by Nina Wright
I’d last seen Abra that morning when she scooted past me through the breezeway connecting my kitchen with my garage, and then bolted out the open door. A squirrel had caught her eye. She’s a sight hound, after all.
I had neither the time nor the speed to chase her.
“In case you didn’t know,” I told Jeb, “Afghans can gallop up to thirty-five miles per hour, turn on a dime, and jump seven feet from a standing position.”
“Impressive stats,” he agreed.
“Damn straight.”
I couldn’t have competed with those numbers back when I captained my high school volleyball team. And that was sixteen long years ago.
I’d left the garage door open for Abra, hoping she’d return on her own. Her habit, however, was to find trouble before she found her way back home.
“She always shows up eventually,” Jeb said.
“So far,” I said.
There were times I wished she’d stayed gone even though she was my late husband’s last misguided gift to me. When Abra stole precious jewels or a priceless painting, for example, some folks thought I’d trained her to do it. Please. I couldn’t train her to come when I called.
By now Jeb and I were less than two miles from Vestige on a wide country road. He floored the accelerator, treating us both to a taste of fine German engineering.
“Hard to believe you owe this Beamer to Fleggers!”
I was referring to the phenomenal success of his recent Animal Lullabies CD, put out by Dr. David’s group and then picked up by a major label. Deely had discovered by accident that Jeb’s voice soothed the savage beast, a.k.a. Abra. Unlike his previous attempts at blues, Celtic, country, rock, and rockabilly, this CD did not land in remainder bins. This CD was a hit. Who knew there were so many affluent people with pets in need of musical solace?
As we approached my property, I removed the makeshift icepack from my right eye to fully enjoy the view. The late great Leo Mattimoe had launched me in real estate and the good life. I’d lost him far too soon. But he’d left me Vestige, a trace not only of the old farm that had once occupied this coastal promontory, but also of our love. Now the sun rode low over Lake Michigan, making the big water beyond my house glow like fire and sending spears of light through leaves turning yellow, orange, and red. It was late September, too deep in the year for water sports, but the perfect season for reveling in Nature’s visual bounty.
“Is that Velcro?”
Jeb’s question shattered my serenity. He could only be talking about the teacup-sized shitzapoo, technically shih-poo, that I’d recently returned to my neighbors after they’d tried to palm him off on me. Sure enough, a tiny black furball bounced across the lawn directly toward us. Yipping at top pitch and full volume.
Fortunately, a boy appeared behind the designer dog. The very boy to whom the dog now rightfully belonged.
“Hey, Chester!”
As I greeted my eight-year-old neighbor, Velcro circled my ankles in his customary frantic fashion. Now that he no longer lived with me, I could tolerate brief bouts of neediness. Velcro’s, in addition to Chester’s.
“What are you two doing here?” I said.
“We’re locked out,” Chester explained, and I knew he wasn’t referring to my house. I had left the place wide open. For Abra’s convenience.
“Your mom’s… gone… again?”
He nodded. Then we all turned in the direction of an exuberant woof. Amber-gold Prince Harry the Pee Master loped across the lawn from the direction of the Lake. Prince Harry is Abra’s illegitimate son and Chester’s first dog. Suddenly I had three new roommates: one kid and two canines. Me, who tried to avoid all dogs and most children.
Chester’s mother was Cassina, the single-named pop-harpist diva. She, her son, his father, and their ever-changing staff inhabited the Castle, a twenty-thousand square-foot manor house just up the coast. Cassina toured frequently and imbibed more often than that. She was also on questionable terms with Chester’s father, her on-again, off-again manager. As a result, Chester seldom enjoyed parental supervision. Rupert, his father, had hired MacArthur, known as “the cleaner,” to look after loose ends at the Castle. I had also hired MacArthur to help me sell real estate. The man was versatile: a licensed Realtor and chauffeur and someone skilled at making sticky situations go away. Oddly, he was now living with my stepdaughter, or rather she and her kids were living with him, in his rooms at the Castle. Since MacArthur was a hunk, and Avery was a shrill screaming bitch, I could only assume she was blackmailing him.
“Avery and the twins are gone, too?” I asked Chester.
“Nobody answered the door. And I forgot my key. Again.”
I suspected that Chester lost his key on purpose. No doubt he got lots more attention at my house than at the Castle. Besides, he adored Abra. He’d even had some success training her using tips downloaded from the Dogs-Train-You-dot-com website. Now that I thought about it, having Chester around for a few days might be a good thing. If Abra came back. Assuming, also, that Chester could keep Velcro away from my ankles and prevent Prince Harry from peeing on my floors.
Honestly, though, I couldn’t imagine a world in which having three dogs was better than having no dogs at all. I had just closed my eyes to recall the tranquility of life before hounds when a car horn rudely honked. Unfamiliar but expensive sounding. A foreign car, for sure.
“Hey, Susan!” Jeb called out.
I opened my eyes. The lashes on my right eye stuck together, but I could still make out my ex-husband’s other Number One Fan. Susan Davies had pulled her bright white Audi into my driveway. A whole hour early. With no Abra in sight.
Chapter Three
As promised, Susan Davies wasn’t alone. She’d brought along matronly Ramona Bowden, her co-breeder, a term I found faintly salacious. But Susan’s opening remark canceled those speculations.
“Someone is trying to kill me.”
Because she didn’t scream it, I thought at first she was trying to be funny. Then I got my eyelashes unstuck and saw that her pallor was genuine. So were the bullet holes in her car.
Visibly shaken, Susan said, “Someone shot at us! About a mile up the road.”
Her otherwise spotless Audi sported two black holes in the door near the left rear tire.
“I’m about to pass out from the shock,” announced Ramona. And then she did, collapsing in my driveway like a deflated balloon. Finally I had met someone who fainted as easily as I did.
Jeb attended to Ramona. He was a gentleman that way. Since it was my driveway that she was lying on, I probably should have done something. In my defense, however, I was the one who usually fainted, so I didn’t know how to respond when someone else did it. Jeb gently elevated her head, patted her wrist, and repeated her name until she came to. When she fluttered her cow eyes at him, I suspected Ramona of staging the faint. Uncharitable of me, I know, but she clearly craved attention, specifically of the male variety. As Jeb helped her sit up, she moaned and sighed, acting far weaker than a fifty-year-old woman of her plus-sized proportions should.
“Somebody, get me water,” she gasped.
She had to say it twice before I realized that “Somebody” meant me. Ramona seemed to assume that I existed to serve. Her. Fortunately for both of us, Chester was faster and more motivated to please. He dashed into my house and quickly returned with a tall glass of tap water. Ramona asked Jeb to hold it to her lips so that she could sip it, slowly.
“I would have put ice in it,” Chester said, “but Whiskey’s icemaker’s broken, and she always forgets to put water in the trays.”
“Yes, whiskey. A wee dram would be nice,” Ramona panted.
Although Chester knew the meager contents of my kitchen better than I did, he generally deferred to me on the matter of my liquor cabinet. Out of politeness, rather than ignorance, I was sure. Given his parents’ debauched lifestyle, he was probably well-versed in the types and effects of alcohol.
“Scotch or bourbon?” I aske
d Ramona.
“Johnny Walker Black would be nice,” she sighed, never taking her eyes off Jeb.
Perhaps it wasn’t Susan Davies who lusted after my ex, after all. I had barely had time to size up the builder’s wife. This would have been the perfect moment to do so, while Jeb had his hands full of Ramona. But it didn’t seem right to dispatch an eight-year-old for a bottle of booze. So I had to go play barmaid.
A surprise awaited me on the sofa in my library-slash-bar: Abra the Afghan hound, fast asleep, missing all the human action. A day on the loose hadn’t improved her hairstyle. Her tangled blonde tresses were now adorned with dried leaves and twigs.
“So this is the famous Abra!”
I jumped when I heard the voice behind me. Susan Davies had followed me inside and now beamed at the sleeping hound.
“More like the infamous Abra,” I said. “Sorry about the state of her coat, but she got away from me today-“
“Why be sorry? This is what Ramona and I were hoping for. The dog is a complete and utter mess!”
As if to punctuate that pronouncement, the dog farted.
“Perfect,” Susan murmured.
“Abra showed up about four o’clock,” Chester announced, joining us in the library. “Whiskey, you forgot to put out food for her. Again.”
“Wonderful!” Susan remarked happily.
“So I fed her,” Chester told me. “I gave her fresh water, too.”
“And who are you?” Susan inquired.
“I’m the neighbor. I come here a lot.”
“I see. You have to let the dog in and feed her because Whiskey forgets to. This is almost too good to be true!”
If Susan got any more excited, I was afraid she’d have an orgasm in front of the kid. The color had returned to her patrician face. Her sleek chestnut hair and piercing blue eyes would make any man look twice. Then there was her body: trim but nicely curved. I imagined she was quite distracting in a tennis dress or golf shorts.
“Do you really think somebody’s trying to kill you?” Chester asked Susan, sounding more like a reporter than a curious child.
“I’m sure someone shot at my car,” she said evenly.
“Somebody doesn’t like you,” Chester observed.
Probably someone whose husband does like you, I thought. No question about it; Susan was a potential threat to most of the female population. Or could be if she liked to flirt.
“I’m a little nervous about going to the show this weekend,” Susan admitted.
“What show?” I said.
“The one we’ve invited you and Abra to: the Midwest Afghan Hound Specialty. In Elkhart, Indiana.”
“Elkhart?”
I wrinkled my nose. I had assumed the show would be in a real city. Like Chicago.
“Actually, it’s just outside Elkhart. In Indiana Amish Country,” Susan said.
“Amish Country?”
I sounded like a slow student. The kind who learns by repeating everything.
“Yes. It’s being held at a convention hall in Nappanee.”
“Nappanee?”
“That’s what she said,” Chester confirmed. “The Midwest Afghan Hound Specialty is in Nappanee, near Elkhart, in Indiana Amish Country.”
“Well, at least it’s somewhere safe,” I muttered, wondering how on earth I would kill time there. Shop for cheese?
“It’s not safe at all,” Chester said. “If somebody’s out to get you, Amish Country could be dangerous. Too many open spaces and very few cops.”
I nodded, following his logic. “Plus all those Amish. They look alike, you know.”
Susan and Chester frowned at me. Then Chester said to Susan, “I could recommend a bodyguard. If you’re hiring.”
“Oh no!” I said. “You’re way too young for that kind of work.”
“Not me,” Chester said. “A professional. I was thinking of MacArthur.”
“MacArthur? I thought he was a cleaner. And a driver and a Realtor.”
“He is, but being a cleaner is mostly about being a bodyguard. That’s his job when he’s with Cassina and Rupert.”
“Really?”
I was under the impression that MacArthur’s main job was keeping Cassina sober.
“But MacArthur’s not available,” I said. “He works part-time for me.”
Chester pulled a face. “Nobody’s buying or selling real estate!”
He extracted a business card from the inside pocket of his school blazer and handed it to Susan.
“I happen to know that MacArthur is looking for work this weekend,” he told her.
“You said he was gone,” I protested. “You said nobody was at the Castle!”
“I said nobody answered the door. Cassina and Rupert are in Brazil for some R and R. They left their bodyguard at home.”
“What about Avery and the twins? Where are they?”
“At a New Age ‘Mommy and Me’ retreat in Sedona,” Chester replied. “MacArthur was probably taking a nap when I knocked. He gets bored when everybody leaves the Castle.”
Before I could comment, three shots rang out in rapid succession. A woman, presumably Ramona, screamed theatrically.
What Susan, Chester, and I did next wasn’t smart, but it was expedient. We dashed to the nearest window that faced my driveway and peered out. Sprawled on the pavement next to Susan’s Audi lay a human heap. Jeb had flung himself on top of ample, prone Ramona, who appeared to be not only alive and unhurt but also capable of seizing the moment. Her bejeweled left hand gripped Jeb’s firm ass.
Chester turned to Susan. “If you’re going anywhere with that lady, or in that car, you’d better call MacArthur now.”
“You can call the cleaner later,” I told her. “First, we’re phoning Jenx.”
It was time, once again, to summon the Magnet Springs police force to my home. Fortunately, I had the chief on speed dial.
Chapter Four
To call it the Magnet Springs “police force” is an exaggeration. It’s really the full-time chief and her trained canine, plus one part-time officer. The officer, Brady Swancott, is a nice enough, smart enough guy, but he’s better suited to pursuing online degrees than felons. So I was glad when Chief Judy “Jenx” Jenkins answered her own phone.
“Whassup, Whiskey?”
I could hardly understand her.
“Are you eating?” I said.
“Yup. Dinner. It’s that time of day. Somebody better be in serious trouble.”
I assured her that somebody was and reported the gunshot incidents. Both of them. Jenx chewed thoughtfully.
“Nobody’s hurt, right?”
“Right. Although there are bullet holes in a very nice white Audi. And a large, dramatic woman is lying in my driveway. She’s attached herself to Jeb.”
“Jeb can defend himself,” Jenx said. “But we should probably do an incident report on the shootings. You think the shooter’s on your property-or across the road?”
I hadn’t thought about it. The question raised hairs on the back of my neck.
“Tell ya what I’m gonna do,” Jenx said and burped. “Brady’s out on rounds with Officer Roscoe. They checked in ten minutes ago from your side of the township. I’m gonna send ‘em over to Vestige, siren off. Just in case the shooter’s still around. Maybe we can catch him off guard. You know what you need to do, right?”
“Hire private security?”
“We’ll talk about that later. For now, stay inside and keep away from the windows.”
I took a giant step back from the large glass pane facing my driveway. Susan and Chester did the same. We were safer that way, but I hated to lose the view of Jeb and Ramona. Apparently either she or the car she had come in was the target of someone with a long-range rifle. And she desperately craved attention. My ex had never been fond of heavy women, or of females who required a lot of pampering. Hence his attraction to lean, mean, independent me. But for now he was stuck catering to zaftig, needy Ramona.
“Is Chester there?
” Jenx inquired.
“As a matter of fact, he is.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“If it’s about keeping him safe, I got it covered.”
“This is police business, Whiskey. Chester is on active duty as a volunteer deputy. I want to update his instructions.”
Since I was also a sworn-to-serve volunteer deputy, I asked for my instructions.
“You’re on hiatus,” Jenx said.
Like a professional, Chester excused himself to take the call in the next room. That left me alone with Susan, who seemed completely at ease with silence. I, on the other hand, had a lifelong compulsion to supply meaningless chatter. As Susan moved about my library, studying recumbent Abra from every angle, I considered several conversation starters. Unfortunately they all involved Jeb. Since I wasn’t yet sure he was worth fighting for, I stifled my natural tendency to talk.
Susan stared at my still-snoozing canine. “How can she sleep through gunshots?”
“Practice,” Chester offered, reentering the room. “We’ve all toughened up.”
“Are you saying that you’ve been exposed to danger?”
Chester shrugged. “I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve fallen through the ice. I’ve worked undercover. If you hang around Whiskey, you take your chances.”
“That’s a fact,” Jeb said from the library doorway. He looked none the worse for gunshots.
“Where the hell’s Ramona?” I said. “Don’t tell me you left her lying on her big fat-“
And then there was Ramona, leaning on Jeb.
“Whiskey,” she whispered hoarsely.
“I am so sorry!” I said. “We haven’t been properly introduced-“
“She means she wants whiskey,” Jeb translated. “Did you forget her drink order?”
“Johnny Walker Black,” Chester reminded me. To Ramona, he said, “Straight up or with a little water? Sorry, but Whiskey’s fresh out of ice and mixes.”
