by Kelly, Diane
She snorted. “No need for all this drama. You want to take a field trip to my house, let’s do it right now.”
I extended an arm toward her door. “After you.”
The house she’d built with my business cards toppled over as she stood and left her booth. She stepped across the hall, opened the door to the glass-enclosed room where her two tech guys were sitting, and gestured for them to remove their headphones. Both slid one side off, leaving the other ear covered.
Once they could hear, Flo said, “I’m leaving the station for a bit. You two keep things up and running.”
Both young men were apparently used to silently communicating with Flo so as not to be overheard on her show. Each of them gave a quiet thumbs-up in response.
I followed Flo out to the parking lot, where she climbed into a plain white Chevy Impala that, like her Cadillac, bore a license plate frame with the Ledbetter Cadillac motto. Apparently the Impala was the dealership’s loaner car.
I followed Flo out of the lot and onto the surface streets. Being the uncooperative pain in the ass that she was, she took advantage of the drive to stop by a dry cleaner to drop off a couple of blouses, fill her tank up with gas, and make a run through a burger joint drive-thru to pick up lunch. Finally, we turned onto her street. This time, rather than parking at the curb, I pulled into her driveway. My G-ride had a minor oil leak. Why not repay Flo’s hospitality by leaving a greasy stain in her driveway?
Carrying her soft drink and bag of food, Flo headed to her front door. I followed on her heels as she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Whoa.
The outside of the house was grand, but the inside was even more opulent. My eyes scanned the space, taking it all in. A chandelier sporting more crystals than a meth dealer hung in the foyer. A wide, circular staircase swept upward to the second floor. Thick Persian rugs graced the marble floors in the living and dining rooms flanking the foyer, while oversized antique china cabinets and bookcases soared toward the twelve-foot ceilings. Rather than sporting the same color throughout the house, the walls were painted in varying shades of red, ranging from a light rose in the entryway to a deeper burgundy in the adjacent rooms.
Flo carried her food with her, the scent of onions and pickles and French fries trailing the woman as she led me up the staircase. She opened a French door and entered a nicely appointed study with hardwood floors, heavy cherrywood furniture, and walls the color of merlot. She dropped her bag of food on an end table but carried her drink with her. “Safe’s in here,” she said, walking over to a narrow closet and pulling the slatted door open.
At the bottom of the space was a large black safe with a combination lock. She crouched down and took a noisy sip of her drink—sluuuurp!—while twirling the combination lock with the fingertips of her right hand. Flo stopped the lock and, with a click, it released. She swung the door open, stood, and stepped back, jerking the straw up and down inside the plastic lid. Squeaky-squeak. “Have at it, Miss Holiday. I’ll just take a seat here and keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t pocket any of my funds.” With that, she flopped backward into an upholstered armchair, retrieved her bag of food from the table, and shoved her hand inside. Crinkle-crinkle.
Her insinuation that I might steal from her incensed me so bad it was a wonder my hair didn’t explode in flame. Keep cool, Tara. Don’t let this bitch get to you. I knelt down and peered into the safe. Inside sat stack after stack of bills held together by red rubber bands. Most of the bills appeared to be twenties, but there were also stacks of tens, fives, and ones.
It took several trips for me to carry the stacks over to the desk. Once I finished, I spent the next twenty minutes counting out the bills, attaching a sticky note to the top of each pile to denote the total. Flo continued to tug on her straw throughout my count. Squeak-squeak. Squeak-squeak. She also attempted to derail my mental counting by calling out random numbers. “Twenty-three!”
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty—
“Sixty-five!” she hollered with a laugh.
Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—
“Ninety-seven!”
Ninety-eight, ninety-nine—
Shit. I grabbed a tissue from the box on the desk, tore two strips from it, and shoved them in my ears to drown her out.
One, two, three …
Once the bills were sorted and counted, I pulled out my pocket calculator to add up the total and pulled the makeshift plugs from my ears. “Twelve thousand three hundred eighty-nine dollars.”
“If you say so.” She slurped the last of her drink. Sluuuurp. Obviously her mother hadn’t sent her to Miss Cecily’s Charm School like my mother had.
I jotted the amount down. “Where’s the rest of your cash?”
“That’s all of it.”
I eyed the bills. While it was an impressive pile, twelve grand represented a paltry accumulation for someone like Flo, who’d earned a good living for many years before she’d reduced her salary to the pittance it now was. I returned my gaze to Flo. “You’re telling me that this twelve thousand dollars—”
“Twelve thousand three hundred and eighty-nine dollars,” she corrected with a smirk I was tempted to slap off her face.
I took a breath to calm myself. “This cash represents all of your assets other than your house, your car, and the radio station?”
“Yes,” Flo replied. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
“So you spent all the savings you had from back when your father paid you a good salary?”
“Sure did,” she said. “I like to travel and eat out and have a good time. You only live once. Might as well enjoy it.”
“Everything, other than the cash on this desk, is gone, then?”
She released a long huff of air. “I can say the same thing fifty different ways if you like, but that’s all of my cash holdings. I don’t own any stock, any bonds, any mutual funds, any other real estate, any checking account, any savings account, or any offshore accounts. I’ve got one credit card I use for shopping, but I pay it off each month via money orders.”
She seemed to have her story down pat. But I still didn’t believe it.
I gestured to the stacks. “What are you going to do when this runs out?”
She shrugged. “I’ll figure something out.”
I stared the woman down for a long moment. “What aren’t you telling me, Miss Cash?”
She returned the stare before responding. “Well, for starters,” she said, “I’m not telling you what I think about the federal government invading my private home and sticking its fingers in my pockets. And I’m not telling you what I think about those shoes you’re wearing.” Her nose scrunched in distaste.
Frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s ass what this woman thought about the IRS or my shoes. Her failure to pay her fair share of taxes didn’t only impact the government; it also affected everyone else who had to pick up the slack for deadbeats like her. I wondered what her neighbors would think if they realized Flo had left them to foot the bill for defense, highways, and national parks and willfully failed to pay her part. They might not be so eager to look out for her best interests and report the federal agent who’d tampered with her gardenias.
I cocked my head and gave Flo a pointed look. “What do you think your listeners and neighbors and staff would say if they knew you weren’t paying your taxes? That the woman who claimed to be a financial expert was flouting her debts? Violating federal law?”
She sent me a pointed look right back. “They’d wonder why a federal agent had also violated the law by leaking confidential information about a taxpayer.”
She had me there. Still … “You realize that if the IRS has to file a lawsuit against you the petition will be in the public record, don’t you? Reporters routinely check the filings for potential news stories. When they see a local celebrity like you has been sued, they’ll have a field day. Your name will be plastered all over the newspaper headlines. It could put an end to your career and yo
ur family’s radio station.” I let that sink in for a moment before giving her one last chance. Softly, I said, “Look, Miss Cash. It gives me no pleasure to ruin someone. But I have a job to do. If you come clean, give us the information we need, and pay up, you can avoid a scandal and jail time. If you don’t, all bets are off. What do you say?”
She looked at me for a long moment, and somewhere, deep behind her eyes I saw the first sign that she was wavering. But a moment later her eyes gleamed with fresh resolve.
She leaned toward me. “I say, ‘It’s on,’ Agent Holloway.”
* * *
I fumed the entire drive back to my office. Oh, it’s on, all right! It’s on like Donkey Kong! Flo Cash had met her match; she just hadn’t realized it yet. If she thought being obstinate and uncooperative would cause me to relent in frustration, she didn’t know Tara Holloway.
Back at my desk, I stared at the wall and pondered how to proceed. Hm-m … It couldn’t hurt to call Ledbetter Cadillac, right? To verify Flo’s story? After all, for all I knew she’d faked the invoice from the towing company.
I looked up the phone number for Ledbetter Cadillac online and called their service department. Realizing that they weren’t likely to give information to a third party and realizing I couldn’t impersonate a taxpayer, I simply said, “Good afternoon. I’m calling to check on a car and wondering what all you’ve done and when it might be ready. The name in your paperwork will be Flo Cash.”
Hey, it’s all about plausible deniability. After all, I hadn’t actually claimed to be Flo, right?
“Just a moment,” the man said. He returned to the line thirty seconds later. “We’ve finished the routine maintenance and oil change. The only thing left to do is rotate the tires. We’ll have that done here shortly if you want to pick the car up today.”
Routine maintenance? Oil change? Tire rotation? “What about the engine problem?”
The man paused for a second or two, probably scanning the work order. “I don’t see anything here about an engine problem. Only that you requested the fifty-thousand-mile recommended maintenance, an oil change, and the tire rotation.”
The bitch lied about having trouble under her hood. I’ve been hoodwinked! “How much will the work run me?”
“Says here that per the general manager there’s to be no charge.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “Can’t beat that price with a stick.”
If I hadn’t been sure before, I was now convinced more than ever that Flo was trading airtime for cars and food and services, including automobile maintenance.
Now I just had to prove it.
chapter fifteen
Go with the Flow
Tuesday, I decided to try a new strategy and tail Flow after she picked up her car at Ledbetter Cadillac. Maybe she’d do something that would tip me off, lead me to an undisclosed stash of cash somewhere or to a client who’d actually admit to trading products or services for on-air advertising.
Given that Flo had seen my government-issued car yesterday and her neighbors had likely reported Nick’s from the Friday before, I borrowed Josh’s G-ride to tail Flo. As the office tech specialist, Josh sometimes moved equipment and had thus been issued an SUV, which had much more cargo space than a sedan. Luckily for me, the black Yukon also had darkly tinted windows that would make it harder for Flo to see inside. Nonetheless, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, tucked it down the back of my shirt, and borrowed the white cowboy hat I’d bought for Nick months ago in order to disguise myself. Along with sunglasses and a fake mustache drawn on Scotch tape with a black marker and adhered to my upper lip, I’d appear to be a smallish man behind the wheel, compensating for my diminutive stature and a presumably undersized penis by driving an enormous gas guzzler.
I waited in the parking lot close to Ledbetter’s service center. Sure enough, at a few minutes after two Flo pulled up to the bays in the loaner car. A mechanic waved her in, helped her out of the car, and took the keys, moving the loaner to an outdoor parking space while Flo went inside to retrieve the keys to her Cadillac. She came outside a minute later and headed for her car. As she backed out of the space, I started my engine and eased out after her.
She turned out of the dealership and made her way down an entrance ramp and onto the freeway. I trailed her, staying a lane to the right and back several car lengths where she’d be less likely to spot me. A few exits later, she left the freeway. I followed along, continuing past a chiropractic clinic when she turned into the lot. I pulled into a dentist office across the street and turned left to find a good vantage point that would allow me to spy. A-ha! That spot under the tree would be shady and give me additional cover.
I parked and watched as Flo went inside the clinic. As I waited, I opened my briefcase and removed the list I’d compiled of businesses Flo had mentioned on KCSH. Sure enough, the name of the clinic appeared on my list. I had no doubt Flo was lying on a table right now receiving a complimentary spinal adjustment. If I didn’t have a bone to pick with this woman before, I sure as hell did now. A vertebra.
I waited ten minutes to give the staff time to call Flo to a treatment room. I removed the ridiculous fake mustache and cowboy hat but kept the sunglasses on. Leaving the Yukon in the lot, I walked across the street to the clinic. As I’d hoped, Flo was no longer in the waiting room. A thin, thirtyish man in blue scrubs manned the reception desk, and a middle-aged woman waited in a chair, thumbing through a magazine, but they were the only ones in the room.
I took a seat in the back corner and snatched a copy of Woman’s World from the magazine rack nearby.
The man at the counter called over to me, “Do you have an appointment, ma’am?”
I shook my head. “Just waiting for a friend.”
Friend, my ass. I wouldn’t be friends with a woman like Flo Cash if she were the last person on earth.
I held the magazine at the ready near my chest. When the door to the back rooms opened, I held it up. False alarm. A man in nylon running pants and a fitted tee exited to the waiting area. He stepped over to the front desk and whipped out a credit card.
The man at the desk took the card and consulted his computer. “Looks like you’ve got a thirty-five-dollar co-pay.” He ran the card through the skimmer and handed it back to the man, along with the printout and a ballpoint pen. He pointed to a spot on the slip. “Sign here, please.”
The man signed the paper slip and handed it back to the receptionist. “Thanks.”
The clerk wished him a good afternoon before picking up a phone call.
When the door to the back rooms opened twenty minutes later, I raised the magazine to cover my face, peering around the edge.
Flo emerged and stepped to the front desk. “Got me down for next week?”
“I sure do, Miss Cash,” the man said. “See you then.”
She left without making a payment.
Tossing the magazine aside, I stalked to the desk. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Special Agent Tara Holloway from the IRS.” I pulled out a card and positioned it facing him on the countertop. “I have some questions about Florence Cash.”
The guy looked from me down to my business card and back up. He pointed a finger at the door. “Was she the friend you were waiting for? ’Cause she just left.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I said. “And I notice she made no payment. Could you tell me why?”
“Um-m-m…” He grimaced with reluctance. “I don’t know if I can do that. Let me check with the doctor.” He picked up his phone and dialed a two-digit number. “There’s someone from the IRS at the front desk. She’s asking about a patient’s account.” He listened for a moment before saying, “Okay,” and returning the receiver to the cradle. “Dr. Keele will be right up.”
“Thank you.”
A moment later, a stocky man with short gray hair appeared behind the receptionist. He, too, wore scrubs. “I’m Dr. Keele. How can I help you?”
I put my index finger on my business card and pushe
d it closer. “I’m with the IRS. I need to know why Florence Cash is receiving free services here. Is it in return for advertising?”
The doctor opened his mouth as if to say something but then seemed to think better of it and closed his mouth. “I’m pretty sure the HIPAA laws prevent me from disclosing anything to you.”
“I’m not asking about her health information,” I said. “I’m asking about her bills. Whether she had any.”
The man chewed his lip, appearing to vacillate. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’d like to help you out, but I can’t risk a HIPAA violation. The board could take my license. But if you get Miss Cash’s consent I’d be happy to provide the information to you.”
Thanks for nothing. Of course I supposed I should have expected this type of response from a health-care provider. I should’ve thought this through first. Still, to ensure that the day wasn’t a total loss the least I could do was put a little fear in the doctor, leave him shaking in his blue paper booties.
“Just so you know,” I said, “if you’re trading chiropractic care for advertising on KCSH, you need to reflect those transactions in your reports to the IRS.”
Of course, even though reporting would be required, such swaps in a business context would result in no net taxable income so long as the services or products provided were equal in value to those received. The income would be offset by an equal deduction. But in a personal context, such as Flo Cash receiving a spinal adjustment in exchange for advertising, things were much more complicated. KCSH would have to report the value of the care as advertising income. KCSH could then take a deduction for its transfer of the care to Flo for her personal use. The value of the services transferred would be reported as compensation to Flo and would be subject to income and Social Security taxes, just like salary or wages paid in cash. Flo would be required to pay income tax on the in-kind income. Of course, given the financial records I’d seen, none of these transactions were being accounted for. Instead, Flo was engaging in some off-the-books bargaining.
