by Nina Wright
“Did she?” I said. “Aww. When did you last see Diggs?” I was confident that nobody had leaked news of the canine corpse.
“I have no idea.” Dani clearly preferred snuggling up to MacArthur over talking to me.
I tried again.
“My dog runs away a lot. Did Diggs do that? My dog digs younger men. Younger dog men, I mean. She would probably dig Diggs.”
Dani hesitated. “Diggs did run sometimes. Lisa never knew why.”
MacArthur said, “We’ve found signs of Whiskey’s dog in fields and woods all across this end of the county, and there are traces of Diggs along her trail.”
Suddenly, I moaned. Not because of the dogs or just to distract Dani. I had a truly nasty pain.
“That was not a practice contraction,” I panted.
Dani gasped. “Your water’s not going to break, is it?”
I was pretty sure that wasn’t about to happen, but what the hell did I know? I’d never done anything like this before, and I loved the idea of making Dani fear for her sofa. I screwed up my face as if in way more agony than I really felt.
“Baby’s … coming … fast,” I groaned.
“Get her off my sofa,” Dani shrieked at MacArthur.
Ah, yes, those were the nails-on-a-blackboard tones I recalled from her visit to my office.
“If I stand up, the baby might just drop right here,” I said.
We all stared at the richly woven carpets.
“Pick her up and get her out of here,” Dani screamed.
MacArthur didn’t move.
“What about Hamp and your complaints against Mattimoe Realty?” I said calmly.
“Forget that,” she said, waving her hands in frustration. “Just leave before you ruin something, and we’ll call it even.”
Although I was in the vice-grip of early-stage labor, my business sense was as keen as ever. Keeping one hand on my belly, I used the other to mime the act of writing.
“Get a piece of paper and sign a note to that effect,” I told her.
“Later. You need to leave,” she roared.
Recalling every grisly birthing scene I’d ever seen on television, I clutched my gut with both fists and wailed in faux misery. I could only hope I would never, ever feel what I was faking.
“Whatever you do, don’t push!” Dani begged.
She scrambled to the roll-top desk, yanked open a drawer, furiously scribbled something and lunged toward me, extending a pink post-it note.
MacArthur plucked the paper from her fingers and silently read it. He slipped it into his shirt pocket. Meanwhile, Dani eyed my stomach as if she expected it to erupt.
“Retract your tweets about Mattimoe Realty,” I grunted.
“I will, I will,” she said. “Right after you leave. Please leave.”
“Do it now. Then I’ll go.”
“Seriously?” She dropped her jaw with the pained incredulity of a tenth-grader.
“Seriously. And take off those ridiculous sunglasses. Your house is as dark as a tomb. Speaking of tombs, your husband is dead, yet all you talk about is your sister, who was too self-involved to make time for her own dog. What’s wrong with you?”
Dani glared at me.
“Your dog runs all over the county,” she snarled.
“Just the west end of the county,” I panted. “Don’t push me.”
Better do what the lady about to have the baby tells you,” MacArthur advised her. “I sure wouldn’t want to clean up the mess she’s going to make.”
Dani threw back her head and howled like a coyote. She whipped off her sunglasses and flung them onto the desk.
Her eyes were neither swollen from tears nor darkened by fatigue. They were clear, bright and beautiful, adorned with skillfully applied shadow, liner, and lots of mascara.
“Happy now?” she barked at me.
“I’m in the worst pain you could possibly imagine. Better tweet fast.”
27
MacArthur carried me from Dani’s painted lady Victorian to the Mercedes as if I weighed as much as Dani did, which I probably had when I was twelve. Somehow he managed to open the car door and slide me inside without breaking a sweat. The man is amazing on several levels. We said nothing until he started the car.
“That’s one worry down,” MacArthur offered. “Dani will leave you alone.”
“What’s up with those sunglasses?” I muttered. “Are they her version of a black veil?”
My suspicion was that Dani had been waiting for someone as luscious as MacArthur to come along so she could whip off the shades and be simultaneously comforted and lusted after. She sure hadn’t planned to remove the sunglasses for me.
MacArthur dodged that issue by raising another one. The obvious one.
“I trust you were faking those screams in there. If not, we’re heading straight for the hospital.”
“Only the first contraction was real, but I need a bathroom super-fast. Seriously.”
I was pretty sure I had graduated from practice contractions and was now starting the real thing. If this was first-stage labor, I might have a lot of time before anything major happened. Heedless of speed limits, MacArthur rushed me to a public restroom at a gas station in Sugar Grove. Once he helped me out of the car, I managed to get myself in and out of the bathroom. More importantly, I managed not to pee my pants, but I did lose my mucus plug. When I felt and heard the big gob of goop plop into the toilet, I was terrified until I realized it couldn’t be anything major because that would have hurt.
As MacArthur reloaded me into the Mercedes, he asked again if I wanted to drive straight to Coastal Medical Center, known to locals as CMC. I shook my head. I didn’t yet need the hospital, but I sure as hell needed my husband. According to Mom’s stalking app, his cell phone was somewhere near Wham Road. Where the hell was he?
“I promised Jenx I’d check in,” MacArthur said, activating the Mercedes’ wireless phone system.
The chief picked up at once.
“Yo. How’d it go with the scarf?”
“Very well,” the Cleaner replied. “Dani recognized it and cried like a baby.”
“Fake-cried,” I said from the backseat.
“True. She was wailing into my shoulder, but there were no tears at all.”
“Good work,” Jenx said. “Chester bagged the stuff we found that belonged to Lisa.”
“Aha,” I said. “The scented scarf wasn’t really Lisa’s?”
That would explain how MacArthur could give “official police evidence” to Dani, let alone allow her to blow her nose in it.
“The scarf was really Lisa’s,” MacArthur told me, “but I didn’t find it in the woods. She gave it to me.”
Interesting. If Lisa gave it to MacArthur before he vanished, that would have been at least seven months ago. I didn’t think even Coco Chanel lasted that long, which suggested that MacArthur had spent time with Lisa lately. Grinning at me in the rearview mirror, he touched his index finger to his lips—the universal sign for complicity.
“Sounds like we got what we expected,” the chief was saying over the phone.
“Which was what?” I said.
“Before we left Wham Road, I called Dani and told her I found something of Lisa’s in the woods where,” MacArthur cleared his throat a bit sheepishly, “some of us used to meet. She said she wanted to see it, to ease her grief.”
“I didn’t see any grief,” I said. “Her eye make-up wasn’t even smudged.”
“True,” MacArthur said.
“Dani doesn’t know what we’re investigating,” Jenx added.
“I don’t know what you’re investigating,” I said. “Yet my dog and I seem to be a major part of it. By the way, I’m now officially in labor.”
“Is she?” Jenx asked MacArthur, which really annoyed me.
“One contraction twenty-six minutes ago,” he replied. “I’m timing them.”
“I just lost my mucus plug,” I said. “Things are going to start happening.”
“You lost your what?” Jenx said.
“Mucus plug,” MacArthur said. “The medical term is operculum. After conception it seals the endocervical canal of the uterus and is expelled when labor begins.”
I did not want to know how he knew that.
“No shit,” Jenx said. “Are you taking her to the hospital?”
“She says she wants to go home.”
“I’m right here,” I reminded them. “Please talk to the pregnant lady. Better yet, go find the pregnant lady’s husband.”
“I’ll get the State Boys on that, stat,” Jenx promised. “By the way, the phone Brady retrieved from the family over on Redwing Road isn’t Helen’s like we thought. It’s Jeb’s. Brady didn’t check it ’til a few minutes ago. Up popped a photo of Whiskey and Sandra.”
That was why Mom’s stalking app had detected Jeb’s phone in the vicinity of Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am Road. It was in Brady’s pocket as he searched for evidence with Jenx and Chester.
Jenx continued, “The kid told Brady he found it along the road near the field we were at last night. That’s why we thought it was Helen’s phone.”
I frowned. “When would Jeb have been there? It’s not on the way to Grand Rapids.”
“Maybe he lost it on his way home last night,” MacArthur suggested.
“That’s not on his way home.”
The car filled with the kind of oppressive silence that signals a conversation gone sideways. Finally, Jenx coughed.
“We’re gonna find Jeb,” she said, “and the other missing cell phones. Helen’s and Ben’s.”
“I don’t care about the cell phones,” I huffed. “I just want Jeb.”
“We’ve established that,” MacArthur said.
“Whiskey, we’ll keep you posted every step of the way,” Jenx said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“I’m sure I want to stop home first and get my overnight bag.”
And possibly my mother. If, God forbid, I had to deliver Baby without Jeb, Mom was the one person I wanted by my side. She had already been through this. Plus, she had years of experience listening to me scream and cry.
Mom wasn’t at Vestige when we arrived. The Town Car was there, and so was Anouk’s green SUV, both vehicles occupying the guest parking pad. Helen and Anouk waited on the front porch with Napoleon for somebody to let them in. I gave silent thanks nobody had shot them.
Bringing along the standard poodle seemed like a bad idea for two reasons. First, he was an established target. Second, he was a studly male. Although Abra was still on the lam, Anouk knew Sandra seduced every male dog she met. The size differential between her and Napoleon would mean nothing. They were both, after all, French.
I checked my phone and found a text from Mom posted twenty minutes ago. She was out getting exercise on my bike since I “wasn’t using it anymore.” At least she wasn’t using internet slang.
I texted her back: Baby coming! Hurry home!
With MacArthur’s help, I managed to exit the Mercedes and enter my house, admitting,
if not actually welcoming, our guests. After placing me on my couch, MacArthur dashed upstairs to fetch my overnight bag from the bedroom closet. Although my sofa, unlike Dani’s, was built for comfort, I couldn’t find any. I squirmed and groaned and longed for the day when I could put my feet up and actually see them again.
Meanwhile Napoleon sat leashed at Anouk’s feet, looking well-trained and self-controlled. How long would that last if Sandra entered? In her text Mom didn’t mention securing Jeb’s fave four-legger, so I assumed the Frenchie might make an appearance at any moment.
“Helen said you wanted to see me,” Anouk began.
Thanks to pregnancy brain—or was it now early-labor brain?—I had almost forgotten my crime-solving inspiration.
“Right,” I said, shifting my bulk on the sofa.
“Try this pillow behind you,” Helen suggested, producing a small black lumbar cushion that I’d never seen before. “It works wonders for some women.”
It helped a little. Very little, and I forgot what we were talking about.
“Do you want me to assist you with something?” Anouk prompted.
Helen consulted a pocket notebook, the old-fashioned kind that requires a pen or pencil.
“I wrote down your instructions, Miss Whiskey. You were hoping Anouk could make a ‘connection between dogs, gunfire, and arson,’” she read.
“Can you?” I asked Anouk.
“You speak of the Mullens’ dog Diggs, do you not?” she replied.
I nodded.
“As you may know, I used to train and groom him,” she said. “Someone tried to kill him. Someone did kill his humans.”
I realized that Anouk, like most folks, hadn’t yet heard we’d found Diggs’ body in the ashes on Swan Lane.
“How do you know somebody tried to kill him?” I said cautiously.
“Because I was exercising him when somebody shot at us on two occasions. I had a very strong feeling that somebody was shooting at him, not me. Quite ineffectively, I might add.”
MacArthur had rejoined us. He stood at the base of the staircase holding my overnight bag.
“Did you notify Jenx when that happened?” he asked Anouk.
She pulled a face. “It was hunting season. Jenx would have said it was a hunter.”
“When it happened twice? No way,” I said.
“I knew it wasn’t a hunter,” Anouk said smugly, “but Jenx is—how do you say?—a bit of a rube.”
I stared at Anouk. Had I just been touched by the mental clarity that comes with impending agony? I was struck by something I should have noticed long before.
“From a distance you look a little like Lisa Mullen, and Napoleon looks a little like Diggs.”
Anouk sniffed, offended. “Diggs is a doodle. Napoleon is a poodle—with champion bloodlines.”
True, and if I were a cattier woman, I might have pointed out that Lisa was younger and better looking.
“Somebody shot at you when you were with Diggs. Twice. Since then somebody has shot at you when you were with Napoleon three times—on my front porch, at Vanderzee Park, and in that blasted field.”
“What’s your point?” Anouk said.
I wished I had one. If I could just find a comfortable position, maybe my brain would compute all the facts.
“Somebody might have thought she was Lisa out with Diggs when Lisa was still alive,” MacArthur offered. “Now everybody knows Lisa is dead, yet somebody is still shooting at Anouk. But it’s only when she’s out with a dog that looks, from a distance—apologies, Anouk—rather like Diggs.”
Out of the blue, Sandra sauntered into the living room, strutting her squarish stuff in a red sequined evening gown and rhinestone tiara totally inappropriate for daytime wear. Napoleon emitted an involuntary moan.
“Oh no,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes.
Anouk assumed I was despairing, as usual, in the face of a canine crisis.
“Be the human and take control,” she commanded.
“I’d love to,” I moaned, “but I’m busy having a contraction.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Helen leap to her feet as if prepared to catch my baby. Her response startled Sandra, who flung herself at Napoleon so hard that her crown flew off her head. The poodle dropped to the floor, rolled over and extended his long legs straight into the air. Sandra fitted herself between them, and he squeezed.
In my many misadventures with Abra, I’d never seen that particular doggie maneuver, but I’d always tried not to watch. The two dogs yowled ecstatically, and Anouk shouted something in French. I can’t explain how it all happened so fast, and yet it did. Something else happened, too. I felt a warm wetness spreading between my legs.
“I think my water broke,” I announced with surprising calm to nobody in particular.
Given the rising noise level in the room, I wasn’t sure anybody heard me. Suddenly, my lower back ached as if
a large man were standing on it. The worst part? I knew my pain wasn’t likely to improve for a while.
Napoleon and Sandra rolled across the floor like an obscene canine coil, grunting and panting as they wheeled past. Anouk followed, waving her hands and swearing. I could recall just enough high school French to understand what she was saying, so I translated the curse into English and shouted it. Several times.
The chaos would only get worse. That much I knew. If I couldn’t have my husband by my side holding my hand, I wanted my mother, and I wanted her now.
28
I think I actually yelled “I want my mother!”
It didn’t matter, though, because everybody was watching Anouk and the dogs. Helen was shouting, and MacArthur, like any man, was trying to fix the situation, in this case by issuing Scottish doggie commands.
In the midst of all that, my landline rang. It had the effect of a gong during a boxing match. Sandra and Napoleon sprang apart, returning to their respective corners. Anouk promptly seized her champion and led him firmly out the front door.
Sandra looked for all the world like the winner. True, she had lost her tiara early in the match, and her blingy gown had shed most of its sequins as well as one sleeve, but the tousled Frenchie radiated triumph. Holding her square head high, she wagged her tail like a stumpy banner. Those gleaming dark eyes declared, “I did him, and it was grrrreat.” She yawned and headed upstairs to her room for a restorative post-coital nap.
Helen and MacArthur shifted their attention to me. Amidst the canine chaos, they had missed the larger drama in the room.
“Did you say something, dear?” Helen asked mildly.
When her gaze dropped to my wet spot, she gasped. Shifting instantly into Cleaner mode, MacArthur whipped out his cell phone and placed a call.
“I have your doctor on speed dial,” he assured me. “Chester programmed my phone.”
Like a grasping baby, I reached my arms straight out to grab his phone. Evading me, he made the call and explained my situation.
“I have your physician assistant on the line.”
My P.A. had probably handled hundreds of calls like this one, so she knew exactly what to say.