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

by Diane Kelly

I exited my car and carried my backpack, which contained my new laptop, to the door of the bistro. Through the glass, I could see Stella, Luisa, and Elena. All wore black heels and fitted black dresses that accentuated their voluptuous figures. The three huddled near the hostess stand, staring out the window.

  I turned to see what they were looking at. Nick. No wonder they looked so captivated. He was out in front of Gallery Nico with a spray bottle of glass cleaner and a rag, wiping down the windows of his shop. He wore the clothes I’d picked out for him when we went shopping and damn if he didn’t look good enough to eat. Not that I was all that picky about what I ate. Let’s forget about that chocolate chip from the floor, shall we?

  While Stella unlocked the door and held it open for me, Elena stepped even closer to the glass, her nose almost touching it. “Look at those arms. He must work out.”

  “I didn’t notice his arms,” Luisa said, gazing longingly across the parking lot. “I was too busy staring at his luscious ass.”

  “I want to get a closer look,” Stella said, relocking the door. “Dibs on taking him lunch later.”

  The heat of jealousy flared up in me. Nick was mine, dammit. No matter how nice these girls had been to me yesterday, I didn’t like them ogling my man.

  I stepped up next to them and took a look. “I guess he’s okay,” I said with a shrug. “You know, if you like that type.”

  Elena shot me a skeptical look. “The gorgeous type, you mean?”

  “I mean the type who look like they spend a lot of time looking in the mirror.” I left it at that and proceeded to the small staff lounge next to Benedetta’s office in the kitchen. The door to Benedetta’s office was open a few inches, and I could see her seated inside, her back to the door as she placed an order of supplies with one of her vendors.

  The lounge was a windowless room that contained two of the same tables as the dining room, pushed together to form one long surface and surrounded by six chairs. Along the right wall was a small television atop a bookcase filled with cookbooks. On the left wall stood a series of narrow floor-to-ceiling lockers. Mine was the one on the end. Elena, who worked as both a server and her mother’s right-hand woman, had given me the key yesterday.

  I opened my locker, dropped my backpack in the bottom, and hung my purse on the hook. I wrapped my apron around my waist and tied it in a bow in back. Properly attired now, I grabbed a pen and an order pad from the plastic bin in the kitchen and slid them into my apron. The same three men who’d staffed the kitchen yesterday were back at work today, chopping vegetables, boiling noodles, simmering sauces, cutting meat, and squeezing cream from a pastry bag into a dozen cannoli shells.

  “Save one of those for me!” I called to Brian.

  The pastry chef looked up and gave me a smile.

  Stella met me in the laundry room and explained the standard morning routine. “We cover the tables first, then take care of the glassware and dishes.”

  “Got it.” I pulled green tablecloths from the dryer, and draped them over her arms so they wouldn’t wrinkle.

  “Oh, my God!” she cried, grabbing my hand. “What a cute manicure.”

  “I got it on my way home last night.” I pulled my foot out of my shoe. “See? Toes, too.”

  While Stella carried the tablecloths into the dining room, I transferred the white napkins from the washing machine into the dryer and turned it on.

  Back in the dining room, I helped Stella spread the cloths on the table. Luisa and Elena followed along behind us, adding the roses, candles, sweetener packets, and shakers to the tables. While we waited for the napkins to finish drying, Stella and I removed the glasses from the dishwasher and wiped them down to remove spots. Luisa and Elena stashed the clean glasses in their proper places on shelves in the kitchen, carrying some into the dining room for the bar. When the dryer’s buzzer announced that the napkins were dry, we folded those and set them on the tables in the restaurant along with silverware. We finished up by returning the clean plates, pots, and pans to their proper spots in the kitchen.

  We functioned like a well-oiled machine. Olive-oiled.

  Stella and I were in the kitchen assembling bags of to-go orders that had been called in when Benedetta emerged from her office a few minutes before eleven. “Good morning, Tori,” she said.

  “Buongiorno,” I replied, trying out some of the Italian I’d learned on the drive to work.

  She stopped in her tracks, a smile playing about her wine-colored lips. “You’re going to be one of those butt-kissers, aren’t you?”

  “I sure am.”

  “Good.” She gave me a wink.

  Stella stepped up. “Take a look at her manicure, Mom.”

  I held out my fingers for Benedetta to behold.

  She took my hand in hers. “Bellisima.” She reached up and softly pinched my cheek in a sign of affection. “I should make you my honorary Italian daughter.”

  “I’d like that.” So long as we give Tino the old heave-ho. Arrivederci, daddio.

  My arms loaded with bags, I followed Benedetta out into the dining room. While I situated the to-go orders along the bar, she made her way to the front door and unlocked it, welcoming an older couple who’d been waiting patiently on the sidewalk out front.

  “Tori will show you to your seats,” Benedetta said, her words addressing me as much as the customers.

  I scurried over. “Would you prefer a booth or a table?”

  “A booth,” the woman said.

  I led them to a booth along the left side. “How’s this?”

  “Just fine,” the woman said, sliding in. Her husband slid in on the other side.

  I handed them each a menu. “Can I start you off with an Italian soda or a flavored tea?” Elena had told me to push the drinks. Like the desserts, they had a better profit margin than the entrées. Besides, a bigger tab meant bigger tips. “We have a delicious raspberry tea today. It’s a treat for your tongue.”

  “That sounds great,” the woman said.

  “Count me in, too,” said her husband.

  My first shift was off to a good start.

  I headed back to the kitchen to get their drinks. Once there, I found Stella standing at the stove, filling small containers with an assortment of pastas. Fettucine Alfredo. Linguine carbonara. Spinach ravioli.

  “You really want to make an impression on that art dealer?” said Dario, the formidable man who handled the meat. “Take him this.” He held out a plate bearing two oversized meatballs flanking a huge Italian sausage. A meat penis.

  “That’s disgusting,” Stella said. “I should tell Mom to fire you.”

  Dario laughed and used a pair of tongs to return the meats to their warming trays. “She can’t fire me. I know too much.”

  chapter eighteen

  Into the System

  Hmm …

  What, exactly, did the chef know? Was he merely referring to Benedetta’s proprietary pasta sauce recipes? Or did he have dirt on the family? Could he somehow be involved in Tino’s sinister deeds? I decided to keep a close eye on the guy, see what I could learn. Something about Dario seemed shady, shifty. Then again, maybe he was just an everyday creep. It could be hard to tell the difference.

  Stella continued down the row, snagging a freshly prepared cannoli and putting that in a to-go box, too.

  I filled two glasses with ice and raspberry tea, and returned to the dining room, setting one glass on each side of the table in front of my customers. “Have y’all decided?”

  The wife went for the penne with mushrooms, while the husband opted for the eggplant parmigiana.

  “Excellent choices. I’ll have those out to you in just a few minutes.” I collected their menus and headed back to the kitchen to turn in their order. On my way, I passed Stella, who was heading out with an enormous bag of food.

  “Wish me luck!” she said.

  I gave her a smile, but secretly willed her to fall flat on her face in the parking lot. The thought of a pretty twenty-year-old
with a great figure hitting on my boyfriend had my blood boiling like the linguini noodles in the kitchen. I tried to force my feelings aside as I turned in the food order and went back to the dining room to seat a party of five who’d just arrived. Luisa helped me push two of the tables together and remove the extra chairs.

  The blond salad-eater appeared in the doorway and raised a hand to get my attention. Looked like she was ready to cash in on the deal we’d made during my interview. I scurried over and showed her to a table before one of the other girls could claim her.

  Once she was seated, I said, “I assume you’d like your usual Caesar salad and water?”

  “Not today.” She grinned as she held out a hand for a menu. “I’m thinking about trying one of the seafood dishes. Maybe an appetizer, too.”

  The seafood items were the most expensive on the menu. This woman drove a hard bargain. She was also likely to drive me into bankruptcy.

  I left her to decide just how badly she was going to stick it to me, and rounded up plates for the other tables. A few minutes later, the blonde had decided on the linguini with shrimp, as well as the bruschetta appetizer, a side salad, another chocolate cannoli, and a twelve-dollar glass of white wine. Gee thanks, lady.

  The front door opened and Stella returned, her face drooping with disappointment.

  “How’d it go at the gallery?” I asked her.

  “The guy’s good-looking,” she said, “but he’s older than he looked from over here. He’s like thirty.”

  She said the word as if it were a disease. I suppose to a young woman who had yet to reach full adulthood, thirty probably did seem ancient.

  “Thirty’s not too old for me,” Elena said. “I’ll take him lunch tomorrow.”

  Ugh.

  “You should go over, too, sometime,” Stella told me. “The place has all kinds of interesting art.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  Business picked up, and all of us were hustling for the next two hours. With the large crowd, and most of them ordering the cannoli for dessert, I wondered if I’d been wrong about the bistro’s earnings. Maybe all of the reported income had been earned legitimately. Maybe Tino wasn’t laundering his money through the restaurant. Of course it was much too soon for me to tell for sure.

  While serving minestrone to a couple of diners at a table near the windows, I noticed a man in a green Cyber-Shield uniform walk across the parking lot and enter Gallery Nico. I tensed up for a moment, but realized he was probably going over to try to sell them security services. He hadn’t been carrying a nail gun, after all.

  During the peak of the lunch rush, I spotted Benedetta heading to the register with a zippered vinyl bank bag in her hand. The bag was blue and bore the Chase logo. She typed her code into the screen, opened the cash drawer, and removed stacks of bills from the till. After zipping them into the bag, she slid the drawer shut and returned to her office.

  I continue to hustle and bustle and bus tables. Despite the fact that I’d worn comfortable shoes, my arches began to hurt. I wasn’t used to being on my feet for hours at a time. I’d have to soak my feet tonight. Or maybe if I took a cannoli to the nail salon the tech would give me a foot massage.

  Around half past one, when things had slowed a bit, I overheard Benedetta on the phone behind the bar, taking an order from her husband.

  “Of course I saved you a cannoli, Tino,” she said. When I glanced her way, she rolled her eyes in an expression that said my husband can be such a pain in the neck. She hung up the phone. “One time in twenty-four years I forget to save the man a cannoli and he won’t ever let me forget it.”

  I offered her a shaking head in commiseration. “I’d be happy to take the food next door,” I offered. It would be a chance for me to get my first peek inside Cyber-Shield.

  Unfortunately, Benedetta declined my offer. “I can tell your feet hurt. Luisa can get it and you can take your lunch break.”

  Was Benedetta truly concerned about my welfare, or was she trying to keep me out of her husband’s office? I had no way of knowing.

  She waved a hand toward the kitchen. “Help yourself.”

  I wandered into the kitchen and looked over the selections. Yum. This job was certainly going to have its benefits.

  “What would you like?” Dario said, grabbing a plate and waiting for me to decide.

  “Spaghetti marinara,” I told him. “And toss some of those fried mushrooms on top.”

  His nose wrinkled in disgust. “Those mushrooms are an appetizer.”

  I shrugged. “So?” I’d been known to eat leftover sushi for breakfast. Mixing an appetizer in with my entrée wasn’t going to put me off.

  He didn’t bother to argue further, simply conceding with a return shrug. He ladled red sauce over the noodles and used tongs to add a sprinkling of fried mushrooms. “Let me know how it tastes.”

  I grabbed a fork and took a bite. Mmm. “It tastes delicious.”

  “Let me try.” He grabbed a clean fork and scooped up a huge bite, cupping his free hand under his chin as he put it in his mouth. He let the food sit on his tongue for a moment, then slowly bit into it, his chewing speeding up as he formed his opinion. “It’s an interesting combination of crunchy and savory.”

  “Yep.” I snagged myself a chocolate cannoli, too. No lunch here would be complete without it.

  I sat in the lounge and ate my fried mushroom spaghetti with my feet propped up on a chair. When I finished, forty minutes of my lunch hour remained. I went to my locker and removed my laptop from my backpack, setting it on the table. A moment later, the system was booted up and I clicked on the icon to search for available Wi-Fi connections. Several appeared. At the top of the list was BBistro. Surely that was the link for the restaurant. The second was CSSecure. That had to be Cyber-Shield’s. The others included Portraits2Go, YoloYogu, and GalleryN, which were easily identified as belonging to the photography studio, the frozen yogurt shop, and Gallery Nico.

  I went to the door of the lounge and waved a hand to catch Brian’s attention. “I’ve got some homework I need to work on. Can you tell me what the Wi-Fi password is?” I mentally crossed my fingers that employees were allowed access to it.

  “Cannoli,” he called back. “Followed by the number 89 and a dollar sign.”

  “Thanks.”

  I returned to my laptop, clicked to connect to the bistro’s Wi-Fi, and typed in cannoli89$ when prompted for a password. One strike of the enter button and I was in.

  Keeping up my façade, I retrieved my marketing textbook from my backpack, opened it on the table next to me, and turned to the second to last chapter. As I came across key terms, I Googled them as if performing an extra bit of research into the core principles taught in the book. Meanwhile, I also took bites of the delectable cannoli, going so far as to lick my fork and the plate clean afterward. If any of Tino’s thugs were watching me through the Webcam today, they’d get an eyeful.

  The rest of the day went by in a blur. There was a brief respite in the middle of the afternoon, but it gave us just enough time to rewash the linens and prepare the tables for the dinner crowd. I’d thought my job as an IRS special agent was demanding, but waiting tables took a high toll. Not only did my arches ache, but I’d burned my wrists carrying hot plates, bruised my hip when I’d run into the corner of the brick oven in the kitchen, and accidentally shot lemon juice into my eye when positioning a wedge on a tea glass.

  I should get hazardous-duty pay for this.

  chapter nineteen

  I Gotta Be Me

  I left the bistro on Friday evening with collapsed arches, an aching back, and burn blisters on my arms. On the bright side, I also left with a bag full of scrumptious Italian food and a printout of today’s sales figures, as well as those for the last week and month. I kept a close eye on my rearview and side mirrors, checking for a tail. There was none. Good. I felt smug knowing I’d fooled the alleged “wise guys” of the Dallas mafia. Looked like they weren’t so wise, after al
l.

  I drove until I was a couple of miles from Cyber-Shield and pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store. I removed my IRS cell phone from the locked glove compartment and texted Josh. Bistro’s Wi-Fi password is cannoli89$. I waited a minute or two until his reply came back. Got it. With any luck, he’d be able to hack in right away and access the restaurant’s financial records.

  I deleted the texts, pulled the sales data printouts from my pocket, and looked them over, trying to get a realistic estimate of the restaurant’s income. It wasn’t easy. Sales seemed to fluctuate significantly day to day, with the weekend figures being nearly ten times that of the weekdays. To be expected, I supposed. More people ate out on the weekends than midweek. They were also more likely to order an expensive cocktail or glass of wine on the weekend rather than a weekday.

  Using the calculator feature on my phone, I multiplied today’s sales number by 365 to get a ballpark estimate of what the bistro’s annual gross revenues would be. I did a similar computation with the weekly sales figure, multiplying it by 52. Finally, I took the figure for the last month and multiplied it by 12. No matter how I estimated the earnings, the numbers fell far short of the amount that had been reported on the restaurant’s tax return last year.

  Did that prove that Benedetta was laundering money for Tino? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Other variables could affect the figures. I wasn’t sure whether the data was typical, or whether they reflected seasonal fluctuations. I’d heard that people tended to eat out less over the holidays and in the winter months, while they visited restaurants more often during the summer, when they were enjoying vacations. An economic slump or something as simple as road construction could negatively impact a restaurant’s income, while an economic rally or successful ad campaign could send earnings through the roof. How much the bistro’s catering service brought in was anyone’s guess at this point, too. The figures weren’t broken out on the bistro’s tax return. If Josh could hack into her system, though, we’d have more financial data to analyze and could possibly answer some of these questions.