PI On A Hot Tin Roof

knowing?”
    “Why?”
    “I told you. I need a favor. I want to see the tape you made the night of the Bacchus party. Not the one for Raisa—I need the unedited version. And I don’t think we can look at it there.”
    “Why?” she asked again.
    “Just a thought. Nothing big. Indulge me, okay?”
    “Where are you going to go look at it?”
    “My office—why?”
    “Let me go with you—I need to get out of here.”
    Thinking about it, Talba didn’t see a reason why not. “Okay. Tell Adele I’m taking you to dinner.”
    “No way she’ll go for it. Call me when you get here and I’ll sneak out the back door.”
    Talba sighed. But she knew Lucy would be safer with her than anywhere else. “Just leave a note, okay? So they don’t worry. And say the thing about dinner—don’t say what we’re doing.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because that’s how P.I.s work.” Once again, she questioned her capacity for motherhood. All those damned “whys.”
    It was nearly six and the office was dark when they got there, Eddie and Eileen having long ago left for the day. “Sorry,” Talba said, “we’ll have to look at it in the back room. The accommodations aren’t that good, and the equipment’s worse.”
    “That’s cool.” Lucy was pale and looked tired. Talba wasn’t sure this was the greatest thing to be doing, but she was committed. She got the kid a soda and put the tape in to play.
    Lucy had caught a lot of things Talba hadn’t seen, moments frozen in time, made more poignant by later events. In her role as serving wench, she couldn’t just stand back and look—Lucy could, and she did, concentrating on family members.
    Not knowing who he was throughout most of the evening, Talba hadn’t even noticed Warren LaGarde. But it wasn’t LaGarde who caught her eye—it was Suzanne; Suzanne dogging his every step, tracking him with her eyes. Once, he brought her a drink and spent a few minutes. When he left, she stared after him as if her heart was breaking. Kristin, she thought, could have been right about the affair.
    And the words she wanted were there in spades—so openly there it spooked her.
    She turned up the volume when they came to the part where Buddy said,
“Now that I have your attention.”
She remembered how much it had annoyed her.
    Next, he said, “
I just wanted to welcome y’all all here and let you know that Zulu came early this year. Look what I got!”
Here, he held up the coconut with kristin written on it and continued:
    “Looks like this is for my good friend, Kristin LaGarde. Honey, would you come here and get your present?”
    “Buddy, you shouldn’t have,” Kristin answered, and he said,
“Hey, let’s make sure everybody’s here—Lucy, where are ya? Royce and Suzanne?
    “And there’s Adele over there. Come here, y’all, and check this out. Lucy, ya got ya camera on?”
He turned back to Kristin.
“It’s a magic coconut, honey; it opens up like a box…. You’ve got to twist it.”
    She got it open, and Buddy said,
“Howya like that?”
Then,
“Kristin LaGarde, will you be my wife?”
    Kristin had squeaked,
“I can’t believe it! You mean it, Buddy?”
    “Never meant anything more, sweetheart,”
he answered.
“It’s a cold world out there. I finally found what makes a house a home and I gotta make sure she’s gon’ stick around. By the way, you accept, or what?”
    Talba looked at her notes on the message to Burrell and checked the words
ain’t no need to, out there, home, have to, you, stick around,
and
I’m.
    “Okay, folks! We got a meetin’ of the minds, and we’re headin’ for a weddin’! Want to try the ring on?”
    These words leaped out at Talba:
    “meeting
”
    “for a”
    and
“heading”
    Then there was Buddy’s horrible social faux pas:
“Does this mean we can go on ahead and do it now? How ’bout if ya quit your grinnin’ and drop your linen—right about now?”
    Talba wrote
go on ahead
and
right now.
    “Lucy, where are ya?”
Buddy said.
“Let’s get everybody up here. Hey, Adele, Royce, Suzanne, let’s pose for our first official family video.”
    “Hey,”
was good, as in “Hey, buddy.” The tape artist could have picked up
“This is Buddy”
from Buddy’s own voicemail, and reused the word
“Buddy”
in
“Hey, buddy.”
    She had almost the whole thing: “Hey, buddy, this is Buddy. I’m heading out there right now for a meeting and there’s no need to stick around. You can go on ahead and go home.”
    She