Domestic Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mystery) by Lane Stone Read Free Book Online Page A

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