Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 07 - Whiskey, Large (17 page)

I nodded, watching my former client and the chief conclude their conversation in the glow of our headlights. Although he seemed a little calmer, Mullen insisted on doing most of the talking. Jenx listened with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, a sure sign she wished she could smack him.

MacArthur suggested it was time to leave. Although Chester wanted to accompany Jenx in the squad car so they “could strategize,” we convinced him to ride home with us.

The scenery was divine. I’m talking about the back of MacArthur’s head and his reflected face in the rear-view mirror. What few lights we passed cast enough of a glow to fuel my impoverished imagination. It had been a long pregnancy, and I wanted to indulge a few harmless flights of fancy. Because Chester had accompanied us, however, the drive wasn’t as psychologically satisfying as I might have wished. I did my best to ignore him as he tried out every conceivable theory about why Todd Mullen was so hostile. Blah, blah, blah. Sure, I cared about the case, but I cared more about pretending not to be a blimp for a few minutes. All too soon the Town Car pulled into my driveway.

For the first time since I’d gotten the loan of the Lincoln I hadn’t dozed off. I don’t think I even blinked. Chester was still going on about how worrisome it was that neither Helen nor Anouk had answered his calls or texts.

“Tweet them, why don’t you,” I said, annoyed.

“That’s a great idea! I’ve got almost twelve hundred followers, so I’ll get retweets, and we’ll find them for sure.”

“You’re nine years old, and you have twelve hundred followers?” I asked.

Chester pushed his glasses up his nose and studied me.

“Nine-and-a-half, and I meet a lot of people through my online classes.”

Like the professional fixer of awkward situations that he was, MacArthur removed me from the vehicle with no apparent effort. Happily, I managed to keep my grunts to a minimum. MacArthur gently took my elbow and escorted me to my own front door.

“After I take the lad home, I’m going to drive around and see if I can catch a whiff of Abra,” he said. “Or Helen.”

“I thought you could only smell body fluids,” I said.

He nodded. “Think how many there are.”

My phone chirped again. It was a message from Chester, who was sitting in the Town Car not twenty feet away.

Check your Twitter account.

I started to text back and realized how silly that was.

“I don’t have a Twitter account,” I yelled.

Chester rolled his window all the way down.

“Mattimoe Realty has a Twitter account—the one Ben just set up. Remember?”

Pregnancy brain strikes again.

Chester continued, “You’re on Twitter and Facebook. Ben gave me your log-in info. I’ll text it to you.”

“Must you?” I cast a world-weary glance at MacArthur. It was a rhetorical question, but my dreamy stand-in driver took it to heart.

“Chester feels the need to fix problems, perhaps because his mother has never fixed any herself.”

That made sense. It really did. Speaking of problems, I couldn’t locate my house key. My mother, unlike me, always locked our doors, so I had to ring the bell and wait for Mom to answer. MacArthur stood patiently by my side, still holding my arm in a totally platonic way. Chester’s next text arrived at the instant my flesh-and-blood mother did. I wanted to ignore them both.

Holding out her phone, Mom cried, “Whitney, have you checked your Twitter account?”

“I just told her to!” Chester shouted from the Town Car.

“How do you know about my Twitter account?” I asked Mom.

“Oh, please,” she said. “I’m on Twitter like everybody else.”

“But why are you checking my account?” I said.

“I’m following you. That’s how we say it on Twitter.” Mom added, “Chester texted me your log-in info just in case. We all know you’re not thinking straight.”

I heard the unmistakable click-click of doggie toenails on wood flooring and remembered with a sinking sensation that we still had one canine at home and accounted for. Woof, snort, fart. I fanned my face.

“What did you feed that dog? She stinks worse than ever!”

MacArthur’s nose twitched. “With all due respect, Sandra Bullock smells the same as always, Whiskey. In your advanced state of pregnancy, your nose is hyper-sensitive.”

“Maybe, but look how she’s dressed.”

Sandra was wearing what could only be described as a beige-colored long-sleeved maternity dress, one that looked suspiciously like the very outfit now covering my body.

“Is her dress just like my dress?” I demanded.

Sandra must have thought I was pleased because her stubby tail wagged even faster than usual.

“Her dress is much smaller,” Mom pointed out. “Sandra doesn’t have your weight problem.”

“She’s a French bulldog. I’m a tall human in her ninth month of pregnancy.”

Ignoring my comment, Mom said, “Jeb texted me to change her clothes so she could greet you like that. He hoped it might help your mood. So did I.”

“How would that help my mood?”

“Oh, come on. Sandra’s so ugly she’s cute,” Mom said. “She lives to make people happy.”

“She lives to fart, snort and slobber,” I mumbled.

I eyed Sandra more closely.

“Is she wearing a fake pregnancy bump?”

Mom shrugged. “I had to fill out the dress somehow.”

She explained that Jeb had ordered the outfit from
Curvy Mommy,
the upscale maternity clothier from whom he’d bought most of my current wardrobe. Who knew they had a Pregnant Pet Department? So Jeb was now dressing both his wife and his dog.

In my own defense, I’d never cared about what I wore, so why argue when Jeb took over? If it gave him pleasure, we had a win-win. However, Sandra in maternity clothes was absurd. I could only hope I looked better than that.

Overwhelmed by fatigue, I suddenly yearned to collapse into a sleep so deep that only the most acute labor pains would stir me. Sandra must have assumed she could offer comfort by moving in close and slobbering all over my feet. Although my huge belly blocked the view, I could feel her doggie saliva on my ankles.

“Need a chair,” I gasped. “Now.”

Before I could blink, MacArthur scooped me up and whisked me to the sofa, where he deposited me as if I were a mere slip of a girl. He wasn’t even breathing hard. No doubt he worked out by lifting Avery.

“Oh my,” Mom said, studying the screen of her new phone. “You’re tweeting with UberSpringer, Whitney, and I think you’re winning.”

“I don’t know much about Twitter,” I admitted, “but I’m pretty sure it’s not a sport.”

“Then why do they post all those scores?” Mom asked.

“What scores?”

“How many tweets and followers you have,” she said.

The doorbell rang. MacArthur offered to open it, which pleased Mom because she was tweeting. Chester stood on my porch, phone in hand. I could not have been less surprised. Sandra rushed to see him, snorting and wagging all the way.

“Before you say anything, understand that I am far too tired to care,” I warned Chester and closed my eyes.

“You might care about this,” he said. “Anouk tweeted me back. She has Helen and Abra.”

“Is she requesting ransom?”

“No. She’s offering to return them both.”

I thought about it, my eyes still shut.

“Tell her to keep Abra and return Helen. Tomorrow.”

MacArthur cleared his throat. “Abra is a sworn deputy of the Magnet Springs police force involved in the investigation of perishable odors. We need to retrieve her tonight and resume our search.”

“Fine. But if she gets away again, it’s entirely your problem. Jenx promised me a waiver.”

“Understood.”

“One more thing,” I said. “I’m going to need help getting up the stairs.”

The Cleaner didn’t help me. He carried me all the way to my bedroom, again, without panting.

On second thought, panting might have been nice. It would have reminded me of those pre-pregnant trips to the boudoir when I was swept away by Jeb. Of course, one of those trips had turned me into the hulk I was today.

Mom and Chester tagged along, followed by you-know-who. Mom wanted to fluff my pillows; Chester wanted to read me my tweets; and Sandra wanted attention.

The entire exchange of tweets between Mattimoe Realty and UberSpringer consisted of abbreviated claims and counter-claims about my company’s concern for the community.

“You’re saying all the right things,” Chester remarked happily. “You come across like a Magnet Springs cheerleader. UberSpringer sounds like a whiner.”

“You do realize,” I said, “that neither tweeter is a real person.”

“You’re Mattimoe Realty,” Chester insisted. “We’re just not sure who UberSpringer is.”

“I’m not Mattimoe Realty. I own Mattimoe Realty, and my only connection to those tweets is paying the guy who writes them.”

“Mere semantics,” Chester huffed.

For an instant I wondered if “Mere Semantics” was one of his online Harvard seminars, then I understood.

“The tweets sound personal because they’re supposed to,” I concluded. “Ben knows what he’s doing.”

When Chester glanced up at me, I was surprised how smudged his glasses were. Abra, Sandra and a couple other dogs had licked his face today.

“Tweeting is the right thing to do, Whiskey,” he said earnestly.

Mom folded back my comforter while MacArthur paused in the doorway, my reclining self in his arms. When my husband’s face floated before me, I blushed hot with guilt.

“Lay her here,” Mom instructed MacArthur. Thank God nobody could read my mind. Then Sandra barked so fiercely I wondered if she could.

“Do you need me to help you into your nightgown?” Mom inquired.

“I’ll wait for Jeb,” I said.

Chester picked up the Frenchie on his way out. He and the Cleaner were off to retrieve Abra and resume the smell search.

“Call us if you need anything,” MacArthur said.

“Or text us. Or tweet us,” Chester added.

“Not gonna happen,” I murmured, thankful to be canine-free and drifting toward deep sleep.

I
awoke when the voice
I most loved crooned a sweet little ditty featuring my name. Jeb sang it softly right into my ear, and that tickled.

“What time is it?” I whispered without opening my eyes.

“Almost time for our baby,” he said.

He kissed my forehead, my nose and, deliciously, my mouth.

“What time is it really?” I said.

“A little after ten. Do you want to sleep in your clothes?”

“I’m already sleeping in my clothes,” I said. I recalled Sandra Bullock’s identical outfit. “What’s with the
Curvy Mommy
clothes for the Frenchie?”

“I wanted to make you smile,” he said meekly. “Back to your clothes. May I remove them?”

“Go for it.”

He did, kissing and caressing my skin as he peeled off each garment.

“I’m taking you to your appointment in the morning,” he whispered.

“What appointment?” I murmured, wishing he would just keep on kissing me.

“With your doc, remember?”

I did remember. Of course I did. However, at that moment I was a sleepy, needy, happily married pregnant lady who wanted only to cuddle with her man. We could deal with appointments, French bulldogs, and other forms of reality after the sun came up.

Jeb rustled a piece of paper. “You stash notes in your bra now? Your breasts could leak, you know.”

“They’re just legal papers,” I repeated. “Nothing important.”

I dozed off before Jeb finished undressing me. That didn’t vex either of us because we both got the best night’s sleep we’d had in weeks. Jeb’s closeness soothed me and Baby like nothing else could. My body was resting up for big work ahead.

Morning changed some things. Before the sky was closer to blue than black, the bedside phone rang. How rude. My days of sleeping late were markedly numbered. Jeb kindly took the call, but the other party insisted on speaking with me.

When I pulled the covers over my head, Jeb whispered, “It’s the state fire investigator. He needs to ask you some questions.”

I mumbled something even I couldn’t understand. I heard Jeb promise the caller that I would get back to him as soon as possible.

The instant the call ended, I knew I’d never go back to sleep.

“What time is it now?” I muttered.

Peeling back the blanket, Jeb floated our digital alarm clock before my foggy eyes.

“It can’t be 8:40,” I moaned.

I did return the phone call, but not before Jeb had assisted me in getting vertical, showered, dressed and fed, although not exactly in that order. By then I was closer to coherent, though not sharp enough to catch Randy Dupper’s exact job title. It had something to do with investigating fires. Only a government official could be so terse.

“Are you saying the Mullens’ fire looks like arson?” I asked after answering several questions.

“I’m not saying anything,” Dupper said, which wasn’t accurate. He was talking, wasn’t he?

“The kinds of questions you’re asking suggest that you think it was arson,” I said.

“Just doing my job, ma’am,” he replied.

“Which is investigating arson, right?”

“Investigating fires, ma’am.”

“Humph,” I said.

Arson or not, I wasn’t sure how my input could help. Since I was the agent of record, Dupper wanted me to verify what he apparently already knew—what the house was made of, who owned it, who listed it for sale and how well I was acquainted with them. He also wondered when I’d last seen Todd and Lisa Mullen, and how I would ‘grade’ the condition of their property.

“Their property seemed to be in excellent condition,” I said, hastening to add that I was licensed to sell houses, not inspect them. “The fire was caused by a propane tank explosion, right?”

“Who told you that?”

For the first time Dupper sounded interested.

“Everybody at the scene,” I said. “We all smelled that rotten-egg odor.”

“The propane tank did explode,” he conceded. “We’re trying to figure out why.”

I wondered if he also meant how and by whom, but I figured he wouldn’t tell me since he was skirting the whole arson issue. I asked instead when he expected to complete his report.