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

by Diane Kelly

  “Looks that way.”

  She went on to explain that because Kirchner was suspected to be the one handling the pickup of the protection money, which was the crux of our money-laundering/tax-evasion case, the IRS members of the task force were focusing on him. Meanwhile the FBI members had returned their efforts to Tino and his other patrolmen, who were more likely to be involved in the violent facets of Tino’s schemes.

  Hana continued. “Kirchner’s driven by the optical shop a few times since, both during the day and at night. We spotted him in a parked car across the street yesterday, looking the place over with binoculars.”

  “But he hasn’t gone inside again?” I asked.

  “No,” Hana replied.

  I mulled things over for a moment. “You think the owner might have refused to pay the protection money and Tino’s planning some type of punishment?” After all, the clients who paid were presumably left alone. I felt the excitement of a pending bust begin to buzz through me. Clearly, Looking Good was next on Tino’s list, but how it would be hit was anyone’s guess.

  “Looks that way,” Hana said again.

  “You think they’re planning to set it on fire like Alex Harris’s bar?” I asked. “Or maybe just rob it like they did the hookah lounge?”

  We debated the possibilities. It was doubtful an optical shop would have a lot of cash on hand, so a robbery seemed improbable. More than likely, Tino had ordered his goons to do violence against the man who owned the business. My mind envisioned some type of slow, horrible death involving a lens-grinding machine. Or maybe they’d strap the optician to a chair and drip dilating solution into his eyes until he went blind or his eyeballs exploded. Could that even happen?

  “He’s been casing the owner’s house, too,” Hana said.

  “Oh, Lord.” A sick feeling coursed through me as I thought of the optician and his family and I had to bend over to put my head between my knees. What if Tino or Cole decided to target the optician at home rather than attack him at his place of business? The man’s wife and child would be there. What if federal agents didn’t get to them in time? Just how far is Tino willing to go?

  I sat back up and swallowed the lump in my throat. “Did anyone else happen to check out the Looking Good Web site?”

  Nick’s eyes met mine. “You saw the picture?” he asked. “The one with the kid?”

  Again he proved just how well he knew me.

  “Yeah,” I said on a sigh.

  “Don’t worry,” Nick said, reaching out from beside me to give my hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’re not going to let the little dude down.”

  I looked around the group, asking one final, desperate question. “Has anyone seen any concrete evidence that Tino’s collecting protection money? Please, one of you say yes.” I prayed one of them had seen something solid that would give us grounds to move in before something happened to the optician or his business or his family.

  Unfortunately, everyone answered in the negative. All they’d seen was Cole Kirchner going into places of business operated by Cyber-Shield clients and coming back out minutes later. All of the other patrolmen merely made their rounds in their cars, getting out occasionally to check that doors were locked or to shine a flashlight into a dark space between buildings or behind Dumpsters. None of them went inside any of the businesses they visited. The FBI members of the task force reported the same observations.

  Josh said, “I was at the gallery early this morning when the patrolmen were coming back from their night shifts. It was around six-thirty or so. I saw Tino go over to the bistro. He rolled up the security doors and went inside. He came back out about twenty minutes later and closed everything up again.”

  It seemed odd that he’d be at work so early on a Sunday morning. “Was Benedetta at the restaurant?”

  “I didn’t see her or her car,” Josh said. “As far as I could tell, Tino didn’t carry anything in or out of the restaurant, but he was wearing a suit. There would have been plenty of pockets to hide money in.”

  I remembered Hohenwald telling me that Fabrizio served as a Eucharistic minister in his church. Maybe he planned to go to an early mass after dropping by Cyber-Shield. But why had Tino gone into the bistro? Perhaps he was bringing the cash Cole Kirchner had collected from Cyber-Shield’s victims so Benedetta could add it to last night’s cash-bar receipts and deposit the funds together at the bank tomorrow. Maybe she really was laundering the protection money through the liquor account as we’d speculated. What other reason would he have had to go into her place of business? Even so, I had my doubts. Benedetta seemed like a genuinely nice person. Then again, maybe I’d become too close to her and the girls to stay objective.

  We still had no concrete evidence, and we’d need something solid to link Tino to a crime. While Eddie, Hana, and Will would continue to keep an eye on Cole Kirchner, Josh would continue his attempts to hack Cyber-Shield’s system, and Nick would continue his surveillance of the company from the gallery. I’d go ahead with my plan to plant the recorder in Tino’s office as soon as I was able. The more evidence we could gather, the better.

  We concluded the meeting with mutual expressions of concern.

  “Stay safe.”

  “Watch your back.”

  “Watch your ass.”

  It would take a little more effort than usual to watch my ass these days given that it had expanded an inch or two thanks to Benedetta’s chocolate cannoli.

  Nick rounded up his car from where he’d parked it a few blocks over, and swung back by to pick me up at Hana’s. He drove to a nearby hotel, and parked around the back. We really couldn’t be too careful. Cyber-Shield’s staff lived all over Dallas, and many of them came into the restaurant or crossed paths with me or Nick in the parking lot. We couldn’t risk them spotting me here with Nick and mentioning it to Tino.

  I stayed in the car, keeping my head low and a keen eye on my surroundings, while Nick went inside and obtained a room. He texted me with the room number: 347.

  I locked his car, took the keys with me, and went into the hotel, bypassing the elevator and instead taking the stairs up to the room. Not only would it burn a few more of the cannoli calories I’d accumulated, it would get me warmed up for what was to come.

  And what was to come was warm, indeed …

  chapter thirty-eight

  Free Bug with Every Meal

  Monday morning, I had my first final exam for the semester. My Global Marketing final was multiple choice. When the teacher’s assistant handed out the bubble forms, I was tempted to darken the circle next to the letter B for each question. With Tori Holland’s mediocre GPA and fictional existence, what did it really matter if she failed this test?

  But my Tara Holloway work ethic wouldn’t let me be so lazy. Besides, what if the Fabrizio case stretched out and Echols decided to hack into DBU’s computer system or to access their student records system via the password gleaned from my infected laptop? If Tino learned that I’d failed my finals, it might clue him in that my Tori Holland persona was a fraud. Skipping classes was one thing, but flunking out was another.

  Instead, I read through each question carefully, racking my brain to remember what I’d learned in the marketing classes I’d taken years ago at the University of Texas down in Austin. When my memory came up short, I applied common sense or outright guesswork. And when neither approach worked on a particular question, I went with the proven eenie-meanie-meinie-mo method, coming up with C for my answer.

  I wasn’t due at Benedetta’s until two o’clock, so I did my usual Neiman Marcus maneuver, parking in the garage downtown across from the store and pinballing my way to my office at the IRS.

  I stepped off the elevator and headed down to Lu’s office.

  “Good morning,” I said to Viola, Lu’s administrative assistant.

  Viola returned the greeting, assessing me over her bifocals. “Your roots could stand a touch-up.”

  Sheesh. I’m out risking my life going after a mobster
and all I get is a rude comment about my hair? But it wasn’t worth getting upset over it. I had bigger things to worry about. I might have to stop by the pharmacy for another box of hair color, though. “I’ve missed you, Viola.”

  I rapped on Lu’s door frame and she looked up from her desk.

  “How’d your date with Jeb go?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I suppose I had a good enough time. But he’s really not my type after all. I think I just agreed to go out with him because he was so easy. You know, low-hanging fruit.”

  Ew. I really didn’t want to think about Jeb’s low-hanging fruit.

  “Got an update for me?” she asked.

  I filled Lu in on the developments in the Fabrizio investigation, and on my plan to plant the fitness tracker/recording device in his office.

  “Be careful,” she said, “sounds like he’s got lots of experience disposing of bodies where they’ll never be found.”

  That’s a lovely thought with which to begin the workweek, huh?

  The mobster case dealt with, I told Lu about the plans I’d made with Harold and Isaiah to nab Adam Stratford, aka Tripp Sevin.

  “I love it!” she said. “Count me in.”

  I went to my office to set the plan in motion. After closing my door, I ran a search of the tax filings. While I found that Adam Stratford had filed tax returns, the only income he’d reported over the last few years was around thirty-five grand in wages from a warehouse job at a local big-box store. When he wasn’t driving the van, he was driving a forklift. The fact that he hadn’t reported any of his earnings from the vacation scam put him on the hook not only for fraud, but also tax evasion.

  I used my trusty old IRS-issued cell phone to call the number I’d seen on the Ozarks Express postcards.

  A man answered. Sure enough, he had that Cajun accent that Isaiah, Jeb, and Harold had mentioned.

  “Hello,” I said, adding a warble to my voice in the hopes I’d sound aged. “My name is Melvina…” On the spot like that, I couldn’t think of a last name. Ugh! I should’ve thought this through better before I’d placed the call. I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Cannoli.”

  I slapped a palm to my forehead. Cannoli? Really? That was the best I could come up with?

  “How can I help you, Mrs. Cannoli?” Stratford asked.

  “I saw your Web site online,” I said, continuing the warble. But rather than making me sound elderly, it made me sound as if I were gargling. I coughed as if to clear my throat and spoke in my regular voice. “Me and a group of my friends would like to plan a trip to the Ozarks. Maybe make a stop in Hot Springs along the way and visit the bath houses. Is that something you could help us with?”

  “I sure can,” he replied.

  “We saw that you offer transportation and hotel packages for two nights?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Only four hundred dollars for the whole enchilada.”

  “Oh, I don’t like enchiladas,” I said, screwing with the guy. “All those spices give me heartburn.”

  “What I meant,” he said after a moment’s pause, speaking slowly as if he thought I was an idiot, “was that the fee includes both the van and the two nights’ accommodations.”

  “Oh! Okay. Okeydokey.”

  “When would you like to depart?” he asked.

  I chose a random date in June. “How about June seventeenth?”

  “Let me check the bookings to make sure the van’s available then.”

  Yeah, right. I had a feeling no matter what date I’d tossed out he’d tell me the van was available.

  “You’re in luck,” he said a few seconds later. “That date is open.”

  Just as I’d suspected.

  “Summer vacations are booking fast, though,” he said. “In order for your group to reserve the van, I’ll need to collect half of the fee up front from each traveler as a deposit. I can accept payment in cash, or traveler’s checks if you prefer.”

  Or you can accept it in my orthopedic shoe up your ass, you conniving little whippersnapper! Eighty-seven years on this earth and the fictional Melvina Cannoli hadn’t lost her girlish sass.

  “You’ll come by to collect the payment, right?” I asked. “I’m not comfortable putting cash or traveler’s checks in the mail and I’m sure my friends will feel the same.”

  “Certainly. I’ll just need an address.”

  I couldn’t give Adam Stratford the address of Whispering Pines or he might realize it was a setup. Instead, I gave him the address for the apartment complex where Alicia and I had lived when we’d first moved to Dallas after college. I’d be sure to be waiting outside when he arrived so that he wouldn’t have to knock on the door and bother whoever actually lived in our unit now.

  “How’s Friday morning?” I asked. I had Friday off from the bistro and wasn’t scheduled again to work until the following Monday. “Around ten o’clock?”

  “That works fine,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

  Yes, you will. And you just might be surprised by who else you see.

  * * *

  At eight that evening, Tino called the bistro. I took the call. He asked for a meal to be delivered to his office.

  “What can I get you tonight?” I asked.

  “Surprise me.”

  Oh, I’d surprise him all right. With a disguised recorder. Hee-hee! Finally I’d get a chance to plant the darn thing.

  “See you soon.” You sorry excuse for a human being.

  I walked back to the kitchen, where Dario stood at the stove, beginning to wind things down for the night. “Tino said to surprise him.”

  “I can do that.” Dario proceeded to fill a container with the remaining mushroom ravioli, covering it with a combination of Alfredo and marinara sauces, improvising a parma rosa, though rather than mixing the two sauces together he applied them in distinctive red and white stripes.

  “Creative,” I told him.

  Benedetta looked up from her desk in her open office. “What did he do?”

  “He made stripes with the sauce.” I carried the box in to show her. “See?”

  “Interesting presentation. I like it.” She raised a hand and motioned to her chef. “Dario, come in here, please.”

  He hung the hooked ladle over the side of the large pot and walked into her office, his expression wary.

  “I know you’re thinking about taking another job,” Benedetta said, giving him a pointed look. “Tino overheard you on your phone out back.”

  I’d known Dario was job-hunting, too. Of course I hadn’t shared that tidbit with Benedetta or she’d have wondered how I’d gotten the information. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was an undercover IRS agent and that one of my colleagues had followed the guy.

  “I don’t fault you for considering your other options,” she told Dario. “Sometimes I think you are an ass and that I should send you packing anyway. But the fact of the matter is that you are a talented chef. Other than myself, no one else has been able to make my grandmother’s recipes as well as you do. I don’t want to lose you.” She paused a moment to let her words sink in. “What’s it going to take to keep you here? You want more money? More creative freedom? Is that it?”

  His expression changed from wary to thoughtful to eager. “I’d love to create some of my own dishes,” he said. “Your grandmother’s recipes are delicious, but I’ve been cooking them for years now. I’d like to try something new.”

  “Come up with some dishes, then,” Benedetta said. “We’ll make them the daily specials, see which ones are a hit with the customers, and add the best ones to the menu.”

  Dario grinned. “I’ve got an eggplant lasagna idea I’d like to try first. And then maybe I’ll try Tori’s idea and toss fried mushrooms on top of spaghetti marinara.”

  I raised a finger. “I want credit for that one.”

  “Of course, cara.” As she spoke, Benedetta looked up and reached up with one hand, fingers splayed, moving her hand from left to righ
t if reading the words on a theater marquee. “We’ll call it Tori’s Mushroom Pasta.”

  Tori’s Mushroom Pasta? Great. Tara Holloway was the one who’d come up with the idea, but my fictional alter ego would get the naming rights. Oh, well. There was nothing I could do about it.

  I packed the pasta surprise, a couple slices of toasty garlic bread, and a chocolate cannoli into a bag, along with a napkin and silverware. While my hands were in the bag, I tugged the fitness tracker out from under my sleeve so I’d be able to pull it from my wrist quickly and easily once I was in Tino’s office. I pushed the button on the end to activate the recorder. With one last deep breath to steel myself, I headed next door.

  As I walked over, I spotted Tino’s and Eric’s vehicles in the lot. Patrol car number six sat in the lot, too, Cole Kirchner having yet to set out on his rounds for the night. I wondered if tonight would be the night Tino’s goons made a move on Looking Good Optical or the optician. Part of me hoped it would be. I missed my apartment and my cats and spending time with Nick. I wanted this case resolved ASAP, assuming, of course, that no one would get hurt.

  I punched Benedetta’s code into the keypad. Two-three-six-three. Though I heard the automated lock release with a click, the door wouldn’t budge. Looked like someone had locked the dead bolt.

  I rapped on the glass. Rap-rap-rap. “Tino?” I called, hoping he’d be able to hear me through his half-open door down the hall. “It’s Tori. I think the dead bolt is locked.”

  A moment later, he appeared in the door to his office and headed my way. He released the dead bolt and opened the door for me. “Force of habit,” he said. “You work in the security business, locking doors is second nature.”

  Maybe. Or maybe he’d locked the door because he didn’t want his wife or daughters or anyone else walking in on him and overhearing something he didn’t want them to know.

  Lest he simply take the bag from me, I looked down into it and began to rummage around as I headed toward his office. I realized as he rounded his desk that it was the perfect opportunity for me to drop the tracker and kick it under the piece of furniture. Thank goodness his office was carpeted so it wouldn’t make much noise. I slid it from my wrist and dropped it to the floor, crinkling the takeout bag to cover any sound. Crinkle-crinkle. Just as it hit the carpet, he turned to face me.