Here’s the conclusion of the second Detective Daddy story, Detective Daddy and the Man with the Golden Bum.

In case you missed it:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

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Part Five of Five

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Case File 002: The Man with the Golden Bum

9/4/14

I had just gotten home from work on Thursday when my phone buzzed. Tara was on her knees in front of me, resting her head on my leg, as I checked the message. “It’s from Keisha.”

“What did she say?” Tara knew who Keisha was; I’d mentioned her name before.

I scrolled through the message, and I knew Tara could see something was bothering me because she got up off the floor and sat next to me on the couch. She tried to look at my phone but I shook my head. “Just a minute, sweetheart. Please.”

The curiosity was coming off her in waves, mixed with her frustration that I wasn’t showing her what I was reading. We didn’t keep secrets from each other, but if Keisha was right, we’d have to keep this one from everybody else.

Finally I clicked off my phone and set it on the table. “We need to drop this.”

She cocked her head a little, one eyebrow going up. “Why?”

“First you have to promise me that this goes nowhere.”

“Okay, I promise.”

But I shook my head. “Not just what you read in Keisha’s e-mail. I mean, we delete the files off our cloud drive, and we stop talking about it on Kinkster, and we stop looking into it.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Daddy, what is it? Is he a criminal?”

“No, sweetheart. He’s not that.” Then I passed the phone to Tara.

It only took her a few seconds to read the message. Without questioning it at all, she tapped the delete button — not a swipe to archive, but an actual deletion. I was glad that the message was only stored on my e-mail servers, instead of something like Gmail, where nothing is ever truly gone; when something was deleted off my server, it was gone forever. “Can you do the rest? I don’t want to miss anything.”

“Of course.” I took the phone from her hand and opened the cloud drive. A minute later everything we had on the Man with the Golden Bum was gone. “I don’t think we’ll ever see him again,” I said, “but if we do, can you act as if you don’t know any of this?”

“I think so.” Her face was serious; I’m sure mine was too. “I’m glad it was so hard to figure out. I feel bad for him.”

“If that actually is him.” I set my phone on the table again and then put my arm around Tara’s shoulders. She was wearing a lavender tank-top today; her skin was cool and soft under mine. She rested her head against my chest. “Keisha wasn’t sure–“

“It doesn’t matter. If he really was in the witness protection program, we shouldn’t take any chances. He deserves a chance at a real life.” Her right arm went across my stomach and she hugged me as best she could in this position. “He’s got to know about all the posts and stuff.”

“He probably does. I’m sure the next time he’s out in public he won’t wear the golden pants again, and I’m sure he’ll be more careful in the future. If we could figure out even this much…”

I felt Tara nod against my chest. “Can we just forget about it? I feel…” Her shoulders tensed. “I feel kind of yucky. Like I uncovered a big, dirty secret.”

“You didn’t, sweetheart. We stopped before we went too far, and if Keisha knew his name, at least she didn’t know why we wanted it, and she didn’t tell it to us.” I kissed her hair. “It’s going to be okay. Promise.” With my left hand I tilted her head up. Her face was so serious, and I couldn’t help but kiss the tip of her nose. She gave me the tiniest smile, and that, at least, was a start. “How about you get dressed and we go out for Mexican; we can forget that this ever happened, and I can get enchiladas.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She moved her right hand up to cup my cheek and kissed me. “I love you. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“I love you.”

I opened Kinkster and gave my news feed a quick scroll-through; there were still a few people posting about the Man with the Golden Bum, but the social networking zeitgeist changes quickly. Two new journal entries about implied versus explicit consent were about to cause a firestorm — these particular authors always seemed to take the opposite side of any argument, and their writing invariably led to half the site taking sides with one or the other while the other half either tried to expound upon it in their own way or ignore it while looking for pictures of butts to heart.

I was part of that last bit, myself. Not that I had anything to complain about as far as that went — Tara’s backside was wonderful — but I’ve always appreciated butts. I hearted a few, and I had enough friends on the site that there would be a ripple. Maybe it would help push the Man with the Golden Bum even further down in people’s minds, and maybe it wouldn’t, but it made me feel better.

Tara came down the stairs wearing sandals, black shorts that showed off her legs, and a t-shirt with a cartoon elephant on it. “Ready, Daddy?”

I shut off my phone and got up from the couch. “Ready, sweetheart.” But as she went toward the foyer I caught her by the shoulder, spun her around, and kissed her hard enough that I felt her knees go weak and I had to put my arms around her waist for support even as she put one hand on my shoulder and the other on the back of my neck.

After the kiss, her green eyes were soft. “What was that for, Daddy?”

I smiled. “Because I love you. Do I need any other reason?”

Tara shook her head. “Never.”

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So, as you can see, the story sort of falls flat at the end. I would need to do some serious revision to make it better, and at this point I just don’t have it in me to work on a story this old. I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

Next week: the third Detective Daddy story, and it’s a big one!