Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries) (5 page)

Tara looked at the outstretched hand. “I agree we owe Kelly more than we’ve given her, but that’s not the kind of work we do.” Then she looked first at me then at Victoria and exhaled.
 
“Oh, what the hell.”
She covered Vic’s hand with her own.

I put my hand on theirs. “Let’s agree to sleep on it. We can talk about it in the morning, but I would like to point out that all three of us jumped out of the car when he got shot. We didn’t consider our own hides for a second.” We squeezed our hands together. When I raised mine, instead of lowering it, I brought it up and ran my fingers through my hair, over my ears.

“That’s new,” Victoria said.

“We now have a signature move. Let’s practice,” Tara added.

They each tried it a few times. We laughed the way people do when they’re both tired and wired.

Were they thinking what I was thinking?
 
I was hearing Kent’s voice in my head calling us untrained, ill equipped and incompetent.
 
It had been a long day, and we didn’t need to go into it just then. We hugged each other before Tara and
Stephie
got in her car and followed Vic’s up the hill out of the subdivision. I watched them and thought about our beginning.

~

Attorney Tara handled incorporating us. She had always wanted to use her law degree to help women and was finally getting her chance. Victoria drew up a business plan. I was a park ranger before my marriage, and in the state of Georgia that qualified me to apply for a private investigator’s license. I handled getting us tested and certified. We studied hard, and we made it. When we felt prepared for our first case, we placed an ad in the
Gwinnett Daily News
.

In the first week after it ran, we got a call and met with a prospective client. She was a successful, savvy thirty-seven-year-old woman being courted by a man she desperately wanted to trust while every instinct was yelling at her to get away.

A day later she telephoned me. “He’s here now. Can you come over? He says he can’t stay long because he has to catch an afternoon flight. Coming up here is adding an extra forty miles to his drive to the airport and means he’ll be driving through downtown Atlanta rush hour traffic.” The whisper made
Atlanta rush hour traffic
come out as a hiss. Actually this is probably the way most of us talk about Atlanta traffic. “I offered to come to his place or meet in between, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I feel terrible about being so suspicious but I have that feeling again, like maybe this means something or maybe it means nothing.”

“Hon, from what you told us, the relationship became serious quickly.
 
You’re right not to want to buy a pig in a poke.”
 

I hung up and called the others and told them it was time for our first stakeout. I loaded Abby into my Toyota Highlander Hybrid and picked up Victoria and Mr. Benz and then Tara and
Stephie
. We were to drive to the client’s house and follow him when he left.

We drove north on Interstate 85 to Braselton, then north on Highway 211.
 
The entrance to the Chateau Élan hotel and winery is just yards from the exit, but because of the dense cords of kudzu wrapped around the pine trees we didn’t know we were close until we were right on it. A little farther up
we
saw the entrance to The Estates of Chateau Élan.
 

 
“Chateau Élan is the new Country Club of the South.” Victoria was referring to metro Atlanta’s ongoing expansion, which regularly changes the ranking of the most exclusive addresses.

“We’re going all the way back to the other side of the golf course to the Legends section. The houses there go for a million and up.”

I parked at the end of our client’s street. “Look at us. We’re on a stake out.”

 
“That’s her house there.” Victoria pointed to a Tudor mansion on the left. The client had described her fiancé’s car, and there it was, sitting in the driveway. Ten minutes later the groom-to-be drove his once silver, now gray, Porsche around the horseshoe driveway and passed us. I started the car and waited for him to get down the street.

“What’s happening? Won’t the car start?” Tara grabbed my arm and started shaking it, like it was connected to the engine.

“Don’t worry, it’s on. Hybrids are just very quiet.”

We followed him back to the highway and south into Atlanta. Just past the Georgia Tech campus and Olympic Village he, and therefore we, exited. I’m not ashamed to admit I was getting a little nervous about keeping up with him in midtown when he pulled into the parking lot of a townhouse complex.
 

I exhaled in relief. “This isn’t his address, is it?”

“Nope,” Tara and Victoria answered at the same time. We parked and sat there for two and a half hours before he came out.

After a while we got bored and started
yucking
it up. “You know why divorces cost so much?”

“Pray tell.”

“Because they’re so much fun.”

Just then the puppies in the back woke up, rediscovered each other, and started playing. Busy watching them, we didn’t notice that their wrestling and jumping caused the car to sway until we heard a man’s voice yell, “Hey, get a room.” We looked around to see that it was our client’s fiancé.
Ooops
.
He was wearing a woman’s bathrobe with LAURA monogrammed on the pocket.

“Laura?
Hmm.
Not his.” Victoria handed me a camera. “See this detective stuff isn’t so hard.”

 
He was putting a bag of trash in the garbage can. I lowered my window about an inch, clicking a photo with one hand while starting the car with the other. We drove down the street and turned around. Coming back we saw him kissing a woman, presumably Laura of bathrobe fame, as he re-entered the townhouse. I slowed down long enough for Victoria to snap a photo of this touching scene.

From the back seat Tara whispered, “You are about to be put on the curb yourself, mister.”

We dreaded telling the client, and that part hasn’t gotten any easier, but preventive work is a good thing. We also got crates for the puppies. Hard to believe, but that was a year ago, and with that first success we were off and running.

~

When Abby and I got in the house, I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it. I couldn’t help but compare what I saw in my great room to Kelly Taylor’s rooms with their few pieces of furniture. I had chosen soft buttercup and moss tones for the overstuffed chairs. The yellow- and vanilla -striped sofa had an S-shaped silhouette, and the moss-colored cushions were trimmed with a matching fringe. The tables and cabinetry were made of aged pine.

I filled Abby’s water bowl and then checked for phone messages. The first was from my mother. “Leigh, this is Mom. Call me when you get home. There’s a problem with Aunt Mary.” I squeezed the telephone receiver against my lips. Aunt Mary was ninety-four years old.
A broken hip?
Worse?
Without waiting for the rest of my messages, I took the phone to my balcony garden, speed dialing my mother as I walked.

“Mom, it’s me. What happened to Aunt Mary?”

“Nothing happened to her. Do you know what she did? She cussed out Dr. Reeves this morning.”

“Why? She’s been seeing him for years. All of the aunts go to him. What did he do?” This was going to be good.

My mother settled in to tell the tale. “She has held a grudge for the last seven years about that little joke he made. Do you remember when he told her he thought she might be pregnant? What with her being a widow for the last thirty years, she didn’t think it was one bit funny. Then after what happened this morning, well, do you know what she did? She hit the ceiling and gave him a piece of her mind.”

“What happened this morning?”

“He told her to lie down on the examining table. You know how her osteoporosis is, she can’t just lie down. She tried, but that old table was cold and hard. So she cussed him out.”

“How is Doc Reeves?”

“He went into shock. He said he had never seen anything like it or been called such names.”

“Did Aunt Mary apologize?”

“No, he did, but she’s not accepting it, at least not till she’s ready to. We do hope she will soon. He’s a good doctor. Well, how are you,
Dear
?”

“Actually, I’ve wanted to tell you about something. My friends and I …”

“Wait, there’s another call. Look, I better get this. I’ll talk to you later, dear. Bye
bye
.”

“Bye, Mother. Please give Aunt Mary my affection.” And Mom was gone, off, I was certain, to a call from one of my other aunts to receive a late-breaking bulletin on this escapade or another. “Lord,
have mercy
,” I said to Abby.

She cocked her head from side to side.

“Let’s go to bed, girl.”

I activated the security system, grabbed the newspaper and climbed the stairs, Abby running ahead of me.

“Hey, I know you’re a Schnauzer, but aren’t you supposed to walk behind me?”

When she reached the upstairs landing, she turned around and gave me a look that said
I yam what I yam.

“Good girl.”

You may be wondering about the dogs. Here’s the story behind that. We’re not the gun-toting type, but we needed some way to defend ourselves, should the need arise. Victoria said she would figure it out. A week later she called a meeting at her house in Alpharetta. She had given my name to the security guard on duty at the entrance of the gated community, Chattahoochee River Close, and I drove through the streets of stately homes. Did I just say stately homes? What I mean is
,
Victoria and Shorty live high on the hog.
 

I had been with Victoria when she toured the model home. The red brick columns and black wrought iron gate at the entrance to the subdivision had been erected before a single house was sold.
 
I was coming out of a bad time and wondering how they already knew women would try to escape.

As I walked up to her porch, I heard the yapping of puppies, but Victoria didn’t have a dog. She opened the door, and Tara was with her, also grinning like a deacon holding four aces. Victoria stood aside and threw back her arm.
“Ta-
daaaaaa
!
Our protection.”

Two skinny Standard Schnauzer puppies tottered across the marble floor on scrawny legs. Their faces looked round because they were too young to be groomed and didn’t have beards.
 
My husband gave me a Standard Schnauzer because he missed Christmas with me last year. These little guys reminded me of Abby at her puppy stage.
 
Victoria explained the plan. The dogs would go out on cases with us.

“Right.”
I sat down on the Dover grey leather sofa.

“I’ve named mine Mr. Benz.” Victoria beamed at the puppy.

“And mine is Stephen.” Tara picked up her new baby and kissed the little salt and pepper head.

“Wait a minute. You named your puppy after your ex-husband?” I couldn’t believe she would do that.

“Yeah, since he was a dog. Anyway, I’m going to call her
Stephie
.”

That’s the name of that tune. I have to say I love having Abby with me. My husband is about seven thousand miles away, and she’s good company.

I performed my nighttime routine, scrubbing my face with a washcloth, massaging in PABA-free night cream, flossing, and holding my stomach in for a count of one hundred. Then I joined Abby in bed and opened the
New York Times.
She was already asleep, and I thought about her run down the street. “I really wish you could talk.” I reached over and twirled one of her ears in my fingers. She opened her eyes and sighed. Then she showed her teeth and turned her head and took my hand in her mouth. I didn’t bother to pull back. Then she licked my hand and went back to sleep. She could communicate, but she couldn’t tell me who she and her pals were chasing away from David Taylor’s house. “You did a good job tonight. Go to sleep because, as the good book says, tomorrow is another day.”

Four

C
ontinuation of statement by Leigh Reed.
On Saturday morning at 7:30 we met at a parking lot along the
Suwanee
Creek Greenway for our weekly long run, despite what had happened the night before. For the ten miles we would need the smooth path and lush canopy of trees. Or should that be canopy of leaves? I was just wondering. Tara and I had parked at the
Burnette
Road parking lot, and Victoria picked us up to drive to the George F. Pierce Park at the north end of the trail, our starting point that day. Abby, Mr. Benz and
Stephie
were not with us because the mileage would have been too much for those short legs and twelve tiny feet.

We had been pounding pavement for almost a half hour when Victoria began, “I went back to the notes I made on my Internet search of David Taylor and his company, Flow Network Design. He was the sole proprietor, so Kelly may be a very rich widow.”

Tara was ahead of her on the path and yelled back, “If he was sole proprietor, how can you tell how profitable it was? It’s not listed, is it?”

“He had contracts with publicly held companies.
Actually, company.
I only found one, but that one was a real gravy train.”

“Namely?”
We were in my favorite part of the Greenway, the wooden boardwalk
over
 
Suwanee
River wetlands.

 
“The Peachtree Group.
They’re a manufacturer of …”

“Look!” I pointed at a Blue Heron on the wetland. I immediately started looking for a red-shouldered hawk I had seen around there before.
 

“Backpack UAVs.”

“What’s that?”

“Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.”
I was in the rear so I had to raise my voice. “NASA originally called theirs RPV’s for Remotely Piloted Vehicles. The Department of Defense calls them UAVs, and they’ve taken to calling them drones more often. ”

“Like the Predator?” Tara asked from the front of the line. “It was a Predator that tracked, what’s-his-name, al-Zarqawi until the U.S. forces got him, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” I spit out between breaths. “The Predator is the most famous. It’s about the size of a Cessna, but we’re talking about Backpack UAVs, right?”

The path turned to asphalt and then a second raised walkway. Victoria took a bottle of water from the holder around her waist. “From what I’ve been able to find out so far, that’s the only version using David Taylor’s programming software.”

That water looked good, so I got my bottle out, too. “The backpack-sized or over-the-hill UAV is the smallest version. They can be sent over a fence or around a corner. They can go behind enemy lines. They’ve even prevented infantry platoons from walking into an ambush.”

Victoria poured a little water down her back. “He was a subcontractor writing computer programs for communications applications.”

“Communications?
 
For images to be sent to the ground?”
The bank of
Suwanee
Creek was on our right. We crossed Martin Farm Road and headed to McGinnis Ferry Road.

“No, for interoperability.”

I replaced my water bottle, trying not to break my stride.
“Interoperability with what?
Not only do they need to give what they learn to troops on the ground, sometimes the information is pieced together with
intel
from other UAVs. So which had he developed?”

“Both.”

“Hmm, sort of vertically and horizontally?”
Tara asked from the front of the line, but before I could answer we heard a familiar ring tone. Tara’s phone was playing “Hey, Good
Lookin
’.” She answered, agreed to something and hung up. “That was Detective Kent. He says we’re to meet him at the police headquarters in Lawrenceville instead of the Mall of Georgia office. We’ll have to allow more time to get there.”

“I wonder why?”

“Duh.
Because it’s farther away.”

“Very funny.
Why did Detective Kent change our meeting place?”

“He didn’t say.”

I ran a little faster to catch up. “I’m guessing he’s ashamed to be seen with us. He doesn’t want to take a chance on anyone seeing us who knows what we do for a living.”

Tara and Vic
hmm’d
at the same time, and I went on. “Did you find websites for Flow Network Design and The Peachtree Group?”

“Yeah, but there wasn’t much more information.”
Victoria made eye contact with Tara, and then I had four eyes looking back at me. “Do you think you could find out more?” I knew she meant from my husband and that was suggesting a new turn for Tiara Investigations.

“Let’s see if the investigation leads us down that road first.” I pulled my arms out of my tee-shirt but left it around my neck. I don’t have the nerve to run with only a jog bra, and the shirt sufficiently covered me up, plus giving me something to mop up the sweat with.

“We have an investigation? I thought we were just fact finding to help Detective Kent and try to make up for letting Kelly Taylor down.” Tara called this over her shoulder.

Victoria skipped over her question and went on. “It already has led down that road. The call that Kelly says drew him out of the house was from a Peachtree Group phone number. I got that off of reverse lookup.” The three of us stopped in our tracks. Granted, this is not much of a status change when you are already running an eleven minute mile. At the time we were under McGinnis Ferry Road.

“Did you dial it? I mean to get the name off of the voice mail?” Tara asked.

“No, I couldn’t remember how to disable caller ID.”

I stretched my arms out to the side. When I run I hold my elbows at a ninety degree angle, and they were some kind of stiff.
“A menopause moment?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s star 59.” Tara began running again. “I think we should attend the funeral. I’ll call Kelly and ask about the arrangements.”
 

“I think we should visit The Peachtree Group on Monday morning.” Victoria lowered her voice because we were nearing a group of kids.
 

We passed the Buckeye
Pavillion
, where a group of Boy Scouts listened to a lecture.

“
Wanna
flash them?” In Tara’s defense, we had been running quite a while and were getting loopy.

“You first.”
Despite my challenge there was no mooning of Boy Scouts, as least not that day. We’re just big talkers.

 
The rest of our run was spent discussing other cases, a couple of new clients and those on hold waiting for a call. We made the loop at
Suwanee
Creek Park, which gave us four miles, and went into the ladies room. Then we ran out and back to our starting point. We turned around and ran back to Martin Farm Park and then retraced our steps to the cars. This gave us our ten miles.
 
Victoria took Tara and me to our cars.

“See you around
noon
at my house,” Tara called out the window as she drove off.

We didn’t go straight to our respective homes because there was the little matter of Starbucks with their sweet tea calling to us. In a line we peeled off and into the drive-thru lane.
 
Next it was home for showers, then to Tara’s for lunch and to prepare mentally for our come-to-Jesus meeting with Detective Kent.

~

You can just imagine my surprise when I was met at the door by Dr. Armistead, or as we like to call him, Paul, Tara’s boyfriend. Victoria was already there with a look of horror on her pretty face. He was supposed to be playing golf. I mean, when we’re supposed to play golf, we play golf. He was making lunch for us, but still, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a northern thing. We followed him through the kitchen to the screened-in breakfast room where Tara was just placing a centerpiece of floating candles and the tops of Gerber daisies in a crystal bowl. The Lloyd Flanders white wicker dining table was covered with an ivory antique lace table cloth.

Wine glasses were on the table, but the three of us chose iced tea. What we knew that the good doctor didn’t was that we had to be one hundred percent professional when we showed up at the police station. Nonetheless, I picked up the bottle and read the label.

“Very nice,” I complimented him on his selection.

“Nothing but the best for the ladies.”
He smiled at each of us.

Tara leaned toward him and said, “
Gimme
sugar.” She had puckered up, but Paul walked away and came back with the sugar bowl.

 
“What’s that?” We cracked up laughing and settled into the chairs, realizing how good it felt to take a load off after that run.

“Have you ever noticed that when wine is bad, you drink a lot of it to make it taste good, but when food is bad you just push it away?” I asked the table. “The ladies” started nodding their heads, and
uh huh
-
ing
. Dr. Paul, however, tilted his head to one side and then the other, the way Abby does when she hears a noise for the first time. I’ve taken a lot of kidding from my husband and everyone else I know about my questions. Once I asked my husband why you say Home
Deee-po
, but
it’s
Army de-
po
. And how about that expression, cusses like a sailor? Do soldiers have a broader vocabulary, since parents always say that’s why people cuss?
Natch
, being a soldier, he agreed with that hypothesis. Or are sailors tougher? He didn’t agree with that.

“Tara and I would like to get together with you and your husband when he’s back in town. Right, Sweetie? I’d love to hear what he has to say about what’s going on in the Middle East.” This
non sequitur
was probably just because he couldn’t think of a response to my bad wine versus bad food philosophical remark, but it made the hair on the back on my neck stand.
 

He went back to the kitchen and brought iced tea out to us. “So, how was your run?”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Paul decided to return to the kitchen and finish the salad. No sir-
ree
, no flies on Paul.

I leaned forward and whispered, “Did you notice the lack of furniture in the Taylors’ living room last night?”
 

Victoria nodded. “Since she said the problems started when they moved into the new house, do you think they had money problems?”

Then Paul returned with the salad. “The leaves are spectacular this year, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Oh, yes,”

“Oh, yes.” And back to the kitchen he went.

Tara waited until he was out of hearing. “I spoke with Kelly’s mother. The service is on Monday at eleven o’clock with lunch at the house afterwards.”

“That soon?
They’re performing an autopsy, right?” The tea was so
good,
I took more of a drag than a sip of it.

“It’s just a memorial service,” Tara answered quickly because Paul was coming back in with two bowls of homemade salad dressing. She patted the chair next to hers, and he sat down, beaming at her. We tied on the feedbags, as they say. In this case the feedbags contained garden salads with grilled shrimp.

I looked over at Paul. It was obvious he hadn’t quite recovered his equilibrium. I felt bad because, let’s face it, we are a lot to handle. “I think Dr. Paul wants to report us to Dr. Phil.”

Just then
Stephie
ran in, and Tara leaned over to pat her head. “He could start with our unnatural devotion to our dogs.”

“Easy now.
You make it sound like we have sex with them.” I looked over to Paul.
“Which we don’t, because they’re girls.”

Victoria threw her head back and laughed, and Tara snorted tea out her nose. I was cracking up at my own joke and dabbing my eyes with my napkin. Someone was missing. Oh, yeah, Paul wasn’t laughing. “Get it? They’re dogs!” He was trying, really trying. “We don’t have sex with them because they are dogs!”

“Like they say, it only seems weird the first time.” Tara patted his arm, and we went into hysterics again. Paul blushed.

The Tiara girls moved the conversation to safer
ground, that
of aging parents, a familiar topic. I recounted a piece of advice my mother had given me last week. She had looked at my watch and said, “Leigh, dear, only a party pooper wears a watch to a social function.”

Tara said, “Up North, when you turn seventy, you move to Florida. That’s the law up there, you know. Even if the person doesn’t want to, their kin makes them move to Florida. This is one thing Yankees do right.”