Whiskey on the Rocks (4 page)
Read Whiskey on the Rocks Online
Authors: Nina Wright
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Women real estate agents, #Michigan, #General, #Mattimoe; Whiskey (Fictitious character), #Mystery fiction, #Women Sleuths, #Fiction
Noonan said, “He told me he was driving to Chicago.”
Odette shrugged. “Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was nothing like he looked.”
“I liked his looks,” said Noonan.
“Me, too,” I said, remembering Jenx’s photo. “We should all look that good. Alive.”
Mrs. Santy didn’t bother me. Much. I deal with unreasonable, high-maintenance types every day. It’s not as if she’d accused me of anything . . . other than being a realtor. But my reaction to her handsome brother was unsettling.
I left the office early for the second day in a row. Early in this biz is before 8 PM. Since Leo died, I tried to make the least of the dinner hour. He and I used to make the most of it: he cooked, I assisted. Mostly by pouring good wine and holding up my end of our conversations about the future. We thought we had a lot of that.
These days, I was in the habit of stopping by Mother Tucker’s. No relation, just my favorite restaurant run by two good people. Walter and Jonny St. Mary are a long-committed gay couple retired from previous lives in Chicago. Now they feed the tourists and lonely working folk of this town.
“Will it go away soon?” Walter asked as he poured me my second glass of a very fine Riesling. He was referring to the hubbub over Gordon Santy’s untimely demise.
“If Crouch can confirm he had a heart attack, and the widow can’t find a smoking . . . whatever.” I giggled, feeling the tingle of Walter’s wine.
“Ah, yes. The Other Woman Scenario,” Walter sighed. “I hear Mrs. Santy is a shrew. Is her beautiful brother straight?”
Caught in mid-swallow, I stared at him. It hadn’t occurred to me that the gorgeous, aloof Edward might be gay.
“I don’t know. I just thought he was Canadian. Does he seem gay to you?”
“I haven’t talked to him.” Walter’s lustrous white hair gleamed in the bar light. It occurred to me that I might have been attracted to Walter if I hadn’t known he was gay. I chugged the rest of my wine.
“Hit me again.”
“Slow down, Whiskey,” Walter said. “This stuff isn’t potent, but it is precious. Jonny and I paid sixty dollars for the bottle. It’s not meant for guzzling.”
“Then switch me to the cheap stuff.”
Walter kissed my cheek. “Go home, dear. You have a dog to feed. And Jonny has your dinner ready.”
This was the routine we’d fallen into: I’d have a couple, three glasses of expensive wine, and then Jonny, the chef half of the team, would pack me a deluxe go-box of the nightly gourmet special.
“What am I having?” I asked Walter.
“Broiled lake perch almandine with locally grown corn on the cob and garlic mashed potatoes. Peach pie for dessert. If you want it à la mode, you’ll have to stop at Food Duck for a pint of vanilla.”
“No à la mode necessary.”
“The Canadians felt the same way. They had what you’re having.”
I cupped my chin in my hand and smiled at Walter. “What do you think of them—really?”
“Scenic but chilly. Like the country they come from.”
The phone at Vestige started ringing as I was entering my security code. That morning I’d taken the time to activate the alarm. Abra wouldn’t win another free pass to the outside world if I could help it. When I entered, she ignored me, as usual. But the aromatic lake perch in my go-box had her attention.
I grabbed the phone on the fourth ring, a split second before the machine could pick up.
“What do you want to hear first—the bad news or the not-so-bad news?”
I recognized Jenx’s voice.
“You’re calling me with news that’s not so bad?”
“And bad news, too. What order do you want it in?”
“Hit me with the hard stuff.”
“Shadow Play’s been burglarized. Mr. Naylor called it in. The alarm system failed. He claims he set it, but it never went off. Somebody broke in while he and his sister were at dinner.”
“What was taken?”
“We’ll need your help to answer that one. Some of Mrs. Santy’s jewelry, for sure. I assume the Reitbauers left you an inventory of household contents.”
They had.
“Any damage?” I asked.
“The back door’s broken, but I haven’t noticed anything else. I just got here, though.”
I sagged against the kitchen wall. “What’s the not-so-bad news?”
“Mrs. Santy might not sue you.”
Jenx suggested I come to Shadow Play as soon as I could. I took three greedy bites of Mother Tucker’s perch filets before stuffing the box in the fridge and taking Abra out to relieve herself. I let her pull me around the house; then we went back inside. But she craved more action. As I was leaving, she slipped out the kitchen door with me. I tried to tackle her in the breezeway. Abra bounded over to my car and placed her paws on the passenger door. Although I managed to set the alarm, Naughty Dog got to go for a car ride.
I was surprised to see young Officer Swancott at the scene. In the glare from his patrol car’s headlights, Brady was posting crime scene tape around Shadow Play’s bashed-in back door.
“Do you have to do that?” I said, rolling down my window. Abra leapt across my lap and out. “Damn that dog!”
Brady said, “No problem, Whiskey. I got Officer Roscoe with me. He’ll bring her in.”
Officer Roscoe was Brady’s assistant, a dignified German Shepherd trained by the Michigan state police. When Brady whistled, Roscoe appeared from around the corner of the house and stood at attention. Brady barked a command. Roscoe dashed off to execute it.
“Thanks,” I said. “But does this have to look like a crime scene?”
“It is a crime scene.”
“I know. But that yellow tape is bad for business.”
Brady pondered the situation and then yanked the tape down. I asked where I could find Jenx.
“Inside,” he said. “Interviewing Mrs. Santy and Mr. Naylor. Let’s go in this way.”
He opened the previously sealed door, and we followed Mrs. Santy’s anxious voice into the master bedroom. Three faces turned our way. Jenx’s looked as smooth and mulish as ever, but the other two were strained.
“I thought you said the alarm system was state-of-the-art,” Mrs. Santy began. To her brother she added, “She told you the same thing, eh?”
Eh again. Before I could reply, Jenx said, “Thanks for getting here so fast, Whiskey. Mrs. Santy is missing a watch—”
“Not a ‘watch,’” Mrs. Santy snapped. “A Piaget. If that means anything to you people.”
“We get it,” I said.
Jenx continued, “Mrs. Santy hid her other jewelry before they went out, and the intruder didn’t find it.“
“My other jewelry is antique—priceless family heirlooms.” The Canadian beauty fixed her icy eyes on me. “You’d be in deep, deep trouble if they were gone.”
Edward Naylor laid a calming hand on his sister’s arm. He spoke softly. “Ms. Mattimoe, I didn’t notice anything missing from the house, but I did observe that the safe is damaged.”
He indicated the Reitbauers’ built-in closet vault. The safe was intact, but the keypad was smashed.
“Somebody must have pounded on it,” I observed.
“Obviously,” sneered Mrs. Santy. “A junkie, probably. We might as well be in Detroit.”
Outside Abra let loose her freakish howl, somewhere between a wild dingo sound and a dying human sound.
“What is that?” cried Mrs. Santy.
Jenx glared at me. “You brought her along?”
“She brought herself, actually. I had very little to do with it.”
“Jesus, Whiskey, this is a crime scene.”
“I know, I saw the tape.”
Before Jenx could reply, Mrs. Santy started screaming and didn’t seem able to stop. We all looked where she was looking, through the window to the floodlit terrace. Abra stood in the center, something dark and shapeless dangling from her mouth.
“Shit,” hissed Jenx. “She went and stole somebody’s purse again!”
“Maybe not,” I said lamely. “Maybe she found it in the street.“
“Somebody, get that goat out of here!” shrieked Ellianna Santy. Then she fainted.
What makes people mistake my dog for a goat? By the time Jenx, Brady, and I reached Abra, Officer Roscoe was on the case, attempting to subdue her with one of those fancy police moves he had learned in East Lansing. Unfortunately, Abra mistook his professional vigor for sexual ardor. This dog’s no Nesbitt, she must have thought, for she eagerly assumed the position. Her response confused Roscoe. Apparently they didn’t cover that contingency in Canine SWAT School. Human Officer Swancott snatched the handbag from Abra’s grinning mouth and ordered Roscoe back to the patrol car. He sailed in through the open passenger-side window. With difficulty, I wrestled the whining Affie into my vehicle, sealed the windows, and activated the child-proof locks. She continued howling and making bedroom eyes at Roscoe, but he ignored her. Clearly, he was still on the clock.
Inside Shadow Play, Brady and Jenx had donned surgical gloves and were examining Abra’s find. They glanced up when I entered.
“Can I just go ahead and pay the fine this time?” I said, cringing at memories of Abra’s purse-snatching past and the court hearings that followed. “I thought she was rehabilitated.”
“She might be,” Jenx said. “This time she might be on our side.”
“I doubt it.” I peered over Jenx’s shoulder at what looked like an expensive leather purse, none the worse for Abra’s mauling.
“Check out the ID.” Jenx flipped open an eel-skin wallet to display a Michigan driver’s license.
I studied it. “So?”
Brady said, “Probably our thief. This was in the bag, too.”
He produced a gleaming gold wristwatch, edged in diamonds.
Jenx whistled. “I take it that ain’t cut glass.”
“Probably worth about thirteen thousand,” I said.
“Dollars?” Jenx said. She whistled again. “But does it keep better time than my Timex?”
“There’s something else,” Brady said. From the purse he carefully withdrew a square wood-framed watercolor, about five inches by five. Instantly I recognized it from my walk-through last night. It had adorned the master bathroom wall next to the vanity; I remembered because it was one of the few paintings in the house I had liked: cottony clouds floating in an azure sky.
“I thought Mr. Naylor said nothing was missing,” I said.
“He probably didn’t check the bathroom,” replied Jenx, “or else he didn’t notice. This isn’t very big.”
“But it’s valuable,” Brady announced. “It’s a Warren Matheney. See?” He pointed to the artist’s signature. Jenx’s eyebrows arched.
“Geez,” she whispered.
“So what?” I said.
The officers stared at me. “You don’t know Warren Matheney? ‘Cloud Man’?”
“Should I?”
They exchanged glances. Jenx said, “You ought to get out more, Whiskey. Warren Matheney had a show at the West Shore Gallery last month.”
“I’m not into watercolor. Is he supposed to be good?”
“Like the best in the Midwest,” Brady said. “He’s been on Oprah.”
“And the cover of People magazine,” Jenx said. They looked at each other again. I had the feeling, and not for the first time, that most people knew things I didn’t.
Brady added, “Cloud Man’s popular because his paintings help people relax. Stare at this a minute.”
I did. Brady was right; the picture was soothing. Kind of like white noise.
“So you’re saying this is worth something?”
“I take it you haven’t seen the news this week,” said Jenx. “Warren Matheney was found dead in his Chicago apartment.”
“He’ll never paint again,” Brady said. “So his stuff just got super expensive. I’ll bet this little number’s worth at least a hundred grand now.”
“Get out of here!” I snorted.
“Brady should know,” Jenx said. “He’s doing his master’s in art history, aren’t you, bud?”
“Nights and weekends. On-line through Northwestern.”
“But if that picture is worth that kind of money, why didn’t Mrs. R have me put it in their safe?”
“Maybe she forgot she had it,” Brady replied. “The Reitbauers have a lot of nice stuff. And they haven’t stayed here much. That’s an early Matheney. Circa ’78.”
“How can you tell?” I said.
Brady pointed to the picture. “Those are cumulus clouds. From his Cumulus Period. Matheney moved on to Cirrus and then Nimbostratus. He was flirting with Cumulonimbus when he died.”
We heard a low moan from the bedroom.
“Should someone look in on Mrs. Santy?” I said.