by Nina Wright
“What’s going on up there, baby?” McKondin asked. “You’re too quiet. I like to hear my girls talk.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The next sound that reached our ears was a canine chorus. I’m not talking about Jeb’s Celtic music, either. This was the kind of racket that only Abra and son could make.
“Uh-oh,” Roy said from his post at my bedroom window. “Looks like Jeb let the dogs out.”
I had to see for myself. The back porch lamp made my yard into a circle of white light fading to gray and finally black. I peered out in time to see Abra and Prince Harry lope into the darkness.
“You trying to sic your dogs on me?” asked Thomas McKondin.
“No way,” I said into the phone. “My stepdaughter let them out. She likes to exercise them before bedtime.”
“Why doesn’t she use that nice new exercise pen right next to your house?” he said. “You’re lying to me, Whiskey Mattimoe. People who do that pay for it. Big time. I’ll be back.”
The phone clicked in my ear.
“Dammit,” I said. I turned to Roy. “I’ve got to go round up those dogs. This is your best time to leave—before the police arrive. Jeb’s keys are in the ignition. Did Deely find you clothes that fit?”
“They’ll do until I can get something else. Whiskey—.” Roy’s earnest blue eyes searched my face. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’m working on my redemption, just as I said I would. You’ll understand when I come back. I swear you will.”
I nodded, but my mind was racing in other directions. “Good luck, Roy. Be careful out there.”
I slipped on my socks and hiking boots and took off down the hall at a run. When I turned the corner, I smacked right into Avery.
“Jeb said you’re on the phone with some guy who talks dirty,” she said. “What are you, a whore?”
“That would imply that I work for a living. Wish I could say the same about you.”
I slipped past her, ran down the steps, and paused at the hall closet long enough to grab my coat, earmuffs, and gloves. Casting a nervous glance back up the stairway, I hoped that Roy’s time in prison had taught him about stealth. Surely he wouldn’t attempt to clear the upstairs until he knew Avery was elsewhere.
The temperature outside seemed to have dropped ten degrees since I came home, mainly because a breeze had picked up. Anyone who lives her whole life in the North Country can instantly estimate wind-chill factor. My exposed flesh registered minus ten degrees Fahrenheit. And I was wearing pajamas under my coat.
“Abra! Prince Harry!” I called, crunching through the snow as fast as my feet would allow. “Here, girl! Here, boy!”
I had entered the Dark Zone, that nocturnal void beyond the circle created by the porch lamp. My property gave way to a deep forest on the south, to Lake Michigan on the west, and to Cassina’s Castle, set off across a broad field to the north. My home faced east, toward the road, but I was in the back yard, following the barks. They were coming from the woods. Although faint moonlight glinted off the Lake, the forest swallowed all illumination. I slowed, listening. The last thing I needed to do was trip and fall. Or get lost in the woods. I cursed myself for not bringing a flashlight.
The dogs barked again. I swore they sounded closer than the last time. But a heavy snow cover can intensify sound, and wind can blur its origin.
“Here, Abra, here Harry, here baby!” I shouted.
“Oh-baby-ohhhhhh.” The male voice was so close to my ear that my blood froze. “You didn’t have to chase me all the way into the woods. You must want it real bad.”
Instinctively, I swung around and kicked with all my might, my right foot connecting with something solid. Through the sole of my boot the shape felt right; I had hit my target. The male yelp confirmed it.
“Damn you, bitch!”
The darkness was so complete that I could barely discern McKondin’s face, but I knew the voice. I also recognized my window of opportunity: I should kick him again to disable him and then get the hell away. I did, landing my second boot swing squarely in his jaw. I felt a bone crack. He made a sound like someone choking on his own tongue. No mercy for aggressors. Skin clammy, mouth dry, I stumbled on through the blackness toward the sounds of Abra and Prince Harry.
Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the pitch dark well enough to avoid collisions with trees. Yet I failed to spot a downed sapling, shin-high and covered in snow. Over I went, skidding along the ground on my face. I lay very still for a minute, evaluating my condition. Everything seemed to be intact although my flannel pajama bottoms were now soaked with snow. I shuddered, chilled to the bone. If I couldn’t get back home, I could die of exposure. Scrambling to my feet, I battled a surge of terror. Which way should I go? The dogs had stopped barking, and the dense wall of trees obliterated my sense of direction.
In times of crisis, I talk to myself. Some remote part of my brain takes over as Coach and issues elementary commands. Coach was speaking now, using my mouth, and I was following orders: “Breathe. Step. Step. Rub your legs. Breathe.”
I proceeded like that, not thinking, not worrying, just doing what Coach said . . . until I collided with a man. It was me who screamed, not Coach. And it was Jeb Halloran who held me in his arms till I stopped shaking.
“Good god, Whiskey,” he said after I told him about landing two kicks against Thomas McKondin. “What were you thinking, calling out for the dogs like that? You made yourself a target!”
“On the phone he said he’d be back, so I assumed he was leaving, heading for the road. It didn’t make sense that he’d be in the woods.”
“When you’re dealing with a whacko, never assume,” Jeb said, “and never expect logical behavior.”
“I don’t suppose you have a flashlight,” I said. “or any idea how to get back to the house?”
“No. But I know where Deely Smarr is, and she has both.”
Jeb put his finger to my lips so that I would listen. I did. For a long moment, I heard nothing. Gradually, though, I became aware of a shush-shush sound growing ever closer. When I turned my head toward the noise, I saw a swinging beam of light.
“Over here!” Jeb shouted. “Whiskey and I are over here!”
Then Abra barked, and so did Prince Harry. Deely jogged toward us, flanked by the dogs. They were all three wearing matching parkas.
“So the dogs didn’t get out by accident?” I said.
“Not entirely,” Deely replied. “I was about to take them for a run, but Jeb dashed out the door before I could leash them.”
“Sorry about that,” my ex-husband said.
“No problem. Did you call the police?”
“Jenx is on her way.”
Crouching in the snow, Deely stroked Abra with one hand and Prince Harry with the other. The dogs’ erect tails ticked back and forth like the needle on a metronome.
“It’s a good thing Abra got out,” Deely said. “She made sure we found something the police need to see.”
“What?” I said. “It’s not a dead body, is it?”
Deely turned her wide face up to mine. “How’d you know?”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“It’s Gil Gruen, isn’t it?” I said, trying not to picture the mayor’s bloated body or imagine how it had ended up in my back yard.
“No, ma’am,” said Deely. “It’s a woman.”
“A woman?!” I needed a moment to fit that notion inside my head. “Was she . . . murdered?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. She’s wearing fur.”
The hostility in Deely’s voice was unmistakable. Of course Fleggers would be down on fur.
“Chinchilla, by chance?” I asked, thinking of Mrs. Oscar Manfred Gribble the Third and her similarly clad sister Evelyn Huffenbach. If the dead body belonged to the former, Odette and I had lost a commission; if it belonged to the latter, Chester had lost his grandma.
“I think so, ma’am,” Deely said. “Have you ever seen a chinchilla? While it was alive, I mean?”
“Not that I know of.”
“They’re the most innocent creatures on earth. They look like a cross between a rabbit, a mouse, and a squirrel, but they’re no bigger than a man’s hand.”
“You don’t say. . . .”
“Did you know, ma’am, that 75,000 chinchillas are killed every year to make coats like the one that dead woman is wearing?”
“I did not know that,” I said, taking a small step backward. This was the first time I’d seen the Coast Guard nanny go all anti-speciesist.
She continued, “Chinchillas are crammed into wire cages and forced to breed three times a year. Then, when their fur is ready, they’re either electrocuted or their necks are crushed.”
“Is that a fact. . . .” I tried to catch Jeb’s eye, hoping he might break into a Celtic tune or find some other way to calm her.
“Listen!” he said. We all did. From far off, through the trees and across the snow, came the sound of a coughing engine. It sputtered, gasped, choked, and gasped again before settling into a broken-muffler roar and fading away.
“The Van Wagon,” Jeb concluded. “Roy’s on the road again.”
“You lent him your car?” Deely asked. Her tone was reverential.
“What can I say? The man’s on a quest. I admire that.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “And you’re hoping he’ll fix your car while he’s got it.”
Jeb said, “Judging from the sound, Vestige must be right over there.” He pointed.
“The wind is deceptive, sir,” Deely said. “Actually, Vestige is there.” She indicated the opposite direction.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Positive, ma’am. I have a compass. And, when I passed this way earlier, I left a trail of tangerine peels in the snow.” She played her flashlight beam across Nature’s glistening white carpet flecked with orange-colored scraps.
“Man, you’re good,” Jeb remarked.
“Thank you, sir. You’re good at what you do, too.”
I said, “Here’s a suggestion: Now that we know where the house is, why don’t we go there? Unless you’d rather stand here praising each other while my snow-soaked pajama bottoms freeze to my flesh. . . . ”
“Let’s go,” they agreed.
Abra barked her approval. But Prince Harry wouldn’t budge until he’d taken a long, satisfying leak.
We reached the house at the same time Jenx did. Gratefully I observed that she had refrained from using the siren. No small sacrifice since Jenx loved to use the siren. Her flasher was on, though, a red streak of light rhythmically slashing the front of my house. I expected Avery to notice the crimson pulse and burst out the front door in yet another temper tantrum.
“Yo, Whiskey!” Jenx called out as our motley crew approached. “Everybody all right?”
“Everybody except the dead woman!”
Jenx cupped a hand around her ear to show that she hadn’t heard me.
“We’re okay!” I said, deciding to save the shocker until we could see the whites of her eyes.
As if on cue, Avery flung open the front door and surveyed the scene.
“How the hell is a brand-new mother supposed to get any rest around here?”
“Sorry,” Jenx said. “I got a call about a peeping tom on the property.”
“Is that what Whiskey calls her men now?” Avery asked, sneering in my direction. She slammed the front door and clicked the lock.
“You don’t happen to have a spare key, do you?” I asked Deely.
Damage Controlman Smarr produced one.
“Jeb’s right,” I said. “You’re good.”
I took the key from her. By now I was so chilled that my teeth were chattering. I told Jenx, “Deely will fill you in while I put on pants.”
The dogs were intently watching Jenx. Abra probably wondered where Officer Roscoe was. Prince Harry probably didn’t have a thought in his head; he just liked to look at people.
“Should I crate the dogs?” I asked Deely.
She scooped up Abra’s son and handed him to me. He yawned.
“Prince Harry won’t need Jeb to sing him to sleep tonight,” Deely said. “Even though we have the artist on site.”
“What about Abra? Shouldn’t I crate her, too?” I said.
“No. She needs more sight and chase training, which she’s about to get. But you’d better bring me her leash, just in case.”
Prince Harry was asleep before I slipped him in his crate. Avery had retired, hopefully until tomorrow. Although I was exhausted, my nerves tingled when I thought about the unnamed body on my property. This threatened to be a very long and distressing night.
On my unmade bed lay a cryptic anonymous note:
The First Sun of Solace is to do the right thing. That’s where I begin. Thank you.
I tore Roy’s note into a dozen pieces and flushed it down the toilet. Then I got dressed.
By the time I rejoined my group, two more officers had arrived sans siren—Swancott and Roscoe. Abra could barely contain her excitement. She taunted Roscoe with in-the-face views of her private attributes.
“I know you’re concentrating on the rescue and retrieval part of her training,” I told Deely, “but her libido needs a time-out.”
Deely agreed. When she put her hand out to receive Abra’s leash, I realized I’d forgotten to fetch it. I offered to run back inside.
“No. Let’s try her without it,” the nanny said.
“Okay, sure.” I shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Abra assumed the male-aggressor role and began humping Officer Roscoe, who stared off into space.
“You did finally get around to having her spayed, right?” asked Officer Swancott.
“Right!” I said, my face reddening. “It’ll just take me a second to grab that leash.”
“Slow down, Whiskey.” Jenx was trotting along behind me. “I want to tell you something.”
In the shadows at the corner of the house we stopped.
“I passed Jeb’s Van Wagon on my way over here.” Her voice was expressionless.
I said nothing. I couldn’t read her face in the dark.
“Never fails to amaze me how generous he is for a man with so little,” Jenx added.
After a long silence, I felt compelled to say something. So I stammered, “Yeah, well. I guess that’s true. . . . ”
“His good-for-nothing cousins can always count on Jeb to help ’em out,” Jenx said. I could hear rather than see her kicking at the snow. “Wonder who’s the lucky bastard this time? Which one gets to borrow the Van Wagon tonight?”
“I couldn’t say. . . . ”
“Yeah, Jeb wasn’t sure, either. But then he’s got about thirty cousins. Must be hard to keep ’em straight.” She coughed. “Hurry up and find that leash, Whiskey. Deely says we got a corpse to recover.”
The Michigan State Police arrived while I was inside. Unlike our thoughtful local force, they didn’t mute their sirens. Either Leah or Leo was starting to fuss as I dashed from the house. I was grateful to escape before Avery could rise and whine.
When I caught up with my group, Deely had already told the MSP what she knew. The officer clicked on his flashlight and said, “Lead the way.”
He seemed skeptical as Deely fastened Abra’s leash in place.
“That’s not a scent hound,” he pointed out.
“That’s right,” she said. “Neither was Lassie.”
True. But then Lassie wasn’t a blonde bimbo.
Deely’s tangerine-peel trail made Abra’s contributions almost irrelevant. Any of us on our own could have followed the Coast Guard nanny’s well-marked route to the corpse. We just wouldn’t have wanted to.
As we drew near, Abra set up a howl. If you’ve never heard an Afghan hound in extremis, count yourself blessed. The breed makes an unearthly sound that rolls up and down your spine, particularly in a winter woods at night when the bare trees are shuddering.
“Stop!” Deely shoute
d. Everyone did.
Four flashlight beams crisscrossed the scene. After a few beats, they converged on a single object about a dozen paces ahead.
I thought I’d be afraid to look, so my reaction surprised me: I couldn’t stop staring. A well-dressed woman was seated on the ground, her back against the spotted trunk of an old sycamore tree. She wore, as Deely had said, a chinchilla coat. Unfastened, it had slid halfway off her shoulders. Beneath it a short beige dress was visible. She had no hat or gloves. Her legs were splayed, and her feet, incongruously, were bare. I wondered if anyone else had fixated, as I did, on her bright red toenails. They matched her fingernails and shone like spots of new blood in the snow. But there was no blood.
I couldn’t see the woman’s face; it was obscured by the down-turned angle of her head. Her ash-blonde head.
Chapter Twenty-eight
When I crouched for a better angle, my throat tightened. I knew the hair, the face, the dress. Or should I say the uniform.
The dead woman was Mindy the cocktail waitress from Bear Claw Casino. Mother of three. Allergic to cigarette smoke.
That wouldn’t matter anymore.
Personal reactions to death are hard to predict, except in the case of professionals. Jenx, Brady, and the MSP officer were trained to be stoic and respectful, which they were, and to do their jobs, which they did. Deely’s response didn’t surprise me, either. Without a word, she led Abra away. I listened to the Afghan hound’s lament fade into the night.
But Jeb shocked me. He stalked off beyond the range of the arcing flashlights and retched.
I considered going after him, to lay a hand on his shoulder. Except that I didn’t feel so steady myself. I dusted off a snow-covered rock and plopped down, lowering my head between my knees.
“Breathe,” Jenx reminded me as she passed by.
She was studying the scene. I heard the MSP officer tell her and Brady to stop messing up the snow. Jenx reminded him curtly that this was her jurisdiction, too. “I’m a trained tracker. You think you can read a crime scene better than me?”
“No,” he conceded. “But I got the State Crime Scene Unit coming in to do it for me.”
