Whiskey on the Rocks

by Nina Wright

  Avery was waiting for me when I got home. I was in too much pain to ask how she’d gotten in or what had happened to her too-small car. At least she’d had the decency to remove the crime scene tape.

  Obviously miserable, she was even more bloated than the last time I’d seen her. I hadn’t realized someone could be that pregnant.

  Ignoring my injuries, she greeted me with “We need to talk.”

  I considered taking a double dose of my prescribed pain medication but doubted it would ease this ache.

  “I know you don’t like me, you’ve never liked me, and you plan to never like me,” she began.

  I held up my good arm to stop her.

  “For clarification: Doesn’t that also sum up your feelings toward me?”

  “What does that matter? You married my father. I’m not supposed to like you.”

  “But automatically I’m supposed to like you?”

  “Yeah.” I saw no doubt in her eyes. “Dad would have liked any kids you had, but you didn’t have any.”

  I shook my head, and it hurt. But what hurt more was the realization that Avery was right. Leo would have loved any child of mine. He was like that.

  “When did he take you to Rio?” I asked, plunging ahead.

  “Last winter. We didn’t go to Mexico, like you thought.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I begged him to take me to Rio.” She stuck her tongue out, probably unconsciously. I fought a powerful urge to smack her.

  “Why didn’t he tell me that?”

  “He didn’t want to hurt you. He said you were planning your first trip there to celebrate your anniversary, and he didn’t think he should go before that. But I was studying Portuguese in school and wanted to go to Brazil more than anything. I knew Mom would never take me, and it would be forever before I could afford to go by myself. Dad wanted to make me happy.”

  Avery added, “He spent half the time collecting tourist brochures for you. You never got them?”

  I never did.

  “Maybe he forgot to unpack them,” she suggested. “Maybe he was saving them to surprise you.”

  It wasn’t like Avery to try to make me feel better. She sighed. “I guess we both lost something. You were supposed to have a nice trip. I was supposed to have a grandfather for my kids.”

  A stab of pain doubled me over. With my good hand, I gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, groaning. I could barely draw a breath.

  “You sound awful,” Avery said reproachfully. “What’s wrong with you? And what did you do to our garage?”

  After my next moan, I was dizzy. I must have staggered, for Avery cried, “Why are you doing this to me? Sit down before you fall down!”

  Too late.

  I’m doing this way too often. That was my first thought on regaining consciousness. For someone who had managed not to faint from age sixteen to thirty-three, I was suddenly exceeding the national average. At least I’d been fortunate enough to land on my good side, so I didn’t feel shooting pains upon waking. Avery looked ghastly, however, when her wide white face floated into view.

  “Don’t ever do that to me again! I’m pregnant, for crying out loud. You could have scared me right into labor!”

  I thanked God for sparing us that trauma. Then we faced an intriguing dilemma: A woman on the floor who couldn’t get up and a woman standing who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) help her up. After a few minutes, we started laughing.

  “It would have been even funnier with you on the floor!” I giggled. “You’re so big and fat, you’d never get up. And I’ve only got one good arm to pull with. You’d have to lie there like road kill!”

  Avery stopped laughing and stomped out of the room. Eventually, I got up by myself.

  After the drive from Angola and the encounter with Avery, returning to work was easy. Pleasant even. Everyone in the office knew about my adventure with Blitzen. They just didn’t know what to say about it. Their employer had killed a client. There’s no stock comment for that one.

  Odette rapped three times and flung open my door.

  “You never told us about your secret life as a Super Hero!”

  “I didn’t think I had to. Don’t you have psychic powers?”

  “Telephone telepathy. And you didn’t call. What the hell happened?”

  I told her she’d been right about the phone version of Mr. Reitbauer not being the real Mr. Reitbauer.

  Odette looked reflective. “Perhaps we can find more lucrative ways to apply my powers.”

  “I thought it was bad karma to use psychic gifts for profit.”

  “It’s good karma to get rich, Whiskey. Killing clients is bad karma.”

  I reminded her that the Santys were former clients—and murderous felons. Then I filled in the rest of the story. She had no comment. I wondered if she’d even been listening.

  Dreamily, Odette poured herself coffee from the pot on my credenza and added cream from my mini-fridge. After settling herself across from me, she said, “Rico Anuncio is involved in this.”

  I was about to say that I thought so, too, when my phone buzzed.

  “Call for Odette on line three,” said my receptionist. “Rico Anuncio. And he’s upset.”

  Rico Anuncio wasn’t upset; he was hysterical. Odette switched on the speaker phone so that I could listen. Fortunately, her slow, rhythmic speech pattern soon calmed him to the point of coherence.

  “That money was supposed to be mine!” he exclaimed. “Warren showed me his will when he was here for the show. He was leaving half his estate to me!”

  “What’s the problem?” said Odette.

  “The estate is frozen! The Chicago police just sent me a fax. They said he may have been murdered, and that changes everything!”

  “Did you murder him?” Odette asked calmly.

  “Of course not! I loved him! I lived with him—and put up with him—

  for seven and a half years! I still loved him when we broke up, but I had to leave. The thing with the dogs made me crazy.”

  “Tell me about the dogs,” Odette said. Rico did--in more detail than either of us wanted.

  “I’m not what you’d call an animal lover,” he concluded. “But I’m no sadist. I didn’t care what Warren did to me; I could take it. I could even take knowing he was doing it to other people because they were consenting adults.” He paused. “Okay, there may have been a few minors. But he forced himself on animals. And they couldn’t walk out the door.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “Did you know the Santys or Kimba Reitbauer or Darrin Keogh?”

  Odette read what I had jotted on a sticky note and passed to her. Rico guessed that I was there. “Why don’t you ask your own questions, Whiskey?”

  So I did, from then on. Although Rico insisted that he was not involved in Matheney’s sordid world, he was aware of it.

  “Darrin was in and out of Warren’s life, mainly begging for money. Of course I knew who he was when he asked about you at my gallery. I didn’t want you to know I knew him.”

  “And Kimba?”

  “I saw her at a couple of Warren’s parties. Before she married money, she used to whore around. She was part of a ‘twins’ act: ‘Kimba and Holly.”

  “Holly Lomax?”

  “She didn’t use a last name.”

  I asked if he thought Holly was her real first name.

  “Probably. Kimba went by Kimba. People thought that was an alias. Her mother had trailer-trash taste in names.”

  “What did the Santys have to do with Matheney?” I said.

  “In the beginning, they gave parties. Gordon and Ellianna got Warren all the drugs and lovers he could handle. Skanky people. Pretty but oh-so-nasty.”

  “Then why did you pretend not to know Gordon Santy when he posed as Edward Naylor in the bar at Mother Tucker’s? Walter told us.”

  “When I was planning Cloud Man’s show at my gallery, Santy acted as Warren’s business manager. He insisted I include two faux Matheneys.
He didn’t say they were faux, but I knew. When I refused, he threatened to—blackmail me.”

  “About what?”

  “A personal matter. Nothing important. To keep the counterfeits out of the show, I had to make a deal with Santy. Promise I’d do him a favor later. Something small, he said. Last week he gave me the script for that little scene at Mother Tucker’s. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t ask questions. By the way, Whiskey, how does it feel to kill a man?”

  “I prefer to think I saved a man.”

  “Ah, yes. Thanks to you, Keogh’s a fugitive now.”

  “He’s not a completely bad guy,” I said.

  “He’s kind to animals. That much is true.”

  “And he takes care of his sick mother.”

  “His mother lives in a condo in Coconut Grove!”

  “No, she’s an invalid in that old house in Angola. He waits on her hand and foot. Everyone in town knows it.”

  “He’s fooled everyone in town.”

  “But I was in that house. I heard her voice!”

  “You heard his sister’s voice. They work scams, Whiskey. The FBI is going to find that For Arts Sake doesn’t exist!”

  “I’ve been to the store! I knocked on the door—”

  “How much did you see? Keogh has a few good antiques and a few decent paintings. But the store’s a front for the art he forges and fences. Nobody who dresses that badly could survive in retail.”

  “Let’s talk about your Cumulus,” I said.

  “The real thing. Painted in October ‘79. A parting gift from the artist. I have the provenance, including Warren on videotape asserting that the Cumulus was his gift to me. I made sure no one could later claim I stole it.”

  That raised a good question. “So who buys a forgery? Doesn’t every buyer require provenance?”

  “If the price is right, some people ask no questions. My art is my investment portfolio. Warren gave me several lesser paintings, too. From his pre-Cloud days. And a few Cloud studies.”

  “He did studies? Of clouds? What for?” Keogh had said that clouds weren’t hard to paint.

  “You don’t know much about art,” Rico sighed.

  “I know that your ‘portfolio’ is soaring in value, thanks to Matheney’s mysterious death.”

  “Warren couldn’t have lived much longer, the way he was living. And, yes, I have assets. But not enough to buy me the home of my dreams.”

  Odette said, “I can show you several stunning alternatives! Buy now; move up again soon. Why not start looking this afternoon?”

  My best agent arranged to pick up Rico at his gallery. I said, “What do we have to satisfy a man who wanted a château?”

  Odette’s eyes twinkled. “Be prepared to be amazed, Whiskey.” And she was off.

  Almost immediately, my phone buzzed again. Acting Chief Jenkins on line one.

  “A realtor I know thinks it’s her place to solve crimes, and not just in this jurisdiction! What the hell were you doing in Angola?”

  As I began to recap my adventures, Jenx interrupted. “I know what you did. I want to know why you did it.”

  “You convinced me Keogh hadn’t told the whole story, so I went back to spy on him.”

  “Think you got the whole story now? He’s gone, you know.”

  “He’s . . . missing.”

  “And so’s his sister, who’s got a sheet as long as her legs. But I didn’t call to pick on you. I called because somebody here wants to see you. You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to. In fact, this is highly irregular.”

  “Who is it, already?”

  “Your favorite ex-client, or one of them: Ellianna Santy.”

  “I thought she was in jail!”

  “I’m looking at her through vertical bars right now. She’s on her way from Angola to Chicago, in police custody. The lady wants to talk to you. How about it?”

  At the police station, Jenx confided, “Ellianna Santy’s not the priss we took her for first time around.”

  The Chief led me down the hall to Magnet Springs’ one and only holding cell. Inside sat a woman I didn’t at first recognize. Her skin was pasty, her eyes small and dull. Her hair, so carefully tended the last time, was no longer blonde or even combed. It was now the over-dyed, over-permed hair of a woman who wished to be anonymous.

  “How did it feel to kill my husband, eh?”

  “How did it feel to kill Holly Lomax?” I countered.

  “I’ve never killed anyone! That’s why I wanted to see you. I didn’t think you were made that way.”

  “Then who killed Lomax?”

  “Gordon. First, he got her drunk, and then he dyed her hair so her corpse could pass for mine. Told her she’d be sexier as a blonde! He’s also the one you saw with the wings. And the one who blew up your propane tank. If he’d whacked you, like he was supposed to, he’d be alive today. I can’t fucking believe you got him first.”

  “Watch the language,” Brady said. I hadn’t seen him come in.

  “Fuck you and the dog you rode in on,” Mrs. Santy’s replied.

  Officer Roscoe growled.

  “What’s with the dogs in this town? They’re all big and crazy. Must be the water.”

  “It’s the magnetic fields,” Jenx corrected her.

  I asked Mrs. Santy, “How could your husband have killed Holly Lomax? He was in the bar at Mother Tucker’s.”

  “He killed her and then went to the bar. It’s called creating an alibi, bimbo!”

  As if on cue, a sugary voice sang out: “Chief Jenkins—Marilee Gallagher to see you! Hellooo!”

  Jenx and I locked eyes. “Do you want to talk to this one or that one?” she asked me.

  Such a choice: I picked the crook.

  “How did your husband kill her husband?” I asked Mrs. Santy.

  “Gordon didn’t kill him.”

  “Then who did?”

  She faked an innocent expression. “I thought the official ruling was ‘natural causes.’”

  “Not anymore,” said Brady. That’s when I noticed he had a manila folder in his hand. “Crouch’s toxicology report.” He nodded in the direction of Marilee Gallagher’s disembodied twittering. “That’s why she’s here.”

  “I’m intrigued,” Mrs. Santy said, cupping her chin in her hand. “What does he say now?”

  Brady gave her a look so cold that it didn’t belong on his sweet young face. Then he opened the folder and read, “Cardiac blood: Positive for cocaine—”

  “We knew that,” I said impatiently.

  “And Digoxin.”

  “What’s that?”

  Mrs. Santy said, “Ever heard of digitalis?”

  Ignoring her, Brady flipped a few pages. “Crouch made an amendment to his original autopsy report: ‘Abnormal findings include the presence of Digoxin, a digitalis derivative—’”

  “Told you,” Mrs. Santy said.