Whiskey on the Rocks

by Nina Wright

  Then Jenx called.

  “Let’s hope history won’t repeat itself. Dan Gallagher’s widow is on her way to Magnet Springs. She wants to know what happened to her husband.”

  “Well, she can’t stay at Shadow Play,” I said.

  “I should warn you, she’s a Fundie. On the phone she asked me to pray with her. Something tells me she won’t be happy at our house.”

  I offered to put the widow up at Vestige if nothing else could be found.

  “There’s a room at the Broken Arrow,” Jenx said. “Our fake Heather Nitschke never came home. Glad I kept that crime scene tape on the motel-room door. I’ll tell the desk clerk to expect Mrs. Gallagher.”

  Jenx asked if I’d ever heard the name Holly Lomax. I hadn’t.

  “Her prints were all over Shadow Play and the motel room: She’s twenty-nine years old with at least that many arrests for prostitution.”

  “And you thought the Broken Arrow Motel was reformed.”

  “Lomax failed to check in with her parole officer in Grand Rapids last week.”

  I said, “Grand Rapids was Dan Gallagher’s hometown. Coincidence?”

  “Most of life is.”

  Jenx invited me to join her and Mrs. Gallagher for coffee later.

  “Her husband died on your turf. She might want to meet you.”

  I pointed out that Noonan owned the massage table.

  Marilee Gallagher was nothing like the late Ellianna Santy. She wasn’t Canadian or blonde or beautiful. She also wasn’t a bitch. When I stopped by the police station, I thought Jenx’s office was empty. The door was ajar with no one in sight. Then I heard whispering. Stepping cautiously inside, I glimpsed a puffy brunette hairstyle bobbing low on the far side of Jenx’s desk. A moment later, the attached face and body appeared. Marilee Gallagher struggled to her feet.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed when she spotted me. “I was just on my knees having a word with the Lord. I’ll bet you’re looking for Chief Jenkins. She’s checking her fax machine.”

  Marilee Gallagher gave me a radiant smile. A large woman with lovely dimples, she possessed a perfect heart-shaped mouth and sparkling teeth.

  I thanked her, turned to go, and crashed right into Jenx.

  “Mrs. Gallagher, this is Whiskey Mattimoe, a local real estate broker.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Mattimoe.”

  I asked her to call me Whiskey, but she was uncomfortable saying the word since her church outlaws liquor.

  “Why would your mother do that to you?” she asked, her eyes shining with sympathy. “Was she . . . an alcoholic?”

  I explained that the nickname was based on several weird factors, beginning with my real name. My dear mother is a teetotaler. Nothing stronger than decaf for her. Sweet Irene Houston christened her baby girl Whitney. She chose the name after reading it in a romance novel. I never liked it, and eventually it became a joke. I’m not black, I was never beautiful, and I have no musical talent whatsoever. What I do have is the raspy voice of someone who lives in a bar. Or someone with a three-pack-a-day habit. Never mind that I rarely drink the hard stuff, that I haven’t lit up since I turned thirty, and that I’ve sounded this way since I hit puberty. That’s when a kid named Jeb Halloran dubbed me Whiskey, and the name stuck. A few years later, I married Jeb Halloran. That didn’t stick.

  Marilee Gallagher still wasn’t “at peace” with my nickname. So Jenx sadistically encouraged her to call me Whitney—the birth name I loathe as much as Jenx does hers.

  “Why don’t we all use our first names then?” I said brightly. “Chief Jenkins loves to be called Judy, or—even better—Judith.”

  Jenx’s eyes narrowed as if prepared to fire lasers.

  “My sister’s name is Judith,” chirped Marilee. “I always wished my mother had saved that name for me.”

  Suddenly, she shrieked and went spinning away from us as if flung by an unseen dance partner. At the same instant, everything made of metal on Jenx’s desk jumped, and all the phones at the station started ringing. I glanced at the acting police chief, whose eyes now bulged.

  “Easy, Jenx,” I whispered.

  “Oh my,” Marilee said again, from the corner where she had landed. “I do believe I felt the Holy Spirit in me!”

  What she had felt was a disturbance in our local magnetic fields. Such occurrences are legendary, dating back to the earliest days of Magnet Springs’ history. In recent years, though, the phenomenon has been linked exclusively to Jenx. I’d never seen her so exercised about her birth name and said so.

  “It’s not about that,” she hissed.

  “I haven’t felt like this since the tent revival in Kalamazoo,” Marilee cried. “Let us pray!”

  “Let us not,” said Jenx. She handed me the paper she had been holding when I ran into her. The fax from the New Brunswick Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicles Services, featured the photocopied driver’s license of Gordon David Santy, age thirty-four, of Fredericton. Although the driver’s photo was blurred, I recognized him at once. Gordon Santy was Edward Naylor.

  Chapter Ten

  “What happened to the driver’s license you took off the corpse?” I asked Jenx.

  She glanced at the widow across the room. “Released to next of kin. Presumed next of kin.”

  Jenx exhaled loudly, and I felt a shift in magnetic pressure.

  “Careful,” I whispered.

  When Marilee Gallagher said, “Amen,” we moved toward her. She smiled, radiating pure good will. How the hell could we tell her?

  “Your husband’s dead,” Jenx blurted, helping Marilee to her feet. “And his remains have left the country.”

  “I thought it was something like that,” she said calmly.

  “Why?” I had to ask.

  “The Holy Spirit filled me with Truth and Light.”

  Jenx said, “What can we do for you, Mrs. Gallagher?”

  “Call me Marilee, please. Well, first I’d like to see your reports. And then I’ll need a word with the medical examiner.”

  “Anything else?”

  She poked around inside her purse and came up with a business card. “Please call my insurance agent and find out how the heck I’m going to collect Dan’s life insurance when you’ve lost his body.”

  A few minutes later, I was sipping instant cappuccino and contemplating a plate of Pepperidge Farm Milanos. Marilee likes comfort foods. The cookies and coffee mix had come from her handbag.

  “This will cheer us up,” she declared. Her fussing, clucking and purring made me feel like I was the new widow. I offered my condolences.

  “I’m sure it hasn’t quite sunk in,” she said. “The Holy Spirit took away my pain. Cookie?”

  Jenx returned with a fat manila folder and a legal pad.

  “Whiskey has a dog,” she began.

  “Let’s leave her out of it,” I said.

  “High-strung and contrary,” Jenx continued. I wondered if she meant me or Abra. “But I think she can help. Being recently widowed, she knows what you’re feeling.”

  Marilee turned to me. “Your dog is a widow?”

  “No. I am.”

  Then it hit me: maybe Abra felt like a widow, too.

  Jenx said, “Whiskey lost her husband last spring. She’s having a real hard time.”

  “I’m handling it just fine!” I said.

  “Shall we pray?” said Marilee.

  “No,” said Jenx.

  “But thanks for asking,” I added.

  I wanted to know how Jenx thought Abra could help. She reminded me about the training session in progress with Officers Swancott and Roscoe. Then she reviewed the Crime Scene Report following her call Tuesday to Noonan Starr’s Star of Noon Massage Therapy Studio.

  “Dan was having massage ‘therapy’?” Marilee asked. I started to explain, but she asked me not to.

  When Jenx showed her the photocopy of the driver’s license found on the corpse, Marilee gasped, “I took that picture of Dan at his birthday party!
” She observed that his height and weight statistics were wrong. “Didn’t the coroner measure him?”

  “Of course I did.”

  We turned to the rotund bald man filling the doorway.

  “Such discrepancies are routine,” he said. “People self-report personal statistics at license bureaus. And people lie.”

  “Thanks for coming, Dr. Crouch,” said Jenx.

  “It’s my job, Officer Jenkins.”

  “Acting Chief,” she reminded him as he waddled past.

  Crouch extended a doughy hand to Marilee and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She thanked him and asked what he could tell her.

  Crouch began, “The word autopsy literally means ‘see for oneself.’ What I saw when I examined your husband was an apparently healthy thirty-four-year-old man who died of asystole.”

  “What does that mean?” Marilee said.

  “His heart stopped.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s why I’ve ordered drug screens. Are you aware, Mrs. Gallagher, that your husband used cocaine?”

  Marilee’s rosebud mouth went slack.

  “I saw no evidence of chronic abuse,” Crouch went on, “but there were traces of the drug in his nasal passages.”

  I thought Marilee might cry or pray; instead she reached for Crouch’s hand and squeezed it in both of hers.

  “My husband was the man the Lord sent me,” she said. “I don’t know what he was doing in this town or why he had that fake ID. But whatever your science says, I won’t love him any less.”

  “Amen,” Crouch agreed. Then he invited Marilee to worship with him and his wife.

  “Will I get Dan’s body back?” Marilee asked, offering Crouch a cookie.

  He passed the question to Jenx.

  “We don’t know yet,” she said. “The state police have the case. I can refer you to them.”

  Crouch told Marilee, “Whoever took your husband’s remains might cremate them to destroy evidence.”

  She looked worried. “Our religion forbids that, but I’m sure the Lord will forgive us when it’s not our idea.”

  “He shall,” Crouch said with authority. As if in explanation, he added, “I pray for all lost souls.” He glanced sideways at Jenx. “Also, I saved enough tissue samples to satisfy any insurance company that the man is dead.”

  Marilee thanked him. “But I can’t help wondering, since Dan wasn’t who you thought he was, maybe the other victim wasn’t, either?”

  Crouch explained stiffly that he’d followed standard procedure in both cases, relying on the presumed next of kin to identify remains.

  “But what do you think now?” Marilee persisted.

  Crouch patted his mouth with a paper napkin. “I think it’s in God’s hands.”

  Before anyone could pray, I said, “If Edward Naylor is Gordon Santy, then he faked his own death. Isn’t it likely that Ellianna Santy faked hers, too?”

  Everyone stared at me. Jenx excused herself to make some calls.

  What she found out: Edward Naylor had a legitimate New Brunswick address, driver’s license, and license to practice law. Though not as handsome as his impostor, the real Edward Naylor was the former mayor of Fredericton. Passing for an upstanding citizen must have been Gordon Santy’s idea of a game. We knew the score: the Santys were winning.

  Jenx connected with the Fredericton police, who in turn linked her to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national law enforcement agency to our north. They’re not all on horseback. Who knew? The RCMP reported that Gordon and Ellianna Santy got themselves “into a bit of a jam” while running a gallery in Toronto. Both were indicted for art fraud but managed to vanish before their trial. That was two years ago. The RCMP believed that the Santys had been selling art on the Internet and probably still were.

  Jenx was reporting this to Marilee and me when our cowboy realtor mayor arrived. He doffed his Stetson.

  “Time to put on your crime-fighting hat, Chief. You need to crack this case and make Magnet Springs the safe haven we say it is.”

  Jenx said she’d love to, but there was a problem: The county prosecutor had assigned the case to the MSP.

  “Say that in plain talk,” Gil ordered.

  “It’s up to the state police now.”

  So that his visit wasn’t a total waste, Gil introduced himself to Marilee and gave her his business card. His social gaffe made me groan.

  “Is that your stomach growling, Whiskey?” said Gil. “You ought to try eating more regular. I hear you been drinking your dinner at the bar at Mother Tucker’s. Now that’s just sad.”

  I had to marvel at his original dialect, concocted from bad films and ’50s TV.

  “In case you’re not aware, Gil, Mrs. Gallagher’s husband is the man who died in Noonan’s studio.”

  “Whoa! I thought that was some Canuck named Santy! My apologies, ma’am.”

  Marilee nodded graciously and excused herself to powder her nose. I half-expected Gil to ask for his card back. Instead, he focused on Jenx.

  “If the state police are stepping all over you, I reckon you’d better nip at their heels. Find out what’s up before the papers do. This kind of publicity’s pure poison.”

  I said sweetly, “I thought scandals made money, Mr. Mayor. By the way, have you sold Murder House yet?”

  Gil guffawed. “I like you, Whiskey, no matter how you conduct your life. Say, I hear the West MichiganRealtors Board has got some questions for you.”

  He winked and walked out.

  Jenx said she had some questions for Noonan, and she’d like me to come along. We agreed to meet at the Goh Cup after Jenx settled Marilee Gallagher at the Broken Arrow Motel.

  “I don’t know what I can add.” Noonan gazed at us over her herbal frappé, a foamy iced beverage created by Peg Goh. I might have ordered one myself if it had come in a palatable color.

  “When we talked to you before, we thought Dan Gallagher was Gordon Santy,” Jenx explained.

  “I told you his name was Dan.”

  “Right. What I’m wondering was—did he seem jumpy to you?”

  “He talked fast and tapped his fingers on my reception desk.”

  Jenx said, “Would it surprise you to learn he was coked up?”

  Noonan looked distressed. “I can usually detect things like that.”

  “Frappé too sweet?” Peg Goh asked, noticing Noonan’s frown as she cleared a nearby table.

  Jenx explained that we were reviewing Tuesday afternoon’s events in light of new evidence.

  “Is this about the man from Canada who died on your table?” whispered Peg, not about to upset any Leaf-Peepers.

  “Except he’s not from Canada,” I said and brought her up to speed.

  Peg slipped into the empty fourth chair at our table.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” she told Jenx. “After you brought in that photo of the dead man, I remembered something.”