Take the Monkeys and Run (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #1) (4 page)

“Where is Howard, by the way?” she asked.

“Work,” I said, throwing old grounds into the trash. Technically, I wasn’t lying—he might have been at work.

“On a Saturday morning?”

“Emergency.” Again, not technically a lie—if he was at work, it would have been due to an emergency. Probably. Maybe. While I didn’t like to admit it, I didn’t know much about Howard’s job.

“I don’t understand the kind of work that man does. An engineer who always seems to have emergencies. Your father was an engineer and he never worked odd hours or had emergencies. Bless his dear soul.” My sweet father, who was a small man compared to most, had died in his sleep three years ago, supposedly of sleep apnea. I always suspected that maybe my mother had accidentally rolled on top of him in the middle of the night, smothering the life out of him.

“It is what it is, Mom,” I sighed, turning on the Mr. Coffee. It was very hard to please my mother.

“Well, I have to run. I’m going to the gym. Did I tell you I’m training for a marathon? I’ll call you later today and arrange a time—we’ll do Fiorenza’s.” She yelled the last bit over her shoulder while flying out the front door. I stood in the middle of my kitchen, trying to imagine my flappy-skinned giant of a mother running a marathon. She’d probably scare off half the competition. Of course, who was I to throw stones? I got winded just looking at the treadmill.

As I grabbed a mug from the dishwasher, the phone rang. I checked the caller ID, half-hoping it would be Howard, but pretty sure it wasn’t Steven Spielberg. I was only a bit let down when I saw that it was Roz. I picked up the receiver, anxious to find out if she had heard any of the previous night’s raucous at House of Many Bones.

“Hey, Roz.”

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

“A couple of hours, I think. Hey, did you . . .”

Amber was pulling on my sleeve.

“Not now, Amber, I’m on the . . .”

“Mommy, can we keep them?”

Every mother knows this axiom: the minute you get on the phone, a child will find a reason to interrupt you. My patience was wearing thin. “Amber, I’m on the . . .”

I noticed Bethany and Callie staring out our window, seemingly transfixed.

“Mommy!” Amber wasn’t giving up. “Please, can we keep them?”

Bethany looked at me with a particularly queer expression on her face, then back out the window.

“Sorry, Roz. Hang on a minute. Amber wants me to see something.”

“They could live in our basement! Please, Mommy, please! They’re so cuuuuuute!” She was pulling me to the window by the sleeve while I talked into the receiver to Roz.

“Anyway, I wanted to know if you heard . . .” Out of my kitchen window I did see something moving around in the branches of my trees. I stopped talking. I blinked. Amber squealed in delight. I blinked again, sure that my contact lenses were just foggy, causing a strange optical illusion. Amber was jumping up and down and pointing, while Bethany joined in with claps of delight. My jaw had fallen to my knees. I hadn’t been hearing things after all. I was both relieved and bewildered.

“Mom . . . ,” Callie said, focused in disbelief on the same vision. “Do you see what I see?”

Holy cow.

“Roz,” I said. “I have to call you back. I’ve got monkeys in my trees.”

Chapter Four

THE GIRLS HAD RUN OUTSIDE faster than I could say “rabies,” so I dashed out after them, phone in my hand, dialing the Fairfax County Police.

“Hello,” I said more calmly than one might think, “I have monkeys in my trees. Can you send someone to catch them?”

A moment of silence made me wonder if I’d been disconnected.

“Is this a prank?” a woman on the other end finally asked.

“No, this isn’t a prank. My name is Barbara Marr and I live at 902 White Willow Circle in Rustic Woods. There are monkeys in my trees.”

“Are you sure they aren’t squirrels? You have some very big squirrels in Rustic Woods.”

I detected that she was patronizing me. I wasn’t sure. I felt patronized.

“Well, unless they evolved overnight and acquired the ability to swing from limb to limb with arms longer than their tails, I’m thinking these aren’t squirrels. There are definitely, unequivocally three monkeys . . . make that four monkeys in my trees. And the fourth one just pooped on my mums.”

“Ma’am, I hear a lot of screaming in the background—is anyone hurt?” she asked.

I looked around my yard. The gaggle of my three girls had grown as Roz and her three kids joined us in my yard, followed by another neighbor, Maxine, and her yapping poodle, Puddles. Maxine, who lived just one street over, was an aging hippie-widow with past-her-bottom straight, gray hair and an affinity for huarache sandals and hemp. I liked Maxine a lot, but that poodle of hers was the yappiest animal I’d ever met.

“No, no one is hurt—just excited. We don’t get monkeys around here too often you know,” I said. “Listen, is there something you can do here?”

“Can you describe the monkeys?”

“They’re brown. Long tails. Long arms.”

“Do you know what kind of monkeys they are?

“Sorry, I don’t have my
Wonderful World of Monkeys Reference Volume
handy right now. They’re monkeys. Bigger than a bread box.”

“There’s no need to be rude, Ma’am, I’m trying to be helpful here. This usually isn’t our area, but I’ll send a squad car anyway and contact animal control.”

Roz and Maxine were standing next to me in my side yard, holding themselves tight to keep warm. I gave a quick scan around the rest of my yard, just to make sure a stray monkey or two hadn’t come down from the branches to check out life on land. Fake foam and resin tombstones and a hideously tacky inflatable witch decorated our lawn in anticipation of Halloween, just five days away, while handmade ghosts hung from my dwarf Japanese maple. The inflatable witch had been erected against my wishes by an insistent Amber and her relenting father, who had decided to hit the high road shortly thereafter. Yup, plenty of Halloween on the ground, but luckily no monkeys.

While it had just turned colder in the last couple of days, Northern Virginia had been experiencing a doozy of an Indian Summer, giving every blade of grass in my lawn plenty of reason to grow knee-high, despite the light layer of leaves that had already fallen to the ground. Sadly, my yard had the appearance of a long-forgotten graveyard. Too much longer, and some pesky old man wearing three-inch-thick glasses and carrying a clipboard would announce himself at my doorstep as a board member of the Rustic Woods Homeowners Association, and slap me with a hefty fine.

“Who were you talking to?” Roz asked.

“The police,” I said.

“How about animal control?” she asked.

“The dispatcher said she’d contact them. Do you think we should make the kids get in the house?” I asked. “Who knows if they have rabies.”

“Let the kids enjoy it. Those monkeys don’t look like they’re coming down any time soon. Hey, speaking of monkeys, the PTA meeting is Thursday and Peter has to work. Can Callie babysit?”

Roz was the PTA president at Tulip Tree Elementary School. She was wonder woman. Mother of two boys and a girl, each just a year apart in age, PTA President, den leader for the Cub Scouts and volunteer at the local retirement home.

A person could always recognize Roz, even from a distance. Only about five foot three and thin as a rail, with thick blonde hair cut Dorothy Hamill style, her standard uniform was a calf-length, floral rayon dress with comfortable tan loafers. She must have had thirty of those dresses. She was also a devoted friend, and the only person who knew that Howard had moved out. She’d been my shoulder to cry on for the last few days.

While we shivered and gawked at the primates playing, a breeze blew through, dropping acorns all around us. The wind seemed to have an effect on the monkeys, as well. The four of them all stopped moving for a minute, sitting on branches in two different trees. One crossed his arms as if he was cold, too. After a moment of silence, they started chattering and climbing again.

“The dispatcher on the phone asked me what kind of monkeys they are—what do you think?” I asked the ladies.

“They’re definitely not chimpanzees. Too big for spider monkeys,” Roz offered.

“They have cute faces, eh?” Maxine had grown up in Canada and even though she had lived in Rustic Woods for over a quarter of a century, she still liked to say ‘eh?’ every once in a while.

“Where do you think they came from?” Roz wondered.

Suddenly I remembered the previous night’s adventure. “That’s it!” I shouted.

“That’s what?” Maxine asked.

“Last night—remember, Roz? I did hear a monkey. I’m not crazy after all.”

“That’s still to be determined,” Roz stated matter-of-factly.

Roz explained to Maxine, who looked puzzled. “A van pulled into the driveway of the vacant house over there last night. . .”

“Three o’clock in the morning,” I corrected her.

“. . . and Nancy Drew here came outside trying to see who it was. She claims she heard a monkey.”

“Right,” I agreed. “And after you went inside and there was this horrible howl and even though I didn’t see anyone, I heard some guy storm out of the back screaming something about toes.”

Maxine shook her head. “You young people sure have wild imaginations.”

“I didn’t imagine it. I heard a monkey and now look in my trees. How is that for imagination? That’s plain freaky-weird is what that is.”

Chuckling, Maxine gave a tug on the leash. “Well, this has been fun girls, but Puddles and I have errands to run,” Maxine said as she turned to leave. “Let me know how this turns out, eh? And let me know if you find the crazy man with no toes.” As she started up the street trying to quiet Puddles, she pulled a cell phone out of her coat pocket and put it to her ear. She was probably calling her many widow friends to tell them about the crazy neighbor with monkeys in her trees.

As Maxine disappeared, a police cruiser turned onto White Willow Circle. It pulled just past my driveway and parked on the street.

“Are you sure you heard a man screaming?” Roz asked.

“Trust me, there was a whole lot more than screaming going on in that house. I’m sure of it.” A moment later, a very handsome, nicely proportioned policeman was standing in front of me, asking for the owner of the home.

“That would be her,” Roz said smiling, pointing at me and winking.

“And your name, Ma’am?” he asked. He was all business.

“Barbara Marr.”

“You have an animal problem here? Monkeys . . .” he gave me a sideways glance.

“Look for yourself,” I said, pointing to the trees. “Holy cow, Roz, is that another one?”

“Yes it is. That would be number five. They’re multiplying before our very eyes! Boys! Don’t touch the monkey poop! Yucky!”

Mr. Policeman looked concerned. “Ma’am, I suggest we get the children into the house until animal control has taken possession. We don’t know if they have rabies.”

I gave Roz my best I-told-you-so grin.

“Fine,” I said. “But first I have to ask you to stop calling me Ma’am—I turned forty-five today and I don’t need any more reminders that years are passing me faster than light particles. Call me Barb.” I could see Mr. Policeman struggling not to smile, but he lost the battle and looked down at his feet while he regained a more stoic attitude. While Roz rounded up her kids to leave, she whispered in my ear.

“He’s cute,” she said. I agreed. He was cute. Stop it, Barb, I told myself. You can’t think another man is cute. Not yet.

“Girls!” I shouted across the lawn. “Back in the house please.” My demand drew three frowns and lots of groans. “Hey, don’t blame me—the police officer here said so.”

I smiled at my new uniformed friend. “Sorry to do that, but I’m tired of always being the bad guy.”

“I’m used to it.” The barest hint of a grin appeared on one side of his mouth. The promise of a dimple looked possible if he would have allowed himself a full-out smile. He was looking better and better, this man of the law. He had a sort of Brad Pitt thing going there with his sandy blond hair and all.

As it turned out, the time to consider the sex appeal of another man—Brad Pitt sexy or not—would have to wait. Howard’s Camry was pulling into the driveway.

Now, my husband Howard, more recently known as Howard-the-creep, looks a little like George Clooney—everyone says so. Same dark hair, a little less chin, slightly softer features. I had to admit, he was supremely handsome as husbands go, despite the fact that if a magic genie were to grant me three wishes, the first would be that he suffer thirty consecutive days of passing golf-ball-sized kidney stones.

I took a moment to consider the circumstances—Brad Pitt the policeman beside me, George Clooney the renegade husband walking up my driveway, and monkeys in my trees. Hmmm. Give me a Matt Damon look-alike from Animal Control and I might think I was at a read-through for Ocean’s Fourteen.

Howard had more than a slightly concerned look on his face as he eyeballed the police car parked in front of our house. He walked briskly across the front lawn, arriving just behind me and the uniformed stud.