Death, Taxes, and a Shotgun Wedding

by Diane Kelly

  I shook my head. The fact that I hadn’t seen someone wasn’t really the issue. It was what I felt. And what I felt was an eerie sense that whoever was after me was here. The Joseph Heller quote from Catch-22 popped into my mind. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” “I just feel it,” I said. “I think they’re close.”

  “Harlan!” my mom barked. “Boys! Y’all form a circle around Tara. Keep her in the middle.”

  Next thing I knew, I was enclosed in a shield of humans, my mother leading the way and Bonnie taking up a lookout position at the rear. Now I knew how celebrities felt when they were surrounded by their bodyguards to keep them safe from overzealous fans, or how politicians felt when they were surrounded by Secret Service to shield them from the angry constituents they’d disappointed or lied to.

  We shuffled along, en masse, to our seats. Mom and Nick insisted I take the seat in the center. She and Bonnie took the ones at either end of our row, while my two brothers were the next ones in. Dad and Nick sat on either side of me. With this human barrier around me, my safety was virtually ensured. But was theirs now at risk? I’d feel terrible if one of them got hurt defending me. Ugh.

  A few minutes later, the action began down on the field. Green Bay won the coin toss and decided to receive. Within the first seven minutes, both teams had scored touchdowns, and the stadium filled with the roar of the crowd.

  As the end of the first quarter neared, my fears had mostly dissipated. Really, what were the odds of whoever was after me coming to the game? They’d have had to follow me here, and then they’d have had to spend big bucks on tickets from a scalper. They’d also risk getting caught on one of the many security cameras scattered around the stadium. Chances were slim to none they were actually here, right? But while my fear had drained away, my bladder, on the other hand, had filled up.

  “I need to go to the ladies’ room,” I told Nick.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said.

  I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from rising. “I’ll be fine. I was being paranoid earlier. We didn’t notice a tail this morning. Besides, what are the chances that whoever is after me would pay hundreds of dollars for scalped tickets? Coming after me in a place this crowded would be a huge mistake.”

  Nick’s eyes narrowed as he thought things over.

  “I don’t want you to miss any of the game,” I said. “Mom will come with me. She can keep a lookout.”

  Nick looked unsure, but when the Cowboys got within three yards of scoring again, he made the decision to let me go without him. Still, he admonished me to “be extra careful.”

  Mom stood as I passed her and squeezed down the row with me. Finally, we emerged onto the main walkway. Mom and I stopped and glanced left and right, looking for the closest ladies’ room.

  She pointed across the hall and down a ways. “There’s one.”

  We headed to the restroom, carefully eyeing those who approached or who were gaining on us from the rear. None looked like the two suspicious women who’d come to the garage sale or the couple I’d seen in the parking lot earlier, and none raised any red flags.

  Mom and I hurriedly relieved ourselves and washed our hands. As we exited the ladies’ room, a fresh roar came from the crowd.

  “The Cowboys must’ve scored,” Mom said.

  I was glad Nick had stayed in his seat. I wouldn’t have wanted him to miss the touchdown.

  We aimed for the entry to our section. As we approached, I noticed the couple from the parking lot. Or at least it looked like the same couple. With so many people here dressed in similar clothing and wearing face paint, I couldn’t be certain. Given that I couldn’t see the woman’s hair or face, my eyes went to her chest. The loose jersey and the fact that she was moving made it impossible for me to tell whether she sported Leah Dodd’s double-Ds.

  When both of them locked their eyes on me, I stopped in my tracks and reached out a hand to my mother. “I’m getting that feeling again. See those two people by the entrance?”

  She looked their way, but by then they’d turned their attention away from me. “The ones putting mustard on their pretzels?”

  “Yeah. I’m getting a weird vibe from them. I think I might have seen them in the parking lot, watching us when we were tailgating.”

  Her maternal instincts kicking in, Mom stepped in front of me. “What should we do?”

  I wished I had my gun with me. I hadn’t brought it. It was a hassle to go through the clearances. Ironically, the Cowboys stadium and the stadium in Houston were the only two in the NFL where off-duty police officers were permitted to carry their weapons. Though the NFL had a rule against it, Texas law trumped NFL policy. The theory was that cops were responsible for maintaining law and order 24/7, even if they were technically not on the job at the time.

  “I’ll call Nick.” I whipped out my phone as I backed up against a stand selling fan gear. Maybe I should buy one of those big foam fingers. If the two in the face paint were truly out to get me, I could give them a nice big poke in the eye.

  I dialed Nick’s number. As I put the phone to my ear, the man looked my way again and said something to the woman.

  “Tara?” came Nick’s voice through the phone.

  The two were headed our way now, their strides long and purposeful. The man’s hand eased into the front pocket of his pants. Holy shit! Is he going for a weapon? By the time Nick could get to us, we could be dead. I grabbed my mother’s hand, turned, and yanked her after me. “Run!”

  I sprinted as fast as I could, dragging my mother along with me. When we reached the next entrance, I pulled her back into the stadium and down a flight of steps. If that couple was going to try to kill me, they’d have to do it here, in front of eighty-thousand witnesses. Maybe the scene would be replayed on the huge screen hanging over the field. A halftime horror show.

  A voice came from my hand. Nick’s. “Tara?” he hollered. “Tara?”

  I put the phone back to my ear. “We’re one section over.”

  My eyes scanned the seats until I found him. I waved my arm to get his attention. “Down in front!” someone yelled.

  Mom and I crouched down so as not to block the view of the field. “I saw a suspicious couple coming at us.”

  “Stay where you are. Your dad and I will come get you.”

  I jabbed the button to end the call and looked up to the entrance. The couple was nowhere to be seen. My cheeks heated. I felt like an idiot. I guess they weren’t after me after all. That, or they’d changed their minds when they realized I’d seen them. Kind of hard to take someone by surprise once they’d seen you. But yeah, the more likely conclusion was that I’d simply gotten spooked over nothing.

  My father and Nick appeared in the entrance. Mom and I climbed the stairs to join them and we returned to our seats.

  Once I’d settled in, I reached over and took my father’s binoculars from his knee. I put them to my eyes and scanned each of the next three entrances to our right several times, looking to see if the two had reentered the stadium. After all, there were multiple pretzel stands spread about the circular walkway. They wouldn’t have had to walk more than one or two sections over to get to the stand I’d seen them at.

  Ten minutes later, the two still hadn’t come back into the stadium. Even if they’d stopped to use the facilities or check out the foam fingers and pom-poms-on-a-stick, they should have been back by now, shouldn’t they?

  Still, I supposed there could have been reasonable explanations. Maybe the pretzel stand closer to their seats had a long line of customers or had run out of pretzels, and they’d walked much farther than I assumed. Maybe they’d bought the less expensive standing-room-only passes. Of course, the standing-room level was below the one we were on. Would someone come up here to get food?

  Hmm.

  I didn’t know anything for sure, other than the fact that I wanted to smack Nick upside the head with my program when he borrowed my dad’s binoculars to get
a closer look at the cheerleaders during their halftime dance routine.

  “You’re about to be a married man,” I told him. “You shouldn’t be ogling other women.”

  “I’m not ogling,” he said. “I’m appreciating their art form. Dance is one of the humanities. I’m trying to become more cultured.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  He lowered the binoculars and cut me a pointed look. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you checking out the butts and biceps on the players.”

  He had me there. I blame the tight pants.

  The game ended with a score of 34 to 31 in favor of the Packers. But while the Cowboys had lost the game, at least I hadn’t lost my life.

  I’d take that as a win.

  chapter nineteen

  Backseat Blues

  The following week, I provided five more rides to men who were not the purported leasing agent. While four were perfectly pleasant and polite, one of them asked whether I provided other services.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He formed a fist with his hand and pumped it up and down.

  Once again I found myself pulling over and demanding my rider get out of my car. “Out. Now.”

  He sneered. “Make me.”

  When he refused, I phoned Nick, who’d pulled over right behind us. “This perv in my car just asked for a hand job and is now refusing to get out.”

  Nick didn’t waste time on a reply. He ejected from his car, stormed up to back door, and ripped it open.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the man cried, looking up at Nick.

  Nick didn’t bother responding to him, either. He grabbed the man by the shirt, yanked him out of the car, and tossed him headfirst into an oleander bush. “Don’t you ever talk to a woman like that again. You hear me?”

  “I hear you,” the man said meekly, lying facedown among the limbs, afraid to move for fear Nick would kick his ass.

  I promptly reported the rider to Backseat Driver so he would be banned from using the service again.

  I also looked through dozens more rental listings online that week, responding to several of them. While a few seemed suspicious at first, I was able to rule them out by contacting the property owners and verifying that the leasing agent who’d responded to me was legitimate. While I’d gotten nowhere, at least I hadn’t wasted precious time trekking all over Dallas to determine whether the agent was bogus or not.

  Detective Booth called on Thursday with some new information. “We received another complaint against that so-called leasing agent. The victim wasn’t able to tell me anything new, but I got the name on the credit card the leasing agent used to rent the place. I was thinking maybe you should call this one. See if you discover a link between the con man and the person whose identity he stole.”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  She gave me the man’s name and contact information. “He’s in his forties, lives in Madison, Wisconsin. That’s all I know.”

  It was enough for me to get started. As soon as we ended our conversation, I placed a call to Tyrone Robinson. After identifying myself, I gave him the bad news. “I’m working a case with a detective from the Dallas Police Department. A rental-fraud case. Unfortunately, the guy we’re after obtained a credit card in your name that he’s been using to lease properties.”

  “Well, hell! I have a credit score of over eight hundred. This better not screw it up!”

  I couldn’t blame the guy for getting upset. I’d be angry, too, if I’d found out someone had put my good credit and good name at risk. “As of now, he’s been making the minimum payments to keep it active, but his typical routine is to hit one card hard for a short period of time, then move on to a new one. When he moves on, he’ll default. But I can tell you how to take care of it so that you don’t end up with a ding on your credit report when that happens.”

  “I’d appreciate it. I always pay my bills on time and other than my mortgage I have no debt. My car’s been paid off for two years.”

  “All we know about this guy is that he’s Caucasian, looks to be around thirty, stands around six feet tall, and has a beefy build and brown hair. He wears business suits and eyeglasses when he meets with the prospective tenants. Sound like anybody you know?”

  “The only person I know in Dallas is my uncle. He moved down there a few years ago. Got tired of the winters up here and met himself a woman online who convinced him to come down there and give Texas a try. I haven’t gotten down there to visit him yet, but I’ve been meaning to. We were really close when I was younger.”

  “So you’ve never been to Dallas?”

  “No. Lived in Madison all my life.”

  Hmm. Tyrone had no connection to Dallas other than an uncle who lived here. Could the con artist have somehow obtained Tyrone’s personal information through the uncle? It seemed to be a stretch. Besides, Booth had told me that most of the other identity-theft victims had lived out of state, too. She’d mentioned Florida. Wyoming. New Hampshire. It seemed more likely that the leasing agent had hacked into a database containing personal information for people all over the U.S. Still, the Dallas connection could be worth pursuing. “Can you give me your uncle’s phone number?”

  “You think he can help?”

  “Honestly, Mr. Robinson? I have no idea. But it’s worth a shot.”

  After Tyrone gave me his uncle’s number, I gave him a rundown on how to file a fraud alert on his credit report and an identify-theft affidavit with the credit card company. It would be a hassle, but it would protect his stellar credit score. “Thanks for speaking with me.”

  When we hung up, I phoned Tyrone’s uncle and identified myself. I explained the situation and the reason for my call. “So what I’m trying to do is to figure out whether there might be a connection between you and the man posing as the leasing agent. He seems to have had access to your nephew’s name and social security number. Do you know where you might have provided that information?”

  “I can’t think of anywhere off the top of my head,” he said. “But let me give it some thought. If something comes to me, I’ll give you a call back.”

  “Thanks.”

  While he thought things over, I decided to pull out the file and call the other people in whose names the fraudulent credit card accounts had been opened, see if they had a Dallas connection.

  The first one I called worked for an awning company called A-1 Awnings that was based in Dallas, though he’d been employed at its regional office in North Carolina. “I’ve never even been to Dallas,” he said.

  I jotted a note on my legal pad. A-1 Awnings. “Thanks for the information.”

  My next call was to Sebastian Rivera. He’d never lived in Dallas, either. “Any chance you ever worked for a company called A-1 Awnings?”

  “Never heard of it,” he said. “The only connection I have to the state of Texas is a sister who worked at an advertising agency in Fort Worth. Bloomfield and Associates. She moved back here to Florida last year.”

  When we ended our call, I jotted another note. Bloomfield & Assocs. While the ad agency wasn’t located in Dallas, the city of Fort Worth was only thirty miles or so to the west.

  The third person told me that he’d grown up in Dallas and worked in the city for a few years when he’d become an adult, but that he’d moved to New Orleans when he decided to pursue a career as a jazz musician. “Life’s too short to spend it hawking overpriced used cars to people who can’t afford them.”

  I made another note. EZ Autos. “Any chance you know someone at A-1 Awnings or the Bloomfield and Associates advertising agency?”

  “Never heard of either one.”

  I called Tyrone’s uncle and the man from A-1 Awnings back. The uncle had never heard of A-1 Awnings and knew nobody associated with EZ Autos or the ad agency. The man who worked at A-1 Awnings knew nobody who worked for Bloomfield and Associates or EZ Autos, though he recalled seeing the used-car dealer’s ads on TV.

  I’d reached a dead en
d. Dang. Unless I could make a connection between everyone whose identity had been stolen for the fraudulent credit cards, the only options I had left were to keep trying to suss out one of the properties listed by the con artist and to keep driving for Backseat. It was a tedious, time-consuming process.

  On a bright note, I received no further death threats during the week. On a second bright note, my Realtor called me on Friday.

  “I’ve got good news,” she said.

  “You do?” Thank goodness. I sure could use some.

  “Cory liked your town house and made an offer. It’s within your acceptable range, and he’s been approved for financing.”

  “Fantastic!” At least my home sale was moving along, even if the real estate investigation wasn’t.

  Cory sent me a text shortly afterward. All it said was Me and my new roommate, but the selfie he’d sent told the rest of the story. It was a pic of him with a black-and-white dog who looked thrilled to be getting out of the shelter. The dog’s eyes were bright, and his tail, a bushy blur in the shot, was clearly wagging in joy. I was happy things had worked out for the two of them. I sent him a text in reply. Congratulations! I hope you both enjoy the place as much as my cats and I did.

  Friday evening, shortly after Nick, Bonnie, and I finished eating supper, I drove over to the grocery store in the Village to wait for ride requests. Nick had followed me. I was getting really tired of having a babysitter every time I left the office or Bonnie’s house, and I hated to be continually inconveniencing my coworkers and my future husband. Nick had endured a tough week, spending his days in court testifying in a major tax-evasion trial. Attempting to explain the intricacies of corporate tax law and how the company’s chief executive officer and chief financial officer had manipulated the company’s data was difficult and daunting. He was doing his best, but he said the jurors looked either confused or bored out of their minds. He feared they might not get a conviction. I knew he’d love nothing better than to sit on his ass on the couch with a beer in one hand and the television remote in the other, but here he was, stuck playing my knight in tired armor. I couldn’t even make it up to him in the bedroom, not with us stuck living in separate rooms at Bonnie’s. But I supposed nothing could be done about the situation until we caught whoever had made the death threats against me.