Death, Taxes, and Pecan Pie

by Diane Kelly

  We’d taken only a few steps when my ears picked up the sound of a big automobile engine coming up the street in front of us. Daffodil heard it, too. I looked up to see the white truck heading our way. Still, I would have paid it no mind had the dog not pricked up her ears and stopped dead in her tracks, staring at it, as if she sensed something was amiss.

  “Everything okay, Daffy?”

  VROOOOOM! The driver floored the engine and swerved right at us.

  What the—?!?

  Luckily for us both, Daffodil’s canine instincts were quicker than my inferior human ones, and she darted behind a mature oak tree, yanking me after her. Not a second too soon, either. As I fell to the grass behind the tree, the truck came up the curb, ran over the sidewalk where we’d just been standing, and hit the mailbox with a resounding BAM!

  The four legs of the box had been bolted to the concrete. But not anymore. The force of the impact ripped them from their moorings. The box flew up in the air and performed a back flip, its door opening and showering out wedding invitations in every direction before the box came down in the center of the main road. CLANG! The white pickup never even braked, careening onto the street and roaring off before I could catch its license plate number.

  SCREEEEEEECH! An oncoming red Ford Fiesta braked hard but couldn’t stop before crashing into the mailbox. CRASH! An instant later there was a poom as the airbags inflated followed by tinkle-tinkle-tinkle as the Fiesta became a metal piñata, raining parts onto the asphalt. Meanwhile, the mailbox spun like a top down the street, finally coming to rest against the curb.

  As I levered myself up from the ground, the airbag deflated to reveal a teenage girl at the wheel. Heck, the ink was probably still wet on her license. Her eyes bugged wide and her mouth hung open in shock.

  I ran to the curb, holding Daffodil’s leash tight. “Are you okay?” I hollered to the girl.

  She looked at me through the window and burst into tears, but nonetheless managed to nod, her dark curls bobbing about her face.

  I whipped my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 9-1-1.

  “Dallas nine-one-one,” came a male voice. “What’s your emergency?”

  “A driver in a white pickup nearly ran over me and my dog, and hit a mail collection box. The mailbox ended up in the road and a car crashed into it.” I gave him the names of the streets at the intersection. “Last I saw the truck it was heading east.”

  “Did you get a license plate number?”

  “No. It all happened too fast. But there’s got to be front end damage to the truck.”

  “Anyone injured?”

  “No.” Thank goodness!

  “I’ll get law enforcement en route.”

  By this time, traffic had slowed to a crawl as cars backed up behind the stationary Ford and rubberneckers inched around it, gawking as they rolled over the invitations we’d paid a pretty penny for and spent untold hours addressing and stamping. But there was nothing I could do about that now. Holding Daffodil’s leash tight, I stepped up to the curb and motioned for the girl to unroll the passenger window. “The police are on their way.”

  She held out her phone to me. “Can you call my parents?” she blubbered. “They’re going to be so mad!”

  “Not at you,” I assured her. “I’ll let them know this wasn’t your fault.”

  I took the phone, found “Mom” on her list of contacts, and dialed the number. “Hello,” I said. “My name is Tara Holloway. Your daughter is fine but she’s been in an accident.”

  “WHAT?!?” shrieked her mother.

  “She’s okay,” I repeated to calm the woman. “The accident wasn’t her fault. A truck hit a mailbox and it flew out into the street right in front of her car. She’s not hurt. She’s just scared.”

  I gave the woman our location.

  “I’ll be right there!” she cried.

  I ended the call and handed the phone back to the girl. “Your mom’s on her way.”

  Sobbing, she nodded and took her phone.

  The girl taken care of, I phoned Nick. “Put on some pants,” I told him. “Daffy and I need you.” I gave him a quick rundown. Truck. Mailbox. Crash.

  “Holy shit!” he hollered into the phone. “I’ll be right there!”

  We ended the call and I slid the phone into my pocket. In mere seconds, Nick came running around the corner in sneakers, a rumpled pair of shorts, and nothing else. He hadn’t even bothered to put on shoes.

  “Are you all right?” he shouted as he ran toward us.

  “We’re fine.” Well, other than my shoulder having been pulled out of the socket. But I wasn’t about to complain.

  Nick grabbed me in a bear hug and pulled me to him, holding me so tight I could barely breathe.

  When he finally released me, I told him about his hero dog. “Daffodil yanked me to safety. No telling what would have happened if she hadn’t clued in and pulled me out of the way.” Actually, that was a lie. I knew exactly what would have happened. I would’ve been plowed down, that’s what. I owed her my life.

  Nick crouched next to me and cradled Daffodil’s face in his hands, looking into her eyes. “You okay, baby girl?”

  She trembled in fear, but nonetheless gave him a lick on the cheek. He returned the gesture by kissing her snout. “I can’t believe someone tried to run over an innocent dog.” He stood and turned to me. “Unfortunately, I have no trouble believing someone would want to run you over.”

  I frowned and put my hands on my hips. “Thanks a lot!”

  “You know what I mean.” Nick’s eyes darkened with concern. “You’ve made a lot of enemies.”

  I certainly had. Trouble just seemed to find me. Since joining the IRS, I’d put dozens of people behind bars. Far as I knew, though, all of them were still behind those bars. “Maybe this was just a freak thing,” I said. “Maybe the driver wasn’t aiming for me. Maybe the driver just lost control of the truck.”

  “I suppose that’s possible. But until we know for sure this was an accident, we’d better keep our guards up.” Nick turned to the crumpled car and eyed the sobbing girl behind the wheel. “Let’s get her out of there.”

  “Good idea.”

  Putting up a hand to halt the traffic, he circled around the car and opened her door. “Why don’t you come wait with us?”

  She swiped her tears away and nodded. She tried to climb out, realized her seat belt was still on, and reached down to release it. Nick held out a hand to help her out of the car.

  After leading her over to the oak tree where I waited with Daffodil, Nick glanced back at the envelopes strewn all over the road. “Tell me those aren’t our wedding invitations all over the street.”

  I sighed. “Wish I could.”

  Chapter Two: Special Delivery

  Sirens sounded in the distance, drawing closer. A minute later, a fortyish female police officer pulled up behind the Fiesta, the lights flashing on her cruiser. She climbed out and came over to speak with us. Her gaze went to Nick, and she eyed his biceps appreciatively. I used to get jealous when this type of thing happened, but by now I’d gotten used to it. Female attention was a given when you were dating a hottie. Fortunately, Nick didn’t let it go to his head.

  After obtaining our names, she said, “All units are keeping an eye out for a damaged white pickup in the vicinity. Nothing so far.” She turned to the girl, angling her head to indicate the crumpled Fiesta. “That your car, hon?”

  “Yes,” the girl said. “My mom and dad bought it for me for my birthday last week.”

  “It doesn’t look safe to drive. I’ll get a tow truck out here.” With that, she squeezed the button on her shoulder-mounted radio to contact the Dallas PD dispatcher.

  Being the sweet dog that she was, Daffodil seemed to realize that the girl, too, was rattled. She looked up at her and wagged her tail, giving a soft woof? of concern. The girl crouched down and ran her hands over the dog, the effect seeming to soothe them both.

  The officer pulled a notepad and
pen from her pocket. “Either of you ladies get a look at the person driving the truck?”

  “I didn’t,” the girl said. “I didn’t even see the truck. All I saw was the mailbox flying out into the street and the airbag coming at me.”

  The cop shifted her gaze to me.

  I raised my palms. “Sorry. It all happened so fast and there was a glare on the windshield from the morning sun.”

  “Can you at least tell me whether there was anyone in the truck besides the driver?”

  I shook my head, knowing my responses had to be frustrating her. I felt the same way when a witness was unable to provide helpful information in my cases.

  “Did you recognize the truck?” she asked.

  “No. It was just a typical white pickup.”

  “Make or model?”

  “Couldn’t tell ya.” I should’ve paid more attention.

  “Anybody got a reason to try to run you down?”

  I issued an involuntary snort in response.

  She arched an intrigued brow.

  “I’m a special agent for IRS criminal investigations,” I explained. “Since I joined the agency last year, I’ve arrested an ice cream truck driver, several businessmen and tax preparers, a televangelist, the leader of a secessionist group, members of a terrorist operation, a drug-dealing pimp, a country-western singer, members of a drug cartel, a mafia boss, a guy who’d catfished women online, a local talk radio personality, and a human smuggler.”

  “Among others,” Nick added.

  The woman looked up and down my relatively scrawny five-foot-two-inch frame. “Never would’ve taken you for such a bad ass.”

  “Most people don’t,” I acknowledged. “Sometimes that works to my advantage.” I told her that despite my numerous arrests, I wasn’t aware of anyone in particular being after me. “This whole thing could have been nothing more than accident.” Maybe the driver had been using a cell phone and accidentally hit the gas and swerved our way. Or maybe the driver panicked after hitting the mailbox and had driven off to avoid the repercussions. After all, distracted drivers and hit and runs were not uncommon.

  “Maybe.” She wrote down my contact information, as well as the girl’s. “If anything comes up, I’ll be in touch.” She slid her pen and notepad back into her pocket. “In the meantime, let’s see about getting that mail rounded up. Sure seems to be a lot of it.”

  “I’d just mailed our wedding invitations.”

  She cut me a look. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  She shook her head. “I hope you don’t believe in bad omens.”

  While the police officer held traffic at bay with a raised palm, Nick and I scurried about, collecting the envelopes and stuffing them back into my bag. I found three in a storm drain. Some of the invitations had ended up lodged in the branches of nearby trees. Fortunately, Nick was able to reach those or get them down by shaking the branches until they fell. Many of those that had landed on the road bore telltale tire marks. But at least the addresses on all of them were still legible.

  After we finished collecting the envelopes, Nick grabbed the dented mailbox and dragged it up onto the curb. He looked inside and found a couple more invitations lodged between the frame and the damaged door.

  The tow truck arrived, followed by the girl’s mom. The anxious mother eyed the squashed front of the Fiesta, leapt from her car, and ran over to wrap her arms around her daughter. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

  Cocooned in her mother’s embrace, the girl burst into fresh sobs.

  Her mother eyed me over her daughter’s shoulder. “What happened?”

  “A truck came out of nowhere and hit the mailbox. It flew into the street. Your daughter was coming up the road and had no time to stop.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her jaw flexed. “Was it a drunk driver?”

  “Could be,” I said, though it seemed too early for anyone to be drunk. Then again, maybe the driver had gone to brunch and downed a few too many mimosas. “Or it could have been someone on a cell phone who accidentally hit the gas pedal. There’s no way of knowing.”

  Nick, Daffy, and I parted ways with the two. “Take care.”

  When we returned to Nick’s townhouse, I overturned my bag on Nick’s kitchen table.

  He took one look at the dirty envelopes and groaned. “This sucks. I know how much time you spent on those.”

  Money, too. The invitations hadn’t come cheap. Neither had the postage. “Besides the time it would take to readdress the invitations,” I said, “we’d have to pay a rush fee if we reorder. I say we send them as is. They don’t look pretty, but at least they’re intact.”

  He stepped over and pulled me into another hug. “That’s one of the many things I love about you.”

  “What is?”

  “You don’t sweat the small stuff.”

  We sat down at the table and compared the names on the envelopes to the guest list, making sure we had them all. We did. Phew.

  The crisis now contained, I fixed Daffodil four of my world-famous fried baloney sandwiches and hand-fed them to her, all the while singing her praises. It was the least I could do for the dog who’d saved my life. “You’re a good girl, Daffy. My hero!”

  She wagged her tail in appreciation and wolfed the food down.

  * * *

  Little did I know that outgoing mail wasn’t going to be my only problem. Turned out a certain piece of incoming mail would bear a surprise for me, too.

  At work on Monday afternoon, my ears picked up the squeak-squeak-squeak of the mail cart as it rolled up the hall. Someone should oil that darn wheel. The young clerk stepped into my office with a small stack of envelopes and paperwork and slid it into my inbox.

  I was on my phone, arguing with an attorney who’d been hired to defend a target in one of my tax cases. I gave the mail clerk a smile and a thumbs-up in appreciation for his delivery services as I reamed the lawyer. “The records your client sent over are incomplete. There were none of the invoices we asked for. Either you send the rest of the documentation over by one o’clock on Friday or I’ll be out to arrest your client that afternoon.” With that I hung up the phone. I’d had enough of his and his client’s bullshit.

  I reached over and pulled the stack of mail from the tray. At the top was a postcard advertising a continuing education workshop on the finer points of oil and gas law. No thanks.

  Next was an envelope containing a check for $47,368.92 made out the U.S. Treasury, payment of a settlement I’d negotiated. Good job, Tara, I mentally told myself. You’re a superstar! Okay, maybe that was a bit too self-congratulatory, but it’s not like the American public ever thanked us for doing our jobs. Heck, most people didn’t even know there was such a thing as the IRS Criminal Investigations Division or a special agent who carried both decimals and weapons. I can’t tell you how many times someone saw the holstered Glock at my waist, gasped, and exclaimed, “Auditors carry guns?” We IRS special agents worked in the shadows, like Batman. Of course some might say that cockroaches also worked in the shadows and liken us agents to the filthy bugs, but those people would be assholes.

  The third piece of mail was an interoffice memo from Viola reminding the staff that any items left in the refrigerator at four thirty on Friday afternoon would be tossed out. One too many tuna sandwiches had been left to grow fuzz over the weekend. While I didn’t enjoy the stench when I went for my coffee creamer in the fridge come Monday morning, the shades of blue and green mold could be quite pretty if you didn’t think too much about their source.

  My last piece of mail was a pink greeting card envelope. There was no return address on the front. I turned the envelope over. None on the back, either. That’s odd. Looked like the sender must have forgotten. I checked the front again. The postmark indicated the piece had been mailed from somewhere in Dallas last Thursday.

  I opened the envelope and pulled out the card. It was a flowery model, with YOU’RE ENGAGED written across the front in a fancy f
ont. How nice, I thought. Our first formal well-wisher.

  But when I opened the card, I realized I’d been sorely mistaken. The preprinted message BEST WISHES FOR A LIFETIME OF HAPPINESS! had been marked through in thick red ink. Instead of the sweet sentiment, the sender had instead scrawled a handwritten message. AT DEATH YOU WILL PART.

  Uh-oh.

  Remember what I’d said about trouble always finding me? Looked like it had found me again.

  Chapter Three: Best Wishes, Death Wishes

  While I had eventually written off yesterday’s near miss with the pickup as a random event, this card told me it might not have been. The driver of the pickup could have actually been trying to kill me. Given that the card had been mailed from within the city last Thursday, the sender might have assumed I’d receive the card on Friday, prior to the attempt to run me down. If not for the fact that the mail clerk had taken a vacation day last Friday, I probably would have received it then. Viola had sent an email to the agents telling us to sort through the mail ourselves if we were expecting something important. Given that I hadn’t been anticipating anything urgent, I hadn’t gone to the mail room to check. If I had, I might have been more careful yesterday, kept a closer eye on my surroundings. That’s what I get for being lazy.

  I took the card across the hall to Nick’s office and held it out to him.

  “A wedding card?” He smiled as he took it from me. “I hope it has a big fat check in it.”

  “Not exactly.”

  His smile faltered and he looked down at the card. When he opened it and saw what was written inside, his face tightened and he rose reflexively from his seat. “What the hell?”

  When he looked to me, I shrugged. I had no answer to his question.

  He came around his desk. “We need to show this to Lu.”

  He and I hightailed it down the hall to the office of our soon-to-retire boss, Luella “Lu” Lobozinski, otherwise known as The Lobo. Viola, Lu’s secretary and gatekeeper, sat at her desk, typing on her keyboard. She eyed us over her bifocals.