Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 07 - Whiskey, Large

by Nina Wright

  “It’s embarrassing to lose Abra when she’s leashed for a change,” he confessed.

  “Don’t take it personally,” I told him.

  He removed the night goggles, and wiped his sweaty brow with a monogrammed handkerchief.

  “She saw something that revved her up so fast I had to either let go or be dragged. I’m sorry.”

  “You made the right choice.”

  Chester and Ben exchanged casual greetings. My neighbor, familiar with Ben’s running routine, wasn’t surprised to see him.

  “You out alone tonight or doing the criss-cross?” Chester asked.

  “Running solo,” Ben replied.

  “What’s the criss-cross?” I said.

  “Some nights I coordinate my run with another runner so we cross paths at specific points.”

  “Using the GPS on their smart phones,” Chester chimed in for my benefit.

  “And a runners’ app,” Ben said. “It adds motivation when we need it.”

  Sounds geeky, I thought, but said nothing. Looking past them both, I watched Jenx and MacArthur continuing to play their flashlight beams back and forth. Ben followed my gaze.

  “Are they looking for your dog?”

  “Hell no, she’s long gone. MacArthur probably sniffed something.”

  Chester nodded excitedly. “He picked up a fresh whiff on our way in. Jenx told me to go on ahead and make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m okay, just jammed up,” I muttered.

  Chester planted his feet and grabbed my hands in order to yank me the rest of the way out.

  “Better to push me back in at this point,” I said. “Assuming someone can drive me home.”

  Chester glanced around. “Where’s Helen?”

  “I, um, told her to take a nice relaxing walk, so she did. Then she got in a car.”

  “Whose car?” Chester sounded suspicious.

  Ben said, “It was an SUV, actually. With a logo on the side.”

  “You didn’t mention that,” I said.

  Chester turned to Ben. “What kind of logo?”

  “I didn’t get a good look. It was nearly dark, and I was running.”

  “Could it have been a green SUV with a bow and arrow logo on the side?” Chester’s voice grew shrill with anticipation. “And maybe some words in French?”

  “Maybe. Like I said, I didn’t get a good look.”

  My phone signaled an incoming text message. It had to be Jeb telling me he was almost home. I needed him, and I needed him now. We had a baby due any day, and I was embarrassingly immobile.

  smh

  What the–? I stared at the screen. The text was from my mother. Of course.

  “Look at this,” I griped, holding out the phone for both Chester and Ben to read. “My mother is learning to text. Can you believe it? She keeps interrupting me with complete nonsense.”

  “That’s not nonsense, Whiskey,” Chester said. “That means ‘shaking my head.’ You must have done something to annoy her.”

  “Not a darn thing,” I lied.

  “At least she didn’t text ‘kmn,’” Chester told Ben.

  “Wait for it,” I said. Sure enough, that was Mom’s next text. She had to be using some kind of messaging manual.

  “About that SUV with the logo,” I said to Chester. “Are you thinking it’s from Tir à l’Arc?”

  I was referring to Anouk’s French-named archery range.

  He nodded. “We know that Helen knows Anouk because everybody in Magnet Springs knows Napoleon’s human. We also know that Abra takes off every chance she gets, and she likes to get into a certain kind of trouble.”

  “Sexual trouble,” Ben concluded, adding, “I do my homework.”

  Chester said, “Abra’s most likely to be with Napoleon, and Helen is most likely to be with Anouk.”

  It sounded so logical when he said it.

  “Now that I think about it, Helen seemed to know the person driving the SUV,” Ben said. “She climbed right in.”

  We all turned in the direction of heavy footsteps and heavier panting. MacArthur and Jenx jogged into the narrow cloud of dim light from two smart phones and one open Town Car door.

  The Cleaner nodded at Ben, acknowledging a fellow employee from the Castle. “Out running?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “And I met Whiskey. She hired me today.”

  “Right,” MacArthur said. Facing me, he said, “Sorry we lost your bitch.”

  I waved the bad news away. “Happens all the time.”

  “Not when I’m on the case, it doesn’t,” he growled.

  That wasn’t strictly true. Abra had vanished from a dog show under MacArthur’s watch, but he was sexually distracted at the time. I let the remark pass. Like a bad penny, my hound would surely turn up.

  Jenx’s cell phone rang, and she turned away to answer it. I told MacArthur that Chester had reported new smells in the field.

  The Cleaner nodded. “Besides doggie odors and a whiff of cordite, I sniffed human piss. Fresh piss. Somebody whizzed in that field while we were tramping around in it.”

  “I didn’t notice anybody,” I said.

  “We wouldn’t expect you to,” Chester said kindly.

  Translation: Whiskey doesn’t catch much.

  “I only saw Helen,” Ben volunteered, “and she was going that way.”

  He pointed down the road in the direction I’d seen my driver walking.

  “Helen’s gone?” MacArthur sounded startled.

  “She took a break,” I said. “Then she rode away.”

  “In an SUV,” Chester said. “Probably Anouk’s. That could explain why Abra ran away. Maybe she recognized the SUV or caught a whiff of Napoleon’s human. Maybe she knew we weren’t far from their house, so she decided to pay him a visit.”

  “Doggie booty call,” I muttered. However, I liked his theory, and I wanted it to prove true.

  Just then Ben’s phone made a strange noise and he tapped the screen in response.

  “Great news, Whiskey. Mattimoe Realty’s new Twitter account already has over eight hundred followers and seventy-four retweets. On Facebook, you’ve added ninety-three friends.”

  “I don’t have ninety-three friends,” I said.

  Ben shot me a professional-grade grin. “Of course you don’t. We’re talking social media. It’s not the real world. It’s bigger.”

  Jenx, who was listening on her cell phone, cursed under her breath and automatically apologized to Chester.

  “No worries,” he said. “I knew that word before I could talk.”

  When the chief disconnected, her eyes were dull with fatigue.

  “I got two voice mail messages from Todd Mullen. He’s at the station, and he’s mad as hell.”

  “Mad?” I said. “Shouldn’t he be grieving? He just lost his wife and his home.”

  “And his dog,” MacArthur said.

  “He’s mad that I insisted he come straight to the station,” Jenx said, “and he’s double-mad I’m not there to greet him.”

  “You don’t run a hospitality center,” I remarked as her phone rang.

  “Mullen again,” Jenx said, checking the number. She took the call. “Chief Jenkins here. I’m working your case right now, Mr. Mullen. Following up a potential lead. Then I’ll meet you at the station.”

  After a beat, her face registered dismay.

  “Yessir, but that’s not public information. How’d you know…?”

  I closed my eyes. The answer was surely Twitter. I just hoped it wasn’t UberSpringer.

  Jenx listened a moment longer and clicked off. She returned the phone to its holster.

  “Asshole’s on his way over here right now.”

  “Did he find us on Twitter?” I asked, clueless as to how that might happen but newly convinced that it could.

  “Or the old-school way,” Jenx said. “By police scanner.”

  A vehicle approached from the direction Ben had come. Its headlights were on, and in the darkening dusk I di
scerned a high-profile vehicle, either an SUV or a truck.

  “If that’s Todd Mullen, he’s super-fast,” said Chester. “If it’s Anouk, she’s returning Helen.”

  The vehicle, a dark pick-up truck, roared past us without slowing. I turned my face away to avoid the gravel spray.

  “Asshole,” I muttered.

  “But not the asshole I’m expecting,” Jenx said.

  Before I glanced away, I had caught a glimpse of the driver in the glow of his dashboard. He had glasses and a beard. Wasn’t that Anouk’s description of the driver who followed her and Napoleon to Vanderzee Park?

  My phone chirped, finally, with a call from my man instead of a text from my mother. The news was disappointing. Jeb had encountered another issue at the recording studio and would be much later getting home. I must have whimpered.

  “Babe, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to get almost all the tracks laid down tonight so we’ll only need one more session. Then I’ll be done and at your service, 24/7. Are you okay?”

  I took a beat to evaluate. No pain. No blood. No amniotic fluid. Jeb didn’t need to know my driver was AWOL and so was my dog.

  “I’m fine,” I told him, “but I’ll be better when you’re home.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Is Mom still texting you?” I said.

  “Only every hour on the hour. For a while, it was every ten minutes.”

  I laughed. “That’s what you get for giving your mother-in-law a smart phone. No good deed goes unpunished.”

  Jeb expected to be home within about ninety minutes. When I disconnected, I noticed Ben was gone.

  “His muscles were tightening up,” Chester explained. “He had to run. Literally.”

  “Do you have Helen’s home number?” I said, checking my phone and discovering I didn’t.

  Chester not only gave me the number, he insisted on programming it into my phone along with the numbers of several other “helpful contacts”—people I didn’t even know.

  “Staff at the Castle,” he explained. “You could call any of them if you have an emergency, but always call me first.”

  MacArthur volunteered to drive me home. I managed to thank him without sounding school-girl thrilled. It was probably a good thing I was jammed in the door frame, or I might have humiliated myself by doing a happy dance.

  “I’ll call Helen at home,” Chester said.

  I clamped my hand over his.

  “Just to make sure she’s okay,” I said meaningfully. “I don’t require her services right now.”

  Helen didn’t respond to his call, which worried Chester. Of course I wanted her to be safe. I just didn’t want her to show up when I was about to take a free ride with the driver of my dreams. MacArthur’s tendency to vanish for months at a time and his alleged engagement to super-crude Avery raised questions about his character. Yet he was the picture of male hunkiness for this happily married enormous pregnant gal who longed for a little eye candy.

  When the Cleaner eased me back into the vehicle, I prepared to enjoy a scenic ride home until I remembered Todd Mullen was on his way to the spot where we were now. He and I hadn’t spoken since I listed his house. I owed him condolences.

  “Are you sure?” MacArthur asked. “The man is in a devilishly foul mood according to Jenx.”

  Even so it seemed the right thing to do.

  “I’ll just give him my sympathies, then you can whisk me away.”

  I had always dreamed of someone whisking me away. A pair of round headlights zoomed toward us in the dark. The vehicle, a vintage Ford T-bird, spewed gravel as it screeched to a stop less than a foot from the Town Car’s bumper. Todd Mullen appeared in our headlights wearing jeans and a yellow polo shirt.

  “What the hell are you looking for out here?” he yelled at Jenx. “Our house, or what’s left of it, is six miles that-away.”

  Instead of shouting a reply, Jenx hooked her thumbs in her holster and leisurely strolled toward him. I couldn’t hear their conversation except for a few epithets from Todd. MacArthur leaned in to check on me.

  “Do you still want to speak to him?”

  I nodded, although I was now a lot less sure.

  “I’ll fetch him for you.”

  I watched as MacArthur brokered the visit. Although Todd was in no mood for a social call, MacArthur convinced him to mosey on over to the Town Car to hear what the pregnant lady had to say. Jenx agreed she’d wait while he talked with me.

  “I’m very sorry about your loss,” I began. “If there’s any way I can help, please let me know.”

  “Help? You want to help?” Todd said, a sneer twisting his lips. “You could have helped by inspecting my home before you listed it. Then maybe it wouldn’t have blown up, and maybe my wife would still be alive.”

  “Real estate agents don’t do home inspections,” I said mildly. “When we filled out the listing agreement, I asked if there were any known issues. You and Lisa said no.”

  “How could we know the place was going to blow?” he bellowed. “She was a housewife, and I sell cars for a living. You’re the so-called real estate professional!”

  “That’s enough.” MacArthur inserted himself between me and my angry client. Ex-client.

  Chester rushed to my aid, too, shouting, “Talk nice to Whiskey! She’s good at her job.”

  “You’re terrible at your job,” Todd told me before turning away. “You’ll hear from my lawyer.”

  That made two legal threats in one day. A new maternity leave record. I had completely forgotten about Bill Noury’s legal advice in my lingerie. So much for the power of carrying a convenient reminder.

  “Do you even care that your dog died?” I shot back at Todd before recalling that we hadn’t told Chester.

  “Whose dog died?” my young neighbor asked. It was too dark to read his face, but I could hear his distress.

  “That was my wife’s dog, not mine,” Todd said. “She was the one who wanted a pet, then she hardly ever found time for him. She ended up hiring people to train and take care of him instead of doing it herself.”

  Kind of like Cassina’s approach to motherhood. Chester had sidled up to my open car door.

  “A dog died in the explosion?” he asked. “I didn’t know that.”

  In the dome light, his face looked gray with sorrow.

  “Yeah. Sad, huh?” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “The police are trying to keep it quiet until they solve the case. I shouldn’t have mentioned it to Mullen.”

  Chester patted my shoulder.

  “That’s okay, Whiskey, I won’t tell anybody. Besides, Jenx and I are going to catch the bad guy.”

  I nodded, watching my former client and the chief conclude their conversation in the glow of our headlights. Although he seemed a little calmer, Mullen insisted on doing most of the talking. Jenx listened with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, a sure sign she wished she could smack him.

  MacArthur suggested it was time to leave. Although Chester wanted to accompany Jenx in the squad car so they “could strategize,” we convinced him to ride home with us.

  The scenery was divine. I’m talking about the back of MacArthur’s head and his reflected face in the rear-view mirror. What few lights we passed cast enough of a glow to fuel my impoverished imagination. It had been a long pregnancy, and I wanted to indulge a few harmless flights of fancy. Because Chester had accompanied us, however, the drive wasn’t as psychologically satisfying as I might have wished. I did my best to ignore him as he tried out every conceivable theory about why Todd Mullen was so hostile. Blah, blah, blah. Sure, I cared about the case, but I cared more about pretending not to be a blimp for a few minutes. All too soon the Town Car pulled into my driveway.

  For the first time since I’d gotten the loan of the Lincoln I hadn’t dozed off. I don’t think I even blinked. Chester was still going on about how worrisome it was that neither Helen nor Anouk had answered his calls or texts.

  “Tweet them, why don’t
you,” I said, annoyed.

  “That’s a great idea! I’ve got almost twelve hundred followers, so I’ll get retweets, and we’ll find them for sure.”

  “You’re nine years old, and you have twelve hundred followers?” I asked.

  Chester pushed his glasses up his nose and studied me.

  “Nine-and-a-half, and I meet a lot of people through my online classes.”

  Like the professional fixer of awkward situations that he was, MacArthur removed me from the vehicle with no apparent effort. Happily, I managed to keep my grunts to a minimum. MacArthur gently took my elbow and escorted me to my own front door.

  “After I take the lad home, I’m going to drive around and see if I can catch a whiff of Abra,” he said. “Or Helen.”

  “I thought you could only smell body fluids,” I said.

  He nodded. “Think how many there are.”

  My phone chirped again. It was a message from Chester, who was sitting in the Town Car not twenty feet away.

  Check your Twitter account.

  I started to text back and realized how silly that was.

  “I don’t have a Twitter account,” I yelled.

  Chester rolled his window all the way down.

  “Mattimoe Realty has a Twitter account—the one Ben just set up. Remember?”

  Pregnancy brain strikes again.

  Chester continued, “You’re on Twitter and Facebook. Ben gave me your log-in info. I’ll text it to you.”

  “Must you?” I cast a world-weary glance at MacArthur. It was a rhetorical question, but my dreamy stand-in driver took it to heart.

  “Chester feels the need to fix problems, perhaps because his mother has never fixed any herself.”

  That made sense. It really did. Speaking of problems, I couldn’t locate my house key. My mother, unlike me, always locked our doors, so I had to ring the bell and wait for Mom to answer. MacArthur stood patiently by my side, still holding my arm in a totally platonic way. Chester’s next text arrived at the instant my flesh-and-blood mother did. I wanted to ignore them both.

  Holding out her phone, Mom cried, “Whitney, have you checked your Twitter account?”

  “I just told her to!” Chester shouted from the Town Car.