CHAPTER ONE

 

"Murder me!" the girl cried out with large, pleading eyes. "Please?"

"No!" begged another. "I want to be murdered!"

I was holding a large carving knife in my hands as I looked these two over. "I'm not going to kill either one of you."

Betty pouted, folding her arms over her chest. "But Mrs. Wrath! You need victims!"

Mrs. Wrath. Sigh. For the past few years, I'd been begging my girls to call me Ms., since I wasn't married. But technically speaking, they were right this time. Sort of. Newly married, my name was actually Mrs. Ferguson. Or at least, it would be if I'd taken Rex's last name.

Lauren objected. "I'm the tallest. I should be the one killed. It only makes sense."

Mrs. Linda Willard, my fourth-grade teacher who had started helping out with my troop here and there, arched an eyebrow in my direction but said nothing. She was learning that my Girl Scouts were, well, a bit quirky.

The girls, who were fourth graders themselves, saw my fourth-grade teacher as a sort of mythical creature from the olden days, and they viewed her with an awe they'd have for the arrival of Abraham Lincoln dressed in full samurai armor astride a pterodactyl.

Kelly, my best friend and co-leader, gently took the knife from my hands and set it up on a high shelf so the girls couldn't reach it. She should know better. I'd seen these kids form a human pyramid just to get the cookies off the top of my fridge.

"We talked about this," she said sternly (she always said things sternly). "This is a fundraiser for the Girl Scout Council, and we are here to help run it. The adults who paid for tickets get to be the characters and they get to be the victims."

Betty and Lauren simultaneously threw their arms up in the air and stomped away in disgust. I wondered if they'd been practicing that move and finally found a reason to deploy it. Kind of like an angsty, synchronized fury swim.

"We could kill one of them," I mused. "No point in having the whole troop against us."

Kelly rolled her eyes.

Linda Willard stepped in. "I came up with the mystery for an adult victim. I don't think it's a good idea to kill off one of the girls."

Kelly pointed to her and nodded. Mrs. Willard had been her teacher too.

Our former educator was a puzzle master who actually had a New York publishing contract to create crossword books. And when the Council asked me to come up with a murder mystery–night fundraiser, I'd turned to her. She'd helped me solve a mystery recently and was rewarded by the local police with a Medal for Murder. Okay, they didn't call it that. They called it a Citizen's Award for Service. But Medal for Murder would've been way better.

My name is Merry Wrath, and I used to be a spy with the CIA, until I was "accidentally" outed by the vice president of the United States. As Fionnaghuala Merrygold Wrath Czrygy, I had to flee my field assignment to get home in one piece when the news came out. That wasn't easy since I was in a dive bar in Chechnya with a group of paramilitary terrorists who had a thing for CNN (which didn't mean much since that was the only channel they could get besides the current strongman's cable access show on house cats). I barely made it out intact.

Because I was forced into early retirement, the government awarded me a huge settlement before sending me packing. I changed my name to Merry Wrath and came back to my hometown of Who's There, Iowa, to figure out what to do next. Kelly talked me into helping her with a troop, and that was how I ended up in this particular predicament.

Due to a number of unusual events, word leaked out about who I really was, and the Girl Scout Council asked me to create a fun mystery fundraiser for their biggest donors. Linda came up with the mystery, clues, and whodunnit stuff. Kelly and I filled in the blanks.

We were going for a sort of twist on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. One of the board members owned a private island in the middle of a huge lake with a mansion there that we could use. There was no Wi-Fi—ergo, no cheating by looking stuff up on the internet. The players would arrive by boat, and we'd be stranded for forty-eight hours. It was the perfect setup.

The party would start soon. We'd arrived early this morning to help with setting things up. Only eight of my girls were able to come, due to a Monster Golf Cart Rally being held in Bladdersly.

So it was the four Kaitlyns (I have four Kaitlyn M.'s who all look alike for no apparent reason), Betty, Lauren, Inez, and Ava. Dr. Soo Jin Body—the county medical examiner—and I were providing adult supervision because Kelly had to work at the hospital this weekend and Mrs. Willard was going out of town to visit her daughter in Texas. At least they came to help us set up.

And I'd just found out that the four Kaitlyns couldn't stay because they were going to a Weimaraner dog show in Ames. Their mothers, all improbably named Ashley, had started an Etsy shop, making harnesses strictly for that one dog breed. The girls were going along to help and, I assumed, to roll around in puppies.

"Are you sure you can handle it with just four girls?" Kelly bit her lip.

"This is the third time you've asked," I reminded her. "Yes. I've got this. And four girls will be much easier to wrangle."

"I still don't know why they won't tell us who the victim or murderer is," Betty grumped loudly, from across the room.

I ignored it. Kelly and I'd decided that the girls would experience this firsthand. They could try to solve it on their own but had to keep that to themselves. The guests were the stars of this show. Six mega donors who'd paid $10,000 each to be here, these folks were smart and wealthy. They were about to have their socks blown off. Almost literally in fact, since I confiscated Betty's homemade shape charges an hour ago. She'd insisted they were for special effects, but I threw them into the lake anyway.

Other than the four adults (including two employees who lived here), four girls, and eight players, the Council sent two staffers to help. One was Stacey Gillespie, the camp director who my girls loved, and the other was Satan. I'd love to say I'm kidding, but Juliette Dowd was my arch nemesis (and this is from an ex-CIA agent who literally had arch nemeses in the past).

An angry young woman who had a thing for my husband, Juliette tried (and sometimes succeeded) in making my life miserable. I'd wanted to "kill" her off, but Linda said it would be too obvious. She had a point. Plus, Kelly thought I might really kill her instead of fake killing her, so she decided to remove the temptation for me and edited her right out of the script.

"This house is awesome," I said for the one hundredth time today.

Soo Jin nodded, her beautiful eyes wide with glee. "It's a Queen Anne Victorian! And it's original to the island."

"How do you know that?" I asked. I didn't know that.

She held up a book titled Islands in the Middle of Lakes in Iowa. "I found this at the library. I can tell you everything about this place!"

"Is it an interesting history?" I asked. Maybe there was a ghost story! The girls would love that!

Soo Jin flipped the book open and showed me a photo from the mid-1800s. "That's Jim Bentley." She pointed to a scowling man in the photo, standing next to a pretty young woman. "And that's his wife, June. Jim was cheated out of his life savings by a con man from Chicago."

"So he got revenge?" Kelly asked.

Soo Jin shook her head, "No. He developed tuberculosis and was sent to an asylum in Colorado. His wife, June, believed that his poor health was a result of the swindle. I guess they didn't really know what caused tuberculosis back then. Anyway, she tracked the crook down and lured him to the island, to this very house, and murdered him."

"She killed him?" I gaped. "That's an opportunity missed. We could've built a ghost into the script."

The medical examiner shrugged. "It was a pretty straightforward case. June admitted guilt and went to prison. Somebody bought the island after that, and since then it's been privately owned."

"Too bad it wasn't an unsolved mystery," I said. "We could've plugged that in somewhere."

Soo Jin smiled. "That's the only good story in the book. The rest are pretty boring."

I could imagine. A book on islands in lakes in Iowa? Still, I had to give Soo Jin props for preparedness. That combined with her dazzling beauty was a source of aggravation for me. Since it was unreasonable to feel this way, I kept it to myself.

"Okay, everyone!" Stacey appeared in the hallway. The tall woman with blonde hair and a permanent, infectious smile was easily likeable. She ran the Council's camps and was the perfect camp director, always ready with a game or song for the girls to keep them distracted (a talent that made me very, very happy).

She clapped her hands together. "The boat is on its way here with the guests! Those who are staying need to get into their costumes and assume their roles! Those who are leaving should get ready to go!"

Kelly, Linda, and the Kaitlyns waved goodbye and disappeared through the front door. They'd hide in the boathouse until the guests were unloaded and then take the boat back to the shore, where it would remain until lunchtime Sunday, when it would return for us.

The unfortunately named Dead Otter Lake (an improvement on the original Native American name that translated to Stinky Water Where Animals Die and Men Get Dysentery) was one of the largest in the state. Just twenty minutes south of Des Moines, in our home county. A very exclusive area, the lake was ringed with giant homes, each one bigger than the next.

Penny Island sat dead center—a small five-acre wooded area with the large mansion in the middle. Our hosts, the Deivers, handed over their staff and the keys and fled for the big city. The only warning was that they had a mini Holland lop rabbit named Gertrude, that lived in the walls.

"She's hiding from us at the moment," Audrey Deivers apologized. "You probably won't even see her while we're gone. We don't even know how she gets in and out of the walls." She went on to say that they'd put a small bale of Timothy hay and a water bottle in the mud room so the bunny would have access to food.

"A mini lop?" I asked. "She must be small."

Audrey gave me a look I couldn't translate. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? But no, it's actually larger than the Holland lop. Which was a huge surprise when she grew."

Upon hearing about Gertrude, the girls launched the greatest manhunt since Jimmy Hoffa, searching high and low (including one rather optimistic search on top of the fridge) but never found the bunny. Audrey told us we might hear her thumping…a thing she did when angry.

"They're here!" Lauren shouted from the front window.

I shooed her and the other three girls up to our room to change their clothes. Soo Jin was waiting for us, already dressed in a fitted skirt, high heels, and an angora sweater with a circle pin. She looked ridiculously stunning. I tried not to hate her for it.

The guests were supposed to arrive dressed in clothes from the 1950s. Linda had wanted to set the party in the '20s, but we couldn't find enough costumes for all of us, so the '50s it was.

The four girls were dressed in sleeveless buttoned-up blouses, pedal pusher pants (that just looked like capris to me), socks, and saddle shoes, with their hair in ponytails tied with scarves. I had to admit, they looked adorable.

As for me, I'd been dreading this moment. Kelly must've thought it hilarious when she brought the giant felt poodle skirt, short-sleeved blouse with Peter Pan collar, and loafers with pennies tucked into them.

"I look like an idiot," I said as I surveyed myself in the mirror. "I'm too old for a poodle skirt."

Soo Jin and the girls looked me up and down. Then my troop began laughing hysterically. I toyed with stuffing them into the walls with Gertrude.

"Okay." Soo Jin approached and looked at my reflection in the standing mirror. "I think I can help."

A few minutes later, Stacey and Juliette burst into the room, each looking very chic in pencil skirts, twinset cashmere sweaters, and high heels.

"You look like an idiot!" Juliette sneered.

Stacey shook her head. "What did I tell you about being negative?"

The redhead simmered but kept her mouth shut. The camp director outranked her. But I knew if we were ever alone, the insults would flow like lava.

The only thing Soo Jin was able to do was apply makeup and do my hair. My normally unruly, short dirty blonde hair had been curled into sleek waves away from my face and with the bloodred lipstick, mascara, and rouge, made me look completely different.

"I think you look amazing!" Stacey said. "You should wear your hair like that all the time."

I scowled at my reflection. Seemed like a lot of work.

"Okay, everyone! The guests are getting settled in the parlor with cocktails. Does everyone remember their parts?"

The girls nodded solemnly. Dr. Body giggled. I grudgingly shrugged, and Juliette disemboweled woodland creatures with her gaze. Okay, that didn't really happen. But in an alternate dimension, several chipmunks exploded.

Stacey and Juliette left the room, and I looked back at the mirror. Actually, it wasn't bad. Except for the ginormous twenty-pound circle of heavy fabric around my waist, I looked okay. Stacey was right about the hair. How Soo Jin smoothed and styled it in a few minutes was beyond me. I probably shouldn't have kept my eyes closed the whole time.

The Girl Scout Council staff was part of the show, as Soo Jin, me, and the girls were. The idea was that the guests were invited to a mysterious party in a house where it turned out the host wasn't present.

There was a housekeeper who cooked and a groundskeeper too. These were played by the actual housekeeper, Miriam Cooper, and actual groundskeeper, Ned Odom. We hadn't had much time to get to know these two, but they were a bit standoffish while we were getting ready. If I had to guess, I'd say they weren't very happy about participating. I wondered how the Deivers had convinced them.

Miriam was maybe in her mid-thirties and seemed normal, just quiet. So quiet that she spoke in a smaller font. Ned, on the other hand, was maybe sixty years old and scary. At six feet, eight inches, he towered (and glowered) over all of us. If I hadn't already memorized the mystery, I'd say he did it.

Stacey and Juliette were playing the parts of two socialite sisters who were also invited. They weren't the victims or the killer but a kind of buffer between us and the guests. Soo Jin and I were playing to type as the leaders of a stranded group of Girl Scouts taking shelter from a raging storm during a failed canoe trip gone wrong. Why the two of us were wearing skirts on a canoe trip had never been explained to us.

And that was it. The guests, whom we were just about to meet, were the real players. We found our way to the lounge—a very large room with four couches, a fireplace, and many chairs. In the middle of the room was a small round table with a large silver tray on top.

"The figurines!" I rolled my eyes. "We forgot them!"

Linda Willard had modelled the event on the Agatha Christie novel, and in the book, as each victim was killed off, a figurine was found smashed. We'd been talking about it for weeks, but I'd totally spaced. Would the guests notice?

Betty and Inez ran from the room and were back before we could yell at them. Betty set a box on the table, and Inez pulled out a very interesting sort of clay rabbit.

"We made these!" the girl said proudly.

One by one, the girls pulled eight Picasso-like attempts at woodland creatures (although I could swear one looked like a hippo) out of the box and set them up in a ring around the tray.

"These are wonderful!" Stacey cried out as she bent close to inspect them. "You girls took the initiative and made these! Good job!"

"All four of us did!" Ava said quickly.

I reached for a disturbingly mutated pigeon, but Betty slapped my arm away. "Leave the squirrel alone," she said.

Squirrel? "They're not exactly dry. How are we going to smash them if they're not smashable?" I asked.

Lauren thought about this for a moment. "We could tear their heads off," she suggested.

Voices came from the front entrance, and we took our places, with Betty shoving the box behind one of the couches. The girls were seated cross-legged on the floor, with Soo Jin and me in chairs behind them.

Stacey stayed with us, while Juliette was greeting the guests. That seemed like having a spider greet flies before eating them. But maybe she was just pure unadulterated evil to me and me alone.

The first to walk into the room was Dennis Blunt. Last week, I'd done my homework and looked up all the donors. Dennis was a sullen rich kid who'd never had to work a day in his life. He'd barely scraped through college, majoring in a degree of his own invention (or rather, based on his parents' generous donation to the school) in video gaming.

If I had to guess, I'd say he was in his early thirties, but it was clear he was embracing a slovenly, slacker image, wearing a black T-shirt with some metal band on it, ripped jeans, and high-top sneakers. His hair was too long to be short and too short to be long, as if he'd found the one hairdresser who could do I-don't-care hair. He looked homeless, not wealthy. But his parents hadn't been able to come at the last minute, so he was their stand-in. Which explained why he wasn't in costume.

Dennis rolled his eyes and sighed heavily as he slunk over to an overstuffed chair and fell into it with a loud groan. He didn't even look at the rest of us, acting as if we weren't even there.

"Idiot," Betty mumbled under her breath.

Thad and Wren Gable were the next through the doorway. A young professional, Thad was well known as one of the leading defense lawyers in the state. Nefariously known. Thad loved making waves, defending some of the worst criminals in Iowa, including the notorious Vy Todd—a convicted smuggler whose path I'd crossed not too long ago.

Thad had a reputation for cheating on his wife, at times openly. His current paramour was going to be here as well. I wasn't sure how that was going to go down. Maybe there'd be a real murder after all.

"Oh." He made a face as he saw the girls. "There are children here." The emphasis invoked images of a roach infestation in a sewage lagoon.

Soo Jin put her hand on my arm, probably anticipating I'd say or do something. I relaxed. These folks had given a lot of money to be here. The least I could do was not kill them before they were killed in the game. I made a mental note to have a little chat about respect with him later. A long chat that included death threats.

Wren Gable looked at the girls anxiously. "Oh! Well! I guess this is a Girl Scout event, Thad," she jittered as she fiddled with some period bangles on her wrist.

Dressed as a well-to-do couple from the '50s, Thad wore a three-piece suit, while Wren was dressed in a dull gray with matching pumps and purse. She tugged nervously on her gloves. Wren was the very definition of a mousy wife. According to my research, no one believed that she was completely clueless about Thad's wandering eye. And yet she never left the man…never even threatened such a thing. Maybe I should have a chat with her too. A long chat with instructions on waterboarding your husband.

Without wasting any more time, Thad breezed past to the liquor tray and poured himself a glass of what looked to be whiskey. Wren fluttered near him as if waiting for permission to sit.

"These may not be the best role models for the girls," I whispered to Soo Jin.

"We can use this as a teaching moment then," she said brightly.

Right. Girls, don't be like Wren, and don't marry a Thad. And never, ever date a Dennis. That summed things up.

A grim-looking middle-aged woman entered the room, wearing an unfortunately fitted black dress, ballet flats, and a frown. With short hair and a serious gaze, Dr. Caroline Regent looked like she'd much rather be elbow deep in a patient's intestines. The woman had a brilliant reputation as a surgeon but turned out to be a social dud. My research indicated that, from time to time, she attended galas, but they weren't really her thing, and she rarely talked to anyone.

Dr. Regent had recently pioneered an experimental bowel bypass using snakeskin, making a name for herself nationwide. Unlike Thad, who liked the publicity, Caroline ignored it and spent almost all her time in surgery. I couldn't help but wonder why she was even here.

"Oh! Arthur! Look at the little girls!" An elderly woman with a warm grin came through the door with an equally elderly man.

"This is great!" Arthur smiled at my troop. "I love being around children!"

Arthur and Violet Kasinski were in their late 70s and came from old money. Arthur's grandfather was the first pork producer in the area, a long time ago, and Arthur had built a vast fortune in the hog industry.

The couple were famous for their love of children and were thought to be the nicest people in Iowa. Legendarily generous, the couple had never been able to have kids of their own, so they gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities like the Girl Scouts and Boys & Girls of Iowa, among other groups. The two of them were known to be very much in love, still doting on each other like they had when they'd first married. They were the couple everyone wanted to grow up to be.

Arthur and Violet came right over and introduced themselves, asking each girl her name and being delighted by the answer. Arthur rewarded each girl with a cellophane-wrapped butterscotch disk. The girls politely thanked him but didn't seem very sure about what it was. I'd be willing to bet they'd never seen hard candy before. I gave them a quick nod. Betty unwrapped the candy and popped it into her mouth. The smile on her face told the other girls the candy was okay.

Soo Jin and I introduced ourselves last.

"You are so lucky." Violet beamed. "To get to work with kids! I wish I were younger—I'd be a Scout leader every year."

I wanted to say that they might rethink that if they had my troop, but Soo Jin beat me to the punch with a sweet thank-you.

Arthur then reached into his pocket and handed each girl a candy bar. This was familiar territory, and the girls tore into them, thanking them through mouthfuls of chocolate, which amused the older couple and horrified the Gables.

Dennis still hadn't acknowledged the fact that there were others in the room.

The last two people through the door, weren't a couple at all. Taylor Burke was forty, just making Iowa's 40 Under 40 last year before aging out of the award. Petite and imposing, Taylor was the first female CEO of a major insurance company, headquartered in Des Moines. Known to be sharp and very ambitious, she was often called the Dragon Lady of Double Indemnity (whatever that meant). I liked what I'd read about her, especially the part where she'd been a Bronze, Silver, and Gold Award winner when she was a Girl Scout. The only reservation I had was that Taylor was rumored to be Thad's latest fling.

"This is nice," she said as she took in the room, wearing a very red, very expensive vintage designer coat dress. After spotting the girls, she grinned. "And we have real Girl Scouts!" The woman bent down to Betty. "You know what? I was once a Girl Scout too! The youngest Gold Award winner in the state of Iowa."

She said it in a way that complimented herself while insulting us. It was all in her inflection. Most people don't realize how dangerous that can be. In my experience, you had to be careful who you passive-aggressively complimented. You might get away with it with most people, but occasionally you came across a paranoid Lithuanian strongman who thought "have a nice day" was an invitation to a firefight. That's when you're glad you chose to attend his garden party armed with a very, very large handgun. I escaped only because his pet wolf distracted everyone by coughing up a human femur.

Betty must have been suspicious of Taylor's words, because she gave me a cautious look. I nodded, indicating it was okay to respond.

"Okay," the girl said, unimpressed.

Ava, my somewhat bossier Scout, piped up, "That's what I want to be! I want to be the youngest Gold Award winner in the US."

For a split second, a look of annoyance marred Taylor's carefully made-up features, but it disappeared, and she patted the child on the head. "Good luck!"

Clearly, the woman did not like the idea of her record being broken. I decided right then and there that Ava was going to make that happen, if it took all my resources and a couple of well-placed bribes.

"Thad!" Taylor purred when she saw him and made her way to join the Gables at the drinks table.

The man who'd walked in with her had stopped in the doorway and looked around. Enos McQuaid was a bored billionaire and my vote for wild card at the event. Dressed in a work shirt like you'd see at a gas station fifty years ago, the guy seemed to be thumbing his nose at the stylish folks around him.

McQuaid became rich during college when he invented Clean Yo Mouth—a cell phone app that reminded people to brush their teeth. He sold it for millions and then joined the leisure set.

Word on the street said that since he'd retired young, he was incredibly bored and always looking for anything to do. He'd been parasailing with Canadian geese…in Nicaragua, skateboarded illegally down the Pyramids of Giza, and built a castle for zombies in his backyard (violating zoning laws and scaring his neighbors into wondering what he knew that they didn't). What the twenty-seven-year-old was doing here was anyone's guess. The man scanned the room, his gaze lingering on each and every guest, before he found a chair and sat down.

"Now that everyone's here," Stacey announced, "it's time for introductions! I'm Stacey, and you've already met Juliette." She indicated the redheaded demon, who simply nodded to the guests but managed a sideways sneer at me. "Why don't we go around the room?"

"If I have to." Dennis sighed. "Dennis Blunt. My parents made me come. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here."

Wren didn't give us time to react to this. "Wren Gable!" She pulled on her husband's arm. "Wife of Thad Gable. I'm excited to be here!" She turned to kiss her husband on the cheek, but he shot her a look that would've seared her lips off, so she stopped.

"Thad Gable." He sneered. "I'm sure everyone knows who I am."

Lauren raised her hand. "I don't know who you are."

"Well, you're just a kid," he said. "Ask your parents. They know who I am."

Betty piped up, "Are you a serial killer?"

Thad jumped, spilling his drink. "Why would you think that?"

"Because that's the only reason we'd know who you are," Betty suggested.

To be fair, it made sense to me.

"No," he said as he refreshed his drink. "I'm not. But I defended one."

Inez frowned. "You had to defend a serial killer? From police or bad guys?"

"No…I…um…" Thad struggled to find an answer.

"From ninjas?" Ava's eyes grew wide.

"I didn't defend him from ninjas!" Thad shrieked. "I defended him in court!" He sat down and scowled at the girls.

Arthur stood up, smiling at Violet, who remained seated. "I'm Arthur Kasinski, and this is my lovely wife, Violet. We have a large farm not far from here, and we are so happy to be here supporting the Girl Scouts. Right, honey?"

Violet nodded her agreement as Arthur sat down. She looked serene and happy. They both did. Was that how Rex and I would be fifty years from now? I hoped so.

"Enos McQuaid," the young man said as he struggled to stand. While not grossly so, he was definitely overweight. "I was an inventor. Now I'm a man of leisure." He looked around awkwardly.

"What's a man of leisure?" Inez asked.

"Maybe it's a planet?" Lauren asked. "Are you from another planet?"

Enos shifted his considerable weight from one foot to another. "No, it means I have lots of free time. I don't really work. Not anymore."

"What did you invent?" Ava asked.

He looked relieved to have a subject he understood more than he understood little girls. "It's an app on your cell phone that tells you when to brush your teeth."

The girls looked at each other then turned toward him.

"Is it for stupid people?" Betty asked. "Because everyone knows when to brush their teeth."

Lauren spoke up. "Maybe it's for babies. Babies don't know when to brush their teeth."

Ava rolled her eyes. "Babies don't have teeth!"

"Or cell phones," Inez added.

"Well…" Enos looked confused. "I guess there are enough people who needed reminding, or I wouldn't have been able to sell it for millions."

The girls immediately started whispering among themselves. My guess was they were trying to invent something no one needed so they could make millions too.

Taylor got to her feet. "I'm Taylor Burke, and as you all know, I was one of Iowa's 40 Under 40 Top Business Leaders last year, was just named CEO of the Year by Insurance Magazine and was the state's youngest Gold Award winner." She shot Ava a quick glare. "And when I was a Girl Scout, we didn't do silly things like this. We camped in tents we made out of whatever we could find, and we lived off the land. Girls now have it too easy."

I was pretty sure Taylor never did any of those things when she was a Scout. In fact, she probably lied to earn badges quickly and made others do chores for her. Maybe I'd invite her camping with my troop sometime. My girls made the twins in The Parent Trap look like amateurs.

Did these people know each other? The introductions implied that they didn't. In fact, the only recognition between guests had been Taylor and Thad. These people had to know each other, at least marginally, since the number of major donors in Des Moines was probably limited.

"Hi, everyone!" Soo Jin's voice next to me gave me a start. "I'm Dr. Soo Jin Body, the medical examiner based in Who's There, Iowa."

I waited for the usual drooling to start. Soo Jin was willowy with perfect skin and glossy black hair in a sleek bob. Her sweet nature was genuine, leading men and women to fall for her. I kept my eyes on Thad, who didn't disappoint as his eyes went up and down her figure. Wren didn't notice, but Taylor did. And she did not look happy.

Enos's eyebrows went up hopefully. "You're playing the part of the coroner?" He probably hoped he'd be a victim.

The lovely doctor blushed. "Oh! No! I can see where that might be confusing. I really am a medical examiner—but not a coroner. I'm not here in any professional capacity. I'm just here to help with the troop." She indicated the four girls on the floor in front of us.

"What's the difference?" Enos asked.

Soo Jin smiled. "It's an easy mistake. The titles seem interchangeable, but they aren't. A coroner is an elected official and doesn't have to have any medical degree. Whereas a medical examiner is a real doctor and is a hired position."

The guests looked at each other in surprise but said nothing, then, as a group, turned their attention to me.

I struggled to get to my feet under the weight of the felt circle skirt. "I'm Merry Wrath, the leader of this troop. We're just here to help."

Wren's jaw dropped. "You're Merry Wrath? The Merry Wrath?"

"Well"—I was famous?—"I'm a Merry Wrath."

She turned to her husband. "Thad! This is the woman I was telling you about! Mike Czrygy's daughter!"

Ah. They knew my dad, Senator Czrygy. Everyone knew him. He came back to Iowa and visited as many of the 99 counties as he could whenever there was a recess. An important politician who chaired many committees, Mike Czrygy was considered one of the most powerful members in the Senate.

Thad looked at me with interest for the very first time. "The spy who was outed and came back to Iowa?"

I nodded, unsure what to say. Even though word had gotten out about me, I'd been incognito for years. Unfortunately, bodies popped up around me like ants at an all-sugar picnic, and when my senator father was in town for my wedding a couple of months ago, people started putting two and two together.

One of the reasons I loved Iowa was that people weren't really starstruck. Celebrities, good or bad, weren't a big deal. They were just like everyone else. No one had confronted me about my past since word leaked out. And I liked it that way.

"I heard about you." Enos stared at me. "Your name was Finn something."

"Czrygy," Wren corrected.

I held my hands up. "I'm just Merry now. And I'm just here with my troop to help out. That's all."

Most of the guests seemed okay with my plea. But something in the eyes of Caroline Regent caught me off guard. Had I met the doctor before? I think I'd remember any reconstructive bowel surgery. But the look passed, and I chalked it up to my overactive imagination.

"My friend," Dennis said unconvincingly, "is writing a book about you."

I froze. A book? About me?

He nodded as if I'd said those words aloud—which was super creepy. "Yeah. About how you were a spy and stuff."

Someone was writing a book on me? Why on earth would they do that? First off, almost all of my cases as a field agent for the CIA were and still are classified. Secondly, I wasn't really that interesting. Someone once wrote a Hollywood script about me, and it did not go well.

"Who?" I demanded. "Who is writing a book on me?"

Dennis shrugged.

"I need a name, address, phone number, and social security number. Now." If he thought I was dropping this, he was wrong.

"It's none of your business," Dennis said.

"None of my business? Your friend is writing an unauthorized biography on me! I'd say that's my business." I started to get up, but Soo Jin put her hand on my arm.

She whispered, "Not here, not now. This is a fundraiser, remember?"

As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. This wasn't the time or place. You might be interested to know that the right time and place was a dark alley with a baseball bat and no witnesses.

Dennis wiggled his eyebrows at me, and I sent him a look I hoped would make him swell up and break out in boils.

It didn't.

Stacey clapped her hands together. "Not here at the moment are Miriam, the housekeeper, and Ned, the groundskeeper. They work for the Deivers family and will only be involved in meals and that sort of thing. They aren't part of the game." She took a big breath. "Now that we've all introduced ourselves, before lunch is served, let's go over the ground rules."

I heard her tell the group that they were playing characters based on themselves but set in the 1950s—just so we wouldn't have to remember new names and character backgrounds. But it was fuzzy because in the back of my mind, I was wondering when I could kidnap Dennis, tie him to a chair, and torture him for more information on this buddy and her book.

There was a shed outside. Which probably meant there was rope, hedge pruners, and a convenient amount of flammable bug killer that I could use to get answers. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a paranoid person. It's just a spy thing.

We don't like our exploits published for all the world to see. Especially the stuff we get wrong. Like the time in Nicaragua when I accidentally kidnapped Pablo Escobar's (no, not that Pablo Escobar—it's a common mistake since this Pablo was his cousin three times removed) pet sloth. How was I to know that Honeybun had crawled into my jeep for a nap?

By the way, Honeybun is safe and living in a sloth preserve in Costa Rica. Like I was going to take her back to Escobar! Sure, it put a price on my head for 10,000 Cordoba Oros (which, sadly, is only about $300 in the US), but it was worth it because Pablo wasn't known to be kind to anyone due to an unfortunate hemorrhoid issue, and I got to play with the baby sloths while I was there. I'd have to take my troop sometime.

But as much as I wanted to deal with this now, Soo Jin was right. I had to focus on what we were doing. I'd feel awful if the other guests said screw it, wanted their money back, and went home. I wasn't going to give up on this, but I wasn't going to deal with it now. Eventually, I shook myself out of my funk and started to listen as the staff, Miriam and Ned, appeared in the doorway.

"Ned here," Stacey was saying, "will show you to your rooms upstairs, where your luggage has already been delivered. Once you've unpacked, join us back down here for further instructions."

Everyone got up at once and made their way into the hallway. There was a grand staircase in the center of the house that led up to our rooms, each one with their own bathroom. The two couples had two rooms, and the Girl Scout employees shared a room, but the four single individuals had their own rooms. Soo Jin and I had a room with two twin beds and two sets of bunkbeds. Ned and Miriam had a separate cottage out back.

The Deivers didn't have children, which made me wonder about the room with bunk beds. But I couldn't think of a way to ask without sounding nosy (an annoying spy trait, says Kelly), so I didn't. Maybe they had family who came to visit. Or maybe they rented it out on Airbnb. Or perhaps the room was for Gertrude, the lop-eared bunny. It didn't matter, because it suited us perfectly.

Once the guests were gone, I waited for the girls to pepper me with questions. They'd guessed a while back that I'd been something like a spy, but for reasons I don't completely understand, we'd never really talked about it.

"I don't think it's a good idea that someone is writing a book about you," Inez said somberly. "What if they find out how many people you killed and make you stop being our leader?"

Ava scowled. "That's not going to happen. Not on my watch."

"Hold on," I said in my defense. "I haven't killed all that many people."

Soo Jin shot me a warning look.

"I mean," I added, "I haven't killed any people." It was a lie, but I should probably avoid telling them that when I was in the CIA, I killed exactly five people. Not all at once. I'm not that good.

"Want me to torture it out of him?" Betty asked, a bit too eagerly.

"You have to put a bar of soap in your sock and hit him with it," Lauren nodded. "You don't leave marks that way."

I shook my head. "No one is doing anything of the sort. These people donated a great deal of money to support the Girl Scouts. Trust me, I'll find out what's going on with this book my own way." Which would most likely include pliers and some painfully applied Q-tips.

Lauren turned to Inez. "I'll bet she uses a car battery and cables. That's what I'd use."

Betty shook her head. "Waterboarding. Best way to find out if your brother has been stealing your Halloween candy, hands down."

Soo Jin was familiar with my girls and used to this kind of talk, so she ignored this part of the conversation. I faded back inside my own head, trying to wrap my thoughts around this book thing. Maybe Dennis was messing with me. He was a bored brat who didn't want to be here anyway. Maybe he was doing it to get back at his folks. In any event, I was going to get him alone and find out.

That was when we realized that Miriam was still standing in the doorway. The woman was so quiet and unobtrusive she might as well be invisible. Her expression was unreadable, so I had no idea what she thought of what she'd just heard.

"They're joking." I laughed artificially. "They love to joke."

Miriam just blinked.

The girls stopped talking like Spanish Inquisitors and chattered amongst themselves about what they thought would be for lunch. The unanimous hope was for chili cheese dogs and ice cream. To be honest, I was rooting for that menu myself.

Soo Jin and I talked quietly about the script. She knew the premise and story but not who the victim and killer were. Stacey and I were the only ones who knew that. We were careful not to spill any secrets aloud. The girls didn't know what was going on, and we thought it best if they didn't. Then it would be fun for them. Plus, they couldn't randomly announce spoilers to the other guests—something Betty had become very fond of in the last six months. I haven't seen a movie since because I now knew things I wish I didn't. Perhaps we should stage an intervention the next time a Marvel's Avengers movie comes out.

After a few minutes, the guests began trickling into the parlor, quietly taking up their former seats. I watched everyone, sizing them up for the part they'd play. That was when it occurred to me that this was a very odd group of numerous ages and interests.

When they got to their rooms, each person should have found a sealed folder with their personal information in it—who they were, if they were victims or the killer. I couldn't tell if any of them had read it or not. Had there even been enough time?

Once everyone was seated, Miriam seemed to come alive. Well, she blinked. She took one step into the room and said, "Lunch."

The game had begun.