Whiskey Rebellion Part 19

So much for control.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Wednesday "Fuuuuuuuuccccccccccckkkkkkkk!"

In the grand scheme of things I thought I handled the new disaster in my life fairly well. I woke up vaguely depressed, mostly because I was alone and the people around me seemed to be dropping like flies, but I think part of it was the fact that my eyes were swollen almost completely shut. Apparently, I had some kind of allergic reaction to cuc.u.mber. Who knew?

So I did what everybody does when they're faced with sickness or something else equally horrible. I called my mother.

I reached for the phone on my nightstand and congratulated myself for buying the kind with the large b.u.t.tons, so at least now I could feel out her number. When my mother answered I had a sudden urge to cry. Just the sound of her voice, vaguely questioning and oddly comforting made me yearn for something I couldn't explain. The only thing that kept me from crying was that I didn't know where the tears would go since my eyes were swollen shut. Would it make my eyelids explode from the tear buildup? It wasn't something I wanted to find out first hand.

"Addison, is that you? Stop blowing your nose into the phone. I can't understand what you're saying."

"I'b gob a lurbic abtion," I said and cried harder.

"What was that? Are you sick?"

"Yeb."

"I'll be right there."

I hung up and waited for her to arrive. I laid spread eagle in bed and traced invisible maps through my mind of my mom's route to my apartment. My thoughts eventually veered back to the night before and what would have happened if Nick hadn't been called in to work. He gave me a hard kiss on his way out the door and promised he'd be back. I hoped it wouldn't be any time soon, considering this newest predicament.

I heard the key turn in the lock on the door and whimpered a little, knowing my mother would be able to fix everything in no time at all. I tilted my head and listened closely as my mother made her way to the bedroom. I'd never noticed before how distinctive her walk was.

"Mom?"

"I'm here, sweetheart. I dropped off a few groceries in the refrigerator. I know you don't take the time to eat a balanced meal now that you're living on your own."

I refrained from reminding her that I'd been living on my own for ten years now and hadn't died of malnutrition yet.

"Dear G.o.d! What happened to your eyes?" she asked, dropping something on the floor and sitting beside me on the bed.

"Is it really that bad?"

She hesitated too long before she lied, so I knew it must be pretty bad indeed.

"No, it's not bad at all. We'll just get some cold compresses on them and I'll give Dr. Jones a call to see if he has any suggestions."

Mom didn't wait around to see if I was going to ask her to tell me what I looked like. And of course, that's exactly what I was going to ask her. She practically ran to the kitchen to use the phone before I could tell her to use the one on the nightstand.

When she came back in she told me she was holding a bag of ice and the Aloe Vera plant I kept on my windowsill and not to be surprised by the cold.

"See, we'll have you fixed up in no time," she said, taking her place beside me again.

"So, what do they look like?" I was trying to envision the expression on my mother's face as she described my newly deformed face. I could practically hear the corners of her mouth pinch tight and her eyes squint in concentration.

"Do you remember that time you fried your eyeb.a.l.l.s in the tanning bed?"

"Yes," I said, dreading what was coming next.

"This is worse. How in the world did you do this anyway?"

"It was the cuc.u.mber."

"Oh, no," my mother said, horrified. "I had no idea you were allergic to cuc.u.mbers. You've always loved cuc.u.mbers."

Not really, but I wasn't going to break my mother's heart by telling her that. "It seemed to work so well. All the swelling was gone by the time Nick came by last night."

She began rubbing the Aloe on my itchy lids and the cool, soothing balm was like an answered prayer. "And how is Nick?"

"He's good. And still hanging around despite the fact you gave him the third degree."

"He seemed very excited about getting a home-cooked meal. Not everybody is as blessed as you are to have a mother who likes to cook. I'll make meatloaf. Everyone loves my meatloaf."

"Hmmmmm," I said for lack of anything better.

The truth is my mom's meatloaf has the consistency of an Acme brick, and it's still one of her best dishes.

"We've got to get the swelling down," I said. "I have work to do tonight, and I'm sort of on a deadline."

I thought about the murders and how Nick was keeping information from me. I needed to pay a visit to John Hyatt. This time in a professional capacity instead of as a hysterical wanna-be homeowner. There was something fishy about the Hyatt situation. I needed to find out for sure what his relations.h.i.+p was with Loretta Swanson and if she was lying for him to give him an alibi. There was no reason for Victor Mooney to be dead unless he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to. Since he was supposed to be watching John and Loretta, it made sense that the secrets should lie with them. Not to mention there was still something about Loretta that I didn't trust.

"I don't know if I like you working in all these dangerous situations."

"It's not dangerous, mom. All I do is take pictures."

I didn't bother to tell her I was more of a danger to myself than any criminal could be. I told her about Nick's suspicion that Mr. Butler's death at The Foxy Lady was somehow related to Mr. Mooney and now Greg.

"Poor Greg," she said. "But I don't understand what you have to do with Bernard Butler's death. You've never even been to that place where they found his body."

"Maybe it's because we worked together." It was a lot easier to lie when you weren't able to look anyone in the eye. There was no reason for her to know about the new job on my resume or the fact that my princ.i.p.al was a stalker. "Mr. Mooney called me and wanted to meet before he died, and someone poisoned Greg. I've got to be connected somehow."

"This is just awful. I can't believe something like this is happening in Whiskey Bayou. We have to do something to stop it."

"There's nothing we can do about it, Mom," I said. A little niggling of worry was making itself present in the depths of my bosom. I knew that tone in my mother's voice. "The police are doing their jobs, and I'm trying to help them out in a limited capacity."

I didn't bother to mention the promise I'd made to Kate or the fact that Nick wanted me to stay out of police business. I was skating on thin ice as it was. My mom would go ballistic if she found out I was skirting around the police and starting an investigation of my own.

"You can't go anywhere in your condition. You need someone to drive you around. I can do that for you. I'll be your sidekick."

I prayed for the cuc.u.mber infection to enter my bloodstream and take me quickly, but no such luck.

"Now get some sleep. When you wake up adventures will still be waiting. We'll be just like Batman and Robin," she said.

Lucy and Ethel was probably a more accurate a.s.sessment.

I woke a few hours later to cold cream being slathered on my eyes. Amazingly enough, when your eyes are swollen shut you have no other alternative but to eventually fall asleep.

"Dr. Jones dropped this by for the reaction," my mother said. "He said it should make the swelling go down."

I was secretly relieved she had stayed while I slept and hadn't left me alone to stumble my way to the bathroom or the kitchen.

"And I've made you a little something to eat. I hope you don't mind."

I nearly fell off the bed when I realized I could open my eyes the smallest bit. A flood of something I won't even begin to try to describe ran down my cheeks, and I had a slight moment of panic when I still couldn't see, thinking that my eyeb.a.l.l.s had dissolved.

"And to think a little cuc.u.mber did this," my mother said. "You'd think it'd do the same thing to your insides. Maybe it'd be best if you didn't eat them any more."

I couldn't have agreed more. I laid back in bed with little to do but sleep.

When I woke up again I could hear my mother rustling around in my closet. I could open my eyes a little farther this time and even managed to see what was going on, though things were still a little blurry.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm getting our things ready. It's getting dark outside and we'll need to leave soon if we want to find a good place for a stakeout."

I groaned and flopped back on the bed. I felt like hammered dog s.h.i.+t, and now I had to go sleuthing with my menopausal mother. What else could the fates throw at me to make my life miserable?

"I've got our things all laid out," she said excitedly. "This is going to be so much fun. It's been ages since we've been on a mother-daughter outing. The last one was when we took that camping trip to Allatoona Lake. You got poison ivy and a second-degree sunburn. That was a memorable trip."

No kidding.

"What things did you get ready?"

"Our outfits, of course. We don't want anyone to recognize us."

I looked at the outfit on the chair and started laughing hysterically. Tears rolled out of my sore eyeb.a.l.l.s, but it couldn't be helped. My mother had dug a black trench coat out of the back of my closet that I never wore anymore because it was missing the b.u.t.tons. She'd laid a black fedora over it I recognized as my father's.

"Where'd you get Dad's hat?"

"I ran home and got it while Dr. Jones was here. Isn't this exciting?"

"Uh huh." It was then I actually got a good look at my mother. She was dressed in head to toe black-a skintight black cat suit with bell-bottom legs, ballet slippers and giant hoop earrings. But the kicker was the Do-rag tied around her head. She looked like a s.l.u.tty pirate.

"It's ninety-five degrees outside. I can't wear a trench coat. And you can't wear that outfit. You're a mother for goodness sakes."

"Columbo always wore a trench coat, no matter what the weather was like. And it was wearing outfits like this that made me a mother in the first place. Don't be such a prude, Addison."

"Hmmm," I said. She was right. Columbo always wore a trench coat, and he never looked out of place. And I guess my mom had the right to dress however she wanted, no matter how much I hated it. I could only hope our disguises worked because I couldn't bear to give everyone in town more to talk about.

Since my car was still at the impound we were left with the Dodge for transportation.

"Where are you going?" I asked when I noticed her heading into Savannah.

"All this planning has made me hungry, and I don't want to eat in Whiskey Bayou. Those people ask too many questions, and I a.s.sume you want to keep our after hours activities a secret."

My stomach growled at the mention of food. The last time I'd eaten was with Nick the night before. And mom was right about the people in Whiskey Bayou asking questions. There was nothing normal about either of us in our current state.

My mom pulled through a Burger King drive-thru and placed our orders, and the guy at the register only looked slightly appalled at the two of us. His bland reaction did wonders to ease my self-esteem issues.

"I can't believe John Hyatt could be cheating on f.a.n.n.y. First Greg, now John. I don't know what the world is coming to. Men need to learn how to keep their flies zipped if you want my opinion. John Hyatt and his family are practically legend in this town. Whiskey Bayou would be a ghost town if his family hadn't used their own money to support the businesses during Prohibition and the Depression. And then the train depot stopped running and all those jobs were cut. The man is practically a saint. And now this. An adulterer."

The thought had crossed my mind more than once of what the ramifications would be if I brought down a pillar of the community. Would I lose my job? Would they take my picture down from the wall in the Good Luck Cafe from the time when I ate all those hot dogs and won a free T-s.h.i.+rt? The consequences were too unbearable to think about.

We pulled into a parking s.p.a.ce and ate our burgers. A knock on the window had both of us jumping in our seats. A middle-aged man with a comb-over and thick gla.s.ses looked at us and blinked like an owl as he caught a good look at us. My mom rolled down her window slowly.

"Sorry to disturb you," the man said. "But I found this on the ground next to your door." He handed my mom a five-dollar bill, said goodbye and ran to a blue Honda Civic before she could tell him thank you.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," I said, cramming our wrappers back in the bag. "That's Harry Manilow getting into that car. He's one of my cases."

"Harry Manilow? I just love his songs. Especially Mandy. Is he cheating on his wife?"

"You're talking about Barry Manilow, mom."

"Oh, well, who's Harry? Are they related?"

I decided not to roll my still sensitive eyes to save myself the headache. Also because I had kind of been wondering the same thing myself.

"He's one of the cases that Kate gave me to check on. Look, he's getting in the car with that woman in the pa.s.senger seat. And I'm pretty sure that's not his wife."

"Are you sure that's a woman? I don't think I've ever seen a woman with forearms that hairy."

"I think so." My eyesight was still fuzzy so I couldn't be sure, but mom was right. That was one hairy woman. "Maybe she has a hormone imbalance, or maybe he's just into kinky s.e.x."

My mom gasped at this declaration, but I could tell she was silently thinking the possibility over.

"Step on it. We need to follow them."

She took me at my word and floored the Dodge across two lanes of traffic before settling in behind Harry and his furry companion. I dug around in my bag for his file, but I still couldn't see well enough to read.

"They're taking the Forreston exit," my mother whispered.

No one wanted to be caught in Forreston. It wasn't exactly the south's version of Compton, but it was still a place mothers warned their children never to go.

"I think we should turn around and go back," she said nervously. "We've already dedicated ourselves to John Hyatt tonight. I think Harry Manilow and the Sasquatch should wait until another day."

"We'll be fine. Just keep going. There's still plenty of daylight. I just need to get a couple of photographs."

I perched on the edge of my seat, the vinyl seam pressing a dent into my thighs and knuckles sore from my grip on the Nikon. Adrenaline coursed through me. My heart raced. I even noticed a shortness of breath. For what? Chasing cars with my mother? Trying to catch people having s.e.x?