Death Takes a Partner: A Mary Jo Assassin Novel Read online

  Mary Jo, one of the most beautiful and deadly assassins in all history, loves drinking vodka and orange juice after a job well done.

  She planned her next kill perfectly. Every detail thought through.

  But Mary Jo never planned on meeting Jean, the beautiful woman two houses down the street.

  Jean also loves drinking vodka and orange juice after a job well done.

  A twisted story of love, killing, and drinking, not necessarily in that order.

  PART ONE

  The Stage is Set

  CHAPTER ONE

  MARY JO STOOD in her kitchen, staring at the bottle of Smirnoff Vodka in her hand. Actually, it only said Smirnoff on the outside. She had poured out the Smirnoff and replaced it with Absolut Crystal, one of the more expensive vodkas in the world. But she had to keep the fact that she could easily afford Absolut Crystal hidden.

  She had a pitcher of orange juice beside her on the counter, ice was a touch away in the fridge, and a highball glass sat waiting.

  That wonderful taste of fresh orange juice over ice with the slight flavor of a very good vodka could make a girl smile and she liked to smile.

  She made herself look away from the bottle of vodka like a lover turning from a night of sex with a great date.

  She was fairly certain she could have just one more. But she needed to be sure. Not like the day-after pill sure, but full condom and birth-control pills sure.

  She thought she had done everything right. But she needed to check it all again.

  The gray granite counter surface was spotless, the white cabinets wiped down completely, the dark tile floor scrubbed.

  Not a spot of blood could have survived in this modern suburban kitchen. She had even opened every cabinet door and made sure nothing had dripped down onto a hinge or in a crack. She had sanitized every tiny inch with bleach.

  Sometimes more than once just to be sure.

  She had come to love the smell of bleach over the years. It always signaled a job well done in her mind, which then led her to top-shelf vodka mixed with fresh orange juice.

  She had put nothing down any sink, but instead used a plastic bucket for the cleaning water. Then outside in the fenced back yard she had washed the bucket out completely in the gravel at the back end of the path to the yard.

  Then she had put the bucket in the ground in a new flowerbed full of roses that she had planted last week. She had punched some holes in the bottom of the bucket, put a new ground-cover plant in the bucket, and filled the bucket up with dirt.

  The bucket was covered completely.

  It was gone.

  Then she had turned on the sprinklers that watered the lawn, including the area of the path where she had poured the cleaning water.

  She was very good at this sort of thing.

  Very, very good.

  At five-one and a pixie-like body, no one would ever suspect her abilities to kill. For centuries, her looks had always given her an advantage. And she had used the advantage often.

  Now, as a modern housewife living on a suburban street in a small town in upstate New York, the idea that she might be able to kill would be ludicrous to anyone who had met her.

  A deadly misjudgment on some people’s part.

  She stared at the bottle of vodka and the pitcher of orange juice. It had been a perfect day so far.

  She could have just one more, she was sure.

  But instead she stood there, thinking back over the events so far, the drink not yet poured.

  Mary Jo had to make double and triple sure.

  Safety first in both sex and murder.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Three Hours Earlier

  JEAN FINISHED THE last project for the afternoon and sat back in her oversized (for her) office chair. At five-three and with a tiny stature, no office chair had ever fit her. She had used pillows at times to support her back and a footrest for her feet, but those pillows, at the moment, were on the hardwood oak floor in her office, near her couch.

  She had one of the best offices in all of Benton with a view of the surrounding rolling pine-covered hills and the river that cut along the side of the small city.

  She turned and just let the peaceful view relax her. It would only be a little longer before her mission here was complete. It might be another six months before she could really move on, but that didn’t matter. She had the patience that came with living for thousands of years.

  The patience of a hunter.

  And she was one of the best hunters and killers there was.

  She glanced around. She might actually miss this office. She didn’t need the job or the money, but her husband Sam didn’t know that. And besides, she found this modern job challenging and the people here in the office were friendly. They all fell totally for her role, and her story about working to let her husband stay home and write novels.

  Her husband Sam was a nice guy. Gentle and friendly and always willing to help. Not that good a writer, but decent enough to maybe have a chance of selling someday. Too bad he wasn’t going to live long enough for that to happen.

  He was just her cover to get to her real target and when she finished off her real target, she wouldn’t be able to leave any loose ends, no matter how much she liked him.

  Too bad she didn’t love him. If she had, she might have worked to find a different way. Sadly, she hadn’t fallen in love with anyone for a very long time.

  And that thought just depressed her.

  She stood to get her pillows and put them behind her back again as she started on a new project.

  The work at least kept her mind busy until she could get to her real job and kill her target.

  That would be soon.

  Very soon.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Three Hours Earlier

  MARY JO SMILED as her neighbor Sam stood on the ladder in her hall and finished fixing the light that had been shorting on and off. Mary Jo had caused the short and then asked Sam, the friendly writer from three houses down the street, to help her fix it before it burnt down her house.

  An easy excuse in the middle of the afternoon that no good neighbor could refuse.

  Sam was one of the nicest men Mary Jo had ever met. Maybe in his late thirties, balding with only thin brown hair and a grin that reminded her of a nice puppy wanting to be petted. She had only seen his wife from a distance. She was an attractive small woman and they looked to be a happy couple. Mary Jo knew that Sam’s wife worked downtown somewhere so that he could stay home and write a novel.

  How cliché as far as Mary Jo was concerned.

  But perfect for what Mary Jo needed at the moment.

  “Got it,” Sam said, pride at his own small accomplishment in his voice.

  She clicked on the light and the bulb burnt steady.

  “Wonderful,” she said, smiling as Sam climbed down and folded up the ladder.

  “That calls for a quick drink,” Mary Jo said. “I owe you. You like screwdrivers?”

  Sam beamed, the smile reaching his brown eyes. “Love them. And so does my wife. I think at times she might be able to live on them.”

  “Well, this one is on me,” Mary Jo said, watching as Sam put the ladder away and noting carefully what he touched and exactly where. She would clean off his prints later, including inside the light fixture.

  Then she led the way into the modern, bright kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, white cabinets and granite countertops. The floor was covered in a dark tile that contrasted perfectly with the cabinets. All the houses in this neighborhood had modern kitchens like this one.

  “Make mine a small one,” Sam said. “
Still got to finish that chapter.”

  “No problem,” Mary Jo said.

  She took down the bottle that said Smirnoff on the outside and two glasses.

  “Ice in the fridge,” she said.

  As Sam turned to get the ice, she drove a long ice pick through his back and directly into his heart. He was on the floor almost instantly, bleeding only slightly.

  He had a puzzled look in his brown eyes.

  “Sorry,” Mary Jo said to Sam as the light in his eyes faded. “Just needed a body and yours was handy. If you wrote mystery novels, I’m sure you would understand.”

  Sam took one last breath and died.

  Mary Jo got the ice from the fridge, put Sam’s glass in the sink to wash in a minute, filled her glass, then added vodka and orange juice. She had her first drink of the day watching Sam slowly bleed onto her kitchen tile floor.

  Drink tasted damn good.

  She loved screwdrivers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JEAN PUSHED BACK and stood, glancing at her watch.

  Almost three in the afternoon.

  She had a routine at this time of the day because her target had a routine as well.

  Her target was the Chief of Police for Benton, Robert Hanson. It seemed he had really, really made someone with a lot of money very, very angry. So this someone had hired her to take care of the chief.

  One million up front, two million on completion of the job.

  She had made it clear to the man who hired her that it would take her almost a year to kill the target. She liked working slowly and carefully.

  The guy didn’t care, just wanted it done.

  So she had met dear old Sam, they had moved to Benton and she had taken a job so he could write, and three months later they had gotten married. In her long life, she couldn’t remember how many times she had been married.

  And then widowed.

  Or even under how many names.

  The wedding with Sam had just been another of the small and completely forgettable ones, with only his family and friends, since she had told him her family was dead. That was a truth. Her original family had been dead for a couple thousand years, all killed right after they sold her as a young woman to the order of assassins.

  She headed down to the street level. The day was a nice fall day, with a slight wind from the west. She didn’t need a jacket, but in just a few weeks the leaves on the trees would change and the snow would arrive soon after.

  Fall here in this part of New York State was pretty, but she had no interest in staying through another winter, even though she knew she would have to, just to make sure no suspicion fell on her.

  Two blocks down from her office was a wonderful bakery called Ben’s. He had the best cinnamon rolls and actually a decent cup of coffee.

  Chief Hanson sat in his normal spot near the front window, talking and laughing with two of the town’s citizens.

  It seemed from what Jean had heard around town that Chief Hanson liked to be open to people coming and talking with him if he wasn’t busy on call. And he held those meetings in the main window of Ben’s Bakery.

  Jean smiled as she went in to get herself a bagel with cream cheese and some hot tea. She loved the rich, thick fresh-bread smell of the bakery, mixed only slightly with the sweet odor of fresh pastries. Ben’s was one of those old-fashioned bakeries you didn’t see too often, with a dozen wooden tables and five huge antique display cabinets with the fresh cookies, pies, cakes and breads of the day.

  She was going to miss this bakery more than anything about this small town.

  She took her bagel and tea to go and went back into the crisp fall air. Across the river was a small rise of trees that gave clear line-of-sight to the front window where the chief always sat. She had considered killing him that way, since she was an expert sniper, but decided that it didn’t leave her a clean getaway.

  So she had decided instead on a bomb, powerful, set to explode when he started his car. She could easily plant it on her break and be back in her office when the explosion occurred.

  It would be too simple, actually. She had been surprised that the chief always parked his car in the exact same spot every day, secluded from sight of windows or cameras, tucked off to the west of the police station.

  Clearly the chief didn’t realize that he had made someone very rich very angry.

  It had taken her about a month, once she had decided on the plan, to carefully round up the ingredients needed for the bomb. Only the explosives had been a problem and she had killed the man who had delivered them just to make sure there were no connections to her.

  That guy’s body would never be found. She had buried him four feet down in the woods fifty miles to the north and covered his body with a quick-acting acid. That had been three weeks ago and by now there would be nothing but a sticky mess left of that guy.

  As she turned on the sidewalk to head back to work, the chief caught her eye and smiled. She smiled back and gave him a slight wave.

  The chief was a friendly guy, of that there was no doubt.

  And he would be worth three million to her dead.

  And even though she didn’t need the money, she liked that a great deal.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MARY JO HAD used a wheelbarrow to get the plastic-wrapped body of Sam the writer out and into the back of her Jeep in her garage. That had been a struggle, but luckily she was a lot stronger than her small size would show.

  She had only done a surface job of cleaning. When she got back she would take care of everything completely.

  Once she had good old Sam in the back of the Jeep, she had covered him in what looked to be piles of full black bags of garbage. Actually, each sack was full of nothing more than foam used in stuffing pillows and stuffed animals. She had bought the foam months earlier with the excuse of stuffing some dolls for needy kids.

  But they also stuffed black garbage bags perfectly as well to look like pretend garbage headed to the landfill.

  She headed north out of town, driving right at the speed limit with the window down to let in the wonderful fresh afternoon air. Fall in New York State was always a wonderful time, even though the deep snow of the winter was right around the corner.

  She liked it here. Not enough to stay longer than she would need to stay, but still, it had turned into a nice place to live.

  She followed an old road off the main highway until she found the turnoff she was looking for.

  She had paid a man ten thousand to steal a pickup truck from a neighboring state and leave it here. The man had never seen her and she had never seen him, which kept him alive.

  As of yesterday afternoon, the dark brown Ford pickup was there, hidden behind some large brush.

  Wearing skintight gloves that left false fingerprints, she moved the truck around to a position behind her Jeep and lowered the tailgate. Then she slid Sam’s body into the back of the truck, making sure it was still tightly wrapped in the heavy plastic.

  She moved her Jeep into the place the truck had been, out of sight, and locked it. Anyone trying to get into it without her keyed password would be killed instantly by an explosion that would leave very little left to pick up.

  The drive back into town in the truck was the part that worried her the most.

  She put on a long, blonde wig and a skintight face mask that gave her wide cheeks and a pointed nose.

  She put on a coat with padding that made her look much larger and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses.

  Even with all that, if she got stopped by the police for anything, she would have to kill the cop and abandon her plan and she hated doing that now that she was so close.

  Twenty minutes later she pulled the truck into a deserted rock quarry just outside of Benton. Checking the instruments in her purse to make sure that she wasn’t being recorded in any way, she waited for a moment before climbing out.

  No one around and all clear.

  The sun in the bottom of the high-walled old rock quarry felt
much warmer. She listened for any sounds of a car coming in the gravel road to the quarry and when she heard none, she opened the back tailgate and pulled out Sam’s body, letting it flop on the ground.

  She quickly unrolled him, leaving him face-up in the sun.

  Then she folded the plastic, tucked it on the passenger floor of the truck, and quickly left.

  Twenty-five minutes later she had the truck back hidden in the brush and her Jeep pointed down the road.

  She took off her disguise and jacket she had worn and the thin gloves that left fake fingerprints and put them all on top of the plastic on the passenger side.

  Then she took a bottle of quick-acting acid from her purse and covered the pile, watching the acid melt into the fabric and plastic.

  She then lit a rag on fire and tossed it into the cab of the truck.

  Using another rag to close the door, she moved around to the back of the truck, took off the gas cap and dropped two capsules into the tank.

  Then she turned for her Jeep.

  As she buckled into her seat, she heard a solid “thump” sound as the gas tank ignited.

  As she pulled away, the truck was engulfed in flames and sadly, in short order, there would be a small forest fire going.

  And a torched stolen truck would be to blame.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JEAN FOUND IT odd that Sam wasn’t answering his cell phone. He always, with a frightening punctuality, called her at four every afternoon to see how she was doing and when she would be home.

  Since Sam had agreed to stay home to write, he had decided he was going to cook for them as well. Bless his heart, he tried and sometimes his limited menu was pretty good.

  Jean didn’t actually mind cooking. But to make him feel better, she had agreed. Still, she had convinced him that three times a week they deserved to go out to eat. He needed to get out of the house besides just going to the grocery store for food and the hardware store for things to fix up the house.