Whiskey Straight Up

by Nina Wright

  That shut Jenx up until he pissed her off again, a minute later, when he ordered her back to the house to escort his CSU techies.

  “Meet and greet your own people,” she said, leaning against a tree. “I got work to do here.” She wedged her flashlight under her chin as she scrawled in her notebook.

  I hadn’t noticed Brady and Roscoe leave. But from somewhere in the distance I heard Roscoe’s “pay-attention-to-this” bark. Unlike Abra, he speaks only when spoken to, or when he has something useful to say. Wherever he was, he was insisting on something. I stood up and peered into the darkness toward his faraway woofs.

  Jenx said, “Breakthrough for our side. Brady’s on the case.”

  Then Jeb rejoined me. “Sorry about that,” he whispered.

  “Hey, I’m not doing so well myself,” I said. “What’s up with Roscoe?”

  The German shepherd came crashing through the brush, still barking. Jenx and the MSP officer trained their flashlights on him.

  “Roscoe found something,” Brady panted, jogging behind his partner. “Another body!”

  I passed out.

  When I came to, I thought Roscoe was crushing me. He was just following Brady’s orders to keep me warm so as to prevent shock. By pressing his considerable mass against my torso, the canine officer imparted quite a few BTUs.

  Jeb was holding my hand and stroking my forehead. “You’re all right,” he said.

  “Who else is dead?” I moaned. “If it’s Thomas McKondin, I killed him in self-defense.”

  “The second body isn’t dead,” said Brady. “But it is McKondin. You’re saying you messed him up like that?”

  “I kicked him in the balls . . . and in the face.”

  “You kicked him?” Brady looked baffled. “Who stabbed him?”

  “He was stabbed?” I tried to sit up, but Roscoe wouldn’t let me.

  “Oh, yeah. Not a pretty sight. The EMTs are with him now.”

  “Will he make it?”

  “Too soon to tell. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  My eyelids fluttered. Jeb whispered, “Think happy thoughts, baby. You’re going to be fine.”

  I don’t know if I fainted again or just drifted off to sleep. I was spent.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I was in my own bed with Jeb sitting next to me, the room dark.

  “I was thinking of getting under the covers with you, but I didn’t want to push my luck,” Jeb said.

  “Wise move. What time is it, anyway?”

  “Almost three.”

  “I don’t remember getting back here.”

  “That’s because I’m such a smooth escort.”

  “No, really, how did I get here?”

  “Brady and I put you on a stretcher and carried you. You’re a lot heavier than you used to be.”

  “And you just blew your chance of ever getting in this bed. Good night, Jeb!”

  I rolled away from him and pulled the quilt over my head.

  “I was kidding!” he said.

  “Go away.”

  “I like you better with a few extra pounds.”

  “Get out!”

  I could feel him sitting there, waiting. He was waiting for me to fall back to sleep, and then he’d slide between the sheets.

  “Now!” I roared.

  Jeb said, “I can’t leave, remember? I loaned my wheels to your friend in need.”

  “Then use the guest room across the hall. Good night!”

  He sighed and left; I was instantly asleep. Even if I’d let him stay with me, I would have been too tired to enjoy his performance. After thirty-nine weeks and four days of celibacy, I could wait a little longer for the ride of my life. And I wanted that ride to be with Nash.

  The knock on my bedroom door was too loud and too early. Winter sunlight shone through my windows, and my bedside clock said 8:12. But my internal clock screamed middle-of-the-night.

  “Open up, Whiskey! It’s me, Jenx.”

  “Open the door yourself. It’s not locked,” I groaned.

  Our chief of police strode in, all business.

  “Can I get a statement from you?” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About what happened between you and Thomas McKondin last night.”

  “I didn’t stab him,” I said.

  “I didn’t think you did. Even before he exonerated you. . . .”

  “What?”

  “The guy’s half-dead from massive chest wounds, but he says you didn’t do it,” Jenx explained. “We haven’t found the weapon, and McKondin can’t tell us what it was. Says he didn’t get a good look at his attacker. But he’s very specific that it wasn’t you.”

  Why, I wondered. I wished I felt something less like anxiety and more like relief. Sure, I was pleased not to be a suspect. But I had a dirty little secret. I knew that Roy Vickers had had both motive and opportunity to stab Thomas McKondin in the chest.

  Roy served time for doing exactly that to Leo Mattimoe. Circumstantial evidence suggested that he might have fatally slashed Gil Gruen. Was Thomas McKondin Roy’s third victim?

  The ex-con could have followed me out of the house and into the woods. Did he believe that redemption for his attack on Leo required him to defend me against all aggressors? If so, Roy might have been misguided enough to see both Gil Gruen and Thomas McKondin as bad guys who had to be eliminated. The thought made me very nervous.

  “We haven’t found the weapon used in McKondin’s attack. You’d better tell me everything you know,” Jenx said, pencil ready, notebook open. “Start from the moment he rang your cell.”

  I did, omitting of course all references to Roy. I wasn’t ready to implicate him again since that would mean implicating myself and Jeb for helping him flee.

  In the midst of my story, I stopped. The last name McKondin had suddenly appeared as a folder tab in the deep dark recesses of my mental files.

  “Remember a Donald McKondin who used to work for Gil Gruen?” I asked Jenx. “He was his bookkeeper. For years. Then Gil fired him, and the guy wrapped his car around a tree.”

  Jenx nodded. “I was the first officer on the scene. McKondin was dead when I got there. The inside of his car reeked of scotch.”

  After I finished my story, I waited while Jenx scribbled the rest of her notes. Then I said, “The dead woman is named Mindy, isn’t she?”

  “Mindy Mad Hawk. How’d you know?”

  “She’s one of the waitresses I met at Bear Claw Casino yesterday. How’d she die?”

  “Preliminary reports suggest alcohol poisoning, possibly combined with hypothermia. The corpse reeks of booze. She had vomited on herself although someone tried to clean her up.”

  “She had no shoes,” I recalled.

  “No shoes, socks, gloves, scarf, or hat. It looked like she was trying to take her coat off when she died, but she was either too drunk or too sick to manage it.”

  “Why would she try to take her coat off?”

  “Who knows? Intoxication, panic, hypothermia. . . . She might have felt overheated even as she was freezing to death. It happens. We’re waiting for the coroner’s report.”

  “She had three kids,” I said.

  Jenx nodded. “There’s never just one victim.”

  “You think this was a crime, not an accident?”

  “Too soon to say, but it sure looks funny. Especially with that coat. No way a cocktail waitress living on an Indian reservation could afford a fur like that.”

  “Does it have a label?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Does the coat have a label? Some women put their names in their coats. There’s probably a furrier’s label, at any rate. Maybe you can trace it back to point of purchase.”

  “Worth a shot, I guess. I’ll get Brady right on it.”

  “What was Mindy was doing on my property?” I wondered aloud. “And how did she get here?”

  “Good questions,” Jenx said. “The MSP will probably want to talk to you. The FBI, too. Hav
e fun with all that.”

  “You don’t like playing with the big boys, do you?” I observed.

  “Who said they were big boys?”

  Jenx reminded me that the Jamboree resumed today. In fact, this would be the last full day of events, culminating in a cross-county snowmobile race and a bonfire. Tomorrow’s festivities consisted of the closing ceremony, plus clearance sales by all the vendors.

  “Do you feel well enough to participate?” Jenx asked. “I could use a couple more deputies on site.”

  “I don’t think I’m up to handling Abra today.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ve deputized Deely, and she’s good with your dog.”

  As if Abra’s behavior depended on her handler.

  “Deely’s on duty here today,” I said.

  “Not anymore. Avery’s so pissed off at you and Nash that she won’t trust anyone but herself to watch the kids.”

  “Don’t tell me she fired Deely?!”

  “She laid her off. For the weekend.”

  “Avery just wants to sulk,” I muttered.

  “That’s right,” Jenx said. “I hear sparks are flying between you and the daddy. He’s a hunk, all right. If you like men.”

  “I do.”

  “Of course, we’re all hoping you’ll get back with Jeb.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said.

  “He’s living here, isn’t he? I just saw him in the kitchen making coffee.”

  “No! He couldn’t go home last night. He doesn’t have his Van Wagon, remember?”

  “Yeah, right. He loaned it to some cousin. . . .” Jenx studied me. “Anything else going on around here you forgot to mention?”

  “Nope. Not a thing.”

  Jenx seemed to be mulling something over.

  “I take it Dr. David’s out of the picture,” she said.

  “Out of what picture?”

  “You were flirting with him for a while.”

  “He was flirting with me. But I think he’s with Deely now. Or she wishes he was. There’s nothing between David and me except a desire to do real estate, which we can’t because of his contract with Best West.”

  “Does that still hold if Gil’s dead?” Jenx asked.

  “I think so even if David doesn’t. The man needs to learn to sign contracts after he reads them.”

  Jenx cleared her throat. “You know Dr. David better than I do. Here’s a hard question: Do you think he would engage in illegal activities?”

  “Such as what?”

  “Radical activism on behalf of Fleggers.”

  “You mean, like Greenpeace?”

  “Less dramatic. More personal. Still illegal.”

  “I think you’d better tell me what this is about.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Never mind about Dr. David.” Jenx checked her wristwatch, a man’s Timex. “I don’t have time to go into it. I’m due at the Jamboree at nine, and I want to take one more look at the crime scene before I head out.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her.

  “All right, I’ll give you the poop scoop,” she sighed, sitting on the arm of my Morris chair. “But this is strictly confidential. Got it? The only reason I’m telling you is because you’re a realtor. Maybe you can give me some advice.”

  “You want to buy, sell, or rent real estate?” I asked.

  “No. I want to talk about Dr. David and the trouble he may be in. It starts with Best West.”

  “If it’s about that contract he signed—”

  “It isn’t. It’s about some damage he did, or might have done.”

  “Damage?”

  “Alleged damage. Gil never got around to filing charges. You knew he had trouble with vandals, right?”

  “Right.”

  I thought about the stories I’d heard in recent months concerning suspicious thefts from properties Gil had listed. In the beginning, it looked like the work of kids. Gil Gruen life-size cut-outs kept disappearing along with Best West FOR SALE signs. Gradually, the thefts grew more troublesome: house numbers, outdoor lights, mailboxes, shutters, and doorknobs. Even plantings vanished. In one case, a twenty-foot-long row of serviceberry shrubs were removed overnight.

  “David Newquist wouldn’t play pranks like those,” I said. “For one thing, he’s too busy. For another, he has no sense of humor.”

  “There were more serious incidents. Somebody punctured Gil’s tires. Smashed his windshield. Set a fire under his car.”

  Stunned, I fell back against my stack of pillows. “David was mad about the bad contract Gil had him in. But he’s not violent.”

  “Are you sure? This was about animal rights, Whiskey. Gil made a practice of poisoning stray animals.”

  “What?!”

  “He believed that the over-population of cats and dogs lowered property values. So he fought back.”

  “That’s illegal! Isn’t it?”

  “Yes. If we could have caught him in the act.”

  “But you know he did it! You must have evidence.”

  Jenx shook her head. “He bragged about it, and we found poisoned animals, but we couldn’t link them to Gil.”

  “Where does David fit in?”

  “David put humane traps all over town. That pissed Gil off big time. He called them eyesores. The traps were stolen, and the poisonings increased. David started following Gil, trying to catch him in the act. ‘Stalking’ him, Gil called it. Monday—five days ago—our mayor took out a restraining order against our new town vet.”

  I was speechless.

  “There’s something else,” Jenx said, rubbing her eyes. I wondered if she’d been to bed at all last night. “We have witnesses who say David’s been stealing dog and cat treats from local vendors.”

  “Stealing treats?” That sounded ridiculous . . . until I recalled what I’d seen from the helicopter: Dr. David stuffing something from the concessions stand into his voluminous parka pockets. “Why the hell would he do that?”

  Jenx shrugged. “Maybe he’s nuts.”

  I reflected on my conversation with David about speciesism while riding in the Animal Ambulance. It verged on craziness. But was it the real thing?

  Jenx stood up and pulled a folder from her hip pocket. “Read this. It’s the Flegger Manifesto.”

  I smoothed the glossy tri-fold brochure on my bed. The cover declared

  FOUR LEGS GOOD

  Our premise is simple:

  Do you own your child?

  Cats and dogs are not your property, either.

  Like children, they deserve protection

  and the recognition of their rights.

  We love people of all species.

  “Oh boy,” I sighed.

  “It gets better. Read on.”

  I opened the folder to a litany of similar propositions, including an argument in favor of criminal behavior to defend animal rights. The assertion: Great leaders have always demonstrated that immoral laws must be broken. Consider the Founding Fathers, Mahatma Gandhi, and Che Guevara.

  “Does speciesism measure up to taxation without representation?” I said. Then I thought about the Coast Guard nanny, whom I respected. “Deely’s a Flegger, too. But she doesn’t seem whacky.”

  “Maybe she knows better than to show her true colors around you,” Jenx said. “After all, you employ her.”

  “Or maybe all Fleggers aren’t nuts.”

  Jenx grunted to show she doubted it. I handed her back the brochure.

  “What are you going to do about David?” I said.

  “Keep an eye on him. I’m ordering you to do the same, Deputy Mattimoe. Right now, I need to call Brady.”

  Jenx unclipped her cell phone and headed out. I was too jazzed by our conversation to get more rest, no matter how deep my sleep deficit, so I opted for a long hot shower. But I forgot to lock the bathroom door. Midway through my delicious ablutions, the shower door slid open and then closed.

  Jeb Halloran had joined me. Naked.<
br />
  “May I soap your back?” he asked.

  “May I slit your throat? Get out of here!”

  “Aw, come on, Whiskey. We used to be married, remember?”

  “And then we got divorced. I remember that.”

  He grabbed me and kissed me hard, pressing his firm self against me. I was at a distinct disadvantage, having soap and water in my eyes. No way a girl can fight off a guy in that situation.

  So we kept kissing until there was no more hot water.

  “I need a bigger tank,” I panted.

  “Your tank is just right, like the rest of you.”

  I moved us both out of the shower and into big fuzzy towels. The drier I got, however, the harder I had to defend myself. On a non-slippery surface, Jeb was even more confident.

  Finally, I ordered him to stop.

  “FYI: You’re forcing your attentions on a Lanagan County Deputy. Please cease and desist at once.”

  “Or else?”

  “Or else . . . I might have to make a citizen’s arrest.”

  “And handcuff me to your bed, I hope?” Jeb winked.

  With his hair wet and spiky, and his smooth skin rosy from the heat, my ex-husband looked almost irresistible. Fortunately, someone started pounding on my bedroom door.

  “Yo, Whiskey, it’s Jenx again. Can I come in?”

  Before I could reply, Jeb said, “Sure. Join the party.”

  Jenx looked us both up and down, admiring our matching towels. Her grin implied that we were made for each other.

  “Jeb needed a shower,” I said.

  “And two people can shower as cheaply as one,” he chimed in.

  Our police chief had an announcement to make. Her news changed everything.

  “We found Cassina’s American Express card, the one Chester had with him when he left.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Near Mindy’s body. We think she dropped it.”

  “How—how is that possible?”

  “Chester was at Bear Claw, remember? He and Mindy must have connected.”

  “But she said she didn’t see him!” I insisted.

  “Either she lied, or she saw him after you talked to her.”

  When Jenx answered her cell phone, I could tell she was as worked up about Chester and the dead waitress as I was. Jeb slipped into the bathroom, presumably to put on clothes. My oversized towel wrapped around me, I sat on my bed and eavesdropped shamelessly. I didn’t learn much from Jenx’s cryptic murmurs.