by Liliana Hart
I gave Eugene the information on where he could do the DNA testing and then Rosemarie and I left.
“Mmm, mmm,” she said, shoehorning her way back into the Cabriolet. “That man is about as close to perfection as you can get. If it was him trying to wake me up in the middle of the night you can guarantee I wouldn’t say no.”
“There’s got to be something wrong with him,” I said. “Nobody is that perfect. His wife left him for some reason.”
“Maybe he leaves the toilet seat up. Or maybe he’s a hummer. My daddy used to hum all the time. Drove my mother crazy. She finally hit him on the back of the head with a frying pan and he never hummed again.”
We stopped at the outlet mall and I picked up a Kate Spade clutch I found for half price and then I went to the CVS and bought a pregnancy test for Kate. Rosemarie found a corset and matching collar at Frederick’s of Hollywood. I hoped that wasn’t what she was planning on wearing to dinner with Leroy’s parents. She’d tried it on for me and she looked just like Rosie O’Donnell in Exit to Eden.
I dropped Rosemarie back at her duplex and made the drive back to Savannah by myself. I stopped at the outskirts of town and took my gun out of my purse and put it in my lap. I didn’t want to take any chances.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I made it to my front door without incident and I remembered to lock the door this time. I needed to change into something more comfortable. I stopped by the bar and picked up the note Phoebe had left. She said she’d found a new studio on the riverfront and she was making arrangements to have her canvasses and other supplies transported. She also said she’d be about ten minutes late for dinner, which was fine by me. Ten minutes was plenty of time for Nick and I to get snockered before we had to sit down at the table.
There was a knock at the door and the handle jiggled. I grabbed my gun and went to look through the peephole. Nick winked at me and I unlocked the door.
“You’re early,” I said, putting my gun back in my handbag.
“I clocked out just as a double homicide got called out. I wasn’t about to stay. I wouldn’t make it home until next Tuesday. Hello—” His eyes darkened and the line of his mouth softened. “I really like that sweater.”
In heels I was only an inch shorter than he was and he leaned in to kiss me hello. “I was just about to change into something more comfortable.”
“Let me help you with that.” And then the sweater was on the floor and my jeans were around my knees. I was up on the dining room table and Nick was looking a little crazed at the sight of my push up bra and matching thong.
“I had no idea you had such a fascination with kitchen tables.” He pulled my boots off so my jeans could fall to the floor. “We’re going to be late for dinner.”
“This will only take a second. Promise.” His finger ran just beneath the lace of my thong and it was more than obvious it would only take a second for me as well.
“Time’s ticking.” I worked at his buckle and had exactly what I wanted in hand when I happened to look up and see the glare from the binoculars. Spock was pressed against the big square window that faced my house and the glass was fogged from where he was breathing.
I squeaked and Nick turned to see what had gotten my attention. That’s when Spock got a real eyeful and closed his blinds. I laughed hysterically until I fell back onto the table and tears ran down my face.
“What the hell? You have a peeping Tom next door?”
I could tell Nick was about two seconds away from going next door and beating the shit out of Spock.
“Not really. He’s the president of the NAD Squad.”
Nick froze and looked at me. His pants were around his knees and his shirt was unbuttoned. He still wore his shoulder holster, and he was still rock hard and raring to go. There wasn’t much that got Nick down. This struck me as unusually funny and I burst into laughter again.
“He’s the president of the NAD Squad? What in the hell is the NAD Squad?”
“Neighbors Against Delinquency. It’s the neighborhood watch.”
He sighed and finally gave up and started laughing. “Jesus, it’s like you’re a magnet. Stuff like this never happens to normal people.” He pulled me up off the table and brought me down to the floor so I straddled his hips. “No one can see us down here.”
“Not unless they look in the mail slot in the door.”
“Comforting thought, but nothing is going to distract me this time.”
Then my thong was pulled aside and I was taking him inside of me. A few minutes later both of us were sprawled on the floor and waiting for our breathing to return to normal.
“I don’t think my legs work,” I said. My eyes weren’t focusing and I felt tingling in my toes.
“Maybe we should skip dinner. I think I might have had a small stroke.”
“Not even that will save you. But you should probably straighten your clothes. We don’t want to scandalize anyone at the dinner table.”
“If I remember right we scandalized the hell out of that table. It’s going to be difficult to eat remembering what we did there.”
My lips twitched and I rolled to my hands and knees. Back when I’d been living at home Nick had paid me a late night visit. It was our first time together and we christened every flat surface, and a few that weren’t so flat, in the house.
I managed to make it to my bedroom without falling on my face and looked through my drawers for clean clothes. I needed to do laundry badly and ended up digging out a pair of black cargo pants and another black long-sleeved T-shirt. I tied a windbreaker around my waist and put on my sneakers.
When I came back out Nick was fully dressed and staring at the pregnancy test on the counter. All the color had drained from his face. He looked up at me with and opened his mouth to say something, but then he closed it again and just arched a brow instead.
“It’s not mine.” I grabbed it and put it back in the sack. “It’s for Kate. She’s coming over later to take it.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I just had a moment. I’m okay now. Why are you dressed like combat Barbie? And more importantly, are you still wearing the red bra? I might like to visit it later.”
“I’ve got to work tonight. Besides, you just visited with the red bra. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what else I have in my repertoire.”
***
By the time we made it back to Whiskey Bayou I was starting to think dinner might be a bad idea. I had a lot on my mind. The Tannenbaum case was bothering me for some reason, not to mention the problem with Johnny Sakko wanting to kill me.
If I was honest with myself the thing that was bothering me the most was the look on Nick’s face when he thought the pregnancy test was mine. It wasn’t a good look.
“Anything new with Tannenbaum?” I asked.
“Not really. The couple that lives next door was coming in late from a party that night and they think they saw a man standing across the street in the park. But they said they didn’t pay much attention because it looked like he was just trying to stay dry under the tree. I went back to talk with my dad about the changing of the will and didn’t get anywhere there. He said Tannenbaum called the day before about changing the will and demanded the new one be in place and ready to sign within twenty-four hours. My father isn’t a fool, at least not in business, so he had the contracts ready rather than risk the chance of losing him as a client. My father also suggested that you seduced him and he had no choice but to give in because he’s only a man.”
“What can I say? The red bra is magical over all men, beasts, and assholes. Your mother suggested they could make things hard on me if they wanted.”
“That’s probably true. This is still the same South it’s always been. The same families have all the power and dictate the rules. We liked to think we’re an advanced society with freedom to believe what we want and act how we choose, but it’s just not true. And when you do fight for those things the cons
equences might be something you may never recover from.”
“So what should I do?”
He pulled up to the curb in front of my mom’s house and turned off the car. “I think we should get back together and you should move in with me. Permanently.”
“Like marriage?” The thought of marriage freaked me out a little, and all of a sudden I wasn’t feeling so good. I’d already been stood up at the altar once. I could do without ever having to go through that hell again.
“Not marriage. Not yet. I can tell you need some time to get used to the idea. I figure if you move in with me then maybe you’ll start to love me like you did before.”
I put my head between my knees and took slow deep breaths until the bells stopped clanging in my head.
“I can see you’re pleased with the idea and considering it.” Nick got out of the truck and came around to my side to open the door.
By the time we made it to the front door I’d gotten my hearing back and I no longer felt like I’d taken a fist to the solar plexus. Vince answered the door and greeted Nick with a beer and me with a large glass of wine.
“Phyllis was starting to wonder if something had come up. Come on back. I’ve already got the steaks on the grill.”
“What happened to the stuffed shells?” I sniffed the house and didn’t smell the usual scents of burning.
“Home Depot was having a sale on grills and one caught my eye as we were driving by. I decided to buy it on the spot and talked Phyllis into letting me try it out tonight.” He winked and I knew Vince had just saved us all from getting ptomaine. Maybe he was a good fit for my mother after all.
Phoebe arrived twenty minutes later and we all sat down to the table. Mom and Vince at each end, me and Nick on one side, and Phoebe across from me.
“It’s been a long time since we all had a dinner together,” my mother said. “We should do this more often. And maybe some day I can actually put the leafs in the table.”
She looked at Nick as if she was evaluating how strong his swimmers were and Nick took a long drag on his beer and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “You’re going to owe me so big for this.” he whispered out of the side of his mouth.
“I’m not doing that anal thing.”
Everyone got really still at the table and I realized I’d said that out loud. “Banal,” I said. “That banal thing. Nick can be so banal sometimes.”
Nick’s foot pressed down on top of mine and I gave him a smile with a lot of teeth. My mother cleared her throat and knocked back the sidecar she’d been drinking. “Well, I’m just glad to see the two of you are back together.”
“I’ve been trying to get her to move in with me, but she has cold feet.”
My grip tightened on my fork and I resisted the urge to stab Nick in the hand.
“It’s understandable,” my mother said. “She has terrible luck with men, and she doesn’t listen when I tell her not to give up the goods for free without a commitment.”
“I’m sitting right here, you know.” Phoebe was hiding her laugh behind her wine glass and I kicked her under the table for help.
“I think moving in together is a good step,” Nick continued. “She’s still a little gun shy about marriage because of the last time.”
“Rest in peace,” we all said. My former fiancé had bounced off the hood of my car a few months ago and was dead on the spot. Fortunately, I wasn’t the cause of death. He’d been poisoned.
“If you move in with Nick I can just take over the lease on your house,” Phoebe said.
“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea. And I didn’t know you were planning to move so close to home. It’ll be wonderful to have my girls and grandchildren so close.”
“You’ve got to take a chill pill about the grandkids,” Phoebe said. “I might get a dog. And I’m thinking about having an affair with one of Addison’s neighbors. But there will be no children.”
“The guy next door with the binoculars?” Nick asked.
“No. The FBI guy across the street. I don’t know his name. Looks like a superhero. Wears cool socks.”
“Perfect,” Nick said, his smile broadening.
“Wait, I thought you were dating him,” my mom said to me. Then she turned to my sister. “I don’t think it’s good manners to sleep with the same man as your sister.”
“She can have him,” I said, pushing back from the table. “We were never sleeping together. You can have Nick too if you’d like. I’m going to get dessert and then see if I can join Veronica Wade at her convent.” I leaned down and whispered in Nick’s ear. “You better kiss the red bra goodbye.”
“Meet me back at my place tonight and I bet I could change your mind.” He was probably right. I was easily influenced.
“I heard Veronica was trying to become a nun,” Phoebe said. “She doesn’t seem like the type of woman to be without a man very long.”
“I heard she was caught with two priests in the confessional,” said Vince. And just like that the subject shifted off me. Vince saves the day again. I went to the kitchen and brought back a homemade chocolate cake Mom had bought at Kroger.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kate was waiting on me by the time Nick dropped me back at my place. Phoebe had stayed behind and decided to have a girls’ night out with one of her friends from high school, so we at least had some privacy.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
“I got a couple of different kinds,” I told her. “That way you can be double sure.”
“Good idea.”
Kate was dressed much like I was—black jeans, sweatshirt, and combat boots. She wasn’t wearing her gun on her hip, but I was willing to bet she had one tucked at the small of her back. She had a black baseball cap pulled over her blond hair.
“Here,” I said, handing her the sack.
“I can’t do this. I’m not ready.” She shoved the sack back at me.
“What are you going to do? Wait until you give birth at the office? I wouldn’t do that. Lucy looks like the kind of woman who might eat the placenta. Doesn’t matter if it’s hers or not.”
“That’s disgusting.” Kate grabbed the bag back from me and dumped the boxes out on the counter. “I just figure it won’t be real if I don’t know the outcome.”
“This is ridiculous. Just pee on the damn stick already. How hard can it be?”
“Fine. I’ll do one and you’ll do one. That way I don’t have to do it by myself. And after we’re both done peeing we’ll put the sticks back in the bag and put them away somewhere for a while and then that’ll give me time to get used to the idea before I actually look at it.”
“Jesus. Give me that. I can certainly pee on a stick if that’s what it takes for you to stop being a pussy. Where do you want me to keep them once we’re finished?”
“Just put them in the closet or something?”
“I’m not putting pee sticks in my closet. That’s gross.”
“Fine. I’ll take them with me and put them in my closet. And then maybe five years from now I’ll look and see what the result is.”
“I’ll go first.” I went into the bathroom and did my business, tossed the stick into the sack without looking, and then washed my hands. “Your turn. And then we need to get a move on if we’re going to catch Carly Mathis doing the nasty.”
“Right.” Kate took a deep breath and took her box into the bathroom. A couple of minutes later she came out with the sack tied in a knot at the top. She shoved the sack in the side pocket of her shoulder bag and then rolled her shoulders. “No big deal. Now it’s done and I don’t have to think about it anymore. Lets go catch Carly Mathis in action. I got a call from her husband before I left to come here for the night. She called home and told him she had to work late.”
“Why can’t people think of a better excuse than that?” I asked. “That’s like admitting you’re having an affair. Why don’t people say they’re going to stop at the grocery store or get their nails done or have a massage?”<
br />
“People have no imagination. And most people aren’t as good at lying as we are.”
“It takes practice,” I said, nodding. I looked back and forth between Kate’s beige Taurus and Nick’s Cabriolet and knew which one we were going to take. I sighed and got in the passenger seat of the Taurus.
“We’ve got to get a move on. She gets out of her aerobics class in twenty minutes.” We parked in the lot of the Anytime Fitness and waited for Carly Mathis to make an appearance. Kate and I studied a recent photograph of her. Late twenties with long blond hair, green eyes, and a cute nose. She looked like the All-American Girl.
“She doesn’t look like a cheater,” I said.
“They never do.”
I checked the clock on the dashboard and rummaged around in my files. Something was bothering me about the Tannenbaum case. I filled in Kate on what I’d gotten from Nick’s police report as well as my interviews with the three possible heirs.
“It’s weird. My gut instinct says to look at Rose Parker and her great-grandson Jamie a little closer. She admitted that her son wasn’t her husband’s child, but she didn’t want her grandson to be DNA tested. That seems suspicious to me.
“Then we’ve got Norman Hinkle who is the only remaining heir in the Hinkle line. He’s seventy-one years old and spends his days growing and smoking pot in a green house.” I told Kate about the enormous crop I’d found at Summer’s Eve.
“Holy shit,” she said. “You’ve got to report that.”
“But everyone is so old. What if it’s medicinal? What if all those old people die because they can’t get their weed?” Besides, I was starting to get a feeling about where Johnny Sakko was getting his stash. I wasn’t quite ready to pull the plug on SEAL until I could do a little more investigating.
“Then there’s the sex god, Eugene Woods. He’s likeable in every way. He’s handsome and brilliant. But something about him bothers me. He’s not that perfect. I feel like we need to dig deeper on him. He’s a computer hacker. Maybe he’s known all along that his father was Tannenbaum’s son. He also wears a size twelve shoe, just like the muddy footprint they found at the murder scene.” I chewed on my bottom lip as I thought it through. “I think that’s what bothered me about him. It was almost like he was bragging. Letting me know about his hacking abilities and dropping his shoe size.”