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

by Diane Kelly

  Had he noticed? I eyed him for a moment. Nope. No signs he’d seen me drop the device. Thank God.

  I simultaneously unpacked the bag and used my toe to push the recorder under the drawers of his desk. The desk sat too low for a vacuum to get under the drawers, but if the custodians used a hose attachment they might suck the tracker out from under the desk. “Buon appetito!” And speak up loud and clear.

  As I left the room, I said a quick and silent prayer that the cleaning crew would do a half-assed job.

  chapter thirty-nine

  Keeping Our Eyes and Ears Open

  Tuesday came and went without an opportunity for me to get into Tino’s office to retrieve the recorder. I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. The longer the device was in Tino’s office, the more information it could gather for us. But the longer it was in place, the greater the likelihood that we’d miss time-sensitive information, such as plans to do harm to a client.

  While I finished removing the soiled tablecloths from the tables in the dining room, Benedetta stepped out the front door of the bistro and used her key to lock it. Standing on the sidewalk, she reached up to pull the security doors down over the windows. The loud rattle as they rolled down their tracks was muffled by the glass but still audible.

  Elena glanced over at the covered windows. “I know those doors are supposed to make us safer,” she said, “but I don’t like them. I feel like I’m trapped in a cage.”

  I’d had the same feeling each time they’d been lowered before. Despite the spaciousness of the dining room, it gave me a sense of claustrophobia. The outside world was being shut out and we were being shut in.

  Separated.

  Confined.

  Entombed.

  With the security gates locked in place, the back door was the only way out.

  No word came in from anyone on the Operation Italian Takeout team on Tuesday night. It was both good news and bad news at the same time. Good news that nobody had been hurt or robbed or killed. Bad news that there’d been no break in the case and none of us agents had made an arrest.

  My accounting exam on Wednesday morning went well. Given that I was the first to finish my test, I daresay I earned the highest score in the class. Then again, maybe I was being overconfident. That was never a good thing. In fact, it was often when tax evaders got overconfident and cocky that they screwed up, giving us special agents the evidence to nab them.

  When I arrived at the bistro at eleven, a man I didn’t recognize was in the kitchen. He was dressed in navy pants and a blue button-down shirt. He stood in front of one of the two fire extinguishers mounted on the kitchen walls and wriggled it free from the support bracket.

  As he headed for the other fire extinguisher, I stepped over to Brian and asked, “Who’s that?”

  “Safety inspector from the fire department,” Brian responded without looking up from the bomboloni he was filling with raspberry goo. “They come by every so often to make sure things are up to code.”

  That made sense. It wasn’t uncommon for restaurants to have grease fires. Without proper safety equipment, flames could spread quickly and endanger the lives of the staff and customers.

  The man opened the back door and carried all three of the fire extinguishers outside. I, on the other hand, stepped into the employee lounge and stashed all of my things in my locker. I was tying my apron around my waist when the man came back in a minute or so later.

  He poked his head into Benedetta’s office, where she sat at her desk. “I tested all of your equipment,” he said. “Levels and pressure are good.”

  Benedetta glanced up. “Good to know. Thank you.”

  The man scribbled something on the paper tag that hung from each device, probably noting the date of the inspection and his name or initials. As he returned the fire extinguishers to their rightful places and left, I got down to work, performing my usual tasks with both efficiency and a smile, maintaining my grace even when a small child sitting in a booth with his mother managed not only to spill his milk all over the carpet, but also to turn over the salt shaker and cover half the seat with spaghetti. I couldn’t much blame the kid. I’d been a tomboy as a young girl and sitting still and behaving properly had never been one of my strong suits.

  I tried to be in the right place at the right time to take Tino his lunch, but—dammit!—Stella beat me to it. I had better luck with his dinner, which, as always, he took late, after the crowd had subsided. He’d requested another serving of what he called “Dario’s striped ravioli” and his standard cannoli. He’d also ordered a small Margherita pizza.

  My heart beat so fast it threatened to explode as I carried the food next door. I typed 2-3-6-3 on the keypad. Tonight, the dead bolt was unlocked and I had no trouble getting in. I’d slid a black hairband around my wrist. My plan was to pull it from my wrist to put in my hair, accidentally on purpose drop it to the floor, and feel around under his desk until I found the recorder. I closed my eyes and begged every deity I knew—God, Jesus, Allah, Ra, Vishnu, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster—to please let this go off without a hitch. If you have to go with the alternative, I told them, please let him kill me quickly. And not with a nail gun.

  The door to Eric’s cybercave was shut tight tonight, but Tino’s door stood wide open. He looked up from his desk as I came in. “Leave the pizza in reception,” he said. “Eric can get it when he’s ready.”

  Clearly, Tino didn’t want Eric to be interrupted and he didn’t want me getting another peek into the room. I could only imagine what Eric was doing in there right now. Probably doctoring another video, preparing to cover up another crime for his boss. I wondered whether Eric was a willing participant in Tino’s schemes, or whether Tino had threatened him, too.

  I laid the box of pizza on the reception desk and continued down the hall, past Eric’s closed door. I went into Tino’s office and set the bag on his desk, making small talk as I unloaded it. “Did Benedetta mention that Dario’s going to try some recipes of his own at the restaurant?” I stretched my arm across the desk and set the entrée before him. “I can’t wait to taste them.” Now the cannoli. “I can’t imagine they’ll be as good as your wife’s, though.” Napkin and fork.

  “She’s the best cook on the planet,” Tino said. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

  My hands empty now, and admittedly trembling a little, I pulled the band from my wrist and went to gather my hair behind my head to put it in a ponytail. I opened my fingers just enough to let the band fall. “Oops.” I knelt down, hoping my back would block the view of any hidden camera Tino might have deployed, and quickly swept my hand under the desk.

  Where is it?

  Where Is It?!

  WHERE IS IT?!?!

  My fingers finally hit something solid and I snatched up the tracker. Thank God! And/or Jesus, Allah, Ra, Vishnu, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I swept my hand back and grabbed the hair band, too, lifting it to the back of my head again as I exited his office.

  “Good night, Tori,” he called after me.

  “You, too!” I called cheerily, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tightness in my voice.

  As I left Cyber-Shield and walked down the sidewalk, I managed to shift the recorder to my left hand and pull my hair up with my right. Knowing the cameras out front might capture my movements, I tucked the recorder into my pants pocket as surreptitiously as possible. Nothing to see here. Just a girl casually putting her hand in her pocket and trying not to throw up from anxiety.

  Every remaining second of my shift felt like an eternity. Having the recorder in my pocket made me feel anxious and conspicuous. My worries that it would fall out at an inopportune time felt so loud in my head I was sure everyone around me could hear my thoughts. This must be what working as a smuggler feels like, knowing you’ve got something on you that could get you in a heap of trouble.

  Finally, the night ended.

  Benedetta stepped out front, locked the door, and pulled down the security gate
s. Having entombed the restaurant, she walked around to the back door to reenter. We cleaned up the dining room and kitchen as usual, put the dishes in the dishwasher, and gathered up our personal things to go. The front door covered by the new security gate, we left through the back door, but not before checking out the peephole to make sure there was nobody around outside waiting to bust in and rob the place. The only person outside was Tino, who walked his wife to her car on the nights they both worked late. On the nights he wasn’t there, he insisted she have one of the male kitchen staff walk with her.

  It was all I could do not to run around the building to my car. I couldn’t wait to hear what the recording had picked up. Would it finally give us enough evidence to arrest Tino? I knew that was probably wishful thinking, but I hoped that at the least it would provide information we could use to put the Operation Italian Takeout team in the right place at the right time to bust Tino’s sorry ass.

  chapter forty

  One-sided Relationships

  I aimed for my apartment complex, checking for a tail. The road behind me was virtually deserted. Good.

  I switched directions, headed out onto the freeway, and drove to the IRS building downtown. After clearing myself with the guy working after-hours security in the lobby, I rode the elevator up to my floor. I found Nick and Josh already in my office. Will, Eddie, and Hana were out following Tino’s patrol units, keeping a special eye on unit number six, though we’d fill them in as soon as we knew what the recorder had picked up, if anything.

  I reached my right hand into my pocket and panicked when I couldn’t find the tracker.

  What the—

  Oh, yeah. It’s in the other pocket.

  Derp.

  I reached into my left pocket and removed the device, tossing it to Josh. “Echols was still at work when I left,” I told him and Nick. “Seems to me that if he’s putting in overtime there’s something big in the works.”

  Whatever it was could be merely a security-related project for a client, but I had my doubts. My instincts told me something big was brewing. But whether it involved Looking Good Optical or another client we couldn’t be sure.

  Josh quickly disassembled the recorder, inserting the built-in USB into his computer and cueing up the feed. “Okay,” he said, staring intently at his screen. “Looks like we’ve got about forty-eight hours’ worth of recording here, beginning Monday evening and ending tonight.”

  I held up both hands, my index and middle fingers crossed. “Fingers crossed we got something good.”

  The first thing we heard was the sound of footsteps and a rap-rap-rap. I thought back to Monday night. That must have been me knocking on the door to Cyber-Shield.

  My voice was audible now, the little device providing surprising volume and clarity given that it looked like a virtual toy. “Tino? It’s Tori. I think the dead bolt is locked.”

  Josh stopped the replay. “Is the dead bolt usually locked when you go to Cyber-Shield at night?”

  “No,” I said. “I normally only have to use the keypad.”

  Nick chimed in. “Looked like he wanted to make sure no one walked in on him that night.”

  “I had that same thought,” I said.

  Tino’s voice was the next one we heard. “Force of habit. You work in the security business, locking doors is second nature.”

  There was the sound of paper crinkling and silverware tinkling as I unpacked his bag of food, along with me saying, “Buon appetito!”

  I cringed. The mix of my Southern drawl and my botched pronunciation of the foreign words sounded ridiculous. Josh and Nick had the good manners not to call me on it.

  There was a muffled thunk as the recorder hit the carpet, then footsteps sounded, growing softer. I realized they were my own, recorded as I walked out of Tino’s office.

  “Nice ass on that one,” we heard Tino mutter.

  Ew.

  A muscle in Nick’s jaw flexed as he ground his teeth. “I’ll kill the guy for that.”

  Awww. Nick said the sweetest things sometimes.

  The next few minutes were filled with sounds of Tino eating. He smacked his way through his pasta. Slurped his drink. Crunched his way through his chocolate cannoli. When he finished, he let out a loud belch. Brrrupppp.

  “Well, that’s classy,” I said. I know, I know. I’m a total hypocrite.

  For the next quarter hour there was nothing but the sounds of paper shuffling, the clicks of keys being hit on a keyboard, and the sound of a drawer opening and closing.

  “Mesmerizing,” Nick muttered, shaking his head, obviously frustrated with this experience.

  I was frustrated, too, but I knew it was too much to expect Tino to say, right off the bat, “Hello, Cole Kirchner, who has just entered my office. How about me and you plan to rob and terrorize the optician who runs Looking Good Optical? That will teach him not to give in to our demand that he pay us cash under the table. And you, Eric Echols, got that doctored tape ready? Great. Hey, while I’ve got you both here, why don’t we recite a list of all the crimes we’ve ever committed and name all the victims and the locations of their corpses?”

  When the clicks continued, I speculated out loud that Tino might have been watching something on his computer screen that he hadn’t wanted anyone to see. “Maybe that’s why he locked the dead bolt.”

  Nick let out a long huff. “That may explain things, but since we can’t see his screen it doesn’t really get us anywhere.”

  True.

  Josh put his hand to his mouse. “Let me see if I can run an analysis on the audio file and search for segments that include significant amounts of sound.” He leaned in, the screen giving his face a light glow, his gaze running over the data. “Here.” He clicked his mouse. “This is from Tuesday morning around nine o’clock.”

  For the next three minutes, we listened to Tino engaged in a discussion with his administrative assistant. She evidently showed him a page proof for a Cyber-Shield print ad that was going to run in several community newspapers. Tino didn’t like the font. “It needs to be bigger,” he said. “Like it’s shouting from the page.”

  “I’ll let them know,” the woman replied.

  “Be sure to have them send a revised proof.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  When it became quiet again, Josh forwarded to the next sound segment. I won’t describe the next sound we heard, but suffice it to say it was the kind of sound people often try to blame on a chair.

  The next significant exchange took place on Tuesday at 6:03 P.M., after Tino’s receptionist would have gone home for the day but before the patrolmen would have come in to begin their shifts. Tino addressed someone we assumed was Eric Echols. I’d only heard the guy speak once, when he’d come out of the bathroom and found me standing in front of the open door to his office. His voice had been squeaky when he’d spoken. Did you go into my office?

  “How’s it coming?” we heard Tino ask.

  Instinctively, we all leaned closer to Josh’s computer.

  “I need more time,” replied Echols. “The camera shifted slightly. I’m having a hard time making the feed look consistent.”

  “Get it done,” Tino barked in a voice far more stern than I’d ever heard him use. “Time’s a-wastin’.”

  Josh, Nick, and I exchanged glances. Were Eric’s words an outright admission that he’d tampered with the videos? That sure seemed to be what he was talking about. Still, the words were probably not sufficient to nail Tino and Echols. Surely they’d lie about what they were discussing, maybe claim they were working on quality control for the videos or something benign like that. A good defense attorney could likely spin the words so they sounded harmless. We needed more. We needed them to discuss specifically what they’d done to doctor the videos, name the clients they’d screwed over with the tampered footage.

  And what had Tino meant by “time’s a-wastin’”? Were they on a schedule? Up against some kind of deadline?

  From the audio feed, Tin
o answered my questions, almost as if he’d read my mind. “Everything else is in place. This is going down Thursday night. No delays. No excuses. Not unless you want to be very, very sorry.”

  Echols’s voice came back, sounding weary and small and, most of all, scared. “I’ll have it ready. Even if I have to work all night.”

  Tino’s reply was heartless and pointed. “Yeah, you will.”

  “There we go!” Nick wagged his finger at Josh’s computer. “Something’s going down tomorrow night.”

  “I’m scheduled to work until closing at the restaurant,” I said, “but as soon as I’m done I want to head over to Looking Good.” Presumably, that was where this event would go down. No way did I want to miss out on our team catching Tino’s goons red-handed. Once we’d apprehended them, we’d likely have enough evidence to implicate Tino and haul him off to the klink, too. I could hardly wait!

  “Josh and I will go with you,” Nick said. “But we’ll stay at the gallery until you leave the restaurant so we can keep an eye on Cyber-Shield.”

  We listened to the rest of the recording. There were footsteps and a door closing as Echols left Tino’s office, but nothing else Tuesday night other than the sound of the custodians cleaning and vacuuming. Thank God they half-assed as I’d hoped and didn’t take a suction hose to the space under Tino’s desk.

  The tape continued on to this morning. There was more silence broken only by the occasional sounds of a person shifting in their chair, tapping their foot, absentmindedly clicking a ballpoint pen. Click-click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click.

  Nothing of consequence occurred until Stella came in to bring Tino his lunch. “Here you go, Dad.”

  “Grazie, Stella bella.”

  Tino had brief discussions with his assistant a couple times in the afternoon, before I arrived with his dinner. Josh’s computer replayed the conversation I’d had with Tino only a few hours earlier.