Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure Read online

  When my boss found out I’d fired my gun, she’d kick my ass. But what can I say? Some people just need shooting.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Case of My Own

  Viola, the longtime secretary for Criminal Investigations, shook her gray curls and reached across her cheap metal desk to take the form from me. She glanced at the paper, her brow furrowing when she noted the caption. “A firearm discharge?”

  “Sorry. Believe me, I hate paperwork as much as you do.”

  Viola shot me a skeptical look over the top of her bifocals.

  Treasury Department procedures require special agents to file a report any time they discharge a firearm. My superiors would have to investigate the incident, make sure the shooting was justified. I wasn’t looking forward to my interrogation. There was no telling how things would turn out when the director of field operations and internal affairs reviewed the facts. My instinctive reactions, decisions made in the heat of the moment and driven by fear and adrenaline, would be examined under a microscope, second-guessed, analyzed to death. Hell, the nightly news ran stories all the time about cops raked over the coals for using their Tasers or shooting criminals who’d resisted arrest or pulled a weapon. Some of the officers faced criminal charges themselves for the shootings. If their defense attorneys could whip out a loaded handgun and aim it at the jurors, no doubt fewer cops would be indicted. Maybe I should bring a box cutter to my hearing, rush at the men who’d decide my fate, give them a small taste of what I’d just gone through. Then again, I’d never get a box cutter through building security. Only officially issued weapons were allowed inside.

  Viola stamped the form with today’s date, added it to a stack of documents to be copied and routed, and turned her eyes back on me. “So? What happened?”

  Eddie perched on the edge of Viola’s desk, his long legs stretching all the way to the floor. He turned to Viola. “The dude who owned the store came at her with a box cutter. Tara had no choice but to shoot.”

  This time Viola shot Eddie her skeptical look.

  “It’s true.” I removed my raid jacket and pulled back the sleeve on my blouse to show Viola the oozing two-inch gash on my forearm, a bloody souvenir from the bust. “The guy was freaked, but he walked away without a scratch.” Which was more than I could say for myself. I was both scratched and freaked. But I was trying hard to hide the latter. In my line of work, any sign of wimpiness put you on the fast track to a desk job. No way could I sit behind a desk all day. I’d ridden a desk for the past four years at a stuffy downtown accounting firm and it had just about done me in.

  Working at Martin and McGee had been excruciating. Day after day crunching numbers in a cramped cubicle surrounded by other accountants crunching numbers in their cramped cubicles, the only sound the clickety-click of dozens of drones inputting information into spreadsheets and tax forms. By the end of the day, my ass would be numb from sitting for ten hours straight. If I’d stayed at that mind-numbing, ass-numbing job a day longer, the cleaning crew would have found me dead at my desk from a self-inflicted pencil shoved through my eye.

  Viola took hold of my wrist and inspected the cut, her maternal instincts overcoming her usual I-don’t-get-paid-enough-to-put-up-with-this-crap demeanor. “You better get that looked at.”

  “I will.” I hoped I wouldn’t need a tetanus shot. I had enough holes in my arm for the moment.

  Eddie and I headed out of Viola’s office and down the hall, cutting out of work early. One bust was enough for one day. Besides, it was Friday and I had plans to attend a black-tie charity event at the Dallas Arboretum tonight. I’d need a little extra time to stop by the nail salon to have my manicure repaired.

  Eddie slung his jacket over his arm as we walked down the narrow hallway, which glowed a faint, eerie green from the shiny industrial paint and fluorescent lighting. “I loved the way you shut that guy up today.”

  “A lady like me doesn’t appreciate foul language.”

  He snickered. “Lady?”

  I shot him a shut-up glare. “You’re lucky my arm’s hurt or I’d punch you right about now.”

  Eddie eyed me intently, the humor now gone from his face. “What is it with you, girl? I’ve been a special agent for eight years and haven’t once had to fire my gun.”

  I shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.” I didn’t tell Eddie what I was really thinking. That scumbags like Battaglia didn’t take a petite woman like me seriously. If the only way I could earn respect was by drawing my gun, what future did I have in this job?

  Probably none.

  I’d come to work at the Dallas IRS office just six weeks ago after completing extensive training at the Federal Law Enforcement facility in Glynco, Georgia, where I’d earned the distinction of being the best marksman in the group of trainees. Although the hard-core agents who trained us seemed surprised to see a woman hit every paper target square in the heart, I knew I’d shine on the firing course. Having a gun nut for a father and two brothers who lived for deer season, I’d learned how to handle a gun before I was fully potty trained. Daddy’d bought me my first Daisy BB gun as a present for my third birthday. Every day I’d practice shooting empty root beer cans off the old picnic table in our backyard.

  When I was a little older, my father took me to the skeet range, where I quickly learned to hit a moving target. With a sharp eye and a fast finger, I rarely missed, though I’d limited my shots to nonliving targets. I’d never seen the sport in hunting, especially when timed feeders and deer blinds were involved, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to douse myself with animal urine to mask my scent. Chanel No. 5 was more my style, thank you very much. The only hunting I did was bargain hunting.

  Eddie and I tiptoed as we neared the open office door of our boss, Lu Lobozinski, aka “the Lobo.” We heard the Lobo speaking with Ross O’Donnell, an attorney from the Justice Department who represented the Treasury on a regular basis. We ducked and darted past, hoping we wouldn’t be noticed sneaking out early.

  “Tara!” barked Lu’s raspy, two-packs-a-day voice. “Get your butt back here.”

  So much for sneaking. I sighed and performed a quick about-face.

  Eddie followed me back down the hall, putting his thumbs in his ears and wiggling his fingers at me. “Tara’s in trouble, Tara’s in trouble.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Grow up, would ya?”

  I stuck my head in the door and eyed the pear-shaped older woman, sitting in her cushy high-back leather chair behind her expansive, paper-covered desk. Lu had been with the IRS since the late sixties and appeared to have time-traveled from that decade. Today she sported a lime-green polyester pantsuit with shiny black vinyl go-go boots. The box of hair color may have said “strawberry blond,” but the Lobo’s eight-inch beehive was really more pink than red, like a cotton-candy wig. Take forty years and forty pounds off her and she could star in an Austin Powers movie.

  When I’d interviewed for a special agent position several months ago, Lu had leaned forward across her desk, her eyes—fringed with sixties-style false eyelashes—narrowed and fixed on mine. “I didn’t get to be director of criminal investigations because I’ve got a vagina, and I didn’t sleep my way to the top.”

  “I believe you.” What man would have the balls to approach such a tough broad? Besides, the polyester pantsuits did nothing for her sex appeal.

  She’d pointed her lit cigarette at me, her smoking a blatant violation of office policy but one nobody apparently dared to challenge. “I’m director because me and my people have collected over ninety-seven million dollars in past-due taxes for this agency.”

  “Impressive.”

  She took a deep drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out through her nose. “Don’t suck up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She flicked ashes into a Styrofoam cup containing the dregs of her morning coffee. “As soon as I reach a hundred mil, I’m retiring.”

  My gaze locked on hers through the swirling smoke. “Hire me a
nd before you know it you’ll be sitting around in your bathrobe watching soap operas and sucking down bonbons.”

  She stared at me for a few seconds, her cigarette poised just inches from her lips. I didn’t look away. And I didn’t blink.

  She took another drag on her cigarette, then shot a poof of smoke out the side of her mouth. “You’re hired.”

  “Hot damn.”

  But that was then and this is now, and now I was in the Lobo’s office trying to defend myself while Eddie and Ross looked on. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there was nothing else I could do.”

  The Lobo frowned, her thin, drawn-on brows pulled together in a single line. “What the hell’re you talking about, Holloway?”

  So she didn’t know I’d fired my gun. Yet. “Um … nothing?”

  Lu held out a business card between two fingers that might be wrinkled if they weren’t so meaty. She waved it impatiently, cigarette ashes dropping onto her desk. I stepped forward and took the card from her, careful to avoid the lit cigarette. The card read “Christina Marquez, Drug Enforcement Agency.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “A rookie at the DEA. Some granny reported that an ice-cream man named Joe Cullen sold her fourteen-year-old grandson a joint right along with his Fudgsicle. You and Marquez are going to put the ice-cream man out of business and get our piece of the pie.”

  Ironically, the IRS doesn’t discriminate against dirty money, demanding its share of the profits whether earned legally or not. Since most illegal income goes unreported, the Treasury’s special agents are often pulled into other agencies’ investigations to locate and seize the government’s share of the revenue.

  Lu flicked ashes into an orange plastic ashtray. “I ran a check on Cullen. An electronics store filed a cash transaction report on him last year. He bought thirteen grand in stereo and television equipment with cash, but he’s only reported fifteen thousand in income on his tax returns for the past few years.”

  Those numbers didn’t add up. The guy definitely had some “splainin” to do.

  I turned to Ross, a squat guy in his early thirties wearing a basic brown suit, his skin pale from long hours spent in windowless courtrooms, his dark hair beginning to give way to male-pattern baldness. Ross was blessed with the unflappable demeanor of Mr. Rogers, his ability to remain calm under pressure an obvious asset in a field where constant conflict was the name of the game.

  “Do we have a search warrant?”

  Ross shook his head. “No go. Judge Trumbull said she needs more than the statement of some quote-unquote snot-nosed bed wetter before she’ll let y’all go barging into the guy’s home and ransack his panty drawer.”

  Appointed by John F. Kennedy during the heyday of the civil rights movement, Magistrate Judge Alice Trumbull had been on the bench as long as the Lobo’d been with the Treasury. The two had a long history of butting beehived heads. How a liberal judge like Trumbull had survived in the tight-assed, conservative political climate of Dallas was beyond me.

  The Lobo stubbed out her cigarette and set the ashtray aside. “You’ll need to go undercover, Tara, get some more evidence on this guy before we can proceed.”

  Eddie, who’d been eavesdropping outside the door, stepped into the Lobo’s office. “You’re cutting our baby girl loose on her own?”

  At twenty-seven I was hardly a baby, though I was the newest, youngest, and smallest special agent in the office.

  Lu leaned back in her padded chair and put her hands behind her head. “This guy’s small-time stuff, Eddie. Too pissant for any of our experienced agents to bother with.”

  But not too pissant for me, the newbie. I probably should’ve been insulted by the exchange, but I was too excited to finally have my own case to care. “Woo-hoo!” I threw my fists in the air. Big mistake. The pain in my arm kicked back in with a vengeance.

  Lu shot me her cut-the-crap look. “Give Marquez a call.”

  “Will do. See ya’, Ross.”

  I slipped the business card into my wallet and Eddie and I stepped back out into the hall.

  “I remember my first solo case,” Eddie said, holding the glass door open for me as we headed out of the building. “Busted a middle-aged mom who volunteered to serve as treasurer for the PTA at her kid’s school. Stole twenty grand before they caught on to her.”

  “Shoot, that’s low. What did she do with the money?”

  “Lotto scratch-offs. The irony is she actually won, doubled the money. The school used the extra funds for asbestos removal and a field trip to the planetarium.”

  We rounded the building, making our way into the adjacent parking lot.

  “Any big plans for the weekend?” I asked Eddie.

  “Just the usual. Soccer games and birthday parties.” Eddie and his wife, Sandra, had twin six-year-old girls who were not only demons on the soccer field but also very popular judging from the number of birthday parties they were invited to. “I’m going broke buying Barbie dolls for all those little girls.”

  “Remind me to buy stock in Toys ‘R’ Us.”

  Eddie and I reached our cars, parked side by side in our usual spots at the far end of the lot. “See ya.”

  Eddie gave me a two-finger salute and climbed into his maroon minivan, ready to return to his role as husband and father.

  I lowered the top on my Beamer, slid my sunglasses on, and left the lot. Carrie Underwood blared from my speakers as I drove to a minor emergency clinic a few blocks from the office. I parked in the back lot so my precious car wouldn’t be dinged by the doors of a lesser vehicle. Two spots down sat a gleaming blue Dodge Viper, pimped out with shiny spinner hubcaps and a personalized license plate that read DR AJAY. I walked around to the front of the building and opened the door.

  The redheaded receptionist glanced up as I came in, and had a clipboard ready for me by the time I reached the counter. Her nametag said KELSEY and her yawn said her day had been a long one. “What’s your medical issue?”

  I pulled back my sleeve for the second time to show off my battle wound.

  Kelsey’s freckled nose scrunched. “Ouch. What happened?”

  I took the clipboard from her. “I was attacked by a nut with a box cutter. Had to shoot it out of his hand.” Okay, so that last part was bragging. But not many people had my gun skills and I was proud of them.

  She looked me up and down, taking in my conservative business attire and diminutive stature, clearly dubious. “You a police officer?”

  “IRS. Special agent.” When she still looked confused, I added, “Tax cop.”

  “Oh.” She handed me a pen. “Sounds dangerous.”

  I shrugged. “Your job seems scarier to me. You could be exposed to the Ebola virus or flesh-eating bacteria.”

  “We don’t see too much of those around here. The worst thing I’ve seen was a guy who came in here with a light bulb stuck up his—”

  “Stop!” I held up a palm. “I’m getting a visual.”

  Kelsey shuddered. “You’re right. It’s too horrifying to talk about.” She gestured toward a row of chairs. “Take a seat. Dr. Maju will be with you shortly.”

  I sat in the closest chair and filled out the forms. I checked the boxes to indicate no, I’d never suffered from asthma, heart palpitations, hemorrhoids, or an STD, and no, I wasn’t pregnant. Can’t get pregnant when you’re not getting any.

  Sigh.

  When I’d completed the forms, I returned to the counter. Dr. Ajay Maju walked up behind Kelsey and placed a file on her desk. Dr. Maju was Indian, on the short side, with shaggy-stylish shiny black hair and thick brows. His white lab coat hung open to reveal fashionably torn blue jeans and a green Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt. Dr. Maju appeared to be only a year or two out of medical school, not much older than me. But hopefully he’d be competent enough to handle my minor medical problem. He was attractive in an oddly boyish, slightly exotic kind of way.

  “You were slashed with a box cutter?” Despite his all-American attire, his staccato words
were tinged with a Hindi accent. The guy was a poster child for culture clash.

  “Yep.” I stuck out my arm.

  Dr. Maju held my wrist and took a quick peek, then waved for me to follow him.

  “Here’s Ms. Holloway’s file.” Kelsey handed the doctor a thin manila folder as he left the reception area.

  Once we were in the examination room, I hopped onto the table, the stiff white paper crinkling under me. The doctor set my file on the counter. He grabbed a stethoscope and a blood pressure monitor from a drawer and checked my pulse and blood pressure. When he was done, he pulled a tiny black flashlight out of the pocket of his lab coat and shined it in my right eye.

  I tried not to blink. “What’s that for?”

  “Mostly just to irritate my patients.” He shined the light in my other eye and called for a nurse.

  The doc cleaned my wound with antiseptic, the acrid smell burning my nostrils. Once the blood was gone, he inspected the cut more closely. “You’re going to need a few stitches.”

  Shoot. “Will I need a tetanus shot, too?”

  Dr. Maju consulted my computer file. “No. You are good for another three years.”

  Thank heaven for small favors.

  I turned my head away and contemplated the illustrated breast exam poster on the side wall, my eyes focused on the cartoon nipple while Dr. Maju injected a local anesthetic, sewed me up, then affixed a square bandage over the wound. When he finished, he turned my inner arm upward, thumped on a vein with his index finger, and drew some blood. He handed his nurse the vial. “Full workup.” He pressed a cotton ball to the inside of my arm for a couple seconds, fixing it in place with a piece of gauze tape. “In six months we’ll need to run the blood tests again.”