β Scribed by Wright, Nina
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Nearly drowning in an icy lake isn't Whiskey Mattimoe's favourite way to celebrate the season. Neither is finding the mayor dead at Magnet Springs' annual Ice Fishing Jamboree. And then there's the problem of locating Chester, her precocious eight-year-old charge, who has run away...or was he kidnapped? This is how Whiskey, an eternally disheveled, mid-thirties realtor, is drawn into another rollicking adventure with her purse-stealing Afghan hound. Other eccentric characters abound in this Michigan resort town, such as the police chief with a gift for tuning into the town's magnetic energy and the adorable vet with an unfortunate speech impediment. Amid the uproar, Whiskey also makes a surprising discovery that - for the first time since her husband's death - she's ready to dip her toes into the whimsical waters of love again.
Nina Wright is an award-winning playwright and novelist. She is the author of the Whiskey Mattimoe mystery series (Midnight Ink), Homefree (Flux), and other fiction for adults and younger readers. When not at her keyboard, Nina leads workshops in writing and the creative process.
one "Whiskey, there's a guy from your past here to see you."
Tina Breen, my nasal-voiced office manager, intercepted me before I could stomp the snow off my boots.
"From my past?" I echoed, mildly interested. "Professional or . . . romantic?"
"Uh. . . ." Tina slid her eyes toward the nearest cubicle.
"Does the name Roy Vickers ring a bell?" The resonant voice came first, then the trim, tastefully dressed form of Odette Mutombo, top producer in my real-estate agency. Riding her desk chair into the foyer on cue, she smiled slyly. "He may have changed your destiny."
Odette, who was from Zimbabwe, had a syncopated accent and an unnerving way of inserting herself into other people's conversations.
"I doubt it," I said.
Odette and Tina exchanged glances. Never a good sign.
"Okay. Spill it," I began as my overloaded briefcase did just that.
Tina dove to retrieve the contents. Since she's usually not helpful, I knew for sure something was up.
"Leo would remember him. . . ." Odette teased.
I ran the name Roy Vickers through my usual mental filters.
The one with Leo's name on it still occupied most of my brain. Dead nine months already, my late husband was never far from my thoughts. Leo had been a wise and wonderful partner in both business and the stuff that really mattered. Despite everything that had happened to me since his sudden death, my first reaction was often to go tell Leo. Only I never could again.
"I'm drawing a blank," I said.
"Think about it," insisted Odette. "Roy Vickers. You must remember him."
"Maybe we should let Jenx tell her." Tina sounded nervous.
"And let our new police chief have all the fun?" Odette made a rude noise. "Here's a clue, Whiskey: Roy Vickers is seventy."
"Then he's not my old lover," I said. "He's just old."
"There's a real-estate connection. Sort of. . . ." Tina said, handing me my newly alphabetized files.
I was already bored with the game. "Was he an agent?"
"No."
"A former client?"
"Leo's former client. Before you were married."
"Then he's from Leo's past, not mine." I yawned and started toward my office.
"It's not that simple," Tina called after me. "He's a handyman, and he needs a job."
"We have a handyman. And seventy's way too old."
Tina followed me down the hall. "But what can he do? He just got out of jail!"
"Jail?" I stopped cold.
The name Roy Vickers suddenly illuminated a dark corner of my mind. Repression is an underrated gift, one that I'm proud to cultivate. But it's a challenge in the company of Tina and Odette, who never met a disturbing fact they wished to forget. Especially in someone else's life.
"He went to jail nine years ago," Odette said, rolling her desk chair toward me. "For stabbing Leo in a rent dispute."
"Leo was married to Georgia then," Tina added. "But you know what happened, don't you?"
Indeed I did.
Although Leo never discussed the incident, other residents of Magnet Springs, Michigan, weren't so reticent. When it happened, I was twenty-four and on the road with my musician husband, Jeb Halloran. My role in his entourage wasn't musical. It was to remind his groupies that he was married. The point is that I wasn't around at the time Leo Mattimoe was stabbed. I hardly even knew him. But the event became part of our local lore, and the story goes like this: Town drunk Roy Vickers, a carpenter reduced to catch-ascatch- can repair work, opened his mail to find a rent-increase notification. Although it was a bitterly cold January afternoon, Roy was too incensed and too intoxicated to don a coat before staggering the two blocks to his landlord's office. Leo Mattimoe listened to Roy's bourbon-scented complaints. Then he explained his reasons for raising the rent. Roy wasn't interested in logic; he called Leo a slum landlord with the heart of a robber baron. Leo pointed out that Roy was free to find another place to live. Roy blubbered that he had very little reason to live because his wife had left him.
Then he seized Leo's letter opener and began waving it around. Worried that Roy might try to kill himself, Leo grabbed for the blade. In his whiskey fog, Roy mistook the action for a counterattack. Moments later, he stumbled outside and knelt in the snow to wash away Leo's blood. The snow turned bright pink, and his frozen- raw hands darkened to purple, but-like Lady Macbeth-Roy couldn't stop rubbing. A passing tourist spotted the moaning, blood-spattered man without a coat and detoured to the police station.
Our then-chief, Big Jim, strode directly up to Roy and asked what he was doing. Roy shook his head and cried, "Better go tell Georgia she's a widow."
Georgia was Leo's first wife. She left him a year later. Two years after that, Leo married me, and then I became his widow. But that's getting ahead of the story.
Big Jim found Leo on the floor of his office, blood pouring from his chest wound. A few more minutes, and Leo would have died.
Library : General
Universes : The Whiskey Mattimoe Mysteries [02]
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780738708553
Mysteries
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