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  ICED TEA

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, businesses and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or implied.

  Iced Tea. Copyright 2011 by Sheila Horgan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, or distributed without the written permission of the author, with the exception of short quotes for purposes of review.

  ONE

  My sister Teagan and I were sitting at the table, waxing philosophical, when my brothers showed up with the trunk. Turns out that my mother’s best friend, Bernie, who was once my grandmother’s best friend, had a few surprises in store, the latest turned out to be a locked trunk. For me.

  First Bernie died unexpectedly, we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a murder, but haven’t gotten confirmation on that yet. Then we find out that the woman, who happened to be older than dirt, had some interesting hobbies, including writing erotica and helping out at Church.

  We were just getting used to the whole erotica thing, when Mom and Daddy announced at a family dinner that Bernie left each of us, all eight kids and my parents, a little money. Bernie was from Ireland and didn’t have any family here in Florida, so we’d pretty much taken over that honor. It seems Bernie thought of us as family too, the only real family she had. Wish I’d thought more about that before she died. Bernie has always just been there, I didn’t make a big deal out of her, I didn’t try to have a close relationship with her; I had no idea that she thought of me as the kid most like her. One of those things you can’t go back and change. Unfortunately.

  When we were told that Bernie left us some money, each one of us ‘kids’ decided to pool our share and send Mom and Daddy over to Ireland, partially as a tribute to our Bernie, and partially as a reward.

  Mom and Daddy are the kind of parents that are completely dedicated to the health and welfare of their children, even though we’re now pretty much grown. According to my mother, you’re never too old to be parented.

  I openly admit sometimes parental dedication can look like dysfunction brought to a whole new level, but our family doesn’t see ourselves as dysfunctional, really, and we appreciate the involvement of our parents and siblings. Mostly.

  Bernie stored the trunk in a loft area of her garage. Her garage is where she was found dead. Although death doesn’t usually ook me out, Bernie’s death has bothered me, on some level, since it happened. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about Bernie’s trunk sitting in my apartment, but when the time came, and my brothers finally delivered it I wasn’t ooked out at all.

  When the guys carried in the trunk, I was shocked. Rory explained that the rough wooden exterior that we’d seen in the garage the day we’d emptied the last of Bernie’s things out of her little house, was a storage container that housed the real trunk. The trunk is a masterpiece. Dark wood inlaid with beautiful flowers made of other beautiful woods and something a little bit shiny.

  Completely out of character, Teagan and I left the trunk untouched while we set out lunch. Nothing fancy. The guys dug in, ate well, and took off before we opened the trunk. They teased us a bit about the whole fairytale aspect of found treasure, and Mom’s warnings about being careful what you wish for, something about Prince Charming and toads, and, of course, Pandora’s box, but they didn’t stick around to see what was in it.

  Saying that I have a fondness for lingerie is like saying that Jay Leno has a fondness for cars. I’ve never met a peignoir I didn’t like. I think Teagan and I have already pretty much decided that Bernie was collecting lingerie for me. Since I’m tall, and wasn’t when she started collecting all of this, I’m hopeful that she either bought short, or planned ahead.

  At first, the thought of a woman collecting lingerie for a young girl seemed kind of creepy, but Bernie comes from another generation, when hope chests and dowries were in vogue, and being one of 8 siblings, I can see where she might think a little help in that direction would be a good thing. Women used to plan these things, putting aside a bit whenever they could, be it their trousseau or a lovely piece of china and other household items.

  I’m confident that Bernie, who, to my knowledge, had never been married, was building a hope chest for me. Or maybe she figured that since I wasn’t the most beautiful of my mother’s daughters, we would need a bigger dowry to marry me off.

  When I suggested that possibility to Teagan, she smacked me.

  I know I’m not ugly. I have my stunning moments; they just aren’t as frequent as my sister’s. I’m okay with that. I have better lingerie than she does. Besides, I think it says more good things about you if you can be honest about your flaws. Just because I’m not as pretty as Teagan, doesn’t mean I don’t have as much value as Teagan. It took me a while to figure that one out, but I get it now, and I’m good with it.

  I took the key off the desk, where my brother left it on his way out, and unlocked the trunk. I took a deep breath, and opened the lid.

  A lovely citrus scent wafted out before I could see inside. I smiled. It would be just like Bernie to know I’m not a roses and vanilla kind of girl, I’m a citrus and sage kind of girl. Actually, lemon all by itself would work for me, but it’s hard to find, other than in an old fashioned bottle of Mr. Clean, which could explain my slightly compulsive approach to cleaning.

  So now we have the chicken and the egg problem. Do I love the smell of citrus because I was introduced to it by Bernie, or did Bernie know me well enough to know that citrus pleases me? Or did citrus please her, and that’s just one of the things that made her think she and I were alike? Her wee little house did smell citrusy all the time. I’d have to think about that.

  Those are the kinds of things that get my attention. I know. It’s a little strange, but the whole thing about looking at life a little sideways has served me well. At least it did until very recently, but that’s a whole other issue to pursue at another time.

  The lid creaked as I opened it all the way. It had leather straps that held the lid straight up. Beautiful. The inside had the feeling of a very traditional old-time trunk, although when we’d seen only the outside, it seemed rather modern, and, thinking about it, informal but precise. Kind of like me I guess. I wonder if Bernie planned that, or it was just a happy accident.

  The trunk looked like a horizontal version of a vertical trunk. You know those trunks they have in the old movies that you have to stand on end to access drawers and a hanging rod. Basically a rolling closet. Probably when every mode of transportation took longer, and life was a little more formal, a trunk was your rolling closet. Older houses often don’t have closets at all. Anyway, this trunk didn’t need to be turned up on end, but it was full of little compartments along the edges, and still had plenty of storage in the middle. Everything in the trunk was either sequestered in a drawer, or wrapped in tissue paper with a beautiful ribbon around it. I couldn’t tell what anything was.

  Teagan reached in to open a drawer, and I instantly blocked her move. Teagan and I share everything, but for some reason, I didn’t want to share this.

  When you come from a large family, with limited funds, virtually nothing is your own. You share food, and clothing, and space. That has just been a fact of my life, all my life. I never give it any thought, it doesn’t bother me, except that once Teagan borrows my clothes they’re gone to me forever. If she doesn’t leave bumps in them, where I have no bumps, they look so much better on her that I don’t want them back. But that’s only slightly annoying, this sudden urge to keep the trunk, and everything in it, to myself - this is confusing.

&nbs
p; Teagan took my rudeness well. Probably not the first time she’d experienced it. She smiled and asked, “So, how are you going to do this?”

  “I’m going to close the lid. I’m going to the store to buy some flowers, and I am going to bring them out to Bernie. She put a lot of thought and effort into this gift, and I’m not going to tear through it.”

  “Sounds very mature.”

  “Shut-up!”

  “That was meant as a compliment, Cara.”

  “Oh, well, thanks.”

  “I’m assuming that you want to be alone when you actually go through this stuff?”

  “I don’t know yet. I haven’t decided. When I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “I used to be the first to know, now I’m the second. AJ’s the first.”

  “Not always.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I happen to be in the room.”

  We laughed.

  “Cara, I have a question. You said that Joe-the-cop called and said he wanted to spend some time with you, have you heard from him?”

  Joe-the-cop is the ex-partner of Louis, who I was told died in a car accident, and as a favor to my family priest, and in an effort to earn a little money, I’d taken on the task of emptying out his condo for his jerk brother who is next of kin, but couldn’t be bothered coming to town, even to bury his own brother.

  Things got really convoluted and complicated, but basically, I’m pretty sure that Louis was investigating a series of murders, although depending on my mood, my opinion might be that his involvement might not be that benign. Joe-the-cop is weird by any standard, and again, depending on my mood, he’s a cop who’s trying to find out what happened to his ex-partner, and he’s bad with boundaries, or he’s just a dangerous ass with permission to carry and use a gun. Of late, I’ve tried to keep my distance.

  Joe-the-cop is one of those chameleon guys. Everyone I’ve talked to sees him in a completely different way. It’s starting to make me nervous.

  Besides, the fact that Teagan and I accidentally beat him up in Louis’s condo, and then he almost ran my butt over, means that Joe and I have a little bit of history, and all of it seems to be pretty violent. I’m not a violent person, so either Joe-the-cop is a violence magnet; or he brings out the worst in me; or he is a bad guy wearing a good guy uniform. None of the possibilities are good ones, so, until I figure out what is reality and what is paranoia, I don’t want him around me.

  I told Teagan, “Haven’t heard a word, but now that you have put it out there in the cosmos, I’m sure I’ll hear from him soon. You always do that Teagan. You need to filter what you put out there.”

  “Just because you think about something doesn’t make it happen Cara. The more I think about it, the more I don’t believe in that crap.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If you chose not to believe in blue, blue would still be out there. Unless I missed the memo, it isn’t just your reality that we are living in.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “I’m not starting anything. All I’m saying is that if you’re going to manifest something for me, make it winning the lottery, not some whacked out cop looking for me.”

  “I’m gonna get out of here. I have a bunch of errands to run. I haven’t been at work for a while, and I need to get back into going to work every day mode. I’m going to do a full afternoon at the salon. You want to come?”

  “No thanks. They wouldn’t know where to start. I’m more a home-based beauty person. I prefer to do my own pedicure and stuff.”

  “You can’t give yourself a proper facial. My treat.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’m gonna pass. I’m going to take flowers out to the cemetery, do some grocery shopping, fix a nice dinner, and hang out here with AJ tonight.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Teagan, I really appreciate all the help you’ve given me trying to get me started on a new career, but I ate up all your vacation time. I’m sorry about that part, although having you around has been a good thing. Is there anything I can do for you, to help you get back to work, make that whole thing easier?”

  “Nope, I’m good. It was nice to get away from the office. If you hadn’t kept me busy, I’d probably have gone back to work a week ago. That would have been a bad thing, on several levels. As it is, I still have lots more time coming to me, so I might be back to play sooner than you think.”

  With that, Teagan was out the door.

  TWO

  I decided to drive over to Bernie’s house and pick some of her flowers instead of buying them at the store. I think Bernie would like that. My sister Troya is living in the house now, so I didn’t need to call for permission or anything.

  I drove up to the little house, my sister’s car nowhere to be found. Knowing Troya, she wouldn’t have it in the garage, because the garage would be full of stuff she hasn’t unpacked yet. Troya is a staging person and it has only gotten worse since she started nursing school. I’m pretty sure she’s using the garage as a triage zone, sorting through her belongings, deciding which should be attended to first.

  I leaned over to grab my scissors out of the glove box. What does it say about me that I carry a pair of scissors in my glove box? I guess it says I have a history of needing scissors in my car. Mostly for wrapping last-second gifts on the way to a party. Being that I am normally very organized, the whole last minute gift thing is an exception, not an eccentricity.

  I understand it would appear to most people who know me that I’d be the kind of person who would have the gift shopping and wrapping done well in advance of the actual gift-giving event. I’ve had this conversation with Teagan, more than once. The reason I end up wrapping gifts at the last second is that I enjoy finding very personalized gifts for the people I care about, and there are times those gifts come to your attention when they are least expected.

  A stuffed church mouse for my nephew. You can always tell a church mouse from a regular mouse, their arms are slightly longer, so they can fold their hands in prayer, and they have teeny tiny calluses on their knees from kneeling a lot. That was a well-planned gift and sat in my house for a while.

  Another time it was a hooker for a 16-year-old male friend of the family. You should have seen the look on his mother’s face when I told the kid that I’d paid for a hooker since he was officially on his way to man-dom. I guess it says something about me that his mother panicked for just a second. A hooker is fishing tackle in this case. I saw the package, thought that it was the perfect gift, and wrapped it up in a bigger box, along with a savings bond, because if you have something as exciting as a hooker to brag about, you should also have something a little more conservative to balance it out.

  Then there are the gifts you get just because. Not for a birthday or an occasion, but because you see the perfect thing for someone, so you grab it, and sometimes that means you wrap it up last second, in the car. I have an all weather mat in my trunk; I keep several different sheets of beautiful wrapping paper laying flat under it, so that I have appropriate paper for just about any spontaneous gift giving need, out of the way, and protected by the mat.

  I have tape in the storage thingy between the seats, for two reasons, wrapping gifts, and if you ever get a ding on your windshield from a flying rock, as long as the damage is smaller than a dollar bill, they can fix it without replacing your whole windshield. I know a guy that does this for a living and he told me that especially if it’s a little chip, if you put a piece of tape over the ding right away, it will keep dirt out of it and the repair will be more invisible. I’ve never actually gotten a ding in my windshield, but I’ve got the tape ready if I ever do. My primary tape need is gift giving.

  I think the best no reason gift I’ve ever given was something I happened across for my mom. Mom has this really old picture of her grandmother and great-aunt. I’ve only seen it a few times. In the picture, on the table between the two of them, there was a beautiful teacup and saucer. The cup looked very dark, with flowers on it. I asked my mom about it, as
I’d never seen a dark teacup before. She said it used to sit on her grandmother’s sideboard. That the cup was black, with gold painted around the rim, that it was fluted, had exotic looking flowers painted on it, was fine bone china, and that she was pretty sure that it was English, not Irish, which knowing my family, was a whole big story I knew nothing about.

  One day I was driving down the street and I saw this huge garage sale. I’m not really a garage sale kind of person, which is a good thing, because if I’d been paying attention to the stuff on the lawn, instead of watching where I was going, I might have run over the little kid that flew out from between two cars. I stopped, waited for a second, expecting a parent to come flying out behind the kid, but he just stood there.

  I put on my emergency flashers, jumped out of the car, grabbed the kid, leaving him there to be smooshed would have been rude, walked him over to the yard sale and tried to figure out which person could have been spending the rest of their day, or life, devastated because their child had been bumped, squished, or kidnapped. I was stunned that it actually took some effort to find the parent.

  Actually, I was pissed beyond words - don’t get me started on the issues of parenting in this society.

  I was walking back to my abandoned car, when I saw two teacups identical to those my mother had described. I didn’t have much cash on me, the lady wouldn’t come down on the price, at a garage sale, what an idiot, so finally the parent of the kid whose life I’d just saved, came up with the difference between what I had and what the garage sale lady insisted on, and I drove off with the cups.

  I didn’t even wrap the cups in the car. I took them home, washed them, went to the store, got a couple of place mats, a basket, some of that straw stuff, a couple of cloth napkins, a couple of different kinds of cookies in tins, and put it all together with the cups.