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Authors: Diane Kelly

Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Humorous, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #Women Sleuths

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BOOK: Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria
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“And you welcomed him back with open arms?”

“Heck, no! I made him beg and plead and make a fool of himself for me first.”

Mom might be forgiving, but she wasn’t a pushover. “Good for you.” The fact that Dad
groveled said a lot, too. He was a proud man, not prone to displays of humility. If
he’d been willing to beg to get her back, he must have known, without a doubt, that
Mom was the girl for him.

I hoped that Brett would be as understanding as my mother had been when I asked for
a chance to try things out with Nick. I also hoped Brett would give me a second chance
if things with Nick didn’t pan out. I hoped, too, that I wasn’t being overly hopeful.

“You know,” Mom said, “I should look up that Randall on Facebook.”

Dad might have gotten over Candy, but that wistful note in my mother’s voice told
me Randall might be the one she thought about on those cold and lonely winter nights
when Dad and my brothers went off to the deer lease. Maybe she dreamed about Randall
putting her in checkmate or capturing her queen.

“Speaking of high school,” she said. “We’ve got our forty-year reunion coming up.
I was thinking I’d come to Dallas on Saturday to look for a new dress to wear.”

“So you can look good for Randall?” I teased.

“So I can look good
for your father
,” she said, after a brief pause adding, “okay, maybe for Randall, too.”

A knock sounded at the door and, despite my mother’s pep talk, a sick feeling came
over me.

“Gotta go, Mom. See you Saturday.” I ended the call, shoved the phone into my pocket,
and opened the door to find Brett on the porch. With his sandy hair, boyish good looks,
and lean but muscular build, he was easy on the eyes.

Brett wore a suit tonight. His job as a landscape architect required him to be two
people—a smart businessman who could land high-dollar contracts for major landscaping
projects and an artist of sorts who used foliage as his medium. He was good at both
sides of the business, earning him a reputation as the must-have landscape designer
in Dallas. His reputation was beginning to spread nationwide as well. The country
club gig he’d recently completed in Atlanta had put him on the short list of potential
landscapers for an extensive job at a resort in Palm Springs that was undergoing renovation.

As we sat at my kitchen table eating our manicotti—well, Brett was eating his while
I was merely poking mine with a fork and moving it around on my plate—I took a good,
hard look at him, knowing it might be one of my last. Brett was a caring and thoughtful
guy, intelligent and hardworking, too. His skills in the sack weren’t bad, either.

But whether he was
The One
remained to be seen.

Still, even though I’d fortified myself with a glass of sangria, I felt my conviction
slipping as I looked at Brett. I drank another glass, only half-listening to Brett
prattle on about a big new gig he’d landed with the city of Grand Prairie’s Parks
and Recreation Department, the upcoming fall planting season, expected rainfall amounts
predicted by
The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
My thoughts now loosened somewhat by the alcohol, I realized if I wasn’t convinced
by now that Brett was the man I was meant to spend my life with, I owed it to myself
to take a chance with Nick. Yep, as hard as it would be, telling Brett we needed to
take a break was the right thing to do.

When we finished the manicotti, I rinsed the dishes and stuck them in the dishwasher.
Despite the two glasses of sangria I’d polished off, my nerves were still on edge.
I led Brett to the living room, but rather than sitting next to him on the couch for
our usual presex make-out session, I took a seat on one of the chairs. He cocked his
head and gave me a questioning look.

Damn!
Did he have to look so sweet and concerned and unsuspecting? I felt as if I were
about to kick a puppy.

I took a deep breath, looked at Brett, looked away, looked back at him. No sense putting
things off any longer. This wasn’t going to get any easier. It was now or never, Tara.
“Brett, I—”

Bam!

My front door flew open and banged against the wall of the foyer as my best friend,
Alicia Shenkman, stormed in. As always, Alicia was impeccably dressed in designer
jeans, wedges, and a black tunic-style top with a red sash around her waist. Her platinum
hair hung in asymmetrical, angular lines on either side of her face. Ultrachic.

As much as I loved Alicia, her timing tonight totally sucked. I regretted giving her
a key to my place, at least until I saw her face contort in grief. Something was wrong.
Something big. She rarely cried. She didn’t like to risk runny mascara.

I stood from my chair. “What’s wrong, Alicia?”

“Men suck!” she shrieked.

I looked from her to Brett. He looked from me to Alicia. Alicia looked from me to
Brett.

“Sorry,” Alicia told Brett, choking out her words. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

“Some kids were tossing a football in the street earlier,” he said. “I parked down
the block.”

Tears began to stream down Alicia’s cheeks, leaving the dreaded dark, mascara-tinted
rivulets on her skin.

Tears. The cue for any man in the vicinity to hightail it to safer territory.

Brett slowly rose from the couch. “Um … I think I’ll go, give you two some time alone.”

“Thanks, Brett.” Alicia flopped onto the couch as soon as he vacated it.

I walked him to the door and he gave me a quick kiss on the forehead.

“We’ll talk soon,” he said.

I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “Sure.” He’d told me earlier that he’d be tied up
the rest of the week. I wouldn’t be able to see him in person again until Friday evening,
but I wasn’t about to put things on hold with him by phone. That would be disrespectful
and wimpy. Unfortunately, this delay meant I’d have to put off telling Nick that I
was available.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn!

 

chapter six

A Friend in Need

As soon as I’d shut the door on Brett, Alicia broke out into an all-out wail. “Three
years!” she sobbed. “Three years I’ve been dating Daniel! And for what? He’s never
going to marry me!”

She began blubbering so profusely I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying,
though I made out that Daniel was somehow both “a miserable son of a bitch” and the
man of her dreams who she hoped would “rot in hell” yet also “realize what a mistake
he’d made and come crawling back.”

How long a crawl would it be from hell?

I went to the kitchen, poured Alicia a big glass of peach sangria, and grabbed some
napkins. I brought the drink and napkins to her, taking a seat beside her on the couch.

She slugged back the drink in ten seconds flat. Impressive. I hadn’t seen her do that
since back in our college days when we’d gone barhopping on Sixth Street in Austin.

“My mother was right!” she cried, setting the glass on the coffee table. “Why would
a man buy a cow when she’s giving away the milk for free?” She bent over, sobbing
into the wad of napkins clutched in her hands.

“Come on.” I put a hand on her back. “You know that’s not true. Marriage isn’t just
about sex.” Heck, from what I could glean from my married coworkers, marriage was
hardly about sex at all. Seemed like once people said “I do” they didn’t actually
do it
anymore. “Daniel’s not like that. He loves you.”

“Oh, yeah?” she spat, glancing over at me. “Then why did he freak out when I told
him I was tired of shacking up and wanted to get married?”

“You told him that?” I knew Alicia wanted to marry Daniel someday, but I’d never felt
any sense of urgency on her part. She loved the yuppie lifestyle, having a professional
career, living in a downtown loft, spending her big paychecks on nice clothes at Neiman
Marcus and fancy meals at trendy restaurants.

“It just sort of slipped out,” she said. “Our neighbor’s sister was visiting with
her new baby and we saw them on the elevator and something came over me.” She dabbed
at her eyes. “I realized I’m ready for the next phase, Tara.” She dabbed again. “It’s
clear Daniel isn’t.”

“He’ll come around,” I said. “Just give him some time.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve been together for years. How much more time does
he need?” She sighed and slumped back on the sofa, her tears dwindling to a mere trickle.
“I’m thinking about putting myself back on the market.”

I wasn’t sure what to tell her. What did I know about love and relationships? Not
much. Fortunately, she was only looking for a sympathetic ear, not advice.

“I’ve got some news, too.” I gave her the full scoop. That I’d decided to give Nick
a try. That I’d planned to break things off, at least temporarily, with Brett. That
I’d planned to tell Brett tonight.

Her eyes grew wide and she sat up. “Oh, shit. Did I screw that up?”

Royally.
“It’s fine. I can tell him later.” And meanwhile I would pray that Nick hadn’t reconciled
with Natalie or started something with one of the seventy-one other women who’d expressed
an interest in dating him. Of course there was always Sergio, too. Those biceps had
indeed been impressive. Maybe if things didn’t work out with Nick or Brett, I could
convince Sergio to switch teams.

My doorbell rang. “I wonder who that is?” I hadn’t expected this many people to come
to my door until later in the month for Halloween trick-or-treating.

Alicia put a hand on my arm. “If that’s Daniel, tell him I don’t want to talk to him.
That I need some time to think.” Despite her words, her eyes gleamed with hope. She
wanted Daniel to track her down here, to prove how much he cared.

I went to the door and put my eye to the peephole.

“Is it Daniel?” Alicia whispered. She’d stood from the sofa and was looking at me
expectantly.

I shook my head.

“Figures!” She flopped back onto the couch and began to wail again, muttering about
the “stupid jerk” whom she was “so in love with” who she’d hoped would “drop dead”
and/or “get his shit together and grow up.”

I opened the door. DEA Agent Christina Marquez stood on my porch, her long black hair
hanging loose over a zipped purple hoodie. She wore yoga pants and a pair of cheap
black flip-flops. Christina was tall, busty, and gutsy. She and I had teamed up recently
to take down a drug-dealing, tax-cheating ice-cream man, and we’d remained friends
ever since. She’d even helped me out on a later case, acting as bait for a bunch of
thugs sent by my target, a violent loan shark.

She pushed past me into my place. “Got any of that peach sangria handy?”

I closed the door. “Just made a fresh pitcher.”

She turned in my foyer and held out her left hand. Her ring finger bore a huge diamond
roughly the size of a shotgun shell. Surrounding the diamond was a circle of brilliant
blue sapphires.

“Oh, my God!” I cried. “Ajay popped the question?”

Alicia shrieked, alerting Christina to her presence. I’d introduced the two of them
weeks before and we’d all gone out together as couples several times since.

Alicia rushed over and looked at the ring. “Ajay proposed to you?”

Christina nodded.

My mouth contorted, half of it trying to smile in congratulations at Christina, the
other trying to frown in empathy for Alicia.

“But you’ve only been dating a few months,” Alicia said, fresh tears forming in her
eyes as she held Christina’s hand and took in the beautiful ring.

“I know,” Christina said. “That’s the problem. It’s too soon, isn’t it? I told Ajay
that, but he told me to wear the ring for a while, to see how it feels.” When Alicia
released her hand, Christina held her hand up in front of her face and eyed the gorgeous
ring. “I’m just not sure.”

Alicia threw her ring-less hands in the air. “Oh, boo-fucking-hoo! Your boyfriend
cares too much about you and wants to marry you! What a horrible, awful problem!”
Alicia turned, snatched her empty glass from the coffee table, and stormed into the
kitchen for more sangria.

Christina raised a brow at me.

“She and Daniel are having problems,” I said, keeping my voice low. “She’s ready to
tie the knot and he’s not.”

Christina grimaced, realizing that her timing, too, was off. “Sorry.”

“This is life. We’ll deal with it.” With a little help from Nick’s mother’s sangria
recipe and a mason jar of spiced Georgia peaches.

The three of us sat at my kitchen table for the next hour, drinking peach sangria
and taking turns lamenting our man problems.

“Men,” I said, shaking my head. “You can’t live with ’em, and you can’t shoot ’em.”

“You’ve shot men plenty of times,” Alicia said.

“I’ve shot
at
them many times,” I corrected, “but I only actually put bullets in three of them.”
I took the left nut off the first and got the other two in the leg. But don’t worry.
They totally deserved it.

When we finished off the first pitcher of sangria, I made another. Alicia drank most
of the second pitcher herself. Before Christina prepared to leave she helped me drag
Alicia and her overnight bag upstairs to my guest room.

“By the way,” Christina said as she turned at my front door to go. “Ajay and I are
planning a Halloween party at the rec room at his condos. Tell Alicia she’s invited.
And you can bring Nick.… or Brett, or … whoever.”

“Whoever” was right. With the luck Alicia and I were having, we might have to be each
other’s dates for the party.

 

chapter seven

Pseudocelebrities

Wednesday morning, I arrived at work only to have Viola, Lu’s gray-haired secretary,
immediately summon me to the Lobo’s office. To my surprise, I found Trish LeGrande
already seated inside. Trish was a butterscotch blonde with excessive tenacity and
enormous tits. She worked as a reporter for a local TV station and had been a thorn
in my side for several weeks now, not only because she’d put me on the spot and made
me look like an idiot on camera but also because she’d openly flirted with Brett and
inched her way into his life via volunteering for the same Habitat for Humanity project
on which he’d been installing the landscaping.

BOOK: Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria
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