Not so Sexy Wanda

I'd been following Frank Barnes for the last three days trying to serve him with a summons to appear in court. He knew it was coming and had done everything he could think of to keep me from getting close enough. See, the law says I have to personally hand him the summons and explain what it was. I couldn't just slip it under his door or anything like that. I understood why he was doing it, but this was the last straw.

I knew where the son of a bitch lived because the first day I'd followed him home from work. He drove into the attached garage of the house and closed the door.

I waited about half an hour to give him time to get inside, change clothes and take a dump, then walked up and knocked on the door. After half an hour of knocking, he still hadn't answered, so I gave up and left.

I was back there the next morning at five so I could follow him again. About seven thirty, the garage door opened and he barked the tires backing out onto the street. He barked them again when he drove off. I followed him but he gave me the slip at the burger place he turned into.

I followed him into the parking lot of the burger place and watched him pull into the drive-up lane. I pulled into a spot to wait for him to come back out and turn onto the street again.

He was two cars away from the sign where you say what you want and then have to repeat it because what the fucking high-school kid inside says comes out of the speaker sounding like "hiss hiss tha crackle ger crackle hiss n crackle ies hiss crackle crackle hiss hiss shake", so you have to say it all over and then listen to the same fucking thing again. Finally you just give up and drive around and park so you can go inside and order.

I couldn't see the drive-up window from where I was parked because that big sign was in the way, but I saw Frank drive in front of it. Fifteen minutes later, he still hadn't come back around to the street so I backed out of my space and drove around beside the drive-up window. The bastard wasn't there. There was a side street with an exit from the parking lot and he'd taken that. I drove to where he worked and found his car, but he was already inside.

You might wonder why I didn't just stand in front of his garage door to stop him, and there are some reasons for that. I'm a PI, not a cop. A cop could do that. Hell, a cop could stand there all goddammed day if he wanted as long as he had a reason to be there. I couldn't. If I'd have done that, I'd have been trespassing.

I'm also on the shorter side of fifty, and I don't run worth a shit anymore. If he came busting out of that garage like he had, he'd run me down before I could get my ass out of the way. I try to avoid shit like that every chance I get.

That was a Friday and on Saturday I did the same thing, except I didn't try to hide the fact I was following him. I stayed right on his fucking ass until he turned into the parking lot of the mall. I pulled into a space three cars down and got out of my car so I could catch the asshole before he went inside.

At first, I thought somehow I'd lost him and picked up the same make, model, and color car by mistake and followed it. I thought that because a woman got out and walked across the parking lot.

My second thought was she was one butt-ugly woman. She had no tits to speak of and her ass didn't fill out her jeans like women like to do anymore. Her ass looked like a boy's ass in jeans that were too big. I only caught a glimpse of her face, but if I'd have put her picture in my pantry, the goddamned mouse that's been eating my fucking corn puffs would have had a heart attack and died.

I kept watching, and quickly realized I had the right car and this was no woman. This was Frank dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and wearing a long, brown wig.

Now, I've tailed a lot of people, but I'd never seen anything like this. Men are usually pretty easy because they don't deviate much from their normal appearance and patterns. They wear their hair the same way for years, and either wear a suit and tie or pants and a shirt, and a guy with more than three pairs of shoes is probably really in touch with his feminine side.

They stop at the same gas station once a week and they stop off at the same bar every Friday night after work. I just have to figure out where they're going to be and when, then wait there until they show up.

Women can be a bitch to catch because a woman can and will change her appearance as often as she changes her panties. They dye their hair, bleach their hair, cut off their hair, and wear wigs so they can have different colors, different styles, and longer or shorter hair. Depending on the bra, the same woman can look flat chested one day and be sporting jugs the size of softballs the next. They use makeup to change their eyes and mouth, and body shapers to push the not so slim places into wherever there's room for the flab to fit.

They call this "smoothing". I call it fucking bait and switch, like when they offer you a red hot sportscar on TV but when you get to the lot, they don't have any left and try to sell you some goddamned little econobox that looks like an overgrown blue turd and feels like driving a kid's electric car.

You take one of these women out for dinner and drop about a hundred to get her in the mood, and then when you undress her...well, let's just say it's a big let down in a lot of ways. Doesn't do much for the old ramrod either.

The other thing women do is dive into their holiest of holy places, the ladies crapper, and I've had them stay in there for hours if they've figured out I'm trying to catch them. Oh, they'll come crack the door to see if I'm still there, but they'll duck back inside if they see me. I know they'll come out eventually because they have to fucking eat sometime, but I usually give up and try another day.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of women do shit like that, but I've never had one dress up like a man. Well, there was this one broad named Harriet Davidson, but she was a fucking dike so she called herself Harry and dressed like a man all the time anyway. She did try to trick me one day by wearing a dress. It was the combat boots that gave her away.

I followed Frank into the mall thinking I could catch him in one of the courtyards. That's a good place to hand somebody a subpoena or a summons and tell them they've been duly served. Most people won't try to punch me in the face, kick me in the nuts, or swing a purse at me if they're in the mall.

When I got inside the mall I spotted Frank, and he was headed for the ladies restroom.

Now, I know there are men who think they should have been born with tits and a snatch, and I know there are women who think they should have been born with a cock and balls. They aren't new. Back in the day, we called them "trannies". In today's world that would be considered an insult. The correct word today is "transgender" or "transexual".

As far as I'm concerned, they can call themselves whatever they want. I don't understand it, but if that's how they want to roll, more power to them. I know some people who don't understand why I'm the way I am either. Well...it's a couple more than some actually.

I knew Frank wasn't a tranny...er...a transgender person. I'd watched him fuck his girlfriend that first night I followed him. She must have worked at the same place he did, because she came out of the building with him and got in his car. They made a stop in a park on their way to her house.

I guess they were fucking anyway. It sure looked like they were. All I could see through my binoculars was what I could see through the rear window of Frank's car. I could see his head propped against the right side rear door, and her big tits flopping up and down while she rode his cock. Frank liked those big tits. He kept grabbing her nipples and pulling them up.

Her tits were huge, but then, she was pretty huge all over. Before you jump down my throat, I don't have anything against "BBW's". That's what they like to be called now. From what I've seen, a lot of BBW's are a lot bigger than they are beautiful, but that's OK with me. I know a couple of women who fit into that category, and they're nice people. I wouldn't want to fuck either one, not even on a bet. I mean, I like a woman with some meat on her bones, but not that much meat. It might be cool to see how their big tits feel though, at least once.

Anyway, Frank went into the ladies room and I couldn't follow him. I waited around for a while to see if there were any screams or if any women came running out half dressed, but that didn't happen. Apparently Frank had found a stall and decided to sit there for the duration. It was Wednesday night and I'd been following him for three days. I was tired of fucking with his ass, so I gave up and went home.

It was about five then, so I pulled a frozen pizza out of my fridge and tossed it into the microwave, then poured myself two fingers of Glenfiddich in my jelly jar, lit a cigarette, and sat down at my desk to look at the other subpoenas and summons I had to serve.

I was doing that when my front door opened and a woman walked in.

My first impression was she was timid as a mouse. She crept through the door, turned around and closed it as quietly as she could. She turned then and took little itty-bitty steps until she was standing in front of my desk.

My second impression was she was in no danger of winning any beauty contests. She wasn't ugly and she wasn't gorgeous. She was just somewhere in between like about ninety-nine percent of all the women in the world.

If she'd have been standing up straight and had worn something that fit better than her cotton blouse, I might have been able to tell if she had tits or not, but I couldn't. She kept her shoulders rolled forward and she was kind of hunched over. I couldn't tell anything about her ass either, because her pants looked about two sizes too big.

The only thing about her that did look pretty good was her long, dark-brown hair, but I'm a sucker for long brown hair anyway.

I pointed to the chair in front of my desk and when she sat down, I asked how I could help her.

She did some hand wringing and frowning, and then looked up at me.

"I think my sister is trying to steal my boyfriend. I went to the police station, but they told me that isn't a crime and unless one of them committed a crime they couldn't do anything. The detective who talked to me told me you might be able to help me."

That had to be Roger Ames. Roger and I go way back to the time when he was a rookie county sheriff's deputy and I was just starting out.

I'd been on my own for a year when I started investigating a guy who's wife thought he was stepping out on her. The guy worked second shift in one of the factories in town and she said he used to get home about midnight. The last year, he'd been coming home as late as four in the morning, and claimed he was working overtime. She said they did seem to have some extra money, but she'd found a few long, blonde hairs on one of his shirts. The wife's hair was red.

I followed the guy to work to make sure that's where he was really going, and he was. I went back and parked across from the factory parking lot that night and when he drove out the gate at eleven thirty five, followed him to a farm out over the county line to the ass end of nowhere. I mean, this place was so far out in the sticks, the chickens fucked the hoot owls.

I'd stayed about half a mile behind him, and when he made the turn onto the county road that went past the farm, I shut off my headlights. There was a full moon that night, so it was easy to follow the road. I got to the intersection and made the turn, then stopped in front of the farm.

I didn't see any lights on at the farmhouse so I wondered what the hell he was doing out there so late at night. He hadn't done anything to hide his being there, like turning off his headlights or anything like he would have if he was going to rob the house. He didn't even go to the house. He just drove in the drive, parked beside the barn, and walked up to one of the doors.

He messed around with that door for a while, then opened it and went inside. A few second later, I saw light coming out of the cracks around the door. I couldn't figure that out at all, but I couldn't stick around to find out. There were headlights coming down the road in my direction.

I drove on down the road and when I came to another intersection, turned and then turned my lights back on. When I looked back, I saw at least four more cars on the road to that farm.

The next morning, I dressed up in a suit and tie and drove out to the place to look around in daylight. What I'd planned to do was drive up to the farmhouse, take the briefcase out of my back seat, and pose as a traveling salesman. They were pretty common back then and sold everything the housewife could ever need, like brushes and cleaners and laundry soap. It was a convenient way for people to get what they needed without having to make a trip to a town big enough to find the stuff in a store, just like the Sears catalogue. I was selling fertilizer so I didn't have to have anything in my case except some pictures of healthy corn and a few official-looking order forms.

Knocking on the door didn't raise anybody, so I walked out to the barn. I didn't see any cars, trucks, or tractors on the way, and when I got to the barn, things started to smell and it wasn't cow shit. It was the heavy lock on one of the doors and the fact the rest seemed to be nailed shut. That told me whatever was going on in that barn after midnight probably wasn't a bunch of country guys and gals having a barn dance.

Across the road was a stand of trees with a lane that ran back inside them. I drove up that lane until it ended at another house that had basically collapsed on itself. It wasn't visible from the road, but when I walked out through the trees, I found a spot where I could hide but still look across the road and see the farmhouse and barn. That evening just before dark, I parked behind the trees and carried my binoculars, camera, a camp stool, and a jug of water out to my spot.

About the same time as the night before, I saw the guy drive into the barn lot and park beside the barn. Just like the night before, he opened the barn door with the lock and turned on the lights. About five to twelve another three cars drove in and parked beside his. I couldn't see the people very well until they opened the door to go inside but when they did, I started taking pictures.

One was a stacked blonde, the second was a not quite so well-stacked brunette, and the third was a guy with a barrel chest who looked like he could benchpress my car. A few minutes later, the barn lot started to fill up with cars.

I wasn't going to be able to see much more unless I went inside, but when I watched the other guys going in, the gorilla stopped each one until they handed him something. Since I couldn't see what that something was, if I'd tried to do the same thing, I'd fumble around and probably get my ass kicked in the process. I gathered everything up, went back to my car, and drove back to the road with my lights off. I didn't turn them back on until I was headed back to town.

I didn't know what was going on in that barn, not for sure, but I had a pretty good idea. That county in Tennessee was a "dry" county at the time. That means you couldn't buy alcohol of any type anywhere in the county except rubbing alcohol. That was about the only reason for the locked barn and the fact nobody was at that farm until a little before midnight. It was possible there was some gambling going on, but there were too many cars there for that to have been happening.

I have a standing rule that if I run into anything illegal, I hand everything over to the police. The next morning I drove out to the sheriff's office in the county where the farm was located and when I walked inside, Roger was at a desk. I explained who I was and what I thought was going on, and gave him the three rolls of film I'd taken the night before. He was polite, but I thought he was just doing that to humor me. He said he'd have the film developed and if it looked like there was something there, he'd let me know.

Well, there was something there. After they got the film developed, they saw what I'd seen, a lot of people going to a barn too late at night to have been looking at cows. They were also able to make out the license plate on one of the cars, and brought that guy in for questioning. Of course, at first, he didn't know shit about anything, but when they showed him the picture of his car, he started talking.

It made the front page of the Nashville papers. My client's husband was a confirmed capitalist. He'd rented the farmhouse and barn and turned the barn into a bar. On Saturdays, he'd tell his wife he had to work overtime, and then fill his pickup with beer and liquor he bought in Nashville. The blonde and the redhead were his bartenders, and the barrel-chested guy was the bouncer. When Roger and the other deputies raided the place, they hauled in thirty thirsty county residents, including the mayor of the nearest town and half the local school board.

Well, after that, Roger and I stayed in touch. He'd give me what information he legally could, and I'd give him anything I thought was fishy. He changed jobs a few years later and now he's a senior detective in Nashville.

Anyway, the dinger on my microwave dinged right after she finished telling me her problem. I couldn't very well just get up and go get my pizza, so I asked her name and why she thought that was happening. She looked at her lap, wrung her hands some more, and then started to tell me.

"I'm Wanda, Wanda Murphy. Well, I thought Gerald and I were doing fine. We'd go out to eat on Saturday nights and then go to a movie or something. After that, we'd come back to my apartment and...well, you know."

"My sister knew about Gerald and she met him once. She seemed to like him too. That was a little odd, I thought, because Gracie and I aren't alike at all. She's two years younger than I am, and when she was eighteen, she went boy crazy. The things she told me she did with the boys she dated...well, I can't tell you what those things were. I'd be embarrassed to tears if I did that.

"She got worse once she got out of high school. Mom wouldn't let her wear the clothes she wanted to while she lived at home, but once Gracie got a job and moved into an apartment, well, sometimes she looked like one of those women you see on the corner in parts of town like this."

Wanda looked up then.

"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have said that about where you work."

I smiled.

"No need for an apology. I live here too. I know what you're saying and it's true."

Wanda fidgeted with her hands again.

"Well, about two months ago, Gracie came over one Saturday night to visit, and she was wearing little shorts that didn't even cover up her bottom, and her top... well, Mom would have grounded her for a month if she'd worn anything like that at home. She wasn't even wearing a bra under it either and she's too big to not wear one. She was showing so much I was embarrassed."

"Gerald and I didn't get to do anything that night because Gracie was there. She wouldn't leave until I said I had to go to bed. She did then, but not before she gave Gerald a hug and said she hoped we had fun.

"Once she was gone, Gerald said he'd better leave too because he had to go visit his mother on Sunday. When I walked to the door with him, Gracie's car was still out on the street. She didn't drive away until Gerald backed out of my drive.

"Since then, Gerald keeps making excuses for why we can't go out on Saturday, and if I call him on those Saturdays, he doesn't answer so I think he's not at home. I haven't seen Gracie since that night either, and if I call her, she always say's she's busy doing something and doesn't have time to talk. I think she's with Gerald and that's why."