actually kill the animal? Certainly, by the words in the note, I was meant to think he was dead.

While examining the cat’s fur some more, I discovered something even more interesting—a tattoo on his tummy. The numbers ‘47592’ were clearly tattooed in black ink on a shaved area of his upper tummy, closest to his chest.

“Roz, look at this,” I said, barely able to believe what I was seeing.

Roz bent down for a closer look. She blinked. She looked at me. “A tattoo? On a cat?”

“Who would tattoo their pet? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Do you think it’s an address?”

“I don’t think this is someone’s pet,” Roz said. “I’m thinking this cat and those monkeys shared a home, if you catch my drift.”

I stood up and stretched my legs, since my forty-five-year-old knees didn’t work well in the kneeling position. “Meadowland Labs? You think this is a lab cat?” I looked down at the pitifully stoned animal. He looked so helpless. Those goombahs were really starting to get my dander up. Drugging cats, pointing guns, calling me Snoopy.

Roz and I decided to move the cat to my garage, making a comfortable bed for him out of an old discarded gift basket and a handful of old rags. We left food and water and then closed him in to keep him safe. Then we stood silently on my driveway, staring out at our once quiet and safe White Willow Circle.

“You know,” I said finally, “it’s like we’ve found a table piled high with a jumbled mess of puzzle pieces.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, “and we need to put them together to see what the picture is.”

Life in our cozy neighborhood had gone scarily awry. An evil element had reared its ugly head and I had innocently put myself smack dab in the middle. Common sense would say I should be afraid, run for cover while criminals lurked in my backyard and the men in my life seemed to be going off the deep end. Of course, I had already determined that my common sense brain cells had hit the road—left me for dead. Besides, I had made a commitment. I was not going to be one of those wimpy women who run away and hide. There would be no cowering for this chick. I was going to pull myself together, be brave and fight. Problem was, I needed to know what I was fighting. So, while Colt was upstairs doing his own thing, Roz and I hatched ourselves up a little plan.

Chapter Thirteen

BY THE TIME COLT CAME back downstairs, it was almost 2:15 in the afternoon. Roz and I had orchestrated a simple, but somewhat daring, course of action. One that did not include Colt. Correction. The plan included Colt—he just didn’t know it.

“Okay, ladies,” he said as he sauntered into the kitchen. “Let’s get this show on the road. Curly, we should call that hotel and see if we can get you and the girls a room. I’d like to see you settled in before I head out.”

Roz was sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea and munching on pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies while I filled the dishwasher with the dirty breakfast dishes.

“It’s done,” I said. “I called while you were upstairs. Callie will be getting home soon, and then we’ll drive over, pick up Bethany and Amber from school and head over to the hotel. I’m going to go pack some things when I’m done here.”

“Good,” he said rubbing his hands together. “I’ll ride over with you guys, make sure you have everything you need. Then I can catch a cab from there to the airport.”

“So,” said Roz. “You’re still going back to L.A.?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. So! Let me help you pack,” he said evasively.

“I could give you a ride to the airport—then you won’t have to pay for a taxi. When does your flight leave?” Roz offered, winking at me when Colt had his back turned.

“No! I mean, thanks, but no, really. I have no idea how long it will take to get them settled, and I don’t want to put you out. Late, too—the flight, I mean—it’s a late flight out. Thanks for the offer, though.” Colt might have been an above-average detective, but he was a lousy liar. He turned to me. “Where do you keep your suitcases? I’ll get a couple out for you.”

“Guest room where you’re staying—in the closet,” I said. He rushed off, avoiding further discussion. Just as we suspected.

“I don’t think he’s going to the airport, do you?” asked Roz.

“Odds a million to one that he’s not.”

“Let the show begin,” she said with a devilish grin.

Our plan had several layers. First, Roz would run home and check county tax records online to see if she could dig up a name for the owner of House of Many Bones. Colt had told me that most counties were online with real estate tax records and at the very least, we might get a name. She didn’t have loads of time for researching, however, since she was also involved in Step Three of our plan. Thank goodness, her husband Peter had taken the day off to fix a grumpy sump pump, so he would be home to watch her kids when they got off the bus.

The one thing we both agreed on from the outset—no more snooping around House of Many Bones. Colt was right—these guys had guns and didn’t seem afraid to use them. No reason to put ourselves or our children in harm’s way. I had no intention of running into Elvis and Pug Mug, or their firearms, a second time.

We had reached Peggy, still running errands, on her cell. Her mission, which she chose to accept, was Step Two in the scheme. She would Google Tito Buttaro as soon as she got home and find out all she could, then wait for Roz to call her with further instructions. I was to get to the Wildwood Suites with my girls and stall Colt as long as I could, waiting for Roz, who would know I was there because I would text her the moment we arrived.

That was the third part of our plan. Roz would get herself placed inconspicuously after receiving the text message, so that when Colt left, she could follow him and find out what he was up to.

I knew he wasn’t leaving town—he was sticking around for some reason. Probably to do some investigating on his own. Based on what Roz had told me, I figured he was onto something and wanted to continue on his own. My assumption was that Howard had convinced him to leave town, but he’d decided to stay after the cat and note incident. Maybe he had some inside info on the Mafia that he could work with. I couldn’t be sure, though, because one never really quite knew with Colt, so we would follow him and find out for ourselves. Of course, we could be way off base, and Roz might just end up following him to the airport, but only time would tell us that. We considered the Colt surveillance to be the most crucial part of our master plan, assuming he’d be unwittingly dropping clues in our laps as we followed behind.