Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 06 - Whiskey and Soda (3 page)

“How steep?”

I had always wanted to know what it cost to attend The Bentwood School, an elite academy for the super-rich dating back as far as my grandparents’ day.

Chester motioned for me to bend down, which wasn’t as easy as it used to be before the bundle in the middle. He whispered a five-figure number in my ear.

I whistled.

“The Bentwood School is just a day school, right? No boarders?”

Chester nodded.

“And it’s K through 8?”

“Preschool through 8,” Chester corrected me. “Preschool parents get a twenty-percent price break. But they have additional fees for paper products. Those kids tend to be wet.”

He had barely finished before an oncoming cherry-red Mercedes convertible, top down, issued a sustained honk and swerved toward the berm where we stood. Instinctively, I threw myself in front of Chester and Prince Harry. I was protecting Chester on purpose; the dog just happened to be there.

A petite blonde bombshell with shoulder-length poker-straight hair and enormous breasts exited the Mercedes. She tottered toward us on five-inch heels, texting on her smartphone. I could only hope she hadn’t been doing that when her car stopped six feet away.

“Chester!” she shouted without glancing up from her phone. “Don’t you dare try to protect him. Which way did he go?”

Chester gulped. “Uh—hello, Ms. Kellum-Ramirez. How are you on this fine day?”

The woman, who was not yet thirty, tore her eyes from her smartphone. Her white-blonde bangs were so straight and long that they collided with her thick, surely fake, black lashes.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she snapped. “Call me Kimmi, like a normal kid. I don’t know where you get that formal crap.”

“From my very first personal assistant—my nanny.”

“Whatever,” Kimmi said. “Which way did the headmaster go? And don’t pretend you haven’t seen him. The PTO is tracking him.”

“Why?” Chester asked.

“Why what?” Kimmi said.

Distracted, she was texting again. That gave me time to consider her dress, which matched her vehicle: expensive, red, sexy and small. Very small. The bodice dipped low enough to expose two perfectly orb-shaped breasts, the kind God never gave women. The hemline was a foot above her knees. Kimmi Kellum-Ramirez also wore lots of shiny gold and diamond jewelry, including rings, dangly earrings, tinkling bracelets and gobs of necklaces. If my errant Afghan hound were nearby, Kimmi would be Abra-bait.

“Why are you looking for Mr. Vreelander?” Chester said.

“We need to talk to him. To set him straight.”

After Kimmi pushed the send-button, she noticed me.

“Who’s that?” she asked Chester.

“That’s Whiskey.”

“You have a personal assistant who gets you booze?”

“I’m Whiskey Mattimoe. I’m a Realtor.”

“Chester has his own Realtor? Great. That will be Vreelander’s next requirement.”

She resumed texting.

“That’s not how it works, Ms. Kel—, I mean, Kimmi,” Chester said. “Mr. Vreelander isn’t raising requirements because of anything I do.”

“Ha! You learn things. Now he expects every kid to do that.”

“He just wants the school to be stronger,” Chester said.

“And as a result, our children are abandoning their PlayStations and Xboxes. Vreelander’s got them outdoors, running around like they’re—they’re—.”

“Regular kids?” I offered.

“Poor kids,” she revised. “Underprivileged. Forced to use their bodies and their minds. It makes me sick.”

Just then, another vehicle—this one a sky-blue Mercedes SUV—arrived from the same direction Kimmi had, and screeched into place alongside her. The driver didn’t seem to care that she was blocking one half of Broken Arrow Highway.

“Where is he?” she shouted through her open window.

“Chester won’t tell,” Kimmi replied, crossing her arms over her chest and glowering at my small neighbor.

“Leave Chester out of it,” I interjected.

“Which of his personal assistants is that?” The second driver leaned out her window to frown at me. Unlike Kimmi, this one wasn’t sexy. Or even young. I’d call her plain and over forty. Without a trace of make-up, she sported shaggy dark hair and a scowl.

“That’s his Realtor,” Kimmi said.

“We have to get our kids Realtors now?” the second driver asked.

“She’s not my Realtor. She’s my neighbor, who happens to be a Realtor,” Chester explained, hopping anxiously from foot to foot.

The women weren’t listening; they were comparing geographic coordinates on their smartphones. A third vehicle, this one a silver PT Cruiser pointed in the direction I had been driving, pulled up alongside the second vehicle. Broken Arrow Highway was now completely blocked.

Kimmi minced over to the new arrival and animatedly explained directions through the passenger side window. A discussion ensued, with Kimmi relaying information between the two drivers. As she did so, several vehicles whose drivers just wanted to get somewhere converged on us from both directions. The original drivers ignored them until horns bleated and the second driver leaned out her window and screamed an obscenity.

I covered Chester’s ears with both hands. When she graced us all with her middle finger, I shifted my palms to cover Chester’s eyes.

“You need more than two hands,” he said. “Don’t worry. I already know this stuff.”

At that point, the driver of the PT Cruiser—whose face I couldn’t see—said, “We’re on it.” and peeled away. The second driver wheeled her SUV around to follow.

Kimmi told Chester, “Vreelander can’t hide for long.”

“He’s not hiding,” Chester said. “He’s getting a workout on his bike.”

“He’s going to listen to us. There’s no way that asshole is cutting the Christmas play.”

“You do a Christmas play at a secular school?” I asked Chester.

“We do
A Christmas Carol.
I play Tiny Tim every year, but Mr. Vreelander wants to cancel the production because the other kids aren’t even trying to learn their lines.”

“Who cares about the stupid words?” Kimmi fumed. “It’s about how good the kids look. I spent three hundred bucks on my daughter’s costume. She’s gonna be the Ghost of Christmas Past, whether Vreelander likes it or not.”

With that, Kimmi wobbled away on her absurdly high heels. They may have functioned effectively as FM shoes, but they offered poor traction on gravel. She gunned her Mercedes and roared past us, spraying small stones.

I used one hand to shield Chester’s face, the other to protect my belly.

“What a witch. I can’t believe she’s a mother.”

“They all are—Ms. Kellum-Ramirez, Mrs. Wardrip, and Mrs. Lowe. The kids call them Kimmi, Robin and Loralee. They run the PTO, but they really run Bentwood.”

“They run the school?”

“They run Mr. Bentwood, School President. He’s the grandson of the founder. Mr. Bentwood wouldn’t give the previous headmasters much power, but he let the mothers do what they wanted. Until the board hired Mr. Vreelander.”

“Why the change?”

“Recent graduates of The Bentwood School aren’t doing well, Whiskey. Most can’t pass admission tests for private high schools.”

“You mean—?”

Chester nodded gravely. “Our alumni are ending up in public school.”

“Alumni of The Bentwood School … in public school?” I couldn’t believe it.

Chester nodded grimly. “Some don’t even get into college.”

“No way. Your school produces surgeons, moguls and politicians.”

“Not lately,” Chester said. “Since 2004, most of our graduates matriculate into Magnet Springs High and then into Lanagan County Tech. The girl who cuts my hair went to Bentwood.”

“You get a hundred-dollar haircut,” I reminded Chester. “Anyway, that won’t be your story. Where do you want to go to high school?”

His cherubic face darkened. “Cassina thinks I should go to boarding school. She believes in the value of going away.”

Out of sight, out of mind. That was more Cassina’s parenting style than her educational philosophy.

Chester continued, “But I might not have to leave. She wanted me to go away for elementary school, and I won that battle.”

“How?”

“I didn’t leave. For almost six months Cassina thought I was at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills when I had actually enrolled myself at The Bentwood School.”

“Wait. How could you do that?”

Chester rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, Whiskey, you are so naïve. But I find it refreshing.”

“Answer my question.”

He rubbed his second and third finger against his thumb in the universal sign for filthy lucre.

“You bribed your way into The Bentwood School?”

“No. I hired somebody to impersonate Cassina and forge my paperwork. Way easy.”

“But didn’t your mother notice you hadn’t left home?”

As soon as I spoke, I realized how ridiculous I sounded. Cassina toured often to promote her latest CD, leaving her son in the care of an ever-changing household staff. Even when she was in residence at her twenty-thousand-square-foot Castle, Cassina routinely ignored or forgot about Chester. That accounted for his frequent presence at my house.

“Never mind,” I revised. “So where will you go to high school?”

“I’ll probably go where my friends go.”

“You have friends?”

Chester’s only known playmates were assorted canines.

He shrugged. “I have acquaintances, and I’m an optimist. Now that Mr. Vreelander is in charge, the school has a new admissions policy. They’re accepting intelligent, motivated kids only. I’m about to meet my own kind.”

I was genuinely happy for him.

“Prince Harry and I have to run back to The Castle now,” he reminded me.

The dog had fallen asleep, his fuzzy yellow head resting on Chester’s left foot. Apparently the cheese-flavored pedometer had lost its power. When I mentioned that, Chester assured me I was wrong.

“As soon as my body temperature rises from strenuous activity, the pedometer smells and tastes like cheese again. That’s the beauty of this thing. Prince Harry will be trying to lick my ankle all the way home. It’s a motivator for dog and boy.”

After giving them a head start, I slowly followed for a quarter mile. Chester giggled and accelerated whenever Prince Harry’s tongue tickled his ankle. Was there a device for sale that would keep Abra at home? Or motivate me to want to keep her there? I had mentioned to Chester that she was gone again. As usual, he promised to watch for her. But we both knew that Abra would come home when Abra was good and ready. Generally, that was only after she had inflicted mayhem on our community. I tried not to wonder what kind of mischief she was up to this time, and how soon the police would be involved.

I didn’t have to wonder for long. Approaching Vestige, I couldn’t help but notice a Magnet Springs Police cruiser parked in my driveway. Fortunately the flasher wasn’t on, and there were no ambulances in the vicinity. Our local police force was, frankly, kind of a joke. Now if it had been a Lanagan County Sheriff or State Police cruiser—as it too often was—I would have been concerned. This was, most likely, either an informative social call or a nuisance report.

As I pulled into my driveway, Police Chief Judith “Jenx” Jenkins hove into view. I honked and leaned out the window. She failed to acknowledge me, appearing intent on casing my house.

“Looking for clues? Or planning a break-in?” I shouted by way of greeting.

Jenx and I shared a long history that predated Abra’s criminal record. We were classmates in the Magnet Springs school system, and she hated her given name as much as I hated mine. Jenx was more a Jude than a Judith. Openly lesbian since about age ten, she helped her partner Henrietta operate the best B&B in Magnet Springs—when we weren’t in the grip of a crime wave. That is, when Abra wasn’t on the loose.

“Where’s your dog?” Jenx said, not yet turning in my direction. She seemed to be tracing the foundation of my house.

“Ha, ha. What did she do this time? And what’s so interesting about my foundation?”

Finally Jenx gave me her full attention. “It’s too early in Abra’s crime spree to know the extent of her destruction, but it looks like somebody forced their way in through your basement window.”

That got me out of my vehicle in a hurry.

“Did my alarm system go off?”

I was going to say that but didn’t. Of course my alarm system hadn’t gone off. I rarely remembered to set it.

“I came by to talk to you about Abra,” Jenx said. “Being a highly trained professional, I naturally took a look around. This was the first thing I saw.”

With the toe of her steel-toe boot, she indicated the place where a pane of glass used to be. Now there was only air.

“I’ve been meaning to install glass block windows,” I mumbled.

Jenx drew her sidearm. “Get back in your car, Whiskey. I’m going in.”

“Is that wise? I mean, what if someone’s still in there?”

“I’m armed. I also phoned for back-up.”

“You called County?” I asked, knowing full well she hadn’t. Unless absolutely forced to—as in the case of a violent crime—Jenx eschewed the assistance of larger law enforcement agencies. They tended to make fun of her.

“I called Brady,” Jenx replied. “He and Roscoe are en route.”

Officer Brady Swancott and K-9 sidekick Roscoe comprised the rest of the Magnet Springs police force. Brady worked part-time, but Roscoe was in line for a pension. Trained by the best police-dog handlers in Lansing, Roscoe could resist even Abra’s charms.

Secretly I suspected that Chester might have removed the basement window days or even weeks ago, and I simply never noticed. If I remembered to lock my doors, my neighbor usually let himself in through the window above my kitchen sink, but if that were jammed, he would try others. It wasn’t like Chester not to replace the window, though.

I gave Jenx the key so she could let herself into the house, but she didn’t need it; I had left the front door unlocked. Impatiently, I waited in my car. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Jenx hadn’t yet re-emerged when I detected the unmistakable wail of a police siren. Damn. I’d forgotten to ask Jenx to tell Brady not to use that thing. It wasn’t that I feared the siren would disturb my neighbors. This was about my own sensibilities. I preferred to pretend that I had a life rarely visited by the men and women in blue.