Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 07 - Whiskey, Large (25 page)

“This is a simple problem,” Mom said. “You can call and pay for the privilege of asking him, or you can take your best shot with what Sandra gave you. She’s such a good girl, and she looks so good in her purple paisley pantsuit. Yes, she does.”

Mom’s voice had devolved into baby talk. The little gargoyle barked enthusiastically, clacking her claws all over the floor.

“What do you think happened to Jeb?” I whined.

“I don’t think anything has happened to him, Whitney.” Mom was using her stern voice again. “You need to take charge of yourself. Use your big-girl brain and get yourself home.”

Mom was right.
I needed to use my “big-girl brain.” If only I could find it.

I breathed slowly, the way I’d learned in Lamaze class. With my eyes closed, I took a conscious, very deliberate head-to-toe inventory of my entire body. Everything felt more or less in the same place it had been yesterday, nothing shifting or loosening that I could detect. However, we were in countdown mode to delivery, and Baby controlled the show.

When I opened my eyes, Helen and MacArthur stood outside the Mercedes engaged in what looked like an animated discussion, possibly even an argument. Apparently, no one else from that merry band of deputies had emerged from the woods. What the hell had drawn the super-sniffer back so quickly? What was his issue with Helen?

Grunting like a rhinoceros in heat, I reached around my huge belly and forced open the car door.

“Hey!” I called.

MacArthur and Helen froze mid-word. The Cleaner sprinted toward me. Helen hurried after him in her uneven elderly gait.

“I’m fine,” I shouted.

They didn’t seem to believe me because their pace didn’t slow.

“Glad you’re fine,” MacArthur said, “but something has happened and we need to roll.”

I looked past him at Helen, who was still limp-jogging toward me, frustration twisting her face.

MacArthur said. “I sniffed something significant, and we need to move fast.”

“Because someone’s in danger?” I asked.

“Because you’re due to give birth. Tick-tock.”

Helen arrived at my side panting. “MacArthur insists he needs to show you something, but I don’t like the idea one bit. You’re too close to delivery. Of course, I’ll do whatever you say.”

I glanced from Helen’s worried expression to MacArthur’s impatient one. Although I lacked sufficient information to make a decision, I made one, anyway.

“Helen, I need you to find Anouk and bring her to Vestige.”

My driver’s sparse gray eyebrows shot up. “Is there a canine psychic emergency?”

“Not that I know of. I just need to talk to Anouk.”

Given her reputation as a trainer and groomer of standard poodles—and, on occasion, other big dogs—Anouk might have known Diggs. If she did, and I could find out what she knew about him and his humans, I might get a clue to the connection between dogs, gunfire and arson. If there was a connection.

MacArthur and Jenx thought there was. It was why they had dragged me to the field that held the shell casing and Diggs’ tag, and why we were now out here on Wham-Bam Road.

Noonan had sensed a different though also troubling connection—between Anouk and Abra.

I couldn’t ignore the possibility that somebody was right.

“Bring Anouk to Vestige,” I said firmly, looking straight into Helen’s dubious eyes. “Tell her whatever you need to tell her to make her cooperate.”

“All I’ll have to do is ask,” Helen said. “Anouk likes me.”

I nodded. What was not to like about Helen? Except for the needling, needy people-pleasing side of her nature, which annoyed my mother more than it did me.

I couldn’t read Helen’s face as she shot MacArthur a glance. Did she think I was wasting her time? In any case, she tipped her cap at me and hurried back to the Town Car.

“Good strategy fetching Anouk,” MacArthur said.

He effortlessly slid me into place on the Mercedes’ spacious backseat and softly closed the door.

I wasn’t sure I had a “strategy,” but I hoped talking with Anouk would help me feel less conflicted about the now-dead dog I didn’t even known lived at the Mullens’ house when I mistakenly listed it. Talk about a hot mess. In my whole career I’d never listed a house contracted to another agent, or a house that exploded, killing clients and canine.

After MacArthur climbed into the driver’s seat, I asked what he and Helen had been fighting about.

“We weren’t fighting.”

“Well, you weren’t agreeing on much.”

He offered a rumbling chuckle.

“I told Helen I was going to take over as your driver for the rest of the day. She didn’t care for that. She’s become rather protective of you.”

Personally, I appreciated the change of driver, and not just for the scenery. After my chat with Avery, I wanted a chance to ask MacArthur if he’d seen a path through the field where he’d found the dog tags.

“You mean like for hikers?” he asked.

“Or runners,” I said.

He shook his head.

I let my shoulders sag in disappointment. So much for my wild guess about Ben, his boyfriend, and their GPS-based running app. A serious runner wouldn’t risk turning an ankle in a disused field, especially at twilight.

“Nothing mulched or paved,” MacArthur added, “but there’s a narrow trail beaten down by use. Looks like a shortcut connecting Uphill and Downhill Roads.”

I sat up as straight as I could.

“What if Ben Fondgren’s running buddy cut through that field while you were chasing Abra?” I said.

“Reagan, you mean?”

I admitted I didn’t know his name even as I recalled Avery’s saying it started with an R.

“Reagan Duffy,” MacArthur confirmed. “I suppose he could have done it, but nobody saw him. Chester said Ben was running alone.”

“Ben said he was running alone,” I argued. “As for nobody seeing anybody cut through the field, I was the only person not chasing Abra, and we all know I miss everything.”

“Not everything,” MacArthur said kindly.

“Well, if Reagan did cut through the field, maybe he pissed there.”

My theory sounded so lame when I said it out loud that I quickly added, “Or not. What do you know about Ben and Reagan?”

MacArthur punched the Mercedes’ keyless starter and made the engine purr.

“Avery has more contact with Ben than I do, but I don’t think she knows him well. We’ve met Reagan. He seems pleasant. They’re more than running buddies, you know.”

“Right.” I was still grappling with the notion that Ben was gay. “What does Reagan do?”

“If I recall correctly, he’s a server at the Sugar Grove Inn.”

My heart contracted a little. The Sugar Grove Inn had been “our place” when I was married to Leo. Since his death, I’d visited the restaurant only a few times, and only because someone else insisted on dining there. Leo and I used to request a middle-aged server named Terrence. I couldn’t remember anyone there named Reagan.

When I asked MacArthur about Reagan’s appearance, he said, “About the same age as Ben. Same height and build, too.”

“Nothing unique about him? I asked.

MacArthur shrugged. “Not to me, but then I don’t lean that way.”

His vagueness surprised me. Were Ben and Reagan simply off his radar? That didn’t seem likely considering Cassina employed MacArthur to drive, protect and clean up after her. He needed to notice everything. He didn’t need to comment on it, however. I believed MacArthur generally knew more than he shared.

I sat back, wishing I could relax. Was it mere coincidence that the names Reagan Duffy and Randy Dupper were similar? Peering into the greening woods as MacArthur put the Mercedes in gear, I saw no human or canine action. We passed Roscoe dozing by the parked squad car, probably enjoying a sex dream about Sandra or having a nightmare about Abra.

“You’re sure it’s okay to leave Chester?” I asked MacArthur.

“Chester’s fine. He’s in his element bagging evidence with Jenx and Brady. They’re finding plenty of human and canine artifacts.”

I figured “human artifacts” was code for litter whereas “canine artifacts” meant body parts, dog accessories, or scat. The last item brought to mind the kind of treatment I was likely to receive at Dani Glancy’s house, and that motivated me to review what remained of Bill Noury’s notes. I must have groaned because MacArthur asked what was wrong. Briefly I explained my business crisis. His intense blue eyes met mine in the rear view mirror.

“No worries, Whiskey,” he said. “Dani Glancy is my mission, too. We’re going to her house together.”

“We are? I have to meet with Mrs. Glancy. What’s your excuse?”

“I smelled Lisa Mullen in the woods.”

“You did?” That seemed highly unlikely for several reasons, the most pressing of which was her death.

“Distinctly,” he replied.

“Okay,” I said. “What does that have to do with seeing Dani Glancy.”

“Lisa and Dani were sisters.”

That was huge news. It explained why Lisa and Todd would have listed their house with Hamp. Did the sisters get along? I thought about Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland, a.k.a. Sandra and Abra.

“The woman I met at 318 Swan Lane didn’t seem the type to piss in the woods,” I noted.

“To be precise,” MacArthur said, “I smelled her perfume.”

His eyes were on the road now, not the mirror. I stared at the mirror anyway, willing him to look at me.

“You know Lisa Mullen’s perfume?” I asked.

I remembered he had volunteered to identify her body at the scene of the explosion.

“I knew Lisa well,” MacArthur said, “but that was a while ago.”

“How long?”

He shrugged. “A while.”

I wondered how he kept time. The Cleaner had arrived in Magnet Springs the previous summer and landed almost immediately in Avery’s bed. I spotted him with another woman last fall. After that flirtation ended, he vanished for seven months. When had he met Lisa? Mysterious as he seemed, MacArthur was a classic bad boy. Apparently his movie-star looks, major muscles, and sexy accent came with a capacity for convenient vagueness.

“Isn’t it possible you smelled another woman who happened to wear Lisa’s fragrance?” I said.

“No.” His disagreement was emphatic. Tapping his nose, he added, “To an instrument as sensitive as mine, the same perfume varies according to body chemistry. I smelled Lisa Mullen.”

“She’s been dead for days,” I protested. “Nobody knows when she was in that woods, if she was in that woods. How long can a scent last outdoors?”

“Odors cling to clothing. We recovered one of her scarves. ”

After driving in silence for several minutes, I could no longer contain the question.

“What was Lisa’s scent?”

“
Coco Mademoiselle.
Sweet, floral, sexy. Like Lisa herself.”

I coughed. Avery was not sweet, floral, or any definition of sexy I knew. Yet she and MacArthur were due to be wed. Thinking about marriage turned my thoughts toward Jeb. I dialed the recording studio. This time I got the recorded version of Rusha saying exactly what she had told me almost two hours earlier.

“Ocean Audio. We make beautiful music.”

I knew the message was recorded because it contained one more line.

“We can’t talk to you right now, so leave your name, your number, and your reason for calling, and somebody will call you back.”

I did as instructed sounding nowhere as near as mellow or, let’s face it, sexy as Rusha. In fact, I probably sounded worried or annoyed or both. I asked whoever might be the next person to talk to Jeb to make sure he called his immensely pregnant wife pronto.

“We have a baby ready to drop down the chute,” I concluded and clicked off.

MacArthur instantly made a screeching U-turn worthy of an Indy 500 driver and floored the accelerator.

“Whoa!” I yelled, dropping my phone.

I seized the Mercedes’ leather-covered grab bar, which was probably intended for hanging expensive suits.

“Easy, Whiskey,” the Cleaner said. “I can get you to the hospital in record time.”

“I don’t need the hospital yet,” I panted. “I just need Jeb. I was trying to get his attention.”

MacArthur slowed the vehicle to less than double the legal speed.

“You got my attention,” he declared. “I recommend you breathe deeply and think relaxing thoughts.”

“I’d love to,” I said, “but I have to deal with Dani Glancy.”

To my surprise, MacArthur slowed, pulled the car to the side of the road and gently braked.

“You don’t have to do anything but get ready for Baby,” he told me in the sweetest Scottish tones I had ever heard.

As if we needed proof that my estrogen level was through the roof, I burst into tears.

“I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” I wailed. “My baby’s coming, my husband’s gone, my business is falling apart, and my dog ran awaaaaaaay!”

“Hear, hear,” MacArthur said. “Your baby is a blessing, your husband will be home soon, your business can be saved, and your dog, well, your dog is a pain in the arse. But she’ll be back.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I sniffled, “but I’m clueless about being a mother. What the hell will I do?”

“You’ll do what Avery did,” he said cheerfully.

I frowned. “Avery relied on me to hire help.”

“You taught her the value of consulting childcare professionals.”

In fact, I had paid for her childcare professionals.

“You’ll learn to trust your instincts,” MacArthur added.

What a terrifying thought. As far as I could tell, I had almost no helpful instincts at all.

MacArthur must have read my mind.

“Look at the way you love Chester,” he said.

“Everybody loves Chester,” I argued. “I can’t even keep track of his age.”

“Neither can his mother. Open your eyes, Whiskey. You don’t have to be ‘gifted’ to love and care for a child and receive their love in return. Chester loves you even more than he loves dogs.”

That was quite a compliment. It only made me cry harder. MacArthur presented a starched linen handkerchief half again as large as any I had ever seen, except for the one Chester had pulled from his pocket the night before. When I unfolded it, I recognized the logo of Cassina Enterprises, which also appeared on Helen’s chauffeur’s cap.