Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries) (6 page)

Victoria looked at her. “I’m only sorry I don’t know of a group of Northern women who meet to talk about crazy things Southerners say about Northerners so I could tell them that one. Are Northerners really all that different from Southerners? I will admit it is a little funny when they say things like grocery cart instead of buggy. Speaking of which, it’s almost always the Northerners that leave them in the middle of the parking lot at the grocery store. And our expressions are more, well, expressive. For instance, they say ‘nothing to write home about’ and we say ‘nothing to run home and tell Mom about.’ Other than that I’m sure we’re really alike.”

 
“
Wait,
let’s go back to the part about sending your parents to Florida even if they don’t want to go. You cannot send your parents to someplace where they don’t even know what ‘I swan’ or ‘I
swaney
’ means!” I looked at Paul, “Isn’t that right?”

“I have no idea what ‘I swan’ means.”

“No, the part about Northerners sending their parents to Florida, whether they want to go or not.”

“I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t know, I just … I should check on something in the kitchen.”
 
We all shrugged our shoulders.

Tara stopped eating long enough to say, “I absolutely love your mother. Her funny expressions are etiquette advice. My mother would say things like, ‘I’ll slap you to sleep, then I’ll slap you for sleeping.’”

A few minutes later Paul returned with slices of Coca-Cola cake and homemade vanilla ice cream.

“There’s cake!” Victoria cried out.

“Now why did you do that?” I asked. “Why does cake surprise people? No one ever says,
‘There’s peas
! But cake always seems to surprise people.” Paul cocked his head again.

“
Mmmm
.”
Victoria had taken her first bite, and her head was swimming back and forth. “Y’all have got to taste this. It will make you take back things you never stole.”

“It’s just like going to church.” Paul gave Tara a peck on the cheek when she said this and went to get more sweet tea.

I took a bite and froze mid-chew. “You mean it’s just like going to Cracker Barrel!” I hissed with my mouth full. “He bought this cake there, didn’t he?”

“So what if he did, Leigh? You look like that bite just gave you lockjaw,”
Victoria
 
whispered
.

“So what?
We can’t have him going to Cracker Barrel.” Until then it was such a pleasant lunch, at least for the three of us. “Tara, handle it.”

“Handle it? What do you want me to do, kill him?”

“Actually I think up North they whack them,” Victoria corrected her.

I realized how we sounded and started to giggle, “No, just scare him.” I got the note pad and golf pencil out of my pocket. I had brought them to use when we discussed our plan for meeting with the detective. I wrote something and slid it over to Tara: IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU, YOU’LL STAY AWAY FROM CRACKER BARREL. She passed it over to Victoria to read.
 

Paul returned and looked around the table at each of us. I could tell he didn’t think he was up to asking what we were laughing about, and then his curiosity got the better of him. “What’s so funny?”

“We were talking about how we say ‘bless his heart.’ You can say anything about anyone if you follow it with ‘bless his heart.’” I was lying through my teeth. I mean, that is true, it’s just not what we were laughing about.

“That’s right!” Victoria exclaimed. “Her cooking is not fit to eat, bless her heart.”

“Or he can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so I don’t know why he’s in the choir, bless his heart.” When Tara said we would clean up, he didn’t argue. Like I
said,
no flies on Paul.

“Sweetie, it’s our turn to take snacks to church for Fellowship Hour.
 
If I put something in the oven will you take it out?” He kissed her, mumbling something to the affirmative and extracting a promise of recompense.

We gave him time to clear out of the kitchen before we got up from the table. The stiffness from the morning run made us moan and cuss. When we were able, we hobbled to the kitchen. Not real attractive.

When the decision to start Tiara Investigations had been made, we knew we had to get in shape. For us that means running three times a week and the services of a personal trainer, Julio (who you wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crackers, if you know what I mean) for strength training twice a week and working out to a kickboxing DVD Tara had purchased for us. “We’ll be able to kick ass in, uh, the label says two weeks,” had been her explanation for that.

We’re stronger, and we walk taller. I, for one, am happy to report I no longer have to put talcum powder on my inner thighs just to make it down the hall.

 
Tara turned the cake mix box over to read the directions, “Look, we can make brownies out of this mix. Let’s do that.” And, yes, making brownies from a mix does take three of us. “They’re called Better
Than
Almost Anything Brownies. Hmm, I guess they have to say
almost
anything because of sex. That’s what we call a disclaimer.”

I looked at Victoria, “She’s an attorney, you know.”

Victoria ran her hand along the granite counter top. “I don’t think about sex as often as you two. At my age it’s more fun to laugh about it than to do it. I mean, isn’t that normal? The older women get, the less interest we have in it, right?”

“Listen, Hon,
it’s
bad sex women aren’t interested in.” Tara was trying to see the tiny red marks on a measuring cup.

“I beg to differ. Teenagers have nothing but bad sex, and they’re very interested in it.” I can be quite the philosopher.

“Hmm.
Have either of you ever faked an orgasm?”

Tara and I exchanged glances. “No,” we answered together.

“Well, not in years,” I qualified mine.

“Now, I may have embellished a few, but faked, never.”

“And, Honey, remember I’m making up for lost time when my husband is home from deployment or here on TDY.”

“
TDY
?”

“Temporary Duty.”

Victoria looked at us from the sides of her narrowed eyes. “What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done in bed?” She looked at Tara first.

“I haven’t done it yet.”

 
“Let me preface this by saying some of my open mindedness is apathy. I don’t judge what other people are doing,” I answered, “with the exception of what we do for a
living, that
is. But once I made a man call me ma’am in bed.”

“Do you like being called ma’am?” She was no longer squinting. Actually her eyes were round as saucers.

“Nope.
I just wanted to see if he would do it.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, ma’am.
And there was the time I put a thong in my husband’s popcorn at the movies.”

“Did you take them off right there in the theatre?”

“Please.
The seats.
I brought a pair from home.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Victoria remembered who she was talking to.

“What did he do?” Tara leaned over and put her elbows on the counter top.

“He said, ‘What
tha
…?’ Then he realized what he had and used it to eat his popcorn.”

“That’s so funny.”

“Oh, it was a riot. The next week I reached into my bag of popcorn and there was a pair of his
tighty
whities
in there. And his are big. Hmm, why do you think women’s underwear is sexy, and men’s underwear isn’t? I was just wondering.”

After a good laugh Tara turned to me. “Why did you tense up when Paul asked about us all getting together?”

“I just don’t know how that would work out. My husband is not very sociable. As a matter of fact, he’s an asshole to everyone but me.”

“I don’t believe that.” Victoria sat down on a kitchen stool.

“Believe it. The Pentagon wants him to do some media work. A media specialist called him to talk about it. She said all he needed to do was show his personality. Want to know what he told her? He said, ‘I don’t have one, let’s leave it at that.’” I know this is crazy, but even as I was saying it, my heart was absolutely swelling with pride and love.
Pathetic, huh?
And the Tiara girls could tell.

“But what about the political part of the job?”
Victoria asked.

“He doesn’t do it. He says you can’t be a good general and political.” I thought it was time I changed the subject. “Dr. Paul’s very nice.”

Tara nodded and smiled. “How’s Shorty, Victoria?” Her husband is six feet, seven inches, so what else could his nickname be?

 
Her answer was a shoulder shrug. “What’s this for anyway?” She ran her finger along the inside of the mixing bowl.

“Fellowship Hour at church.
We serve refreshments after the eleven o’clock service. You can bring either a dessert or a heavy hors d'oeuvre.”
 

Victoria retrieved a slip of paper from the side pocket of her handbag.
“Heavy hors d'oeuvre?
What’s that, a fifty-pound cheese ball?” I cracked up, but Tara sighed because there’s nothing about church that isn’t serious to her.

While Tara finished the brownies, I dialed star 59 and the number Victoria read off to me. “Kerry Lee,” I said when I hung up.

“Is that a man or a woman?” The buzzer on the oven told Tara it had preheated.

“It was an automated voice.”

“So an affair is still a possibility,” Victoria said. “You
know,
justifiable homicide.”

“Yeah, an affair which may or may not be related to his murder.
We can find out if Kerry Lee is a man or woman when we pay a visit to The Peachtree Group on Monday morning before the service.”

Tara looked at me, then at Victoria, “Why?”

“Are we getting in over our heads?” Victoria asked.

“Probably.
Maybe it’s time to do more with the agency than just who-did-he-want-and-when-did-he-want-her, or in industry jargon, matrimonial work.” I didn’t want to get into a long discussion before we met with Detective Kent, and we were going to have to leave soon. So I asked, “Hey, what's the best thing ever to come out of a penis?"

Just then the air in the room changed. Shorty was standing in the doorway.

“Hi,” Victoria walked over and stood in front of him.

“I’m picking Paul up to go play golf.”

“I left a message for you by the kitchen telephone. Did you see it? It seemed
important,
at least the guy said he was impatient.”

“He said he was an in-patient. He’s a patient in the hospital and got my home phone number.” I don’t know which annoyed me more, his tone or that
my
phone number rather than
our
phone number.

“Sorry, I was on two phones at once.” Here she glanced at Tara and me. That didn’t sound like the kind of mistake Victoria would make. It had to be Freudian. “Did you call Aidan?” Aidan is their son and the soon-to-be father of twins.

One eye crinkled. “No, I’ll do it later,” but it was too late. The beat it took him to answer said it all. It said he had to think about who Aidan was, and it told me why the couple had waited until she was four months pregnant to tell Victoria and Shorty.

He grumbled, “They can’t afford to have a baby, much less twins.”

Victoria walked behind Tara and me to put a plate in the sink. “Oh, yes they
caaaaan
,” she whispered.
 

In the nick of time Dr. Paul joined us. He walked over to Tara and kissed her goodbye.

“Ready to head out, Shorty?”

“Sure.” Then to Victoria, “I accepted the Parkers’ invitation for Monday night.”

“Okay, I’ll have dinner with the girls.”

“I accepted for both of us.”

As they started toward the door, Paul froze. “I can’t leave. I promised I would wait and take the brownies out of the oven for Tara.”

“No, no, no, you go ahead. We’ll wait for them.” Tara shook her hand to shoo him out the door.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

He blew her a kiss, and before he got to the door he turned and took one last look back at her. Shorty just kept walking.

“The wrinkles,” I said to the back of their heads.

“What?” Both men had turned around.

Victoria clarified it, “The best thing ever to come out of a penis is the wrinkles, Frank.”

“That’s hot,” Tara said. “That is dashboard-hot.”

Stephie
heard the door open and scampered up, not wanting to be left at home if we were going out on a case.

“What’re you doing here?” Shorty asked the dog.

“That’s not your dog. That’s
Stephie
, my dog.”

“Hmm.
We have one that looks just like it. Victoria, what’s our dog’s name?”