Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries)

Current Affairs

A Tiara Investigations Mystery

by

Lane Stone

Mainly Murder Press, LLC

PO Box 290586

Wethersfield, CT 06129-0586

www.MainlyMurderPress.com

Mainly Murder Press

Copy Editor:
 
Paula Knudson
Executive Editor:
 
Judith K. Ivie

Cover Designer:
 
Karen A. Phillips

All rights reserved

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © 2011 by Lane Stone

Ebook
ISBN 978-0-9846666-0-7

Published in the United States of America by

Mainly Murder Press

PO Box 290586

Wethersfield, CT 06129-0586

Also available trade paperback ISBN 978-0-9836823-2-5
from www.MainlyMurderPress.com

To Pat and Sue Stone

~

Acknowledgments

It’s been said that a good friend will bail you out of jail at three in the morning, but a true friend will be sitting next to you in the cell saying, “Damn, that was fun.” Since this is primarily a book about women’s friendship and support, I have to thank my own BFFs for making my world a happy place:
 
Keeley
Carter, Ellen Pollack, Terrie Simpson, Patrice Wilde, and Theresa Wood.
 

 
Next, a big cheer for all the members of Sisters in Crime, both writers and readers, for all you do for women writers.
 
I particularly want to thank Marcia Talley, author of the Hannah Ives mystery series, for her help with the sailing section; and Susan Schreyer, author of the
Thea
Campbell mystery series, for helping me with the equestrian section.
 
Then there’s Jacqueline Corcoran, my amazing critique partner.
 
Our books are so different, but you never once said, “What
the
...?”

Thanks and love to my husband, Larry
Korb
.
 
Over twenty years ago I told him, “We may not be married forever, but I’ll bet I can make it seem like it.”
 
How am I doing?

And to you, reader.
 
I hope this book makes you laugh and say, “Damn, that was fun.”

 
Stay in touch.

Lane

One

S
tatement by Leigh Reed.
The FBI Special Agent told me to start writing and to begin from the beginning.
 
The subject of this statement is the late Mr. Taylor. Not late as in tardy, late as in taking a dirt nap, which he has been doing since last Friday night.

At the time it seemed the bullet that had killed our client’s husband might have done the same to Tiara Investigations. Now I’ll tell you how three former beauty queens, living in a sunny Atlanta suburb, created a successful detective agency and saved the world. You can thank us later. I’m Leigh Reed.

I’d have to say that as far as we’re concerned, the real beginning of the David Taylor case was when a certain police detective’s wife hired us. She stayed with him, and he has stayed on us like a bad rash, like white
o
n rice, like trouble to a fool. You get the idea.

Tara, Victoria and I met at our usual table
at the Cracker Barrel in
Suwanee
after the breakfast rush Monday, two weeks ago, the first week of October, and waited for our client. I arrived first, and Victoria came in about five minutes later followed by Tara. They did exactly what I do every time I come in. They took a long sniff, inhaling the aroma of the best cooking in the world.

Gina Kent arrived ten minutes late. I held out my hand to her. “I’m Leigh. We spoke on the phone.”

She looked at us one by one, checking us out. “Why did you pick this place? I thought I would never find it.”

As a greeting this was a tad short of the mark, and I was pleased to see the waitress walk up with her order pad. “I’ll have the Country Morning Breakfast, eggs sunny side up, no meat, and a breakfast dessert of fried apples.” Tara and Victoria ordered the Smokehouse Breakfast, and our client chose the aptly named Breakfast Sampler Special. That’s the one with six meat choices.

“You said you had trouble getting here? I’m so sorry.” If anyone other than Tara had answered her, it would have sounded sarcastic. I kept my mouth shut because I know my own limitations.

“We can just about see Interstate 85 from where we’re sitting.” Victoria sounded almost not-Southern with that last comment. She’s sweet and direct at the same time. And brainy as hell but usually patient with those of us who aren’t.

“I didn’t come on I-85. You didn’t say to.”

“I said, ‘It’s right off I-85 at exit 111, in
Suwanee
’.” So far this was not a typical first interview.

“I didn’t know that’s what you meant.” Surprisingly enough, she wasn’t embarrassed about it. “I tend to get lost a lot. My husband calls it unintentional kidnapping when I have anyone else in the car.”

Quoting something funny he said? Not a good sign. The clients we like best want to go to divorce court with hard evidence. Believe it or not, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” is alive and well.

“Would you tell us why you suspect your husband?” It might have sounded cryptic, but we both knew exactly what I was talking about. Then I sat back and observed her. Mrs. Kent had blonde, chin-length hair and a square jaw. She wore khaki shorts, a black polo shirt and leather sandals.
 
I guessed she was in her mid-thirties. We had ten years, give or take, on her. She addressed me, and Tara and Victoria leaned in to listen to what she had to say. It was all pretty standard: unaccounted-for periods of time and money, phone calls he wouldn’t take in front of her, wearing his music player earphones during lovemaking. Okay, I made that last one up.

We said we would take the case and told her to call us when she suspected something was up, and we would follow him. She left, and we stayed to pay the bill.

 
“Guess what today is?” Then Victoria answered her own question. “It’s the one year anniversary of our first case.”
 
I looked, I mean really looked, at her when she said this. She’s five feet six inches with dark brown hair and looks like the T.V. heroine who throws off her glasses and shakes out her hair to make the leading man forget his own name. I saw something different. She was happy, but she definitely had something on her mind.

~

Gina Kent called the Wednesday after our initial meeting to say her husband planned to take a long lunch, verbally italicizing the words. We scrambled into action. Victoria picked up Tara, then me, and we got to the police station just before noon. We hadn’t been sitting there five minutes when he came out and got in a shiny red Ford Escort rather than one of the three Crown
Victorias
lined up in front.

Victoria followed him west on Highway 20, keeping back just far enough for comfort.
 
“Look what he’s driving.
A real player, right?”

Tara kept her eyes on the Ford while she spoke.
“Obviously not compensating for anything.”

I had been typing notes on my laptop and looked up. “Something doesn’t feel right. There’s no tentativeness, no looking around, no overly cautious driving.”

Victoria passed another car,
then
returned to the right lane where she could innocently turn off at a moment’s notice. “I know what you mean. People sneaking around are usually guarded.
 
Why does a plumber or an exterminator think he is so fascinating that someone might recognize him and call the six o’clock news team? Really, the only person who cares is at home.”

 
I put my computer away before I got carsick. “I think Detective Jerome Kent is so arrogant he cannot imagine anyone would have the gall to follow him. Or maybe he just feels he belongs everywhere. Did you notice that when he walked to his car, he never so much as looked around?”

We followed him into the city of
Hartfield
Hills, where I live. While we’re only seventeen thousand souls, the town is anything but sleepy. There’s a steady flow of traffic all day long. On
Suwanee
Dam Road I pointed out a brand new assisted living facility across from the golf course. “I may never have to leave this town again.” Then we passed my subdivision. A couple of miles later
Suwanee
Dam Road ends at Buford Dam Road. He turned left. We turned left. We drove over the dam, on our left a grassy slope dropping to the Chattahoochee River and to our right rocks leading down to Lake Lanier.

The Ford Escort pulled off at West Bank Park, just past the dam. We followed and photographed. Victoria even slowed down for Tara to take one of the sign at the entrance. In the 1950s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Buford Dam to hold the Chattahoochee and
Chestatee
Rivers, creating the lake.

There were all kinds of parking spaces available, but he pulled in next to a late model Corvette.
 
A twenty-something girl jumped out.
Literally.

“If you can afford a Corvette, you can afford a decent bra,” Tara said.

Victoria left the engine running to cover the sound of the three cameras. “Are we still in Gwinnett County? I thought I saw the Forsyth County line.”

I summoned memories from my Park Ranger days. “A small portion of Lake Lanier is included in the Gwinnett County Police North Precinct, but it’s not this part.”

Tara was getting her camera ready to go again. “I imagine he doesn’t want to be seen by other officers, but he can’t be too far out of his jurisdiction.”

The fool around-
ee
ran up to Detective Kent and laid a big, juicy one on him. She was definitely braless, but no one was hurt. The disposable cameras went click. She took a picnic basket out of the car and handed it to him to carry.
Natch
, she had to thank him for that, so she kissed him again. With arms around waists they headed to a walking trail.

“Real nature lovers, I see.” Victoria said this tongue in cheek, but nearly seven hundred
miles of the lake’s shoreline is wooded to this day.

We decided we could do with a walk ourselves and changed shoes. Good thing the dogs weren’t with us that day, because they’re not allowed in this particular park. We don’t usually bring them on daytime stakeouts anyway, because it can get too warm in the car.

I double-tied my shoelaces and started toward the path. “Can you smell that cologne? Why did his wife hire us? She could have just driven around town until she smelled him.”

“Yeah, but that odor would still be around an hour after he’d left,” was Tara’s comeback.

The cheating, lying, sneaking lovers covered a concrete table with a vinyl cloth and then they did something really bad. They took out enough food to feed an army. They ate chicken that was fried, not grilled. Add to that deviled eggs, baked beans and potato salad.
Then the cornbread.
Good Lord. It was almost more than we could take, but we kept our professionalism.

“How many
carbs
do you think are in cornbread?” Victoria was staring at the table.

“I don’t know, but I bet it has bad fats.” We had to get out of there. None of us photographed them eating. There was something about it that was so intimate we would not have wanted to show those to the wife.

As we hiked back to the parking lot and were out of earshot, I brought up an item of Tiara business. “I’m not wild about our signal to get out of the house. I know
it’s
Three Dog Night because of our three dogs, but I’ve never been a fan of seventies music. And it’s so obviously code for something. Who goes around saying ‘three dog
night
’? I’m telling you, it’s a struggle to work it into a conversation.”

Tara stopped walking. “How about, ‘
On
my signal prepare to unleash hell’?”

“Oh, that’s subtle.”

“I have a suggestion. How about, ‘
Do
you know Eve Wood?’” We waited for Vic to tell us more. Instead, she looked back down the trail, lost in thought.

“Hon?”
Tara touched her arm. Victoria smiled and started walking again. She slid behind the wheel of her Lexus SUV.

“My husband has become a man of small appetites.”

I pictured Shorty’s wiry body and stiff limbs and understood that by appetite Vic meant passions or desires. Tara and I looked at each other and got in the car. We didn’t speak. She hadn’t asked us to fix it for her, and she didn’t need us to tell her if it was or was not a problem.

“Or maybe Frank’s always been that way, and I’m just now noticing,” Victoria added.

“Frank? Not Shorty?” I asked.

“He doesn’t deserve a nickname.”

Both Victoria Blair’s children are grown. After running the regional office of a dot com for years, she was sick of the hours, the politics and having to prove herself every time upper management in Oregon rotated mid-level managers through the Atlanta region. She wanted out. Victoria was married to Frank “Shorty” Gale, Medical Director for Cardiac Services at Gwinnett County General Hospital, so relocation was not an option for her. She and Shorty introduced Tara to Paul, an OB-GYN who’s crazy about her and with whom she was having hot sex, if you happen to run into her ex. It should be noted here that Paul’s not like us. He’s from the
North
. Enough said? But the fact that Tara Brown has a body made for sin takes care of most communications problems.

As for me, I left the Park Service and started moving every few years for my husband, The General’s, career. He is, well, let’s
say
he’s away on business.
 
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that the danger in being gently reared is a life that looks good on paper only. In 1980 I was Miss Georgia. I might as well tell you that, because you would learn it from my mother sooner or later. That’s all my mother seems to know about me. I have always felt that entering the county pageant, which started the ball rolling, was the biggest mistake of my life, because I have spent the rest of said life trying to avoid being a cliché.

I met Victoria and Tara at the pageant, and when I moved back to Georgia, we reconnected. I’ve never been happier.
 
My husband says I still have a face that can start a fight, which makes me smile, but it’s not enough. It never has been and it never will be. And I hate to say it, but I take material blessings for granted. Tiara Investigations has given me what I was looking for—a good reason to get up in the morning.

~

At the time we were indeed using yellow disposable cameras, and you might be wondering why. On our first stakeout Tara got in the car with a K-Mart shopping bag. Yes, K-Mart.
 
She had been charged with getting camera equipment, and I was anxious to lay my hands on some real high tech, professional private eye gear. When we parked at the end of our client’s street, Tara reached into the bag and brought out three yellow disposable cameras and handed us each one.
 

“What are these?” I turned mine over and over in my hand.

“You know how I’m always losing things? I don’t have to worry with these. And you know how sometimes pictures don’t turn out the way you thought they would? Well, this way we can all take photographs, you know, increasing our odds.”