Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries) Read Online Free Page B

to him some time other than when he was saving my life. He looked up from the table and smiled.” Here he did a pretty good imitation of The General’s slow grin. “Then he said, ‘Well, son, that’s not a trade I’d make, but it’s up to you.’”
    “Thank you for telling me that,” I said with difficulty.
    “You’re certainly welcome.” It was hard for him to speak, too. “I’ll be leaving for my third deployment this afternoon.”
    “Why are you buying groceries if you’re about to leave?”
    “My mom is pretty upset, and I don’t want her to have to do it.”
    “How long have you been home?” My throat was narrowing fast.
    “Two months.”
    “That’s terrible. I think you all should have two years between deployments for retraining.”
    “Well, hopefully it’ll be over soon,” he said, avoiding agreeing with me, loyal to the end.
    “I hope so, too.” I had everything I had come for and more, so I went to get in the checkout line. For the millionth time I thought about how this war should never have started.
    Back at home I checked my e-mails, natch , looking for one from my husband. There wasn’t one, nor was he online. I have an overstuffed chair covered in velvet tapestry in my little home office, and I let it swallow me up when I sat down to read the newspaper. After starting the same article on North Korea’s nuclear weapons tests over and over, I put it down. That was when I went into a funk I couldn’t shake. I missed my husband. I was also saying and thinking my too much, as in my dog and my house. I felt that my whopper of a secret was hurting our closeness, and being surrounded by, even facilitating divorces for a living didn’t help. He was far away, and as isolated as I felt, I still didn’t want to tell him about Tiara Investigations.
    I couldn’t stand being inside any longer, and I realized it had been a while since Abby had been out, so I called her to go for a walk. “I’m taking a bag, just in case you are locked and loaded,” using a military term because of where my thoughts had been wandering.
    We walked around the block, including a killer hill. As soon as we walked through the door, Abby sprinted to her water bowl. After lapping for about a minute and getting more water in her beard than in her mouth, she returned to me and licked my hand once. She was hungry. I filled her bowl and went to my desk.
      I spent a couple of hours working on the business aspect of Tiara Investigations, updating our spreadsheets, preparing a deposit and writing paychecks for Victoria and Tara. Before I knew it the day was about gone, and I had yet to exercise. An hour later Kelly Taylor telephoned and told me about her husband’s plans for the evening. The call came in while I was mid-kickboxing video. Interruptions are the norm in doing business the way we do. As I walked upstairs I dialed Tara and then conferenced Victoria in. I told them about the call and asked who wanted to drive.
    Victoria said, “I will. Who should I pick up first? Where are we going?”
    “Duluth. Pick me up around seven-thirty. That’ll give us time to get there and position ourselves.”
    I took a quick shower and then made myself a peanut butter and honey sandwich dinner.
    It was literally and figuratively a three-dog night when Tara and her Standard Schnauzer, Stephie joined us in Victoria’s Lexus SUV. “I hope he’s not fooling around on his cute little wife.”
    “Well, he is.” I gave Vic’s dog, Mr. Benz, a good-to-see-you ear twirl.
    “How do you know?” the ever-hopeful Victoria asked.
    “He’s going to his office for a 9:00 p.m. conference call. He doesn’t have a phone at home?”
    We let the navigation system lead us to the subdivision, and then we slowed down to read the carved wooden house numbers on the mail boxes. The neighborhood was established, upper middle class. For Duluth, Georgia, that’s still not necessarily very old.  
    “This area was originally called Howell