by Diane Kelly
Ajay’s mother stepped forward, Christina’s mother flanking her.
Ajay’s mom spoke first, looking from Christina to her son. “Your brother called us. He told us that we were putting too much pressure on you two and that we better back off and let you do things your way or we’d miss out on the entire thing. We are so sorry for interfering. I hope you can forgive us.”
“Us, too,” Christina’s mother said, taking her daughter’s hands in hers. “We certainly don’t want to start things off on the wrong foot.”
Christina misted up, waving a hand tipped with pearlescent polish in front of her face to dry the tears that were forming in her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here!” she choked out. “I really hated to do this without you!”
“Me, too,” Ajay told his parents, giving his mother a hug and his dad a squeeze on the shoulder. He turned to Christina. “You ready to become the next Mrs. Maju?”
She nodded vigorously, still too emotional to speak.
Ajay’s brother opened the double doors and we stepped into the chapel. The room was pretty, with marble columns and arched accents, as well as carpet in a colorful, traditional print. A black grand piano sat at the back of the room, a pianist ready to start.
The officiant was a gray-haired man in a stylish suit a shade lighter than his hair. He stood at the front next to a white, wooden podium, his hands clasped behind him. While the rest of us took our seats, Ajay walked up to stand to the man’s left. Once everyone was in place, the pianist launched into an abbreviated version of the traditional wedding march. Christina’s father, a tall man with her same dark hair and fit build, escorted her up the aisle. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and took a seat next to her mother in the front row.
When Christina and Ajay turned to each other with such love in their eyes, I found myself tearing up, too. Unlike the amor portrayed in Amor y Vengaza, the love between these two was real and lasting, the way it should be, the way it was when it was meant to be. You know, without the fake smiles and backstabbing and attempted murders and stuff.
Nick cut a glance my way, smiled softly when he saw my tears, and whipped a tissue out of his jacket pocket. He must’ve known this was coming and slid a package into his pocket when we were getting ready at the hotel. He wrapped a warm hand around my shoulders as I dabbed my eyes.
After the usual preliminaries, the officiant got down to business, turning to Ajay. “Do you, Ajay, take Christina to be your wife? Will you always love, honor, and cherish her, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for as long as you both shall live?”
Ajay said, “I do.” His voice broke when he added, “And I always will.”
Christina smiled at his improvisation, repeating the sentiment when it was her turn. “I do, and I always will.”
They exchanged rings and the officiant pronounced them man and and wife, the rest of us cheering and applauding. They sealed their future with a warm kiss.
After a celebratory meal topped off with champagne and wedding cake at one of the casino’s upscale restaurants, we spent the rest of the day enjoying the city. We gathered around a craps table, some of us winning and some of us losing, our money basically being redistributed among us time and time again. Just three hours into their marriage and Ajay and Christina had already gone through three or four rounds of richer and poorer.
When we tired of craps, we moved on to blackjack. The waitress brought us another round of drinks as we slid onto the stools. In the first game, the dealer dealt me the queen of hearts. “Hit me,” I said, tapping my card.
He gave me a second card. The ace of spades. I threw my hands in the air. “Twenty-one!”
“Rub it in, why don’t you?” snarled Ajay jokingly. He’d gone over. He shouldn’t have asked for that fourth card.
After an hour or so, we moved on to the slots.
Christina’s mother chose a machine next to me. “I remember back in the day when the machines gave you actual money instead of a ticket to redeem,” she said. “We’d all carry around these little plastic buckets of money and the coins would turn our fingers black. It wasn’t as convenient, but it sure was fun watching those coins fall into the tray.” These days, that sound was simulated by the machines when they paid out.
She pulled the lever to play the machine. A red seven popped up in the first column. Another red seven popped up in the second column. She raised clenched fists. “Come on, red seven!” As if she’d willed it, a third red seven popped up in the third column. A light at the top of the machine began to spin like a police beacon. “I won!”
“Congrats!” I said. “How much?”
She consulted the screen. “Two grand! Woo hoo!” She cashed out and grabbed her payout ticket from the machine. Leaning in to me, she said, “Don’t tell my husband I won. I’m going to surprise him with a new sofa, maybe one with a built-in recliner. We’ve had the one we’ve got since Christina was a little girl. It’s time for an upgrade.”
I gave her a smile and pretended to zip my lip.
Nick walked up. “These machines are robbing me blind. How about we go for a swim?”
We bade good-bye to Christina’s mother, went up to our room to change into our bathing suits, and spent the next couple of hours lounging by the pool, me with a frozen margarita in my hands, Nick with a cold beer. My odd skin tone garnered me a few odd looks as I lay sprawled on the padded chaise, but I didn’t care. I was having too much fun.
That night, we regrouped to go see the Blue Man Group together. Sitting in front of me at the performance, Ajay turned his head and caught my eye over his shoulder. “With your skin, you could star in the Orange Woman Show.”
I took his razzing in stride, responding only by sticking out my tongue.
The show was a lot of fun, an unusual but entertaining mix of music, science, dancing, and comedy. Afterward, Nick and I returned to our room, tired from the busy day, but not too tired to continue the party on our own.
“I may have lost at the tables and slots,” Nick said with a naughty grin as he swept me up into his arms and carried me to the bed, “but I know I’ll get lucky here.”
“I owe you that raunchy makeup sex, don’t I?”
“Hell, yeah!”
By the time we were finished, the pillows were on the floor, the sheets were tangled up around us, and we were both panting as if we’d just run a marathon.
Nick turned his head to look at me. “This Vegas wedding has been fun. Maybe you and I should get married here.”
“It’s much too late for that,” I told him. “Our mothers have nearly all the details hammered out already.”
“They didn’t waste any time, did they?”
“Not a second.”
He turned to face me full on, propping himself up on an elbow. “Those two are going to spoil our kids.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second.”
He reached out a hand and rubbed a warm thumb down the side of my face. “I love the hell out of you, Tara Holloway.”
“Back at you, Nick Pratt.”
Everyone was much quieter on the flight home Sunday, worn out from the nonstop action and excitement. The closer the plane got to Texas, the more my anxiety about the girls returned. I’d hoped Agent Castaneda would have contacted me over the weekend to tell me that they’d either found the girls or put eyes back on Hidalgo, but he hadn’t been in touch. My heart shrank into a hard, painful ball in my chest. Only twenty-four hours remained before the ransom was due. If the girls weren’t found before then, their lives could be over. God, I didn’t want to think of that horrific possibility.
While Nick dozed next to me, I took advantage of the airplane’s Wi-Fi system to watch the next episode of A y V. I’d been going nuts wondering what would happen between Isidora and the barista, and I figured the show might help take my mind off my worries.
The episode began by repeating the previous scene, the one on which the preceding episode had ended.
“Isidora?” the bari
sta cried, his expression incredulous. “You are my new boss?”
The deceptive smile spread across her face once again, just as it had in the last episode. “Indeed I am.”
“But what we had was so special! Why do you treat me so poorly? Do you love me no longer?”
“I never loved you,” Isidora lied. “You were merely a plaything to me.”
Ooh, that did it. The sexy barista threw down the gauntlet—or, rather, he threw down his bar towel. I watched the screen, one eye on the actors, the other on the subtitles. “I refuse to work for such a pittance!” he cried to Isidora. “Or for such an evil woman as you! I quit!”
As he stormed out of the room, she had a vicious thought that ran across the bottom of the screen. Nobody makes a fool of Isidora Davila without thoroughly regretting it.
She sat down at her computer and doctored the coffeehouse’s financial records, smiling deceptively as she reported an enormous amount of income for the barista to the SAT, or Tax Administration Service, the Mexican equivalent of the IRS.
Holy guacamole!
The situation was too similar to the fake prize case I was investigating to be coincidence, wasn’t it? Had I just been handed an inadvertent clue? Could the person who issued the fraudulent 1099s have been inspired by Isidora Davila? Had the telenovela star given a viewer the idea of using the tax reporting system as a means of revenge?
It was certainly possible, likely even. But with seemingly everyone I’d spoken to lately being hooked on the show, including all of the victims, this potential lead didn’t narrow things down much, if at all. Still, it gave me something to think about.
Think, Tara. Think. Think …
Could the perpetrator be someone like Isidora, a seemingly sweet woman to everyone’s face, but a conniving backstabber when she felt she’d been wronged? If so, who was this person?
chapter twenty-seven
Making the Connection
When the plane landed at DFW at 9:30 Sunday evening, I still didn’t know who was responsible for issuing the fake prize reports, but I felt certain it was someone who watched A y V. That person had to have a connection to all of the victims. But whatever the link was, it still eluded me.
Ugh!
The nap Nick had taken had given him a second wind, and my frustration seemed to be fueling me. Like the connection between the 1099 targets, Salvador Hidalgo was nowhere to be found. On the drive home, I asked Nick if he’d mind taking a quick detour.
“Just tell me where to,” he said.
I inputted Hidalgo’s address in Pleasant Grove into my GPS. A half hour later, we rolled up his street. When the GPS told us we’d arrived at our destination, I gave the house a quick but thorough once-over as Nick kept the car moving. Didn’t want to inadvertently tip the guy off that his house was being cased or he might not return to it. Of course, given that the house was totally dark and there was no vehicle in the carport, it appeared no one was home anyway.
We continued on down the street. When we turned the corner at the next intersection, I spotted a man sitting in an old muscle car, smoking a cigarette. I glanced back, noting he could keep eyes on Hidalgo’s house from his position.
Nick picked up on the guy, too. “A hundred bucks says that guy in the GTO is a fed.”
“That’s a bet you might actually win,” I teased. Nick had lost every cent he’d brought to Vegas. First Kanji the sumo wrestler let him down, then it was the shooters at the craps table, then it was the blackjack dealer. Heck, even the cherries conspired against him at the slot machines.
Being a good sport, Nick chuckled. “I hope you won’t mind working until you’re eighty because I lost all of my retirement savings.”
“Time for me to start looking for that second husband, huh?”
“Don’t you dare.”
The fact that Border Patrol had an undercover agent keeping eyes on Hidalgo’s house here told me they still hadn’t tracked the guy down. Damn. I’d been hoping to hear some good news when I got back in town, thought maybe Castaneda has been saving it for after I returned from my trip. So much for that.
Where was Hidalgo hiding? Whether he was north of the border or south was anyone’s guess at this point. Hell, for all we knew he was in a kayak, taking a nice pleasure trip down the Rio Grande River. Was it wrong of me to hope he capsized and got eaten by a bear?
When I arrived home, Annie met me and Nick at the door, mewing nonstop as if to say Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! I thought you’d never come home! While Nick carried my suitcase upstairs to my bedroom, I scooped the cat up in my arms and cuddled her tight, scratching behind her ears with my fingers. She craned her neck and purred in appreciation.
From atop the armoire that housed my TV, Henry lay with his eyes closed, though he swished his tail to let me know he was angry I hadn’t been here to give him his treats on demand. I stepped over and gave him a rub down his back. “Come on, boy. I’ll give you a treat.”
He stood, stretched, and made his way down from the perch, hopping first to a bookcase, then onto the coffee table, then onto the floor. He followed me to the kitchen, where I gave each of the cats three treats each. Henry gobbled his down, swished his tail one last time, and returned to the living room to sharpen his claws on my sofa.
Nick left me with a chaste kiss. “See you in the morning.”
* * *
I tossed and turned all night, my mind troubled with the niggling thought that there was something I was missing, some clue I’d overlooked. When I woke on Monday morning, groggy and grumpy, I started the coffeepot and took a shower.
As the warm water ran over me, I realized that while I’d asked the prize scam victims for their personal information and compared their lists of churches, banks, gyms, and the like, and while I’d asked them about their coworkers, I hadn’t gone so far as to compare a list of employees for each of the companies. Really, it was the only thing left I could do before throwing in the towel and telling the victims and the senator that all leads had been exhausted to no avail.
I dried off, got ready for work, and drove to the office. After logging into the system, I pulled up the W-2 data for Sweet Melody Music, MetalMasters, Eternal Summer, and Snippy’s. I printed out a list of people for whom each company had filed 1099s in the past five years. Fortunately, the lists for all of the companies but MetalMasters were relatively short. Being strategic, I focused on the lists for the other three companies, searching for any overlap of names. I set the three lists side by side, going through the names one by one.
Adamson, Bradley. Nope. That name appeared only on the Sweet Melody list.
Anders, Mary. Nope. That name was not repeated elsewhere, either.
Archer, Nicole. Nope.
I continued on down the list. The only overlap among the three was the name John Smith. Not a surprise, I supposed, given that both the first and last names were extremely common. While the name did not show up on the Sweet Melody list, it appeared on both the list for MetalMasters and the one for Snippy’s. A quick glance at the employee’s social security numbers, however, told me it was two different John Smiths.
Ugh.
I continued on until I reached the end of the list. Zaruba, Zachary. Nope.
Dang it! Dang, dang, dang!
I rounded up my notes from my briefcase. Maybe if I took a look at them one more time, something would pop out at me. If not, the file would go into archives along with the other cases agents had been unable to solve. I didn’t like that idea, though. I mean, on a realistic, practical level, I realized I wouldn’t win them all, wouldn’t always figure things out, wouldn’t catch every bad guy. But on another level, I didn’t like to lose, especially to someone who’d used the IRS as an unwitting pawn. If I couldn’t determine who had issued those fake 1099s for the prize winnings, it was going to bug me, to sit in a tiny little corner of my gut and fester. And I sure didn’t like the fact that I’d be letting Lu down. She’d have to call Senator Perkins’s office and tell him that I’d been unable
to find the clues I’d needed or put together the clues I’d gathered. She’d have to tell him that I’d failed. Maybe I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my work, and maybe I put undue pressure on myself, but I didn’t like to be a failure.
I ripped the pages of notes from the notepad and laid them out on the desk where I could see them all at once. I ran my gaze over the pages, various words randomly catching my eye. I circled the ones that could be important. Stolen checks. Payroll service. Franchisee.
Wait a second …
My eyes and mind went back to payroll service. Jocelyn had mentioned that the woman sent out by Eternal Summer’s payroll service had made some mistakes. I’d dismissed the information at the time because Jocelyn said she’d never complained about the worker to the payroll company. I’d assumed, then, that the worker wouldn’t have known Jocelyn was dissatisfied and would have suffered no consequences as a result, and would therefore have no reason to seek revenge on Jocelyn. That logic still seemed to hold. But hadn’t Thomas Hoffmeyer also mentioned that Snippy had outsourced its payroll?
My eyes scanned the pages, stopping on the notes I’d taken during his interview. Yep, I’d jotted a note that Laurie Murphy and his other staff members had taken turns handling payroll on a four-week rotation before the payroll handling was sent “out of house.”
My nerves began to buzz with excitement, but I tried my best to ignore it. This could be nothing, a mere coincidence. After all, it wasn’t at all unusual for companies, especially smaller ones, to hire a third-party service to handle their payroll. Collecting and paying taxes could be complicated, and it was often cheaper to have a specialized company take care of the task than to hire an experienced employee to handle it. In fact, payroll processing services were on the rise, with many to choose from. Heck, one of the CPAs I’d worked with at Martin & McGee had left the firm to start his own payroll service outfit. Last I heard, he was making money hand over fist.
Could the payroll service be the missing link, the connection between the victims that I’d been missing? Neither Bethany Flagler nor either of the accountants at MetalMasters had mentioned a payroll service. But I hadn’t asked them about their payroll, either. Looked like it was time to do just that.
