Whiskey Straight Up

by Nina Wright

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You’re looking at the heavy part of the delivery—the ice,” Brady said. “My guess is that somebody hauled it in using contractor-grade trash bags.”

  “Any sign of the bags?” I asked.

  “Not yet, but I haven’t searched the premises. The MSP will want to do that.”

  No sooner had he spoken than Abra and Roscoe set up such a ruckus that we knew we had visitors. Presumably official visitors.

  Brady took one more look at the scene in the whirlpool bath.

  “Do you think that’s Gil’s hat?” he asked.

  “It could be one of them. Gil always wore black hats.”

  “Black hats are for bad guys, Whiskey.”

  “I’ve often thought so. Does that explain the dead rat?”

  “What do you mean?” Brady said.

  “I mean, was the person who pulled this stunt trying to say that Gil was a rat? Or that somebody else thought Gil was a rat--and that’s why Gil’s dead?”

  Before Officer Swancott could reply, Jenx shouted from downstairs, “Anybody home? Brady, where the hell are you?”

  “Up here!” he called, but she was already pounding up the steps in her steel-toed boots.

  “Whiskey!” she panted when she saw me. “You and Abra need to get out of here before the State Boys come in. They don’t look as kindly on temporary deputies as Brady and I do.”

  Too late. From downstairs we heard more frantic barking followed by the identifying cry of the Michigan State Police.

  “I’ll do the talking,” said Jenx. She got no argument from me. When Trooper L. Hartmann found his way to the master bath, Jenx explained that I was the real-estate broker handling Iberville. She said I had noticed the open delivery door and asked for police assistance.

  Trooper Hartmann nodded without interest. At least I couldn’t discern any interest, possibly because he had not yet removed his sunglasses.

  “What’s with that crazy Afghan hound downstairs?” he demanded. “Why is she here?”

  Jenx, Brady and I chewed over that one for a moment. Finally Brady said, “She’s a civilian canine consultant.”

  “A what?” Trooper Hartmann removed his shades to squint at Brady.

  “Do you remember the Warren Matheney case last fall?” Officer Swancott was talking fast. “The triple homicide that got Magnet Springs mentioned on every cable news network?”

  Comprehension crossed the trooper’s flat face. “Yeah, sure. You’re saying she’s the dog that helped solve that case?”

  I wouldn’t have gone so far as to say that she helped solve the case although Abra did contribute to it. She contributed complications.

  “So what’s her angle on this case?” Trooper Hartmann asked. I couldn’t wait to hear Brady’s response.

  “She’s . . . uh . . . she’s a crime scene expert.”

  “What?” Jenx, Hartmann and I cried.

  “Yeah,” said Brady. “I thought she might help us out here.”

  “You mean she’s like . . . canine CSI?” said Hartmann. “How does she work?”

  “Believe it or not,” Brady began, “she works by . . . tasting dead animals at the scene.”

  “That’s disgusting!” Hartmann roared. “Not to mention, cops aren’t supposed to consume evidence!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the down side. On the plus side, she works cheap.”

  Brady quickly brought Hartmann up to speed on the evidence that Abra had not eaten.

  The trooper studied the scene of each of Gil’s cut-outs, lingering in the master bath.

  He said, “They haven’t recovered Gruen’s body yet, right? Is there any way of knowing whether this is his hat?”

  “We were discussing that before you arrived,” I said, forgetting that I was supposed to keep mum.

  “And what did you conclude?”

  “That Gil only wore black hats,” I said. “Black Stetsons.”

  “Well, this one is top of the line.” Hartmann leaned low over the whirlpool ice bath. “My dad has owned a tack shop for thirty years. I help him out on weekends. This here’s what Stetson calls their Black Beauty—a sleek genuine fur job with a suede finish. See the Spartan profile?”

  Jenx, Brady, and I nodded even though we had no idea what he meant.

  “The band is real sweet with that three-piece silver buckle,” Hartmann continued. “And each piece of the buckle has a red stone. Do you remember seeing this hat on Gil Gruen?”

  None of us could say for sure.

  “What does a hat like that cost?” asked Jenx.

  “That’s a special order,” the trooper said, straightening. “It runs around five hundred bucks.”

  Jenx whistled. “If that’s not Gil’s hat, then somebody spent a lot of money trying to convince us it was.”

  “If that is Gil’s hat, how did somebody get it?” I wondered aloud. “And why did they bring it here?”

  Everyone stared at me.

  “A good question, considering you’re the real-estate broker,” Trooper Hartmann said. “Who else has access to this house?”

  I explained that the owners had a cleaning service under contract to check the property once a month, but the first visit wasn’t scheduled until the end of January.

  “I’ll need the name of that cleaning service,” the trooper said.

  “So will I,” Jenx chimed in.

  I promised to get it for them and added that Mattimoe Realty had placed an electronic lock box on the front door. The owners specified that either Odette Mutombo or I must be present whenever the house was shown.

  Hartmann said, “So what you’re telling me is that no other realtor can show this house?”

  “Oh, another realtor can show it,” I said, “but only if someone from my firm is present.”

  The trooper frowned. “The house has no security system. What’s up with that?”

  “The owners are technophobes. They had a couple bad experiences with their electronic alarm and ordered it removed. Pasco Point residents pay for an hourly Security Patrol, so the owners of Iberville rely on that.”

  The three officers shook their heads, presumably at the folly of trusting low-wage civilians to protect a castle. Hartmann said to Brady, “The back door wasn’t forced. Did you find any sign of a break-in?”

  “No,” Brady replied. “If the house was locked, whoever entered used a key.”

  “If the house was locked,” Jenx echoed.

  Again everyone looked at me.

  “When was the last time you showed it?” Hartmann asked.

  “I’ll check with Ms. Mutombo,” I said.

  It was a new listing. The only showing I knew of so far was the one that Odette had planned for the previous afternoon. She was scheduled to show Iberville to Mrs. Gribble the Third after our helicopter ride. When Odette visited me at the hospital last night, I’d forgotten to ask how it went. Or if it went.

  Trooper Hartmann scratched his chin. “I was called to Bear Claw before I came here. Could this incident be connected to the missing kid?”

  “I don’t know how,” said Jenx.

  “Come on. In sleepy Magnet Springs the son of a celebrity disappears, and the mayor is murdered—and then this happens? All in the same week?”

  Before she could comment, Jenx got a call from the dispatcher. An old tree in the center of town had suddenly split in two from ice overload and in the process pulled down a power line. One more complication from the storm.

  “I gotta keep folks away from the hot line till the electric company shows up,” Jenx told Hartmann. “Can you and Officer Swancott secure the house?”

  “I’ll handle it,” said the trooper. “You take the dogs—and the realtor—and get out of here.”

  Jenx gave Officers Brady and Roscoe a lift back to their patrol car, which was parked at the entrance to Pasco Point. Then Abra, Jenx and I continued on to the police station so that I could write down what I knew about the fake C. Richards, RN.

  On th
e ride back to town I used the last bar of my cell phone battery to reach Odette.

  “Did you show Iberville yesterday?” I began.

  “I would have told you about it last night,” she said, “but you were more interested in other matters. Such as Nash Grant. . . .”

  “Last night I was in the hospital.”

  “From which I hear you’ve escaped. Did you run straight to Avery’s ex?”

  “He came to me. Listen, Odette, I’ve got one bar left on my phone, and I need to

  know—”

  “I’ll save you the bar. Mrs. Gribble did not love Iberville. She said it reminded her of Iowa.”

  “Iowa?” I repeated.

  “My sentiments exactly. Isn’t Iowa a land-locked state? It can’t possibly have that kind of scenery!”

  “I thought Mrs. Gribble was from Chicago,” I said, picturing white Jaguars from two states that began with the letter I.

  “Her husband is from Chicago. Mrs. Gribble grew up in Iowa and still owns a home there.”

  “If her Iowa home reminds her of Iberville, then it ain’t no ‘Little House on the Prairie,’” I muttered to myself.

  “That was in Minnesota,” Jenx contributed from the driver’s seat.

  “What?”

  “Michael Landon’s show. It was Walnut Grove, Minnesota—not Iowa.”

  I rolled my eyes, wishing that people would refrain from commenting on one-half of somebody else’s overheard phone conversation.

  Odette exclaimed, “No, not Walnut Grove—Cedar Rapids. I never heard of it.”

  Since leaving Zimbabwe, Odette and her husband had lived in London, Paris, Boston, and Magnet Springs. They were not inspired to learn more about the Midwest.

  “Does Mrs. Gribble live in Chicago or not?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. She and her husband have a condo downtown.”

  “Is she a resident of Illinois or Iowa?”

  “What’s the difference?” sighed Odette. “As long as she buys a fabulously expensive home from us?”

  Just then Abra poked her long nose over my shoulder and nuzzled my ear. Before I remembered the rat-eating incident, she burped loudly.

  “Jeez!” cried Jenx. “What do you feed that dog?”

  The police chief rolled down all four windows.

  We drove in the freezing breeze to the site of the split tree that had pulled down the power line. Fortunately, the electric company crew arrived at the same time we did. Jenx decided we had sufficiently refreshed the air in the car, so she rolled up the windows and headed for the station.

  I used my remaining road time and battery power to get Tina Breen on the line. My office manager isn’t good at tasks that require sustained attention, but she does have an excellent memory for trivia. I needed the name of the cleaning service hired to maintain Iberville.

  “Extreme Clean,” she replied promptly. “Do you want their number?”

  She provided it but couldn’t come up with a contact person.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “I was afraid this would happen!”

  “What?”

  “The owners of Iberville were supposed to call me back with that information, but they never did. . . . And now they’re on a cruise somewhere.”

  “No problem. Just call Extreme Clean yourself and ask who runs the show.”

  “Oh, please don’t make me call them!”

  “Tina, what’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry, Whiskey, but the last time I called that company, the person who answered got me very upset!”

  “She was rude?”

  “It was a he, not a she. And he wasn’t rude, exactly. More like . . . lewd. Yes, that’s the word. He was extremely lewd.”

  Whenever she grew upset, Tina’s voice turned higher-pitched and more nasal than usual. By now it was making my teeth ache.

  “Lewd? How?” This interested me on several levels.

  “Oh, you know. He . . . said things. . . . ”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “I can’t repeat them! I’m a good woman with toddlers at home!”

  “And how did you get those toddlers, Tina? You can say what he said.”

  “It was about what makes a woman . . . a woman. You know, her woman parts. . . .”

  “Her woman parts?”

  “Oh, Whiskey, don’t make me say it!”

  “Yeesh,” I moaned. My battery quit the call before I could.

  Naturally, Jenx had been listening to my half of the conversation.

  “Tina Breen was talking about woman parts? I didn’t think she knew the words.”

  “She may not,” I said.

  We had just pulled into the police chief’s parking space at the station. I expected her to turn off the vehicle, but suddenly the engine roared. And then the siren wailed.

  “What the hell—?” I said. The instant I looked at my driver, I knew. Her eyes were bugging out, and she had turned that alarming shade of puce that meant only one thing: Judy “Jenx” Jenkins was mad enough to mess up the local magnetic fields. The reason was apparent. Parked perpendicular to us was a nondescript late-model Chevrolet with U.S. Government plates and two men in dark suits. The Fibbies had arrived.

  They stepped out of the car, tapping their watches. I checked mine; Jenx had set the numbers spinning.

  “What do you boys want?” Jenx asked after turning off the engine and siren and joining them on the sidewalk.

  The Feds proffered their IDs, and Jenx showed her own. The older agent said, “We’re here about the kidnapping.”

  “So it’s official now?” I said. “Chester couldn’t have run away?”

  The younger agent asked Jenx, “Who’s she?”

  “Meet Volunteer Deputy Whitney Houston.”

  “Technically, it’s Whitney Houston Halloran Mattimoe,” I said, extending my hand. “You can call me Whiskey.”

  The first agent ignored me. So did the second one.

  “It’s too cold to stand outside,” Jenx said and went in. I followed her. Eventually the agents did, too. By then Jenx was rummaging through her desk, trying to find the form for me to fill out about the guy who wasn’t C. Richards, R.N.

  “We got a call from Chester Casanova’s legal guardian,” the older agent announced.

  “Chester Casanova?” I said, stunned to learn that he had a last name, let alone that one. His diva mother used a first name only, and as far as I knew, so did Chester.

  “Cassina called you?” Jenx asked.

  The younger agent checked a small notebook. “No. We got a call from a woman named Evelyn Huffenbach. The grandmother.”

  Jenx and I exchanged glances.

  “Chester doesn’t have a grandmother,” I said. “He has a mother, but she has no living relatives. She was a foster kid who never got out of the system.”

  “And you’re Whitney Houston,” the older agent reminded me.

  “Whitney—Whiskey—is taking care of Chester while Cassina does the world,” Jenx explained.

  “But she’s not the legal guardian,” said the younger agent. “That would be Evelyn Huffenbach.”

  “Who the heck is Evelyn Huffenbach?” I asked.

  “That would be me.”

  We turned toward the foyer. There stood a tall auburn-haired woman, probably in her late fifties, wearing a fur coat and fur hat.

  “Mayzelle is my only child,” the woman said. “She started running away from home when she was six. On her twelfth birthday, she left for good. Ten years passed before we spoke again.”

  “Mayzelle?” asked Jenx.

  “She changed her name to Cassina. When she gave birth to a son, I had to read about it in the National Inquirer.” The woman dabbed at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. “For years she denied me access to the boy. Then, out of the blue, she asked if I’d be his legal guardian. That made me so happy.”

  “When was that?” the younger agent asked.

  “Two days ago. I left Dubuque as soon as I could.”

&n
bsp; Wasn’t Dubuque in Iowa?

  Chester had disappeared two days ago. What did Cassina know that we didn’t? What did the FBI know? What did Chester’s legal guardian know?

  “I think somebody kidnapped him,” Evelyn continued.

  “Somebody who looks like you,” I observed. It wasn’t just the fur ensemble that made me say that. Except for her hair color, Evelyn Huffenbach resembled one of my clients.

  She nodded. “I believe the kidnapper may be my sister.”

  “Who’s your sister?” the younger FBI agent asked.

  I moved my lips in sync with Evelyn as she replied, “Mrs. Oscar Manfred Gribble the Third.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Wait a minute,” I said as if anyone wanted my input. “Cassina was a foster child. She had no family.”

  “She told that story just to hurt me,” Evelyn Huffenbach replied, wiping her eyes again. “And to sell CDs. Cassina is her public persona—an ethereal creature who sings about love and clouds. She bears very little resemblance to my earthy daughter Mayzelle.”

  Except when drunk, I thought, recalling a nasty scene at my house last fall.

  “I don’t follow popular music,” said the older FBI agent. “How famous is she?”

  His partner replied, “She made the cover of Rolling Stone. And all her CDs have gone gold.”

  To Evelyn the older agent said, “What makes you think your sister kidnapped your grandson?”

  “My daughter said Chester called her and told her he was with Beatrice.”

  “Who’s Beatrice?” said the younger agent.

  “Mrs. Gribble the Third,” I supplied. “She also answers to Bibi.”

  The agents glared at me and then at Jenx.

  One of them said, “Chief Jenkins, dismiss your volunteer deputy. Now.”

  “No way,” said Jenx. “Whiskey’s involved in this up to her hairline. Cassina left Chester in her care.”

  Evelyn Huffenbach snorted. “Clearly, Mayzelle hired the wrong person.”