Nina Wright - Whiskey with a Twist

He looked very pleased with himself. And his ice cream.

“Just out of curiosity, Chester, how much did you tip that lady?”

“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it, Whiskey.”

We both knew I couldn’t afford it, so I let the topic drop. I wanted to know what had happened to the rest of our team. Chester explained that Jeb and MacArthur had drawn up a list of “persons of interest,” split it down the middle, and gone off to find those folks.

“MacArthur will interview Ramona and Susan,” Chester reassured me.

“Thank you.”

“And Jeb will interview Kori,” he added.

Chester should have been much too young to understand those issues, but life with Cassina was an education in domestic drama.

“What do you know about Kori?” I said.

“Only that you don’t like her, and you don’t like the way MacArthur likes her, but you don’t think Jeb will like her, so that’s okay.”

He’d pretty much summed it up. What I didn’t want him to know, however, was that even if Kori wasn’t a killer or a dognapper, she might be a homewrecker. And the home she might wreck was at the other end of The Castle from where Chester slept. Never mind that MacArthur had Avery’s ugly mug inked on his arm. Tattoos do not an enduring relationship guarantee. Just ask Peg Goh.

“What are we supposed to do now?” I said.

Wherever we went, Chester would need a shower first. His cone had melted all over his sleeve and was now dripping onto his Italian leather shoes.

He licked the ice cream off his Patek-Philippe watch and announced, “The chopper pilot is expecting us.”

“For what?”

“An aerial tour of Amish Country. Jeb and MacArthur think that’s the most efficient approach to finding Abra. So up, up, and away!”

During my previous helicopter experience, I’d accidentally stolen the pilot’s flotation device. Since we weren’t flying over water today, at least no water larger than a small inland lake, our pilot didn’t have flotation issues. His name was Brad, and his only concerns were that we buckled up so we wouldn’t fall out, and we wore headsets so we could hear each other en route.

MacArthur had instructed Brad to take us where we wanted to go. I explained that our goal was to find a blonde bimbo Afghan hound last seen in the company of an Amish teenager and his long-haired goats.

Brad paused his preparations for take-off.

“Was the Amish kid drunk?” he said.

“How did you guess?”

“When I flew in, I saw an eastbound wagon weaving all over Route 20. It was carrying livestock.”

Chester bounced in his seat. “Take us to the drunk Amish kid!”

Even with a helicopter on our side, I couldn’t believe finding Abra could be as easy as Pilot Brad made it sound. I wanted to believe it, but experience had taught me otherwise.

Chester, on the other hand, declared that we were “overdue for a lucky break.” I couldn’t argue with that logic. I was more than ready to lift off from the Barnyard Inn, scene of murder, mayhem, and way too many Afghan hounds.

Rising straight into the sky is an experience like no other. Helicopters offer a surprisingly smooth if vertigo-inducing ascent. Given the recent state of my stomach, I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut during take-off and keep them that way for most of the ride. But Chester kept shouting into my headset, “Look at that, Whiskey! Look at that!”

Since we were on the trail of my lost dog, I felt obliged to comply.

On my first chopper ride last winter, I had been searching for Chester. Happily, the little guy was now safe and secure next to me, loving every moment of our adventure. A helicopter tour feels like an amusement park ride… except that you’re actually traveling. Skimming treetops and buildings gives you both the big picture and the small picture simultaneously. Although I wasn’t sure it was the best way to experience Amish Country, it seemed the most likely route to Abra.

Since we were in the middle of nowhere interesting, I’d expected the scenery to be one boring farmer’s field after another, broken up by look-alike houses and barns. I was wrong. With the late afternoon sun at our backs and U.S. Route 20 under our feet, we were treated to meadows of green, gold, and coffee-brown rolling away to our right and left. And the trees! Clots of vivid color greeted us wherever a patch of woods remained. This was leaf-peeping in a close-up, high-up rush. Chester squealed with delight.

I had to remind myself of our reason for being airborne: tracking the traffic along Route 20 for signs of a weaving Amish wagon.

“This is where I saw the wagon on our way in,” Brad announced. “That was 35 minutes ago. He could have turned off anywhere east of here, so start scanning the side roads.”

“Roger dodger!” Chester replied.

Brad took us up another hundred feet for a more sweeping panorama.

“Most of the Amish live south of Route 20,” he said, “so our driver probably turned right.”

My eyes were peeled for a horse-drawn farmer’s wagon. But what I spotted first was a silver pickup truck with something bluish-gray in the back. The truck was heading to our left, north, on a curving paved road. I shouted to Brad to take the chopper down for a closer look.

“I don’t see a wagon,” the pilot said.

“Oh, we’ve got way more trouble than that,” Chester told him.

Brad followed instructions and brought us down dizzyingly close to the moving truck. Until the cargo came into focus, I held my breath in suspense.

“Looks like a big plastic bag of trash,” Brad said. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Nope,” I said. “We’re looking for big wayward dogs and killers.”

“I didn’t copy that last word.”

“Just as well,” Chester sighed.

So up and back around to Route 20 we flew. Now I found myself distracted by every single silver pickup truck I saw. And they were not uncommon. But none had anything in the back that might have been Silverado.

After flying in silence for several minutes, Brad said, “I gotta tell you, I don’t think it’s likely that wagon went this far east. We need to focus where the Amish farms are.”

Chester and I agreed. One right turn improved the scenery immensely. Gone was that gray ribbon of concrete connecting cities from east to west. In its place was an undulating landscape crisscrossed with gravel roads and dotted by neat square buildings. Brad made ever wider and higher circles. After ten minutes of seeing nothing but bucolic splendor, punctuated by the occasional lone buggy, I gave silent thanks that I wasn’t paying for this ride. At least not straight from my pocket. I had no doubt that Liam Davies would expect-and receive-extraordinary service in exchange for this gift.

“What’s that?” Chester asked.

I followed the imaginary line from his pointing finger, and so did Brad.

“Looks like goats to me,” the pilot said.

I squinted into the distance at a fenced pasture containing a few dozen animals that looked, from here, decidedly less elegant than horses and skinnier than cows. But I couldn’t be sure how tall they were.

“I’m not up to speed on barnyard critters,” I admitted. “What could they be, besides cows?”

“Goats,” Brad repeated. “We’re going in!”

That was my first clue that he was weary of our wild goose-I mean-goat chase. Brad did the helicopter pilot equivalent of stomping on the gas as he took us down. Although I knew less than nothing about physics, I’d once heard a test pilot on TV describe “atmospheric pressure” on re-entry. This felt like that. Panicked, I glanced at Chester, who grinned like he was being tickled. It must be a guy thing.