by Diane Kelly
We gave her an update on the case, which took all of two seconds. It doesn’t take long to say, “We’ve got squat.”
She put the meat stick to her lips as if to take a puff but took a nibble instead. “If what you’re doing isn’t working,” she said, “you need to try something else.”
No kidding. “But what?” I asked.
“That’s for you two to figure out,” Lu said. “Put your heads together and come up with a plan.” She held out both hands and waved us out of her office. “Scoot. Come back when you’ve figured things out. But make it quick. We’re getting backlogged.”
Eddie and I walked back to my office. I plopped down in my desk chair while Eddie took a seat in one of the wing chairs that faced my desk. Nick sat across the hall, talking on his personal cell phone, which meant the call wasn’t business related. He chuckled.
How the hell could I concentrate with Nick across the hall setting up dates? I motioned to Eddie. “Shut my door, would ya?”
Eddie stuck out a foot and pushed it closed.
“What can we do that hasn’t already been done?” I asked, throwing up my hands.
“I don’t know.” Eddie leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “We’ve got to think of something, though.”
Viola stepped into my office with a copy of a tax return in her hand. She tossed it onto my desk.
“What’s this?” I picked up the document and took a quick look at the front page. It was a tax return for an elderly woman named Ora Bickerstaff. The return had been prepared using surviving-spouse filing status, meaning Ms. Bickerstaff had lost her husband during the tax year. He’d left her well off, through. Her return reported investment income of fifty grand.
“Richard Beauregard is at it again,” Vi said, eyeing us over the top of her bifocals.
“How can that be?” Eddie said. “We terminated his e-filing privileges.”
Vi pursed her lips. “He filed the old-fashioned way.”
“A paper return?” Eddie snatched the pages out of my hand. “Nobody files paper returns anymore.” He scanned the first page, then turned to the second. “Beau claimed another fraudulent fuel tax credit.”
Which meant another taxpayer defrauded. A widow, no less. Was there no depth too low for Beau to sink to?
Eddie handed the return back to me. I looked it over thoroughly. Sure enough, Beauregard Financial Services was listed in the paid-preparer section.
It was one thing to be outsmarted by well-trained terrorists with college degrees in difficult subjects. It was another to be outsmarted by an idiot with a unibrow.
“Let’s pay a visit to Ora Bickerstaff,” I suggested.
While Eddie went to his office to retrieve his jacket and briefcase, I gathered up my purse and stepped across the hall to Nick’s office.
Nick glanced up from his computer screen. “Hey.”
I leaned on the doorjamb. “Another night, another girl, huh?”
He ducked his chin in agreement. “Yep.”
“Do me a favor, will you?” I snapped. “Have a horrible, rotten, no-good time.” It was a mean-spirited, spiteful, jealous thing to say. I’m human. Sue me.
A knowing grin spread across Nick’s lips. “You’re eating your heart out, aren’t you?”
No sense lying about something that was so obvious. “Yes, I am. If Brett weren’t dealing with a beetle infestation in Atlanta it would be you and me going out tonight.”
He raised a brow. “Bugs, huh? That’s what’s kept you from breaking up with him?”
I nodded. “His career’s on the line. And not just the landscaping but the nursery business, too.”
Nick watched me for a moment, his expression thoughtful, considering. “I suppose it would take a nasty bitch to break up with a guy who’s going through a major career setback.”
Did that mean he understood why I hadn’t been able to move things along with Brett? I didn’t have time to find out. Eddie walked up.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I took one last look at Nick before walking away.
He gave me a soft smile and he gave me a wink. But what he gave me most was hope.
* * *
Ora Bickerstaff lived in a newly constructed high-dollar high-rise for senior citizens. The place was gorgeous, with lush gardens outside and Tuscan tile and granite accents inside. The residents enjoyed valet parking, gourmet meals, and maid service. Who said getting old had to suck?
“I’d love to live like this,” I told Eddie as we made our way to the security desk to check in.
“No kidding,” Eddie agreed. “Did you see the lunch menu posted by the entrance? They’re serving mahimahi. You know what I had for dinner last night? Macaroni and cheese, for the third time this week.”
Mac ’n’ cheese was the twins’ favorite. Poor Eddie, stuck with a diet fit for a grade-school palate.
We showed our identification to the guard at the desk. Once we’d been cleared, we climbed into the elevator and rode up to the twelfth floor along with a couple of older women carrying canvases and oil paints.
Ms. Bickerstaff lived in unit 1204, a spacious model with plate-glass windows and a balcony that overlooked a park. Her place was filled with expensive high-quality antiques, including an ornate grandfather clock and a baby grand piano. As for Ms. Bickerstaff, she, too, was a high-quality antique, dressed in a tailored pantsuit I recognized as a Liz Claiborne offering. Her silver hair hung in a short, smooth bob. At her ankles quivered a tiny male Yorkshire terrier with red ribbons in his hair, a canine cross-dresser.
Ms. Bickerstaff invited Eddie and me to take a seat on her couch and offered us tea. We both thanked her but declined.
She took a seat in a wooden rocker and used her hands to lift her legs up onto a footstool with a needlepoint cover. “Swollen ankles and arthritis,” she explained, “but I don’t let it slow me down much.”
Good for her.
The dog waited until Ms. Bickerstaff had settled in, then leaped up into her lap. The woman ran a blue-veined hand over the dog’s back and looked at me and Eddie. “You said you had some questions about my tax return?”
“That’s right,” Eddie said. “We’ve been after your tax preparer, Richard Beauregard, for a while now. We went to arrest him at his office last week, but he fled out a window.”
“My goodness.” Her eyes grew wide and her hand stilled on the dog’s back. “What were you going to arrest him for?”
We explained about Beauregard’s fraudulent fuel tax scheme and the nonexistent insurance and investment companies.
Ms. Bickerstaff sat up in her chair. “Are you telling me I gave that little bugger three thousand dollars for a gas well that doesn’t even exist?”
The dog looked up at the woman’s face, cocking his head in concern.
“Sorry,” I said, “but yes. That’s exactly what we’re telling you.”
She shook her head. “My husband must be rolling over in his grave. He always told me I was too trusting. That’s why he took care of all of our finances while he was alive.”
We asked her how she’d hooked up with Beauregard.
“I saw his ad in The Greensheet,” she said. “It caught my eye because it said he’d come to his clients. I don’t drive much anymore.”
“So he came here?” I asked.
She nodded. “Prepared my return right there at my kitchen table.”
“Any chance you’ve got that Greensheet?” I asked. Beauregard’s old phone numbers had been disconnected and he hadn’t listed a new phone number on the tax return. If we could get a copy of the ad, we’d know his new number and could possibly use it to track him down.
Ms. Bickerstaff gestured toward her pantry. “Check the recycle bin in the bottom. I think it’s still in there.”
I opened the pantry door and bent down to rifle through her plastic recycle bin. I found a Greensheet near the bottom, under a week’s worth of the Dallas Morning News. I quickly perused it. Beauregard’s ad had
been circled in pencil. “Found it!” I called.
We thanked the woman for her time and told her we’d let her know when we tracked Richard Beauregard down … if we tracked him down. Our targets seemed to be doing a good job of staying out of reach lately.
chapter twenty-two
Vroom-Vroom Kaboom
Eddie and I headed back to the G-ride in the parking lot. As I approached the car, I flipped through The Greensheet, perusing the singles section to see if I could find a new love interest for Alicia. One of the pages slipped out, dropping to the parking lot. As I bent to pick it up, I noticed something odd lodged behind the back tire of the car. The thing was plastic, circular, and flat, like the tortilla warmers used in Mexican restaurants. I assumed it was trash, though I wasn’t sure how the trash ended up behind the tire and I wasn’t sure why someone would throw away what appeared to be a perfectly usable tortilla warmer.
Being the upstanding citizen I was, I grabbed the thing, carried it over to a nearby metal garbage Dumpster, and tossed it over the top of the bin. I turned and was headed back to the car when KABOOM!
I dived behind a nearby Impala. Garbage sailed into the air and the Dumpster rocked backward, its metal sides bowing out, the impact blowing a hole completely through the far side.
“Holy shit!” Eddie ducked behind the fleet car and held his briefcase over his head, shielding himself against the deluge of yesterday’s cheese tortellini raining down from the sky. “What the hell did you throw in that Dumpster?”
I was guessing it was not a tortilla warmer. I was guessing it was some type of land mine.
Someone had followed us to the high-rise without our knowledge, someone who wanted me and Eddie dead.
That much required no guesswork.
I ran to Eddie, grabbed him, and dragged him away from the car. “There might be more explosives. We’ve got to call the bomb squad.”
Eddie and I put a safe distance between us and the car and called 911. A couple of men from the building’s security team raced outside. We waved them over and told them what had happened. They took one look at the blown-out Dumpster and the vehicles splattered with leftovers and gaped.
“Jesus Christ,” one of them muttered, shaking his head. “Didn’t expect nothing like that on this job.”
One of the men stayed outside to prevent cars or people from entering the lot, while the other returned to the building to evacuate the residents. Better safe than sorry.
In minutes, three police cruisers and two fire trucks were on the scene, along with dozens of cops and first responders. Soon afterward, the bomb squad arrived with a frisky black Lab trained to sniff out explosives. The dog put his nose to the ground and set right to work. Looked like we were in good hands. Or should I say good nostrils?
A steady stream of residents exited the building, some in wheelchairs, others making their way down the sidewalk as quickly as they could with their walkers and canes. A group of women in bathing suits and rubber swim caps came out together, the bomb having interrupted their water aerobics class. The residents gathered on the far lawn to watch the activity in the parking lot, the sound of their excited chatter drifting across the lawn.
A fortyish plainclothes cop headed our way, identifying himself as a detective. He whipped out a mini tape recorder and notepad. “Mind if I ask you some questions?”
An hour later, after Eddie and I had provided all the information we could to the detective and the bomb squad had determined there were no other explosives in the vicinity, we were cleared to leave. I demanded that Eddie stand back while I started the car, just in case. If I was blown to smithereens my parents and siblings would lament my death, but if Eddie died he’d leave a wife and two young children behind. I wasn’t about to take that chance.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and crossed the fingers of my left hand as I turned the key in the ignition. The engine started without a hitch. Phew. I glanced upward. “Thanks, Big Guy.”
Looked like Eddie and I would live to fight crime another day. Of course whoever put the explosives under the tire would no doubt soon be back at work trying to find another way to kill us.
Rats.
As Eddie and I drove back to the IRS building, we tried to make some sense of the situation. I supposed it was possible that Richard Beauregard had planted the land mine, but my money was on the terror network. We knew that the person who’d helped move funds was still on the loose, but was that person the one who’d planted the bomb or were there more of them? If there were more terrorists in the area, how many? When would they strike again? And how did they know that Eddie and I were after them? Had someone at one of the MSBs told the bomber about us? Or had Homsi, Algafari, or Nasser somehow communicated to a cohort on the outside?
“The only thing I can say for sure,” Eddie said when I posed the questions to him, “is that you and I had better watch our backs.”
chapter twenty-three
Girls’ Night Out
I kept my eyes wide open on my drive home from work, checking my rearview and side mirrors for a tail. I didn’t see one, but just to be safe I performed some evasive maneuvers, crossing three lanes of traffic to make a sudden exit from the freeway, executing several bootlegger’s turns at random intervals, backtracking through my neighborhood.
I arrived home to find Alicia in my kitchen slugging back yet another glass of peach sangria. She wore nothing but a black bra, panties, and a slightly buzzed expression. “Put on your dancing shoes!” she called, raising her glass. “We’re going out.”
After what I’d been through I was in no mood for dancing. But that’s precisely when a girl needs to hit the dance floor, isn’t it? “You’re getting dressed first, right?”
“Of course,” she said. “I just wanted to have a drink while I got ready.”
I grudgingly bypassed the sangria. Clearly I’d be the designated driver tonight.
We walked upstairs, parting ways on the landing. Alicia went left into my guest room while I turned right into my bedroom.
It had been ages since I’d been to a nightclub. Frankly, I wasn’t all that excited by the prospect. But I was even less excited about the prospect of staying home with Alicia, the two of us sitting on the couch like a couple of old spinsters feeling sorry for ourselves.
Annie hopped onto the corner of my bed, licking her paw and watching as I sorted through my small selection of clean clothes. I searched for something fun and cute that I wouldn’t freeze to death in. A rapidly moving cold front had snuck into the Dallas area late this afternoon and the temperatures had plummeted into the forties. I settled on a sweaterdress over tights with high-heeled boots.
Alicia stepped out of the guest room in one of the secondhand designer outfits she’d snagged at the thrift shop several weeks ago. The winter-white dress was cinched at the waist with a wide black belt. She’d paired the dress with classic black T-strap heels.
It had been years since we’d both been single, but tonight, for all practical purposes, the two of us were single again. Though I hadn’t yet put things with Brett in a holding pattern as planned, I was miffed he’d only called me twice since leaving for Atlanta a week ago. I knew he was dealing with an emergency situation, but didn’t he need me for moral support? I felt left out, cut out. Not that I had any right to feel upset given my plans to put him on the back burner, but the feelings were there nonetheless.
Sheesh. Relationships are complicated, huh?
We piled into my BMW and drove a few blocks to a nightclub in Uptown. We stood in line on the sidewalk for half an hour, shivering and huddling together in a desperate and futile attempt to keep warm. The throbbing bass line reverberated through the wall beside us as we waited.
Alicia reached into her purse, pulled out two lollipops, and handed one to me. “Here. Maybe these suckers will distract us from the fact that we’re slowly dying of hypothermia.”
I removed the crinkly plastic wrap and stuck the sucker in my mouth. It had an unusual taste, a h
int of citrus with something that tasted sort of like a wheatgrass protein shake Christina had once forced on me. “What flavor is this?”
Alicia consulted her wrapper. “Hemp.”
“Hemp?” I said. “Where the heck did you get a hemp lollipop?”
“At that smoke shop,” she said. “The one where your mother bought the ‘hummingbird feeder.’” She made air quotes with her fingers.
After several more minutes we finally reached the front of the line, paid our ten-dollar cover charge, and entered the dark, noisy, crowded club. Bodies packed the dance floor, gyrating under the flashing colored lights. Alicia and I wound our way through onlookers to the bar. We bellied up and shouted our orders to the bartender, who had to lean forward and cup a hand around his ear to hear us over the loud techno music. Alicia ordered a Cosmo while I opted for a Dr Pepper.
A soda.
Ugh.
This was going to be a long night.
As we stood near the dance floor, I wondered about Nick’s date tonight. Was he out with a bosomy blonde? A racy redhead? A brainy brunette? Where did they go and what did they do? Did the two of them hit it off? Was he putting the moves on her at this very moment?
I realized then that I wasn’t wondering what Brett was doing at the moment, where he was, or who he was with. Should I feel bad about that? I mean, he was still technically my boyfriend. But I supposed I didn’t worry about Brett because I knew what Brett was doing. Lying on the bed in his hotel room, watching the late news or maybe David Letterman.
At least I assumed that’s what he was doing. For all I knew he was out at a nightclub, too. I mean, he probably thought Alicia and I were at home painting our nails and watching a chick flick. If I could be out doing something unpredictable, so could he, right?
Jeez. Yet another thing to worry about.
Two men in their late twenties came our way and asked Alicia and me to dance. We accepted and followed them onto the crowded dance floor, squeezing between bodies until we found an open spot. My dance partner was tall, dark haired, and undeniably attractive, but he lacked Nick’s cocky chipped-tooth smile or Brett’s boyish charm. He was fun to dance with, but beyond that he didn’t do anything for me. Besides, for all I knew he was the one who’d put the explosive device under my tire. Maybe he’d figured out where I lived, watched my town house, and followed me here with the hopes of kidnapping and torturing me.
