Whiskey Straight Up

by Nina Wright

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Reviews

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thrity-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Whiskey Straight Up

  by

  Nina Wright

  Published by Ampichellis Ebooks, an imprint of Martin Brown Publishers, LLC,

  Kokomo, Indiana.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 Nina Wright. All rights reserved.

  Brought to you by Ampichellis Ebooks, an imprint of Martin Brown Publishers, LLC

  If you enjoyed this novel, you might like Whiskey on the Rocks available in both Print and Ebook.

  This novel is entirely the product of the author’s imagination and intended to be fictional. All content, including people, names, and events, whether real or imagined, are used fictitiously. No part of this book or artwork may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, the only exception being brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published in 2010 by Ampichellis Ebooks

  An imprint of Martin Brown Publishers, LLC

  Kokomo, Indiana

  Cover art property of Ampichellis Ebooks.

  Whiskey Straight Up

  ISBN 9780976540953

  Dedication

  In loving memory of my mother, Victoria Sophia Wright. She taught me to honor everything that’s good.

  For Bonnie, Diana and Kate—the big sisters I got when I grew up.

  Acknowledgments

  To Theodora Aggeles and M.K. Buhler—brilliant writers both— Dedication

  In loving memory of my mother, Victoria Sophia Wright. She taught me to honor everything that’s good.

  For Bonnie, Diana and Kate—the big sisters I got when I grew up.

  for their insights, precision, humor and encouragement.

  To Richard Pahl and Linda Jo Bugbee for their wisdom and enthusiasm.

  To Rita Thomas, the best real estate attorney I know, and Nancy Potter, a skilled Realtor who generously offered feedback on Whiskey’s business.

  Finally, to every dog I’ve ever known: Thanks for keeping me humble.

  Reviews

  Not since Lucy Ricardo has any woman gotten into so many madcap situations. "Whiskey Straight Up" is a delight, and you'll be anxious for your next visit to Magnet Springs. Wright has delivered a great cocktail for series fans. --Julie Obermiller, Mysterical-E (Summer 2006)

  Raise your glasses to Whiskey Straight Up, Nina Wright's jolly second entry in her Whiskey Mattimoe mystery series, hot on the heels of Whiskey on the Rocks, last year's equally entertaining entry. --Mystery Scene

  Chapter One

  “Whiskey, there’s a guy from your past here to see you.”

  Tina Breen, my nasal-voiced office manager, intercepted me before I could stomp the snow off my boots.

  “From my past?” I echoed, mildly interested. “Professional or . . . romantic?”

  “Uh. . . . ” Tina slid her eyes toward the nearest cubicle.

  “Does the name Roy Vickers ring a bell?” The resonant voice came first, then the trim, tastefully dressed form of Odette Mutombo, top producer in my real-estate agency. Riding her desk chair into the foyer on cue, she smiled slyly. “He may have changed your destiny.”

  Odette, who was from Zimbabwe, had a syncopated accent and an unnerving way of inserting herself into other people’s conversations.

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  Odette and Tina exchanged glances. Never a good sign.

  “Okay. Spill it,” I began as my overloaded briefcase did just that. Tina dove to retrieve the contents. Since she’s usually not helpful, I knew for sure something was up.

  “Leo would remember him. . . .” Odette teased.

  I ran the name Roy Vickers through my usual mental filters. The one with Leo’s name on it still occupied most of my brain. Dead nine months already, my late husband was never far from my thoughts. Leo had been a wise and wonderful partner in both business and the stuff that really mattered. Despite everything that had happened to me since his sudden death, my first reaction was often to go tell Leo. Only I never could again.

  “I’m drawing a blank,” I said.

  “Think about it,” insisted Odette. “Roy Vickers. You must remember him.”

  “Maybe we should let Jenx tell her.” Tina sounded nervous.

  “And let our new police chief have all the fun?” Odette made a rude noise. “Here’s a clue, Whiskey: Roy Vickers is seventy.”

  “Then he’s not my old lover,” I said. “He’s just old.”

  “There’s a real-estate connection. Sort of. . . .” Tina said, handing me my newly alphabetized files.

  I was already bored with the game. “Was he an agent?”

  “No.”

  “A former client?”

  “Leo’s former client. Before you were married.”

  “Then he’s from Leo’s past, not mine.” I yawned and started toward my office.

  “It’s not that simple,” Tina called after me. “He’s a handyman, and he needs a job.”

  “We have a handyman. And seventy’s way too old.”

  Tina followed me down the hall. “But what can he do? He just got out of jail!”

  “Jail?” I stopped cold.

  The name Roy Vickers suddenly illuminated a dark corner of my mind. Repression is an underrated gift, one that I’m proud to cultivate. But it’s a challenge in the company of Tina and Odette, who never met a disturbing fact they wished to forget. Especially in someone else’s life.

  “He went to jail nine years ago,” Odette said, rolling her desk chair toward me. “For stabbing Leo in a rent dispute.”

  “Leo was married to Georgia then,” Tina added. “But you know what happened, don’t you?”

  Indeed I did.

  Although Leo never discussed the incident, other residents of Magnet Springs, Michigan, weren’t so reticent. When it happened, I was twenty-four and on the road with my musician husband, Jeb Halloran. My role in his entourage wasn’t musical. It was to remind his groupies that he was married. The point is that I wasn’t around at the time Leo Mattimoe was stabbed. I hardly even knew him. But the event became part of our local lore, and the story goes like this:

  Town drunk Roy Vickers, a carpenter reduced to catch-as-catch-can repair work, opened his mail to find a rent-increase notification. Although it was a bitterly cold January afternoon, Roy was too incensed and too intoxicated to don a coat before staggering the tw
o blocks to his landlord’s office. Leo Mattimoe listened to Roy’s bourbon-scented complaints. Then he explained his reasons for raising the rent. Roy wasn’t interested in logic; he called Leo a slum landlord with the heart of a robber baron. Leo pointed out that Roy was free to find another place to live. Roy blubbered that he had very little reason to live because his wife had left him.

  Then he seized Leo’s letter opener and began waving it around. Worried that Roy might try to kill himself, Leo grabbed for the blade. In his whiskey fog, Roy mistook the action for a counterattack.

  Moments later, he stumbled outside and knelt in the snow to wash away Leo’s blood. The snow turned bright pink, and his frozen-raw hands darkened to purple, but—like Lady Macbeth—Roy couldn’t stop rubbing. A passing tourist spotted the moaning, blood-spattered man without a coat and detoured to the police station.

  Our then-chief, Big Jim, strode directly up to Roy and asked what he was doing. Roy shook his head and cried, “Better go tell Georgia she’s a widow.”

  Georgia was Leo’s first wife. She left him a year later. Two years after that, Leo married me, and then I became his widow. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

  Big Jim found Leo on the floor of his office, blood pouring from his chest wound. A few more minutes, and Leo would have died.

  Now I stared at Odette and Tina. “Give me one good reason why I should hire Roy Vickers.”

  “Karma.” The response didn’t come from Odette or Tina. Noonan Starr, massage therapist, New Age guru, and my best tenant had entered the lobby. Brushing invisible snowflakes from her spiky white-blonde hair, she added, “Plus, Jenx thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Then Jenx should hire him,” I snapped.

  “But that wouldn’t close the circle,” Noonan said. I braced myself for metaphysical metaphors. “Only by restoring balance with Leo’s heirs can Roy make himself whole again.”

  “I’m not Leo’s only heir,” I said as I pictured his daughter Avery, a chronically unhappy young woman who had arrived on my doorstep in time to deliver twins and was now using my home as her nursery. Housing her and her babies and providing a nanny was less traumatic than I’d expected. Still, I wondered if Avery would ever leave. Or look for work. Or smile. And she steadfastly refused to name her babies’ father.

  Leo had another heir who could use Roy’s help: his blonde Afghan hound, Abra, a diva dog if ever there were one. She was as difficult as Leo’s daughter, only faster on her four perfectly pedicured feet. Unlike Avery, Abra had a criminal record. She used to steal purses. Like Avery, Abra had a new brood, father unknown. That was mostly my fault since I’d neglected to have her spayed. In the months following Leo’s death, I’d been distracted. First I had to recover from the injuries I sustained when Leo’s heart failed and he crashed our car. Then two people were murdered in properties I managed. To put it mildly, life got complicated.

  “You’re a good person, Whiskey,” Noonan reminded me. “You’ll think of ways to help Roy free his karmic flow.”

  “He can send me a greeting card,” I suggested. “They make them for every occasion: ‘Sorry I stabbed someone you loved. I did the time for my crime. Wish me well.’”

  Noonan’s dewy eyes darkened. “He needs a job. You can hire him.”

  “But why should I?” My question was a whine.

  “Because Leo would have wanted you to.”

  I hated to hear that because it was true. While Leo wasn’t perfect, he was generous to a fault.

  Odette re-entered the conversation. “I hear prison reformed Roy Vickers. He’s a new man.”

  “He sobered up and found a community,” confirmed Tina. “Jenx says the inmates called him Pop. They looked up to him.”

  Probably because he was tall, I thought. Although I hadn’t known Roy Vickers, I’d seen him on the streets of Magnet Springs when I was young. Back then, he must have been six foot four, a rangy, loose-limbed alcoholic who did odd jobs, mostly for people who pitied his wife. I couldn’t remember her name, but I recalled folks wondering why she stayed with him as long as she did.

  “He lost his community when they released him from prison,” Noonan pointed out. “Now he faces the challenge of his life: building positive relationships where he destroyed relationships. It’s what will heal Roy Vickers.”

  Noonan spoke with such passion that the room fell silent. Everyone was waiting for me to do the right thing.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I mumbled.

  Odette clapped her hands together three times. Tina cheered. Noonan hugged me. I realized that my twice-broken ribs no longer hurt, which meant I was healing, too. At least my bones were.

  “Your goodness will help Roy Vickers open his soul to the light,” Noonan said.

  I didn’t know about Roy Vickers’s soul, but the rest of him looked damned fine. I’m not sure what I expected, but what I encountered blew me away. My first thought when he strode into my office: The guy doesn’t look a day over 50. My second thought—and this one’s embarrassing: He’s buffer than any man I’ve slept with.

  Then again, I’d mainly slept with musicians and desk jockeys. And it had been a long time since I’d slept with anyone. Thirty-nine weeks and two days, to be exact. I’m only human. And still only thirty-three.

  Roy Vickers had sun-punished skin, military bearing, and bulging muscles. His steel-gray hair was cropped close to the scalp, but he seemed to have most of the hairline he’d started with. His electric blue eyes were clear and calm.

  “Thank you, ma’am, for seeing me without an appointment,” he said. We shook hands. His large paw was calloused but warm.

  “Please. Call me Whiskey. Everybody does.”

  He chuckled. “That was my nickname, too. Once upon a time.”

  “Oh, but I’m not a—.” I stopped myself just in time.

  “Didn’t think you were,” he said pleasantly. “Any more than Cokie Roberts is a cokehead.”

  “You know Cokie Roberts?”

  “Sure. I listen to a lot of public radio.”

  I nodded, thinking I didn’t know a thing about this guy.

  “You have an interesting voice,” he remarked.

  “Jeb Halloran called it my ‘whiskey voice’—hence the nickname. I’m no Whitney Houston, even if my birth certificate says so.”

  Roy Vickers cracked his first smile, revealing small even teeth that were probably his own. I had expected gleaming gold caps. And where were his jailhouse tattoos? The backs of his hands were veined and scarred but ink-free. Of course, I couldn’t see the rest of his flesh, only the well-toned physique pressed against his cheap wool jacket.

  “How’s Leo’s little girl?” he asked, jarring me back into the moment.

  Not remotely little, I thought, picturing my hulking stepdaughter. Even after birthing two babies, she probably tipped the scale at 200 pounds. Avery had inherited her mother’s imposing stature. I was six foot one, and Avery could almost meet my gaze. But she was better at filling doorways.

  “She has two little ones of her own now,” I said. “We wish Leo could have lived to see them.”

  I was unprepared for the ex-con’s reaction: he covered his face and wept.

  Chapter Two

  “It’s not your fault,” I told Roy Vickers. “Leo lived eight whole years after you tried to kill him.”

  I waited for the man to get a grip on himself. Finally, he raised reddened eyes to meet mine.

  “But I diminished his life, Whiskey. I robbed him of precious good health and peace of mind. A person who’s been savagely attacked is changed forever.”

  Sounded to me like Roy had already had a session with Noonan.

  “Maybe his life was richer after you stabbed him,” I said, her words somehow finding their way into my mouth. “After all, he married me. And we were happy.”

  I was sure that no one who knew Leo Mattimoe had ever considered him “diminished.” My late husband lived the way he wanted, and for six years, I was privileged to share his dreams.
Together we built an ambitious real-estate business— buying, selling, renovating, and renting properties in the tourist-destination town of Magnet Springs. Leo’s death at age 48 wasn’t part of the plan. But, as my grandmother used to say, “Most people die too soon or too late.” Leo exited early.

  “I have a confession to make,” Roy said, sinking smoothly to his knees. His septuagenarian joints cracked less than mine. “When I heard that Leo died of a ruptured aorta, I knew I had killed him.”

  “No way!”

  “I stabbed him three times in the chest, remember? What didn’t happen that night, happened years later.”

  Before I could reply, we both heard the high-pitched voice in the hallway. “Whiskey! Prince Harry knows a new trick!”

  Enter the dogs: First, a small golden blur bounded into my office and slathered my ankles with his warm wet tongue. Next came the larger creature, the bane of my existence: Abra the Afghan hound. She paused in the doorway long enough for us to admire her Sarah Jessica Parker profile. Then she tossed her gleaming head and cast a bored glance my way. Sure, she looked stately in her rhinestone-studded velvet collar. But I knew better. I knew her for her true self: a recidivist petty thief just waiting for Opportunity to place a forbidden object in her path.

  Enter Chester, a tow-headed eight-year-old who looked like a six-year-old impersonating Albert Einstein. He tripped over Abra in a botched attempt to bring her nine-week-old son to heel.