Free Marshmallow S'More Murder (Merry Wrath Mysteries Book 3) by Leslie Langtry

the load. To commiserate with. But I didn't, and hoping wouldn't make it a reality. So I had to go it alone.
    Where would I even start? I'd asked Dad, and he told me to leave it alone. Ugh! Why did everything happen at once? I wasn't sure I could handle this trip, Riley's kidnapping, and my parents' presumed marital crisis all at once. I was in way over my head here. I'd bet Mr. Fancy Pants never had problems like these.
    I finished changing, but before I left the guest room, I transferred the black pouch to my purse. Checking it out here and now wasn't a good idea. Paranoid as it may have seemed, if it had a tracking device, I wasn't going to lead anyone to my parents. They seemed to have enough problems.
    I joined the sugar assault already in process. The girls were bouncing off the walls, their lips colored by red and blue frosting. Maria was laughing as she watched them. Evelyn Trout was sullenly banging away on her cell phone. Sadly, Ambassador Nakano's charms didn't reach to the Czrgy household.
    "Okay! Everyone thank the Senator for our great trip today!" I shouted.
    The girls crushed my dad in a group hug, and he laughed. He didn't even seem to mind the frosting on his suit.
    "You girls have fun!" Dad waved them off as Maria and I herded our troop outside and into the van. We were back at the hotel in ten minutes, and I sent the girls to clean themselves up. Evelyn flicked on the TV in the main room, giving me hopeful looks.
    "Thank you, Evelyn," I said. "You can take the afternoon off if you want."
    The woman was out the door before I finished my sentence. I had no idea where she was going, and I didn't care. I took my purse to the kitchenette counter.
    "So what did you find that you didn't want Trout Face to see?" Maria asked with a wicked grin as she joined me.
    I laughed. "That's the perfect nickname for her. Let's give her the code name TF. She's the mother of one of the Kaitlins."
    Maria looked around cautiously. The girls hadn't come out of the bathroom yet. "Which one?"
    I shrugged. "No idea." Whichever girl it was, she wasn't admitting it, and I kind of got that.
    Gingerly pulling the pouch out of my bag, I set it on the table for Maria and me to examine. It was just a small, black, leather pouch with a zippered top. About the size of the bags used to make a bank deposit. It had felt as if there was something like a cell phone and some papers inside.
    Touching it any more was out of the question until we knew a little more about it. Reaching into a drawer on the counter, I pulled out two forks and, using them as tongs, gently turned the bag over.
    Maria studied the zipper. "It looks okay. I don't see any triggers."
    I nodded and gently unzipped the bag. We waited for a second or two. You never knew what could happen when you opened a strange package. I've had everything from smoke in Cairo to screeching in Budapest and, in one unfortunate situation, snakes in Belfast. Bitey snakes. And they said St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Yeah, right.
    "We're clear." Maria nodded.
    I dumped the contents of the bag on the table. A small, extraordinarily thin smartphone slid out along with a sheaf of folded papers.
    "What's that?" Emily appeared next to me, her hands on the countertop.
    "Nothing. It's nothing. Go watch TV for a little bit, please," I said quickly.
    The girl shrugged and ran to the couch where she was joined by half of the girls. The TV mumbled in the distance as Maria and I turned our attention back to the counter.
    "This is the newest Taki phone!" Maria whistled. "It's not supposed to come out for another year!"
    She picked it up and ran her thumbs over the screen. I watched as she pressed a button on the top, and the lock screen came up.
    "Not until next year?" I asked as I unfolded the paper bundle.
    "Yup." She nodded, clearly enthralled with the phone. "I'm on a waiting list."
    "Can you unlock it?" I asked.
    "I don't know." She stared at the gadget. "I'll give it a shot."
    I turned my