Whiskey with a Twist

by Nina Wright

  “Hello, Whiskey. This is Chester. I’m calling with some potentially alarming news.”

  “Chester, just remember, no matter how terrible things seem now, they will get better!”

  “Thank you, Whiskey. This is a courtesy call… to let you know Avery was here. She’s on her way to find you.”

  “Avery?” I had completely forgotten that my evil stepdaughter was due back in town today. “Does she know about…?”

  I bit my tongue before I could mention the missing cleaner.

  “MacArthur leaving? Yes. He wrote her a note, too.”

  Uh-oh. Avery scorned was even scarier that standard Avery. According to her overblown sense of entitlement, people owed her whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it. How dare MacArthur change his mind about being there for her and the twins?

  Avery was no doubt looking for me because she expected me to solve her problems; in other words, provide free room, board, and baby-sitting. The concept of full employment didn’t figure into Avery’s universe. I assumed she’d go straight to Vestige since it was right next door to the Castle. Failing to find me at home would double her frenzy. By the time she arrived at my office, every vein in her neck would be pulsing, and her tongue-flicking tic would be in overdrive.

  “How long ago did she leave the Castle, Chester?”

  “I called you the minute she left.”

  “Good man!”

  “No problem, Whiskey. We’ll talk about MacArthur another time. When you feel up to it.”

  I’d had the call on speaker phone, so Jenx heard every word.

  “Stay calm,” she told me. “It’ll take Avery ten minutes to get here. By then we’ll have at least one good excuse why she can’t move in with you. How about… you have a fatal contagious disease?”

  “I like that! Name one.”

  “Malaria.”

  ”Name another one.”

  “Bubonic plague?”

  My front door clicked again, and my heart clenched. I wasn’t ready for Avery. No way she‘d buy malaria or the Bubonic plague.

  But it wasn’t Avery. Standing in my lobby was none other than Kori Davies. With Abra on a leash.

  “I didn’t have time to groom her for ya, but here she is.”

  I’d never seen Abra more of a mess. Her usually glossy blonde coat was not only tangled and matted, it was also caked with mud. She looked like a street mutt. A brown one, at that. Idly I wondered how much a snood might have helped.

  “I owe you some kind of reward,” I told Kori. What I didn’t add was “assuming you didn’t help steal her in the first place.”

  “Forget about it,” Kori said, cracking her gum. “I was going this way, anyhow.”

  As was always the case at our reunions, Abra showed no interest in my presence although she did wag her tail at Jenx. But that was probably because she associated Jenx with Brady and Brady with Roscoe. Abra was always hot for Roscoe.

  Where were my manners?

  “Uh, let me introduce you two. Chief Jenkins, meet-“

  “Kori Davies.” Jenx finished the sentence herself and extended her hand.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “I know how she knew,” Kori said. “Ya looked me up on NCIC. Right?”

  “Right,” Jenx said. “You have an impressive criminal record. For your age and parole status.”

  “Thanks.”

  I wondered if there was more to Kori than car theft and vehicular homicide. If there was, I decided I’d rather not know about it. Accepting Abra’s leash, I said, “Where did you find her?”

  “Route 20. Not far from that shithole motel. I pulled over, and she jumped in. I took her back to your room, but you’d already checked out. I was just dicking around Amish Country, so she was my excuse to come see Big Mac.”

  “’Big Mac’?”

  “That’s what I call MacArthur.”

  Kori tilted her pelvis provocatively. I gave thanks that Chester was nowhere nearby.

  “I thought you’d gone back to Chicago…”

  “I’m never going back there,” Kori said. “You think Abra’s a bitch? Try living with my aunt Susan. Uncle Liam’s going to help me make my dreams come true. He’s sending me to school in Vegas.”

  “UNLV?” I asked.

  “Bartending school. I’m a natural.”

  “I know it’s none of my business, but aren’t you in a twelve-step program?”

  “I am,” Kori said proudly. “Not AA, though. I’m addicted to sex. Speaking of which, where’s Big Mac? I can’t wait to surprise him!”

  Jenx and I exchanged glances; I caught a twinkle in the chief’s eye. She was leaving this one for me.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news-”

  “Don’t tell me!” she said. “He’s in jail.”

  “No. Why would you guess that?”

  “It happens. So what’s the bad news?”

  “MacArthur’s gone,” I said. “He bugged out last night.”

  She stopped chewing her gum and stared. “Are you shitting me?”

  “No. Sorry. I am not shitting you. He packed up and left.”

  Kori guffawed so hard that her gum flew across the room and stuck to the glass of my front door.

  “You think that’s funny?” I said.

  “Oh yeah. That’s what Big Mac said he was gonna do, and I didn’t believe him!”

  She was still laughing.

  “You’re not mad at him?” I said.

  “Why the hell would I be mad at him? The guy did what he said he was gonna do. That, like, almost never happens!”

  “Ya hear that, Whiskey?” Jenx said meaningfully. “’That, like, almost never happens.’”

  “Let me get this straight,” I told Kori. “Where did Big Mac-I mean, MacArthur-say he was going?”

  “Oh, he didn’t say where. He just said it was time to move on down the road. He’s a rolling stone, that one.”

  Abra farted, and I laughed. I couldn’t imagine why; dog farts had never amused me before. Then Kori took a cell phone call from another boyfriend, somebody named Lance. She promised to “jump his bones” in two hours. They were synchronizing watches as she walked out the door with nary a backward glance.

  I couldn’t help but admire Kori. She was an awesome Bad Example. If the economy were better, she’d make one hell of a Realtor.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Jenx said, “What a bitch.”

  Stretched out across two chairs in my lobby, Abra snored.

  “I’m talking to you,” Jenx said, getting in my face. “Jeb loves you. Why give him a hard time?”

  “Because he’s acting like… Jeb always ends up acting,” I whined.

  “Meaning what?”

  “He loves the ladies and his music more than he can ever love me.”

  Jenx plopped down in Tina’s reception desk chair. She put her steel-toe booted feet, one at a time, on the counter and leaned way back.

  “You know what your problem is, Whiskey?”

  “I have a strange feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  There’s no stopping the law, especially when it takes the form of somebody you grew up with. Somebody who knows you better than your own mother.

  Jenx said, “Jeb would do anything he could for you. Anything you’d let him do. Your problem is you don’t know a good thing when it wants to move in with you.”

  “I know my ex-husband! He never grew up. If he hadn’t connected with Fleggers and cut that Animal Lullabies CD, he’d still be living out of his old Nissan Van Wagon-and liking it!”

  “You’re right,” Jenx said. “It doesn’t take much to make Jeb happy. What the hell’s your problem?”

  “This is about Jeb’s problems!”

  I recited my usual and customary laundry list of Jeb’s faults, starting with his easy attraction to other women. Jenx’s eyes glazed over, but I kept talking, building my case against my ex-husband. When the chief’s cell phone rang, she stood up.r />
  “Hold that thought,” she told me. “Hold it cuz nobody wants to hear it.”

  She stepped away to take the call. A moment later she was grinning at me.

  “Fleggers to the rescue! That was Deely. They found Silverado and Ramona.”

  True to their word, Deely and Dr. David had watched for black Cadillacs all the way home from Nappanee. While filling their tank at a Shell station near Union Pier, they spotted an unattended black Seville parked at an adjacent pump and asked the cashier where the driver had gone.

  He pointed toward the woods behind the station. “She’s chasing her big gray dog. It got out when she opened her door.”

  In other circumstances, Dr. David and Deely might have cheered Silverado’s run for freedom. But they recognized a felony in progress and notified local authorities. Within fifteen minutes, deputies had retrieved and busted Ramona. It took less time for Deely and Dr. David to secure Silverado.

  “He came right to us when we called for him,” Deely told Jenx.

  Dr. David added, “Animals instinctively know that Fleggers are on their side.”

  Maybe some animals. My Bad Example bitch wouldn’t care. Watching her snooze, I doubted she gave a damn about anybody.

  If Abra had a heart, it belonged to one human-Leo-and one dog- Norman the Golden, father of Prince Harry the Pee Master. Sure, she’d looked happy loping along Route 20 with Silverado, but Norman was her real mate. Her soulmate.

  I explained that to Jenx.

  “Remind you of anybody?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I had to dash to the john to barf again.

  Afterwards I put the lid down on the toilet and sat there, head in my hands, telling myself that everything was all right. Or would be eventually. Before I could convince myself, however, the cell phone I’d been looking for earlier rang inside my purse. I scooped my bag from the floor, accidentally dumping half the contents.

  “Have you finished searching for Abra?” Odette inquired when I answered. “And please note that I’m not asking whether you found her.”

  “Duly noted. The answer is yes. You’ll be pleased to know I’m back at the office.”

  “Excellent! Anything new at Mattimoe Realty?”

  “Aside from the fact that Tina doesn’t work here anymore because she was an accessory to her husband, who killed two people and also shot me? Nah. Nothing new.”

  “I see,” Odette said. “Well, I have news from Chicago.”

  Part of me wanted to make sure she’d understood my news. But a bigger part of me needed to know what was happening on her end, so I listened.

  “Last night Liam officially propositioned me, and I officially turned him down. We’re still working together, of course. We’re both mature adults.”

  “Of course,” I said automatically.

  “I thought you had doubts,” Odette remarked.

  “Not about you. Never about you.”

  That was almost completely true. I had certainly wanted to believe that Odette would stay true to Reginald… if only as an antidote to my own doubts about Jeb.

  Then she pressed me for details about Tim and Tina, so I gave her what I had. She was less surprised than I was by the turn of events-further proof, I suppose, of my tendency to tune out unpleasant indicators. Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s the kind of bliss that can cost you.

  Happily for me, Odette was in top form heading into her meeting with Liam’s favorite Chicago investors. No doubt she would dazzle them with her vision of Big and Little Houses on the Prairie. I expected construction to start before all the leaves were off the trees.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Jenx was gone. In her place sat Avery Mattimoe. My first reaction was to run for my life.

  “You look like shit,” Avery said by way of greeting.

  I would have returned the compliment except that Avery looked pretty good. For a big girl with bad skin, thin hair, and a permanent scowl. I gave silent thanks that her tongue wasn’t flicking.

  “Where are the twins?” I said. “Don’t tell me you left them with Chester.”

  “They’re with Peg Goh. She was opening her shop early, in case anybody wants a tattoo before breakfast. She couldn’t wait to hold the twins.”

  Something was different about Avery. And it wasn’t the hint of suntan on her sallow face or the conspicuous lack of tic. Her voice, usually strident, was pleasantly modulated. Serene. How was that possible? MacArthur had just dumped her.

  “Everything all right?” I asked cautiously.

  “Wonderful. We loved our Mommy and Me Retreat in Sedona. I learned so much.”

  “I mean is everything all right at the Castle?”

  In the brief pause before she spoke, I saw Avery compose her response. Her lips moved silently, as if chanting a newly learned mantra.

  “MacArthur is gone. But the twins and I will follow our bliss and find our destiny.”

  She smiled in a way that made me extremely nervous. Probably because Avery never smiled. At moments like this, she ordinarily threw things.

  When I didn’t smile back, she said, “You really do look like shit. And you smell like puke. Are you pregnant?”

  At that point I responded the way Avery usually did: I burst into snotty, snuffling tears.

  “I think so!” I wailed. “I’ve missed two periods! But I’m scared to pee on a stick!”

  At the sound of my sobs, Abra snapped at the air and then sank back to sleep. Avery, on the other hand, took practical action. She reached into her purse and pulled out a home pregnancy test kit.

  “You carry that around with you?” I asked.

  “If you were as fertile as I am, you would, too.”

  My stepdaughter placed it in my palm and closed my fingers around it.

  “Wow,” she said. “I thought you were too old to have sex. Let alone get pregnant.”

  “I’m thirty-four!” I said.

  “Wow,” she repeated, shaking her head in amazement. “Just think, if you have a kid, by the time he starts high school, you’ll be, like-“

  I could see the wheels turning as she struggled with the math.

  “You’ll be forty-eight! That’s older than my dad was when he died. When my kids start high school, I’ll be the same age you are now.”

  She narrowed her piggy little eyes, either picturing herself at my advanced age or imagining my looming decrepitude.

  “How does Jeb feel about being a daddy?” she said. “It is Jeb’s… isn’t it?”

  I watched Avery’s mental machinery grind as she ran the known list of Whiskey’s Possible Sexual Partners. I allowed myself the pleasure of her apparent self-torture as she considered-and discarded-MacArthur from that list.

  “It’s gotta be Jeb’s,” she concluded, more for her benefit than mine. “Have you told him?”

  “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  “You gotta tell him!”

  “This from the woman who never notified the father of her twins.”

  “That was so completely different!” Avery said. “I didn’t even know that guy. You used to be married to Jeb!”

  “And then I divorced him. For a lot of very good reasons.”

  Although now, staring at the pregnancy test kit, I wondered which mattered more: forgiving Jeb or being stubborn enough to raise a kid on my own.

  “You’re right,” Avery said suddenly.

  “About what?”

  I was immediately suspicious since my stepdaughter had never admitted I could be correct about anything.

  She said, “You don’t need Jeb. We can do this ourselves! We can raise our kids together!”

  “I’m not following you…”

  “The twins and I will move back to Vestige. And you’ll hire a nanny for all three kids!”

  I flicked my own tongue and told Avery I’d think about it… as seriously as I’d think about bungee-jumping from the Mackinac Bridge. Then I located a brand-new box of tissues for her; it would come in handy when the
Sedona trance wore off, and she resumed her sobbing, screaming ways.

  Moments later Abra was stretched out on the back seat of my car, snoring. I had locked all the doors in case Avery cracked up fast and tried to join us. Instead of starting the ignition, I stared at my cell phone. Jeb had not called since taking off for Chicago with Susan. About now he’d be playing animal lullabies at her fund-raising country club brunch. That meant I could leave him a voicemail message instead of talking to him live. Maybe it would be easier that way to explain my current… situation.

  When I speed-dialed his number; the call went straight to voicemail:

  “Hey,” Jeb’s crooner voice said. “What’s happening? Tell me now, and I’ll call you later.”

  I opened my mouth with every intention of telling him what I knew: That I was scared to my bones I might be pregnant. Me, the Queen of Denial. A woman who couldn’t keep track of a dog much less a child. Just ask Chester, whom I’d lost more times than a set of keys. And I’d accused Cassina of being a lousy mom! How could Bad Example Me ever handle motherhood?

  I listened for the beep and opened my mouth, but nothing came out. A recorded voice kindly suggested that I try again. When I remained mute, the voice said to call back later and disconnected me. Probably just as well. I really didn’t have a clue how to speak my deepest fears. So I started the car and headed home.

  Somewhere along Broken Arrow Highway, my favorite radio station played Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads. When I was married to Leo, that was our song. In fact, it was the last song I heard while he was alive. A year and a half ago, we were holding hands on a late-night drive home from Chicago, Abra asleep in the backseat just as she was now. With the windows rolled down, and the fresh spring air rushing in, we savored our special tune and our happy time together. Naively, I thought those tranquil years would roll on and on. I dozed off, waking when we hit the ditch. Abra was howling behind me; Leo was silent beside me, dead from a ruptured aorta.

  Now I found myself sobbing so hard I couldn’t keep the car on the road. I pulled onto the berm, shifted into park, and collapsed against the steering wheel, letting my heart break all over again.