Death, Taxes, and a Chocolate Cannoli (A Tara Holloway Novel)

by Diane Kelly

  He went to the wall and flipped his light off, then took my hand in his to pull me to a stand. “Come on. Let’s grab some dinner.”

  “Can we go somewhere that serves cannoli?” I’d been craving the stuff since seeing the sign at Benedetta’s Bistro earlier.

  “You name the place,” Nick said, “I’ll make it happen.”

  An hour later we were seated at Carmone’s, our tummies full of pasta, a cannoli sitting on a plate in front of each of us. I finished mine first, no surprise there, and when Nick stopped to take a sip of his coffee I snatched the last bite of his cannoli from his plate.

  “I should’ve known better than to take my eyes off you,” he teased.

  I glanced around. Nobody was seated nearby, but I lowered my voice anyway and told him about the space for lease in the center where Cyber-Shield was located. “It would be the perfect space for us to use to keep watch on Tino and his men, see if we can follow the cash. I’m thinking Josh could work from there, too. Maybe it would be close enough for him to hack into their Wi-Fi and get into their computer system. I’d love to take a look at their financial records, see if they’ve reported all their income.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.” Nick set his fork down. “I’ve got some available time in the morning. Want me to handle the lease?”

  “Would you?” I said, wiping my mouth. “That would be one less thing on my plate.” Ironic words for a woman who’d just emptied the plates in front of her. “Hohenwald says he can get you a new identity to use. He can get you an apartment to stay in while we’re working the case, too.”

  “Good,” Nick said. “That’ll make things easier and safer.” He took a sip of his iced tea. “When I talk to the leasing agent, what kind of business should I say I’m planning to operate?”

  Hmm. I took a sip of my coffee, the sugar and caffeine fueling my thoughts. “What about an art gallery?” I suggested. “You could sell pieces on consignment. A business like that wouldn’t take much time or money to get up and running. All you’d need is a sign and a few pieces to offer for sale.”

  His eyes narrowed skeptically and he cocked his head. “You think I can pass myself off as an art dealer?”

  He had a point. He looked much more like a cattle rustler than an art aficionado.

  “You’ll have to lose the belt buckles,” I said.

  “Hell!” He huffed. “You might as well take my soul.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “That kind of melodrama sounds just like something an art dealer would say.”

  His eyes narrowed in skepticism. “I’m not sure about this.”

  He might not be sure but I, on the other hand, knew Nick could do anything he set his mind to. “In the right clothes and with some blond highlights and a little hair gel you’d pass.”

  “You’ll have to dress me.”

  “I’d be happy to. As long as I can undress you after.”

  He slid me a sexy grin. “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  I’d met a couple of avant-garde artists recently when working a case against a shady gallery that served primarily as a tax shelter for the owner. I pulled up their phone numbers in my contacts list and gave them to Nick so he could call them and see if they might have some pieces they’d like to place on consignment.

  As he entered the artists’ numbers into his phone, the waiter arrived with our bill. Nick paid it and we headed out, driving, of course, to the downtown Neiman Marcus store. There, I outfitted Nick with attire that was classy yet trendy. Slate-blue trousers. A diamond-print dress shirt with a club collar. A pair of burgundy tassel loafers.

  He scrunched up his nose in distaste. “Tassels are for strippers.”

  “Strippers and art dealers.” I thrust the box at him. “Trust me.” Besides, I was hoping Nick might do a little striptease for me at his town house later.

  After adding a second pair of pants and a couple more shirts to the mix, Nick paid for his purchases and we left downtown, heading to the closest Walgreens. We stood in the hair care aisle, looking over the color selections.

  “Here’s what you need.” I grabbed a box with a picture of a seductively smiling blonde on it. “Frost and tip.”

  “If you get to pick mine, I get to pick yours.”

  “I suppose that’s only fair.”

  He ran his eyes over the boxes, chose one in a bold and vivid red, and held it out to me.

  I pointed to the picture on the box. “That color isn’t exactly subtle.”

  “Maybe not,” he said, “but it’s sexy.” He wagged his brows. “You know what they say about redheads. Red on the head, fire in the—”

  I grabbed the box out of his hand. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “I imagine so.” He chuckled. “Besides, you’re fiery enough already.”

  I wasn’t sure the bright red was the right color for an undercover mission, but perhaps having such boldly colored hair would throw suspicion off me. Kind of like hiding in plain sight.

  Our shopping done, we drove back to my town house in the Uptown area of Dallas, just north of downtown. I’d bought the place a while back when I’d lost my roommate, my BFF Alicia, who’d decided to move out of the apartment we shared and move in with her then boyfriend. She’d moved back in with me when the two later had a temporary split. That boyfriend was now her fiancé. Apparently absence not only makes the heart grow fonder, it makes it get off its complacent ass and propose. Although Alicia had accepted the proposal, she’d decided to continue living with me until their wedding, which was only a few weeks away now. Though I was happy for Alicia, I had to admit I’d miss her when she left. It was nice having someone to chat with over my Fruity Pebbles in the morning.

  Nick and I went inside to find my fluffy Maine coon cat, Henry, sharpening his claws on the sofa.

  I shooed him away. “Stop that!”

  He pulled his claws from the fabric, leaped up to his favorite roost atop the armoire that housed my TV, and gave me a look of absolute feline derision before settling down to lord comfortably over the room.

  Alicia sat at the kitchen table, running a hand over the back of my other cat, Anne, who lay on Alicia’s lap, shedding her creamy fur on my roommate’s black yoga pants. Alicia’s platinum head was ducked as she pored over a seating chart for her wedding dinner. As maid of honor, I’d sit at the head table along with the best man, the bride and groom, and their parents. Nick, on the other hand, would be seated among the general riffraff.

  “Hey, Nick!” Alicia called. “Would you rather sit with Daniel’s Uncle Joe who’s going to regale you with tales of his gall bladder surgery, or my snooty cousin Melody who’s going to complain about everything from the food to the napkins to the champagne?”

  “Gall bladder,” Nick said. “Definitely the gall bladder.”

  I waved a hand at Alicia as Nick and I walked into the kitchen. “Finish that later. I need your help with Nick’s hair. You’re better at this stuff than me.”

  As far as style was concerned, Alicia had me totally beat. While my chestnut hair hung to my shoulders in a standard layered look, she wore her hair in a funky, short, asymmetrical cut. Her clothes were always cutting edge, too. Mine tended more toward clearance rack. Not that I couldn’t hold my own when I had to. I just tended to balance frugality with fashion.

  Alicia picked Anne up from her lap and set her on the kitchen floor. “Sorry, girl. Your mommy needs me.”

  I grabbed the manual kitchen timer from the counter. As we went upstairs to my bathroom, Anne skittering along ahead of us, I explained the situation to Alicia.

  “You two are going after the mafia?” she cried. “You just took down a drug cartel! Can’t they assign you some easy cases for a change?”

  “That would be a waste of our talents,” I said with false bravado.

  “Yeah,” Nick agreed. “Besides, we’d be bored with easy work.”

  It was the truth. Call us crazy, but we thrived on the challenges presented by cases like the Fab
rizio investigation. The more difficult it was to take someone down, the more determined we were to do it.

  Turning back to the immediate matter at hand, I said, “Nick needs a style that says ‘Look at me! I’m artsy.’” I splayed my fingers jazz-hands style. Nick sat down on the closed toilet seat, while I placed the boxes of hair color on the counter and pulled out all of my hair products. “Here’s what we’ve got to work with.”

  Nick glanced over at the assortment. “This goes against everything I believe in. The only thing a man needs is shampoo and a comb.”

  “Hush,” I chastised him. “You sound like an old fuddy-duddy.” The fact that my use of the antiquated term made me sound like one, too, wasn’t lost on me.

  Anne ventured to the doorway and sat down to watch the goings-on in my bathroom.

  Alicia looked at the two boxes of hair color. “Please tell me the red isn’t for Nick.”

  “The red is mine.”

  “Good,” she said. “A ginger might work on him but that shade is way too bright for his skin tone.”

  I directed Nick to take off his shirt so it wouldn’t be stained by the dye. After enjoying a quick glance at his rock-hard pecs, I wrapped an old bath towel around his shoulders.

  Alicia opened the frost-and-tip box and pulled out the plastic cap, having to fight to get the thing over Nick’s head. “It’s a little small.” With a final grunt and tug, she managed to yank the cap into place and tied the strings tightly under his chin.

  Nick turned his head and looked at himself in the mirror. “I look like a woman about to take a swimming lesson.”

  “A woman from an Eastern bloc country,” Alicia teased.

  “With a severe hormone problem,” I added.

  Nick was an attractive man, but as a woman? Not so much. Perhaps it was the strong jaw or the five-o’clock shadow.

  Alicia jabbed the hooked tool through the cap and yanked the first strands of Nick’s hair through the plastic.

  “Ouch!” Nick frowned. “That hurts.”

  “Buck up,” I told him. “Women go through this every day.”

  “Masochists.”

  “Keep complaining,” I said, “and we’ll wax your eyebrows, too.”

  Alicia continued to pull Nick’s hair through the cap and, despite my threat about his brows, he continued to say “Ouch.”

  When she was done readying his hair, she began to apply the solution to the exposed strands, squeezing it out of the bottle.

  “My Lord!” Nick waved a hand in front of his face. “That stuff stinks.”

  Alicia applied more solution. “What a whiner.”

  I set the timer for the prescribed amount of time. Nick was right. The bleaching solution did smell bad. “We’ll be back.”

  Despite Nick’s protests, we left him in the bathroom to process and went downstairs to pour ourselves a glass of moscato.

  “Bring me a beer if you’ve got any!” Nick called down to us.

  We returned a few minutes later, carrying our stem glasses and bringing Nick a bottle of his favorite beer, which I always kept on hand.

  He took the bottle from me. “I think I’m high on these fumes. Much longer and all of my brain cells will be dead.”

  I grabbed my hand towel from the rack and waved it in front of him to clear the air. “Shut up and drink.”

  A few minutes later and—ding!—his time was up. He bent over and stuck his head in the sink. I shampooed the color solution out of his hair and wiped the splashes from the countertop. He dried his hair the best he could with a towel, and I blow-dried the rest of the moisture from it.

  Nick’s highlights now complete and his hair dry, it was time to give him a new style. Alicia picked up a comb and carefully looked over the products on the counter before selecting a light mousse. She turned back to Nick, sprayed a golf-ball-sized amount of mousse into her hand, and began to work it through his hair. She took his bangs, which normally lay casually across his forehead, and swept them up and over with the comb, then used her fingers to separate and tease the strands, pulling them to stiff points with hair wax. When she was satisfied, she locked the look in place with a thorough coating of the contraband extra-hold hairspray my boss, who wore her hair in a towering beehive, had given me. The stuff was imported from Shanghai and violated all kinds of safety codes for flammability and chemical content. That said, the spray did its job and then some. Nothing short of a nuclear explosion could move hair coated in the stuff.

  Alicia stepped back to admire her handiwork. “What do you think?”

  “Nice,” I said. Nick didn’t look like his usual self at all, but nonetheless the style worked on him.

  Anne leaped up to the countertop and stretched her neck out to sniff Nick’s hair. Sniff-sniff. Her eyes grew wide and she sneezed three times in quick succession—snit-snit-snit—before she catapulted herself from the counter and scampered off.

  Nick turned, eyed himself in the mirror, and groaned. “I look like every other pretentious asshole in this city.”

  “You look stylish and trendy,” I said. Just like every other pretentious asshole in the city.

  Nick looked up at Alicia. “I’ll never be able to do this on my own.”

  “Sure you will. I’ll teach you.” Alicia spent a moment showing Nick what she’d done so he could repeat the process tomorrow. “See? Just pluck at it. Easy peasy.”

  “If you say so.” He turned to me. “Don’t blame me if I look like some type of circus clown in the morning.”

  Armed with my mousse, wax, and hairspray, Nick left, giving me a good-bye kiss at the door.

  Once he’d gone, I turned to Alicia. “I’ll have to stay at an apartment for a while to maintain my cover. Would you take care of the cats for me?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’d be happy to.”

  “Thanks, Alicia.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “That’s what friends are for.”

  “And don’t worry,” I told her. “I won’t let anything get in the way of your bridal shower this weekend.”

  We were expecting over a dozen women, including Alicia’s mother, her future mother-in-law, friends of Alicia’s from her temple, and several of our favorite coworkers from Martin & McGee, the accounting firm where Alicia was employed and where I’d worked, too, before leaving to join the IRS.

  “Good,” Alicia said. “Because if I don’t get some of your mother’s pecan pralines very soon I just might go into withdrawal.”

  My mother was famous for her pralines. And her spicy cornbread. And her blueberry pie. Seriously, there was nothing my mother couldn’t make that didn’t taste delicious. Unfortunately, I’d inherited none of her talent in the kitchen. That’s why she was driving in from my childhood home in east Texas on Friday night to help me with the shower.

  Alicia put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye, her forehead creased with worry. “Be extra careful on this case, okay?”

  Overcome with emotion, all I could do was bite my quivering lip and nod.

  Alicia stepped toward me and gave me a tight hug.

  It’s good to have friends.

  chapter seven

  Taken for a Ride

  I entered the federal building Tuesday morning with my new flaming red hair. After Nick had gone home last night, I’d colored my hair, too. I felt a bit conspicuous with my vibrant locks, but figured the new shade must work on me when the usual guards at security gave me a “Damn, girl!” and a “Wow!” If I didn’t see these guys every morning, I might’ve taken their comments as harassment. But given that they’d been nothing but professional in the past, I accepted their assessments as compliments rather than come-ons.

  “It’s not too much?” I asked them.

  Damn, Girl! cocked his head. “It’s just the right amount of too much.”

  I continued on through the lobby to discover three older men near the elevators. One of the men wore gray dress slacks with a white short-sleeved shirt and shiny white buck shoes. He
had thick glasses that distorted his eyes, making them appear huge and making me feel like I was looking at a fish in an aquarium. Despite being painfully thin and stooped, he was nonetheless pushing another man, who sat in a wheelchair.

  The man in the wheelchair was dressed in baby-blue pajamas, a zebra-print fleece blanket tucked around him. The limp arm on his lap told me he’d suffered a stroke. His mouth hung slightly agape, though the side that wasn’t paralyzed was curled up in a smile. The half-smile said that while his mouth might not work quite right anymore, his mind still functioned just fine.

  The third man had his hands on the side bars of a metal walker with yellow tennis balls on the bottom of each foot. He wore elastic-waist nylon athletic pants, a matching jacket, and a pair of high-tech hearing aids affixed to the outer shell of his ear like a Bluetooth headset.

  Goodness. They were like those “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys.

  As Hear No Evil leaned forward in his walker to take a look at the building directory posted on the wall, I stepped up to them. “Can I help you gentlemen?”

  “You sure can,” he said. “We need to find the IRS criminal investigations office.”

  “I’m going there myself.” I punched the elevator’s up-arrow button. “You can ride up with me. Do you have an appointment with an agent?”

  “No,” said See No Evil. “Do we need one?”

  “Depends on what you’re here for,” I said.

  “We want to meet with that woman who shot the drug dealer,” See No said.

  That would be me. Although my name hadn’t been revealed in the newscasts or papers, the reporters had noted that it was a female special agent who’d shot and killed a member of the drug cartel. Got him right between the eyes from across a dark field. It was something I was both proud of and, admittedly, a little sickened by. I’d saved the lives of several undercover agents that night, including Nick’s, but knowing I’d put an end to a life, even if it was a worthless one, still gnawed at me sometimes. Is the fact that I’d shot a person to death what defined me now? I hoped not. I’d like to think that I was a complex person, with all sorts of facets, and that I was more than one act taken on one day.