by Diane Kelly
Eddie and I had nearly been blown up once before, so we decided to err on the side of caution. I placed a call to 911. “This is Special Agent Tara Holloway with the IRS. Another agent and I were just followed into a store by two people. One of them was armed with a knife. Any chance you can send someone out with an explosive sniffing dog to check out our car?”
“We’ll send a K-9 team your way. Sit tight.”
The thought of sitting at all, let alone sitting “tight” made my pelvic bones throb worse. As we waited, I took advantage of the time to see if I could verify Leah Dodd’s whereabouts. I logged onto her Facebook page, found the name of the club where she danced, and placed a call to it.
“Pleasure Palace,” a male voice said.
“Is Leah Dodd working tonight?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen her, but I’ll check if she’s on the schedule.” He put me on hold, Donna Summer’s sexy classic “Love to Love You Baby” coming through my speaker. He returned a few seconds later. “She starts dancing at nine.”
“Thanks.” I jabbed the button to end the call.
Eddie crooked a brow in question.
“I can’t be sure,” I told him, “but it’s possible the woman in the store was Leah Dodd, the stripper Pastor Fischer was seeing on the side before Nick and I arrested him. Problem is, she’s scheduled to work at nine tonight at the club in Shreveport where she dances.”
He consulted his watch. “If that was her in Neiman’s, she’ll be late for her shift.”
Shreveport sat a three-hour drive to the east. Even if she planned to take a flight, by the time she drove to the airport, checked in, flew to Louisiana, and drove to the club, she’d be late for work.
Within minutes, a small fire truck arrived. A female firefighter with curly brown hair climbed down from the truck, a frisky Belgian Malinois hopping down after her. The handler attached a leash to the dog and headed our way. “Are you the IRS agents?” she asked as she walked up.
“That’s us,” I replied. “Thanks for coming out.”
The dog sniffed my shoes as his handler cocked her head. “They said someone pulled a knife on you in Neiman’s?”
“Unfortunately, yes. They’ve been after me for a few days now. That’s why we were nervous about getting in the car without having it checked out first.”
“You made the right call,” she said. “Better safe than sorry.”
Speaking of calls, I’d bet it was the woman who’d been on the escalator behind us who’d phoned Neiman’s asking about my appointment for my fitting. She’d probably been the one the clerk had discussed the lace gloves with. I really had been stupid to put so much information on our wedding Web site. I’d made it easy for my would-be killers to plot against me. Ugh. I was tempted to flog myself, but decided the pain in my pelvis was enough penance for my stupidity.
The dog’s nose moved up to my knee now. Lest he go for my cracked crotch, I took a step back and he turned his attention to Eddie’s loafers.
The woman said, “C’mon, boy. Time to earn your keep.”
She led him over to my car and issued an order. The dog began to sniff, starting at the wheel wells, slowly and methodically working his way up and down and around the vehicle. Sniff-sniff-sniff.
When they’d come full circle, the woman reached down to scratch his ears. “Good job!” The dog wagged his tail and she gave him a treat. She looked up at me and Eddie now. “The car’s clear. You’re good to go.”
“Thanks,” I told her. I looked down at the dog. Too bad I didn’t have a fried baloney sandwich I could give him. “Thank you, too, boy.”
He wagged his tail casually in reply as if to say, No problem. It’s what I do.
chapter twenty-three
Time Heals All Wounds
Eddie drove me to the minor emergency clinic.
Kelsey, the red-haired receptionist, glanced up as I walked in. “Uh-oh. What is it this time, Agent Holloway?”
The receptionist knew me by name and vice versa. I was a regular in the place. In the last year and a half, Dr. Ajay Maju had treated me for everything from burns to broken bones to a stab wound inflicted by a rooster. The doc wasn’t just my main medical care provider, he was also now the husband of my bridesmaid Christina Marquez, a DEA agent I’d met working the case against the drug-dealing ice-cream man. The two had met when Christina had brought me to the clinic to be treated for an injury. My pain was their gain.
I stepped over to her desk and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I think I broke my naughty bits.”
She held her pen poised. “That’s another first.” She jotted a note in my file and handed the folder back to a nurse, who waved for me to come in and follow her down the hall.
I was standing next to the exam table a few minutes later when Ajay rapped on the door and entered with my file. He looked up from the paperwork and cast me an incredulous look. “You think you broke your vagina?”
“Yes.”
His tone switched from questioning to correcting. “You can’t break your vagina.”
“How do you know?” I snapped, my pain causing me to be short with him. “You don’t even have one.”
Ajay was the epitome of patience. “I don’t have to have one to know they don’t break. I know they don’t break because I’m a doctor and I’ve studied human anatomy in critical detail.”
I grimaced. “Are you sure? It really feels broken. I fell a good fifteen feet and landed spread-eagled on a stool.”
He shook his head. “This could only happen to you, Tara.”
He had me there. He laid the file on the counter and came over, gently pressing his hands against my lower abdomen and pelvic bone.
I cringed as he touched the sensitive area. “Going straight for third base, huh?”
“Why beat around the bush?” he said. “Of course that’s sort of what I’m doing now.”
“Ha-ha,” I snapped. “Real funny.”
He told me to spread my legs and, once I had, felt along my inner thighs. Ow! When I grimaced and grunted in pain, he said, “Maybe you actually do have the first ever broken vagina. Or a fractured pelvis. Let’s get an X-ray and find out for sure.”
A nurse took me into another room where I gingerly eased out of my pants. A technician took an X-ray of my lower half. Fifteen minutes later, I was back in both my pants and the exam room and Ajay had a picture of my pelvis pulled up on his computer screen.
“How’s it look?” I asked.
“The bad news is you have a hairline fracture right here.” He ran his finger along a thin vertical line that began at the bottom and went halfway up the bone. “The good news is that it’s not bad enough to require surgery, and if you take it easy you should make a full recovery. In the meantime, I’ll get you some painkillers and an ice pack.” He whipped out his prescription pad, scribbled on it, then ripped the square sheet from the pad and held it out to me. He reached into a drawer, pulled out one of those instant ice packs, and squeezed it to activate it. After handing it to me, he reached into another drawer and pulled out a foam ring.
“What’s this?” I asked as I took it from him.
“Hemorrhoid ring. People usually center them around their bum to keep the pressure off, but in your case you can center it around your broken bits.”
“Good idea.”
“It goes without saying that you shouldn’t be riding horses, pogo sticks, or Nick until the pain is gone.”
The mere thought of any of those activities made me groan.
As I turned to go, he said, “See you at your wedding or your next injury, whichever comes first.”
* * *
At nine-thirty that evening, I phoned the club in Shreveport again. “Can I speak with Leah Dodd?”
“She’s not in yet,” the guy said. “She phoned to say she’ll be late. Car trouble.”
Did she really have car trouble? Or did she have attempted murder trouble? There was no way to know, but it certainly seemed to be quite a coincidenc
e. When I ended the call with him, I phoned Detective Booth and gave her an update. “The woman at Neiman’s had a big bust, like Leah Dodd. The club where she’s scheduled to dance tonight says she called in and said she’d be late due to car trouble.”
“What’s the name of the club?”
I gave Booth the information.
“I’ll call Shreveport PD and see if we can get an officer out there to check on things. I’ll have them make a run by her apartment, too.”
“Thanks.”
* * *
First thing Thursday morning, Detective Booth called me with an update. The officer from Shreveport PD reported that Leah showed up for work around midnight, late enough that she would have had time to drive back there from Dallas.
“She claimed her battery died while she was on the freeway in town,” Booth said. “She said she doesn’t have roadside assistance and had to wait until a friend could drive out to give her a jump.”
“Any cameras in the area where she was allegedly pulled over?”
“Unfortunately not.”
In other words, we couldn’t positively verify or refute her story. Ugh. I thanked Booth for making the calls and spent the rest of the day wondering whether my headshot would appear in the newspaper next to Leah’s someday under the headline “Last Dance—Stripper Murders Federal Agent.”
* * *
At eight o’clock on Friday evening, I was sitting on my foam donut in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the Village, waiting for ride requests from Backseat Driver. My nether regions still ached, but the prescription pain meds, ice pack, and donut had helped relieve the pain some.
A notification popped up on my screen. A rider needed a pickup at White Rock Lake, which sat only a mile or so to the east of my location. His drop-off destination was an address here in the Village. I tapped the screen to accept the ride.
As I drove over with Nick, once again trailing me, I realized that maybe Joe Cullen had been on to something. He’d turned his life over to a higher power. Maybe I should turn this investigation over to one.
I turned my eyes to the sky. Okay, God. I know you can see me through the big hole in the ozone layer that all of my driving around town has only helped to enlarge. You know I’m getting married soon. How about you toss me an early gift in the form of an arrest in the rental-scam case? Make this rider be the one? Pretty please? Amen and hallelujah.
But alas God does not answer all prayers, and he wasn’t feeling generous that evening. When I pulled into the parking area at the lakeside park, I was flagged down by a guy with a closely trimmed beard, a sweaty T-shirt glued to his chest, and a bluetick coonhound on a leash. Looked like the two of them had taken a jog around the lake.
When I stopped my car, he opened the back door. “Get in, boy!” he called to his four-footed friend.
The dog jumped into the backseat and the car immediately filled with the musky odor of damp dog. When the man slid in after his pet, eau d’athlete was added to the aromatic milieu—or should I saw mil-ew?
I turned and looked over the seat at the man. “Did your dog go for a swim in the lake?”
He nodded. “He likes to cool off after a run.”
While I couldn’t much blame the dog, I could blame his owner. Either he shouldn’t have let the dog cool off in the water, or he should’ve taken a dip in the lake himself, washed off the sweat. One source of stink I could handle, but two was blatantly unfair. I unrolled my window to grab a breath of fresh air and rolled it back up, holding my breath.
As I started off, the air held in my lungs, a soft jingle of dog tags began behind me. The sound grew louder and louder as the dog worked itself into full-body shake, showering me and the inside of the car with dog-scented droplets. “Hey!”
I ducked in my seat, but it did no good. The dog thoroughly doused me. At the same time, my lungs screamed for fresh oxygen. I fought the burn until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I gasped in the stench, certain I felt my lungs recoil when the dank air hit them. At that point, the only thing I could do was turn the air conditioner on full blast and hope the air pressure would hold the stink at bay in the backseat.
The guy hardly engaged me on the drive to his apartment, but he spoke continuously to his dog. “What do you want for dinner, boy? Should we grill some steaks? There’s some leftover brisket in the fridge. Or maybe we should order a pizza. Does a pepperoni pizza sound good, boy? Does it?”
The dog wagged his tail. Looked like he’d be equally pleased with steak, brisket, or pizza. In my experience, dogs didn’t tend to be picky as long as they got some of whatever their humans were having.
Their dinner decided upon, the man asked the dog about his morning plans. “Want to go for another run in the morning? Huh? Do ya?”
The dog glanced his way then turned to look out the window. I might have other plans. Let me get back to you on that.
Finally, we arrived at the apartment complex.
The guy pointed to a building. “This is me.”
Good. Maybe I could finally breathe again.
As the guy climbed out, he pulled a key ring from the pocket of his running shorts and thumbed the fob. A dink-dink sounded and the lights flashed on a Dodge Avenger parked a few feet away.
“Wait. Is that your car?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I asked the obvious question. “Why didn’t you drive your car to the lake?”
“Because I didn’t want to stink it up,” he replied with an undertone of duh.
So he didn’t want to stink up his own car, but believed it was perfectly okay to stink up mine, even though I purportedly needed it to make a living. What a jerk. I mentally rolled my eyes, but gave the dog a nice scratch behind his ears before he hopped down. He might be stinky, but he was just doing what dogs do. And besides, he was kinda cute.
* * *
Thanks to the ice pack, painkillers, and foam cushion, my nether regions felt much better by the time Saturday rolled around. Good thing, too. My bridesmaids were throwing me a bridal shower brunch and I wanted to enjoy it.
Alicia had been my best friend since we’d met in college, so of course she was my matron of honor. I’d recently served as maid of honor at her wedding, too. My other bridesmaid, Christina, and I had grown very close in the relatively short time we’d known each other. We’d first met early last year while working the case against Joe, the drug-dealing ice-cream man, but she’d later helped me in the Mendoza investigation and we’d both worked on the undercover sting at Guys & Dolls. Fighting crime together really brings two people close.
They’d rented a private room at the back of the restaurant for the shower. In case the couple who was after me tried to pull something here, Nick took a seat at a table near the front door to play security guard. Bonnie, my mother, and I headed to the back. Though we arrived a half hour before the shower was to begin, we found Alicia and Christina already enjoying mimosas and mini almond croissants.
They stood as we entered. “Hey, y’all!” Alicia said, giving us each a hug. Christina followed suit.
Once they’d released me, I gestured to the drinks. “You got a head start on us, I see.”
“We had to make sure everything tasted okay,” Christina replied facetiously.
We joined them, taking glasses and loading small plates with pastries.
Christina set up her laptop on a table near the door, and played a continuous loop of pictures of me and others that she’d rounded up from the guests. There were Alicia and me in our dorm room in our pajamas, looking hideous and unkempt as we were three days into hell week, cramming for exams. We’d both put a hand up to block the camera, but to no avail. Our classmate still got the pic.
“Remember those days?” Alicia asked with a smile.
“Like they were yesterday.” It was amazing how quickly the time had flown since we graduated from college. We’d been mere kids back then, and now here we were, doing important jobs and paying mortgages and getting married. B
efore we knew it, we’d probably have kids and PTA meetings and soccer games.
Another shot showed me and Alicia with our fellow female accountants, breaking open a bottle of Fireball whisky at midnight on April 15 after an exhausting tax season. Alicia cut me a knowing look. “Those April fifteenth celebrations were a lot of fun, weren’t they?”
“Yep.” Still, while I missed the parties that marked the passing of the tax-filing deadline, I didn’t miss the eighty-hour workweeks that came along with tax season each spring. I worked plenty of overtime at the IRS, but only when I had a particularly intense case and rarely for weeks at a time. Besides, the hours passed much faster when you enjoyed your work like I did.
Another photo popped up on the screen. This one featured me and Christina doing yoga. Or, more precisely, Christina performing a perfect scorpion pose while I appeared to be trying—and failing—to kick myself in the back of the head. The next shot was of me and Alicia on her wedding day as we put on our makeup, rollers in our hair.
“We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?” I asked the two.
“We sure have,” Alicia said.
Christina nodded in assent. “Good times.”
The guests filtered in over the next half hour. Women I’d worked with at Martin & McGee. Lu, Viola, and Hana. Eddie’s and Will’s wives. Kira. A few other girls I’d known from college or high school who now lived in the Dallas area. Over the next hour, we chatted and laughed and ate and drank and played silly games, like bridal bingo. The cards spelled out B-R-I-D-E along the top and featured pictures of wedding-related things. A chapel. Rings. A wedding cake. A bottle of champagne.
Christina called the winning square. “B, bouquet.”
