Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries) (3 page)

“Scared? I didn’t get the impression she was abused, did you?” Victoria reached for a packet of
stevia
.

I handed her an ice tea spoon.
“No, afraid of losing him.”

Tara pointed at me with Vic’s spoon. “If you ask me, it was Stockholm syndrome that made her tell him about us. He’s supposed to be the bad guy, and she sided with him.”

Since then, either he’s following us, or it’s just a coincidence that we run into him almost daily.

~

That afternoon we played golf and started three new cases. One concerned the subject of this statement, the very dead Mr. Taylor.
 

Most Thursday afternoons you can find us on the golf course. We don’t know if we are any good at golf or not because we don’t usually keep score past the first hole. If I had to guess I’d say we’re probably not that good. According to our rules you can pick up your ball if you have to go to the bathroom, if you make a bad shot, if the snack cart comes by, if you’re too hot and you wish the snack cart would come by, if you either get or remember you need to make a phone call and you have to sneak your cell phone out of your bag, if you forget how many strokes you’ve taken, if you have taken too many strokes, if you thought you had taken your turn and you hadn’t, if you just then notice another player is wearing a new outfit, if a famous actress dies, or if the stock market dips. Anyway, it helps us finish nine holes in a reasonable amount of time.

 
Kelly Taylor’s call to our business line was transferred to my cell phone as we drove our carts to the third hole. These calls have a distinctive ring that Victoria downloaded onto our phones, so the others knew to, first, hide me from any pesky marshal that might be driving around trying to enforce course rules, and second, only have professional sounding noises in the background. We agreed to meet her at Cracker Barrel at five o’clock. I was wrapping up the conversation, so Tara went to the red marker to tee off. Mrs. Taylor had one more question for me, “By the way, what is your hourly rate?”

“Fore!” Tara says this each time she tees off just in case.

“Four hundred an hour?
That’s fine. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Wait, I, I …,” but she had hung up.

And just like that our fee went from one hundred an hour to four hundred.

Two

C
ontinuation of statement by Leigh Reed.
The three of us arrived at the Cracker Barrel before our client, Kelly Taylor. I found a parking space near the entrance to this little piece of heaven. The asphalt lot was surrounded by contrived landscaping. The trees were mathematically equidistant from each other, and the leaves were burgundy, orange, gold, and salmon. Along the front porch the world’s most comfortable rocking chairs were lined up. I guess management’s afraid they would be stolen, because they’re bolted down. Mingled in with the plain rocking chairs were a few with the University of Georgia Bulldog insignia and two church pews.
 

When Kelly Taylor approached the table, I stood up and shook her hand. She was African-American, and I noticed she was about my height. She looked me in the eye, and her handshake was firm. She wasn’t embarrassed to be there. No wife should be; the husband is the one who should be mortified. I liked her right away. Later, looking at her seated, she seemed, well, shorter and smaller. That day her hair was pulled back in a chignon, and she wore tiny pearl earrings. That’s pretty much how the rest of the meeting went, my impression of her switching back and forth. Some of her mannerisms reinforced a demure façade, and some contradicted. One minute she was hard and tough as steel, and then with the next glance you thought she was going to cry. Who was the real Kelly Taylor?

I started the interview by asking her to tell us about her husband. “He’s thirty-three years old, four years older than me. He’s very intelligent. He owns his own consulting firm.”
 

 
She said she loved him even though he was not romantic or demonstrative. When asked to give a more complete physical description, she had to think for a few seconds. Me, I can describe every hair on The General’s head. Still, she claimed to be in love with him.

As I went about getting the information we needed to begin a case, I noticed she was pulling back into her chair. This made me wonder if I was coming across like I was grilling her. That was certainly not my intent. I stopped
speaking,
knowing that one of my colleagues would pick up on this.

Victoria took over. “What has made you suspect your husband of being up to no good?”

 
“Sometimes when I come into a room and he’s on the telephone, he hangs up.”

“Anything else?”
I was glad Vic asked this because I hate wild goose chases.

“David used to work in his home office about half the time. In the last few months he’s been spending more and more time at his office in Peachtree Corners. Lately he’s been going there at night, or so he says. My husband has changed. That’s all I know.”

Most of her concern was due to a vague, but unmistakable, feeling that something was altered. We took the case based on that fact. She’d noticed this change a few months after they bought their new house in Duluth, Georgia. This was to be their dream house. We wrote down the license plate number of his car and all the addresses we might need. As we passed around the photo of the black, tall, slender man in glasses, I was pretty sure we were all thinking the same thing, “There is no type.” Anybody can try their damndest to screw up their life, and there’s no better way than infidelity.

Victoria continued on with the interview. “Might he have clients on the west coast that would necessitate him being at the office at night for teleconferences with them?”

“I know his biggest client is in Atlanta, that’s why we moved here. But I don’t know where the rest of his clients’ offices are. This one is the only one I’ve heard him talk about.”

Good
, I thought. We try to throw in one easy out in the first meeting. It’s a convenient way for clients to go into, or back into, denial.
Kelly could have said or thought, ‘Oh, yeah, clients on the west coast.
That’s probably it.’
 
She didn’t, meaning she was ready to hear whatever we would be telling her. I take that back, no wife or husband is ever ready to hear it. Kelly would be able to hear it.

Tara picked up a menu. “Want to order something?
Tea or a dessert?”

I ordered apple pie, the no-sugar-added version, with ice cream. Victoria went with the chocolate cobbler, Tara the cobbler of the day, blueberry if I remember correctly, and then we looked at Kelly, waiting for her to say something.

She giggled, “I’ll have the carrot cake.”

 
“A seasonal choice, excellent.”
Tara gathered up the menus.

“And four sweet teas,” the waitress said as she walked away. It wasn’t a question. Like I said, we’re regulars.

“Can I ask you something?” Kelly really did sound like a little girl when she spoke.

“Sure.”

“Where are you from?
 
You don’t sound like you’re from here.”

“All three of us are native
Atlantans
. I was born in Crawford Long Hospital. I have an Atlanta accent instead of a Southern accent. Believe me, people up North say my accent is quite pronounced, and I lived outside the country for almost ten years.”

“Outside the country.”
She was imitating me, like I had spoken in a foreign language and she wanted to be sure she got it right. “I’ve always wanted to travel. Are you sisters?”

“No,” we said together, laughing.

“Then why do you dress alike?”

We were wearing jeans and white blouses. Yes, all three of us. The blouses were a little different but not enough to matter. Oh, and our shoes were different.
Big whoop.
I wore Donald J.
Pliner
thong sandals, and Tara and Victoria both wore boots, Tara in Stuart Weitzman suede boots laced up outside her jeans and Victoria in Calvin Klein riding boots.

“We didn’t do it on purpose.” Shit. I had hoped she wouldn’t notice.

Three

C
ontinuation of statement by Leigh Reed.
On Friday morning I was at Publix buying groceries when I noticed a man following me with his cart. This annoyed me no end, so I turned around and headed his way. This might sound hypocritical, considering what I do for a living, but who did he think he was?

“Excuse me, ma’am. Is your name Leigh?” He was young and muscular with a buzz cut.

“Yes, it is.”

“I served under your husband in both Gulf wars. I’m Roger Wilson. I met you at a reception a few years back.”

I exhaled and felt my shoulders relax. I told him it was good to see him, and we rolled our carts down the aisles, collecting items. He seemed to want to tell me something. Twice he went as far as stopping his cart and facing me. He just needed time to get it out. I put three Granny Smith apples in my cart and smiled when he did the same. Then we headed to the soup aisle.

“We used to laugh about how little he socializes.”

“I know. He’s a man of few words.” I had to laugh myself.

“One day we had gone into a village and wound up in a firefight before we knew what was happening. We were crawling on our bellies, and then I heard him say, ‘Wilson,’ in my earpiece. I was lying there thinking, wow, the General knows my name. He said, ‘Head down,’ and then I heard two quick shots. I looked up to see that he had shot an insurgent’s hand off with a gun still in it and then shot the bas … him in the head.”

I shivered, and he continued, “The next week I heard him in my earpiece again, telling me to halt. I did just before I would have detonated an IED. He had noticed the disturbed section of dirt they tell us to look for. That night I got up my nerve and approached him in the mess tent. I thanked him and said I would like to speak to him some time other than when he was saving my life. He looked up from the table and smiled.” Here he did a pretty good imitation of The General’s slow grin. “Then he said, ‘Well, son, that’s not a trade I’d make, but it’s up to you.’”

“Thank you for telling me that,” I said with difficulty.

“You’re certainly welcome.” It was hard for him to speak, too. “I’ll be leaving for my third deployment this afternoon.”

“Why are you buying groceries if you’re about to leave?”

“My mom is pretty upset, and I don’t want her to have to do it.”

“How long have you been home?” My throat was narrowing fast.

“Two months.”

“That’s terrible. I think you all should have two years between deployments for retraining.”

“Well, hopefully it’ll be over soon,” he said, avoiding agreeing with me, loyal to the end.

“I hope so, too.” I had everything I had come for and more, so I went to get in the checkout line. For the millionth time I thought about how this war should never have started.

Back at home I checked my e-mails,
natch
, looking for one from my husband. There wasn’t one, nor was he online. I have an overstuffed chair covered in velvet tapestry in my little home office, and I let it swallow me up when I sat down to read the newspaper. After starting the same article on North Korea’s nuclear weapons tests over and over, I put it down. That was when I went into a funk I couldn’t shake. I missed my husband. I was also saying and thinking
my
too much, as in my dog and my house. I felt that my whopper of a secret was hurting our closeness, and being surrounded by, even facilitating divorces for a living didn’t help. He was far away, and as isolated as I felt, I still didn’t want to tell him about Tiara Investigations.

I couldn’t stand being inside any longer, and I realized it had been a while since Abby had been out, so I called her to go for a walk. “I’m taking a
bag,
just in case you are locked and loaded,” using a military term because of where my thoughts had been wandering.

We walked around the block, including a killer hill. As soon as we walked through the door, Abby sprinted to her water bowl. After lapping for about a minute and getting more water in her beard than in her mouth, she returned to me and licked my hand once. She was hungry. I filled her bowl and went to my desk.

 
I spent a couple of hours working on the business aspect of Tiara Investigations, updating our spreadsheets, preparing a deposit and writing paychecks for Victoria and Tara. Before I knew it the day was about gone, and I had yet to exercise.
An hour later Kelly Taylor telephoned and told me about her husband’s plans for the evening.
The call came in while I was mid-kickboxing video. Interruptions are the norm in doing business the way we do. As I walked upstairs I dialed Tara and then
conferenced
Victoria in. I told them about the call and asked who wanted to drive.

Victoria said, “I will. Who should I pick up first? Where are we going?”

“Duluth. Pick me up around seven-thirty. That’ll give us time to get there and position ourselves.”

I took a quick shower and then made myself a peanut butter and honey sandwich dinner.

It was literally and figuratively a three-dog night when Tara and her Standard Schnauzer,
Stephie
joined us in Victoria’s Lexus SUV. “I hope he’s not fooling around on his cute little wife.”

“Well, he is.” I gave Vic’s dog, Mr. Benz, a good-to-see-you ear twirl.

“How do you know?” the ever-hopeful Victoria asked.

“He’s going to his office for a 9:00 p.m. conference call. He doesn’t have a phone at home?”

We let the navigation system lead us to the subdivision, and then we slowed down to read the carved wooden house numbers on the mail boxes. The neighborhood was established, upper middle class. For Duluth, Georgia, that’s still not necessarily very old.
 

“This area was originally called Howell Crossing, but when the railroad connecting it with Duluth, Minnesota, was completed, the name was changed. Did you know Duluth elected Georgia’s first woman mayor? Her name was Alice Harrell Strickland, and that was in 1922. She vowed to rid Duluth of that demon rum.”

“Thank you, Miss Georgia.” Victoria took her eyes off the road and looked at me.

 
“That’s just one bit of Georgia history trivia left over from my years with the Forest Service.”

 
“Are you sure you didn’t learn it during your reign?” Tara leaned forward from the back seat.

For a second I couldn’t breathe. “You know, you’re right. That is where I got that from. I had completely blanked that out. Actually I’ve put most of that year, and the year before with the county pageant, out of my mind.”

“Did you enjoy that year?” For a second there I was afraid Vic might release her ten o’clock, two o’clock hand position.

“Some of the expectations were hard for me.”

 
Tara was still leaning forward, reading house numbers. “What was hard?”

“Talking to visitors about Georgia, for one.
 
Now I know why. It was because I was so close I couldn’t really see. I had to get away and come back to be able to really know Atlanta.”

Victoria slowed because we were getting close. “At least you didn’t have to be kidded about being Miss Congeniality all year long.”

“At least you didn’t have to worry about Tara incapacitating you so she could complete your reign.”

“Very funny.
Why did you enter the pageant if you didn’t want to win? I really wanted to win.”

“My mother told me my father wanted me to.”

“Did he?” Victoria wanted to know.

“He didn’t even know about the pageant. Let’s get to work.”

By the time we parked two houses up from the Taylor’s, the dogs had mercifully gone to sleep. We lowered the front and back windows on the driver’s side by a few inches and settled in for some serious surveillance, the three of us looking through binoculars—okay, opera glasses. We liked to all be on duty at the same time. My way of turning a sentence into a novel had made the photographer lose her shot a few times on our first cases. Like, “I see him coming out of her condo wearing a yellow shirt, maybe it’s a mustard yellow shirt, and actually that’s a townhouse, and I am pretty sure the shirt is IZOD. Oh, yeah, and it was the third door down.”
 
Well, maybe more than a few times, more like several. Anyway you get the point.

Before long we went back to talking to pass the time. Victoria was filing her nails, short and almost straight across, known as
squoval
.
 
“You think we might just have a happy ending this time?”

“I went to grammar school with a kid who said he had a friend who had been born out of his mother’s butt. He would always add, ‘but he’s okay now.’ That always gave the story, or at least the mother, a happy ending.
Literally.”
Tara shared this touching story with us as she finger-combed Abby’s beard. Abby is also a Standard Schnauzer. Picking up a pattern?

“That’s gross!”

“That’s not gross,” Tara said. “I’ll tell you
what’s gross, how much you learn about yourself when you wear black underwear
. Now, that’s gross.”

“
Eew
,” Victoria cringed but couldn’t help laughing, and Tara laughed at that.

“You mean disgusting.” I’ve known Tara for a long time, and I’m used to these comments.

“On a more ladylike topic, I’m going to be a grandmother.
Twice.
Twins.”
Victoria was smiling but looking befuddled.

“That’s wonderful! Really, I am so happy for you,” Tara exclaimed. “Is your daughter pregnant or your daughter-in-law?”

“My daughter-in-law.”

“So
what’s that look
for? What’s the rest of the story?” I mean, I am a detective.

“Well, she’s over four months pregnant, and she just told us today.”

“Oh, wait. Here he comes. Smoke ’
em
if you got ’
em
, boys. We’re
goin
’ in.” I knew it was David Taylor from the photograph Kelly gave us, and there was the fact that it was his house.

“Huh? Why isn’t his garage door opening?” Victoria was whispering like we always do when we see the follow-
ee
.

“He came out a side door, must have been from the kitchen.” During a chase I like to plan three or four moves ahead, and this guy was not helping. Mr. Taylor turned and headed away from the house.

“He’s not going to his garage.” Tara’s voice had just a touch of panic. He walked purposefully down the long, straight driveway, which was flanked on both sides with yellow and purple pansies. At the end he stopped to look around. His one last glance back at the house was not in the usual cheaters’ furtive manner. “Where does he think he’s going?”

Victoria kept her eyes focused ahead. “We can’t exactly ask him, so we need a plan. Just as soon as Leigh thinks of something, we’ll have one. Leigh?”

“What do we do if he walks to wherever he’s going?” I was thinking aloud, and as much as I would like to say I was shuffling through a deck of possibilities, I didn’t have any idea how to follow a walker from a car in a quiet subdivision at night.

“Should we follow him on foot?” Victoria had her hand on the keys waiting for my answer.

Tara lifted up her left foot and put it on the console between the front seats.
“In these, no way.”
She was wearing navy patent three-inch heels.

“Are those new?” Then I got hold of myself. “We can’t let him see us sitting here. Let’s pass him and then watch to see where he goes. He can’t be going far.”

“Maybe he’s about to get neighborly with someone.” Tara rotated her ankle, admiring her own shoes.

Victoria started the car and pulled away from the curb. We hadn’t driven but just a few yards when we heard, or felt or sensed, a swish, and Mr. Taylor dropped to the ground. Victoria slammed on the brakes and cut the engine. In a matter of seconds the front of his shirt was soaked in blood.

We didn’t duck. Nor did we look around, and that mistake came back to bite us. We left the car sitting in the road and got out. As we scurried to him, I reached for my cell phone and dialed 911.

Tara got there first and fell to her knees to begin administering first aid. She looked up and said, “He’s dead.”
 
Then she leaned over him and prayed silently.

I couldn’t speak, but Victoria had connected with her inner smart ass. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing we’re not in protective services.”

She and I moved away from the body and sat down on the curb to wait for the police.

“We can’t just sit here. One of us should go in and tell Kelly what happened. I’d rather it came from one of us instead of a police officer.”

An ambulance, followed by a police cruiser with piercing sirens, came around the corner. Detective Kent swaggered up to us. “
Muuuuch
better,” I said when I saw him.