by Nina Wright
At around 7:30 Brady phoned to report that he’d found nothing in the vicinity of the first shooting. Not even shell casings.
“I couldn’t tell where the shooter was standing,” he admitted. “The target was a moving car, and I don’t know how to calculate that stuff.”
“I thought Jenx sent you to a seminar on bullet trajectory,” I said.
“That was the plan,” Brady said, “then my son got the mumps, and I had to stay home.”
“Can’t Jenx figure bullet trajectories?”
“Nope. She got a D in trig. She said you did, too.”
“True. But I became a Realtor. To do my job, all I need is a pocket calculator.”
I suggested that it was time to call in the county sheriff, whether Jenx wanted to or not. Brady disagreed.
“All Susan needs for her insurance claim is a police report, and I provided that. Unless something else happens, we’re putting this one to bed.”
Speaking of bed, Jeb reluctantly went home around nine, promising to dream about me all night long. And to drive me to work in the morning.
Chester would sleep in the guest room with Prince Harry and Velcro. Knowing their “issues,” I insisted that he take the dogs out twice before bedtime. Then he fetched a step-stool from my garage to place next to the bed. Prince Harry needed no assistance; however, the stool solved Velcro’s separation anxiety and protected his fragile joints from the necessity to jump.
Abra may have been a recidivist felon, but she was far easier on the nerves than that teacup dog. I didn’t even mind giving her a bedroom all her own. If I wasn’t going to sleep with a man, I certainly didn’t want to share my sheets with a big shaggy dog.
The dark house was profoundly silent, save the squeaks from my mattress as I tossed and turned. For the first time in months, I found myself battling insomnia. And losing. The more I rearranged myself in my king-sized bed, the more I realized that I missed having Jeb in it. Was this proof that I needed him in my life? Should we live together full-time?
I finally surrendered my determination not to check my bedside clock and gazed in horror at the blue digits screaming 3:44. Had I slept at all? Maybe warm milk would help. If I had any. In a few hours I was due at work, where nothing much would be happening. Then Abra the Bad Example and I were off for a full weekend of Afghans and Amish.
While nuking a mug of the evaporated milk leftover from Chester’s gourmet mac ‘n’ cheese, I felt a presence behind me. Whirling around-which is easy in cotton socks on a tile floor-I confronted Chester, wrapped in the hugely oversized white bathrobe I kept in the guest room.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” I demanded. And then I remembered what really mattered. “Where’s Velcro?”
I simultaneously scanned the floor for stray poop and steeled my nerves for a strident chorus of yips.
Chester silenced me with a finger to his lips. “Velcro’s sound asleep, which isn’t easy when you’re up banging around.”
“You’re up, too,” I whispered back.
“Yes, but I know how to move with stealth.” He flourished a sheaf of computer printouts. “I had a dream about the dog show you’re going to. So I checked it out online.”
“A dream? Please don’t tell me you’re psychic,” I said. “This town doesn’t need one more person with telepathy.”
“Not a psychic dream. A regular dream. Then I woke up and Googled Mitchell Slater.”
“Who?”
By now I was sitting at the kitchen table, slurping my hot evaporated milk. It tasted smooth enough to knock me right out.
Chester said, “The breeder whose stud had a stroke while mounting Susan’s bitch!”
That snapped me wide awake. “What about him?”
“He might be the shooter, and he’s coming to Amish Country.”
Chester pulled out a chair, sat down across from me, and spread his pages on the table so that I could read them. They outlined the schedule of events at the Midwest Afghan Hound Specialty. Using a highlighter, Chester had marked Mitchell Slater’s name wherever it appeared. Apparently the man headed several committees.
“He’ll be in Nappanee, Whiskey.”
“So?”
To make his point without shouting, Chester stood on his chair. “Slater might be the shooter! If he is, Susan could wind up dead!”
“His stud died four years ago,” I said. “If he’d wanted to kill Susan, I think he would have done it by now. We have no proof he’s the one who fired those shots!”
“If he’s not the shooter, then Susan has a bigger problem,” Chester said darkly. “An enemy she doesn’t know.”
“Or won’t admit she knows,” I said.
“She needs a bodyguard,” Chester declared, “and so do you if you plan to be near her.”
“I’ll be with Abra. She scares the crap out of people.”
“Only people who don’t know Afghan hounds,” Chester said.
I understood his point. People who didn’t know the breed didn’t know how to handle Abra’s speed and springiness. She had disarmed more than one would-be assailant. But we were headed for an event where people knew all about Afghan hounds.
“If Susan doesn’t hire MacArthur this weekend, then you should,” Chester said.
“He’s your driver,” I said. “Isn’t he supposed to drive you places?”
“This weekend I can ride my bike. Besides, Velcro and Prince Harry need a workout.”
Chapter Seven
I challenge anyone to have a four A.M. conversation about shooters and bodyguards and then fall asleep. By the time Chester and I headed back to our respective bedrooms, I‘d sacrificed whatever soporific benefits were possible from a cup of hot evaporated milk.
I must have dozed off at some point, though, because I woke to the sun slanting through my blinds and Jeb insistently tooting the horn on his new BMW. I don’t care how classy the car is; a horn is a horn is a horn when it interrupts your beauty sleep. I threw on my robe, stumbled down the stairs, flung open the front door and shouted at him to hang on a freaking minute while I got myself together. He took that as an invitation to come in for coffee. Go figure.
I jumped in and out of the shower, ran a rubber brush through my recalcitrant curls, yanked on a couple deliberately understated beige separates, and dashed downstairs. Chester, clad in a starched white chef’s apron, was serving Jeb breakfast. A hot breakfast.
“Where did you find the ingredients to make waffles?” I asked. “Not to mention that apron. And isn’t today a school day?”
I cared about the kid’s education. But I cared more about the fact that there were hot waffles in my kitchen. They smelled like honey and malt.
“I called MacArthur, and he delivered what I needed from the Castle,” Chester replied. He removed a perfect golden waffle from a gleaming griddle that hadn’t come from my kitchen. “As for school, this is an in-service day, teachers only. That means I’m free 'til Monday to be Jeb’s personal chef.”
Jeb licked his chops. The diminutive chef indicated my place at the table.
“You’ll be in Amish Country with Abra,” he said. “So I’ll hang with Jeb. I’m going to try out a couple new entrées-including Steak Chester, a variation on Steak Diane.”
“If you’re good, Whiskey,” Jeb said, “maybe Chester will give you the recipe.”
That sent Chester into a spasm of laughter. Presumably because he’d never seen me so much as turn on my stove. He topped my waffle with imported Swedish syrup made from lingonberries, which I had never heard of.
“Where did you learn to cook like this?” I said.
“Cassina keeps hiring and firing chefs,” he said. “I learn what I can from each of them.”
After a second lighter-than-air waffle-and a third cup of Peruvian organic coffee, hand-ground by Chester-I reluctantly let Jeb drive me to work. What for, I had no idea. I walked in the door of Mattimoe Realty, buzzed and stuffed from my unexpected breakfast, to find the phones silent and my office manager
sobbing.
While that wasn’t typical Friday morning behavior, it wasn’t unheard of, either. Tina Breen was quite possibly the most emotional person on the planet. I stared at her leaking bloodshot eyes, her runny nose, and her desk covered with sticky balled up tissues. Before I could ask what had set her off, she bawled, “My life’s a bigger disaster than your business!”
Although I thought that unlikely, the possibility gave me hope. Whenever I’m discouraged, I like to recall one of my mother’s favorite sayings: “There’s always somebody worse off than you are.” This morning that somebody seemed to be Tina.
So I pulled up a chair and sat facing her in the lobby. We used to have a receptionist on duty out here, but I’d laid her off months ago. Assigning the depressed and volatile office manager to double as greeter may not have been my brightest move. But we rarely had walk-in business.
I offered my best impression of a patient person. “What’s wrong, Tina?”
“Ask me what hasn’t gone wrong! That would be simpler!”
She snuffled loudly and wiped her red nose on the already streaked cuff of her wrinkled blouse. Tina must have run out of tissues some time ago. I fished in my purse for a fresh supply.
“Tim has been unemployed for five months!” she wailed. “And Winston and Neville were diagnosed with ADHD. Do you know what it’s like to have toddlers with ADHD?”
“Well, no,” I answered honestly. “Unless it’s like having Abra…”
“My husband is out of work, my kids are driving me out of my mind, and your business is going down the tubes!”
I tried to remember how shrinks on TV do it. “Let’s forget about my business for a minute and focus on you.”
“But your business is my biggest problem! If you go under, we’ll have no income! We’ll lose our home and our health insurance and our car! What would we do?”
What would I do if my business went under? As adept at sustaining denial as I was at brokering real estate, I hadn’t yet let myself face that hard question. And I didn’t feel like dealing with it this morning.
I handed over to Tina all the linty tissues that had gathered at the bottom of my purse and hoped most of them were clean. Forcing a smile, I said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go home and play with your boys. I can handle things here.”
Tina reacted as if I’d slapped her.
“Oh no you don’t! You’re trying to prove you can get along without me, aren’t you? The next thing you know, you’ll let me goooooohhhhh!”
Her passionate protest dissolved into a series of choked sobs. I waited for her to catch her breath and use half the tissues I’d provided. Finally, between ragged hiccups, she whispered, “I’d rather be here than home, anyway. The boys make me nervous, and Tim gets me so depressed. This is the happiest place I know.”
Now that was tragic.
I returned the lobby chair to its original position, just in case anybody happened to come in and needed to wait for an agent. Then, for old times’ sake, I asked Tina if I had any messages. To my astonishment, I did. She handed me a pink note stained with tears and something sticky. On it she had scrawled: Call Jenx!!!! Not exactly the message of my dreams, but proof that our phones could still ring. I retreated to my office, closed the door, and collapsed into my big leather swivel chair. For the hell of it-and to kill some time-I spun around and around. Until I remembered the rich waffles. Then I waited for the nausea to subside and dialed our chief of police.
“Yo, Whiskey,” Jenx said, apparently recognizing my number in her Caller ID. “More shootings at your place?”
“I would have called if there were,” I said.
When she pointed out that I was calling, I pointed out that she had called me first.
I pictured Jenx’s compact frame settled in her own desk chair, non-regulation steel-toe boots propped on her desk between canyons of manila folders. Jenx didn’t file reports; she stacked them as high as the laws of physics allowed.
“I assume Brady told you he couldn’t find squat at the scene of the first shooting,” she said.
“He did. Maybe you should call the sheriff and ask for a crime scene investigation unit.”
“Maybe you should mind your own business.”
I told her I would if I had any. That must have been her cue to give me some.
“As of today, your hiatus from volunteer deputy duties is over,” she announced. “I need your help with this case.”
Volunteer deputies-a misnomer, really, since every one of us was drafted-comprised the criminal investigation teams in our town. Chester was the best Jenx had. True, he was too young to drive, but he had a full-time driver. He also had Prince Harry, who showed potential for retrieving clues. I, on the other hand, could drive, but my dog was a liability. Usually she was in league with the crooks we were chasing.
“You need my help?” I echoed. “I flunked senior physics, and I barely passed trig. We copied each other’s homework, remember? No way I can figure out where those shots were fired from.”
“I’m talking about keeping an eye on Susan Davies and her friend,” Jenx said. “At the dog show.”
“That’s in Indiana,” I said. “A little outside your jurisdiction.”
“Since when does that stop us? You know you love to snoop.”
She had a point. That was part of my attraction to real estate: having a license to get inside other people’s homes. But this was a dog show. In Amish country. Chester had said it could be dangerous; I was more worried it would be deadly dull. Having a job to do might give me a sense of purpose and also help pass the time. My eyes tended to glaze over when confronted with quilts and oak furniture.
“Do you think Susan should hire a bodyguard?” I asked Jenx.
“Is Abra going to be there?”
“She’s the reason I’m going.”
“Then, yes, Susan needs a bodyguard.”
“I meant because of the shootings!”
“If Susan can afford a bodyguard, she should hire one,” Jenx said.
“Of course she can afford a bodyguard. She’s married to Liam Davies.”
Jenx didn’t respond.
“Hello?” I said.
“I hear Liam Davies is cash-strapped.” Jenx lowered her voice. “His development business is over-leveraged, and he’s amassed a lot of personal debt. Susan’s spending sprees haven’t helped the family finances.”
Headline news to me. Suddenly I wondered if Big and Little Houses on the Prairie were a pipedream.
“The Davies’ financial problems are just rumors,” the chief added. “So are their marital problems. But in my line of work I pay attention to gossip.”
So did I. Every successful Realtor keeps an ear to the ground.
Jenx continued, “Got any idea how many Afghan hounds Susan owns?”
“Too many.”
“Eight, according to my sources. And she shares six more with her co-breeder. That’s a lot of dog shit.”
I agreed. “Susan needs MacArthur. He’s a cleaner as well as a bodyguard.”
Chapter Eight
I asked Jenx how she’d found out so much about Susan and Liam Davies.
“I’m in law enforcement,” she said. “Therefore I investigate.”
“How come you need Chester and me to work for free?”
“I like to delegate.”
The more I pondered my trip to the Afghan hound show in Amish Country, the more I dreaded it. I despised anything that came under the heading of crafts, and I did my darnedest to avoid most dogs. But given what Jenx had said about Davies’ development business being maxed out, it would probably be in Mattimoe Realty’s best interest for me to learn all I could about Liam and Susan.
As soon as I hung up from Jenx, I speed-dialed Odette. Since she was representing us as Realtor of record for Davies’ newest project, I wanted to keep her in the loop.
“What is it, Whiskey?” Odette snapped. “I’m with a client.”
�
�A client?” It had been too long since I’d heard that phrase.
“I’m showing a home in Pasco Point,” she said. “Can this wait?”
Of course it could. Pasco Point was arguably the best four-digit zip-code suffix in Magnet Springs. Perched high on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, the subdivision boasted a baker’s dozen multi-million-dollar estates, each with its own ostentatious name. Until Davies developed Big House on the Prairie, assuming that he eventually would, Pasco Point was where our big commissions came from.
Odette said she’d call me right back. I told her to take as much time as she needed.
Tina’s dentist-drill voice immediately announced there was a call on line one. If my phone rang at all lately, it was either a wrong number or the police. I answered cautiously.
“Top o’ the morning to you, Miss Whiskey! This is MacArthur.”
I wondered why Tina hadn’t said so. He was one of our part-time agents. The one who sounded like Sean Connery, without the lisp. To my embarrassment, I felt a small thrill at the sound of the cleaner’s baritone brogue.
“Chester and I were just talking about you,” I said, omitting the fact that the chief of police and I had just talked about him, too.
“Could we meet for lunch in half an hour?” MacArthur asked.
“Well… “ When I hesitated, it wasn’t because my schedule was full. My stomach was. Painfully so. It felt like Chester’s waffles had expanded in there.
“My treat,” the cleaner added.
Nice of him to buy, especially since he had taken my disagreeable stepdaughter off my hands. In the grand scheme of things, I was sure I owed him. We agreed to meet at the counter at the Goh Cup, the coffee and sandwich shop run by Magnet Springs’ mayor. It wouldn’t matter if I couldn’t eat a bite; MacArthur was the kind of eye candy no woman passed up.