Whiskey on the Rocks (17 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
“What Program?” I asked.
“Dogs-Train-You-dot-com, remember? The secret to our success.”
I wasn’t sure we’d had any. And I couldn’t in good conscience inflict Abra on a stranger, even a man who’d never bothered to know his son.
Chester said, “No problem. Cassina says he’s having his first ‘bout of guilt,’ so I should make the most of it. Besides, he has a beach house in Malibu. Abra will feel right at home.”
For Rupert’s sake, I hoped not.
“Do you even know if your father likes dogs? He could be allergic.”
Chester shook his head. “Cassina says he picks up strays all the time.”
She could be speaking metaphorically, but I let that go. Maybe it would be safer for everyone if Abra were gone. It would certainly be simpler.
“What does your father do for a living?”
“He was a musician in my mom’s band. Now he’s a Hollywood producer. Cassina says he had a near-death experience and saw God. That’s why he wants to meet me.”
I told Chester to call me if he had any problems. I expected to hear from him soon.
Brady assured me that he and Officer Roscoe would swing by later, so I decided to work at home. With Abra gone, my alarm system activated, and police protection on the way, I felt safe from Sparky.
I told my receptionist to forward only those calls that qualified as urgent or lucrative. The first time the phone rang, I figured it was too soon to be Chester.
“How dare you?” a familiar voice demanded.
“Pardon?”
“How dare you try to sweet-talk my husband out of seeking restitution? Thanks to you, our beautiful beach home was like totally trashed, and our priceless Matheney got stolen!”
At least the savage murder didn’t bother Mrs. R.
“My husband is a very busy, very important man. He will not play the fool,” she declared. “So don’t phone us again. You’ll hear from our attorneys.”
“That’s unnecessary. I’m willing to do whatever it takes—”
“We’re taking you to court. For negligence. Remember the clause in our contract about screening tenants? The people you rented to weren’t even the people you said they were. They were like . . . Canadian criminals!”
They were precisely Canadian criminals, but I didn’t say so.
“You approved Mrs. Santy as tenant,” I reminded her.
“Do you have that in writing? No you don’t! And our contract says you have to.”
She was right about that. In the interest of saving time, I had accepted her verbal approval over the phone.
“That’s not all, Mrs. Mattimoe. Your fingerprints were all over our house!”
“Because you asked me to remove valuables to your bedroom safe.”
“Then why did you leave our most valuable possession to be stolen?”
“Because it wasn’t on your list to be locked up!”
“Oh, but it was, Mrs. Mattimoe. You put the wrong fucking picture in the safe!”
I mentally replayed reading the list and stashing the goods. I had locked up a small watercolor that was not the Matheney before I even knew what a Matheney was. But I had locked up the right watercolor, the one stipulated in Mrs. R’s instructions.
She said, “The Magnet Springs police will testify that your dog had our Matheney. It’s in their report. And your dog is a known felon!”
“My dog retrieved your Matheney!”
“For you, Mrs. Mattimoe! And when that didn’t work, you went back in and got it again.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“We’ll see what a jury says.”
I paced my office until my heart rate slowed. When the phone rang again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer.
“I owe you an apology, Mrs. Mattimoe.”
“Who is this?”
“Robert Reitbauer. I believe you just spoke with my wife.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“I apologize on her behalf. Kimba has been . . . well, overly emotional since the problems at Shadow Play.”
Ah, yes—Kimba. I had forgotten Mrs. R’s first name.
“I let her oversee our real estate interests. I suppose you could call it her little hobby.”
And my little livelihood.
“Kimba is used to getting what she wants, and she wants to take you to court. I’ll do my best to convince her otherwise and to keep our attorneys at bay. But you’ll have to let the matter go, Mrs. Mattimoe. Stop calling and aggravating her.”
I assured him I would.
Mr. Reitbauer added, “I believe you had good intentions.”
Not exactly a professional commendation. I summoned enough grace to thank him, anyway. We had barely disconnected when Odette buzzed.
“I took that call first, Whiskey, and I’m sure of one thing: the caller was not Mr. Reitbauer.”
“I hope your telephone telepathy is wrong this time. We don’t need a lawsuit.”
“You don’t need your stepdaughter, either, but she’s here.”
That was a shocker. “Avery’s in the lobby? What does she want?”
Odette lowered her voice. “I haven’t asked, but from the looks of her, a maternity wardrobe would be nice.”
Avery Mattimoe was never my friend. She was in her mid-teens when her father married me. By then, she and her mother Georgia had already moved to Belize with a hunky builder named Garth. Once upon a time, Garth and Leo had been partners. That was how Garth met Georgia, and the two fell in love. Yet Avery convinced herself that the divorce was my fault. Maybe she just liked Garth better than she liked me. She sure didn’t want to share Leo. The distance between Central America and Middle America made visitation difficult. Avery spent the first couple Christmases and summer vacations with us. From then on she begged Leo to meet her for visits in more exotic locations. I hadn’t seen her in three years—except at Leo’s funeral. And that was a painful blur.
My Late Beloved was going to be a grandpa in absentia. I couldn’t imagine Avery pregnant. She was about as maternal as—well, as I was. Maybe less.
Though I already knew the answer, I asked Odette to ask Avery whether she would rather meet me for lunch at the Goh Cup or drive out to Vestige.
Odette said, “She wants to come ‘home.’”
I was sure she had put it just that way. Odette asked me to hold a moment. Back on the line, she said, “I’m watching her squeeze her big belly into her little Honda CRX. Cute car, but you’ll need to buy her a minivan.”
“I’m sure it’s on her list.”
I scrambled to find something, anything, edible in the house. Without Chester around to nag me, I hadn’t gone to the store. So I called Walter St. Mary at Mother Tucker’s and implored him to send over a couple wonderful lunches for Leo’s daughter and me. Inspired, he said he’d deliver them himself.
“I remember what a sweet tooth Avery used to have,” he said. “And how she loved her cherries: cherry pop, cherry pie, cherry ice cream, cherry tarts.”
I winced.
Walter added, “Jonny saw her in the Goh Cup this morning. He said that must be one big baby she’s carrying.”
I watched my estranged and enlarged stepdaughter pry herself from her car. Once standing, she stuck her tongue out. That didn’t mean she knew I was watching. Avery sticks her tongue out many times a day. What started as a childhood gesture of insolence evolved into a grotesque nervous tic. Maybe once upon a time, Leo or Georgia told her it was cute. Not anymore.
“I didn’t come here for a lecture,” she said the instant I opened the door.
“Fine by me. So how the hell are you?”
“Fat, bored, and flat broke. Pregnant, too, in case you can’t tell.”
Just for the fun of it, I waited a beat for her to ask me how I was. It didn’t happen. I let her come in anyway. She lumbered over to the picture window and stared out.
“I can’t believe my dad left this place to you.”
Willing my blood pressure to stay in the non-stroking range, I replied, “I put as much of my own money into this property as Leo did. We owned it together.”
“Most of his estate went to you!”
“We co-owned everything. Debts and all.”
She stuck her tongue out. “That’s what tenants are for, right? To pay the mortgage? Nobody’s paying my bills.”
In a controlled voice, I said, “What about your trust fund?”
Avery snorted. “What about it? It’s like a joke!”
“Well, tell that ‘joke’ to everyone who doesn’t have a trust fund—which is almost everyone.”
“It won’t pay enough to live on till I’m thirty! Even then, I’ll probably have to work.”
“I believe that was Leo’s intent.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “But he didn’t know I’d be a mother, did he?”
“I think he assumed you might breed eventually.”
Groaning, she lowered herself into the largest chair in the room. Her lack of resemblance to Leo had always helped me maintain an emotional distance. She had never seemed genuinely linked to her father or our life. Now that he was gone, and she was here, I felt a wave of overwhelming resentment.
“You don’t understand family obligation, do you, Whiskey?”
That made me want to stick my tongue out. “Gosh. I think I understand it as well as the next Daughter-Sister-Wife-Stepmother.”
Avery blinked. “I guess that’s what Dad saw in you. You’re almost funny. You’ve even got funny hair.”
My unruly curls had never amused anyone, least of all me and my hair stylist.
“I remember how you made Dad laugh, how he used to play with the hair on your neck when he sat by you. That made me crazy.”
“Why?”
”Because it meant he loved you without even thinking about it.”
Leo had done that. It was such an old, subtle habit that I hadn’t thought about it in ages. That didn’t mean I didn’t miss it, though. Suddenly, I missed it so acutely that I had to bolt for the kitchen.
“What would you like to drink?” I called back to her.
It didn’t matter since she was having what I was having, the only drink in the house: tap water. I would have offered it on the rocks if the icemaker were working.
A few minutes later we sat on the terrace overlooking Lake Michigan, sipping lukewarm water in strained silence and waiting for Walter to arrive with our food. Finally I worked up the nerve to ask when she was due.
Avery flicked her eyes away. “I’m in my third trimester.”
“So . . . you’re, what, seven months? Eight?”
I was no expert on pregnancy, but Avery seemed enormous. No way she’d be able to drive her CRX to term. Even in her slender days, she’d been a big-boned gal like her mom. I guessed she weighed two hundred pounds.
“Must be one big baby!” I quipped, echoing Walter and Jonny.
“It’s two big babies.”
“Two?” I stared at her stupidly.
“I’m having twins, Whiskey. Fraternal twins.”
“Fraternal?” For an instant I thought she meant the father was Sigma Beta Chi.
“Not identical. I’m carrying a boy and a girl.”
Stalling for inspiration, I downed my entire glass of water. Then I said, “Is that so? Well, well. Do they have a name?”
“If you mean a last name, I’m giving them mine. Their father is out of this. I’m doing it all on my own. And I need a place to have my babies.”
“You mean like a hospital?”
“No, I mean like here. A place to live. Till the twins get older and I get my life back.”
“Avery, I hate to tell you this, but your life with twins is never going to be like your life before twins.”
“I know that! But if I have help, it won’t be bad.”
“What kind of help are you talking about?”
“A nanny. And a personal assistant.”
“Excuse me?”
“There’s plenty of room for live-in help at Vestige. My dad would have wanted me here. With his grandchildren.”
She stuck her tongue out. I was tempted to do the same.
“We have no way of knowing that since your father is dead.”
“Well, I know it! And I know I have a right to stay!” She burst into tears. A flood of snotty, smeary tears. Some women are pretty when they cry. Avery Mattimoe isn’t one of them. As I handed her a box of tissues, a consoling notion struck me: the mother-to-be had a mother.
“Georgia must be thrilled about having grandchildren.”
“Ha! She thinks I’ve ruined my life. I’m never talking to her again.”
“Let’s not be hasty. I’m sure she would love to help.”
“There’s no room for me in her life, let alone two babies. Did you know that her boyfriend is my age?”