Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries) (2 page)

“Right.”
That was so Tara, standing at five feet four inches,
add
two or three if she’s wearing heels, and tossing her auburn-streaked brown hair.
 
I’m tallest at five feet eight inches, and I have brown hair with blond highlights and hazel eyes. These are not the hair colors we were born with; they’re the ones we chose.

~

I called Gina Kent that afternoon after the photographs were developed. “Where would you like us to meet? Should we come to your house?”

“No,” she answered almost before I got the question out. “I don’t know what time he’s coming home from work.”

“You want to wait until tomorrow morning to meet?”

“Yes. Can we meet at the same place? I sort of remember where it is.”

“Sure. We don’t need to go in. We can sit in my car and talk.” Showing a wife these photos in the restaurant? No, thank you, we do not want to be banned from Cracker Barrel.

So the next morning there we were, sitting and waiting for the Mrs. Then we sat and waited some more.

 
“Uh, Leigh?”

“Yeah, Victoria?”

“Can we discuss your bumper sticker?”

“I ALREADY OPPOSE THE NEXT WAR. It’s new. Do you like it?”

“Well, we’re supposed to be undercover. That makes your car identifiable.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll take it off.” I’m not a namby-pamby person, she was just right.

Tara was in the back seat. “My dad always said you should learn something new every day. Now you can take the rest of the day off.”

“Is that her? There she goes!” Victoria pointed at a Mazda just like the one Gina Kent drives.

 
“And there she went. It was her. Good, she’s turning around.” I got out of the car, hoping she would see me.

Tara got out and stood with me. “She’s passing us again.” With the next pass she saw us and made an illegal U-turn.

 
Once we got her inside my car, we showed her the photographs. It was odd. Sure, she was mad, that’s to be expected, but she seemed to be doing a triumphant victory lap in her head. I imagined her getting lost doing it and had to get hold of myself quickly.

Tara reached over and rubbed little circles on Mrs. Kent’s back. We hate this part of the job with a passion. Sure, she came to us, but it still hurts to be the bearer of wounding news. And my friend knew what it was like on the receiving end all too well.

Gina gripped the photographs and then slid them into her canvas handbag. “Where’s the binder?”

Victoria spoke up. “We don’t do binders.”

“And the write-up from the background
check
?”

“We don’t do background checks.” I was still twisted in my seat to address her. “We stick to who’s, I mean what’s, happening today
.
And, Mrs. Kent, with your husband being on the police force, he might find out a background check had been run on him.”

She took this into consideration, but still gave a
hrmph
.

Tara continued to pat our client. “We help people.”

Gina glanced at her handbag containing the photos as if to say, “Oh, yeah, you help people all right.” She shrugged Tara off and huffed out of the car. “I hope I can find my way home from here.” She looked around.

“Are you going to be all right? We can drive to your house, and you can follow us, just to be sure you get home okay. ” That’s Tara, nice to the end. I had started the car, and Vic was texting someone.

“No, I’m fine.”

We watched her pull out of the parking lot and turn in the opposite direction of her house.

Tara banged her head a couple of times on the headrest.
“
Arghhh
!
We really did start Tiara Investigations to help women who can’t afford big-time detective agencies.”

She paused for confirmation and I gave it right away.
“Yeah!
When your marriage was all over but the shouting, you paid an ungodly sum to the one you used. A lot of women can’t afford that.”

I would like to write that achieving a money-making detective agency with a one hundred percent success rate, if I do say so
myself
, is due to brilliance, courage, and skill. Our little detective agency has all that—well, to some degree—but truth be told, much of our business growth is due to our pricing structure. When we first started, we were cheap. Not value priced. I mean blue light, final clearance cheap. Our billing plan is simple. We charge by the hour, not the day. The client calls us, and we leave immediately for the restaurant, hotel,
bar
, whatever. This seems to be empowering for her, usually
a
 
her
, and she saves money. This manner of doing business has also made it possible for us to keep up our double lives as wives, or in Tara’s case girlfriend, and private detectives.

Victoria turned to face Tara in the back seat. “To be fair, we had another motive for starting our own detective agency. We’re going to be fifty pretty soon, and we knew if we didn’t make some changes we would never have the lives we wanted.”

Tara reached between the seats to our shoulders. “If I’m honest about it, revenge played a teensy part for me. Infidelity comes with a side order of gas lighting. That’s what hurt the most. If we could spare some woman, somewhere, that torment, we had to go for it.”

I pulled onto Lawrenceville-
Suwanee
Road. “Did you see her slip the photos in her bag?”

“Should we have told her we always give the client the photos?” Victoria looked up from her phone. “And how did she know about binders and background checks?”

 
“She’s not new at this.”
 
It was such a nice crisp and clear day that I opened the sunroof.

“Something tells me, neither is he,” Tara said.

We left without eating, which is not like us, but giving that kind of news ruins one’s appetite. Anyway, we needed spa therapy in the worst way. With our first few cases we realized we had to do something to let the case go emotionally. High Hill Day Spa fits the bill nicely. I feel myself relax when the hostess parts the ornate walnut double doors. Once inside, where new age music seems to have turned all the walls lavender, you’re escorted to a dressing room and handed your beverage of choice. All the estheticians are friendly. In
Hartfield
Hills no points (or big tips) are given for pretentiousness.

We developed a post-case routine of Tara calling her boyfriend and Victoria calling her husband. I e-mail The General. We tell them we love them and hear them say the same. The facials make us look really good, and two of the three of us have sex that night. After Victoria’s comment the day before, I wouldn’t swear on a stack of Bibles that she had continued that part. At the time of this case we drank heavily at the spa. This particular day, Tara’s breakfast had been coffee. You see where I’m going.

Ronald, our favorite masseur, came in for my deep tissue massage and closed the door.
 
“I can’t believe you three are private detectives. I had no idea.”

 
If our own husbands don’t know, how would our rubdown-divine-being pick up that little fact? No one knows but our clients and the jurors in the two cases that went to court.
 
I jerked up, forgetting about my current state, which was naked.
  

“Tara just told me about the case with the police detective. Good for you!”

“Ronald, she should not have told you about that. Please promise me you won’t tell anyone.” He gave me his word, and that was good enough for me. If you can’t trust a masseur, who can you trust?

From the massage table to the manicurist I went, following in Tara’s wake. The manicurist congratulated me on the case, as did Sherry when I got my pedicure. I didn’t call Tara’s cell phone because I was tipsy myself. In the limousine ride home, I talked to Tara about the need for confidentiality.

 
Victoria was scrubbing some kind of exotic oil off her glasses. “You would think
it’s
okay to drink at a spa but not a tattoo parlor.
Anywho
, I think our rule should be, no more drinking on spa days.”

“
Ooooh
, it wasn’t the drinks, it was the massage.
Or maybe the combination.
After the first half hour I just started chattering.”

The combination was lethal and not consistent with real P.I. behavior, besides being inconsiderate to our clients. We agreed to hold each other to our no-drinking-while spa-
ing
rule.

The headband the
facialist
used had left Tara’s bangs sticking straight up, and she started working on calming them down. “No binders, no background checks, no bullets, and now no booze.
Got it!”

We were feeling pretty good about our new, more professional way of doing business. Until we saw the Ford Escort sitting in my driveway, that is.

Victoria pointed to her gold wristwatch and arched her right eyebrow.

Tara shook her head, no. There hadn’t been time for him to learn about us from the spa and get over here.

I tapped my wedding band. They both gave one nod, yes. It hadn’t taken much detective work to figure out that his wife had confronted him, and when he demanded she tell him how she knew, she had sung like a canary.

We got out of the limo, and I tipped the driver a fifty. Detective Kent walked towards us. He looked mad as hell. “So you three are private investigators?” There was a beat between each word, never a good sign.

At Buford Dam I had noted his looks well enough to match him up with our photograph. My attention was focused on who he was with. Now I took a closer look. The detective was taller than average, slim build, and every blond hair in place. I would guess mid-forties. He enunciated each syllable, wreaking havoc on his Southern accent. The wind was blowing, and as he spoke he had to keep turning to protect his hair. We three circled to keep up with the pivoting of this human weather vane.

“I’d like to see your license.” We invited him to come inside and wait while I got the folder with our documentation. Abby was barking and jumping in her excitement to see me, as well as Tara and Victoria.
The detective, not so much.

He started to climb the stairs after me, and Tara stopped him, “We can wait down here while Leigh goes up to get what you want.” The look he gave her and then Victoria would have done Clint Eastwood proud. He was loaded for bear, but so was Tara. He did wait downstairs. When I looked down the staircase from the top he was staring up at me. I loosened the death grip I had on the mahogany banister, went into my home office and closed the door. I leaned back against it and almost fainted. I’m not the kind of person that has to be liked by everyone I meet. Because I don’t talk about myself very much and I don’t walk around smiling like a jackass chewing briars, I put up with a certain amount of being misunderstood. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt dread when I thought about his expression. It fell short of hate but hurt just as much. He was dismissive of Tiara Investigations.
 
Something else occurred to me. If he was mad at what we had learned about him, what if he found out that half of the city’s beauty industry knew it also?

Holding the folders of test results, certificates and letters, I really wished I had photocopies. I put my ear up to the door and listened. All was quiet in the foyer so I sent the documents through the copier as quick as they would go. I took a deep breath and hurried back downstairs to my friends.

Detective Kent went through the folder, tossing each sheet over as he scanned. His manner and the looks he shot us said that as much as we disgusted him, everything was in order.

 
“I could have told you it would be. Everything this woman owns is alphabetized. She’s the only person I know that has a rental car washed before she returns it.” Though I couldn’t really see the relevance of Tara’s last flattering remark, I started to relax a little because of her confidence in me.

On his way out he turned to me. “Your problem is you know nothing about romance.”

I never expected such a personal comment from him. Maybe it’s contagious, because I never expected a personal comment out of my own mouth either. “The three of us have forgotten more about love than you will ever know.”

“So what case are you working on now?”

“Oh, we’re looking for Jimmy Hoffa’s baby. Wish us luck.”

He squinted at me. “Wouldn’t that be the Lindbergh …?” Better late than never, he realized it was a joke and stalked out, leaving the front door open like he was raised in a barn.

We watched through the living room window, and Victoria spoke first.
“A regular
fashionisto
.”
He was wearing stovepipe jeans and a short leather jacket, not a good look for someone so short-
waisted
.

Tara walked away from the window. “He thinks he has a nice butt.”

I led them to the kitchen and got the tea pitcher out of the refrigerator. “So we’ve learned a second lesson for the day. Number one was, do not get drunk in a tattoo parlor or a day spa. Number two, never trust a scared person.”