Whiskey on the Rocks

by Nina Wright

  Walter shook his head. “Jenx didn’t say, and there was too much background noise to continue the conversation.”

  “You mean sirens?” I said.

  He looked puzzled. “I mean the background noise in here. Happy hour is no time to talk on the phone.”

  Odette said, “If there was a murder at Shadow Play, we might have to knock twenty percent off the asking price.”

  “Please!” I glared at her in disgust. “Ten percent, max.”

  Walter said, “Jenx tried calling you at home, Whiskey. She said that’s how she knew you were here. Does your voicemail say, ‘If I don’t answer, I’m drinking at Mother Tucker’s’?”

  “Whiskey hired that harpist’s kid,” explained Odette.

  Walter said, “Why not just get voicemail?”

  I said, “Does Jenx need to see me?”

  A food server was asking Walter more important questions, so I waited.

  “Sorry, yes, that was the message.”

  I asked Odette, “Care to substitute a crime scene for our dinner date?”

  She declined, so I went alone. An ambulance was pulling out of the drive at Shadow Play. Since its siren was off, I deduced that help had come too late for somebody. Brady Swancott was once again stringing yellow crime scene tape around a bashed-in back door.

  “This is turning into Ground Hog Day,” I said, referring to the Bill Murray movie.

  “Except that was a comedy,” Brady said.

  “Right. Who’s dead?”

  “Everybody’s Favorite Canadian.”

  “You mean—?”

  “The dead guy’s wife got whacked.”

  “How?”

  “Looks like she interrupted a burglary. The way she was beaten, I’d say the killer was high on PCP or meth or something. Either that or she pissed him off. Her head’s a bloody pulp, bludgeoned with a marble bookend. Real messy. She was dead way before he stopped.”

  My legs decided that it was time to sit. Without warning I plopped onto the wooden steps at Brady’s feet.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Compared to Mrs. Santy, I’m peachy. How’s her brother taking it?”

  “About how you’d expect. I think he’s in shock. Naylor came home from Mother Tucker’s with take-out and found her on the bedroom floor. She was sick with a migraine headache when he went out. When he got back, she had no head left.”

  “Please—.” I felt Walter’s red wine rising in my throat and clamped my hand over my mouth.

  “Yo, Whiskey!” Jenx’s steel-toed boots appeared next to my knees. “Is she going to hurl?” I assumed the question went to Brady. When he didn’t answer, I grunted.

  “Is that a yes or a no?” Jenx said. “Breathe, damn it!”

  I took her advice and concentrated on working my lungs for a while. I hadn’t felt this queasy since high-school biology.

  Jenx squatted next to me. “Whiskey, we got some real bad news to break to your client. Do you want to do it, or should I?”

  “I have to make the call.” I cleared my throat. “Same person who was here last night, you think?”

  “Not unless whoever looks like Julia Roberts is built like Vin Diesel. Our killer’s a guy.”

  “How’d he get in?”

  “That’s part of the bad news. The alarm system failed, second night in a row. We called the company. They got no sign that anything was wrong. If I were the Reitbauers, I’d cancel my contract.”

  If I were the Reitbauers, I’d fire Mattimoe Realty. Even if we couldn’t have done more, it looked like we should have. Saving this account seemed as unlikely as keeping the leaves on the trees.

  “Give me the rest of the bad news for the Reitbauers.”

  “After we get the sheriff’s department out here to run forensics, they’ll need to hire a cleaning service. I’m talking biohazard removal. The bedroom’s splattered with blood, body fluids, and brain tissue.”

  I tasted Walter’s red wine again and selfishly hoped this trauma wouldn’t put me off Pinot Noir.

  Jenx said, “I’m not supposed to recommend anybody, but I can give you the name of a firm in Grand Rapids. They’ll have to remove the carpets, wallpaper, and so forth. She was killed in the bedroom, but the guy tracked up the whole house.”

  “So much for white wall-to-wall Berber,” said Brady. “Looks great in showrooms, performs poorly in crime scenes.”

  Jenx added, “I hope your client has good insurance and a good interior decorator. This house is going to need a makeover.”

  “Anything stolen?” I asked.

  Brady said, “The Matheney, again. Officer Roscoe’s on the case. I told him to make like Abra and sniff out purses and so forth. He’s scouring the area as we speak.”

  “But doesn’t that mean whoever was here last night came back?” I said. “They didn’t get the painting the first time, so they tried again, harder?”

  Jenx said, “Only one set of bloody footprints, and they belong to a guy.”

  “Couldn’t he have had an accomplice?”

  “You mean ‘Julia Roberts’ waiting in the getaway car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Except there’s no sign of a getaway car.”

  “Anything else missing? That we know of?”

  Brady said, “According to Mr. Naylor, a set of ivory candlestick holders is gone. So’s Mrs. Santy’s jewelry.”

  “The Piaget again?”

  “And the family heirlooms.”

  “Mr. Naylor’s in shock, but he took inventory?”

  “I guess he knew what to look for,” said Brady.

  Jenx said, “One problem solved: I just talked with Hen, and she’ll put him up tonight.”

  “I thought Red Hen’s House was packed with Leaf-Peepers.”

  “It is. We have a guest room in our personal quarters. He can sleep there.”

  Edward Naylor didn’t know it, but he was about to rely on the hospitality of Magnet Springs’ most conspicuous lesbian couple. I assumed they would “contain their sexual deviance” during his visit.

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “You don’t want to see him tonight, Whiskey.”

  My cell phone buzzed.

  “How’s the crime scene?” Odette asked.

  “If you just ate, you don’t want to know.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. Jonny’s Chilean sea bass is too spectacular for you to miss. Your take-out is waiting at the bar. I told him to add something suitable for the child.”

  I bid Brady and Jenx good night and walked stiffly to my car. As I opened the door, something rattled the bushes on my left. My chest tightened. A gray blur glided past. I screamed. Officer Roscoe froze in his tracks.

  From the porch Brady shouted, “You all right, Whiskey? He didn’t mean to startle you.”

  The canine officer sniffed my feet.

  “Abra couldn’t come out and play tonight,” I told him. “She’s in training.”

  He whined sympathetically and trotted away.

  I arrived home with the two boxed dinners from Mother Tucker’s to find Abra using Chester as a beanbag chair while they both watched TV. As usual, she ignored me. But her pose triggered a potent repressed memory: Abra pressed against Leo as he lay on the couch after dinner.

  Jonny’s second meal was what Chester dubbed a “Gourmet Whopper”: three ground-sirloin patties on a homemade Kaiser roll, smothered in grilled mushrooms, onions, and two kinds of imported cheese. Chester felt too tired “to digest so much saturated fat.” He suggested we give a few pieces to Abra as treats at the end of a hard day of training.

  “About this online program, Chester. Did you call it Dogs-Train-You-dot-com?”

  He nodded.

  “But isn’t that what Abra is doing already?”

  “It’s about animal psychology, Whiskey. We have to let her think she’s in control.”

  “But she is in control. Look what she’s doing right now!”

  Abra was helping herself to the Gourmet
Whopper. Her choppers were full of chopped sirloin.

  “I’ll handle this,” said Chester.

  What happened next was not pretty. Chester snatched what remained of the burger and stuffed it in his mouth. Chewing hard, he dropped to all fours in front of Abra, who began to lick his lips. Her goal, apparently, was to transfer Chester’s food from his mouth to hers. I tried not to imagine his celebrity-harpist mother and her entourage looking on.

  “That’s wolf behavior,” he said, wiping his face with Mother Tucker napkins.

  “Well, I wouldn’t recommend it for humans.”

  “Domestic dogs do it, too. When I feed her like that, I’m Top Dog.”

  “But are you current on your shots?”

  After that excitement, I felt as ready as I’d ever be to phone the Reitbauers. Reaching their machine, I left this message: “I’m afraid there’s been another break-in at Shadow Play. I’d prefer to give you the details person to person, so please get back to me as soon as possible. You can call me any time tonight.”

  I repeated my various phone numbers and hung up. The string of events was rapidly adding up to a business disaster.

  Chester appeared in my home-office doorway. “Everything all right in the real estate game?”

  I had to smile. “Thanks for reminding me it’s a game. Everything all right with you?”

  “Uh-huh. Oh—by the way, Cassina called.”

  “Your mother?” I asked stupidly. “What did she say?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Good. . . . Uh—where was she calling from?”

  “Traverse City. They’re still there, still recording. The sessions aren’t going too well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. . . . Any idea when she might finish?”

  He shrugged.

  “Okay then. . . . Well, good night.” I studied him, wondering whether he needed a hug or something. For all his big ideas, Chester seemed very small.

  “Good night.” He hesitated. “Dogs-Train-You-dot-com doesn’t require it, but I was wondering if Abra could sleep in my bed. I think we might bond better that way.”

  I couldn’t imagine bonding more closely than sharing pre-chewed food. But I agreed, rejecting a nasty mental picture of slate-gray Egyptian-cotton sheets layered in long blonde fur.

  “About your contract, Chester. Can I see it?”

  “As soon as I revise it a little. Don’t worry, Whiskey. You can afford me.”

  The Reitbauers didn’t call back. When I hadn’t heard from them by 8:30 the next morning, I phoned again, from Mattimoe Realty. I reached the maid. She informed me that Mrs. Reitbauer was, even as we spoke, on her way to Magnet Springs via her husband’s private plane. That was not good news.

  An hour later, Noonan knocked on my office door.

  “I heard what happened,” she gasped. “Tuesday the husband dies at my studio, and Thursday the wife gets whacked at Shadow Play. This is a real bad latitude for that couple. Oh--and I just spotted Mrs. R walking into Best West.”

  Meet the competition. Best West Real Estate is the second-largest realty in this part of the state and catching up fast. Best West has a nifty new advantage: its owner/broker was recently elected Mayor of Magnet Springs. The town held a special election last June after our once-esteemed city leader was indicted for tax fraud. Gil Gruen of Best West ran unopposed. Many Main Street merchants encouraged me to run, but it was too soon after Leo’s death. I’d read somewhere that new widows should avoid making major decisions for at least a year. Embarking on a political career seemed significant. Plus, Abra had begun snatching purses and getting caught. That didn’t speak well for my leadership skills.

  Thanks to Noonan’s tip, I was more or less prepared for what happened next. My receptionist buzzed me to say that the owner of Shadow Play was in the lobby—with the Mayor.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Reitbauer . . . Gil. . . . ,” I said, focusing on my client. “Mrs. Reitbauer, come back to my office, where you can be comfortable.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Whiskey,” Mr. Best West drawled. Gil Gruen was dressed in his usual costume—a Western shirt, tight jeans, alligator cowboy boots, and a Stetson. Indoors, he stowed the last item under his arm. Although we’d endured twelve years of Lanagan County public education together, Gil acted as if he’d been raised on the Ponderosa with Little Joe. His Cowboy Realtor Persona was born the day he founded Best West.

  “Get down off your high horse, Whiskey, and stop wasting Mrs. Reitbauer’s time. She came all the way from the big city across the lake just to hand-deliver you a letter.”

  He nodded at Mrs. R, who wore enough make-up and attitude to pass for a runway model. She extracted an envelope from her purse and gave it to me without making eye contact.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  Still looking the other way, Mrs. R said, “Sorry, Whiskey, but this like isn’t working. Okay? That’s a letter of agreement to cancel this whole rental deal-thing. My husband and I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “You don’t want to rent Shadow Play? Or you don’t want me to manage the rental?”

  “Both. The whole scene is like a downer. We just want it to be over.”

  “I see. Then let’s talk about listing your property for sale. Mattimoe Realty sold another house in Shadow Point this year—for fifteen percent above appraisal.”

  Mrs. R looked at Gil and then at me.

  “No, Whiskey. I want to dissolve our contract. Then I’ve got to go. I’m getting my nails done at eleven.”

  Gil said, “It’s in your best interest, Whiskey.”

  I turned on him. “Why are you even here? You wouldn’t be soliciting her business, would you?”

  He looked stunned. “In your lobby? While she’s your client? Shame on you! I’m here purely as the mayor of this fine town. I just want to make sure our part-time resident gets the courteous treatment she deserves. Mrs. Reitbauer confided in me that you scare her a little.”

  “What?!” I looked at the stylish, raven-haired Mrs. R, who wasn’t looking at me. She was studying her already perfect nails. “We’ll be more comfortable in my office,” I told her and started in that direction. Behind me, I heard a chair being dragged across my lobby floor.

  “Sit yourself down, ma’am, while I expedite this on your behalf,” purred Gil. “I’m sure the cute little gal who answers Whiskey’s phones also makes a decent cup o’ joe—and will be happy to pour you one while I talk to her boss. Ain’t that right, Missy?”

  I could feel my feminist receptionist’s wrath. It was almost as hot as my own.

  I said, “Mr. Gruen, may I remind you that Mrs. Reitbauer is my client? I will personally make her a cup of coffee, a cappuccino, a cocktail, or whatever she prefers. But I shall do it in my office. Good day, sir.”

  Mrs. R spoke up. “Whiskey, just sign the damn cancellation letter so I don’t have to sue you for negligent management.”

  “Mattimoe Realty has not been negligent,” I said with exaggerated calm.

  Gil interjected, “I’m not sure the West MichiganRealtors Board will see it that way. As Mayor of Magnet Springs, I’ve asked them to look into the string of violent crimes that has occurred under your management.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You win some, you lose some. Make sure you win more than you lose.”