Whiskey on the Rocks

by Nina Wright

  “You forgot about that dog,” Jenx scolded me. “Chester said you didn’t even leave him food and water.”

  “I’d just been burgled. I’m usually a much better host.”

  “Anyway, Chester was here, drilling Mooney on defense maneuvers from that web site.”

  “Dogs-Train-You-dot-com,” I supplied.

  “And they heard an explosion. When Chester looked out the window, he saw your propane tank had blown. Your backyard was on fire, with flames racing toward the garage. He reached for the phone, but Mooney had it in his mouth already. That’s one well-trained canine.”

  After calling 9-1-1, Chester and Mooney had bolted for Cassina’s Castle, where the diva ordered Mother Tucker’s filet mignons for everyone.

  “You just missed Walter; he delivered,” said Jenx. “And he said to tell you you’re a dead woman unless you get out of here. What’s that about?”

  “His lasagna took a bullet for me on the patio, remember? I’m surprised he still delivers in this neighborhood.”

  “After tonight, he might not. Walter thinks the hang glider came back and shot your propane tank.”

  Headlights swept across the front of my house. I turned to see a dark BMW park by my car. Wells Verbelow flung open his door.

  “Here come da Judge!” Jenx said. “And Abra.”

  I groaned as a blonde Satanic creature bounded toward us. Then I realized that the Judge had her on a retractable leash. Maybe someone would escort her next door to share Chester’s pre-chewed steak.

  “Fire bomb?” Wells asked after hugging me. Abra was already wrapping her razor-wire lead around my legs.

  “We’re thinking deer rifle fired at the propane tank,” said Jenx.

  “Lucky you didn’t have it filled recently,” Wells said. “Everything might have been vaporized.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jenx made a “pffffft” noise.

  An appropriately heavy silence ensued.

  “The hang glider again?” asked Wells.

  “Maybe,” said Jenx. “But he was probably in a car this time. It was too dark to fly.”

  I needed a chair, but there was none in the vicinity, so I staggered a little.

  Wells said, “Somebody’s trying to kill you, Whiskey. You and Abra are coming home with me and Mooney. Right now.”

  If I can get that far. Suddenly the smoke and flames and stink of burning plastic overpowered me. I blacked out. When I awoke, I seemed to be inside a fairy tale—on an immense feather bed draped in netting.

  “Hello—?” I said.

  A familiar face popped up along the edge of the bed. Then a second one, and then a third.

  “You need full-time protection,” Chester declared. On each side of him, a large canine head bobbed in agreement. One dripped copiously on the satin bedspread.

  “Is this the witness protection program?” I murmured, still groggy.

  “No, this is Cassina’s Cloud Room, in our guest wing. Jenx and the Judge carried you here after you fainted. Your house was closer, but it’s on fire.”

  I let my head sink back against the pillow. And what a pillow it was. Inside the satin case was so much soft down that it felt like a cloud. A fake cumulus cloud. I must have mumbled something.

  “What about the Cumulus?” said Chester. He slid under the netting and perched on the edge of the bed. “Did you say it’s a fake?”

  “Oh my god!” I cried, my head clearing. “Where’s Jenx?”

  I sat up so fast that I sent Chester over the side.

  “Downstairs. With Cassina and the Judge. They’re eating the extra filet mignons Walter delivered.”

  “Get Jenx in here! Now!”

  Chester picked himself up off the floor and straightened his glasses. “They’ll save you some.”

  “It’s not about the food!” Getting out of this bed was a lot harder than it should have been. My arms tangled in the netting as I tried to yank it back. “What’s this for?” I said, flailing away at the fabric.

  “Set dressing,” said Chester. “Like at her concerts. Cassina wants everything to look romantic.”

  I wanted to point out that getting tangled up in bedding isn’t romantic, but I had bigger issues. “Bring Jenx up here. Alone.”

  He and Abra traipsed off, leaving a moist Mooney to study me from the other side of the veil.

  “I don’t think I’ve thanked you properly. You’re a hell of a Rott Hound.”

  Mooney gurgled in reply. Jenx appeared holding what looked like a half-eaten turkey drumstick.

  “I thought you were having filet mignon,” I said.

  “We did. Then Cassina’s cook whipped this up.” She took a juicy bite from the bone. “We’ll save you some.”

  “Close the door,” I hissed. “I just had a brainstorm.”

  “You hit your head when you fainted, but there can’t be much damage. What’s with the mosquito netting?”

  “It’s supposed to be romantic,” I said, sliding down the side of the mattress and under the veil, as Chester had done. Then I was on my knees, but at least I was free. Jenx hoisted me to my feet.

  “I figured it out,” I cried. “It’s about fake clouds!”

  Jenx studied the room, uncertain. “Well, it’s a look.”

  “I mean, what’s going on! The hang glider, the burglary, the dog-napping, the finger. And the murders! Somebody’s forging art—somebody we know.”

  Jenx stopped chewing. “Rico?”

  “Maybe.”

  She looked unsure. “We know the Santys deal in stolen or forged art. The Mounties told us that. What’s the connection to Rico?”

  “What’s the thread that runs through everything?” I demanded. “Warren Matheney! He has a show at the West Shore Gallery and then he’s dead and then Rico’s rich. The Santys show up and pretend to die. We find Matheney’s missing finger in a dead woman’s purse. A Cumulus painting—Matheney’s most valuable—goes missing. So does his Celtic Cloud Ring. Abra disappears, too. When she comes back, people start trying to kill me! “

  Jenx said, “You left out Matheney’s nephew and the not-dead lady at his store.”

  “And the fact that Keogh is a friend of my stepdaughter—who broke into my house last night with a second set of boot prints.” Then I remembered the Schlegels. “Did you get Odette’s message?”

  Jenx said, “I’ll check my voice mail after dessert.”

  I saved her the trouble, explaining that Abra had buried something two doors down from Shadow Play the night of the murder.

  “You’ll want to dig that up,” I told her.

  First Jenx wanted to question Chester, who arrived with a plate of cookies. He admitted falling asleep while dog-sitting at Vestige that night.

  “I’m sorry, Whiskey,” he said. “But we’d had a hard day of training. I dozed off in front of the TV. I knew Abra must have let herself out because when I woke up, she was doing that cat thing.”

  “What ‘cat thing’?” said Jenx.

  Obligingly, Abra demonstrated by licking her paws.

  Chester said, “She only does that when her feet are dirty.”

  “But how did she get out if you didn’t let her out?” I asked.

  “The same way I get in: through the window over your kitchen sink.” Mooney groaned admiringly. Stretched out at Chester’s feet, Abra gave the Rott Hound a seductive, sideways glance. Her Sarah Jessica Parker look.

  “Any idea how long she was gone?” asked Jenx.

  “I was watching the Pet Psychic, and I woke up to the Crocodile Hunter.”

  “That means Abra was gone two hours or less. All right, Whiskey, I’ll get a warrant for the Schlegels’ back yard.”

  “Their Prayer Garden, under the Nativity birdbath,” I said. “And you should know they think it was Satan.”

  We looked at Abra, who had begun rubbing herself against a softly moaning Mooney.

  “They were right,” Jenx said. “How long has she been in heat?”

  Chap
ter Twenty-seven

  Judge Verbelow agreed at once to prepare the warrant Jenx would need to dig up the Schlegels’ Prayer Garden. Abra’s alleged activities near the murder scene seemed like further proof of my deficiencies as a dog owner.

  “Abra may be a material witness to a murder,” the Judge said. “Do you know what that means, Whiskey?”

  “That I broke the leash law again?” I tried to keep the hopefulness out of my voice when I asked if she’d be incarcerated.

  “She’s too much for you too handle, isn’t she?” Wells said.

  I wanted to protest, but something in his brown eyes stopped me. The man, after all, is a judge.

  “Yes,” I confessed.

  “That’s why I’m on the case!” Chester piped up. “By the time I’m done, all Whiskey will need is a handy wallet-sized print-out of the commands from Dogs-Train-You-dot-com.”

  Wells smiled. “It works for Mooney. Of course, he trained at the K-9 Institute in Detroit.”

  “And did graduate work at the Track & Attack Academy in Marquette,” Chester added.

  “Mooney told you that?” I asked.

  “I read the tag on his collar.”

  Jenx urged the Judge to issue the warrant so that she could execute it at daybreak. He prepared to leave.

  “What do you need from me, Whiskey?”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Not an option,” Jenx interjected. She was peering out the guest room window. “Fire’s out, but nobody’s sleeping there tonight.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here.”

  A voice as feathery as the bed I had sat upon floated through the open doorway. We all turned toward Cassina in her trademark gauzy white gown. I wondered if the woman owned a single piece of clothing with pigment. Her magnificent mane of hair flowed around her shoulders like a scarlet curtain.

  “You’re our guest,” she said. “Besides, my son seems to like you.”

  “I can’t stay—” I began.

  “Your dog can stay, too, if that will make things easier.”

  “It won’t,” I assured her.

  “How about Mooney? Can he stay?” Chester asked, jumping up and down.

  “Is he the wet one?” Cassina eyed the Rott Hound.

  “I’ll wipe up after him,” Chester promised. “Or he can wear his drool bucket.”

  Chester produced a kid’s beach pail on a plastic collar. Deftly, he slipped it over Mooney’s head. The dog promptly made a deposit. Kerplunk.

  “How about that,” said Wells. “Now he’ll be welcome everywhere.”

  Cassina didn’t look so sure.

  That’s how I ended up spending the night in Cassina’s Cloud Room with two big dogs asleep at my side. Notice I said nothing about getting any sleep myself. I tossed and turned. Or tried to. It’s not easy to change positions when sharing your mattress with four-legged beings, one of whom didn’t wear his drool bucket. Yes, there was a wet spot. I won’t even mention the snoring.

  As for Abra being in heat—Mooney, thankfully, was neutered. All I could do for the next few days was what I’d never been able to do: contain Abra. And hope that no males had already visited.

  Just before four o’clock I managed to slide over the side of the bed and under the layers of netting without waking my roommates. Maybe I should have taken Mooney along as bodyguard. His credentials were impressive, and the drool bucket did help. But I had no time to retrieve my laptop from the office. And without going online, I couldn’t talk to him.

  I left a note reminding Chester to keep Abra indoors. Then I wandered on tiptoe through Cassina’s Castle, seeking a door to the outside world. When I finally found one, I listened breathlessly for an alarm system to activate. None did. I flung the door wide and fled, sprinting like the high-school athlete I used to be.

  Dashing across Cassina’s broad lawn toward Vestige, I could smell the now-dead fire: charred wood and melted rubber. My heart fluttered as I realized that one of Leo’s last gifts to me must have perished in the flames. Then I skidded on a muddy patch near the ash pile that had been my garage and landed on my ass. That’s when I saw it—propped against my front steps, gleaming in the light from my still functioning security lamp. Damn if Blitzen didn’t look as fine as the last time I’d fallen off her. Some firefighter had made a heroic rescue.

  Briefly I considered letting myself into the house for a change of clothes. But, no doubt courtesy of Brady Swancott, a yellow crime scene tape stretched across the door. I keep a change of clothes in my car. Huddled in the shadows between the vehicle and a hedgerow, I slipped into clean underwear, a Magnet Springs High sweatshirt, and a pair of jeans. On impulse I strode up to the house, grabbed the bike, which is made of some lightweight alloy, and tossed it into the back of my Lexus. What the hell. Blitzen was valuable, and crime was on the rise in Magnet Springs.

  The sun was still new in the sky when I rolled in to Angola, Indiana. For Art’s Sake wasn’t open yet, but I cruised around the block once just to check it out. No midnight-blue Beamer was parked anywhere in the vicinity. So I drove on over to Keogh’s house on Superior Street.

  With few exceptions, I’ve always had the gift of good timing. My mother gets a little credit in that department since she gave birth to me at a high point in women’s history. I went to school after Title Nine, which allowed me to excel in sports, develop lots of self-confidence, and learn that I could always take care of myself. I got into real estate just as the market was taking off. Then I met and married Leo Mattimoe. We had only five years together, but we made them count.

  My excellent timing landed me in front of Darrin Keogh’s Victorian home just as he was concluding an early walk with his dogs. All six Afghan hounds trotted regally on leashes. Walking six Abras would pull a person apart at the joints. Involuntarily, I looked at Pashtoon, the dog that was supposed to have been Leo’s. The dog that Cloud Man had injured, or so Keogh claimed. She looked queenly in the morning light, her masked face held high as the sun made her golden coat blaze. I was facing them from the opposite side of the street, parked between a minivan and a pick-up truck four doors down. Suddenly Pashtoon froze in her tracks. Cocking her head exactly as Abra does, she trained her one good eye on me. I slid down behind the wheel, praying that Keogh wouldn’t follow her gaze. My heart thudded. What was I doing here, anyway, playing amateur sleuth when I had a business to run and a garage to rebuild?

  Breathlessly I counted to thirty before daring to peek over the dashboard again. When I let myself look, the sidewalk was empty, and so were Keogh’s yard and porch. I checked my mirrors. Nothing. The entire street was still.

  Then tires squealed behind me. In my sideview mirror I saw a midnight-blue Beamer careening around the corner. It screeched to a stop in front of Keogh’s house. Although I couldn’t see who was driving, I knew the license plate. My revving heart shifted into overdrive. Almost instantly, Keogh’s front door flew open, and he dashed out. Maybe he wanted to leave before his sick mother had time to detain him. If he had a sick mother.

  The Beamer peeled away from the curb. I waited one beat and then followed, my trembling hands clamped on the wheel. We were heading north out of town at a rate significantly higher than the local law allowed. For better or for worse, no cops appeared. Traffic at that hour was extremely light. In minutes we were in the country, still northbound. Concerned that someone in the Beamer might identify me, I kept a healthy distance between us and prayed that no one would check their mirrors.