Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 07 - Whiskey, Large (19 page)

“What’s up with the dead dog?” I said when Jenx answered her phone. “Did you get a report back from Lansing?”

“Nothin’ yet from the State Boys, but we’re still keeping the canine corpse out of the news. I showed a photo from the fire scene to Dr. David. He’s not sure, but he says it could have belonged to the Mullens.”

My stomach lurched, just as it had when MacArthur reported what he’d found in the ashes.

“You still there?” Jenx asked.

“Feeling queasy,” I replied.

“Yawn and you’ll feel better.”

I tried it. She was right.

Jenx went on, “Turns out Dr. David had his own photo of the Mullens’ dog, and that ain’t all. How soon can you get to the station?”

I reminded the chief that I’d just seen my OB-gyn. “She pronounced me almost ready to deliver.”

“Then you’d better get over here fast.”

Jenx hung up.

Helen had respectfully excused herself to wait by the Town Car while I made my call. Now I opened the front door and waved to get her attention. She strode directly to me, stopped, saluted and clicked her heels together.

It was ridiculous, yet it looked good. I saluted her right back.

“How may I be of service, Miss Whiskey?” Helen said briskly.

“We’re going to the police station,” I said.

“Not so fast,” Mom announced from behind me. “Pregnant women feed themselves on schedule, remember? I made those whole-grain blueberry muffins you love. They’re not low-calorie, but they are nutritious.”

She held out that darned Fleggers lunchbox again.

Jeb appeared, grinning, over Mom’s shoulder.

“What?” I demanded.

“One day soon you’ll be handing Baby a lunchbox like this,” he said.

“Not like this,” I said. “We won’t encourage our child to think animals should have more rights than people.”

I told my husband what Jenx had just told me. He turned serious.

“Want me to go to the station with you?”

I wanted him to go to the station instead of me, but the sooner Jeb finished his business in Grand Rapids, the sooner he’d be back at my side.

“Helen will be with me,” I told him.

My driver nodded enthusiastically.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Jeb. I’ll take excellent care of Miss Whiskey.”

“I’ll track them both with my new spy app,” Mom announced.

I stared at her. “Your what?”

“I downloaded a program that lets me follow family members wherever they go,” she said.

“Uh, that’s a stalking app, Mom.”

“Whatever.” Obviously self-satisfied, my mother added, “Don’t be late for dinner, Whitney, and don’t forget to read your own tweets. You have a slight lead over UberSpringer.”

I frowned, and Jeb kissed me. Then he kissed my belly.

“I’ll be home with my family tonight,” he whispered to Baby.

En route to the Magnet Springs police station I inhaled the lunch Mom had packed. I couldn’t remember when a cold meatloaf sandwich had tasted so good. There were no cookies, however.

Jenx was standing by the curb ready to help Helen extract me from the vehicle. The chief pulled while my driver pushed.

“I called ahead for assistance on the car phone,” Helen explained.

“Don’t tell me I’m bigger today than I was yesterday.”

Jenx said, “No need to tell you if you already know.”

The two women worked like a well-oiled machine although afterward Jenx had to crack her own spine. I joked that they needn’t worry since I planned to deliver before I required Jaws of Life.

“Good thing,” Jenx said grimly, “because all we got is a blow torch.”

Inside the station, Jenx instructed me to sit in her swivel desk chair.

“I’m fine,” I protested. “You don’t have to give me your chair.”

“Yup, I do. You might break the other one.”

Jenx had cleared her desk of the alarmingly tall columns of manila folders that customarily cluttered it. I had never been sure whether she shunned filing or liked hiding behind the piles.

“Where’d all your files go?” I whispered in case the answer was a secret.

“I consolidated most of ’em and delegated the rest to Brady. He’s building a database.”

“You ‘consolidated’ police files?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Except for the stuff your dog stirs up, not much happens here.”

Now the scratched wood surface of her desk was bare, save four photos from the Mullens’ fire scene. Although they weren’t easy to look at, I forced myself. After all, I told myself, I had already seen the real thing. This couldn’t possibly be worse or even as bad.

Wrong. Shot from varied angles and distances, the eight-by-ten color photos showed the body of a large dark dog half-buried in burned rubble. I hadn’t seen that atrocity before.

“Done,” I said and spun Jenx’s desk chair sideways so I couldn’t glimpse the pix in my peripheral vision.

“You okay?” she said.

I swallowed and nodded.

“One more,” Jenx said.

“Ugh.”

“This one’s easy, I promise.”

She removed the first four photos and turned my chair back in line with her desk before placing a single horizontal photo greeting card in front of me. It featured Todd and Lisa Mullen with their arms around a big black dog. The humans appeared to be laughing, and the canine looked happy, too. All three wore red Santa hats.

Happy holidays from Todd, Lisa, and Diggs.

“Diggs?” I said aloud.

“Yup. Dr. David got this card from the Mullens. Diggs was his patient. He was a two-year-old Labradoodle.”

I knew only too well that our local vet frowned on “designer dog breeds” and, frankly, all practices that offered humans more options than animals. Although Dr. David would have encouraged the Mullens to rescue a neglected or abandoned pet, he no doubt gave their trendy overpriced pooch the best of care.

I closed my eyes. “So that’s the dog Lisa wanted and Todd didn’t. The dog I saw no sign of at their house.”

“Yup,” Jenx said. “We got a canine corpse and a positive I.D. on this photo from Dr. David. He’ll do an autopsy. Look at the photo again.”

“Do I have to?”

“We need your help here.”

I sighed and opened my eyes.

“Remind you of anybody?” Jenx said, tapping the picture.

“The Mullens, you mean?”

“The dog.”

Suddenly, I saw the resemblance.

“Diggs looks like Napoleon. He’s got the coat of a retriever but the body of a poodle.”

“Dr. David said so, too.”

“You think whoever’s shooting at Napoleon is really trying to kill Diggs?”

“Maybe not kill him,” Jenx said. “Maybe just wound him or send a message.”

“What kind of message?”

“A warning, maybe.”

“To the dog?” I pulled a face.

“To somebody who cares about the dog.”

“Well, Todd doesn’t care about him, and Lisa is dead. She didn’t care much about him, either.”

Jenx nodded, thinking.

“I can’t put it together yet, but I believe the shooter blew up the Mullens’ house. He thinks the dog’s still alive, so the job isn’t finished.”

Jenx’s desk phone buzzed
, and she snatched it from the cradle. I listened as she listened to the person on the other end.

“Where? Did you check the number?” she said, seizing a stubby pencil from a coffee mug crammed with them. “Yeah, we had a report of one that went missing in that area. There’s no reward, sir, except the satisfaction of doing the right thing. Uh, that would be theft.”

She hung up, muttering.

“What the hell happened to good citizenship? This guy expects a reward for turning in a found cell phone. He said if he’d known we weren’t gonna pay him for it, he would have let his kid keep it.”

I perked up. “Helen’s cell phone?”

“Probably. He didn’t check the number, just told me where he found it. The coordinates sound right. I’ll have Brady pick it up from the guy at his house. I don’t trust the jerk to deliver it to the station.”

Jenx scrawled an address on a scrap of paper.

“Helen could drive over and get it herself,” I said.

Jenx frowned. “I thought she was on the clock for you.”

I explained that technically she was on the clock for Chester and Cassina while she drove for me.

“Whatever,” the chief said. “Where were we before that asshole called?”

“Trying to figure out why somebody’s been shooting at Napoleon thinking he’s Diggs.”

Jenx stood stock still for a long moment, eyes closed. I wondered if she were tapping into the local magnetic fields. Never a good sign.

“Hello?” I asked cautiously.

Her eyes flew open, and she snatched the scrap of paper from her desk.

“I’ll drive,” she said. “Brady can get Helen’s cell phone. We need to take another look at the crime scene.”

“Which one?” I said.

There were at least four that I knew of—one arson and three attempted shootings, although the arson wasn’t confirmed.

“We’ll start with the latest one and work our way backwards from there. Oh, and we’re gonna need your dog.”

“Are you sure?” I whined. “Chester’s at school, and, in my condition, I can’t handle her.”

Jenx snorted. “Pregnancy has nothing to do with your inability to handle Abra. I’ll text Chester to join us when he gets home. In the meantime, we’ll send Helen to fetch the bitch and meet us at last night’s field.”

The chief was already texting. Suddenly, I felt an unfamiliar twinge near where my waistline used to be. It kind of involved my back muscles, too.

“Whiskey?” Jenx leaned across her desk. “You okay?”

“Why?”

“You just groaned. Real loud.”

“I did? Oh, my God. Could that have been a labor pain?”

I noticed that my hands were gripping my belly. Tightly.

“That was probably a Braxton-Hicks contraction,” said Officer Brady Swancott. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, accompanied by Officer Roscoe. “My wife and I have been through this twice. Both times she had practice contractions before the real ones started. Our doctor says that’s how it usually goes.”

“Up to you, Whiskey,” Jenx said. “We can take you to the hospital.”

I reached for my phone to call Jeb, but he didn’t answer. I don’t think I’d ever been more disappointed to get his voicemail.

“Hey,” I told the recording. “The practice contractions are starting. At least I think they’re practice. Better call me back. Fast.”

I clicked off and sat very still, balancing my phone on my belly. The room was totally silent because two other people and a dog were waiting for me to call the shots. I heard the front door open and close.

“Yoo-hoo!” a familiar female voice called out.

“We’re in here, Helen,” Jenx said. “Whiskey might have just had her first contraction.”

“Or her first practice contraction,” Brady said. “I vote for that.”

“Are we using the democratic process to have this baby?” I said.

At that moment Helen’s gentle smile was a welcome sight.

“Jeb just called the Town Car phone, Miss Whiskey. He can’t find his cell, so he stopped at a diner on Old Lanagan Road and used theirs. He wants you to know he’s thinking about you ‘every single minute,’ and you can reach him at the studio in about an hour.”

“What’s with all the lost cell phones?” I cried. “I’m going to have a baby. People need phones.”

“We know that, dear,” Helen said. “You have your cell phone.”

“But who the hell can I call?”

Brady, who took me literally, counted off all the folks I could phone, starting with my mother, including my employees, and ending with the Magnet Springs police. Jenx reminded me that I could also call the entire staff of the Castle.

“I want my husband,” I wailed, “and I want him right here, right now.”

“Hey!” Jenx barked.

Roscoe barked, too.

“Get a grip,” the chief said. “If you don’t have another contraction soon, Baby’s not moving toward the exit yet. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not alone.”

Everyone in the room nodded reassuringly, including Canine Officer Roscoe. I decided the dog was my best bet. He was highly trained, and he didn’t like to argue.

Jenx quickly informed Helen and Brady about the found cell phone and her brainstorm concerning Diggs. She dispatched Helen to round up Deputy Abra and Brady to collect the found cell phone and turned to me.

“We’re heading over to the field. Let’s see how much we can get done before you freak out again.”

I had no clue what Jenx was up to. She and her team of sniffers had already paid two visits to said field and found multiple shell casings. What more did they need? When I asked—or maybe whimpered—why I had to go, Jenx said, “Because another pair of eyes and another brain are helpful. Even if they belong to you.”

I suggested she summon MacArthur instead. He came with eyes, a brain and a powerful nose. However, according to Jenx, the Cleaner wasn’t available.

“Magnet Springs P.D. needs you for this assignment,” she insisted. “Maternity leave or not.”

Helen didn’t depart until she and Jenx had resolved my logistics. Since patrol cars are built for ease of shoving perps into the backseat, the chief was confident that loading me wouldn’t be hard. Helen could assist with the offloading.

“What if I have to pee?” I said. “I always have to pee.”

“Do it now and then hold it,” was Jenx’s solution.

Together she and Helen tipped me out of Jenx’s desk chair into an upright position. I could handle it on my own from there, at least until we got to the vehicle.

The squad car’s bench seat was roomy enough, yet I felt more like a perp than a passenger, and I looked like one for all the world to see. The windows weren’t even tinted.

Suddenly, the streets of Magnet Springs seemed to teem with folks I had hoped to impress. Instead of showing off my driver and Town Car, I was riding in the back of a squad car.

I closed my eyes and tried to slide down onto the seat. Vanishing from view at this late stage of pregnancy wasn’t possible. I had a sudden brainstorm. If I waved like the Queen of England, everyone would see I wasn’t handcuffed. Ergo, they would know I was here by choice, and that had to be a good thing.

“What the hell are you doing back there?” Jenx demanded.