Excerpt of Museum of Murder by Leslie Langtry

CHAPTER ONE  

It wasn't the first time I'd seen it, but I still couldn't believe it! It was like looking in a mirror…without the, um…mirror. I was staring at a life-sized mannequin of myself. Then I reached up and poked myself in the shoulder. The other me was standing on a "road" in front of my car as it screamed in horror at the scene.  

I recognized Carlos the Armadillo as he lay on his back in front of my car. The mannequin they had for Carlos looked a little different this time and seemed a little more lifelike. I bent down and pressed my index finger against his cheek. I shot up to a standing position. What the hell? That wasn't firm plastic I'd touched! It was human skin! And the man lying in front of me wasn't a mannequin. He was real and very, very dead.  

ONE WEEK EARLIER…  

"What do you mean they're making a museum about me?" I asked after a moment of stunned silence.  

It was such shocking news that I nearly dropped my lava-covered rag. The girls exchanged knowing glances usually reserved for my impending death from old age at thirty-two. We were just cleaning up after a rather unfortunate Girl Scout meeting. Kelly, my co-leader, had gotten the flu this morning, and she was in charge of the snacks. This was a serious offence in a troop that held snacks as sacrosanct.  

But still, Kelly wasn't bringing anything, which meant I scrounged around in my body-sized freezer until I found five dozen frost-covered pizza rolls. Fortunately, I had a gallon of ranch dressing, which went a long way in hiding the taste of freezer burn.  

The girls were working on their Thinking Day project, where each troop presents a booth representing a foreign country at a one-day event at the local expo center. The troop had picked Iceland and had built a replica Eyjafjallajökull volcano, and they'd decided it had to be a working volcano.  

Unfortunately, we ended up spending the better part of an hour cleaning "lava" off the ceiling. And then there was the idea that we should serve hakarl, or rotten shark. Lauren, our junior zookeeper, announced that she was watching the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago to negotiate for the corpse of any shark that might kick the bucket. I was a bit concerned that Betty would send an assassin for the job, but Lauren insisted that most shark deaths were suicides, which for some odd reason made everyone feel a little better.  

The girls had insisted we make hakarl authentically by burying the big fish's corpse in the ground for six months, unearthing it when the toxins (because of course, there are toxins) decayed. We'd cut it up and serve it as diced cubes with a little toothpick bearing the Icelandic flag. The girls showed me a mock-up made of tofu. I had to admit, it was festive. When the girls realized we only had a month until Thinking Day, they said they were going to order harkarl in bulk online. I ran to my purse and pulled out my credit cards, stuffing them into my back pocket. They weren't going to use my credit card this time!  

And now we were talking about a museum about me.  

Betty rolled her eyes. "Oh sure, it's always about you."  

I was confused. Moments earlier the girls had told me there was going to be a museum about me. "But you said…"  

Mayor Ava held her hand up to silence me. "It's not about you, exactly. But it also is because you are always murder-adjacent."  

"Explain," I insisted.  

A museum about me would be bad. I'd been a spy for the CIA for seven years, and most of my cases were still classified. If Langley heard about this, I'd probably be on a hit list tomorrow. I've been on the hit list before. I didn't like it. 

 Lauren spoke up. "It's called the Museum of Murder. It's because we have so many murders here."  

"More than any other town pretty much anywhere." Betty pulled a stiletto out of her pocket and began repeatedly opening and closing it quickly, which was annoying. "In the last eight years, which is how long you've been here, there have been sixty murders. When you compare it to Iowa statistics, you get thirteen percent. Which is a lot. Which is also awesome."  

I'd been here eight years? I counted on my fingers. Huh. She was right.  

"You're involved in all of those murders," two of the Kaitlyns said in unison.  

"Literally," the other two said.  

I had four Kaitlyns in my Girl Scout troop. They looked exactly alike, had M as their last initial and, as near as I could figure, operated on an elaborate hive mind system.  

My name is Merry Wrath Ferguson, and I was once a CIA operative, until the vice president "accidentally" outed me to get back at my senator dad. After accepting a huge settlement and the sad fact that I would never again work in my chosen profession, I moved back to my small hometown of Who's There, Iowa, where my best friend, Kelly, decided we should start a Girl Scout troop. The rest is, apparently, a history that would soon be on display.  

Sixty murders? That was kind of hard to believe. Then again, bodies tended to fall around me like mice on Chechnya's Mice Rain From Sky Making Harvest Lucky Day. Of course, the mice don't literally fall from clouds. A guy named Oskar drops them from a biplane. And no, the mice don't survive the fall, which is probably for the best since Chechens are a superstitious people and would take it as a bad omen if the mice hit the ground running.  

"Who's building this museum?" I asked after a moment.  

Ava shrugged. "No idea. The donor wishes to remain anonymous."  

"We'd found out the money was transferred through forty-seven shell corporations, so we can't trace them yet," Betty admitted. "Which is pretty cool because forty-seven is my lucky number. Because of samurai warriors and stuff."  

"The dude Betty likes, Conrad, is into samurais," Inez said.  

Betty's eyes flashed. "I don't like boys."  

Inez wasn't intimidated. "Whatever."  

According to the girls, Betty had become obsessed with a boy named Conrad, who I'd just met over the holidays. Recently it made her glitchy, which made me nervous. I reached over and calmly took the stiletto from her, just to be safe.  

"Why"—I shoved the knife into my sweater pocket—"is the city supporting some mystery backer who's so dodgy he has to filter the funds through forty-seven shell companies?"  

Lauren shrugged. "He gave money to Ava's campaign."  

Ava threw her arms up. "I know I'm supposed to say that's bad. But why? They're giving me money!"  

Hmmm…we might need to see if there's a way we could stage an intervention without the other city officials finding out. Especially the city council. Those people were always trying to figure out how to remove Ava from office…mostly because they were all afraid of Betty.  

"What's this museum called?" I wondered.  

The Merry Wrath Museum had a nice ring to it, even if I didn't want a museum.  

"The Who's There Museum of Murder!" Two of the Kaitlyns grinned.  

"That's totally awesome, right?" the other two finished.  

Ava held out her hand. "Come on, then. We have to go to city hall."  

I looked up at a bright-red stain on the ceiling, which would never, ever come out. "What? Now? Why?"  

"Because there's going to be a press conference in fifteen minutes, and the donor who's launching the museum wants to see you there or they won't give us the money." The mayor motioned me towards the door, and after grabbing my coat and hat, we made our way to my silver minivan.  

Betty, Inez, and Lauren went with me. The others went with Ava in a very expensive Rolls Royce that had the mayor's seal on it.  

"You ordered the hakarl, right?" I heard Inez whisper to Betty in the seats behind me.  

"Of course," the girl said. "I even put the card back in her pocket after. She'll never know.”