Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 07 - Whiskey, Large (29 page)

“Oh, lots of stuff. Mainly that she accessorizes boldly and, despite her figure, she’s not afraid to wear bright colors or horizontal stripes.”

I frowned. “Does UberSpringer describe what Sandra was wearing today?”

“Oh, yes, UberSpringer particularly liked Sandra’s tiara—”

The rest of Chester’s reply was lost in the prolonged honk of the Town Car’s horn as Helen swerved the wheel.

“Did you see that darned cat?” she exclaimed. “I almost hit it!”

Neither Chester nor I had seen anything, but we weren’t watching the road. He was studying me in his hand mirror, and I was trying hard to think. Something about UberSpringer…

Now I did glance at the road.

“This isn’t the way to CMC,” I said.

“Of course it is,” Helen said. “It’s the shortest way.”

I blinked. “No, it’s the wrong way. You’re driving in the opposite direction.”

Chester lowered the hand mirror and peered out the windshield.

“Whiskey’s right,” he said. “You better turn around.”

“And you better shut the fuck up,” Helen said.

Before I could react, she removed her right hand from the steering wheel and punched Chester full force in the face.

“Chester!”
I shrieked.

“You better shut up, too,” Helen barked at me. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

Keeping her focus on the road, she used her right hand to grope around for Chester’s smart phone. Finding it, she lowered her window and tossed it out.

I called Chester’s name again but got no reply. I leaned forward until I could see him slumped in his seat, his head at a disturbing angle. Blood oozed from his nose down the front of his navy-blue school blazer.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I screamed at my driver. “You hit him so hard he’s unconscious. He’s just a kid!”

Instinctively, I reached for Chester, to tilt up his head and inspect the damage. Helen’s right hand grabbed my wrist and wrenched it so sharply I screamed.

“You’re making me hurt you,” she said. “Stop making me hurt you.”

I couldn’t compute any of this—her rage, her strength, her insane violence.

“You weren’t supposed to bring the kid,” she snarled. “Nobody picks a kid as their birthing coach, you stupid bitch.”

Still clutching my wrist she dug her nails into my flesh. They were surprisingly sharp, and her grip was viselike. I winced, determined not to scream again, at least until the next labor pain.

“Helen,” I whispered. “Why are you doing this?”

I barely recognized the twisted face she turned to me. Darkened in rage, it made her gray-white curls seem ludicrous, especially under the monogrammed chauffeur cap.

“Why?” she repeated nastily. “Miss Whiny-Pants wants to know why? Because I hate you and your prissy know-it-all mother, that’s why. I hate Cassina, too, the way she fobs off her kid on every person who works for her instead of doing one damn bit of mothering herself.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“Okay,” I said as evenly as I could. “You hate me because I whine. You hate my mother because she married my father—”

“No!” Helen shouted, wrenching my wrist again, harder than ever.

I screamed that time. Helen knew how to hurt people.

“I don’t just hate you because you’re a whiny, self-absorbed slob,” she snarled. “I don’t just hate your mother because she’s self-satisfied and suspicious and she married the man I loved who should have loved me. I hate you and your mother—and Cassina, too—because you all got to have babies, and I didn’t. I didn’t get any damn thing I wanted or deserved in my whole damn life.”

I waited a beat, breathless. She seemed to have spoken her piece.

“Okay,” I said carefully, “but why take it out on Chester?”

“Damn, you’re dumb,” she said. “To hurt his fucking mother. Try to keep up.”

“You hurt him,” I said. “You really hurt him, and I’m worried. He’s unconscious, and he’s bleeding.”

“Yeah, well, I’m glad,” Helen said. “Because this might just hurt Cassina, and she deserves to be hurt. I hope to hell this hurts her a whole lot.”

I recoiled at the full horror of Helen’s madness. The quaint, quirky mannerisms I had found mildly annoying were gone, replaced by pure geriatric evil. I needed to get us help, and I needed to do it fast. Another contraction seized me, and I moaned like a dying baritone.

“You better not be faking that,” Helen said.

“I’m not faking anything… . Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh what?” she snapped.

“Something’s happening. Feels like Baby’s on the move.”

Although I couldn’t exactly describe the sensation, I knew things were shifting in a significant way. Suddenly, I experienced a whole new kind of pressure and pain. My body contorted even as Helen tightened her grip on my twisted wrist. Drawing a deep breath was extremely difficult, and yet I needed to do it now more than ever.

“Listen up, bitch,” Helen commanded. “You’re going to use your free hand to reach in your purse and take out your cell phone. Real slow.”

I couldn’t have done it any other way. With my free hand, I groped numbly amid the useless contents of my bag.

“You’re going to do everything I tell you to do just the way I tell you to do it,” Helen said. “Got that?”

“Got it.”

“You think Chester’s in bad shape now? Just fuck with me and watch what happens.”

Not a risk I was willing to take. Helen was right about me. I was a whiny, self-absorbed slob, afraid to have her baby alone. Chester had been sucked into this maelstrom because he wanted to help me. Now it was my duty to find a way to help him.

My fingers closed around my smart phone, and I prepared to extract it. Suddenly, I remembered something, something potentially huge.

Unlike many women, I didn’t change my purse to match my outfit. First of all, I didn’t care a whit about fashion. Second of all, every outfit I owned was beige. Therefore, I used one bag only, which meant that my old business cell phone was in there somewhere. A phone not linked to Mom’s stalking app. I didn’t know where my mother was, or if she had her new smart phone with her, but I ardently hoped that she was safe and well and trying like hell to cyber-find me.

“Haven’t you found your damn phone yet?” Helen said. “How much shit do you have in there?”

Grunting, she adjusted her grip on my wrist. Though surprisingly strong and mean, the woman was not young. She could only hold on for so long. I closed my eyes, willing myself to outsmart and outlast her. The only glitch was Baby, who didn’t seem inclined to wait. My fingers moved past my keys and located the business phone.

“Got it,” I announced.

“Give it to me real slow,” Helen said, watching me in the rear view mirror.

“Okay,” I said. “Real slow, just like you told me.”

In a single very slow and deliberate motion, I brought up the phone from my bag and extended it to the crazy driver. Every fiber of my being was screaming for me to slam it into her face, but I resisted. I would have just one opportunity to undo Helen, and this wasn’t it.

Releasing the steering wheel, she reached back over her shoulder with her left hand and snatched the phone. Helen must have been steering with her knees. Instantly, she lowered her window, tossed out the phone and returned her left hand to the wheel.

“I’m going to let go of your wrist now,” she said, “but don’t get any smart ideas, Miss Whiny-Pants. Understood?”

“Understood.”

I glanced at Chester, who still hadn’t moved, and my heart wrenched.

“Why is he still unconscious?”

Something flew at me. Flinching, I felt the crack of pain, and my vision turned dark. I tried to process what had happened. My nose throbbed. The crazy bitch had broken it. Even before I felt my face with my fingers, I knew my nose was bleeding.

“I told you not to get any smart ideas,” Helen sing-songed, now using both hands to spin the steering wheel counter-clockwise.

We were turning a corner at too high a speed. Tires squealed, and the car rocked ominously to the left.

“I didn’t do anything,” I protested.

“You were thinking about helping Chester, so I hit you,” Helen said, straightening the wheel.

She produced Chester’s hand mirror. Not so that I could check my appearance but rather to show off her makeshift weapon. When I flinched, she cackled.

“That hurt, didn’t it? Especially since you didn’t see it coming. I’ll have to use it on Chester next time.”

“There’s not going to be a next time,” I growled. “You’re done hurting Chester.”

“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? But who’s going to help you now?”

Helen dropped the mirror to the seat and negotiated another sharper-than-necessary turn, spraying gravel. Chester’s limp body rocked in his seat.

“Good thing that kid always buckles his seatbelt,” she said, “or he’d be bouncing off the windshield by now.”

When she cackled, I wanted to hurt her more than I’d ever wanted to hurt anybody. I thought about lunging for her neck, her hair, her throat, but if I caused her to lose control of the vehicle, we’d all suffer. We might die.

“Use a hankie before you get blood all over the car,” Helen told me.

I reached for one, and found myself in the grip of pain again. Not from my nose. Baby. I lowed like a freaking cow.

“I’m driving as fast as I can,” Helen muttered. “Just don’t push.”

As soon as she said it, I wanted to do it. In fact, I wanted to do it more than anything except hurt Helen. Pushing sounded like a great idea. A wonderful idea. The best idea. Vaguely, through my haze of nose pain and Baby pain, I recalled the birthing class teacher saying not to push until the end. I couldn’t remember why, though, and I sure did want to push.

I also wanted to do something, anything, to help Chester, and of course I wanted to not have my baby in the backseat of a moving car with a crazy sadist at the wheel.

Helen mistakenly thought all our phones were gone. They weren’t gone. I could still text somebody for help, if I could just reach my smart phone that was buried inside my purse and manage to send a message without her noticing.

Pressing the hankie to my bleeding face with one hand, I used the other hand to reach into my bag.

“Keep both your hands where I can see ’em,” Helen said, “or I’ll hurt Chester so bad you won’t be able to live with yourself.”

It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. Withdrawing my hand from my bag, I obediently placed both paws on the hankie. Blood from my nose was soaking the fabric so fast I nearly gagged.

“I need another Cassina hankie, please.” My voice sounded nasal and very nervous.

Helen eyed me suspiciously.

“Move real slow,” she said.

I did as I was told, pressing a fresh wad of cloths to my face like a big bandage. The smell and taste of my own blood almost gagged me. If I hadn’t been so stressed, I was sure I would have puked.

“Where are we going?” I said, mostly to distract myself.

“We’re not going to CMC. You got that right,” Helen said.

“I need a doctor. I’m having a baby.”

“We all know you’re having a baby, Miss Whiny-Pants. You won’t get a doctor, but you will get a midwife. Sort of. I know a few things about catching babies.”

I gulped. “You?”

For the first time since she’d struck Chester, I was truly terrified.

“That’s right,” Helen said. “You’ll take whatever help you can get, and the help you’re going to get is me. I’m delivering your baby.”

She beamed a smile at me in the rearview mirror. It was nothing like Helen’s normal smile, but then nothing about this moment was remotely normal.

“I’m delivering it, then I’m going to keep your baby.”

My brain couldn’t process that. “What?”

“Oh, yes, Miss Whiny-Pants. Your baby is mine.”

“Incidentally, your baby is a girl,
” Helen declared. “I’ve been watching pregnant women for years, and I can always guess what sex their baby is. I’m gifted that way.”

I stared, speechless, at her insanely smiling reflection.

“I know a lot about babies,” she continued. “More than most women. Now, finally, I get to have one of my own.”

Panic threatened to overwhelm me. I struggled to control my breathing. Having a broken nose didn’t help. Periodically, I had to spit into the hankie to keep from swallowing blood or throwing up.

Mom had been right to dislike Helen, but the woman was wildly more unstable than Mom knew. Far worse than a corporate spy, Helen was a child-attacker and kidnapper.

I had to think fast. Baby’s life, Chester’s life, and my life depended on it.

“What will you do with a baby?” I said finally, my tone neutral.

“What does anybody do with a baby?” Helen retorted. “I’m going to raise her. Not the way you would, of course. Your generation is terrible at parenting. Just look at Cassina. I’m going to do it right. I’ll be strict with my little girl but loving, too. She’ll learn to take care of me in my old age.”

In your old age, she’ll be all of five, I thought. Crazy, crazy lady.

Maybe if I could just keep Helen talking, she wouldn’t hurt anybody worse than she already had. Maybe that would give me enough time to think of a way to stop her, some plan that might actually work. If only I didn’t have this little issue called childbirth going on.

“Where will she go to school?” I said.

Helen pulled a face. “School? It’ll be years before I need to think about that. I’ll probably home-school her when the time comes. Why? Do you have a college request?”

That cracked Helen up. She laughed so raucously I thought she might lose control of the car. We were traveling at a faster than safe speed on unpaved back roads. I watched the top of Chester’s unconscious head bob with the vehicle’s vibrations.

“Actually, I do have a college request,” I said. “Jeb and I were hoping to send her to State.”

“Well, I bet you’d like to hear me say I’ll bear that in mind,” Helen said, “except I won’t. My little girl won’t need college. She’s going to stay with me. Her mama can teach her everything she needs to know.”

“I’m sure you’ll do what you think is right,” I said with a calm that amazed me.