Whiskey with a Twist

by Nina Wright

  I needed to speak with him about several issues, starting with the little matter of returning Yoda, a.k.a. Boomgarden, to his rightful owner. That would break Peg Goh’s heart. Now that the damned Devon rex was tattooed on her arm, she’d have a permanent reminder of the pet she’d only briefly been allowed to love. I hoped that Perry would find a way to make her sacrifice bearable. Selfishly, I also hoped he’d tell me who among those present might have had a motive to kill Mitchell Slater and injure Ramona Bowden.

  Before my Walk of Shame was aborted, Perry had suggested we meet at the concession stand. He might be there now since it was the most likely gathering place for agitated attendees. I, for one, was in urgent need of refreshment, both to keep up my strength and to shut up my growling tummy.

  With a dog missing and a breeder wounded, the event chairperson had to feel like the kid with his finger in the leaking dike. Pretty much how I felt at that moment. Or at any moment when Abra was out of control.

  Rounding the building on my way to the side entrance, I nearly collided with my former nanny Deely Smarr. Trained by the Coast Guard in Damage Control, that was precisely what she was doing now. For the Other Side. First and foremost, Deely was a Flegger. She was also in love with Dr. David, so her role here was to disrupt the dog show. Posted at the propped-open side door, Deely used a megaphone to blast an antispeciesist message into the exhibit hall.

  “What if human beauty pageants were like dog shows? Think about it! The judges could check out any part of your anatomy. And they would make you jog around the ring, naked! You would have to prove you had the ‘right’ heritage to be considered beautiful. Could any of you be ‘best in show?”

  Deely had a point. An obscure and irrelevant point as far as this crowd was concerned. She was still holding the megaphone to her lips when I tapped her shoulder and suggested she step away from the door before someone called Security. Someone like Perry Stiles.

  Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I spun around to face Kori Davies. She looked past me at Deely.

  “You got cojones, sister! I like your style.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” replied Deely.

  Hastily I made the introductions. “Kori, this is Deely Smarr, former Coast Guard nanny and founding Flegger. Deely, this is Kori Davies. She’s… um-”

  “I’m a Bad Example,” Kori said. “But I have way more fun than those tight-asses.”

  She indicated the people in the arena… who were moving rapidly toward us. Like a lynch mob.

  “Silverado ran away,” I told Kori. “With Abra.”

  “Yeah. I heard.”

  Kori blew a whopping big pink bubble. Angry Afghan hound fanciers, led by Perry Stiles, were closing in on us; I could almost see the whites of their eyes. Standing between Deely the protestor and Kori the rogue handler suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

  Deely spoke into her megaphone again: “We come in peace, but we stand in opposition! We see you for who you are: two-legged animals enslaving four-legged animals! Repent now! Set your fellow creatures free!”

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?” I whispered. “If they set the dogs free, they’d be strays.”

  “Not ‘strays,’” Deely corrected me. “Independents. Animals in possession of their full rights and privileges.”

  “Yeah, well, Abra and her brand-new beau are ‘independents’ already. They set themselves free.”

  “I know,” Deely said. “Dr. David and I saw them run by while we were setting up.”

  Before I could ask which way they had gone, Kori tugged on Deely’s arm.

  “Perry Stiles is gonna throw your ass in the slammer!”

  “Not if I can help it, ma’am. I’m wearing running shoes.”

  “Me, too,” Kori said. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  I waved at Perry, and then I ran, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Over my shoulder, I shouted to Perry Stiles, “Meet you at the concession stand!”

  I didn’t know if he heard me. Kori and Deely had set quite a pace. I was pushing hard to catch up. They had shot off toward the front of the exhibit hall, in the opposite direction one would take to reach the spot where Ramona was shot. The exhibit hall faced the RV lot and the back of the Barnyard Inn. Although the Midwest Afghan Hound Specialty was under way, a few off-duty show dogs were parked in outdoor crates near cottage-sized vehicles. They howled as we hove into view. Poor beasts. If they were anything like Abra, and somewhere under those perfect glossy coats they had to be, they just wanted to join in the run.

  Deely and Kori reached the lot well before I did. Although I wanted to blame my lagging speed on my footwear, I recognized the real culprit: hunger. I’d hardly eaten since leaving Magnet Springs.

  Who was I kidding? The true villain was age. Hunger was just an accomplice. Running behind Kori and Deely, who were in their early twenties, I felt more decrepit than my mother. Pumping my thirty-four-year-old legs as hard as I could didn’t promise speed. It promised sore muscles and a stinging dose of reality. I wasn’t young anymore. I was sliding toward middle age.

  By the time I reached Deely and Kori, they’d already gotten their wind back-if they’d ever lost it. Deely was introducing Kori to Dr. David, who stood on a makeshift stage surrounded by Fleggers. I knew they were all Fleggers because everybody wore bright yellow shirts with black block letters that proclaimed

  YOUR DOGS DESERVE DIGNITY.

  WHY MAKE THEM COMPETE IN

  AN EVENT YOU COULDN’T WIN?

  BAN CANINE BEAUTY PAGEANTS!

  I jogged up to the edge of the stage and promptly doubled over, gasping for breath.

  “Hewwo, Whiskey,” said Dr. David with his signature speech impediment. Allow me to translate the rest of his remarks: “Told you we’d be here! Sorry to hear about Abra running away. Again. Wish we could help.”

  “Oh, please help!” I panted. “Please, please help!”

  Around Magnet Springs, Dr. David-in his Animal Ambulance- was the dogcatcher of last resort. I tried not to count the number of times he’d assisted me in looking for Abra.

  The good vet leaned down from the stage.

  “I don’t think you understand. Deely and I are here in an official capacity. We can’t retrieve the very dogs we admonish owners to set free!”

  “Oh shit.”

  This time finding Abra was going to be entirely up to me. And I didn’t know the territory.

  “But we can tell you which way the dogs went,” Deely said helpfully.

  She pointed toward the Barnyard Inn. We were looking at the back of the building, the section that housed my room. The motel faced Route 20.

  “Did they cross the highway or follow it?” I asked without enthusiasm.

  “Neither,” Deely said. “They’re in room 18.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Abra was chasing the big silvery dog, running loops around the RV lot-”

  “Abra was chasing Silverado?” I interrupted. “When I last saw them, he was chasing her!”

  “Not by the time they got here,” Deely said.

  “That’s right,” Dr. David confirmed. “By then Abra had assumed her usual role as sexual aggressor.”

  He pronounced it “sexuah aggwessah.” That made it sound even worse.

  “The male dog-I think you called him Silverado?-left the RV lot and ran to the motel,” Deely continued. “Abra followed him in hot pursuit.”

  No doubt.

  “When Silverado scratched at the door of room 18,” Deely said, “somebody let them in.”

  “Not room 18,” Kori said. “That can’t be right.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure it is. Dr. David and I were both witnesses.”

  The good vet nodded. So did the entire chorus of Fleggers arranged on the stage.

  “Why couldn’t it be room 18?” I asked Kori.

  “Because that’s my room. And I’m out here. Duh.”

  “Somebody was in there ten minutes ago, ma’am
,” said Deely. “We all saw it.”

  Dr. David and his yellow-shirted compatriots agreed.

  “The bitch set me up,” Kori muttered.

  I assumed we weren’t talking about Abra anymore. Just to be certain, I asked.

  “Who do you think I mean?” Kori snapped. “My favorite auntie! Susan wants to make damn sure everybody knows I’m a Bad Example. She’s getting back at me for winning that round!”

  “Why would having Silverado in your room be wrong?” I said.

  “Susan wants to make it look like I’m trying to steal him! First, I set him free. And then I hid him in my room. But she did it herself!”

  “I don’t see how,” I said. “Even if Susan set him free, she couldn’t have been in your room to let him in. There was no time-“

  “She got somebody to do it for her! Susan has ways of making people do whatever she wants.”

  Kori narrowed her eyes and blew a bubble half the size of her head. I stepped back in case it exploded. No need. Kori deftly deflated it with her metal tongue stud and rolled the whole wad back into her mouth.

  “The plan, if there was one, has a downside,” I pointed out. “They got Abra, too. And that bitch is no bargain.”

  Kori asked Deely and Dr. David if the person who opened the door was a man or a woman. Neither could say, so they consulted their team of Fleggers. No one had actually seen the whole human.

  Kori spat her gum on the ground. I assumed that meant she was annoyed, so I changed the subject.

  “Hey, I’m next door to you. In room 17.”

  “No shit. Your puking kept me up half the night.”

  I was about to apologize because that’s what Midwesterners with low self- esteem do. There was no time, however. At that moment every head in the vicinity-including those on the Fleggers’ stage and those inside the RV park dog crates-turned toward the roar in the sky.

  The sound stirred memories; I’d once ridden in a helicopter and endured the deafening whine of the engine, plus the whup-whup of the blades. As the craft drew closer, everyone who could covered his ears. The dogs had to settle for howling.

  At first I thought it was a cop helicopter, zooming in to investigate Ramona’s shooting. After all, this was the third round of gunfire at the Barnyard Inn-and the second round aimed at Ramona-in less than twenty-four hours. Somebody was obliged to check it out.

  It wasn’t the police, however. After the craft landed neatly in the parking lot, the second person out the door was Odette Mutombo. She followed a man who jumped athletically from the helicopter and then offered his hand to help her down. Wearing what I recognized as her favorite Armani suit, Odette gracefully disembarked.

  The man wore a flack jacket, jeans, and boots; his still-thick hair was an equal blend of brown and silver. I couldn’t help but notice he stood so close to Odette that their shoulders touched. She threw back her ebony head and laughed. Then he slid an arm around her waist, and they started toward us.

  I was about to meet Liam Davies. At last.

  Perry simply couldn’t have been right about Liam and Odette. I’d known Odette for years, and I refused to believe she would betray her husband. Not even for the biggest commission check of her life.

  And yet… watching her with Liam stirred an old, happy memory. The only man who’d ever made me laugh like that while doing business was my late husband Leo. And when we weren’t working, we were having great sex.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “We were en route to Chicago to meet with Liam’s architect. The pilot got a radio message from Jenx that Ramona had been shot, so Liam decided to swing by the dog show to make sure Susan was all right.”

  That was Odette’s story, and I had no doubt she would stick to it. My star salesperson had just introduced me to the man who might make both of us considerably richer. Provided that his plans for Big and Little Houses on the Prairie got off the ground as smoothly as his chopper.

  Liam Davies was not a tall man. Nor was he what I could call handsome. But he had a quality worth way more than good looks alone: charisma. I suspected that Liam had started out in sales and worked up to much bigger things. Like convincing investors to loan him scads of cash with the promise of delivering office buildings, shopping malls, and subdivisions.

  Now Odette stood on his right side, and Kori stood on his left. Neither acknowledged the other, but both seemed pleased to have at least some of the Great Man’s attention. And to have one of his arms around each of their waists.

  “How’s my favorite niece?” Liam asked Kori.

  “I won my round, but I lost the dog.”

  I had to admire how succinctly she summed that up.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get you another,” Uncle Liam said.

  “It was Susan’s dog,” Kori said.

  For just an instant I thought he was going to pat her on the head. Instead Liam turned to me.

  “Your sales agent is brilliant! She has a contact list that could rival Donald Trump’s!”

  Everybody in west Michigan knew that Odette was the best schmoozer on this side of the Lake. So I merely nodded.

  “I’m going to introduce O. to my Chicago contacts,” the developer said.

  “’O.’?” I repeated. “Odette lets you call her ‘O.’?”

  “Doesn’t everyone call her that?”

  “Not if they want to keep their teeth.”

  “Whiskey is funny,” Odette told Liam. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “She’s not that funny,” Kori said.

  I stared at O.’s perfectly marcelled waves. How the hell had they remained unruffled by the chopper’s tornadic blades? Come to think of it, shouldn’t Liam’s short hair also be mussed? I was pretty sure mine was a mare’s nest, and I hadn’t been that close to the copter. Maybe O. and L. were already sharing hair gel.

  “And now if you’ll excuse me,” Liam said, “I need to find my wife. Could you direct me-?”

  The eavesdropping members of Team Fleggers pointed as one to the exhibit hall.

  “Thank you,” Liam said, acknowledging the group onstage. “I like your shirts. Never been a dog-show enthusiast myself.”

  “Me, neither,” Kori announced. “Susan made me do it.”

  We all watched as she and her uncle jogged together toward the arena. Then I arched my eyebrows at “O.” and waited for the rest of her story. She arched hers back at me but said nothing. We went on like that for a minute or so. I could feel the Fleggers’ collectively curious gaze.

  “Can we step away from the nut jobs?” Odette asked. “Or did Dr. David draft you, too?”

  “Nope. I’m still a free agent.”

  I gestured toward the motel, thinking we might adjourn to my room.

  “Definitely not,” Odette said. “I refuse to set foot in any establishment known as the Barnyard Inn. Isn’t there a Starbucks around here?”

  “We’re in Amish Country,” I said. “The best we can hope for is a cheese bar.”

  “Where are the Amish?” Odette asked. “I didn’t see any as we flew in.”

  “I’ve been wondering that, too, ever since I got here! The closest I’ve been to anything Amish is holding one of their brochures.”

  “It’s a scam,” Odette intoned. “There are no real Amish anymore. Only actors.”

  “I don’t think that’s true…”

  But suddenly I wondered if it might be.

  “We could take my car,” I suggested. “Drive around a little. See if we can find us some Amish. Some real Amish.”

  “What about Abra? Did you lose her again?”

  “Only for a few minutes this time. She’s in room 18 with her new boyfriend. Don’t ask.”

  Odette declined my Amish search invitation. She expected to be airborne again soon.

  Trying to sound neutral, I said, “What’s up with you two?”

  “We’re getting the word out on Big and Little Houses. Working night and day.”

  “Mostly nights?”

  “Wha
tever it takes to get the job done,” Odette replied blandly. “Liam is tireless.”

  Before I could insert my foot all the way into my mouth, my cell phone rang. The tune of the ring told me it was my ex-husband. Odette knew it, too.

  “Tell Jeb I said hello. Also, tell him to take better care of you. You don’t look good.”

  “Always nice to be jacked down.” I fumbled for my phone.

  “Whiskey, I’m going to sell every last home in that subdivision,” Odette said. “Don’t ask me how. Don’t ask me when. And for god’s sake don’t accuse me of anything. Just because you can’t trust your man doesn’t mean you can’t trust other men. Now go get sleep or food or sex. Whatever it takes to make you human again!”

  She stalked off, and I opened my phone in time to catch Jeb.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He wanted to know about the latest shooting. Both Jenx and MacArthur had already called him.

  “What I really want to know is why you didn’t call me,” he said.

  Jeb didn’t sound like his laid-back self. He sounded either hurt or annoyed. Maybe both. I tried to explain that there was too much going on, what with Abra departing and Fleggers arriving.

  “Abra runs away every chance she gets,” he said. “And you knew Dr. David and Deely were coming. Those aren’t excuses, Whiskey. You should have called me.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe I needed you to call me. So I could be sure you care. Sometimes I’m not sure you do.”

  “You’re not sure I care?”

  “Sometimes, no, I’m not. Sometimes you seem more interested in other people.”

  “What other people?”

  “Like the person who invited me here. You told me I should go to the show. You said it might help my business if I did. And I believed you. But now I think you just wanted to please Susan Davies!”

  The silence on the other end of the phone was thunderous.

  “Hello?” I said finally.

  “I’m speechless,” Jeb said. “If you believe what you just said-. Well, I have nothing to say.”