Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 06 - Whiskey and Soda

by Nina Wright

  “I can join you for lunch, Whiskey, but there’s a string attached.”

  “No leashes, Chester. You cannot bring dogs to the restaurant.”

  “I’m talking about Avery. She’ll drive me to Mother Tucker’s, but she wants a word with you.”

  Many words, I was sure. Most of which would be nasty. My ex-step and I hadn’t laid eyes on each other in almost two months. An inspiring record, but one that I would break in order to spend time with Chester.

  I remembered my earlier concern about the disposition of Leo’s X-rated home movies. Was Avery’s need to speak with me a coincidence? Or more karma?

  31

  Even before I was pregnant, I rarely imbibed while the sun was in the sky. Now, waiting at my table at Mother Tucker’s for my late lunch with Chester, I needed all my willpower to resist ordering a fortifying shot of something with my name on it. Facing Avery Mattimoe had never been easy. Going back to when she was a teen and I was her new stepmom, she had blamed me for breaking up her parents’ marriage. I hadn’t. In fact, her mom had left Leo for another man, but Avery still saw me as the villain who stole her dad.

  I did feel sad on her behalf that Leo had died without knowing he had twin grandkids on the way, so I did my level best to help by providing a home and a nanny until she could get on her feet. The catch was that Avery didn’t want to get on her feet. She wanted to sit on her ass while others took care of her and her babies.

  Her recent employment at The Castle marked the first time in her life that Avery was self-supporting. I could only hope that status wouldn’t change.

  Now, here she was, crossing toward my table in her usual graceless and aggressive way, perpetual scowl in place. Avery was a large young woman in her early twenties, almost as tall as I but a good fifty pounds heavier even than my current weight.

  Usually her thin blonde hair hung limp. Not today. A stylish geometric cut de-emphasized the fleshiness of her face, which looked smooth, probably thanks to a coat of foundation. Avery’s soft black sweater and pants had a slimming effect. Silver drop earrings and a long chain necklace caught my eye. She had artfully tossed a red and gray paisley scarf over one shoulder, and on her feet were black leather boots with silver buckles and thin heels.

  Quite a change from the usual stained sweatshirt, baggy jeans and Crocs. Cassina must be dressing her, but who was I to talk?

  As my ex-step drew close, I spotted kohl eyeliner and dark terracotta-colored eye shadow skillfully applied. For once, her piggy little orbs claimed dramatic focus in her round face. Earth-tone lipstick defined her narrow mouth. If Avery could have managed a smile, she might have verged on attractive, but that wouldn’t happen.

  She flicked her tongue at me. Not in disrespect, although that was surely what she felt. Avery stuck her tongue out at everyone. It was her singularly repulsive personal tic.

  “Where’s Chester?” I said by way of greeting.

  With Avery it’s wise to get in the first line. Otherwise, she’ll launch her attack and block every divergence.

  “There’s a stray cat in the parking lot. Naturally, he stopped to pet it.”

  Thrown off her rhythm, she took a breath and evaluated my appearance.

  “You’re fat.”

  “I’m six months pregnant.”

  “At least you finally got tits.”

  Willing myself to stay civil, I asked how her babies were.

  “Still cutting teeth. Wait ’til you go through that stage. It lasts forever. You’ll wish you were dead, or dead drunk.”

  I skipped ahead. “What do you want, Avery?”

  “Sandra Bullock.”

  For a moment I thought she meant the movie star. Then I got it.

  “The dog? You want the dog?”

  “Duh.”

  My heart soared. Maybe Avery would take the little beastie off my back. Oh wait. Not so fast. Sandra Bullock wasn’t mine to give away.

  “That’s Jeb’s department,” I said.

  “Really? Cuz Chester thinks you and Jeb are getting married.” A wicked grin twisted Avery’s face. “I knew that wouldn’t happen. No way you can keep a man, even if you’re having his baby.”

  Before I could say what I wanted to say—“Like you know how to keep a man?”—the phrase I’d penned on my palm the day before returned to haunt me.

  So I did the right thing, or at least I didn’t do the easy wrong thing, even though it would have felt wonderful.

  “What about Sandra Bullock?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  “Cassina’s crazy about how cute she looks in costume. She wants to use Sandra on the cover of her next CD. Dressed like an angel, with halo, wings, the works. The photo shoot’s this afternoon. Somebody’s gotta sign this waiver.”

  Avery produced what appeared to be a legal contract.

  “You’ll need to ask Jeb,” I said. “He’s her manager even though she’s our family dog.”

  Man, that was hard to say, but I could almost accept it. After all, I had taken the first giant step by hiring a pet psychic to get us over the bumps. Jeb would be ecstatic about Sandra’s new gig. Abra would just have to deal with it.

  Avery fixed me with a hard gaze. “So you and Jeb are sharing things now?”

  I nodded emphatically.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Really,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. My C cup-size chest.

  “Really?” Avery repeated as if sure she could catch me in a lie.

  “Hey, Whiskey. Did Avery tell you the good news?”

  Chester appeared, panting, at my elbow. He was covered from shoulders to waist in thick white cat fur.

  “Yeah, she told me about the photo shoot.”

  “Sandra Bullock’s going to be famous,” Chester said. “I mean, the canine version of Sandra Bullock.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Jeb and I are so proud.”

  “Did she tell you the other good news?”

  “There’s more?”

  “Tell her, Avery.”

  A devious smile lighted my ex-step’s face.

  “Well, I was going to surprise you later, but you might as well hear it now. I’m getting married!”

  For a second I thought I had entered one of those mind warps where nothing in the known universe makes sense. Who the hell would marry Avery? I might have even said that out loud.

  “Who do you think?” she asked coyly.

  “Really, I have no idea.”

  She and Chester exchanged knowing glances, which I found annoying.

  “MacArthur, of course.” Avery flicked her pink tongue at me. The tic did double duty. It made her look hideous, and it pissed me off. “You knew MacArthur tattooed me on one arm and the twins on the other.”

  I did know that, and I had often wondered about his choice of disfigurement. The hunky yet mysterious Scot had worked for Cassina as bodyguard, driver, and fixer of messy moral errors. Then, suddenly, he was gone. Now I wondered if Chester, like Avery, had always known he would return. To marry her?

  A blinding flash filled my field of vision. Avery was wiggling her fat left hand in my face. On the third finger a diamond sparkled. It was the size of a pea.

  “Congratulations,” I said, because I had been raised that way. Irene Houston taught her daughter to wish people well, at least in public.

  “Bigger than any stone you’ve ever had,” Avery said, sticking her tongue out again.

  I imagined myself hurling a much larger stone straight at her head, until I remembered to “do the right thing” and decided to kill her with kindness.

  “How nice for you,” I said.

  “Speaking of diamonds,” Avery said. “What happened to the one my dad gave you? You didn’t pawn it, did you? Cuz I think I might be entitled to half.”

  “You’re not. But no, I didn’t pawn it. I saved it. In memory of Leo.”

  “Good. You can give it to Leah.”

  There was an upside to Avery’s outrageous rudeness. If she had found Leo’s
secret stash of marriage porn, she would have used it by now to blackmail me. I could cross that off my worry list.

  “You’re not joining us for lunch, are you, Avery?” That was Chester’s question. He looked a little nervous for my sake that she might say yes.

  “Hell, no. I got better things to do than hang out with Whiskey. MacArthur wants me to surf the web for honeymoon locations. We both love a good nude beach.”

  I loved watching her walk away. Such a simple thing, and yet guaranteed to improve my mood. After Chester and I placed our lunch orders, I asked if he had known MacArthur was coming back.

  “Sometimes you don’t know how or when something will happen,” Chester said. “But you just know it will. I always knew MacArthur would return.”

  Our lunches arrived. We didn’t speak again until we had cleaned our plates. For the record, I did make Chester wash his hands before he ate even though there wasn’t much I could do about the cat fur all over his clothes. While he sipped a second glass of milk, I enjoyed a leisurely cup of herbal tea. Only then did we talk shop. Brady had called Chester about decrypting the flash drive, and my neighbor couldn’t wait to get started.

  “It’s probably open-source encryption,” Chester said. “The easiest kind to crack. Something more complicated might take me a couple hours.”

  “A couple hours? I expected you to say days.”

  “Please, Whiskey. I aced the course, and got advance-placement credit at M.I.T.”

  “Did your instructor know you were nine?”

  “It never came up.”

  Chester accompanied me back to the office, where he enjoyed chatting up my mom. Ever the little gentleman, he complimented her hair, her roses, and her smile.

  “Aren’t you adorable?” Mom cooed. “Just wait until you’re old enough to date. Oh my, the ladies are going to love you.”

  “The ladies already love me. I’m looking forward to attracting bad girls. It’s how a guy learns.”

  After he left for the police station, Mom said, “I never told you this, Whitney, but I always wanted a son. Of course, there’s nothing feminine about you, so I almost got my wish.”

  Odette the Good Agent was still out servicing clients. She had left Mom a message that she’d come in later to complete paperwork. She hadn’t left me a message, but, hey, I was just the boss.

  I told myself this was as it should be. Now that Mattimoe Realty had an efficient office staff, there was no need for the top gun to track everything. Truth be told, I had never tracked everything, or even much of anything. I wasn’t a natural like Odette when it came to sales, but I knew how to leverage the local market, and I was a darned good closer. Adjourning to my office, I prepared to dazzle Pauline Vreelander. I would come up with a strategy for getting her a fine price fast.

  When I heard the knock on my door, I was startled to see that almost two hours had passed. I hadn’t made a whole lot of headway. Mom stood in the hall, ready to leave for the day.

  “Have a good time tonight, Whitney. More important, make sure Jeb has a good time.”

  “He’s treating me,” I reminded her.

  She gave me a look that made me want to check over my shoulder, just in case she had hired the Relationship Police to keep me in line.

  After Mom left, I reviewed my Fresno Avenue notes one more time. Earlier in the day, I had called a few local residents whom I thought might like the house, and also a couple ambitious Realtors employed at other agencies. I wanted to start a buzz. The problem, of course, was that Christmas was a week away. Realistically, we couldn’t expect much action until after the first of the year. In that sense, Pauline Vreelander might have been smarter to take Bentwood’s cash. I suspected, however, that she just plain disliked the man and his school so much that she couldn’t accept his check.

  After I delivered the paperwork to Pauline and told her about my sales strategy, I would retrieve my hound from the doggie sex farm. Hopefully, Abra would be exhausted after making whoopee with Napoleon all day. If Anouk were as pleased as I hoped, she might have even groomed Abra. Sleepy bitch. Sexually satisfied bitch. Clean bitch. What could be better? I would schedule a pet psychic session for Abra and Sandra just as soon as Anouk could put it on her calendar. Jeb and I were going to make everything work out for our dogs as well as ourselves.

  An incoming text message from Jeb startled and confused me: Meet me @ Anouk’s ASAP

  Uh-oh. Had Abra managed to take off with Napoleon again? Surely they were too tired to run. Besides, Anouk would have called my cell if that had happened. Wouldn’t she? Unless Anouk couldn’t call because something was terribly wrong.

  32

  Enough with the crazy-making speculation. I started my car and phoned Jeb. Maddeningly, the call went straight to his voicemail.

  “I’m on my way to meet you,” I said and clicked off.

  I just hoped that all the humans I cared about were safe. Jeb’s text message jarred my nerves. Add the fact that his phone was off, and things didn’t feel right.

  What I found in the unlighted archery range parking lot caught me by surprise. The sun had set and faded, so the only illumination came from a pair of high-beam headlights aimed straight at me. They didn’t look like Jeb’s headlights or any headlights I knew, and it was impossible to discern the shape of the car or anything that lay beyond it.

  I fumbled with my phone and managed to dial Jeb’s number again.

  Voicemail.

  “I’m here,” I said tersely. “In the parking lot at Anouk’s. Where are you?”

  A door slammed. A dark form that could have been a man or a woman emerged from the driver’s side of the shadowy vehicle. If I’d been thinking, I would have simply moved my car so that my headlights exposed the other person. Instead, I did the most aggressive thing. I hit my high beams and leaned into the horn.

  The shadow jumped. A dog jumped, too. Straight into the beam of my headlights.

  It was Sandra Bullock, gargoyle angel. Dressed in a gauzy silver gown with sparkling wings and a glimmering halo, she froze like the proverbial deer. Her bug eyes shone blankly, reminding me of alien orbs. My ex-step joined the Frenchie in the blinding whiteness.

  Shielding her own eyes, Avery bellowed, “Cut the lights. You’re spooking your dog!”

  Leaning out the window, I suggested a compromise, that we both notch it down to parking-light level. Avery stooped to scoop up Sandra Bullock. The dog did a forward somersault right out of her grasp.

  “Freakin’ Frenchie,” Avery muttered, collecting the beast on her second try. “I keep forgetting they’re front-loaded.”

  After we’d both cut our engines and reduced our lights, we faced off in the lot, Avery holding Sandra.

  “Where’s Jeb?” I said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “He texted me to meet him here. I thought it was an emergency.”

  “Yeah, well, you might say that. Think about who else was here.”

  “Anouk and Napoleon … and Abra. Abra! Oh no, don’t tell me—”

  “I won’t,” Avery said. “It’s too much fun watching you guess.”

  She stuck out her tongue and told me anyhow.

  “Chester phoned me from the police station. I forget what he was doing there, but he said he wouldn’t need a ride home. Jeb was going to pick him up, and they were coming here to fetch Abra. So I came here to get Jeb’s signature on the waiver for Sandra’s photo shoot.”

  “You didn’t have that yet?” I arched an eyebrow at her.

  “I still don’t. Hey, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Not my fault all hell broke loose when Abra saw Sandra.”

  I cringed at the mental image of my Satanic sex fiend attacking Jeb’s little angel, who was dressed for the part. No doubt Abra ate her halo.

  “So Abra tried to kill her?”

  “After she tried to kill Napoleon for going gaga over Sandra. Abra rammed him so hard she rolled him right over. She attacked Sandra, but Jeb rescued her and asked m
e to hold her.”

  In Avery’s arms, Sandra snort-snuffled. I thought she sounded smugly victorious. For Avery’s sake, I hoped she’d fart.

  My ex-step said, “Abra charged Napoleon, and he took off running. They’re both gone.”

  “Affies can outrun and outlast standard poodles,” I said.

  “Yeah. Anouk’s worried Abra’s going to hurt him.”

  “She should be worried. She should be very worried.”

  By now I had sagged against Avery’s car, my strength ebbing. “Anouk, Jeb and Chester are out trying to find them?”

  “Yeah, and good luck to ’em. Anouk took her bike. Chester went with Jeb in his car.”

  At the mention of her master’s name, Sandra whined piteously, and it hit me, my latest epiphany. Avery Mattimoe was like Sandra Bullock, the French bulldog. Both were lumpy, ugly and yet inexplicably attractive to certain members of the opposite sex. Also, they both looked better when accessorized.

  “Whose car is this?” I wondered aloud. I was leaning against an extremely expensive vehicle. A Bentley.

  “Cassina’s. She keeps it for my use,” Avery said, her tongue flicking. “When MacArthur comes back, we’ll share it, and we’ll live in our own wing of The Castle. Working for Cassina is like a fairy tale.”

  More like a circle of hell. Celebrities as spoiled and addled as Cassina invite chaos, and MacArthur would likely remain a man of many secrets. I couldn’t imagine Avery ever being content for long.

  When I heard what sounded like a tiny bell, I assumed it was part of Sandra’s costume until I spotted the pinpoint of light coming toward us on the Rail Trail. A cyclist approached.

  “I know where they are, and we will need my van!”

  The French accent revealed her identity before she drew close. Anouk wasn’t upset, just slightly winded from her fast ride. I jogged alongside her up the path toward her house, which was barely visible in the night.

  “Whiskey, wait!” Avery shouted from the parking lot. “What about the waiver for Sandra Bullock? What should I do?”

  “Your job!” I yelled back.