Death, Taxes, and Green Tea Ice Cream

by Diane Kelly

  I stopped for gas on the way home. I’d need a full tank for my new, long commute. The temperature hovered in the fifties and the station’s drive-through car wash was open for business. Fortunately, it was one of those no-touch types that could accommodate my convertible. No way would I let the bombardment of bird crap continue to defile my sweet red baby.

  As I drove into the bay, I was tempted to put the top down and see if the high-pressure water could wash away my worries. If only.

  A few minutes later, my Beemer and I emerged from the car wash and continued on our way back to Dallas. I arrived home, reemployed and crap-free. What’s more, no reporters surrounded my home today. Things were looking up. Looked like those big-girl panties were working their magic.

  Alicia lay on the couch, the remote in her hand as she surfed through the evening news and pre-prime-time sitcom reruns. No doubt Martin and McGee was experiencing its usual end-of-year doldrums, the downtime before spring tax season. Alicia had probably spent the workday sitting at her desk shopping for after-Christmas sales on the Internet. Once the new year arrived, tax season would kick in full force and she’d be working late every night. Those crazy hours were definitely one thing I wouldn’t miss about Martin and McGee. Of course being a special agent had meant working crazy hours, too, but by and large they’d been much more fun hours.

  “I put a frozen lasagna in the oven,” Alicia said, glancing up from the television. “It’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

  “Great,” I replied, unbuttoning my new coat. I hung it on a padded hanger in my coat closet, shut the door, and kicked off my pumps, walking into the living room and flopping down into a chair.

  Alicia sat up. “How was the audit department?”

  I made a “so-so” sign with my hand. My new boss seemed nice enough and the cases I’d been assigned weren’t bad, but I could do without the confining cubicle. “Guess who I’ll be auditing.”

  “Chuck Norris?”

  “No.” Too bad. That could be fun. Maybe he’d give me some tips for hand-to-hand combat.

  “Don Henley?”

  “Nope.” Again, too bad. Who wouldn’t want to meet one of the Eagles?

  “Selena Gomez?” Alicia asked, naming yet another celebrity who allegedly lived in Dallas.

  “Chloe Aberdeen,” I said lest this back-and-forth continue all evening. More precisely, Chloe Aberdeen-Jennings. Chloe had married into the wealthy Jennings family, owners of Jennings Prefabricated Buildings, Incorporated, which operated a chain of outlets in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Jennings Prefab sold a wide range of structures, from small backyard toolsheds to enormous airplane hangars. My dad had bought his barn from their East Texas store in Lufkin. I’d seen Chloe’s wedding announcement in the newspaper a few years ago. It had been one of those pricey quarter-page spots that included a detailed description of the bride and how she looked “absolutely enchanting in an ivory gown of Chantilly lace.”

  Pf-ff-t.

  “Chloe?” Alicia’s face brightened. “I haven’t seen her in ages. She was so pretty. Remember her hair? It was always so shiny. And that dimple? Adorable! She was so friendly, too. Everyone liked her.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Alicia rolled her eyes. “You didn’t like her because she was smarter than you.”

  “No, she wasn’t.” Yes, she was. Not only did she turn in her tests before me, she also always scored a point or two higher than I did, no matter how hard I studied. I wasn’t normally a competitive person, striving only for my personal best rather than comparing myself to others, but it irked me that everything seemed to come so easily to Chloe. It didn’t seem fair.

  Alicia sipped her wine. “You can’t deny she was very sweet.”

  “Oh, she was sweet all right. But I still say it was an act.”

  Alicia ignored my lies and pettiness, because that’s what friends do. They allow each other an annoying flaw or two. Take me, for instance. I was able to ignore the fact that Alicia thought Chloe Aberdeen was all that and a bag of chips when Chloe was really just a phony, manipulating people with her winning smile and long, batting eyelashes.

  “I’m going to change.” I climbed off the chair and went upstairs, as much to get out of my work clothes and into my pajamas as to put an end to the one-person meeting of the Chloe Aberdeen fan club. If I had to listen to any more of my best friend singing Chloe’s praises I would puke.

  As I changed, Nick phoned me from Tokyo with an update on the TDT investigation. He and Agent Tanaka had met with representatives of Japan’s tax department and their National Police Agency. Though the Japanese authorities had initially been skeptical of the accusations and were hesitant to acknowledge that one of their citizens was involved in an extensive counterfeit products scam, they’d come around once Nick and Tanaka showed them one of the counterfeit phones and provided them with a copy of Tokyo Discount Telecom’s catalog, e-mail address, and telephone number.

  “The Japanese agents ran a search,” Nick said. “TDT isn’t registered to do business in Japan.”

  “That’s suspicious.”

  Nick agreed. “We’re going to do some snooping to figure out who runs the show here.” Once they knew who was involved, they’d perform surveillance to determine whether the parties were knowingly involved in illegal activity or were merely pawns for someone further up the criminal food chain.

  Nick said the Japanese authorities discovered that the phone number McPherson had provided belonged to a mobile phone rather than a landline. Japanese law enforcement used a process called multilateration to determine the location of the cell phone, which appeared to be moving along with the person who possessed it. In a city as large and crowded as Tokyo, hitting a moving target, especially with a margin of error of fifteen to twenty meters, was damn near impossible.

  “We came close in Shibuya,” he told me. “But not close enough.”

  From my research, I knew that Shibuya was a crowded commercial district often referred to as the Times Square of Tokyo due to its bright lights and abundance of entertainment venues. Unfortunately, given that the area was packed with Japanese teenagers, young adults, and tourists, all of whom seemed to be talking, texting, or taking pictures on their cell phones, law enforcement hadn’t been able to pinpoint the phone and its user.

  “We’re still working on it,” Nick said. He sent me a photo of himself with the bright lights of Shibuya behind him. He also sent one of himself at the base of the Tokyo Skytree.

  “Cool.” I tried really hard not to be jealous that he was halfway across the world working a kick-ass case. I tried and I failed. Envy ate at me. I should be in Tokyo, too, enjoying kappa maki and green tea ice cream, not stuck here assigned to audit Miss Perfect and waiting on a tasteless frozen lasagna to finish cooking. Damn, that Don Geils! I’d love to stuff his mouth full of wasabi and poke his eyes out with chopsticks. Then he’d really have a case for excessive force.

  Just after Nick begged off, my cell phone bleeped again. It was Eddie calling. “Hello?”

  All I got was the muffled sounds of girls giggling and Eddie hollering, “Look out for the tickle monster!”

  Ugh. “You butt-dialed me!” I yelled into the phone. No response. Apparently my words were butt-muffled. I hung up and texted him. Dude. U butt-dialed me 2x. Learn how to lock ur keypad.

  chapter twenty-three

  My First Audit

  Tuesday morning, I pulled into the compound that contained the headquarters and manufacturing facilities of Cowtown Candy Company. The building sat at the front of a twenty-acre tract of land directly north of Fort Worth. The two-story structure had been painted in a white-and-black simulated cowhide motif. Parked along the side were a fleet of small delivery trucks also painted in black and white, the fronts bearing brown eyes, pink noses, and upturned lips. The side mirrors were fashioned to resemble cow ears. The Cowtown Candy Company’s logo was painted on the side, the company’s name spelled out in script made to look like rope.

 
; Fifty yards behind the expansive manufacturing facility sat an old-fashioned red barn. A small herd of Holsteins milled about the acreage, pulling up grass to snack on. One cow had backed up to a gnarled tree stump and was rubbing her hip against it, scratching an itch.

  I parked in the small front lot next to a bluish-silver Town & Country Limited minivan, the most expensive minivan on the market. Two child car seats were buckled into the seats on the second row, one an infant-style seat, the other a toddler-sized model. I had a sneaking suspicion the car belonged to Chloe. Most of the other cars were aging sedans and small commuter-type vehicles likely belonging to the employees who worked in the manufacturing department.

  I opened the glass door that led into the foyer. Unlike the outside, the foyer was painted in a soft pink, though the floor was black-and-white checkerboard tile. A desk with a computer, a three-line phone, and an empty chair greeted me. A small silver bell sat on the desktop, along with a folded paper placard that read: Ring bell for service.

  I slapped the bell. Ching!

  “I’ll be right with you!” called a female voice through an open door to my right.

  A few seconds later a young woman ventured out of the supply closet carrying a ream of copy paper. She wore black pants and a shirt in the same faux cowhide as the building and trucks. The shirt bore the company’s embroidered logo on the chest. “Sorry to keep you waiting. The printer ran out of paper.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’m Tara Holloway from the IRS. I’m here to see Chloe.”

  While I stood at the desk, the girl plopped into her rolling chair, picked up the telephone receiver, and punched two digits. “There’s a Tara Holloway from the IRS here to see you.” She listened for a second, said, “Okay, thanks,” and returned the receiver to its cradle. “She’ll be right with you.”

  I took a seat on a plush pink wing chair to wait, using the spare moment to send Nick a text. Miss u.

  A second later, I sensed the infuriating fabulosity of Chloe’s presence. I looked up to find her standing in the doorway that led back to the factory floor and offices. She was as pretty as ever, her dark hair and fair skin glistening under the fluorescent lighting. She wore a fashionable long-sleeved sweaterdress in a feminine and pure cream color. The dress was formfitting enough to show off her perfect figure yet covered enough skin to nonetheless seem modest. An enormous diamond glittered on her left hand.

  She batted her big brown eyes at me, her lashes fluttering like butterfly wings. She offered a smile, flashing that dimple that others found adorable. As for me, though, I didn’t find her dimple to be at all adorable, nor was it merry like Santa’s. Rather, it seemed to me more like a magician’s trick designed to distract you, to entice you to divert your eyes while the deception was performed. Then again, maybe I was being overly dramatic.

  “Hello there.” She stepped forward, extending her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Tara.”

  I didn’t bother pointing out that she wasn’t meeting me, she was seeing me again. Still, the second I took her hand I realized the feelings I’d had back in college had been nothing more than jealousy. That dimple was indeed adorable. Chloe’d had it all. Still did, apparently. Who wouldn’t be envious? But I should be above all that now. I’d been foolish and immature to come here seeking to settle the score when, really, there was no score to settle. So she’d been a little immature and self-centered back in college. Who hadn’t? Besides, that was all in the past. We were adults now. I should let it go, right? I’d just take a quick look at the company’s accounting records and go.

  I shook her hand. “I appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Though I’ll have to be leaving soon and hand you off to my brother. He’s the chief operational officer, but he can get you into the accounting system.”

  “Jeremy works here, too?”

  She batted her eyes again. “You know Jeremy?”

  Jeremy had been a year ahead of us in college, a marketing major. As with Chloe, everyone liked Jeremy, but for entirely different reasons. Jeremy was a cutup, always ready to share a joke or a pitcher of cold beer. Unfortunately, the cutup wasn’t cut out for college. He’d slept through class after class, forgotten to turn in his assignments. He was infinitely creative, but the more regimented business school environment didn’t work for him. He’d dropped out halfway through his junior year.

  “Jeremy and I had a management class together.” When he bothered to show up, that is.

  “Oh,” was all she said before turning her back to me. “This way. The offices are upstairs.”

  She led me into the large manufacturing facility. The smells of warm chocolate, vanilla, and sugar sweetened the air. A dozen workers in cowhide-print jumpsuits, latex gloves, and white hairnets milled about the stainless-steel machinery and conveyer belts like Oompa-Loompas, checking the finished products for defects before they were sent on to the packaging department.

  Chloe led me up a metal staircase onto a catwalk that spanned a section of the factory. I wondered if the catwalk was the new and unexpected heights foretold by my fortune cookie. Ten feet below stood large open vats of melted chocolate in milk, dark, and white varieties. The surface of each pool of chocolate swirled slowly, stirred by an internal mechanism. I fought the urge to dive over the edge and into a vat. I might’ve done it if I could have decided which of the three was the most enticing.

  The catwalk ended at a hallway leading to the administrative offices. The first door on the right bore a nameplate that read: Dennis Aberdeen. The door was partway open, and a white-haired man sat inside, his back to the door as he spoke on the phone.

  Chloe’s office was next door. Her office was beautiful and appeared to have been professionally decorated. The walls were painted a soft mauve color. Her desk was one of those broad types that was really more like a table. The wood was rich, with reddish hues and gold leaf accents, the legs curved, giving it a fancy, feminine appeal. A matching credenza graced the side wall, forming an L-shaped workspace. An antique glass-front bookshelf took up a large part of the front wall, its shelves filled with books on accounting and finance as well as assorted antique candy dishes. The bookshelf was flanked on each side by wooden four-drawer file cabinets. Two wing chairs upholstered in plum-colored suede faced her desk, a dainty round table between them.

  Gee. If I hadn’t thought my tiny cubicle sucked before, I sure as hell did now.

  A wide plate-glass window looked out from Chloe’s office over the production floor. If I had to stare down at those vats of melted chocolate all day I’d weigh three hundred pounds.

  A large family portrait, one of those photos that were transferred to canvas, hung on the wall over the credenza. They were the epitome of the perfect American family, an attractive husband and wife with a baby and a toddler, both miniature Chloe clones with her same dark hair, same innocent doe eyes, same left-sided dimple. Chloe’s husband was good-looking, too, with dark-blue eyes and light-brown hair cut short. The four wore white in the portrait, which made their features pop.

  “Your girls are cute,” I said, motioning to the portrait.

  Chloe glanced over at the picture and smiled. “I’ve been blessed.” Her eyes moved to my coat now. “Is that coat from the Neiman’s holiday catalog?”

  “Yep.” Page 164 to be exact. “My boyfriend bought it for me for Christmas.” I might not be married with the requisite 2.1 children and a house in the suburbs, but I did have a hot boyfriend who spoiled me and my two cats were sort of like kids—kids who shed and cough up hairballs.

  “How nice.” Chloe gestured for me to take a seat. Once I had settled into a wing chair, she picked up her audit notice and blinked her eyes at me. “I’m a little confused here. The audit notice I received only asked me to mail the documents in.”

  “Right,” I said. “They’re due in the IRS office in two days. I figured I’d save you a trip to the post office.” As if. “Or perhaps you’ve already sent them?”

  C
hloe hesitated a brief moment. “Well, no, I haven’t sent the paperwork yet. Like I mentioned on the phone, my schedule has been crazy.”

  I glanced down at the desktop calendar. Other than an appointment to take “Taffy” to the groomers and several evening holiday parties, the days appeared wide open.

  Chloe followed my gaze. “I only jot reminders there,” she said. “It’s not my complete schedule.”

  “If you have the paperwork printed, I can run through it here in just a few hours.”

  Chloe’s eyes batted again, though this time they looked less like fluttering butterfly wings and more like angry flyswatters seeking a bug to squash. “I’ll get Jeremy to pull it together for you.” She picked up her phone and punched in a couple of digits. “Can you come to my office? I’ve got an IRS auditor here who needs to see some of the records.” She paused a moment, her eyes cutting from me to the bookcase behind me. “We’ll talk about that later.” She set the phone down gently, though with the tight grip she had on the thing I’m surprised it didn’t implode in her hand.

  A moment later, Jeremy traipsed into the room, as loose limbed and jovial as always. He was dressed in the same black-and-white cowhide jumpsuit as the production staff. “Hi there.” He stuck out a hand, flashing the Aberdeen dimple that graced his cheek, too. “I’m Jeremy Aber—” He stopped himself and cocked his head, squinting his brown eyes at me. “Wait. I know you. Tara…” He snapped the fingers on his extended hand three times in quick succession. Snap-snap-snap. “Hall? Hallsworth? Hallingford?”

  “Holloway.”

  He raised his index finger in the air. “That’s it! Tara Holloway. You once bested me at darts at the Crown and Anchor.” The extended arm now wrapped around me in a friendly hug, pulling me up from the chair. “How the hell have you been?”