Tara Holloway 03 - Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray by Diane Kelly

ignore my gut.
    On the other hand, a gut was just that. A gut. A feeling, an emotion. Logic and reason had to be taken into consideration, too. Sure, the boy and the pastor shared similar coloring, but there were lots of blue-eyed blonds in the world, right? Heck, for all we knew Noah Fischer was sterile. He and his wife had been married for ten years but had no children. Still, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say their childless state was by choice. Marissa’ s choice. She’d seemed almost repulsed by the children who’d passed through their receiving line. Her body language had belied the pleasant smile plastered on her face.
    If the boy was Fischer’s son, though, tax problems would be the least of the pastor’s worries. The shit would hit the fan if word got out that Noah Fischer had had an affair with a member of the church and fathered an illegitimate child. Thou shalt not commit adultery was a black-and-white rule with no wiggle room. The guy would lose his ministry, his home, and his reputation, everything he’d worked so hard to build.
    Given the potential consequences, would Fischer take such a risk? Was he that stupid? That ballsy? Heck, that horny?
    I had a hard time believing he’d commit adultery. Then again, men with just as much if not more to lose had succumbed to this particular sin. Jim Bakker of the PTL television ministries was caught in an affair with the church secretary. The Reverend Jimmy Swaggart later suffered a fall from grace, admitting, among other things, to a sexual encounter with a prostitute in New Orleans. Bill Clinton’s Oval Office blow job was no secret and, heck, Arnold Schwarzenegger had kept his love child under wraps for years while serving as governor of California.
    Odd that infidelity seemed to be an almost entirely male-dominated field. Of course for all I knew Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a prowling cougar, boinking one of her interns at the U.S. Supreme Court, or maybe doing the nasty with fellow justice David Souter in his chambers. Still, I had my doubts. By and large, women were smarter than that.
    Nick and I continued on through the oppressive midday heat to his truck. He opened his door and hung his suit jacket from the peg above the window. “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.”
    Rode hard and put up wet. I really wished he wouldn’t talk like that. It made a girl’s mind go places it shouldn’t.
    We climbed into Nick’s truck, rolling down the windows to let out the hot air that had accumulated inside. After a minute or two, the air conditioner caught up and we rolled up the windows.
    “Let’s check out the parsonage,” I suggested.
    Nick backed out of the spot and drove around the church to the curving, tree-lined driveway that led to Pastor Fischer’s residence. After making our way down the long drive, we pulled up to a roundabout encircling a sizable fountain. Water spouted from the mouth of a large concrete fish in the center of the fountain. Though the driveway continued on from there to the house, a locked iron gate prevented us from going further. Too bad we didn’t have the code for the security keypad.
    The house sat a hundred yards beyond the gate, though “house” hardly seemed an appropriate term. “Mansion” was more like it. The place was a beautiful two-story plantation-style home, white wood with light blue shutters, a wide porch, and six oversized columns. Large terra-cotta planters sat on each of the brick steps leading up to the porch, all of them filled with colorful pink and blue hydrangeas. The grounds were well maintained, with vibrant flower beds of blue irises and white impatiens, as well as nicely shaped ornamental trees. Timeless, sprawling live oaks provided an abundance of shade.
    I wanted to see more, partly out of professional curiosity, partly because real estate is like crack to women. “Let’s park and take a look around.”
    “Anything you say, boss.” Nick circled to the other side of the fountain