Moments later, I was kneeling in the grass over the body of a woman who was maybe in her midthirties. Even with her staring glassily at the sky, I still checked for a pulse and then breathing. She wasn't doing either.
Who was this, and why was she in my yard? Before dialing Rex, I took a couple of photos on my phone. Then I phoned my husband what was up and pulled up a lawn chair to wait.
I knew better than to check for a wallet. Rex wouldn't be happy if my prints were found on it. And since the medical examiner was the only one who could touch the body first, I'd be breaking the rules. So, I studied the dead woman and the area surrounding her.
She was shorter than me. Maybe about 5'6" to my 5'9". Blue eyes, red hair, and freckles, she could be anyone. She was dressed casually in shorts, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt, as if she'd just been taking a walk to my backyard to die. There was no visible injury, so I had no idea what killed her.
I didn't recognize her from the neighborhood. And no, I don't know my neighbors. But old habits die hard, and I've spent some time watching people go by. I knew what houses they came out of and at what time. I knew what their cars looked like and which routes they took for work. Not that I followed them or anything (I'm not a total basket case). I put secret hidden cameras up on all the light posts. Much more efficient. Too bad I didn't have any on my alley or aimed at my hedge-hidden backyard. I'd have to fix that. Would've blown this case right open.
Rex walked through the bushes that surrounded my yard, followed by Officer Kevin Dooley, a mouth-breathing Neanderthal I went to school with. Kevin had a clear plastic container with a large piece of cake he was eating with a fork. Frankly, I'd have been worried if he hadn't turned up with food. This guy was always eating on the job. The day he doesn't have his whole arm in a bag of fried pork rinds or isn't covered in powdered sugar from donuts will be the day the apocalypse begins.
My husband knelt down beside the woman as Soo Jin burst through the bushes.
"You'll be amazed to hear," he said, "that this actually comes as a shock."
My jaw dropped. "Since when are you surprised by a body in my presence?"
He didn't look at me as he studied the victim's hands without touching them. Since Soo Jin had first rights to the body. Rex had to wait until she was finished before he could examine the corpse.
"I kind of hoped this was all behind us," Rex sighed.
Soo Jin spoke up. "I can't find any sign of a wound in front. I'll need to take her back to the morgue."
"Could it have been some sort of accident?" I ventured.
She shrugged just as two men I knew vaguely as her assistants came through the bushes with a stretcher on wheels.
Rex and I said nothing as the woman was taken away.
"Is Hilly here?" Rex asked. "I noticed her SUV in the driveway."
I nodded. "She's napping. We should probably go ask her if she knows anything."
"Do you think she might have killed the victim?" Rex asked.
"What?" I jumped. "No! Why would she kill some random civilian on her first day of vacation? Who does that?"
Rex held his hands up. "Don't get defensive. I'm just doing my job. She is, after all, an assassin for the CIA…"
I shook my head. "The CIA doesn't have assassins."
"Why do you keep saying that when it's clearly not the case?"
"I had to sign an agreement to make that claim every time the words CIA and assassin were used in the same sentence. It's standard protocol."
Rex's right eyebrow went up. "So, you're saying she really is an assassin for the CIA, but you can't say out loud that she is?"
I nodded. "She's absolutely not an assassin."
Back in the guest room, I quietly searched the two nightstands and under the pillows without waking my guest. Have you ever woken a sleeping assassin? I don't recommend it. With these professionals, their training kicks in before their eyes open. Rufus, another CIA assassin (we don't have assassins) had overslept, and Riley and I needed to get him on an airplane. He'd choked me for thirty seconds until his eyes flew open. I've never heard someone apologize so much in my whole career.
"Why did you search the nightstand and pillows?" Rex whispered.
"Weapons. These people usually have something close to grab in a pinch. I once knew a Colombian hitwoman who slept with a flamethrower."
He folded his arms. "You're joking."
I shook my head. "In hindsight, it was a bad decision on her part. She tripped the trigger in her sleep one night and singed off her eyebrows and hair and totally destroyed her 18th Century four-post bed. Her eyebrows never did grow back."
From a safe distance, standing in front of Rex, I started calling her name, softly at first and then louder.
The woman quickly reached down to her sock and pulled a razor on me while getting to her feet. Once her eyes opened, she dropped the weapon and smiled.
"Oh. Hi, Merry."
"Sorry to wake you up," I started.
Rex cleared his throat. "Hilly, I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind."
This, I was learning, was detective talk. Rex never gave anything away until he'd asked a bunch of questions. It was kind of annoying, really, but I did love watching him work.
She looked from me to him. "There's a body, isn't there? I didn't do it."
"How did you know there's a body?" I asked, ruining Rex's timing.
Hilly stretched. "I've only ever been woken up by a person other than my mother twice. Both times, it was because there was a body."
She began jogging in place then followed with deep lunges.
"By a person?" Rex asked.
I nodded. "Hilly uses her cell for an alarm."
"The first time was in Switzerland," she said without panting, which impressed me. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when this skier was found shot to death outside the door of my hotel."
"You didn't hear a gunshot?" Rex asked.
She shook her head. "I was wearing earplugs. Did you know they yodel at night? I wish they'd warned me about that."
"They cleared you?" I asked. "Of the murder?"
Hilly began doing jumping jacks without panting. "Turned out to be the hotel's night manager. I guess he'd been visiting this married woman in her suite across the hall for several nights until her husband surprised them both." She stopped jumping and wrinkled her face. "I can't stand that easy stuff. No one kills anyone with finesse anymore."
"And the second time?" I asked.
She rotated her arms in huge circles. "That was in Texas. I was hiding out at a dude ranch, and this guy ends up dead in my cabin. Gored. By a bull."
"In your cabin?"
"Oh wait." She paused and looked skyward. "No. Just outside of it. He'd been drunk and teasing it. The bull busted out of his pen and gored him. The guy just sort of crawled into my cabin to die. Crazy, right?"
I nodded. "Bodies turn up near me all the time too."
Hilly stopped exercising. "Hey! We should have a club! We could build a tree house and have passwords! Can we have Popsicle as the password? It's so fun to say." Then she began to do push-ups while saying the word Popsicle over and over.
Rex shook his head and probably rolled his eyes. I wasn't sure. He held out his cell phone with a picture of the deceased. "Ms. Vinton, have you ever seen this woman before?"
Hilly got to her feet and took the phone. Most people would be freaked out looking at a body, but to a CIA assassin (we don't have assassins) this was kind of a meh moment.
"I have no idea who that is," she said as she handed the phone back.
"See?" I said to Rex. "Obviously this was just some random woman who died unexpectedly in my really hard-to-get-into backyard."
Rex sighed and pocketed his phone. He kissed me on the forehead. "Nothing is ever random with you." And with that, he left.
Hilly showed no interest in the situation. She just went into the bathroom, and seconds later I heard the shower running.
I went out to the living room and sat on the couch.
Was it possible that for the first time since I'd moved here, a dead body had nothing to do with me? That would be nice. Well, not nice because someone died. But nice in the other way.
"I'm totally starving." Hilly joined me in the living room, dressed, with her wet hair in a braid. "What do you want to do for lunch? Take me to the best place in town."
There was only one answer for that.
* * *
"Ohmygodthisburgerisamazing!" Hilly breathed as she took another bite from her double cheeseburger.
I nodded. "Oleo's makes the best burgers in the state."
Oleo's made real food with real meat and grilled it to perfection, which meant there's lots of yummy grease. It was probably my favorite place to eat.
"You're not kidding!" She moaned. "Why is it sooooo good?"
"Corn-fed Iowa beef," I said. "Probably fresh."
Iowa was a meat and potato state. I grew up with dinner always having a meat entrée with potatoes on the side. It never got boring, and I never wanted anything else. When I was training with the CIA on the East Coast, I was shocked by the healthy eating habits there. For example, alfredo sauce should hold the weight of a standing fork, not look like wet noodles. And worse than that, nobody should eat only a salad for dinner. Ever.
"Who's that?" Hilly asked, pointing behind me. At the door.
I turned in my seat to see a young woman in her early twenties marching toward me with great purpose. Short pink hair, huge glasses with thick black frames, and about ten piercings in one ear.
"Wow," I said. "I'd hate to be whoever she's stalking."
"I think it's you." Hilly popped a handful of fries into her mouth.
Sure enough, the kid was standing over me, holding a digital recording device.
"Medea Jones," she said without extending a handshake—a serious breach of Iowan etiquette. "From the Who's There Tribune." She named our small-town newspaper.
"Um, hi?" I said as I wiped the grease from my hands.
"You're Merry Wrath, right?" The girl frowned.
"That's right," I mumbled.
For the last few years, I'd been kind of incognito here. When I came home, I tried to blend into the wallpaper. My last name, Wrath, was a known one here because of my mom's family. And I didn't want to deal with anyone interested in my CIA past.
That had been changing little by little as more locals learned about my story. But it was still kind of hush-hush, and I wanted to keep it that way.
"Who are you?" Medea shoved the recorder into Hilly's face. For a moment I was pretty sure she wasn't going to get that hand back.
"Hilly Vinton," my friend said.
"Hilly." Medea scowled. "Short for Hilary? Hilary Vinton?"
Hilly groaned. "I'm not Hillary Clinton. Yes, I'm aware that I look just like her. No, I'm not her." She looked at me. "Why do people always think that?"
Medea stepped back and sucked in her breath. I was pretty sure that it never crossed her mind to compare the petite, blonde, older former Secretary of State to this brunette statuesque amazon.
It was just one of Hilly's peccadillos. At some point in the last twenty years, Hilly had gotten it into her head that she was a dead ringer and often mistaken for the former First Lady. We all ignored it because she was one of the very few people in the world who could kill a man with a crazy straw.
The young reporter decided I was a bit less nuts and turned back to me. "What can you tell me about the murder victim found in your backyard today?"
Murder victim? So it was foul play. How did Medea Whoever know that already?
"Not much," I said before taking a bite of my burger. Helpful hint—food is great for stalling until you can shoot your way out of a situation.
Medea seemed to think I was going to say more than that. I wasn't.
"Did you kill the victim?" she asked.
I shook my head and took a sip of my pop.
"How did you find out that it's murder?" I asked.
"I have my sources!" the young woman snapped. "You're kind of a mystery here," she continued. Then she bent down and closed the distance, her nose just inches from mine. "I'm going to find out about you."
Medea straightened up, and after a quick glance at Hilly, whose head was cocked to the side as she stared at the kid, she turned to me again. "You're going to be my Pulitzer Prize ticket out of this town."
"I'm your what now?"
"I'm going to win print journalism's highest honor, probably in the next few months. Then it's off to the big-time!"
"New York?" Hilly asked.
Medea gave her a strange look. "No. Des Moines. The Des Moines Register, duh."
Hilly looked at me askance.
"Very important Iowa newspaper," I said. Turning to Medea Jones, I asked, "Why me? I'm nobody. Why don't you look for something else?"
"I've asked around to find out who the most mysterious person in town is. And everybody says it's you." She smirked as the ten piercings in her ear caught the light and blinded me.
I waved a fry at her. "How can I be the most mysterious person in town if everybody can tell you about me?"
A startled look crossed Medea's face, but she quickly recovered. "You moved here a few years ago. Even though your family lived here, you are an enigma. You don't have a job. Instead you volunteer with a local Girl Scout troop. And you have two houses, one right across the street from the other."
"I like to keep an eye on myself," I replied. "I hardly think that makes me mysterious." She fortunately hadn't mentioned that my dad's a very high-ranking senator and my husband is a detective.
"I'm coming after you, Merry Wrath," she snapped. "I'm going to be on you like a tick on a dog."
Well, at least she got that metaphor right.
"And I'm not giving up until I get my story!" Spinning on her heel, she stormed out of the restaurant, making me wonder what the hell had happened.
"I like her," Hilly said.
My eyes were still on the door. "Do you freelance?" I was pretty sure Medea Jones was going to be a problem from here on out.
"Nah," Hilly said. "I'm on vacation."