Chapter Seven
I challenge anyone to have a four A.M. conversation about shooters and bodyguards and then fall asleep. By the time Chester and I headed back to our respective bedrooms, I‘d sacrificed whatever soporific benefits were possible from a cup of hot evaporated milk.
I must have dozed off at some point, though, because I woke to the sun slanting through my blinds and Jeb insistently tooting the horn on his new BMW. I don’t care how classy the car is; a horn is a horn is a horn when it interrupts your beauty sleep. I threw on my robe, stumbled down the stairs, flung open the front door and shouted at him to hang on a freaking minute while I got myself together. He took that as an invitation to come in for coffee. Go figure.
I jumped in and out of the shower, ran a rubber brush through my recalcitrant curls, yanked on a couple deliberately understated beige separates, and dashed downstairs. Chester, clad in a starched white chef’s apron, was serving Jeb breakfast. A hot breakfast.
“Where did you find the ingredients to make waffles?” I asked. “Not to mention that apron. And isn’t today a school day?”
I cared about the kid’s education. But I cared more about the fact that there were hot waffles in my kitchen. They smelled like honey and malt.
“I called MacArthur, and he delivered what I needed from the Castle,” Chester replied. He removed a perfect golden waffle from a gleaming griddle that hadn’t come from my kitchen. “As for school, this is an in-service day, teachers only. That means I’m free 'til Monday to be Jeb’s personal chef.”
Jeb licked his chops. The diminutive chef indicated my place at the table.
“You’ll be in Amish Country with Abra,” he said. “So I’ll hang with Jeb. I’m going to try out a couple new entrees-including Steak Chester, a variation on Steak Diane.”
“If you’re good, Whiskey,” Jeb said, “maybe Chester will give you the recipe.”
That sent Chester into a spasm of laughter. Presumably because he’d never seen me so much as turn on my stove. He topped my waffle with imported Swedish syrup made from lingonberries, which I had never heard of.
“Where did you learn to cook like this?” I said.
“Cassina keeps hiring and firing chefs,” he said. “I learn what I can from each of them.”
After a second lighter-than-air waffle-and a third cup of Peruvian organic coffee, hand-ground by Chester-I reluctantly let Jeb drive me to work. What for, I had no idea. I walked in the door of Mattimoe Realty, buzzed and stuffed from my unexpected breakfast, to find the phones silent and my office manager sobbing.
While that wasn’t typical Friday morning behavior, it wasn’t unheard of, either. Tina Breen was quite possibly the most emotional person on the planet. I stared at her leaking bloodshot eyes, her runny nose, and her desk covered with sticky balled up tissues. Before I could ask what had set her off, she bawled, “My life’s a bigger disaster than your business!”
Although I thought that unlikely, the possibility gave me hope. Whenever I’m discouraged, I like to recall one of my mother’s favorite sayings: “There’s always somebody worse off than you are.” This morning that somebody seemed to be Tina.
So I pulled up a chair and sat facing her in the lobby. We used to have a receptionist on duty out here, but I’d laid her off months ago. Assigning the depressed and volatile office manager to double as greeter may not have been my brightest move. But we rarely had walk-in business.
I offered my best impression of a patient person. “What’s wrong, Tina?”
“Ask me what hasn’t gone wrong! That would be simpler!”
She snuffled loudly and wiped her red nose on the already streaked cuff of her wrinkled blouse. Tina must have run out of tissues some time ago. I fished in my purse for a fresh supply.
“Tim has been unemployed for five months!” she wailed. “And Winston and Neville were diagnosed with ADHD. Do you know what it’s like to have toddlers with ADHD?”
“Well, no,” I answered honestly. “Unless it’s like having Abra…”
“My husband is out of work, my kids are driving me out of my mind, and your business is going down the tubes!”
I tried to remember how shrinks on TV do it. “Let’s forget about my business for a minute and focus on you.”
“But your business is my biggest problem! If you go under, we’ll have no income! We’ll lose our home and our health insurance and our car! What would we do?”
What would I do if my business went under? As adept at sustaining denial as I was at brokering real estate, I hadn’t yet let myself face that hard question. And I didn’t feel like dealing with it this morning.
I handed over to Tina all the linty tissues that had gathered at the bottom of my purse and hoped most of them were clean. Forcing a smile, I said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go home and play with your boys. I can handle things here.”
Tina reacted as if I’d slapped her.
“Oh no you don’t! You’re trying to prove you can get along without me, aren’t you? The next thing you know, you’ll let me goooooohhhhh!”
Her passionate protest dissolved into a series of choked sobs. I waited for her to catch her breath and use half the tissues I’d provided. Finally, between ragged hiccups, she whispered, “I’d rather be here than home, anyway. The boys make me nervous, and Tim gets me so depressed. This is the happiest place I know.”
Now that was tragic.
I returned the lobby chair to its original position, just in case anybody happened to come in and needed to wait for an agent. Then, for old times’ sake, I asked Tina if I had any messages. To my astonishment, I did. She handed me a pink note stained with tears and something sticky. On it she had scrawled: Call Jenx!!!! Not exactly the message of my dreams, but proof that our phones could still ring. I retreated to my office, closed the door, and collapsed into my big leather swivel chair. For the hell of it-and to kill some time-I spun around and around. Until I remembered the rich waffles. Then I waited for the nausea to subside and dialed our chief of police.
“Yo, Whiskey,” Jenx said, apparently recognizing my number in her Caller ID. “More shootings at your place?”
“I would have called if there were,” I said.
When she pointed out that I was calling, I pointed out that she had called me first.
I pictured Jenx’s compact frame settled in her own desk chair, non-regulation steel-toe boots propped on her desk between canyons of manila folders. Jenx didn’t file reports; she stacked them as high as the laws of physics allowed.
“I assume Brady told you he couldn’t find squat at the scene of the first shooting,” she said.
“He did. Maybe you should call the sheriff and ask for a crime scene investigation unit.”
“Maybe you should mind your own business.”
I told her I would if I had any. That must have been her cue to give me some.
“As of today, your hiatus from volunteer deputy duties is over,” she announced. “I need your help with this case.”
Volunteer deputies-a misnomer, really, since every one of us was drafted-comprised the criminal investigation teams in our town. Chester was the best Jenx had. True, he was too young to drive, but he had a full-time driver. He also had Prince Harry, who showed potential for retrieving clues. I, on the other hand, could drive, but my dog was a liability. Usually she was in league with the crooks we were chasing.
“You need my help?” I echoed. “I flunked senior physics, and I barely passed trig. We copied each other’s homework, remember? No way I can figure out where those shots were fired from.”
“I’m talking about keeping an eye on Susan Davies and her friend,” Jenx said. “At the dog show.”
“That’s in Indiana,” I said. “A little outside your jurisdiction.”
“Since when does that stop us? You know you love to snoop.”
She had a point. That was part of my attraction to real estate: having a license to get inside other people’s homes. But this was a dog show. In Amish country. Chester had said it could be dangerous; I was more worried it would be deadly dull. Having a job to do might give me a sense of purpose and also help pass the time. My eyes tended to glaze over when confronted with quilts and oak furniture.
