Death, Taxes, and Green Tea Ice Cream

by Diane Kelly

  “Hello there,” the woman said. “Welcome to Seven Fables. Are you two looking for a room?”

  Nick cut me a grin that said her suggestion sounded like a good one.

  “We’re here on official IRS business,” I told her. At least Nick was. I was merely here as a busybody, butting in where I didn’t belong. But hey, that had never stopped me before.

  “IRS?” the woman asked, looking from me to Nick.

  Nick flashed his badge and introduced himself, offering his hand.

  I merely told the woman my name and bent down to pet the dog. “Hey, pooch.”

  The woman introduced herself as Cindy (seriously?) Allen, her dog as Anastasia, and shook Nick’s hand. Anastasia offered me her paw, which I shook, too.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Cindy asked.

  Nick slid his badge back into his shirt pocket. “We’re trying to locate someone who may have been a guest here back in July. On the sixteenth to be precise.”

  A nervous look skittered across her face. “Is there a problem?”

  “Possibly,” Nick said. The number one rule in investigating a case was to provide information on a need-to-know basis only.

  “Oh … well … okay,” Ms. Allen said, obviously wanting more details but at the same time realizing she wasn’t likely to get them. “Come back to my office.”

  She led us into a foyer papered in a gaudy rose print and through a set of French doors into her office. Anastasia shuffled after us in a graceless short-legged, side-to-side gait.

  “Your decorations are wonderful,” I told the woman. “It must’ve taken you forever to string all those lights.”

  “Thanks,” Cindy said, “though I can’t claim the credit. My handyman service hangs lights in their off-hours.”

  She stepped over to an antique roll-top desk, pulled an old-fashioned ledger book out of the top drawer, and set the book on the desk. She eased the glove off her right hand and flipped through the pages until she found the date we were looking for. “I had four guests on July sixteenth. Two couples, the Fenwicks and the Garrisons.”

  Nick’s shoulders slumped. “So no one by the name of Darshan Sundaram, then.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Oh, Mr. Sundaram isn’t a guest here. He’s a boarder. I treat my boarders like family.”

  Nick and I exchanged another glance. I wondered if she’d want Sundaram in her family once she learned he was a wanted criminal. Then again, Cinderella had always had family issues. Still, a wicked stepsister or two were nothing compared to a wanted felon.

  “Is Mr. Sundaram here now?” Nick asked.

  I hoped he was. Nick and I could take him down, quick and easy. I felt myself begin to buzz with anticipation.

  The woman closed her ledger book. “No. I haven’t seen him in a week or so. He keeps a room here for when he’s in town, but I don’t always know when he’s coming.”

  She went on to tell us that Sundaram had boarded at her place for a couple of years and always paid his rent in advance. “I’m hoping he’ll come back soon,” she said. “His mail is stacking up.”

  My ears perked up. “He receives mail here?”

  “Why, sure,” she said. “It’s one of the services I provide to my boarders.” She looked from me to Nick, a frown creasing her brow. “What sort of business do y’all have with Mr. Sundaram, anyway?”

  Nick went ahead and told her about the illegal activities, about the call center in India, the fraudulent demands on people who’d already made good on their loans.

  As he detailed Sundaram’s indiscretions, the woman’s frown became less defensive and more skeptical. “And you’re sure it’s him? He’s always seemed like such a nice man. Very polite, impeccable manners. I find this hard to believe.”

  Nick showed her a copy of the assumed name certificate with Sundaram’s name and signature on it. She eyed the signature for a moment, then reached back to a bulletin board behind her and pulled off a postcard featuring an Indian elephant.

  “Sundaram sent you a postcard?” Nick asked.

  Ms. Allen nodded. “I asked him to. I collect stamps from around the world. See?” She pulled a large scrapbook out of the desk and turned the pages, showing us stamps from various countries around the world. Still, we’d come to track down Sundaram, not to discuss her hobby as a philatelist, a word that I’d always thought sounded far more naughty and sordid than the concept it represented.

  “Let’s compare the signatures,” I suggested, trying to get things back on track.

  Ms. Allen laid the postcard and assumed name certificate side by side on the desk. Sure enough, the name Darshan was spelled the same on both the postcard and the certificate, from the excessively round D to the swoop following the n. Same with the last name. The final m in Sundaram was also followed by a distinctive swoop.

  “I can hardly believe it.” She looked up from the documentation, her eyes wide, incredulous. Once the truth sank in, though, she became royally pissed. “I run a nice place here. I’m not running a halfway house for criminals. The nerve of that man.”

  “Any chance we can take a look at his mail and his room?” Nick asked.

  Allen owned the place. She could agree to let us execute a search without a warrant. Of course she could also refuse and force us to seek a court order. I mentally crossed my fingers.

  “Of course.”

  Phew.

  She led us down a long hallway papered in a different gaudy floral print, this one featuring pink poppies. We passed a room bearing a plaque that read: The Rip Van Winkle Room, complete with a set of nine pins and an antique liquor jug. I glanced into Sleeping Beauty’s Bed Chamber and noted an assortment of spindles displayed on the dresser. I hoped none of the guests would prick themselves on a spindle and die. The Princess and the Pea Room featured a bed with three mattresses stacked on top of one another and a wooden stepstool to climb up into the tall bed. A potted pea plant grew in a window box sitting on the inside windowsill.

  We stopped at the end of the hall, at the closed door of a room identified as the Snow White Suite. The keys on Cindy’s ring jingled as she sorted through them.

  “Here we go.” She slid a key into the lock and pushed the door open. “The mail’s in the chamber pot.” She gestured to a large white ceramic pot with daisies painted along the outside.

  The room boasted not only a small bushel basket filled with red wax apples but also seven garden gnome statutes, probably the closest thing she could find to dwarves. An enormous bejeweled oval mirror was hanging, of course, on the wall. Sundaram could hardly be called the fairest of them all, however. What he’d done to his victims was very unfair.

  Cindy left Nick and me to scour the room, searching for clues.

  Nick gestured around at the gnomes, all of which were smiling. “Those things are creeping me out. It’s like they’re watching us.”

  I got the same feeling. Eerie.

  While Nick checked the dresser drawers, I pulled the mail from the chamber pot, trying not to wonder whether the thing was a kitschy reproduction or an original antique that might have actually been used. Ew.

  Sundaram had several pieces of mail. Most were standard sales circulars and charity solicitations, though a few of the items were more personal. An invitation from an upscale jewelry store inviting him to a private showing for preferred customers. The most recent issue of Entrepreneur magazine. That one earned a snort from me. The final piece was a past-due notice from a local gym, notifying him that his automatic monthly payment had been rejected due to the account being closed. If he didn’t make good on the payment and late charges within ten days, he’d lose his membership privileges and his account would be turned over to a collection agency. How’s that for irony?

  In some ways, the fact that banking and communications were done electronically made things more difficult, since there was no paper trail to follow, only a path of electronic fairy dust. On the flip side, if an electronic trail could be found it could be easy t
o obtain a wealth of information in one fell swoop. It was too bad we didn’t know Sundaram’s e-mail address. Access to his in-box could provide us all sorts of clues, break the case wide open. We’d mined all sorts of critical data in earlier cases via e-mail accounts. If we could figure out what Sundaram’s address was, the office tech guru, Josh Schmidt, could hack the account in no time.

  I noticed a notepad on the bedside table, pulled a mechanical pencil from my purse, and ran it back and forth across the pad to see if a phone number or name Sundaram had jotted down might magically appear, like in the movies. Unfortunately, the only thing that popped up was a doodle of a bow-wearing basset hound, and a poorly drawn one at that.

  A search under the bed turned up a herd of dust bunnies and a single brown dress sock.

  “Wait a minute,” I said when we stood. I gestured to one of the gnomes on the dresser. “Didn’t that gnome used to be farther back?”

  Nick stepped over, bent down, and looked the gnome in the eye, pointing a finger in his face. “Stay put, you little freak.”

  Using his phone, Nick snapped photos of the jewelry circular, the letter from the gym, and both the label and publisher information page of the magazine. “One last place to look,” he said, stepping over to the bed and putting his hands under the mattress to lift it.

  I walked over next to him as he raised the mattress.

  All we found underneath was a copy of Hustler.

  Holding the mattress up with one hand, Nick picked the magazine up with the other. “I’m obligated as a special agent to perform a thorough investigation,” he said, his lips spread in a roguish grin. “I’ll need to look this over page by page.”

  “Like hell you will.” I slapped the magazine out of his hand. The force sent it sailing to the box spring, where two small blue booklets slid out of it. Passports.

  A-ha!

  I grabbed one while Nick grabbed the other. We opened them to the identification page and held them up. Both contained pictures of what was clearly the same man, though he was clean shaven in one and had a full beard in the other. The name on one read: Krishnan Gupta. The other read: Sanjay Bhattacharjee.

  “Multiple aliases,” Nick said, thinking aloud.

  We’d assumed Sundaram was the tip of the iceberg in a large transnational criminal organization, but given these aliases he might be a whole iceberg onto himself.

  Nick slid the passports into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  We left the room and returned to the front of the house. Ms. Allen sat in the small but comfy parlor now, one foot propped on an embroidered footstool, the other, now barefoot, rubbing her dog’s belly as she lay on her back on the rug. “All done?”

  “For now,” Nick said. “Let us know if Sundaram returns, okay? And don’t let him know we’ve been by.”

  “Of course.”

  “Any chance you’ve got a photo of the guy?” I asked.

  “I sure do.” She stood from her chair and retrieved a photo album from a bookshelf. “Here’s one I took at Thanksgiving.”

  The photo showed several guests gathered around a large oval table. A roasted turkey languished on a platter in the middle of the table, surrounded by heaping bowls of mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and rolls. At the end of the table sat a surprisingly buff Indian man who appeared to be around his mid-thirties. Looked like he’d been hitting the gym regularly, at least before his payment had been declined.

  Nick asked Ms. Allen if he could take the photo with him.

  “Be my guest,” she said.

  “Any chance you’ve got an e-mail address for Mr. Sundaram?” I asked. “Maybe a cell phone number or home address?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, but no on all accounts. Since he always paid in cash, I didn’t see any need to keep tabs on him.”

  After we returned to Nick’s truck, we headed for the gym, which was only a mile away on the highway frontage road. While I waited in the foyer, watching a couple of twentyish men try to outdo each other on the weights, Nick spoke with the assistant manager and secured his agreement to notify Nick if Sundaram showed up at the club.

  “Did they have an e-mail address?” I asked Nick as we returned to the car.

  “Nope,” he said. “I get the impression Sundaram avoided giving that out at all costs.”

  “What about a phone number?”

  “He left them the number for Seven Fables.”

  Damn.

  The jewelry store, located a couple miles down the freeway, had already closed for the night. We looked through the windows to see if anyone might be about, but the interior darkness was broken only by the flashing red beacon of the alarm system.

  With all leads exhausted for the time being, we headed back to Nick’s house for our own private holiday celebration.

  chapter eleven

  Christmas Comes Early

  Although Nick and his mother had come to my parents’ house in Nacogdoches at Thanksgiving, they planned to visit Nick’s aunt and uncle in Houston for Christmas. I would’ve liked to have Nick with me for the holidays, but he was an only child and I knew he wouldn’t want his mother making the four-hour drive to Houston on her own.

  Tonight Nick and I would have an intimate celebration, just the two of us. We drove back to Nick’s place to exchange gifts, making a quick stop at my town house so I could pick up Nick’s present.

  Nutty greeted us at Nick’s door, sniffing intently around our ankles, apparently scenting Anastasia. His tail wagged as he sniffed. Maybe we should introduce the two of them. Anastasia wasn’t much to look at, but then again, Nutty had cataracts, so what did it matter? Besides, beauty was only fur deep.

  Nick knelt down and ruffled Nutty’s ears. “She wasn’t all that pretty, boy. Stubby legs and long ears.”

  “Don’t sell Anastasia short,” I said. “At least she knew how to dress.” The bow had been a cute touch.

  While Nick let Nutty out back for a potty break, I grabbed Nick a beer from his fridge and fixed myself a cup of instant cocoa.

  The three of us convened a few minutes later in the living room. I took a seat on the couch and Nutty climbed up next to me.

  Nick retrieved two gift bags and a large wrapped box from under the small artificial tree and set them on the coffee table. “Ladies first.”

  Who was I to argue? The first bag was tall and narrow. I reached inside and pulled out a bottle of one of my favorite wines, a sweet orange moscato. “Yum.” Maybe if I drank the whole bottle myself I could forget about my situation.

  The second bag contained a kit for making sushi. The supplies included a bamboo rolling mat, a small rice paddle, two sets of chopsticks, two dipping-sauce dishes, and two chopstick rests. I wasn’t much of a cook, but since sushi didn’t need cooking maybe I could pull it off. Sushi was more about assembly. That I could do.

  Now for the box. The box was wrapped in the Neiman Marcus signature wrap, complete with a shiny star-shaped trinket. My heart began to pitter-patter in my chest. I looked up at Nick. “Neiman’s?”

  He grinned. “Go ahead. Open it.”

  I tore through the wrap and lifted the lid off the box. Inside was the beautiful cobalt-blue peacoat I’d oohed and aahed over with Alicia when I’d received my catalog in the mail. Nick must’ve consulted my best friend for gift ideas. I couldn’t help myself. I squealed like a pig. “Nick! I love it!”

  I leaped from the couch to give Nick a big hug and a warm kiss. Nick picked up the coat, held it open, and helped me into it. Mm-m. I rubbed my cheek against the lapel. The garment was soft and warm and comforting, a nice designer piece to add to my mostly clearance-rack wardrobe. It had definitely been time for an update. The only other winter coat I owned was a sporty bright red nylon model I’d had since high school.

  I lifted my shoulders, snuggling into it. “How do I look?”

  Nick’s eyes locked on mine. “You look beautiful,” he said. “But it has nothing to do with the coat.”

  Aw-w-w …
>
  His sweet words earned him another kiss, this one warmer and deeper. After a moment, I reluctantly pushed him back.

  I held out the two small boxes containing his gifts. “Your turn.”

  Nick opened the first box to find a Japanese language program on CDs. “Japanese, huh?”

  “I figured you could listen to it on your drive to Houston.”

  “Good idea,” he said. “The only Japanese I know is ‘domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.’ That won’t get me too far. I better at least learn ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ and ‘how many yen does this cost?’”

  He opened the second box to find a two-tone leather western-style belt in black and brown with a shiny buckle and engraved pewter accents.

  “Fancy,” he said. “I’ll be the best-dressed cowboy in Tokyo.”

  “You’ll be the only cowboy in Tokyo.” Or maybe not. I supposed someone had to round up the cattle for the Kobe beef. Still, I had a hard time picturing a Japanese man dressed in boots, jeans, and a cowboy hat.

  Nick put the box down on the coffee table, stood, and unbuckled his relatively plain tan belt, sliding it from the waist of his navy dress pants. He removed the buckle he’d had on, a gold-tone piece featuring a pair of pistols, their barrels crossed to form an X.

  “Let me help with that.” I stepped over to him and slid the leather strap out of his hands. His shirtfront vibrated with the pounding of his heart as I eased the end of the new belt through the loops on his jeans, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing myself up against his chest as I worked the belt around him. Who would’ve known it could be so sexy to put clothes on someone?

  When I finished, I took a small step back and tucked two fingers into his waistband behind the buckle. “There,” I said softly, giving his fly a little tug. “Nice and snug.”

  Nick put a finger under my chin and raised my face to his. “I know which reindeer you are,” he said. “Vixen.” His lips quirked in a sexy grin. “The only thing that could make this better was if you took the belt back off right now and joined me in some reindeer games.”