Hot Tea (35 page)

“That’s kind of a bizarre coincidence.  Rosenbloom was murdered.  What happened to your mom’s friend?”

“She was old when dirt was young, and we all kind of assumed that she’d just stopped living, but the medical examiner said that something wasn’t adding up, and they’re looking into it some more, but my family is pretty sure that she just woke up dead.  If you’re blessed to live long enough, that’s what happens.”

“What does that have to do with Louis?  He didn’t work either case and he didn’t have a personal plate.”

“No, but I went through a bunch of his papers and scanned them for his brother.  His tag was coming due.  It ended in IRF.”

“But Louis wasn’t murdered.  He was in a car accident.”

“Bernie probably died of old age.  I’m not saying anything more than it is all kind of weird.  I never heard of two of the three people until a short time ago.  Now I know all three and all three have tag numbers with three out of six characters being the same.  I wonder what the odds of that are.”

“It is kind of weird.”

“Hey, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  Maybe it’s nothing.  I’m not saying that I solved a crime wave, or that there even was a crime wave, all I’m saying is that if you allow yourself to stop concentrating on every pixel of the picture something might pop up for you just like the IRF thing popped up for me.”

“I’ll think about that.  I left my business card on your coffee table.  Call me tomorrow when you hear from Steven.  I know he is Louis’s brother but I don’t think he has a valid claim to those books, at least not morally or ethically.”

NINETEEN

I woke up and found myself in the middle of a day lost.  That’s how I think about it anyway.  The police still didn’t want me poking around at Bernie’s house.  Steven hadn’t gotten back to me about what I should do with Louis’s house.  I hadn’t heard from Joe.  AJ was missing in action; I guessed he was off on a photo shoot somewhere.  Suzi had mentioned more than once that AJ didn’t have a very regular schedule, it was kind of feast or famine, but he seemed to be working awfully regularly since he’d moved into the apartment.

Teagan didn’t answer when I called.  Mom went to the outlets with my sister Maeve, and Daddy reported that Maeve and Mom were planning to do dinner, so his assumption was they wouldn’t be home till late.  Even Liam and Morgan couldn’t be found.

I decided to do the only sane thing a girl can do when abandoned by all those that usually fill her time.  I decided to cave and treat myself to a girl day. 

I probably shouldn’t admit this; I could lose all respect, and my membership in the girl’s club, but what the heck, think about the stuff I lounge in, I almost never do the pampered princess thing, although every female I know raves about it.

I started with my feet.  I have one of those course emery boards that are used for artificial nails.  Instead of using them on my toenails, I use them on my heels.  I just kind of sand off the yucky parts until they are soft as a baby’s butt.  Probably not good for you, and I’d never suggest it to a living soul, but it works for me.  I then did the normal pedicure thing, ending up with petal pink toenails. 

I shaved my legs with hair conditioner, because although it drives me crazy that it makes my tub slimy, it makes anything I shave really, really smooth.  I exfoliated and hydrated and waxed and buffed until I was absolutely fabulous.  I gave myself a facial.  I even gave myself a manicure.  I deep conditioned my hair, which I never do, because fine hair stays pretty flat to your head when it is healthy, but it turned out pretty cute.

I decided I’d put on my spiffy new negligee; it’s soft white, very sheer, with fabric roses sewn together to create a deep scoop neckline.  There are matching roses on the cuffs of the robe.  The robe is the exact style I love, it has a yoke in the back at the waist, so it looks a little bit fitted, and it doesn’t close in the front, just frames the neckline of the gown underneath.  It’s the same fabric as the nightgown.  Although the fabric is really sheer, there are layers of it, so it is revealing in a really shy kind of way.  Hard to explain, but it is beautiful, and most importantly, I feel beautiful in it, which is why I like to wear negligees in the first place.

My plan was to lounge around all afternoon, then see if I could track down one of my relatives to join me for dinner.  Annoying how they show up at the most inopportune times, but when you could use someone to bounce a few ideas off, not a relative to be found.

You know those dramatically artful and nearly impossible to recreate layouts you see in the magazines, with the woman posed on the couch, and her hair is shiny and her teeth are sparkly and she looks serene, well, I was doing my very best impersonation of that woman at about 3 in the afternoon, when my phone rang. 

It was Joe.  Louis’s partner.  He called to see if I’d spoken to Steven.  I hadn’t.  He said he was going to give it another 24 hours, then he was going to check with some people on the more legal side of things, to see if there was any way he could force the issue and get the books.  He also said that he was willing to bet that behind the locked door in the hall of Louis’s condo, there was tons of evidence, some of it court quality, to help build the case of a serial murderer.

It didn’t escape me that I’d not told him about that locked room.  I wasn’t sure if his knowledge came from before Louis died, or since we had our conversations, but if he wasn’t sure about the leather books, and confirmed their existence due to my big mouth, how would he know about the locked room and what was in it?  Either way, I wasn’t going to confirm or deny.  I try really hard not to make the same mistakes twice.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss, or at the very least, smart.  I didn’t comment at all.

He also brought up the issue of 3s.  He’d talked to some guys at the office.  They all agreed that the tag thing, the IRF thing, was too much of a coincidence to ignore, even if it didn’t lead anywhere.  They could understand Bernie waking up dead, after all, she was old, really old, but the other two, Louis and the socialite, were a little weird.  One an unsolved murder and the other an unexplained and now maybe an unlikely accident.  It’s something to think about.

I’d hung up the phone, and was contemplating getting up and getting dressed when it rang again in my hand.  Scared the shit out of me.  I hate it when that happens.  It was Teagan.  I told her about the cops looking into the whole thing with Bernie, Louis and Ms. Rosen-whatever.  We talked about how things come in 3s.

I’d hung up and was mentally reviewing my conversation with Teagan.  I have to do that sometimes with her, to rearrange everything so that it kind of makes sense.  During our conversation, Teagan had kept reminding me that I kept insisting that the 3 positives in my recent life were Suzi falling in love with her husband, and then Liam falling in love with Morgan and then Teagan and Jessie getting back together again.  The three are done. 

Teagan disagreed, yeah, I’m not shocked either.  She decided to go on a little fact-finding mission.  She is consistent if nothing else.  Every family has one of those type, Teagan is ours.

Teagan looked it up on the Internet.  She said that lots of people think things happening in threes is just bogus superstition, but then, we’re Irish and we live for that stuff.  Some think it comes back to 3D, and that things happening in threes links everything back to the physical.  Shows you how much I know.  I always thought it was a religious thing.  The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Holy Trinity. Three.  Hello?  We won’t even discuss that shamrocks come with three leaves, no wonder it’s an Irish thing. 

I was muttering something about not knowing if AJ and I were headed toward couple territory because we were the ending of the love trilogy in my family, or if Suzi was the actual beginning of that three and we’d missed the damn boat, when I looked up and saw AJ standing there. 

I swear to you, I am going to put a bell around his neck.

He looked at me, walked over to the couch, smiled and said, “I don’t care if we’re the end of one set of threes or the beginning of another.”

My God, is that sexy or what?

You know how this works.  You know what happens next.   Fade to black.   That’s what happened in all those old Hollywood movies where the skinner satin gown rippled to the floor.  Mine happens to be sheer chiffon. 

Coming soon:

Sweet Tea

ONE

My dingleberry sister, Teagan, shows up at the most inopportune times.
 
If it didn’t happen with such frequency, I might think it an accident, but I’m beginning to think that it’s not just Teagan being a pain in the butt, the cosmos has it in for me.
 
Talk about your basic conspiracy theory on steroids.
 
The whole universe conspiring against me?
 
That could make me sound just a little bit egocentric, but then again, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

I think my recent life experiences speak volumes to this particular issue, the whole conspiracy thing, and although my life is weird at times, I consider myself to be quite normal.
 
Mostly.
 

It’s everything that’s been going on lately that has me a little weirded out.
 
Not just my sister showing up at the butt crack of dawn, she’s done that before.
 
More than once.
 
More than twice.
 
The new twist is that she’s letting herself in with a pilfered emergency key.
 
In the past it was just annoying, but now, it could be mortifying.
 
Sisterly humiliation isn’t good, especially when it’s the morning after the very first night before.

My morning-after-the-first-night-before experiences, as my grandma would say, are as scarce as hen’s teeth.
 
I’m not well practiced in the art.
 
I’m not elegant when it comes to these things.

Maybe it’s the way I was raised.
 
My parents aren’t all that progressive.
 
They were married young, had eight kids, and are still blissfully in love.
 
I know.
 
A hell of a thing to expect your kids to live up to.
 
There’s a very good chance that my parent’s happiness is at the root of everything unhappy in my life.
 
To quote Mom, “There is no good that comes of a swinging bedroom door.
 
That isn’t love, that is sport, and a poor example of sport at that.”
 
Sure she can say that. She found the perfect guy right out of the gate.
 
How often does that happen?
 
Almost never.
 
Chances of it happening repeatedly in the same family is slim to none, and my brother has already taken up one of those chances.