Free Come Hell or Highball by Maia Chance

riot—spill the beans!”
    Perhaps she was touched in the head. Or sozzled.
    She suddenly looked serious. “Like this whiskey?”
    â€œSure.” I would’ve preferred it with a splash of ginger ale, naturally, but these were desperate times.
    â€œCanadian,” she said. “Down to my last bottle. You can taste the northern woods in it, and the peat smoke of Newfoundland.”
    â€œReally?” I sniffed my glass.
    â€œNo!” She hooted and slapped her knee with a wizened paw. “Got you good!”
    Okay: she was crackers.
    â€œThe new butler won’t get me any more Canadian hooch,” she said. “Says he doesn’t know how. You ever heard of a butler who can’t get his hands on bootleg? Why, even before that danged Eighteenth Amendment passed, any butler worth his salt would get you a crate of liquor discounted, simply because he could. But Hibbers! Too hoity-toity for my taste.” She took another healthy swallow. “Hisakawa—now, he was a butler. The fluid grace, the civility! And such exquisite serving manners. His mother was a geisha in the Orient, taught him how to pour things proper. Watching him pour this here Canadian whiskey was like watching honey pour out of an angel’s—”
    â€œAuntie!” Horace boomed, emerging from behind the potted palm. Sweat blotched his tennis sweater, and he was out of breath. “I see you’ve met Auntie Clara. Has she been on one of her rants again? Olive calls her Ranty Auntie.”
    Auntie said, “I was just about to tell this dear young lady here about how you and that scrawny shrew you married chucked poor Hisakawa out on his ear without so much as a day’s notice.” She turned to me. “Because of the recipe, dearie. The pork and beans recipe.” She winked a crepey eyelid.
    â€œNow, why would Mrs. Woodby want to hear about a private domestic matter like that? Supposing it was even true.” Horace pulled me away from Auntie.
    â€œDon’t listen to him!” Auntie crowed after us. “He’ll say I’m crazy, but I’m not!”
    Now, I’m not a lady who enjoys been herded around like the most imbecile steer in a Texan herd. But since I’d been at Dune House for almost a day and was no closer to getting my hands on that film reel, I allowed Horace to lead me back outside, onto the terrace.
    â€œAuntie Clara,” Horace said, “she’s … Well, her parents, if you must know, were first cousins. She isn’t right in the conk. And ever since we changed the label of our pork and beans, she’s been on the goddam warpath.”
    Through a whiskey haze, I conjured up the image of a can of Auntie Arbuckle’s Pork and Beans. “That’s why she looked so familiar! She’s the Auntie Arbuckle. That’s her picture on the can.”
    The pork and beans labels featured an image of Auntie’s rosy face, complete with the cumulus curls, high collar, and sweet-as-pie smile.
    â€œThat’s her,” Horace said. “She’s out of sorts about the whole business. She has been generously compensated, of course, and my home is her home as long as she is with us. I think it’s a problem of, er, womanly pride.”
    I frowned.
    â€œVanity,” he said. “She looks … old on the pork and beans can.”
    â€œShe is old.”
    â€œYes, but ladies always wish to look younger, don’t they? At least, that’s been my general impression.”
    Auntie Clara didn’t seem the type to have her pantaloons in a twist about growing older. She’d been wearing an antebellum gown and ivory dentures, for crying out loud. And what was it she’d said about the butler, and a recipe?
    â€œHorace,” I said, “not to change the subject, but I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you. About something very, very important.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWell, you see,