Nina Wright - Whiskey with a Twist

“Oh? What a shame.”

Susan didn’t seem to recall that she was the one who had brought me the bad burger.

“I told Matthew to sleep in,” Brenda said. “He’ll need all his strength.”

“I’m sure of that,” Susan said.

Brenda tossed her beautifully trimmed head and excused herself.

I assumed Matthew was the handler Brenda had mentioned earlier. Why would handlers attend a breeder breakfast? The Two L’s were here, and there may have been others in attendance… besides the Bad Example. I asked Susan how that worked.

“Breeders often invite their handlers to join them at the Saturday breakfast. It’s a courtesy. Except, of course, in Brenda’s case.”

“Oh?”

“Brenda’s handler is her lover. Her much younger lover. He goes where she goes. Brenda keeps him on a short leash.”

Susan gave me a smile almost sweet enough to belie the cattiness in her remark. She nodded toward the buffet line, adding, “Shall we start? Oh, dear. I seem to have lost my handler.”

“You let your niece handle your dogs?” I said. “I thought she was a Bad Example!”

Susan’s face took on a pained expression.

“I let her handle one of my dogs, yes. She’s Liam’s family. You know how that goes.”

“Actually, I do.”

“I know you do,” Susan affirmed. “Jeb has told me about Avery.”

I wondered what else my guy had confided.

“Where are Kori’s parents?” I said. “Why can’t they help her?”

“Brenda didn’t tell you that part of the story?”

I shook my head.

“Surely she told you that Kori was in prison for car theft and vehicular homicide?”

When I hesitated, Susan said, “If Brenda didn’t tell you, someone else would. Kori stole a car in order to impress her parents. She wanted them to think she was doing well when in fact she was living with a drug addict, and neither of them had jobs.”

I blinked but said nothing.

“While driving the stolen car-with her parents in it-Kori ran a red light and T-boned another vehicle. Her parents were killed, and the other driver was injured. Kori wasn’t hurt. At trial the judge took pity on her, pointing out that she had just turned eighteen, and her actions had cost her parents their lives. He assumed that the accident had psychologically scarred her, and she would need a chance to rebuild her life. So he gave her the lightest possible sentence.”

“When was that?” I said.

“Three years ago. She went to jail for ten months. Since she got out, she’s been busy blowing most of the money she inherited from her parents’ estate. Kori wasn’t ‘scarred’ by the accident. She was born that way.”

“What way?”

“Not giving a shit.”

Hearing blunt language from Susan’s elegant lips was a shock. But more surprises were coming.

“Her father was Liam’s only brother. Which makes Kori Liam’s only family. Besides me,” Susan said. “Like you, Whiskey, I never had kids. Liam wanted them, but I didn’t. He holds that against me. I’m sure it’s why he takes Kori’s side over mine. I’m doing the best I can, but that girl is almost more than I can bear.”

Suddenly I felt a kinship with this woman. A kinship that couldn’t possibly endure. Susan would always be too pretty and too sophisticated for me to trust, let alone relate to, save for brief moments when I recognized the excruciating similarity of her life with Kori to my life with Avery.

“This is so typical of Kori,” Susan said. “She knew I was about to introduce her, so she disappeared. Just to humiliate me.”

“She went outside for a smoke.”

I took almost as much pleasure in ratting out Kori as I would have in tattling on Avery. It was surprisingly satisfying. I even pointed out the exit she had used so that Susan could expediently find her.

They were both back within moments, Kori wearing an expression of complete indifference next to Susan’s mask of repressed irritation.

“Good morning, fellow breeders!” Susan announced from the steam table. “On behalf of the Breeder Education Committee, I welcome you and your guests, and invite you to enjoy this delicious hot breakfast. It’s a lovely day in Nappanee, and we have so many beautiful dogs to show. As is customary at our breeder breakfasts, I’m going to quickly introduce our guests of honor and ask them to lead the buffet line.”

She paused for the obligatory smattering of applause.

“Thank you. First, I’d like you to meet Whiskey Mattimoe, who has traveled from Magnet Springs, Michigan, with her bitch Abra.”

Breeders and handlers clapped enthusiastically. I could not imagine why.

“Second, I’d like to introduce to any of you who haven’t already met her, our guest handler at this event: Kori Davies.”

“Don’t applaud, I hate bull shit,” Kori interjected before anyone had time to put their hands together.

She had an astonishingly deep voice. If my eyes had been closed when she spoke, I would have pictured a college football player. Yet Kori couldn’t have been taller than five-foot-five or weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds. The distinct odor of marijuana emanated from her bubble-gum-colored attire. Apparently Kori liked a little weed before breakfast.

“Let’s eat this crap and get this day from hell over with.”

Kori was already heaping an obscene amount of scrambled eggs onto two Styrofoam plates as the rest of the room stared.

Who would have guessed that I, half of the Bad Example team from Michigan, would find it in my heart to pity Susan Davies? And yet, for just a moment, I did.

Watching Kori Davies shovel eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes onto two sagging plates as I inhaled her eau de marijuana cologne should have rekindled my nausea. Except that Kori distracted me and my stomach with an avalanche of comments.

“How do you feel about being the other Bad Example?”

She hadn’t yet looked at me.

“Well, it’s a team effort. I couldn’t have done it without my dog.”

“I couldn’t have done it without a lot of people’s dogs.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. Susan hooked me up with her Afghan hound friends. She knew I loved dogs, so she figured I’d love handling them in the show ring. I do, kind of. But not the way Susan wants me to do it.”

“Then why do it?”

When Kori shrugged, her double-wide load of food threatened to hit the floor. But she rebalanced her cargo.

“It’s a chance to play with big beautiful dogs and mess with Susan’s head at the same time. Why not do it?”

Kori’s bloodshot eyes twinkled.

“Did Susan teach you to handle dogs?” I said.

“She tried, yeah, but I didn’t make it easy for her. So she asked some other people to work with me. I learned the most from Matt Koniger. He’s Brenda Spenser’s boy-toy… this week. And I learned the least from the Two L’s. They don’t just show bitches, they are bitches. Did you have the pleasure of meeting them yet?”

I nodded.

“The real question,” Kori said, “is how did you get on Susan’s shit list?”

“I’m here as a professional courtesy. Her husband-your uncle-is doing business with my company.”

Some part of my answer struck Kori as hilarious.

“Finding everything you need?”

Susan gracefully inserted herself in the buffet line between her niece and me. I assumed the question was mine to answer, but Kori intercepted it.

“Duh.”

She raised her mounded plates to Susan’s eye level.

“You might want to go a little easy on the calories,” Susan advised. “That new suit I bought you is a size four.”

“Your size. Not mine. And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to feed.”