by Diane Kelly
As I pulled up to a red light, my cell rang. It was the Lobo calling.
I jabbed the button to put her on speaker. “Hi, Lu.”
“Senator Perkins’s office called again this morning. Thomas Hoffmeyer phoned them wanting answers, and now the senator’s chief of staff is breathing down my neck demanding them. Little twerp. I know you’ve got a full plate and then some, but have you made any progress on the fake prize case yet?”
I told her that I’d gone to see Bethany Flagler and that the only lead she’d given me was her former roommate, Robin Beck. “I plan to interview the other victims who live in the area. When I do, I’ll see if they know Robin.”
“Any idea when that will be?”
“I’m on my way to speak with some men about the Hidalgo investigation.” It was clearly the more critical matter. The fake prize scam was a nuisance, no doubt, but nobody’s life was at stake. “But I’m going to stop and see a couple of the 1099 victims on the way. After that I plan to check in with some of the others.”
“Is Thomas Hoffmeyer one of them?”
“He can be.” Though Hoffmeyer was the one who’d sicced the senator on us, instinct told me he’d be the least likely to provide useful information. He seemed like an anomaly, an outlier. While the majority of the other prize scam victims were female, he was male. And while most of the other victims were in the twenty-five to thirty-five age range, he was in his sixties. I’d thought I could learn more by speaking with the typical victims first, figure out what the common denominator was between them before trying to figure out how he fit in to the equation. I explained my rationale to Lu.
“That’s a reasonable approach,” she said, “but how ’bout you at least call Hoffmeyer to schedule your meeting? That’ll give me something to tell Perkins’s pushy little pinhead. If he knows you’re scheduling the interview, maybe he and Hoffmeyer will stop complaining.”
They might also stop complaining if I stuffed socks in their mouths. Unfortunately, such tactics weren’t allowed. I supposed I should be more patient, but the problem was that those who complained the most about us agents not doing our jobs fast enough were often the same ones who complained that tax rates were too high. Without those taxes, there’d be even less money to fund the IRS, which meant it would take even longer for us agents to get around to helping them. Their arguments were logically inconsistent and there was no possible way to make them happy. Ugh. Besides, it’s not like the auditor hadn’t tried to figure things out. She’d done her best. These types of white-collar crimes didn’t leave DNA or a set of fingerprints that could lead investigators directly to the lawbreaker. Our cases could be very complex, with clues hard to pinpoint.
The light turned green as I promised to call Hoffmeyer right away. “Be careful out there,” she admonished me at the end of the call.
“I will.”
Sliding my phone into the cup holder, I drove ahead and hooked a right into the next parking lot. I pulled under a tree for shade, looked up Thomas Hoffmeyer’s contact information in the file, retrieved my phone, and dialed the number.
After three rings, a man answered, his voice gruff and growly. “Hello?”
“May I speak with Thomas Hoffmeyer, please?” I asked.
“That depends,” he snapped back. “Who’s asking?”
“Special Agent Tara Holloway,” I said. “From the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations Division.”
He barked a humorless laugh. “I knew it’d light a fire under you lazy government folks if I got my senator after you.”
Lazy? LAZY?! If I were lazy would I have climbed over a locked fence yesterday to track down a witness? Would I have worked untold hours of unpaid overtime in my quest for financial justice for Americans? Would I have wrestled and wrangled with crooks, enduring untold injuries and risking my life to do my job? Lazy? Not hardly. His nasty comment stung worse than those wasps. It took everything in me not to hang up on the guy. I settled for pulling the phone from my ear and giving it the finger. It was little consolation.
Having delivered my crude and silent retort, I put the phone back to my ear. “I need to meet with you to discuss your case.” Normally, I asked a victim or witness when he or she was available, checked my calendar, and attempted to find a mutually convenient time. But this jerk could work around my schedule. Given that I wasn’t exactly sure where things might take me, I pulled a day and time out of my ass. “I’ve got an extremely tight schedule the next few days, but I can squeeze you in at four o’clock tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t work for me. I golf on Thursdays.”
“All right, then,” I told him. “I’ll let the senator’s office know we offered you an appointment and you declined in order to play games. Good—”
“Hold on!” he said. “I suppose I can make that work if that’s the only time you’ve got.”
“It is. I work an extremely heavy caseload.” I was tempted to make him come to my office, but I feared he’d be one of those difficult people who I’d have a hard time booting out. “I’ll come to your home. See you then.” With that, I hung up, not bothering with good-bye this time.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. Hoffmeyer wasn’t the first jackass I’d encountered on the job, and no doubt there were more like him to come.
After texting Lu to let her know I’d scheduled a meeting with Hoffmeyer for the following afternoon, I drove out to MetalMasters and checked in with the receptionist in the foyer. She called up to the billing department where the two victims worked and got the go-ahead to send me up. “Second floor,” she said, gesturing to the elevator. “Last door on the left.”
I rode up to the second floor and stepped out into the hall. While the hallway was flanked on the left with offices, the right side of the hall was plate glass that looked out over the manufacturing floor. Below, workers moved about the assembly line equipment. A machine spat out a nickel-plated interior doorknob, then another, then another, all of them exactly the same. And I’d thought depreciation computations had been mind-numbing.
As I approached the last door, I heard a familiar voice. It was the dramatic woman from Amor y Vengaza. I stepped to the door to find two young women inside, a tablet situated between them playing the telenovela on the Telemundo app.
I rapped on the door frame and the two women looked up. One was Asian, with dark brown hair and delicate features. She must be Amelia Yeo. The other had brown hair, too, though hers was a lighter shade. She was Caucasian, though on the short and slim side, like her coworker. I pegged her as Gwen Rosenthal. Both appeared to be in their mid-to late twenties, roughly the age of Bethany Flagler. Could that be a clue? Maybe. Maybe not. Unlike Bethany and these girls, Thomas Hoffmeyer was in his mid-sixties. If there was a pattern, he didn’t seem to fit it.
“Come in,” Amelia said.
Gwen stood and rounded up a spare stool for me.
After we exchanged introductions, I gestured to the tablet. “What’s the deal with that show?” I asked. “Everyone seems to be watching it.”
Gwen shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “We’re hooked on it. I know it’s crazy. I mean, the show’s totally unbelievable and over the top. But it sucks you in! There was another girl who worked here a year or two ago and she introduced us to it.”
“She was a huge fan.” Amelia raised splayed hands and arcing them in opposite directions to indicate just how huge a fan the young woman was. “She even dyed her hair black and dressed like Isidora.”
“Isidora?” I asked.
“The female lead,” Gwen clarified. “Isidora Davila.”
Amelia chimed in again. “I DVR the show every day and watch it first thing when I get home.” She lifted her chin to indicate the tablet. “This episode is a rerun from last week.”
The scene moved to a hospital room. The glamorous, fiery-eyed woman was on the screen, adorned in a scarlet dress that seemed more appropriate for singing sultry songs in a lounge than visiting someone in the hospital. She stood at th
e head of the bed, on which lay a blonde, a wide white bandage wrapped around her skull. A handsome man sat next to the injured woman, grasping her hand as if their very lives depended on it.
“What’s going on?” I asked, pulling my stool closer to take a better look.
Gwen rolled her chair over. “Isidora—she’s the one standing next to the bed—is visiting her ‘friend’ Violeta in the hospital.” She made air quotes around the word friend. “Violeta was pushed down a staircase and hit her head. She has amnesia and doesn’t know who did it, but it’s pretty clear it was Isidora. Isidora is in love with that guy,” she said, pointing at the screen. “His name is Juan Carlos. He and Isidora were on the verge of something before Violeta came along.”
“Ah.”
Amor y Vengaza. “Love and Vengeance.” The title seemed fitting. Still, how could intelligent people spend their time watching these silly melodramas? Didn’t they have better things to do? Oh, well. Whatever makes the workday go by faster, right? Not everyone was lucky enough to have a job as interesting as mine. Rather than criticize their choice in workplace entertainment, I asked about their jobs.
Gwen answered for both of them. “I’m accounts payable,” she said. “Amelia handles accounts receivable.”
“I see. Do either of you handle any tax reporting?”
“No,” Amelia said. “Just everyday payables and receivables. Regular, routine stuff.”
I moved on to the 1099s. “Any idea who might have filed them? Maybe someone from your past who’s trying to get back at you? A friend or neighbor or coworker?”
“No one that I can think of,” Amelia said.
“Me neither,” said Gwen. “Both of us get along with pretty much everyone.”
I wasn’t surprised. They seemed friendly and down to earth from what I could tell so far.
“Did you two know each other before you started working here?” I asked.
“We both took a bookkeeping course at a training center here in Dallas,” Amelia said. “That’s where we originally met. The career office at the center got us the jobs here.”
Hmm. “Was there anyone in the class that seemed strange to you?”
The two exchanged glances, their expressions thoughtful as they considered their classmates.
“I can’t think of anyone,” Amelia said finally. “Can you, Gwen?”
She shook her head. “Everyone seemed normal.”
Their response didn’t surprise me. Accounting and business courses didn’t exactly attract nonconventional, outside-the-box types.
“Do you two see each other primarily at work?” I asked. “Or are you friends outside the office, too?”
“We’re friends, too,” Amelia said.
Gwen agreed. “We do stuff together nearly every weekend.”
Hmm. I didn’t know where to go next with my questions, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to see if Bethany Flagler’s former roommate could somehow have a link to these two. “Does the name Robin Beck mean anything to you?”
“Robin Beck?” Gwen repeated, tilting her head, her eyes narrowing as she seemed to be going through names in her mind. “No. Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“It doesn’t sound familiar to me, either,” Amelia added. “Why?”
“The name was a potential lead I got from another victim.” Looked like it was the weak lead I’d suspected it to be. None of what I’d learned so far would get me anywhere or score the IRS any brownie points with the insistent senator. I pondered things another moment. Hmm. I had to consider all potentialities here. “What about the name Bethany Flagler?”
Both of the women shook their heads.
“That name doesn’t ring a bell, either,” Gwen said.
Amelia murmured in agreement.
So much for my thought that Bethany might have issued one of the false 1099s in her own name to throw suspicion off herself. Of course, one of these women might have done the same thing. Perhaps one of them was only pretending to like the other, was not truly a friend but rather an enemy in disguise, much like Isidora was to Violeta in the telenovela now paused on the tablet.
Might as well cover all my bases and ask whether they knew the other victims. “What about Jocelyn Harris or Thomas Hoffmeyer?”
They shook their heads again. Darn.
“I’m in a bit of a rush,” I told them. “I’ve got an urgent matter I need to attend to. But I need some more information from you. I need to figure out what the connection is between you and the other victims. It’s possible you victims were chosen at random, but I think it’s more likely the person who issued the 1099s knows all of you somehow, or at least obtained your information from a common source. This situation seems more personal, a targeted scam.” Of course, I could be wrong about that. Who knew? “I’d like you to e-mail me some additional information. Got something you can make a list on?”
Amelia pulled up a new Word document on her computer screen, while Gwen went for good old-fashioned pen and paper.
“Okay,” I told them. “I need to identify every place where someone might have had access to your name and social security number two years ago when the 1099s were issued. Tell me where you’ve lived the past few years and the names of your landlords. Your doctors and dentists. The schools you’ve attended. Where you bank. Where you bought your cars and what institutions financed them.”
Amelia finished tap-tap-tapping on her keyboard and looked over her shoulder at me. “I had to give my social security number to my gym when I joined a few years ago. Should I include that?”
“Definitely,” I replied. There was no telling what the common link could be.
“I used a payday advance place once,” Gwen said. “I had to get a loan to cover some unexpected car repair bills.”
“Give me that information, too,” I told her. “While you’re at it, tell me what restaurants you went to regularly, what church you attended, your veterinarian’s information if you have a pet.” Okay, so I was grasping at straws. But you do enough grasping and one of those straws could lead to something. “Basically tell me everywhere you go and what you do.”
I’d collect the same information from the other victims and compare notes. Maybe something would pop out at me.
“You can e-mail me the information.” I handed each of the women one of my business cards and stood. “Thanks for your time. When and if I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”
The two issued good-byes and turned their attention back to the telenovela and the stack of paperwork in front of them.
As I rode down in the elevator, I racked my brain, trying to piece together any similarities between these two young women and Bethany Flagler. All were around the same age, and all seemed to enjoy the Amor y Vengaza telenovela, but that didn’t give me anything solid to go on. Darn. I wanted to get this case solved quickly, to impress the pesky senator’s office, to show that the IRS was doing its job and helping his constituents resolve their tax issues. There must be something that the victims and I were overlooking.
But what?
chapter thirteen
The Old Flame Flickers
As I walked out to my car in the parking lot, a gust of hot, moist wind hit me, blowing up the flaps of my blazer and infiltrating my hair. The humidity would turn my locks into a frizz-ball in five seconds flat. I blinked against the breeze and glanced up at the sky. Billowy clouds were gathering on the horizon and the sun was only a hazy glow. Looked like a thunderstorm was coming our way. I only hoped it wouldn’t hail. My plain G-ride was an ugly enough car without adding hail dents to the mix.
I set back out on the road, aiming for Ellington Nurseries, feeling a twinge of guilt. Was it wrong of me to hide this visit from Nick? Maybe. But do two people have to tell each other everything? Maybe not. Would I be angry with him if he didn’t tell me about a visit to an old girlfriend, even if it was strictly for business purposes? Hell, yeah, I’d be furious! Was I being a total hypocrite here? Yep. No doubt about it.
The dri
ve out to Brett’s business took nearly an hour, but that gave me time to prepare myself, both physically and mentally. The physical part involved swiping on a fresh coat of plum-colored lipstick and trying to tame my hair with my fingers and saliva. I had no romantic interest in the guy anymore, but I didn’t want him to take a look at my colorless lips and tumbleweed hair and think he’d dodged a bullet. The mental part of my preparation involved reminding myself that this was business, that I was visiting him as a law enforcement professional, not a former lover, and that there was no need for my insides to feel so squishy and squirmy.
I debated phoning him to give him a heads-up, but decided not to. If he said something to his workers, they might worry that I was coming to arrest them and scatter. Then I’d never get the information I needed to help Agent Castaneda find the kidnapped girls and keep Salvador Hidalgo behind bars where he belonged. Nope, looked like my visit would have to be a surprise.
On the long drive out, I figured what the heck. Why not see what all the fuss was about? I downloaded the Telemundo app to my phone and pulled up the episode of Amor y Vengaza that Amelia and Gwen had been watching earlier, starting it at the beginning. Normally, I wouldn’t do such a thing, but the roads out here were virtually empty and, with the phone situated in my dash-mounted holder, I could cast an occasional, careful glance at the screen without taking my eyes off the road and posing a danger to others. Besides, I was only trying to follow the general gist of the story, not read all the subtitles.
As I drove and listened, the introductory music kicked in, a longer version of the Spanish guitar riff that announced the cut to, and return from, commercial breaks. One by one, the characters were introduced, the shots’ overly dramatic angles showing each actor’s back first, then swinging around to catch the actor from the front. A mustached male lead in his late forties standing in an elegant office. A young woman with flowing blond hair standing on a beach in a bikini. An artsy looking guy with a short ponytail working behind a coffee bar. Things went on until, at last, the queen of the telenovela was presented. The camera traveled up a curved staircase until capturing the scooped back of a red satin evening gown. This time, instead of the camera swinging around to catch the actor’s face, Isidora Davila twirled on her own to face the lens, coming to a quick, dramatic stop, her ruby lips parted in a broad, friendly smile. When the camera zoomed in on her eyes, however, they flashed with fire. The camera angle widened to catch her sweeping boldly down the staircase as if she owned the world and everyone in it.
