Take the Monkeys and Run (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #1) (5 page)

“What’s going on here?” he asked. “Are the girls okay?”

“The girls are fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “Do you care about my well-being, oh by the way? Or maybe what I’m up to these days? Did you know I started working on my movie review website again? Are you interested in hearing about that? Oh, of course you’re not. That’s why you left. Come for more of your things?”

Howard dropped his shoulders and threw up his arms, knowing this was a lose-lose conversation.

“Officer,” I said. “This is my husband, Howard, but he doesn’t know about the monkeys because he moved out this week.”

“Monkeys?” Howard asked, ignoring my sarcasm.

“In your trees sir,” said Officer Brad, looking relieved that Animal Control had arrived just in time to rescue him from a potential domestic disturbance.

“What?” Howard asked looking up. His eyes popped when he caught sight of our jungle visitors. “Where did they come from?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my brows. “Why are you here?”

He tore his attention from the spectacle above us. “I wanted to see the girls for a few minutes and to see if you had calmed down enough to talk about things.”

“Things?”

“Barb, come on,” he whined. “I’m trying here.”

He even whined liked George Clooney. I had a hard time being mad at him as I looked into his sumptuous, deep brown eyes. Those were the eyes I’d gotten lost in when I met him at college. Now his perfect nearly-black hair had these super sexy silver streaks running through at the temples. I could just take a big bite of him. No time for reminiscing or getting all hot and bothered, though. Time to show him I didn’t give a hoot.

“Trying? You’re trying?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Just go in and see the girls. I’ve got a house to take care of here . . . and . . . monkeys to catch.” I stomped off to talk to Animal Control whose second van had just arrived.

An hour later, animal control and the monkeys were gone. Officer Brad Pitt look-a-like, too. Sure that the monkeys were related to the strange goings-on at House of Many Bones, I gave him a full account of what I had witnessed the night before. He nodded politely, semi-interested, but was dispatched to another emergency, so I didn’t get a warm and fuzzy that the police would be looking into it anytime soon. He did leave me his card, though, in case I saw “anything else suspicious.” Turned out he had a real name—Eric LaMon. Nice name, I thought. Nice butt.

Howard was on the phone in the kitchen when I came back into the house after bidding the Fairfax County contingent farewell.

“Yeah Mom,” he was saying, “we’ll see about Thanksgiving. I love you too.” And he hung up. He had a guilty look on his face. “I called her from here so it would show on her caller ID.”

“You didn’t tell her?”

“No.” He was looking down, tapping his fingers on the counter. He couldn’t look me in the eyes.

“Thanksgiving?” I inquired. “What’s that all about?”

Howard was acting more uncomfortable than ever.

“I’ll tell you later. I’ll call you—maybe we can meet somewhere and talk things out. Calmly. I gotta go.”

He was pushing all of my buttons. “You ‘gotta go’? What do you ‘gotta do’?” I was on a roll, shoving finger quotes in the air in front of his face and everything. “It’s Saturday, for crying out loud. You certainly don’t have the yard to take care of. I guess that’s my job now, huh?” Sarcasm appeared to be my weapon of choice. He was either oblivious or immune to it by now, because he just looked at me, kissed me on the forehead, and started to leave.

Noticing a piece of paper by the phone, I picked it up. “Is this yours?” Reading what was on the note, I stopped. Scribbled in pencil was the name “Marjorie Smith” and a phone number with a local area code. Howard snatched it out of my hand.

“Who’s Marjorie?” I asked, stunned. The room started to spin a little.

“A woman at work,” he said, shoving the paper into the breast pocket of his Boston Fog.

“Why do you need her phone number?”

“She’s selling me a couch.”

“Why do you need a couch?”

“To sit on. I’ll call.” He was gone. Out the door. I looked around the empty room, seething and perplexed.

I had absolutely no idea what Howard was doing—or more frightfully WHO he was doing. But now I had a name. Marjorie Smith. Selling him a couch. Every time I even barely let myself go there—to consider that he might be having a affair—I turned into a sobbing mess. I didn’t want to cry anymore. Wimpy women cry.

Taking a moment to get my mental bearings, I thought about the girls. I wasn’t going to let them see me be weak. They deserved better. I was going to be a rock. A brick wall. A lighthouse in the storm. I was going to be like Sigourney Weaver in Alien. Lieutenant Ripley. Now, there was a strong woman to admire. Buff and dauntless. If that woman could survive man-eating aliens, I could survive a little marital mishap. I needed to go to the gym though, if I was going to look like Sigourney’s Lieutenant Ripley.

Figuring the girls were upstairs playing, or on their computers, I decided to check the mail. The mailman had arrived just as Animal Control was slamming their last van door shut. Striding out the door, I whispered a little mantra to myself. She’s selling him a couch. She’s selling him a couch. She’s selling him a couch. I was hoping that if I said it over and over again, I’d come to believe it. In my driveway, I was surprised to see Howard standing on the front lawn of House of Many Bones, talking on his cell phone. When he saw me, he flipped the phone shut and walked my way.

“What were you doing?” I asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Just checking the place out. What did you say you heard last night?”

“Did I tell you about that?”

“Didn’t you tell me about that?”

“I don’t remember . . .”

His cell rang and he looked at it, but didn’t answer. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work. We’ll talk about . . . well . . . look . . . never mind. Just . . . be careful.” He slipped into his Camry, backed out fast and sped away, just in time for my friend Peggy to pull up in her blue Honda Odyssey. My house was beginning to feel like Grand Central Station

“Ciao, baby!” she hailed, stepping onto the drive. Peggy was a pasty-skinned, red-headed, stout lady of obvious Irish lineage who had converted to Judaism before she married and then to Italian-ism after she married. For their honeymoon, she and her husband, Simon, spent an entire month in Italy. Ever since, she has talked Italian, walked Italian, cooked Italian and often forgotten that her maiden name was O’Malley, not Minnelli.

“Hey, Peggy,” I said. I was glad to see Peggy—she had a way of making people happy.

She noticed I was watching House of Many Bones. “Whatcha lookin’ for-a Signora?” she asked. “More monkeys?”

Word had already spread.

“Talked to Roz, huh?” I asked. “You should have been here—it was wild. But no, I’m not looking for more monkeys. I’m trying to figure out why Howard was just . . .” I shook my head and looked back at House of Many Bones. “Something very strange is going on here I tell you.”

“I’m so sorry about Howard.” She touched my arm and gave me that yes-Roz-told-me face. There were many people in this world who I did not want to have knowledge of my current personal dilemma, but Peggy was not one of them. I was actually glad Roz had told her, so I wouldn’t be forced to recount the gory details yet again.

“Thanks,” I said. “He stopped by. But he left again.”

“So,” she picked her words carefully, leaning against her van, “was this mutual?”

“Nope. He just told me one night, and he moved out the next day. I don’t even know where he is. He won’t tell me.” I felt another cry coming on, but choked it back. Lieutenant Ripley would have been proud.

“Mama Mia. Did he say why?” she asked.

“Hmmm, what were his exact words . . . oh yes, they’re etched in my memory forever: ‘I need space.’”

“Oh, that one,” she nodded. “Joanna Spelling’s husband told her he needed space, too. Turned out the space he needed was a condo in Leesburg for boinking their nanny. In fact,” she said, pointing a knowing finger in my direction, “I hear babysitters are the leading cause of divorce next to the secretary. Any nannies in your past?”

“Not a one. And he doesn’t have a secretary.” I didn’t mention Marjorie Smith. Saying it out loud would be like admitting the possibility that Howard was with another woman.

“My cousin’s husband, Steve, left her—he needed ‘to find himself’—so she decided she would find out who he was finding himself with. She would follow him after he left work, stuff like that. Turns out Steve had a friend, all right—a BOY friend. That was a long time ago. Steve is Stephanie now. And he only has one arm. My cousin chopped off the other one.”

Peggy never ceased to amaze me. She knew everybody on the planet, and she always had a story. Truthfully, I really didn’t feel like talking about Howard anymore. My attention kept straying to House of Many Bones and what had happened the night before. I knew I hadn’t imagined it like Maxine said. Surely there was a screaming man and surely those monkeys were involved somehow. I took off across my yard.

“Where are you going?” Peggy sounded surprised.

Stopping, I turned to her. “She’s selling him a couch!” I yelled.

“What?”

“Never mind.” I marched away again. “I’m going to House of Many Bones. I think those monkeys are connected to what happened there last night.”

“What happened there last night?”

“Roz didn’t tell you?”

Peggy’s cell phone rang. “Look! Speak of the devil.” She answered. “We were just talking about you. I’m following Barb to her Boney House. She’s babbling about monkeys and something that happened last night?” After a second, she flipped her phone closed. “She’s coming over. She said I should watch you and make sure you don’t get into any trouble.”

House of Many Bones was two stories high with long, tall, slitty windows in the front, and small windows positioned way up high in the back. Several large evergreens and two overgrown rhododendron bushes generally obscured my view of the house, with the exception of a small opening between two of the bushes, which revealed a singular basement window. The infamous lighted window from the previous night.

Roz was outside in a flash, joining me and a reluctant Peggy on the impromptu sleuthing adventure. Conveniently for us, people weren’t out and about, so no one saw us slipping through the trees and into the backyard.

“So, Barb,” Roz said, “I owe you an apology—you may not be crazy after all.”

“How’s that?”

“After I took the kids home, I found a message on my answering machine from Maria Nichols.”

“Who’s Maria Nichols?” asked Peggy.

“That’s her house back there.” Roz pointed to the back of a house some twenty yards or so from where we were standing. “She lives on Green Ash Lane—she can see this back yard from her kitchen window. You know her, right Barb?” I nodded. The Nichols’ were new to the neighborhood and their youngest girl played with Bethany.

“Well,” she continued, “she called me to see what all the commotion was over here with the police and Animal Control and this, that, and the other, and did I see the man sneaking around behind the empty house?”

“What?” My ears perked up.

“That’s what
I
said! So I called her back. She says she saw some guy dressed in black, walking around back here, being very sneaky and acting peculiarly suspicious.” She slapped her hand on her leg for emphasis. “Same time as monkey time!”

“Maybe she just saw one of the Animal Control people looking around for other monkeys or something,” Peggy said.

“I had the same thought, but Maria says this guy was wearing a long black wool coat—dressed a little too nicely for doing outdoor work. She says he parked his very sleek Town Car on her street, practically in front of her house, and went through the woods to get here.”

“So what are we looking for now?” asked Peggy.

“Anything we can find.”

We searched the ground for footprints or other signs of life. The area was so significantly shaded that grass couldn’t grow. It was basically a backyard of dirt and leaves. There was no patio to speak of—just a small cement slab at the door, wide enough for a doormat, if one were so inclined. My heart rate moved into the aerobic range. Peggy carefully scanned the area of ground nearest the concrete slab and door.

“I’m not seeing anything here,” she said.

Roz decided to look farther out into the yard where Maria Nichols had mentioned seeing a cloaked mystery man lurking about. I tried to look into the house through the glass panes of the door, fairly certain that I had heard the door open last night after the horrible man-beast howl. They were covered in dirt and grime, and since I hadn’t come equipped with my nosy neighbor cleaning kit, I used my sweatshirt sleeve. I wiped away just enough dirt to see that the panes had been covered up from the inside with cardboard.

“Roz, you finding anything over there?” I asked.

“Not a thing,” she answered. “Maria swore she saw someone walking around over here, but I don’t see one sign of it. You’d think we’d see something, but it’s just dirt over here.”