Whiskey on the Rocks (27 page)

The Angola police interviewed me the following morning. Although I didn’t get to meet Darrin Keogh’s loyal friend and choir-buddy, the Chief, the officer who came to my hospital room was respectful. He declared that no charges would be filed concerning the death of Gordon Santy, alias Edward Naylor. It’s always nice to know that there’s no warrant pending against you.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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!”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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?”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.