Whiskey on the Rocks (25 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
Something snagged my peripheral vision. I whipped my head around in time to see Darrin Keogh, one parking lot over, sail past on a bicycle. He didn’t see me. Where was the Beamer? And where was Keogh off to in such a hurry? He pedaled away from me along the lakeshore toward what looked like a distant park. Then I remembered that I had a bike, too. I popped the hatchback and hauled mine out. Now that her tires were properly inflated, Blitzen could handle anything. I climbed on, hoping Keogh wasn’t out just for the exercise. It was a lovely day, and I needed a workout, but first I needed answers.
In a minute I realized that I could pass Keogh without half trying, so I down-shifted and willed myself to enjoy the scenery. The working world was gainfully employed, as I should have been. I realized that I had no cell phone with me. Odette and the rest of my staff must be wondering where I was. And for Pete’s sake, who was running For Arts Sake while Keogh was out having fun? Ahead of me he faded into the shadows of a woodsy glen. I slowed to consider what might await me. If he knew he was being followed, would he ditch me? Or attack me? Or invite me home to meet his mom?
By now he was invisible while I was still bathed in sunlight. Lame disguise, don’t fail me now. Blitzen and I glided into the cool of the trees; when my eyes adjusted, I caught a glimpse of Keogh rounding the bend ahead. The trail had degraded from a paved path to a dirt one that was still relatively smooth. I shivered as the temperature dipped ten degrees.
The path became increasingly uneven and winding. Lake James could have been miles away; for all I knew, I was deep in a forest. Birds sang in the richly hued leaves overhead. The woods smelled of must and decay. Occasionally, I spotted Keogh ahead, dappled in sunlight. He was pedaling hard on a bike whose gear ratio couldn’t compete with Blitzen’s. Then, on a straightaway, I saw him starting up a steep incline. He was laboring, so I let myself fall back another fifty yards. What if he chose this spot to stop suddenly and look around?
But he made it over the top of the hill, so I put some oomph into my efforts. Approaching the crest, I tensed. What if he were resting there? I doubted my disguise would work under close scrutiny. I decided I’d pretend to be scouting the area on behalf of a client who planned to retire in Indiana. I’m a real estate professional. I know how to shade the truth.
But I didn’t have to. Darrin Keogh’s bike lay on the trail before me. He stood a short distance away on a rocky outcropping. But he was too busy pleading for his life to notice my arrival. The man I had known and lusted after as Edward Naylor held him at gunpoint. Keogh inched backward toward the edge of ledge, whimpering pathetically. Gordon Santy aimed his rifle with the confidence of a trained assassin.
Keogh said, “Let’s talk about this. You need me, Gordon!”
For the first time, I heard Santy laugh. It wasn’t a happy sound. “You’ve made enough Matheneys. Thank you very much, but your services are no longer required.”
Keogh took another step backward and stumbled. Santy laughed again.
“Get up. You’re making this way too easy!”
Keogh took a long moment before he moved. I assumed he was wondering what difference it would make. If he stood up, he’d get shot. If he stayed down, he’d get shot.
“I said, get up! Now!” Santy released the safety.
Either Keogh had bigger balls than I’d imagined, or he just wanted to be done with it. He rolled forward onto his knees and pushed himself upright. As he did so, he glanced my way. In the fraction of a second when our eyes met, I realized that my hat had slid off. Attached by a string, it now rested on the back of my neck exposing my infamous unfunny hair. My curls are my calling card, and Darrin Keogh read it out loud.
“Whiskey Mattimoe!” he gasped.
Santy reacted as if Keogh had picked that moment to order a cocktail. He followed his gaze.
“Well, well. It’s the dog lady with the hots for me.”
I’ve been called worse, but that hurt. The Canadian swung his rifle in my direction. “Drop the bike now and get over here!”
“He’ll kill us both!” Keogh cried. “And Avery, too. I told her about the forgeries! He’ll never let her live!”
Santy said, “You told who?”
“Whom,” Keogh corrected him. “Whiskey’s stepdaughter. You saw her the other day.”
“Former stepdaughter,” I said quickly. “Now that her dad’s dead, I don’t think it counts.”
“The fat chick who got in the way of my shot?” Santy asked.
“She’s pregnant,” I explained. “Though she was never thin.”
Santy was once again advancing on the antiques dealer. “You told her what?”
“Everything—about the paintings and the blackmail. You name it, she knows about it.”
“You little fuck. I don’t care whom you told. You’re dead. And so is she.”
Then Blitzen and I were bearing down on him, tearing across the rocky ground toward the ledge as if planning to hang-glide over the side. Those big yellow wings would have come in handy. Keogh saw us coming. His watery eyes widened, but this time he said nothing. In the last instant that we accelerated toward Santy’s unsuspecting back, Keogh leapt deftly aside. I squeezed my handle grips tight, and we slammed our target. Santy’s shoulders and head flew back; his spine flexed into an inverted C. The gun fired. He lifted into the air with me and Blitzen. The last thing I recall—besides his surprisingly girlish scream and the eerie sense that my wheels were no longer in contact with Earth—was the altimeter on my handlebars. The digital readout said 329. Feet or meters? I wondered.
I don’t care what actors say on TV. When you wake up in a hospital room, you know that’s where you are. There’s no confusing it with anyplace else. I asked where I was, though, because I had no memory of getting there. The nice nurse said I was at Cameron Memorial Hospital in Angola, Indiana.
I moaned, more from frustration than pain, although my head hurt and so did my right side. The nurse explained that I had a concussion, a fractured ulna (elbow), and two broken ribs.
“Only two this time?” I asked weakly.
She nodded. “But your X-rays say they’re two of the same ribs you broke before.”
“I’m matchsticks. At least I broke a new arm.”
She assured me that I’d be fine, that they were keeping me for observation. Then she adjusted some tube running into me somewhere, and I was gone again. The next time I opened my eyes, Darrin Keogh was staring at me. He didn’t look much better than I felt.
“What the hell happened?” I said.
“You saved me. And probably Avery, too.”
“I mean, what the hell happened to me?”
He recapped my impetuous Bicycle-as-Battering Ram maneuver.
“So Blitzen and I took Gordon Santy over the edge of a cliff. . . .”
“More like the edge of a ravine. You fell sixty feet.”
“My altimeter said 329.”
“Meters above sea level. We were at one of the highest points in the state.”
“How come I’m not dead?”
“Your bike saved you. That and the tree you fell into.”
“What about Santy?”
Keogh shook his head. “He didn’t have a bike. Or a tree. He hit a rock.”
I had killed a man. I must have passed out again. When I woke, Darrin Keogh was still there looking anxious.
“Thanks for saving me, Whiskey. I’m not a bad guy.”
My brain buzzed, reconnecting a couple synapses.
“Santy said you made Matheneys. You’re a forger?”
“Let’s say I’m good at following directions.”
“What does that mean?”
Keogh poured me water and started explaining. “A few years ago, my uncle hired me to finish his paintings. He couldn’t sustain an interest, didn’t have the focus anymore. I think he was doing a lot of drugs. All I knew for sure was he had a problem, and I could help. And I needed money. My antiques business was going under.”
“You can paint?”
He shrugged. “Clouds aren’t that hard.”
“How does finishing paintings turn into forging them?”
“I don’t consider what I did a forgery,” Keogh said. “My uncle hired me to do it.”
“You signed his name to works that weren’t his but were sold as his. I’m thinking that’s forgery.”
Keogh wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.
“Please listen. Before long Uncle Warren couldn’t paint at all anymore, but he had commissions to fulfill. He said he was in a lot of trouble. He begged me to do the paintings, and he promised he’d pay me more than I’d ever dreamed of earning. So . . . I took over. At first, he gave me a lot of feedback. After a few months, he didn’t say much at all. But the orders kept coming.”
“So,” I concluded, “you’re the real Cloud Man.”
“No way! Warren Matheney was Cloud Man. Whether he could paint anymore or not, it was his mystique that sold the pictures. His appearances on TV and at galleries. I was . . . the hired help.”
“Then why did Gordon Santy want to kill you?”
“He was afraid I’d talk.”
“To who?”
“To whom,” Keogh said automatically. “I’m . . . not sure I should say. I think I might need a lawyer.”
“You think?”
“I never meant to do anything wrong!”
“Nothing worse, that is, than forging art?”
I was doing my best Imitation Bad Cop. But it’s hard to look menacing in a hospital bed.
“I never met Santy till after Uncle Warren died, but I recognized his voice. He’d been the one who phoned me with ‘commissions’—only then he used a different name.”
“Do you remember it?”
“Robert Reitbauer.”
“The cement tycoon? Why would Robert Reitbauer call you to order art?”
“Because his wife hung out with my uncle.”
I tried to picture the adolescent-acting Mrs. R in the company of a world-famous artist, but the image wouldn’t come. It was hard enough picturing her married to a mogul.
Keogh mumbled, “Kimba’s my sister.”
I gestured frantically at my water glass. I needed a drink, and I’d take what I could get.
“So, Mrs. R—Kimba—is your sister, and the man pretending to be her husband on the phone is Gordon Santy? ”
“That’s right.”
“How the hell . . . ?”
“The real Robert Reitbauer is in a nursing home. He’d had a few strokes before Kimba married him. Then he had a massive one. The guy’s a vegetable.”
I recalled Odette’s insistence that the live voice of Mr. Reitbauer didn’t match the recorded version on their home answering machine, but that the live voice had seemed familiar. It should have seemed familiar to me, too, but I had missed the link.
“Why did Gordon Santy pretend to be Robert Reitbauer?”
“Because, in the beginning, the real Robert Reitbauer asked him to. He hired Santy to be Kimba’s escort. He knew my sister needed more of a social life than he was able to give her. But he didn’t know Santy would actually pretend to be him. Santy took advantage of the situation. He started selling forged art to Reitbauer’s business contacts. My sister helped him pull it off. “
“What was their hold over Matheney? Why would he agree to play?”
Keogh lowered his voice. “Like I told you, my uncle had problems. He did drugs. But that wasn’t all he was into. He liked strange sex.”
“How strange?”
“He liked to hurt his partner, and he wasn’t particular about the partner he had.”
Keogh’s stories about Avery as a young art student and Pashtoon as a puppy came back to me. Then I replayed knocking on the door of Keogh’s store. Wells had said that Mrs. Santy probably expected someone tall like me, which is why I’d passed muster through the frosted panes.
“You and Mrs. Santy were expecting Kimba the day I came to your store!”
Keogh nodded. “It was Kimba’s idea to hide the Santys. She leased the condo at Lost Mists in her name so they could stay there. She makes me share my Beamer.”
“What do you know about the murders?”
Keogh paled. “I don’t know anything!”
“You think your uncle died of natural causes?”
“Yes.”
“Then how’d he lose his finger? The one with his famous Celtic Cloud Ring? Dan Gallagher’s widow found it in her motel room—minus the ring—and then my dog ran off with it. Actually, we think my dog had the finger first, while the ring was still on it. She probably buried it, and then someone dug it up—”
My story had a surprising effect: Keogh puked on the floor, narrowly missing his shoes. I didn’t mind because we were in a hospital. Someone else would clean it up.
Now I knew how Keogh could afford the Beamer and who had picked him up this morning. What I wondered was why he’d bicycled into the woods. I delayed asking till the nurse’s aide had mopped the floor.