Death, Taxes, and Sweet Potato Fries

by Diane Kelly

He snapped back to reality. “Yeah,” he said solemnly. “Just thinking about those guys. I can relate to them, you know? When I was in Mexico, the people were friendly to me, and the food was great and the beaches were beautiful, but something was missing. I mean, it wasn’t my choice to be there. It was…” He drifted off, searching for the right word. “I don’t know. Lonely, I guess. But that doesn’t quite say it all. I guess … it just never felt … like home.” He was quiet a long moment. “I hope those men and their families can find their way home again, wherever that might be.”

  “Me, too.” Maybe the U.S. would begin to feel that way to them if they were allowed to stay.

  We switched to lighter topics—the silly antics of his adorable Australian shepherd mix Daffodil, a movie we planned to see soon, whether we should try scuba diving on our honeymoon—until our food arrived.

  After I’d eaten half my weight in sweet potato fries, Nick and I left the restaurant. I found my ring finger feeling itchy and realized my engagement ring seemed a little tight. Had all these sweet potato fries caused me to put on a little weight? It was likely. I’d noticed the waistband on my pants had felt a little snug this morning, too. Still, I chose to believe I’d simply ingested too much salt and was retaining water. Why blame myself when I could blame an innocent seasoning?

  We returned to the IRS office. While I planned to use the affidavits from Brett’s men to request a court order for Hidalgo’s bank records, now that he’d be kept in jail I’d bought myself a little time. I was scheduled to meet with Thomas Hoffmeyer at four o’clock, so I figured I’d spend the afternoon on the prize scam investigation and seek the bank records in the morning.

  “Where are you off to now?” Nick asked me.

  “Tanning salon,” I told him. “A woman there had a false 1099 filed on her.”

  “You getting any closer to figuring out who did it?”

  “Who knows? I’m not seeing any common threads so far. There were two victims from the same business,” I said, referencing Amelia and Gwen from MetalMasters. “That made me think that there could be a workplace connection. But the two had gone to school together and are friends outside of work, too. The link could be from their personal lives.”

  “They don’t have any suspicions?” he said. “Seems like they’d know if someone was angry enough with them to pull a stunt like filing a false tax report in their names.”

  “You’d think so,” I agreed. “But they said they get along with pretty much everyone.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he said.

  “I hope so.” So far, none of the leads seemed to be panning out.

  We parted and I went down the hall to round up Eddie again, stopping to lean against his doorjamb. “I need my partner again.”

  “Where to now?” he asked.

  “Tanning salon,” I said. “One of the women there was a victim of the prize award scam.”

  “Tanning salon?” He arched a brow. “So there will be women parading around in skimpy bikinis?”

  I shrugged. “Probably.”

  Josh called out from his office nearby. “I’ll go if Eddie doesn’t want to!”

  Eddie stood up from his desk. “I got it covered, buddy!” he called back.

  “Darn,” we heard Josh mutter.

  “I hope this lead pans out,” Eddie said as we headed down the hall. “I’m tired of you dragging me all over town.”

  “Enjoy it while you can,” I reminded him. “Once you’re the co-director, you’ll be spending a lot more time sitting behind a desk.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said. “I’ll probably get hemorrhoids and a bad back. You think I could get Uncle Sam to pay for one of those fancy massaging chairs?”

  “Not a chance.”

  chapter twenty-one

  Sunny Side Up

  A woman with toasty brown skin was exiting as Eddie and I approached the door of Eternal Summer Salon. I couldn’t understand why people would go to a tanning salon. I mean, sunshine was both free and readily available here in Texas. You could soak up as much as you wanted and then some at absolutely no charge. Besides, according to Doctor Ajay, tanning beds might as well be called Melanoma Machines given the high incidence of skin cancer among those who used them. Recognizing the dangers of the equipment, and the resulting drain on the health-care system, Congress had included a provision in the Affordable Care Act imposing a 10-percent excise tax on indoor tanning services. It was like the taxes imposed on alcohol and tobacco sales, but instead of a sin tax it was a sun tax.

  As Eddie opened the door for me, he said, “I feel sorry for you poor, pasty-faced white folks. Having to pay for pigment when us black folks get it naturally for free.”

  “Enjoy your black privilege,” I told him.

  Eddie glanced around as we stepped inside. All we could see were closed doors with numbers on them. “I’m not seeing any bikinis.”

  “Keep looking,” I told him. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  We approached the counter. The twentyish girl working the desk looked up. “Hi, there,” she said. “You two have sessions scheduled?”

  Eddie replied with a snort but, really, who could blame him?

  “No,” I said. “I’m not here to tan.”

  The girl squinted at me, cocking her head as her gaze roamed my face and neck. “Looks like you had a bad experience with self-tanning cream.”

  Huh? “What are you talking about?”

  She gestured to my face. “You look orange. That’s from tanning cream, right?”

  First my mother and Nick, and now this girl. What was going on? I pulled my pressed powder compact from my purse and took a look in the mirror. Holy crap, this girl is right! My face had an odd orange glow to it, much more pronounced than before, the tone visible even through my makeup. I’d become a human traffic cone. A five-feet-two-inch Creamsicle. A woman with the complexion of canned peaches. What the heck was going on? The only other time I’d looked like this was when Alicia and I had slathered our cheeks with orange face paint before attending football games back in college.

  Was I getting sick? Had I been exposed to something toxic without realizing it? My mind went to Isidora Davila and the poison she’d used to lace the champagne flutes. Could someone have done something similar to me? If so, who? And when? And how? And why?

  Though I wanted the answers to those questions, I knew I wouldn’t find them here in the tanning salon. Better to get the information I came for, and worry about my odd skin tone later. I could run by the doc-in-a-box and have Ajay take a look.

  I returned my attention to the receptionist. “Actually, I’m here to see Jocelyn Harris. Is she in?”

  “Yeah,” the girl said. “She works in the back. She handles billing. I’ll see if she’s busy. What are your names?”

  “Tara Holloway and Eddie Bardin,” I told her. “We’re with the IRS.”

  “Okay.”

  The girl stepped down a short hallway behind her counter and knocked on a door. When a voice inside called “Come in!,” the girl opened the door and stuck her head inside. “There’s two people from the IRS here for you. Miss Holloway and Mister Bardin.”

  The disembodied voice spoke again. “Send them back.”

  The girl motioned for us to come around the counter and down the hall. I thanked her at the door and stepped inside Jocelyn’s office, closing the door behind us.

  Jocelyn was a slightly chubby woman in her early thirties, with reddish hair and fair skin that told me she didn’t partake in the services offered there. She had more of an eternally overcast kind of complexion. She stood and stretched a hand across her desk to shake first mine, then Eddie’s. “I’m assuming you’re here about the 1099? The one for the supposed prize?”

  “You got it.” I dropped into a chair when she held out a hand to indicate we should take a seat. Eddie plopped down into the one next to me. “We’d really like to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible,” I said. “These types of fraudulen
t filings don’t just hurt innocent people like you, they cause all kinds of problems for the IRS. Our staff spends a lot of time trying to figure out whether the reports are truly inaccurate and getting accounts corrected. It’s a nightmare.”

  “I’d imagine,” she said. “We once had a girl here who was supposed to set up our payroll system and she got everything out of whack. She transposed social security numbers and spelled everyone’s name wrong. She entered my salary in the file for one of the part-timers, and coded the system to pay me minimum wage.” She groaned. “There’s nothing worse than expecting your paycheck and getting a pittance instead.”

  I could think of many worse things, such as feeling forced to flee your home in the middle of the night and losing the stuffed dog that brought you comfort, but there was no point belaboring that fact when it was clear she was simply exaggerating to make her point.

  “Did you fire the employee?” Eddie asked.

  “Couldn’t,” she said. “She didn’t work for us. She worked for an outside company we’d signed up with to process our payroll. Besides, by the time we realized the errors she’d made, it was two weeks later and she had already moved on to another client.”

  I followed up with another question. “Did you complain to her boss?”

  “No, I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t want her to lose her job. She was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Complimented everyone on their hair or outfits, always had a smile for us. Besides, we don’t have a large staff. It only took a few minutes to correct her errors.”

  Hmm. “Any chance she could be the one who issued the incorrect 1099 to you?”

  Jocelyn issued a soft sigh. “As much as I hate to say it, I doubt she’d be able to get a 1099 filed correctly.”

  “Point taken.”

  While the girl would have had access to the social security numbers for the staff of Eternal Summer Salon, that fact alone wasn’t enough to make her a suspect. People didn’t do things without a motive, and there didn’t appear to be any reason for her to file a fraudulent report against Jocelyn. After all, she hadn’t even known Jocelyn was unhappy with her work.

  “Any other ideas who might have issued you the 1099?” I asked. “Any bad breakups with a vindictive boyfriend? Nasty neighbors? Maybe a family member you don’t get along with?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she replied.

  Gee. This visit has been a waste of time, hasn’t it?

  I decided to be honest. “We can’t seem to find a connection between all the victims. Without that, we’ll never be able to determine who the culprit is. Are you sure you can’t think of anyone? Someone you cut off in traffic? An old high school classmate who had it in for you? A customer who got a sunburn on their butt? Anything might help.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. Nobody comes to mind at all.”

  Either she and the other female victims weren’t being honest with me, or they didn’t realize they’d given the culprit reason to be unhappy with them. “Do the names Bethany Flagler, Amelia Yeo, Gwen Rosenthal, or Thomas Hoffmeyer mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should they?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  I jotted down a note that Jocelyn didn’t recognize any of the other victim’s names. “What about the name Robin Beck?” Might as well find out if Jocelyn knew Bethany’s former roommate.

  While no flicker of recognition had crossed over her face when I’d mentioned the other names, this time Jocelyn’s face lit up. “That name I know.”

  “You do?” I sat bolt upright. Had I found the connection? Lord, I hoped so! I wanted to get this case over and done with so I could move on to the other case files loading down my desk.

  She raised her index finger, indicating for me to hold on. My right leg began to bounce of its own accord. Patience was not one of my virtues.

  She turned to her computer, keyed in some information, and slid her mouse to and fro, clicking it a couple of times. When she finished, she motioned for me and Eddie to come around her desk. When we did, she pointed at the screen. “Two months ago, Robin Beck signed a contract for a year of tanning sessions. She bought the Golden Goddess Package for sixty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents a month. She paid the first month in cash when she signed up, but she gave us a debit card number to use for the remaining months. As you can see here”—she tapped the screen—“the card was declined the first time we tried to use it.”

  “Have you tried to collect from her?” I asked.

  “We have,” Jocelyn said. “The first thing we do when there’s a situation like this is we send a courtesy e-mail asking them to update their payment information. If they don’t respond in ten days, I follow up with a phone call. I had to call her. That’s why I remember her name.”

  “So you talked to her?”

  She glanced at the screen and shook her head. “No. I always make a note in the file when I call a client. You know, to have a record of my attempts to contact them? That way if they say they never got my call I can show them a detailed log.” She pointed at the screen again. “My notes here say that I left her three voice mails over the course of a month but that she never returned my calls.”

  “What’s your next step in a situation like that?”

  “We turn the matter over to a collection agency and report the default to the credit bureaus.”

  “And you did that in Robin’s case, too, I assume?”

  Jocelyn nodded. “Yes. We followed our standard procedure.”

  Assuming the Robin Beck who’d signed the contract with Eternal Summer was the same Robin Beck who’d been Bethany Flagler’s roommate, the information Jocelyn had given me told me two things. One, Robin was still in the north Texas area. And, two, Robin might have a motive to retaliate against Jocelyn. Even so, I wasn’t yet convinced she was the culprit. After all, neither Amelia Yeo nor Gwen Rosenthal knew Robin. Nonetheless, it was a decent lead. Maybe Amelia and Gwen had crossed paths with Robin without knowing it, somehow. Bethany had mentioned that Robin often worked retail jobs. Maybe they’d shopped somewhere Robin worked.

  “Can I get Robin’s phone number from you?” I asked Jocelyn. “Her address, too.”

  “Sure. It’s all here.” She gestured to the screen.

  I bent over to take a screenshot with my phone and also wrote the information down in my notes. When I finished, I stood up and thanked her for her time. “I’ll let you know if there are any developments.”

  “Great.”

  Eddie and I exited her office, closing the door softly behind us. As we passed the front desk, I noticed the receptionist was reading a copy of Soap Opera Digest. Isidora Davila graced the cover, the tagline reading American Viewers Obsessed with Crossover Hit! I could vouch for that. I was obsessed with the show, too.

  Eddie exhaled sharply. “This was disappointing. I didn’t see a single woman in a bikini.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” I said. “Better luck next time.”

  A door creaked as it opened behind us. We turned back to see a man wearing tiny goggles and the skimpiest bathing suit possible. Though he had hair on his head, his body was hairless, waxed within an inch of its life. “I need some help in here,” he called to the receptionist. “I can’t get the bed to turn on.”

  Eddie turned back around, blinking as if to erase the image. “I guess I should be careful what I wish for, huh?”

  “That’s karma,” I said as I pushed the door open. “It’s coming back to bite you on the ass for giving me crap about Brett and Nick.”

  When we left the salon, a woman on her way in ran her gaze over me and gave me an odd look. At the car, I checked myself in the rearview mirror once again. Yep, my skin was orange. No doubt about it.

  I hooked a finger in the top of my blouse and looked down it. While my bra covered my boobs, the part of my chest I could see looked orange, too, as did my belly. I reached down, lifted the hem of my pants, and pulled down my sock. Yep, orange ankles. I was the skin tone of Velveeta.

&nbs
p; Eddie eyed me. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if the color has spread. It seems to be everywhere.”

  “If I were you,” he said, “I’d see a doctor. That’s not normal.”

  “You think this is some kind of reaction to the wasps? Or the pepper spray?”

  “Hell if I know,” he said.

  What could the problem be? Were my kidneys giving out? Was my pancreas on the fritz? Did I have too many red blood cells or something like that? I felt absolutely fine and had experienced no other symptoms. I wasn’t unusually thirsty. I hadn’t been running a fever. My body was free of aches and pains. All systems seemed to be functioning normally.

  After dropping Eddie back at the office, I aimed my car for the medical clinic. I might not be able to get to the bottom of the 1099 scheme just yet, but maybe I could at least find out what was causing me to turn orange.

  Twenty minutes later, I sat on the paper-covered examination table, waiting to see the doctor. The door opened and Ajay stepped in. After placing his laptop computer on the counter, he walked over in front of me. Today, his T-shirt bore an image of Betty and Veronica from the Archie comics sitting back to back in tight tops. Sexist, sure. But I was more concerned at the moment with finding out what was wrong with me than giving the doc a lecture on feminism.

  Ajay took one look at my face and exclaimed, “What the hell is going on with you?”

  I scoffed. “You’re the doctor. Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?”

  He cupped my chin and turned my face from one side to the other, leaning in to look at my skin. He reached down and lifted my hand, inspecting the skin there, too, going so far as to scratch at it to see if the color came off. “I’m assuming your skin is evenly discolored all over. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” I hadn’t noticed any blotches anywhere when I’d taken my shower this morning.

  “Does your skin feel tender or itchy?”

  “Only where the wasps stung me. The rest feels okay.”

  “Have you been having any unusual symptoms? Blood in your urine or anything like that?”

  Eek! “No.” Thank God.