Granny Goes Rogue Read online

  Granny Goes Rogue

  A Secret Agent Granny Mystery Book 8

  Harper Lin

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  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  GRANNY GOES ROGUE

  Copyright © 2019 by Harper Lin.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  www.harperlin.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

  A Note From Harper

  Excerpt from “Love and Murder in Savannah”

  One

  When you’re young, you never think about growing old. It’s only when you reach middle age—say, forty or fifty—that reality sets in. Wrinkles appear. Your knees begin to hurt in damp weather. You get embarrassing and unprintable medical conditions. And as you pass through middle age and begin to approach retirement, you realize that aging is irreversible and it’s your turn to go over that proverbial hill.

  Well, sort of. If you’ve spent your entire youth (and a large part of your middle years) hunting down terrorists, toppling drug lords, and causing mayhem among every group of bad guys from Beirut to Bogotá, you don’t really think about growing older. Aging is something that happens to other people. You’re too relieved to make it through another day in one piece to worry about how each individual part is working.

  Until you suddenly find yourself living with a cat in a cute little cottage in a sleepy bedroom district called Cheerville.

  Then you know you’re old, and I have to say it can be pretty darn annoying. Sure, I could still hit the bull’s-eye at fifty yards with my 9mm automatic, but I had to wear my reading glasses to see the gunsights. I could still use a variety of martial arts to lay low a man half my age and twice my size, but I’d need several nights of hot baths before my joints and muscles stop screaming at me in protest.

  It was a bit of a rip-off, if I must say. I’d been a specimen of physical perfection for nearly half a century until all those forced marches, battles, and jungle campsites began to catch up with me.

  And now I had a bad case of lower back pain just when my family was about to celebrate my grandson’s fourteenth birthday. I never used to get lower back pain. Joint pain from too many years firing guns and lifting heavy objects, sure. Occasional cricks in the neck from that time my head snapped back as my Kevlar helmet took a .303 round, oh yes indeed. But lower back pain? I didn’t know where that came from. I couldn’t recall ever being injured or straining my lower back.

  That was frightening, because this new pain might be due to simple aging rather than my hyperactive lifestyle.

  I’m Barbara Gold. Age: barely 71. Height: 5’5”. Eyes: blue. Hair: gray. Weight: none of your business. Specialties: undercover surveillance, small arms, chemical weapons, Middle Eastern and Latin American politics. Current status: retired CIA agent, widow, and grandmother.

  Addendum to current status: Fully aware of the fact that I was probably going to get the wrong gift for my grandson’s fourteenth birthday because I was hopelessly out of touch with teen culture, and the one possible gift I had found had been crushed by a dead body landing in my shopping cart. I knew the man was dead because there was a large kitchen knife driven up to the hilt in the left ear, and the point was sticking out the right ear.

  Perhaps I should back up.

  I had been minding my own business, pushing a shopping cart around SerMart, a high-tech big-box store on the edge of town that sells everything from condiments to craft supplies in bulk. I’d already seen customers leave with thirty boxes of cereal and fifty pounds of toilet paper.

  Huge shelves towered on either side of me as I walked down the jewelry section. Bracelets of every description were lined up on the shelves—from little silver friendship bracelets to hunky gold things that probably helped you work out your biceps and triceps merely by wearing them.

  The bracelets came in boxes of four, six, ten, or twelve. The idea was that if you bought them in bulk, you would get a discount.

  The shopping carts were equally oversized. I had taken the smallest-sized shopping cart available, and I had to practically do chin-ups to see over the top of the thing.

  It wasn’t helping with that back pain I mentioned, I can tell you.

  So why was I in here, you might ask? I was asking myself the same question. Curiosity, more than anything else. I may be what many people consider old, but I try to keep up with the times. That can be useful, especially in my former line of work, and that training never goes away.

  And SerMart certainly was part of the times. It had just opened to international press coverage because it was an experiment by the massive international online vendor Serengeti, which had become famous for its rapid delivery and cut-rate prices. Retail was something new for them, and I must say they still had some bugs to iron out.

  Like not having any human beings anywhere in this labyrinth except at the cash registers.

  They had talking drones instead, complete with facial and voice recognition software.

  One floated down from the lofty reaches of the warehouse and hovered in front of me. I stopped.

  “Hello,” it said in a neutral female voice with not a trace of an accent. A little screen on the front showed a cartoon smiley face. “Are you having a good shopping experience?”

  “Yes,” I replied. Actually, I wasn’t. I found this whole place depressing, but I was raised to have proper manners, even to flying robots.

  “I noticed you have moved from the charms section to the bracelet section. Are you looking for something particular I can help you with?”

  “It’s for my grandson’s birthday. He’s going to turn fourteen this week, and he’s having a bunch of his friends over. I thought it would be nice if they each got a present.”

  The cartoon smile widened. “Oh, how thoughtful! How old is your grandson going to be?”

  Wow, the AI or whatever they call it in these things was pretty good. Or maybe they had someone in Calcutta listening in. On second thought, probably not. The English didn’t have that strange lilting cadence the Indians bring to it. And the drone had missed a detail I had just mentioned.

  “He’s going to be fourteen,” I repeated, speaking slowly. His birthday falls almost in the same week as mine, but we never celebrate with one single party for reasons that should be obvious. The teenage eye-rolling would be unbearable.

  “Will there be girls coming to this party?” The monotone with which this was said made it sound odd. Couldn’t the AI do a bit of wink wink, nudge nudge?

  “Yes, boys and girls.”

  “That’s great! We have some excellent jewelry packs for teen boys and girls. For example, there’s our Sweetheart Pack, a charming—”

  “Not the Sweetheart Pack,” I interrupted the drone. “He’d be mortified.”

  “That’s all right. We have plenty of great offers. There’s the Street Kidz pack, the Young Artists Pack, the FriendZip Bracelet pack, the…”

  I tuned out as the drone droned on. This was all a big mistake.
I pushed my shopping cart around the hovering sales representative, which politely rose up to let me pass, then lowered down to my level again and followed at a respectful distance, still trying to sell me jewelry in bulk.

  A package caught my eye. It was the FriendZip Bracelet Fun Pak. Why it would be spelled that way was not immediately apparent, but I did remember overhearing my grandson, Martin, talking about them with his friends. They were a New Thing.

  New Things were good when you’re fourteen. Old Things were not so good.

  Old Things that provided New Things could be good though…

  Yes, the opinion of a sloppy adolescent matters to me more than almost anything else in my life. I defy any one of you with a grandchild to say otherwise.

  I picked up the package. It included a dozen FriendZip Bracelets. The idea, the blindingly colorful box explained in cool, hip lingo, was that you gave each of your BFFs one of the FriendZip Bracelets. It was a shiny cloth bracelet that unzipped on one side, and you could put FriendZip Tokens inside. These showed why your BFFs were your BFFs.

  (Smug aside: “BFF” stands for “Best Friend Forever.” Yes, I already knew that. No, I didn’t have to look it up. I have a culturally superior grandson to explain these things to me, thank you very much.)

  The FriendZip Bracelet Fun Pak came with a hundred (“Count ’em, a hundred!”) FriendZip Tokens. These were colorful little metal thingies in the shapes of skateboards, footballs, video game controllers, hearts, etc. I supposed they would rattle inside the FriendZip Bracelet, so you could show off how many tokens you had and thus how popular you were.

  Marketing genius.

  A drone buzzed down to me and hovered over my shoulder. It winked at me. Actually winked.

  “I see you have picked up the FriendZip Bracelet Fun Pak. What a great choice for the kid in your life! They are the latest fashion in all the middle schools and high schools.”

  The middle schools I could believe, but I couldn’t imagine a sixteen-year-old wearing one of these. And all fourteen-year-olds aspire to be sixteen-year-olds. Would these be considered beneath them? Kids at this age are extremely picky, so picky I didn’t know if in Martin’s grade they were still a New Thing. They had been a New Thing a couple of weeks ago, but New Things can turn into Old Things before you know it.

  Trust me, I know.

  “Hmmm, I’m not sure,” I murmured. “This may be passé already.”

  The smiley face was replaced with a flashing red exclamation mark. “Then all the more reason to act now! If you buy it in the next fifteen minutes, we’ll take an additional ten percent off the retail price!”

  “All right, but I get to take a selfie with you to show my grandson.”

  Was I trying too hard to be trendy? Yeah, probably. It’s amazing how much grandparents crave approval of slouching, video game-obsessed grandchildren.

  “I love selfies!” the drone said. The cartoon face was back, spinning around on the computer screen.

  “Of course you do.”

  “Let’s go to the checkout,” it chirped. It actually sounded happy as it whizzed down the aisle and did a loop the loop.

  I followed.

  It was at this point that the body with the knife through its head fell into my shopping cart.

  And right on top of my grandson’s FriendZip Bracelet Fun Pak.

  Two

  I let out a horrific scream. I’m not generally prone to screaming, but the appearance of a dead body came as a shock, and I feel that since I’ve been a civilian for several years now, I can cut loose every now and then.

  The drone buzzed back to me, the cartoon face surrounded by question marks.

  “May I help you?”

  “There’s a dead body in my shopping cart!”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Do you think I do? A dead body just fell off the shelf and into my shopping cart!”

  Then I got my head together and looked up, both to see if I could spot the murderer and check if there might be another dead body on its way down.

  The shelves stood a good twenty feet tall. The lower ones had products for the customers to grab, while the upper ones held back stock. The tops of the shelves were connected by a series of catwalks with a steel mesh floor and railings on the sides. I would have been able to see anyone on the catwalks, but there was no one, just a few drones buzzing around, grabbing boxes for special air deliveries or to bring down to other clients.

  Someone could be hiding on the top shelf, however. It was a good ten feet wide.

  “Get me someone right away,” I ordered the drone.

  “I can help you with whatever you may need,” it said pleasantly.

  “No, a human being. I need an actual human being.”

  “Is there something the matter? Are you having a bad shopping experience?”

  “Yes! I am having a bad shopping experience. Call security!”

  “Security has been alerted by radio. What is the nature of the security issue?”

  “There’s a dead man in my shopping cart, what do you think?”

  The drone buzzed over to the body.

  “Sir, I must ask you to get out of the shopping cart. Shopping carts are for SerMart products only.”

  “He’s dead, you idiot,” I snapped, still scanning the top of the shelf. If the murderer or murderers were up there, they were still hiding. There was no way to get off that shelf except by taking the catwalk, and I saw no one. I just happened to be near a break in the shelves where another aisle crisscrossed mine, so stepping a few feet from the cart I could see the catwalk on the other side of the shelf too. No one had fled in that direction either.

  “Where the heck is the murderer?” I said out loud.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” the drone replied.

  “I don’t either.”

  I heard the sound of running feet. A middle-aged couple rounded the corner.

  “What happened? We heard screaming. Argh!”

  They ran back around the aisle.

  “I presume that wasn’t security,” I said.

  “Security will be here in just one moment.”

  Keeping an eye on the catwalks, I also checked out the body. He was thin, about six feet tall, with a fringe of gray hair around a bald pate. I guessed him to be about seventy, although he appeared to have been in good health before having a knife stuck through his head. It was one of those luxury knives with a keen steel blade that professional chefs use. Just the thing to drive through someone’s head. It would take considerable strength, however.

  More details: His clothes, while casual, were expensive. He wore shoes of soft Italian leather that must have cost several hundred dollars, and name-brand slacks and a dress shirt.

  The most impressive part of his wardrobe was a heavy gold ring with a giant ruby framed with diamonds that he wore on the middle finger of his left hand. Generally, I find oversized jewelry to be tasteless, but this piece was so artistically crafted that it managed to be beautiful.

  Assuming it was made with real gems and gold—and it sure looked like it was real—it must have been worth a pretty penny.

  A simple gold wedding band was on the ring finger of the same hand.

  After another glance at the catwalks, where the drones were still busily buzzing around on their various tasks, I approached the body for another look, and then immediately rushed back to the intersection of the aisles to see if the murderer took the opportunity to make a break for it. No luck.

  “Are you lost?” the drone said. “Can I help you find anything in particular?”

  “How about security?”

  “Security will be here in just one moment.”

  “You’ve mentioned that before.”

  I went and took a closer look at the body. The knuckles on the right hand were scuffed. There was very little blood on the entry or exit wound, but I could see faint traces where blood had been cleaned incompletely off the skin on the head and neck. A few fresh
drops dripped out of the wound, staining the victim’s otherwise clean shirt. No doubt the fall had shaken the head and released some blood that remained in the body.

  I touched the flesh of his hand. It was cold but not completely cold. A body will reach the surrounding temperature, and thus feel cold to the touch since we’re used to bodies being warm, within about twenty hours. Either this man had been killed within that time frame or he had been kept in a warm place. I didn’t see any other signs of decomposition.

  I flexed the arm. It was stiff but not completely so. Rigor mortis starts around four to six hours after death. I suspected that this man had been killed, cleaned, redressed, and most likely moved here about eight hours before he made his uninvited entry into my shopping cart.

  I checked my watch. Just past eleven. So whoever killed him did it in the wee hours of that morning.

  But why move him here? He didn’t seem like the kind of person to be hanging around a big-box store at three o’clock in the morning.

  As I pondered all this, I heard a strange sound. It sounded for all the world like an old steam train. Puff puff puff puff. Puff puff puff puff.

  I looked around for tracks. Yes, really. I wouldn’t put anything past this weird place.

  The puffing got louder and began to be accompanied by a rhythmic thudding.

  A security guard came huffing and puffing around the corner, sweat pouring down his face. His brown polyester shirt had popped out of his matching pants to show a large white belly with a fringe of hair around the belly button. I looked away, only to spot the dark stains under his armpits. I looked at the corpse instead. It was more pleasing to the eye.

  “Oh my God!” the security guard moaned. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead as a doornail,” I replied. “Dead as Caesar.”