Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

24

Grace stood in her living room, smiling down at the three shadowy, snoring lumps on the floor. The fur-covered lump sensed his mistress’s presence and looked up at her from the makeshift bed he’d made out of Harley’s leg. Harley, apparently, could banish the demons on the floor simply by lying on it, making Charlie feel totally safe. Grace knew exactly how he felt.

Calling Harley last night had been a knee-jerk reaction, a perfectly rational antidote to the devastating fear Grace had felt. She could have called any one of them; his phone number just happened to be the first one to pop into her head. And then Harley had called Roadrunner because he was the best hacker of all of them. And then he’d called Annie because ‘she’d castrate me if I didn’t and I’ve grown fond of my testicles.’ And they’d all come running without question, converging as a single unit to do battle against an unknown enemy. Circling the wagons, she thought.

‘Charlie,’ Grace whispered, patting her side in invitation. Charlie scrambled up and followed close on her heels as she crept quietly into the kitchen. She knelt down and stroked his head, then groped in the dark pantry for his bag of kibble and the special Jamaican Blue coffee she always kept on hand for Roadrunner. ‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘It’s okay, I’m not jealous.’

Charlie’s tail swished back and forth in reply.

Grace found the kibble but was unsuccessful in her blind search for the coffee, so she hit a wall switch and turned on the soft, recessed overhead lights, hoping it wouldn’t wake Harley and Roadrunner. With the gloom of early morning dispelled, she found the coffee immediately and noticed the row of empty Bordeaux bottles lined up on the counter. The throbbing of a headache she’d almost forgotten about renewed itself so she added two aspirin to her morning vitamins.

As she filled up the coffee decanter with bottled water from the fridge, the larger of the two lumps stirred and she heard Harley’s sleep-gravelly voice rasp, ‘I hope you’re making coffee.’

‘Lots of it, and extra-strong,’ Grace whispered.

Harley groaned and rolled over, pulling the blanket up over his head.

Overhead, Grace heard the wooden floor in the upstairs spare bedroom creaking. A few minutes later, Annie emerged from the stairwell, fully made up and dressed to the nines in a burnt-orange wool suit with a scandalously short skirt. Hooked on the fingers of one hand was a pair of stiletto heels of the same pumpkin shade; trailing from the other, a dramatic black chiffon wrap trimmed with marabou feathers and sparkling black spangles. If Halloween could choose its own spokesmodel, Annie Belinsky would be it.

Grace gave her an approving thumbs-up. ‘Very festive.’

They exchanged a giggle and a hug while Charlie crowded in between them to give Annie’s hand a wash. Annie knelt down and ruffled the dog’s fur. ‘Hey, Charlie. You snuck out on me in the middle of the night, you cad. You know what that does to a girl’s self-esteem?’

Charlie tongued her neck in a happy apology, then went back to the important business of eating.

‘Your dog’s a slut, you know that, Grace? Hey, those two bums still asleep?’ she asked, peering into the living room.

Grace nodded and put a finger to her lips, then cringed as Annie smiled mischievously and sang out, ‘Rise and shine you slobs!’

There was a brief pause, then Harley shouted back. ‘Annie, you are a dead woman!’

Instead of running for cover and cowering in a corner at the sound of Harley’s shout, Charlie lifted his head, barking playfully. It never ceased to amaze Grace that a dog with a pathological fear of almost everything was so perfectly comfortable with these people that even their shouts didn’t scare him.

Roadrunner popped up, startled and looking a little shell-shocked. ‘What? What?!’

‘Nightmare, Roadrunner,’ Harley rasped. ‘Go back to sleep.’

Annie bustled around Grace and flipped the kitchen wall switch on high, blasting the adjacent living room with several hundred watts of light.

Harley lurched up to sitting position, emerging from under the blanket like a whale surfacing for air. ‘You are a loathsome creature,’ he mumbled, scrubbing at his wildly tangled ponytail. His mood lifted when he noticed her outfit and he gave her a very intentional once-over. ‘What are you supposed to be? The Great Big Pumpkin?’

Annie scrunched herself up in Quasimodo style and clawed the air with her nails. ‘Ha-ha. I’m the ghost of your worst Halloween nightmare past.’

‘No, you’re much sexier than she was.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Get up, it’s already six A.M. Breakfast time. That mean anything to you, smart-ass?’

Harley cocked his head and gave Annie an adoring smile. ‘It means I take back anything bad I’ve ever said about you.’

Charlie was now bounding into the living room like an overgrown puppy to start a gleeful campaign of face-licking. Harley fell on his back and submitted to the dog’s ministrations. ‘Help! Help! I’m being attacked by a mop!’

‘You’ll hurt his feelings,’ Grace said, watching with a smile as the elated dog moved on to his next victim.

Roadrunner hugged Charlie and gave his back a vigorous scratching. ‘You want to go for a jog, buddy?’

Charlie dropped to his haunches, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

‘Huh? What do you say?’

He barked his answer and loped toward the door.

Roadrunner yawned and stood up, looking almost fresh except for the large cowlick that stuck up from the back of his head. ‘Is it okay if I take him out for a run?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

Harley looked around at them with a sour expression. ‘What’s the matter with you people? Why is everyone so goddamned perky?’

‘Maybe because we didn’t drink two bottles of wine apiece last night,’ Annie said snidely.

‘For your information, Miss Holier-Than-Thou, that is not wine, it’s Bordeaux. And at two hundred bucks a bottle, I had to finish what your uncivilized palate could not. You don’t open a bottle of ’89 Lynch-Bages, have a glass, then chuck it.’ He fumbled in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet on a chain. ‘Roadrunner, stop at Mell-O Glaze on your way back and get me a box of those apple beignets.’

Roadrunner held up his hand. ‘My treat.’

Harley’s brows shot up. ‘You’re buying? What is this, the end of the world?’

‘The end of the world comes when you stop being an asshole. See you guys in half an hour.’

Grace was unloading food from the refrigerator. ‘Harley, go upstairs and lie down in the guest room. We’ll call you for breakfast.’

Harley stood up and stretched. ‘Nah, that’s okay. Just give me a carton of orange juice and ten aspirin and I’ll be fine.’

Grace held up a pitcher of orange juice. ‘Come and get it.’

Harley strode into the kitchen, took the pitcher from her, and set it down on the counter. Then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. ‘I want you to know that I’m not afraid of cholesterol.’

Grace chuckled. ‘Good thing, because I just went grocery shopping. Ham, bacon, eggs, sausage, potatoes, cheese . . .’

‘I died and woke up in heaven.’ He swooned, making a beeline for the coffeemaker.

Annie was now at the cutting board with sleeves rolled up and knife in hand, poised over an enormous ham. ‘This reminds me of college,’ she said happily, sawing off the first slab. ‘Remember when we used to have crash-overs, then pull out whatever was left over in the fridge and cook it up in the morning?’

Grace went to work cracking eggs into a ceramic bowl. ‘God, we made some disgusting stuff, didn’t we?’

Harley grabbed three mugs from the cupboard and hovered by the coffeemaker, waiting impatiently for it to finish its cycle. ‘What deranged individual made that lo mein omelet with goat cheese? Remember that? Jesus, that was disgusting.’

‘It was Mitch,’ Grace said. ‘He was the only aspiring epicure in the bunch.’

‘Misguided epicure,’ Harley corrected her. ‘Although I’ve got to admit, he’s come a long way. Frankly, I think his skills are wasted on Diane. She’s always eating unshelled birdseed and macrobiotic tree trimmings and crap like that.’ Harley poured coffee and added a hefty dose of cream and sugar to his. ‘Speaking of the ol’ boy, he’s probably already at the office having a nervous breakdown alone. I’d better give him a call and fill him in.’

‘Invite him over for lo mein omelets,’ Grace said.

Harley went into the office to call Mitch while Annie started her baking powder biscuits and Grace set the table. When Harley emerged five minutes later, he was shaking his head.

‘What?’ Annie and Grace asked simultaneously.

‘Bad news, kids. The Monkeewrench connection to the murders blew wide open, along with all of Mitch’s gaskets. We’re all over the news.’

Grace sighed. ‘It was bound to happen.’

‘Just a matter of time,’ Annie said, slapping dough back and forth between her hands. ‘Anybody who played the game and saw the newspaper yesterday would have put two and two together, just like we did.’

Harley poured himself more coffee. ‘Yeah, I know, but Mitch isn’t taking it so well. Five clients already called him this morning to pull their accounts. Right now he’s crunching numbers and he says it’s not looking too good.’

‘Did you tell him about the e-mail?’ Annie asked.

‘Well, I was going to, I meant to, but the poor guy was already totally undone, and if I told him about it I’d have to explain we’ve been here all night, that we didn’t just pop over for an impromptu breakfast, and then he’d feel left out because nobody called him . . . you know. Figured it’d be better if we told him about it in person. Anyhow, he won’t be joining us for breakfast.’ Harley peered over Annie’s shoulder and watched as she cut out little circles of dough. ‘But on the plus side, that means more biscuits for me.’

Annie swatted him with a flour-covered hand.

A half hour later, they were all squeezed around the tiny kitchen table, finishing off an enormous spread of ham, bacon, potatoes, vegetable omelets, and Annie’s legendary baking powder biscuits.

Roadrunner groaned and pushed his clean plate away. ‘This beats trail mix any day, I can tell you that.’

Harley was aghast. ‘That’s all you can say? Better than trail mix? Jesus, Roadrunner, this is paradise.’ He gave Annie and Grace an apologetic shrug on Roadrunner’s behalf. ‘Pearls before swine, you know.’

Roadrunner looked at his watch. ‘I hate to be the party crasher, but we’re supposed to be at the cop shop giving interviews in a few hours. We should talk about the e-mail. Does anyone think it’s the real thing or do we brush it off as a prank?’

‘You tell us,’ Grace said. ‘You were up all night tracing it.’

Roadrunner shrugged. ‘I never did get past that first firewall. Whoever did it is pretty good. I’ll keep working on it.’

Harley reached for the coffee carafe and started refilling mugs. ‘Probably some twisted little cyberfreak getting his anonymous fifteen minutes. According to Mitch, the press has this thing covered from hell to breakfast, especially with the Hammond wedding. So he sees his big chance to carve out his own little column for posterity. He plays psycho, gets his rocks off, and it’s all good, clean fun to him. The next best thing to being there. Plus it gives him something for the scrapbooks, something to show the grandkids.’

Annie scowled. ‘Nice. “Hey look, kids, your granpappy was a real sick asshole, what do you think of that?” ’

‘Lots of wackos out there,’ Harley said. ‘What I want to know is why he only sent it to Grace. Why not the main Monkeewrench e-mail? Or to one of us?’

Grace said, ‘Think about it. If you were a nutcase and wanted to scare somebody, which e-mail address would you pick? Not Harley Davidson, probably not Roadrunner, and definitely not BallBuster.’

Annie looked up at the ceiling innocently.

‘No, you’d send it to me. GraceM. That sounds safe.’

‘Okay, so I’d be a bad psycho,’ Harley confessed. ‘So maybe the e-mail is from the killer, maybe it’s from some harmless, wacked-out gamer. We’ll play it safe and pretend it is from the killer. That brings up another topic.’

‘What?’ Annie asked, slapping Harley’s hand as he reached for another biscuit. ‘That’s mine, pal.’

Harley relinquished the last biscuit to the baker. ‘Well, doesn’t anyone think this whole thing is a pretty amazing coincidence? I mean, what are the odds that this would happen to the same five people twice in a lifetime?’

Roadrunner frowned and started twisting his napkin. ‘Makes me want to go out and buy a lottery ticket.’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

‘This is totally different,’ Annie said sternly. ‘Just some asshole playing the game.’

‘That’s what I figured, too,’ Harley said. ‘We all did. But after this e-mail, it got a little more personal and I got to thinking.’ He hesitated and looked at Grace. ‘What if it’s him?’

Grace was absolutely stone-faced; she’d gotten very good at that over the years, but it didn’t fool anyone at the table.

Roadrunner looked at her, saw what was inside, and shook his head vigorously. ‘No way. There’s no way he could find us, not in a million years. We all made sure of that. This is just a simple case of a homicidal maniac glomming onto a provocative concept and taking it to the extreme. He’s a game player and this is the ultimate game.’

‘I hope so, buddy,’ Harley said, and for a moment they were all so quiet that the chime of incoming e-mail from Grace’s office sounded like an explosion.

‘Oh, God.’ Grace closed her eyes.

Roadrunner got up without a word, went to the office, then came back several shades paler. ‘There’s a new e-mail,’ he said in a shaky voice. ‘I don’t know if it’s from the killer, but I think from the details he gave, it won’t be hard to figure it out.’