I wondered why my ex-girlfriend was texting me. "It's important, please meet me." What?
"Why?"
"I don't want to send it over the phone. Meet me at my place at 7 pm on Friday."
Okay, what the heck? Was she in trouble with the law or something? What could she possibly not want to be sent over the phone?
Well, there was only one way to find out.
"You still live at the house on Almond Way, right?"
"Yes. 1346 Almond. Knock twice, wait 15 seconds and then ring the bell, so I know it's you."
That was our old secret code. It really meant "knock three times, wait 30 seconds, ring the bell, wait 30 more seconds, and ring it again."
"7 pm, Friday, you say? Deal."
"C U then."
Now I was really curious. Why would she have to use our old code? Who was she worried about?
To be extra cautious, I hid in the shrubbery outside her house on Friday evening. At 6:59 p.m., two masked men, carrying weapons, walked up to her door. They knocked twice, waited 15 seconds, and rang the bell.
Three seconds later, the whispering sound of two silenced gunshots reached my ears. The back of the two men's heads exploded, splattering their brains across the steps and the door.
I slipped over to the side door, knocked three times, waited 30 seconds, rang the bell, waited 30 more seconds, and rang it again. My ex opened it and let me in.
"Before we proceed, wait a couple of minutes."
90 seconds later, I understood why. The cops arrived to process the crime scene outside the front door. Since the shots had been fired from across the street, no one IN the house was a suspect. Shell casings had been recovered from the driveway of 1347 Almond. The homeowners for that house were currently in Majorca, so they weren't under suspicion. The cops would have to look for the weapons used to see if they could match the casings.
30 minutes later, all the evidence had been processed and the front of the house was no longer a crime scene. The coroner had taken away the bodies.
A tall blonde woman stepped into the room. "Thanks, Amy. Is this Steve?"
"Yeah, it is," my ex replied.
The blonde woman walked over to me. "I'm Mindy." We shook hands. Her phone rang, and she stepped away from me before answering.
"Mindy speaking... good... yes, another several hours... go ahead, Tony won't be needing them anymore."
She hung up. I looked at her. "Who's Tony?"
Mindy smiled. "He WAS the competition. I'll be taking over his interests." She gave me a look that I interpreted as not to bring up the subject again. "FYI, everyone you saw outside tonight, except for the corpses, is one of my people."
That would include the cops, the coroner... and the killers, who I didn't actually see, but knew existed, because bullets don't magically appear from nowhere.
"The corpses were Tony's people?"
Mindy grinned. "You're a sharp cookie, Steve."