Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 07 - Whiskey, Large

by Nina Wright

  Sensing my unease, Jeb squeezed my hand. Once again I silently thanked the universe and all things beneficent for giving us a second shot at getting marriage right. Yes, this was happening to my body only, but we were having our baby together. After a bumpy marriage, a fast divorce and a long time apart, we had finally become a solid team, with occasional disruptions from two dogs who may have been spiteful sisters in a previous human life.

  Now we just had to get through the messy childbirth part so that, as Helen had put it, the “best part”—the parenting—could begin.

  My thoughts were rambling when I heard Mom, I mean, Doc, say, “Possibly within forty-eight hours.”

  “What?” I said.

  Jeb kissed me. “Baby could come any time!”

  “I thought we had five days the other day,” I said vaguely.

  “That was three days ago, babe,” Jeb said and kissed me again, harder.

  I turned to Doc. “Aren’t first babies usually late?”

  “They’re often late,” she said, “but I don’t think yours will be. Your baby has dropped into position, and I expect your cervix to dilate soon.”

  “But…but…what about the colostrum? And the contractions? And the mucous plug?”

  “They’ll happen when they happen,” she replied. “Soon.”

  Suddenly, I had the chilling sensation that I hadn’t been paying attention. Nine months had passed, and I was unprepared for what was about to occur. I didn’t even understand what was about to occur.

  “What if my water breaks?” I panted.

  “When your water breaks, you’ll probably be in labor already and in the hospital,” Doc said. “If not, you’ll give me a call, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “This is gonna be great,” Jeb exclaimed.

  He had never sounded happier.

  19

  Helen and the Lincoln Town Car were waiting for us back at Vestige. When she approached Jeb on the driver’s side of my SUV, I wondered if she planned to make nice with him to defuse the tension between her and me.

  She just wanted to know if he’d like some help off-loading me.

  “Thanks, but I got it covered,” Jeb said cheerfully.

  I realized that he probably didn’t know she’d walked off the job.

  When he closed his window, I began, “Last night—”

  “Your mom said you pissed Helen off,” Jeb said. “Don’t do that again, okay? You might need her to drive you to the hospital if I’m not around.”

  I felt a stab of genuine fear.

  “Why wouldn’t you be around? You heard Doc say Baby could come within forty-eight hours.”

  He smiled in an attempt to look reassuring.

  “I was paying closer attention than you were. Doc said Baby could come that soon. More likely you’ll start labor in about forty-eight hours, and first-time labor can go on and on.”

  “I know that,” I snapped. “So why wouldn’t you be here to drive me to the hospital?”

  Jeb took my hands in his. “I will be here, babe, but this afternoon I have to go to Grand Rapids for one more session. You know that. I’ll be home tonight, and then I’m not leaving your side. You’ll get sick of having me around.”

  “You? Never. Sandra? Already happened. Keep that stinky dog away from my big feet unless you want to see me go boom.”

  I grimaced. Go boom? Was I channeling baby-talk now? God forbid I should lose my grasp of the language along with my looks and mobility.

  All I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to contemplate Jeb’s being ninety minutes away at this point in my pregnancy. It meant I’d have to make amends with Helen, for sure. Well, I’d planned to, anyway, because we still might need to hire her as a nanny, but I wanted her to see me sulking for a little while first so she’d understand that I was boss.

  I didn’t say I was behaving maturely.

  The next thing I knew Helen had popped open my door and was beaming a conciliatory smile up at me.

  “Miss Whiskey, I owe you an apology. I never meant to cause you concern last night.”

  The thing was I believed her, but I didn’t want to make up that fast. If Helen felt she owed me something, I had an advantage.

  Jeb nudged me.

  “Tell her it’s okay,” he whispered.

  I just couldn’t. Call me a poor sport, a big baby or even a bitch. I wasn’t quite ready to let bygones be bygones.

  Jeb nudged me again.

  “Uh-huh,” I murmured finally, sounding noncommittal.

  Helen continued sweetly, “As you requested, I stepped away from the vehicle so you could have your ‘alone time.’”

  She put air quotations around the last two words.

  “I heard a ruckus out in that field,” Helen continued. “It sounded like Abra was in some kind of trouble, so I went to see what was going on. I must have dropped my phone along the way. By the time I noticed it was gone, I had walked quite a distance, and it was getting dark. Miss Anouk came along, honked her horn and offered me a ride. I thought I should take it.”

  “I see,” I said although I wasn’t sure I did. “Why didn’t you have Anouk call me so I’d know where you were?”

  Helen blushed. “We were so busy talking about Abra that I forgot everything else. You know how that goes.”

  Indeed, I did. My righteous indignation melted like soft ice cream on an August afternoon.

  Leaning into Helen, I let her lower me from the SUV. Jeb jumped down from his side and hurried around to assist. With help from both of them I made a soft and grunt-free landing.

  “Shall we go inside?” Helen suggested. “I’m sure your mother will want to hear what your doctor had to say.”

  “So she can tweet it?” I asked, half-kidding.

  “Of course,” Helen said. “She has three hundred followers already.”

  “How is that possible?” I demanded when Mom showed me her long list of Twitter followers. “You just got your phone yesterday.”

  “I have a lot of friends,” Mom said. “The real kind. Some are here. Some are in Florida. They all have real friends, too, so now we follow each other. That’s the beauty of social networking, Whitney.”

  Helen nodded. “I’m following Irene and most of her friends. Now I just have to find my phone.”

  I rolled my eyes and narrowly missed tripping over Sandra, who was galloping in a tight circle around us. No doubt she wanted to make sure we appreciated her new ensemble, a pastel leaf-print pantsuit and matching fedora.

  “Chartreuse is not Sandra’s color,” I told Jeb. “It makes her look sallow.”

  “I think it makes her look cute,” he cooed as he scooped up his darling doggie. “Hewwo, Mommy!”

  Jeb waved Sandra’s right front paw at me.

  “I’m not her mommy,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Don’t let Anouk hear you say that,” Jeb remarked. “You love both the de Havilland sisters ‘exactly the same.’ Remember?”

  I groaned.

  “That reminds me,” my mother said, “Jenx called, and you need to call her back.”

  “If she wants Abra again for deputy duty, she can just tell Chester,” I said. “Abra’s at his house.”

  I paused.

  “Unless she isn’t. Oh no. Don’t tell me Abra ran away again.”

  “She didn’t,” Mom said coolly. “This call is serious business about a dog who died in a fire.”

  I would have much rather talked about Abra. Since I’d rarely used my home office in recent weeks, I excused myself to call Jenx. There I could lock the door, sink into my big leather desk chair and pretend I was a professional again.

  “What’s up with the dead dog?” I said when Jenx answered her phone. “Did you get a report back from Lansing?”

  “Nothin’ yet from the State Boys, but we’re still keeping the canine corpse out of the news. I showed a photo from the fire scene to Dr. David. He’s not sure, but he says it could have belonged to the Mullens.”

 
My stomach lurched, just as it had when MacArthur reported what he’d found in the ashes.

  “You still there?” Jenx asked.

  “Feeling queasy,” I replied.

  “Yawn and you’ll feel better.”

  I tried it. She was right.

  Jenx went on, “Turns out Dr. David had his own photo of the Mullens’ dog, and that ain’t all. How soon can you get to the station?”

  I reminded the chief that I’d just seen my OB-gyn. “She pronounced me almost ready to deliver.”

  “Then you’d better get over here fast.”

  Jenx hung up.

  Helen had respectfully excused herself to wait by the Town Car while I made my call. Now I opened the front door and waved to get her attention. She strode directly to me, stopped, saluted and clicked her heels together.

  It was ridiculous, yet it looked good. I saluted her right back.

  “How may I be of service, Miss Whiskey?” Helen said briskly.

  “We’re going to the police station,” I said.

  “Not so fast,” Mom announced from behind me. “Pregnant women feed themselves on schedule, remember? I made those whole-grain blueberry muffins you love. They’re not low-calorie, but they are nutritious.”

  She held out that darned Fleggers lunchbox again.

  Jeb appeared, grinning, over Mom’s shoulder.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “One day soon you’ll be handing Baby a lunchbox like this,” he said.

  “Not like this,” I said. “We won’t encourage our child to think animals should have more rights than people.”

  I told my husband what Jenx had just told me. He turned serious.

  “Want me to go to the station with you?”

  I wanted him to go to the station instead of me, but the sooner Jeb finished his business in Grand Rapids, the sooner he’d be back at my side.

  “Helen will be with me,” I told him.

  My driver nodded enthusiastically.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Jeb. I’ll take excellent care of Miss Whiskey.”

  “I’ll track them both with my new spy app,” Mom announced.

  I stared at her. “Your what?”

  “I downloaded a program that lets me follow family members wherever they go,” she said.

  “Uh, that’s a stalking app, Mom.”

  “Whatever.” Obviously self-satisfied, my mother added, “Don’t be late for dinner, Whitney, and don’t forget to read your own tweets. You have a slight lead over UberSpringer.”

  I frowned, and Jeb kissed me. Then he kissed my belly.

  “I’ll be home with my family tonight,” he whispered to Baby.

  En route to the Magnet Springs police station I inhaled the lunch Mom had packed. I couldn’t remember when a cold meatloaf sandwich had tasted so good. There were no cookies, however.

  Jenx was standing by the curb ready to help Helen extract me from the vehicle. The chief pulled while my driver pushed.

  “I called ahead for assistance on the car phone,” Helen explained.

  “Don’t tell me I’m bigger today than I was yesterday.”

  Jenx said, “No need to tell you if you already know.”

  The two women worked like a well-oiled machine although afterward Jenx had to crack her own spine. I joked that they needn’t worry since I planned to deliver before I required Jaws of Life.

  “Good thing,” Jenx said grimly, “because all we got is a blow torch.”

  Inside the station, Jenx instructed me to sit in her swivel desk chair.

  “I’m fine,” I protested. “You don’t have to give me your chair.”

  “Yup, I do. You might break the other one.”

  Jenx had cleared her desk of the alarmingly tall columns of manila folders that customarily cluttered it. I had never been sure whether she shunned filing or liked hiding behind the piles.

  “Where’d all your files go?” I whispered in case the answer was a secret.

  “I consolidated most of ’em and delegated the rest to Brady. He’s building a database.”

  “You ‘consolidated’ police files?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Except for the stuff your dog stirs up, not much happens here.”

  Now the scratched wood surface of her desk was bare, save four photos from the Mullens’ fire scene. Although they weren’t easy to look at, I forced myself. After all, I told myself, I had already seen the real thing. This couldn’t possibly be worse or even as bad.

  Wrong. Shot from varied angles and distances, the eight-by-ten color photos showed the body of a large dark dog half-buried in burned rubble. I hadn’t seen that atrocity before.

  “Done,” I said and spun Jenx’s desk chair sideways so I couldn’t glimpse the pix in my peripheral vision.

  “You okay?” she said.

  I swallowed and nodded.

  “One more,” Jenx said.

  “Ugh.”

  “This one’s easy, I promise.”

  She removed the first four photos and turned my chair back in line with her desk before placing a single horizontal photo greeting card in front of me. It featured Todd and Lisa Mullen with their arms around a big black dog. The humans appeared to be laughing, and the canine looked happy, too. All three wore red Santa hats.

  Happy holidays from Todd, Lisa, and Diggs.

  “Diggs?” I said aloud.

  “Yup. Dr. David got this card from the Mullens. Diggs was his patient. He was a two-year-old Labradoodle.”

  I knew only too well that our local vet frowned on “designer dog breeds” and, frankly, all practices that offered humans more options than animals. Although Dr. David would have encouraged the Mullens to rescue a neglected or abandoned pet, he no doubt gave their trendy overpriced pooch the best of care.

  I closed my eyes. “So that’s the dog Lisa wanted and Todd didn’t. The dog I saw no sign of at their house.”

  “Yup,” Jenx said. “We got a canine corpse and a positive I.D. on this photo from Dr. David. He’ll do an autopsy. Look at the photo again.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “We need your help here.”

  I sighed and opened my eyes.

  “Remind you of anybody?” Jenx said, tapping the picture.

  “The Mullens, you mean?”

  “The dog.”

  Suddenly, I saw the resemblance.

  “Diggs looks like Napoleon. He’s got the coat of a retriever but the body of a poodle.”

  “Dr. David said so, too.”

  “You think whoever’s shooting at Napoleon is really trying to kill Diggs?”

  “Maybe not kill him,” Jenx said. “Maybe just wound him or send a message.”

  “What kind of message?”

  “A warning, maybe.”

  “To the dog?” I pulled a face.

  “To somebody who cares about the dog.”

  “Well, Todd doesn’t care about him, and Lisa is dead. She didn’t care much about him, either.”

  Jenx nodded, thinking.

  “I can’t put it together yet, but I believe the shooter blew up the Mullens’ house. He thinks the dog’s still alive, so the job isn’t finished.”

  20

  Jenx’s desk phone buzzed, and she snatched it from the cradle. I listened as she listened to the person on the other end.

  “Where? Did you check the number?” she said, seizing a stubby pencil from a coffee mug crammed with them. “Yeah, we had a report of one that went missing in that area. There’s no reward, sir, except the satisfaction of doing the right thing. Uh, that would be theft.”

  She hung up, muttering.

  “What the hell happened to good citizenship? This guy expects a reward for turning in a found cell phone. He said if he’d known we weren’t gonna pay him for it, he would have let his kid keep it.”

  I perked up. “Helen’s cell phone?”

  “Probably. He didn’t check the number, just told me where he found it. The coordinates sound right. I’ll have Brady pick it up f
rom the guy at his house. I don’t trust the jerk to deliver it to the station.”

  Jenx scrawled an address on a scrap of paper.

  “Helen could drive over and get it herself,” I said.

  Jenx frowned. “I thought she was on the clock for you.”

  I explained that technically she was on the clock for Chester and Cassina while she drove for me.

  “Whatever,” the chief said. “Where were we before that asshole called?”

  “Trying to figure out why somebody’s been shooting at Napoleon thinking he’s Diggs.”

  Jenx stood stock still for a long moment, eyes closed. I wondered if she were tapping into the local magnetic fields. Never a good sign.

  “Hello?” I asked cautiously.

  Her eyes flew open, and she snatched the scrap of paper from her desk.

  “I’ll drive,” she said. “Brady can get Helen’s cell phone. We need to take another look at the crime scene.”

  “Which one?” I said.

  There were at least four that I knew of—one arson and three attempted shootings, although the arson wasn’t confirmed.

  “We’ll start with the latest one and work our way backwards from there. Oh, and we’re gonna need your dog.”

  “Are you sure?” I whined. “Chester’s at school, and, in my condition, I can’t handle her.”

  Jenx snorted. “Pregnancy has nothing to do with your inability to handle Abra. I’ll text Chester to join us when he gets home. In the meantime, we’ll send Helen to fetch the bitch and meet us at last night’s field.”

  The chief was already texting. Suddenly, I felt an unfamiliar twinge near where my waistline used to be. It kind of involved my back muscles, too.

  “Whiskey?” Jenx leaned across her desk. “You okay?”

  “Why?”

  “You just groaned. Real loud.”

  “I did? Oh, my God. Could that have been a labor pain?”

  I noticed that my hands were gripping my belly. Tightly.

  “That was probably a Braxton-Hicks contraction,” said Officer Brady Swancott. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, accompanied by Officer Roscoe. “My wife and I have been through this twice. Both times she had practice contractions before the real ones started. Our doctor says that’s how it usually goes.”