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All in a Day's Work

  Twila Taunton -- Redneck Detective Agency

  Trish Jackson

  ISBN: 9781310774478

  Copyright ©Trish Jackson 2014

  Acknowledgments

  All rights reserved. The reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The opinion of the fictional characters is not necessarily the opinion of the author.

  All in a Day's Work

  It's a slow day at the Redneck Detective Agency. I've done all the boring stuff, and me and my receptionist, LaMercy, are sitting around just chewing the fat.

  My typical day at work is, in some ways, not much different from that of most P.I.'s.

  I take phone calls, answer my emails, pay bills, count the pennies, do background checks on the Internet—although mine may be a little different because I learned to hack at an early age and it would be a shame to let any talent like that go to waste.

  I also do surveillance, usually at night; handle process serving—which is not my most favorite task and mostly I avoid it—interview people, and write reports.

  Those are all the lame things I have to do. Boring, but necessary.

  And now I'm done for the day and it's only nine-forty-nine in the morning.

  LaMercy, who has skin the color of coffee, and big Afro hair, is sitting at her desk in the front reception area of the office building. She's wearing a white, sleeveless, button-down blouse with a gray skirt, and red sling-back high heels. She always dresses fancy like that. I've told her she doesn't have to, but she says Mr. Pervis—Uncle Pervis to me—would expect it of her.

  Uncle Pervis is kind of her boss, so maybe she's right. He owns the building, an old house he converted to make it work as a real estate office. My first job after I left high school and got my real estate license was here. It worked out well, until the recession hit and someone flipped off the real estate buyer switch.

  Those were tough times. I mean, it took a lot for me, Twila Taunton to leave my home town, Quisby Alabama, and go work in Yankee territory. I never would have done it if it wasn't for my BFF Jane. Her married boyfriend ran a business that had an opening for someone who was computer savvy, and thanks to my Uncle Ray, I have spent a lot of time working on computers and learning about them. Don't ever call me a 'geek' though, 'cause that's a sure fire way to get your ass kicked.

  The only good thing about living in Yankee territory was that I met Harland O'Connor, the sexiest man in the world. You might not believe me, about him being that hot, but when you meet him your will. That's a long story, too, but basically, I am never getting married because of Jimmie-Ray. He was my childhood sweetheart (puke), and he dumped me on my wedding day.

  I guess there was one other good thing that came out of living in Boston. I found out how great I am at being a P.I.—that's private investigator if you didn't know.

  Now, three years later, the real estate business still sucks, but I've been making a pretty good living as a P.I. and the best thing is that I was able to come home. And man, did I miss it while I was away. I was so happy to get back that I climbed off my bike and kissed the ground, right there at Pops' house. I think Harland thought I was crazy. Or maybe he knows that already.

  When I got back, Uncle Pervis took on a bunch of rental homes, and said I could run my P.I. business from here as long as I also kept my hand in the real estate business. That's when we got LaMercy. Her husband, Robert, saw the 'Help Wanted' sign in the window.

  She handles the rental business. It's a job that comes with a shitload of complaints.

  With that in mind, I say, "What's happened to Mike Clancy? You haven't bitched about him recently."

  LaMercy's mouth turns up at the corners. "Mike hasn't given me much trouble since the time his septic system went out and he was bagging on about how there was poop bubbling into his bathtub."

  I grin. "Yeah. I'll never forget the look in his face when I asked him if he wanted me to

  ride my bike over and suck out his septic system with a straw. I thought he was gonna barf."

  LaMercy bursts out laughing.

  I stretch and rub Scratch's ears. He gives a little moan and his legs twitch, but he doesn't move from his place beside me on the sofa that's meant for customers to sit on when they have to wait.

  Scratch is my dog. He was a stray. He scratched on my door one night during a thunderstorm. When I let him in, he jumped into my bed and burrowed under the blankets; wet, terrified, and covered in sand.

  I look down at my jeans and realize these are the pair that have a grease stain from my Harley on the leg. I rub it, even though I know it won't do any good. I washed them, but that spot wouldn't come out. My boots could do with some polish, too. I crane my neck to check my tank top. It's the yellow one and it's a little stretched, but it looks clean enough.

  We hear Aunt Essie's Harley roaring up the street and skidding to a halt in our parking lot. She's actually my great aunt. She's been part of my life ever since she showed up at the Greyhound bus station in Boston, carrying her miniature pot-bellied pig in a carpetbag, and told me she had come to live with me.

  I thought my life was over, but when my mama was murdered, Aunt Essie moved to Quisby to take care of Pops. She still lives with him, and now she thinks I need protection, and she appointed herself to the job. She scares me more than anyone else when she hauls her big old revolver out of her handbag and waves it around.

  We hear her shuffling up the steps and across the porch. "What's up?" she says, while moving her gaze from LaMercy to me and back. "Is Gasser steaming the place up again?"

  I grin. "I don't know. I haven't risked going that way." I chin-cock the hallway that leads to the back office.

  Aunt Essie is still staring at me.

  "It's a quiet day," I say. "I can't do anything more until Gasser is done going through that computer."

  Aunt Essie drops her enormous handbag on the floor and flops onto the other sofa. Scratch lifts his head and wags his tail, sighs, and goes back to sleep.

  "That boy been out with the lady cop again?" Aunt Essie says, flicking her gaze toward the back office.

  I look at LaMercy and she looks at me and we burst out laughing. We can't stop, and after a while I gasp, "You're gonna make me pee in my pants."

  Aunt Essie snorts and says, "You should be in better control of yourself. I don't know why what I just said is so funny, anyhow."

  "Gasser is actually terrified of her—of Mad Maddie, because she just wants to jump his bones all the time." I burst out laughing again. "Anyhow, you're a fine one to talk about control," I manage to gasp. "What about the time you peed all over me at Cyder Hill?"

  Aunt Essie raises her voice. "That was your fault. And Tanner's. He should know better than to sneak up on someone in the middle of the night at a haunted house. And you shouldn't have pulled me on top of you,"

  "I wish I'd seen that," LaMercy chuckles.

  "It wasn't pretty," Aunt Essie says. "And it wasn't no fun being locked in that wine cellar neither. It was dark. The wine was good though. It might have been a little easier if Twila and Tanner hadn't been so hell bent on fornicatin'."

  "Hey," I say. "It could have been our last day on this earth. I can think of worse things to do with my final hours. Besides, we didn't do it."

  "You would have if
things hadn't changed." She sniffs and throws an accusing look at me.

  LaMercy changes the subject. "Sometimes I wish I could be a fly on the wall when you go out on those crazy adventures."

  "Careful what you wish for," I say. "I just might have an assignment for you." This is true. I'm gonna need her to go Goth, but I have to find a way to tell her so she can't refuse.

  "Oh no. Not me. You can leave me out of it. I'm not an adrenalin junkie like you." She holds up her hands, palms toward me as if to fend me off.

  "Adrenalin junkie. Is that good or bad?"

  "Depends," says Aunt Essie. "It all depends on how you get the adrenalin rush." She pulls off her Coke bottle glasses and rubs them on her green flowery top.

  "And it also depends on what kind of person you are," LaMercy says. "Robert told me about how when he dug up that skeleton, you just jumped into the hole with it and cool as anything took that bracelet with the code on it off the wrist bones." LaMercy shudders. "I don't do no dead people or ghosts or nothing like that."

  "He was buried there for twenty five years," I say. "His skeleton was just a bunch of dried up old bones. When I was up north I once broke into a funeral parlor and took pictures of a dead body. Now that was creepy. I don't think I got an adrenalin rush from it. I just wanted to get away as quickly as I could. The adrenalin rush came when we locked up and stepped outside. I mean, this was at a funeral parlor on a real dark that night, and it was