Free Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries) by Lane Stone

concrete block walls were painted beige. No waste of taxpayers’ money here. They could not have made the room uglier if they had tried.
    “I would remind you to be honest in answering my questions.”
    “Excuse me?” I raised my hand and interrupted, but I had a valid reason for doing so. “Do people ever forgetto be honest?”
    His lips moved, and I think he whispered, “For the love,” but instead of finishing his sentence he cleared his throat.   Next he explained he would be taping our statements, and we would be asked to return to sign them after they were transcribed.
    Victoria asked if we were being observed, noting the mirror on the wall behind my head. Kent declined to answer; he just looked down and pretended to ignore her. Tara took this as an affirmative response. “That’s hot. It’s vinyl seat-hot.”
    I didn’t get what was so hot about two-way mirrors, but then she explained herself. “Maybe for our cars?”
    “Tara, you can’t drive down the street with a mirror for a windshield,” I said.
    Detective Kent took a deep breath. “Can we proceed?”
    He centered the microphone on the table. It was three sided and pretty hi tech compared to the rest of the room. Tara leaned over the table and tapped it twice. “Testing, test …”
    “It’s on. It’s on for the love of pete !” He gave the current time and our location and then said each of our names. He should have known better.
    “Leigh Reed.”
    “Present.”
    “Victoria Blair.”
    She gave the room a bow. “Thank you all for coming today.”
      “Tara Brown.” She gave a beauty queen wave with fingers held together and wrist rotating. He ignored us the way you do when a child is acting silly and you don’t want to encourage it, I mean, him.
    He said that this statement concerned the death of David Taylor and then he gave the Taylors’ address. We listened with what passes for rapt attention on our parts. Actually, when you hear something you already know, it’s rarely what you’d call absorbing.
      “Why were you sitting in front of the deceased’s house last night?”
    “Surveillance. His wife telephoned us, and we were going to follow him.”
    “So he was cheating on his wife?”
    “She suspected he was.”
    “And that he was going to leave her for another woman?”
    “Hold your horses. Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? We never said that there was another woman.” I was cool as a cucumber.
    “Did Kelly Taylor suspect he might be planning on ending the marriage?”
    “We never discussed that with her.”
    “That’d be nice to know, since his will leaves everything to her.”
    “To the other woman?” Tara shrieked, almost coming off her chair.
    “I thought you said you didn’t know if there was one.” Detective Kent mistakenly thought he had us there.
    “We don’t.” Then I turned to Tara, “He was saying everything would be left to Kelly Taylor.”
    Kent shook his head. “His business had recently become extremely lucrative. If he was about to end the marriage, he was worth more to Mrs. Taylor dead than alive. When you learn who …”
    I interrupted him. “If.”
    He turned the volume all the way down on the recorder. “ … ifand who the third party is, I expect you to tell me. I’m still considering filing a complaint against Tiara Investigations with the state board.”
    “Sure, we’ll let you know if we find a girlfriend,” said my lips, but my brain was saying , you’re not going to file a complaint against us and tell the board how you learned about our agency.
    He turned the volume back up. “How did Mrs. Taylor seem last night when you spoke with her?”
    Victoria took this one. “She seemed in control.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “She didn’t look like she was out of control?”
    He looked at me. “Since you’ve had a few hours to think about it, did you all see anything to help us identify the perpetrator?”
    My brain: Thank you Lord for not letting him say