by Lane Stone
We had to find Victoria. “Paula?”
“That’s me,” Tara whispered.
“Shelley?” No, wait, I was calling myself. “Leslie?”
“I’m here.” Vic had followed us out.
When we reached the chair, I finally breathed. “We know him.”
“Who?” Vic asked.
I gave the double doors to the viewing room a half-nod. “Him.” They were both still confused, forcing me to say it outright, “The deceased.”
“I’ve never met Paul’s stepfather.” Tara started walking away as she said this. She had to because Paul was waiting for her. He reached out his arm and they floated in, like the attractive couple they are. Tara had to go farther into the room before she saw what I had seen. (She still hasn’t had laser eye surgery as I have recommended to her on numerous occasions.) I didn’t know it was possible for four-inch Jimmy Choo’s to travel that fast. She was flying back to us. “Shelley! Leslie!”
“We know him.” Tara leaned on the chair for safety.
Victoria looked at her and then at me, then she rejoined Shorty and went in. To her credit, she didn’t run back out. She just jerked up about three inches taller. Her feet wouldn’t move, so her husband kind of pushed and pulled and she was sort of motored forward to the casket. As soon as she could, though, she got the hell out of there and back to us. By that time I had let myself fall into the mauve, velvet upholstered chair and Tara was sitting on one of the arms. We waited to see what Vic would come out with. She didn’t disappoint. “The salsa stain came out nicely.”
“Why didn’t we know that he was our dead client?” I was rubbing my forehead. I wanted to fool with my hair but it was in a chignon.
“I didn’t know his stepfather’s name was Pop Tart!” Tara was tapping her toe so fast the chair vibrated.
I didn’t offer her the guy’s real name because I couldn’t remember it to save my life. Natch, Victoria did. “You mean, Thomas Chestnut.”
“Are you okay?” Paul had joined us and he took Tara in his arms. Touching, sure, but when he pulled her up, my chair almost toppled over. We had a veritable crowd by that time and both my husband and Detective Kent reached to stabilize it.
My husband spoke first, “Jerry, this is my wife, Leigh Reed.”
“We’ve met.”
“Nice to see you again.” Since it was never pleasant to see Detective Kent and the feeling was mutual, I hoped he got that this was code for, I’m lying and I need you to lie, too. I held out my hand and he shook it.
The truth that my husband knew nothing about Tiara Investigations dawned on Detective Kent and manifested on his face in a raised eyebrow and a shit-eating grin.
“Oh?” Jack asked.
Victoria, Tara, and I waited to see if he would out us. “Well, she was Miss Georgia.” That was almost thirty years ago so no one bought it, but I appreciated the effort. “And, uh, your security alarm went off and I answered the call. False alarm.” He wanted to change the subject but could have thought of a better way to do it than what he said next. “Tara, how are you?”
“You two know each other?” Paul asked. “I’m Dr. Paul Armistead.”
“She was at Leigh’s house when the alarm went off.” Not intending to make the same mistake again he turned to Victoria, “I’m Detective Jerome Kent.” We were drowning in titles and testosterone, but still I wanted to remind them that my husband was a general in the United States Army. I’m pathetic, huh?
“I’m Victoria Blair.” She was a fast enough thinker not to offer her husband’s last name, which is Gale. Just because we had given him a bit of info about our private lives, we didn’t need to go crazy with it. The less he knows, the less he can use against us. He’s a police detective so he can find out anything he wants, but why hand it to him on a silver platter? “Did you know the deceased?”
“I’m here because his death has been ruled murder. He was poisoned with Atropine.”
CHAPTER 6
Continuation of statement by Leigh Reed. I couldn’t stop myself from looking at Tara. Her nerves were a wreck but she gave him a stone cold look without so much as a trace of emotion. If Kent was trying to find out how good we’d gotten, she answered him. Or maybe her look just said, “Bite me”.
Paul broke the silence. “You know what makes this even sadder? He was engaged to be married.”
“Oh-h-h,” Victoria, Tara and I said. Any woman in hearing distance would have joined in.
We heard the rustle a new group of people coming in make. We all looked toward the foyer. I had to look around, you know how those Queen Anne chairs are, and saw a white couple in their mid-thirties, I’d say, and a compact African American woman with short, salt and pepper, mostly salt, hair. “There’s his daughter, Paige Ford, and her husband, Al. That must be his fiancée with them. I’d better go over and introduce myself.” Paul went over to greet them and they turned around. As I live and breathe, it was Beatrice Englund. Beatrice’s daughter was the client whose husband was murdered last year. Did I mention we solved the case?
I stood up and said, “How ‘bout them dawgs?” My husband, Shorty, and Detective Kent immediately started using their twenty-twenty hindsight to outsmart the University of Georgia Bulldogs coaching staff. Distracting them was so easy, I almost felt ashamed of myself.
I nudged Victoria and Tara towards a plastic ficus plant. “Do we let on that we know her?”
“Depends on whether she knows us,” Vic answered.
Tara was squinting toward the group still in the foyer. “The daughter even looks like Pop Tart. So Paul has been the only relative here, until now? He made all the arrangements. And you know why? Because I was working all day. I feel terrible! I should have helped him.”
I rubbed her shoulder. “Sweetie, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I would have been working even if Jack wasn’t in town.”
“Let’s talk about it later.” I scanned the room for an idea. “Is there some way we can get to Beatrice?”
I don’t know if she heard her name or not, but she turned and met my eye. Then she looked at the ladies room door and started moving that way. We followed.
“Dr. Armistead? Could I have a word?” The Funeral Director was headed towards Paul, his even more diminutive assistant right on his heels.
The four of us, that being Tiara Investigations and Beatrice Englund, stopped. Paul met them halfway, which was next to us at the ficus tree. My husband, Detective Kent, and Shorty drifted over too. Damn, there we were, one big happy family again.
The Funeral Director had a half-inch-long metal strip in his soft, kid-sized hand. It looked like a lapel pen, but it wasn’t. First, it had sharp prongs on the reverse. Second, no lapel pen would make my husband’s eyebrows ram down like that. “Where did you get this?” Jack asked.
“It was in Mr. Chestnut’s body.”
Detective Kent pulled a small plastic bag out of his jacket pocket and held it out for the item.
Janice Marshall moved around her boss and looked at me. “Are you Tara?” I picked up a distinct Boston accent.
The Funeral Director seemed taken aback that she could or would speak. “This is her first day on the job.”
With a slight turn of his shoulder, my husband dismissed them and they had no choice but to move away. It’s amazing what you can do with body language. He leaned in toward the rest of us.
I wasn’t going to let them be sent away like that. “She’s Tara.” I gave Janice Marshall a smile and eye contact, as I pointed out my friend. My husband, on the other hand, got a look from me that said, See, it didn’t break my jaw to be nice. He’ll never change. Ms. Marshall and Tara exchanged smiles. Then she walked away––leaving me wondering why she was looking for Tara in the first place.
“Was your stepfather with DEA or the FBI?” Jack asked Paul.
“No. He was a college professor. He taught at Georgia Tech.” My father had taught at Tech.
Jack hesitated a moment. “Di
d he ever work in Mexico?”
“No. Why?”
“Because that’s wetware.” All the eyes that had been on Jack, now looked at me. “American Narco-terrorism agents working in Mexico have these inserted in their bodies in case they’re kidnapped.”
No one knew what else to say about it. Or whether it meant anything to us or not.
Detective Kent turned the plastic bag from one side to the other, examining the piece. “You cleaned this up real good, didn’t you?” This was asked of no one in particular.
My husband reached for me, tracing the inside of my arm and interlacing his fingers with mine. Then he squeezed. Hard. Shit. Then he leaned over me. “Read it and eat it.” He released the pressure and looked in my eyes to see if I understood. I had. He has one of these tracking devices implanted in his body, but that bit of info was not for public consumption.
Tara put her arm around Paul’s waist under his suit jacket. She was giving him a squeeze, but she looked at me. She probably lies to him daily because we handle a lot of cases and that means a lot of getting-out-of-the-house ploys. While they do not cohabitate, strictly speaking, he rarely spends the night at the house he pays the mortgage on. Obviously, she didn’t feel comfortable fibbing just then. We were pretending, in front of God and everybody, that this was the first time we’d laid eyes on Thomas Chestnut. There’s something about lying to someone you love in a funeral home that’s just not the done thing.
On cue, I asked, “Did he have any other children?”
Paul stared at his shoes. “I don’t consider myself his son.”
I wanted to encourage him to say more, but back on the ranch, Beatrice was waiting on the other side of the room for us. Victoria read my mind and excused herself. Then Detective Kent peeled off. I guess to go eavesdrop on all the talking going on in this extremely congested space. I saw him stop by Thomas Chestnut’s daughter, the young woman who’d entered with Bea. There were so many people around that all of a sudden I felt like my clothes were too tight. I would have given anything to go outside but there was no way I could leave. I went for the next best option and moved up right next to my husband, which is what I do when I feel uncomfortable in my surroundings and he’s around. He’s home from the Gulf every couple of months and I fall right back into this every time. That’s a little odd, if you think about it. At the time I left him, he seemed to suck the oxygen out of any room he was in and I couldn’t breathe. He looked down at me and then scanned around us. Sure enough, the lobby was jam packed with people. No one was in with the guest of honor, Him.
“Can we go back in there to talk?” My husband was already moving in the direction of the Room of Repose, an arm around my shoulders.
Jack and I went in and stopped. Tara and Paul went in and stopped. Ditto Shorty. No one was reposing.
“I’ll go ask the funeral director where he moved the casket.”
“And why? For heaven’s sake,” Tara called out to Paul’s back.
My husband walked out with him, passing Beatrice, Victoria and Detective Kent on their way in. Beatrice leaned back and her eyes closed in slow motion. I was over there in a flash and caught her before she hit the floor. Kent’s double take told me he was impressed that I could hold this grown woman so easily. Victoria and Tara saw it differently and nudged me behind the door. “Your husband’s coming back.”
I passed her off to Kent, whose knees buckled in the second it took Tara to help him right himself and stay vertical.
My husband came in and thought the room was even emptier than before until he turned and saw all of us behind the door. “What happened to her?”
Detective Kent was huffing and puffing his way to a sofa, where he gently deposited Beatrice. “This is Mr. Chestnut’s fiancé and she fainted. Where is the body?”
Paul had come back in at some point. “He doesn’t know, but he’ll find out.”
“Well, he better find out!” Chestnut’s son-in-law stood in the doorway. First, I noticed his stupid face and then my eyes moved to his angry fists clenching open and closed. “And what have you done to her?”
Tara walked over and patted his arm and told him what we knew, which was pretty much nothing.
Beatrice moaned and started waking up. “I don’t understand any of this.” That sentence told me she knew a lot. She reached out her hand to me and I took it and sat down on the sofa next to her.
“Paul has the funeral director finding out where they moved the casket.” She had whispered and I answered her the same way. I felt her brow and then her cheeks with the back of my hand. She didn’t feel hot or clammy.
“I’m okay,” she said.
I was still holding her hand. “Well enough to go to dinner with us?”
“Maybe some other time. I want to get back to Kelly and the baby.” She looked around me to the couple she had come in with. Kelly was David’s widow and was pregnant when he was murdered.
I had tensed because supposedly we had just met and she caught it. “Kelly’s my daughter.”
Victoria said, “Shorty and I will take you home.”
“Just help me to my car. I’ll be fine once I get some fresh air.”
“We’re free for dinner. I’m Paige Chestnut Ford, Paul’s stepsister. Actually, I’m his stepfather’s daughter, but not his stepsister. My father was married to his mother. But my mother wasn’t his mother.” If she didn’t stop talking, she was going to end up her own grandpa. “This is my husband, Al.”
I’m-with-stupid woman had responded to the invitation I didn’t remember extending, and I looked up at her. There are two schools of thought on whether eyeliner should completely encircle the eye or be applied only to outside halves of upper and lower. She had chosen the former and it was a mistake. She had also violated the sacred only-highlight-two-features rule. In addition to all the eye make-up, her lips were lined and her cheeks had circles of rose blush. Despite that long preamble about how she was and wasn’t related to Paul, she didn’t look unintelligent, or maybe I was just comparing her to her husband. She gave the room a smile, pausing for a beat when she got to Detective Kent.
Tara jumped into the breach. “Lovely. We can get to know you better.”
I pointed to where the casket should have been. “We can’t leave.” I looked at Detective Kent for support.
He walked past me out of the Room of Repose.
Tara joined me at the sofa. “I’ll bet they transferred the coffin to the room where the funeral will be tomorrow.”
I take a backseat to no one when it comes to funeral protocol. “They don’t do that in the middle of a viewing.”
“Paul wants to go,” Tara said. “And Bea wants to be on her way, too.”
For the next few moments we were all involved in helping Beatrice get up and out of there. I took her arm and she leaned on me. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Paul was coming out of one of the glass enclosed offices. I patted Bea’s arm and told her I’d be right back, and went to him.
“Paul, would you rather us forget about dinner and stay here until everything is more, uh, under control?”
His jaw clenched. “I’ve already stayed longer and done more, than he ever did for me. Or for my mother. I hated his guts, but now I feel sorry for him.”
Whewee. You could have knocked me over with one of those funeral home fans they used to give away. I had never seen an ounce of spite in Paul, and here he was speaking ill of the dead. What do you say after a speech like that? “Okay, we’ll see you at the restaurant.” It didn’t exactly hit the right note, I know, but it was all I had.
I returned to Beatrice. After looking around to be sure no one was in hearing range, I asked, “What did you want to talk about in the ladies room?”
“I was going to ask if you three were here on business. I didn’t want to say anything I shouldn’t.”
“Yes and no.” We were nearing the tall, carved, wooden doors to the parking lot. Bea was goin
g to have to let go of my arm for me to open them.
Victoria joined us. “Shorty’s pulling our car around.”
Hey, good lookin’, Whatcha got cookin? It was Detective Kent’s cell phone and he answered it. Did I mention we were still at the funeral home? He and Paige Ford had come up behind us. “Sure.” He pressed a few buttons on his phone, smiling all the time. “It’s 678….” As he read off the digits, they sounded more and more familiar. He was giving someone Tara’s cell phone number.
I made eye contact with Vic and she took Bea’s other arm. “I’ll walk you to your car and bring you up to date.”
Jack added two people to the restaurant reservation. For the Tiara Investigation detectives it was a foregone conclusion that the daughter and son-in-law would ride with Tara and Paul. Tara can make a deer talk.
It took a minute to find said son-in-law, Al, to tell him. The Assistant Funeral Director had waylaid him and he broke away to say he would prefer to drive his car so they could go straight home after dinner.
Poor thing never saw Tara’s next move coming. “I know what you mean. I always prefer to have my car with me. Paige, hon, you ride with us.”
“Okay, Al?” Paige’s “little too happy” attitude, I had seen before. It’s how wives act when their husband’s hobby is embarrassing them in public. I wanted to know why she wasn’t concerned that her father’s body was missing. Why was she acting like a guest at his funeral? Why had she invited herself and her husband to come to dinner with us?
Al didn’t answer his wife because he had already walked off. I took a deep breath. Georgia’s chilly fall night air was a first-rate tonic.
Hey, good lookin’, Whatcha got cookin? This time it was Tara’s phone ringing. Yes, it’s the same ringtone as Detective Kent’s. She looked at the screen and rolled her eyes. Paul opened his car door and waited for Tara to slide in. “Sweetie, I really need to take this call. Can I have just a sec?” She turned and gave me a come-with-me eye signal and we nonchalantly sauntered up the walkway. “You listen to me!” Just like that Tara let her real feelings with the person on the phone pour out. She was sure pissed at somebody. “You have about as much chance of me going out with you as I have of hearing you pronounce an R. Now I’m hanging up to get in the cah. Stop laughing. I’m not kidding one bit.” She hung up and flung her phone into her silver Tory Burch clutch.