Strong Tea

by Sheila Horgan

  “Please, let’s not go there. Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Of course. If only for the entertainment value.”

  “Entertainment value?”

  “Yep, watching you call out to Kendra every time a woman comes out the door. I’ll bet you’re going to find out the hard way that not all Hooters girls use their real names. Just for occasions like this. If someone calls out Kendra, then the girl that uses the name Kendra but really isn’t Kendra is going to know it isn’t on the up-and-up, and they’ll call the cops, and you’re gonna be a very unhappy person.”

  “Hey, if they take me away, they’ll take you with me.”

  “They aren’t going to know we’re together.”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  “Why should they believe you? Ready?”

  “Now you have me doubting myself.”

  “Never doubt yourself, Teagan.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Your plan? That’s a whole other conversation.”

  We got to Hooters with plenty of time to sit in the car and worry we were about to do something truly stupid.

  “Dingleberry, the reality is, it isn’t the first stupid thing we’ve done.”

  “It isn’t the first stupid thing I’ve done today. I’m not worried about it.”

  “Why the change in attitude?”

  “I don’t think anything is going to happen, one way or the other.”

  Long story short, Kendra is her real name, and she was the second one out the door.

  She wasn’t wearing her uniform.

  She is gorgeous.

  She drives a really nice car, and she got to it before we could get to her.

  How do I know all this?

  She was wearing a pair of gym shorts, the long ones like guys wear, with a jersey that said Kendra across the back.

  We followed her to a park where she met with a whole bunch of other women.

  Slow-pitch. It’s not even slow-pitch season, is it? And why so late at night?

  “Teagan, if you’re going to talk to her, now’s the time. Before she picks up a bat.” I tried to get Teagan to move a little faster, but she was in slow motion.

  “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “The fact that we’re officially stalkers?”

  “No, there’s something wrong here.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know, something just doesn’t feel right.”

  “You sound like Mom.”

  “I think I feel like Mom. You know how she would get all jumpy right before something got weird. She used to describe it as someone dancing on her grave.”

  I never really hated that phrase before, but now when I hear it, I can’t decide if I want to cry or punch somebody.

  Teagan was still talking.

  “I don’t think this girl is our problem.”

  “We’ll never know if you don’t talk to her.”

  “You do it.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Dingleberry, how many times have I stepped up for you?”

  “Far fewer than you would claim. What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know if Gord really got in a fight with those guys. He made it sound like he was protecting her.”

  “Is she allowed to know that it’s us asking? Can she know who we really are? What we really want to know?”

  “We told Gord that the cops would investigate. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if she thought you were a cop.”

  “Dressed like this? Without a badge? Isn’t impersonating a cop against the law?”

  “You aren’t pulling her over and giving her a ticket. Jeeze, relax.”

  “Really? Relax?”

  Teagan pushed me in Kendra’s direction.

  I must be getting more mature because on the walk over to talk to Kendra, I decided that mostly honesty was mostly the best policy.

  “Kendra?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hi, my name is Siobhan.” Like using my middle name was not going to give me away. It’s about as Irish as they come, so if Kendra was to mention to Gord some Irish chick was around asking questions, he could probably figure out it was an O’Flynn.

  “What can I do for you?” She has a beautiful smile.

  “I have a couple of questions. It’s a long story, and I know you’re busy, but I’m really hoping you can help me.”

  She looked around. Nervous all of a sudden. “Questions?”

  “Yes. The other night, you were with a guy named Gordon Gryzbowski.”

  “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “I’m not anyone official. I don’t know his wife. Please — ”

  “Go away.”

  “All I need to know is if the story he told everyone is true. If you guys were attacked in Old Town.”

  “I’m not talking to you.”

  “Believe me, Kendra. It’s easier to talk to me. We can take care of this. Make it go away.”

  “Make yourself go away.”

  She leaned over and grabbed a bat. I thought for sure it was going to be a rerun of the whole Barry thing, but instead of hitting me with it, she gathered the rest of her stuff and ran for her car.

  Not the outcome I wanted, but I didn’t get my head bashed in, so I’m going to consider it a victory.

  When I got back to Teagan, she didn’t look happy. I explained everything to her. Pretty much word for word what Kendra and I had said. There couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred words between us, and even I can remember that.

  “Now what?”

  Teagan looked angry, but I know her resting frustrated face, so I waited. “I don’t know. What’s going on? You would think it would be a pretty straightforward answer. Yes. No. How hard is that?”

  “Maybe they really are screwing around, and she doesn’t want the world to know.”

  “I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but she’s so far out of Gord’s league, I doubt they’re doing anything that would approach a reason for them to react so badly.”

  “You never know. Some couples don’t really look like they belong together, but they’re totally committed.”

  She smiled. “Don’t go all personal. Everyone knows you just got lucky with A.J. He’s at least two rungs up the hot ladder from you.”

  Okay, so I chased my sister back to the car with the threat of bodily injury.

  She deserved it.

  It’s not that I wanted to point out her less than hot moments, and, yes, even Teagan has a few, but I was curious.

  As she put her seat belt on I asked, “So tell me — and please God keep it G-rated — just how did you get so hot and sweaty in bed alone that you turned yourself blue with your new sheets? Oh, and this one is a twofer. Why in the world did you use sheets you hadn’t washed yet?”

  “I didn’t get hot and sweaty, and, ew, why would you ask your own sister a question that might not be G-rated?”

  “I was thinking maybe early onset menopause since you had early onset puberty. You overdid the puberty, so what is to stop you from overdoing menopause? I was talking to the girls about it the other day. It’s not a one day event, you know.”

  “I don’t want to know. I would have had to start puberty at eighteen months for any of that to be valid. To answer your really obnoxious question, I decided to try a new moisturizer. It’s gel, and it keeps you hydrated for days, but it is a little sticky and a tad slimy, so when I knew Jessie would be out of town for the night, I slathered it on. I didn’t want to get my regular sheets messed up so I slapped on one of those mattress covers with a zipper. The cheap ones made out of old crinkly plastic. I know. I’m a slob. I put it right over the top of my regular sheets, then I put the cheap dark blue ones we bought for the car over the top of the mattress cover thing.”

  “You have dark blue sheets for your car?”

  “I usually get black, but they didn’t have any.” />
  “You have black sheets for your car?”

  “You know I do. When I have something to throw in the back, I don’t want the world to see it when I park my car, so I just throw a sheet over it and with the tinted windows, it all blends in and you can’t see anything.”

  “I knew that. I actually never paid much attention, but I knew that you threw something dark over stuff you didn’t want people to see. The bigger question is: you put cheap sheets on your bed without washing them? Yuck. You have no idea what creepy-crawly things are running around during the whole loom process, and then there is storage and transport. You don’t know what has been doing whom on your sheets before they ever get to you. Yuck.”

  “I was tired. I didn’t know that the cheap mattress cover would make me sweat to death or that my moisturizer would make the sheets bleed all over me and I’d turn blue.”

  “Forget turning blue. You were so tired the thought of a foreign bug making a nest in your hair, or worse, never entered your mind? We can’t possibly be related, Teagan. Not even distant cousins. I can’t even imagine doing that. Not even as a joke. Not even if I never intended to lie down on them. Not even to throw them in the back seat and use them to hide stuff.”

  “I figure if there are any little critters on my sheets, they’ve probably been smothered by being in a plastic container for God only knows how long.”

  “So critter carcasses are okay?”

  “Shut up, dingleberry. What are we going to do about Kendra?”

  “Maybe we should have followed her home so that at least we would know where she lives.”

  “She would have been paying attention tonight, but I fully intend to follow her home from work tomorrow night.”

  “I feel bad stalking a Hooters girl when she hasn’t really done anything to us. It would freak me out if I had someone stalking me.”

  “She could have just answered the question. Then we’d have no reason to stalk her.”

  “Teagan, you’re being totally unreasonable. You get that, right?”

  “I need to figure this out. The company is my responsibility. Mr. Fisher ran it all these years without a single problem, and I’m not going to let everything fall apart as soon as he turns it over to me.”

  “I get that. But I’m not sure this girl has anything to do with your problems. Shouldn’t we be following Gord around?”

  “Seamus said not to do it. He said we don’t want Gord to have any grounds for a harassment suit or anything. If he catches me following him, I’m screwed.”

  “Well then, we just won’t get caught.”

  “Welcome back.”

  “What?”

  “You almost sounded like the old Cara.”

  FOUR

  I’M NOT SURE how Teagan convinced Jessie this was a good idea, but all I did was ask A.J. He was so relieved he could act as my bodyguard that he didn’t even question it. Much. Besides, dinner at Hooters is never a bad thing.

  There was a game on, and everyone was getting a little bit rowdy, so we went unnoticed for a while. Just two couples enjoying wings and beer and watching the game. The guys didn’t mind the little orange shorts and tank tops as they went by.

  Mom must be watching out for us, because we had a server named Heather, but our table was perfect for watching Kendra. Not so close she would stumble on us — since the place was packed — and not so far that we couldn’t see what she was doing.

  When she walked up to each of her tables and told her customers she was turning them over to the next girl and going home, we asked for our check.

  We hit the parking lot just before she did.

  The plan was for the driver — the guys — to trade off following her, so even if she was suspicious, the car behind her would change, and she wouldn’t know she was being followed. The passengers — Teagan and I — would stay on our phones and keep the other car informed.

  Movies and television have taught me all I know about surveillance, so this might not go exactly as planned, but it was worth a shot.

  We followed Kendra to the grocery store. She’d pulled running pants over her orange uniform shorts and a t-shirt over her tank top, and other than the fact that she was wearing some pretty heavy makeup, she blended in with the other shoppers.

  Teagan ran into a convenience store. It shared the parking lot with the grocery store, but she figured it would be quicker to get us surveillance supplies in the little shop. Chocolate and caffeine. We would be ready for anything.

  I was just trying to decide if maybe I’d had too much to drink under the circumstances, first at Hooters and then the bottle Teagan gave me, when Kendra came out with a huge cart filled to the brim. Too late to do anything about my problem now.

  They say if you have to go to the bathroom and you can’t stop, think about sex. Your body will naturally go into a kind of bathroom hibernation mode, and you won’t have to go anymore. I was just thinking about what I should be thinking about when the phone rang.

  Teagan. She informed me we were up. We would follow Kendra out of the parking lot and then switch places with Jessie and Teagan in a little bit.

  We had to make sure A.J. and I were following Kendra when she actually got to where she was going, because in Florida, almost everything is gated. You don’t have to live in a really nice place for there to be a gate at the entrance. Everybody just piggybacks on everybody else to get through the gate, so it really isn’t any safer, but it can be a challenge when you’re trying not to get noticed. You can always see the person trying to piggyback into the place in your rearview mirror, and we sure didn’t want Kendra to see that it was Teagan behind her. If they ever get to court over something in all of this, it wouldn’t be good if Kendra stood up and screamed while she pointed. That’s the woman; that’s the one that was in the car behind me.

  Problem was, since we didn’t know where she lived, and we wanted to trade off so that she didn’t get suspicious, we had to be ready for anything.

  Kendra pulled into a Walgreens and was in the store for about fifteen minutes, a really bad plan if she had eggs or anything frozen in her car.

  She came out with a medium-sized bag and headed down Blending.

  Two minutes later, we were pulling into a really nice development. A.J. and I followed her through the gate. I prayed Teagan and Jessie would be right behind us, having piggybacked on someone else, but sometimes you get stuck waiting for a while.

  We were creeping down the street so that we wouldn’t be right behind Kendra when the blue and red lights started.

  Crap.

  Cops.

  I’m going to jail.

  A.J. pulled over, and one of the biggest people I have ever seen in my life got out of the car. I’m amazed he was even able to get in the car.

  He walked up, looking ready to kill both of us.

  Kendra had pulled over and was running toward the car.

  “Do you know them?” His voice was almost as big as his chest.

  “It’s the chick from the park. What the hell?”

  Long story short, the cop is Kendra’s boyfriend. We didn’t have to go to jail. If Jessie and Teagan ever made it into the development, they didn’t come to our aid, and Kendra said if we promised to leave her alone, she would answer our questions.

  The other reason we didn’t get arrested was because her boyfriend recognized my last name and knew Rory. He really didn’t want any trouble.

  Very long story short, yes, she’s the girl who was with Gord.

  No, they aren’t having an affair or anything, but she refused to give me any details on their relationship. I’m mostly convinced she was afraid to say anything because a very large guy with a very big gun was standing next to her.

  It was very clear the reason Gord was walking around with obvious signs of “having his ass handed to him” — the cop’s words not mine — was because he chose to let his interest in Kendra be known. In a very menacing voice, the cop let me know any interest in his girlfriend would likely resul
t in the same situation; he didn’t care whom the interest was from.

  I couldn’t decide if Kendra was the victim or the instigator. Either way, not a fight to have tonight.

  I thanked Kendra.

  I thanked God we were driving my car so the cop was less likely to have A.J.’s information, because I was absolutely sure he had already — or soon would — run my plates and know exactly who I am.

  I shook the cop’s hand and told him I appreciated his time, was sorry for the confusion, and reminded him this whole thing was because two girls were at risk, hoping that would take A.J. and Jessie out of the loop and maybe he would be a little more understanding.

  I doubted it, but it was worth a shot.

  Back in the car, I apologized to A.J. for getting him in the middle of it. He tried to argue that he had volunteered and that he was glad he was there, but I argued back if he hadn’t been there, the cop probably wouldn’t have done anything anyway. He wouldn’t have seen two women as a threat.

  Silly cop.

  I called Teagan as soon as we got out of the development. She didn’t answer. I was instantly livid. We almost got arrested, or worse, doing this for her, and she couldn’t even pick up the phone?

  Then I went straight into panic mode. What happened to her that she couldn’t answer the phone? Had they been in a car accident?

  That’s my new panic thing. If anything goes wrong, I immediately go there. I know it’s unreasonable, but I can’t help it.

  We were pulling onto our block when the phone rang. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make you panic. I ran into the store, and I forgot my phone in the cup holder in the car. We’re on our way to your house.”

  I didn’t even bother to discuss it. I just said fine and hung up.

  It wasn’t until I was in the house that it dawned on me that Teagan may have just brought her problems to my door. What if someone followed us? That cop had probably run my plates and had my address seared into his brain by now. And this isn’t like living in an apartment; this is my forever home. I don’t want bad guys around it. And what about Evelyn? Bad guys around adults, whatever; bad guys around babies, not acceptable.

  While my mind danced down an ugly path, it occurred to me that Kendra’s boyfriend would know who A.J. was because he would run my plates, get my address, and then drive by, see A.J.’s car in the driveway, run his plates, and then he knows all about us.