Death, Taxes, and Sweet Potato Fries

by Diane Kelly

  “No,” he said, “just the franchisee applications and occasional internal stuff.”

  It wasn’t clear to me whether she was a good lead or not, but good or bad at least she gave me something to go on. “What was her name?”

  He raised his hands. “I don’t remember. Laura. Lauren. Laurel. Something like that.”

  Hoffmeyer might not remember her name, but I’m sure she remembered his. “Did she have access to employee social security numbers?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Before we contracted our payroll out of house, the staff took turns handling payroll duty. We had them on a four-week rotation.”

  Hmm. If Laura/Lauren/Laurel handled payroll, that could explain how she might have Hoffmeyer’s social security number. But it didn’t explain how she’d have Bethany’s or Amelia’s or Gwen’s.

  “Any others?”

  “A couple guys quit on me, but they found jobs with better pay so they didn’t seem to be too bitter when they left.”

  “What about a franchisee or potential franchisee?” I asked. “Did you have any problems with any of them?”

  Mrs. Hoffmeyer perked up, sitting straight up on the couch and pointing a finger at me. “You might be on to something there.” She turned to her husband. “Who was that guy you told me about? You remember the one. The barber from Longview.” She looked back to me now. “He’d been operating out of a converted barn and got angry when Tom told him the place wasn’t up to Snippy’s standards and he’d have to move to a different location.”

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten about him.” Mr. Hoffmeyer looked up in thought. “His name was Phillip Gentry. I remember that because he sent me a dozen angry e-mails.”

  I jotted down a note. Phillip Gentry. Longview. Barber. Barn. It was a long shot, though, and I knew it. A disgruntled franchisee might have reason to get back at Hoffmeyer, but would he have the means to obtain Hoffmeyer’s social security number? It seemed doubtful. Then again, he could’ve convinced someone on the inside to give it to him, maybe even Laura/Lauren/Laurel. Anything was possible. But if Gentry was the guilty party, what was his connection to Bethany, Amelia, and Gwen?

  “We’ve covered your work and business contacts,” I said, “but what about personal ones? Is there anyone you know personally who might have some reason to want to cause you trouble?”

  Hoffmeyer sneered. “There were a couple young punks who used to live next door. They were around all the time, didn’t seem to go to school or have jobs. At least not regular ones, anyway. Their parents owned the unit and they thought that gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. They played their music loud and left soda cans and beer bottles all over their patio. Their friends ran in and out at all hours of the night and day, slamming their doors and honking their horns.”

  Mrs. Hoffmeyer reached over and picked Fritz up from the floor, settling him on her lap. “All their commotion drove this little guy crazy.”

  “I can imagine.” Given how much the dog had yipped and yapped when I’d arrived, it was clear he took his watchdog duties very seriously.

  “This development has rules,” Hoffmeyer said. “Most of the people who live here are retirees and we like things clean and quiet. Several of us asked the boys repeatedly to clean up their patio and keep the noise down, but they wouldn’t do it. In fact, they had the nerve to tell my wife that what they did in their condo was none of anyone else’s business. They even contacted the president of our homeowners’ association and complained that they were being harassed by the other residents. Of all the nerve!”

  Mrs. Hoffmeyer interjected. “Of course, the HOA saw right through them and gave them the boot. We came out the morning after they left and found an empty soda can on our porch. Our door and stoop were covered in sticky brown liquid, so it looked like the boys had shaken the can up and intentionally sprayed our door before they left.”

  Hoffmeyer rolled his eyes. “Typical juvenile behavior.”

  “Do you know their names?” I asked.

  “I can’t remember,” Hoffmeyer said. “Not sure I ever knew them.”

  “Same for me,” Mrs. Hoffmeyer said. “The HOA should have that information in their records, though.”

  I mulled the information over for a moment. While it was possible the young men were behind the 1099 scam, in my experience slackers like them were too lazy to even hold a grudge. They’d take some type of petty revenge, like the soda incident, and move on to annoy someone else. Still, there were exceptions to every rule. Maybe the Hoffmeyers had said something in particular to set one or both of the boys off more than usual. But would the boys be financially sophisticated enough to know how to use a tax form as a means of revenge? And how would they have obtained Thomas Hoffmeyer’s social security number?

  “I’ll check with the HOA,” I told the couple. “One last question before I go. Do you happen to know Bethany Flagler, Amelia Yeo, or Gwen Rosenthal?”

  “None of those names mean anything to me,” Hoffmeyer said. “But unless somebody can make me money or a dirty martini, I don’t bother committing their names to memory. I mean, what’s the point?”

  Uh, gee, common courtesy? Basic manners? Human connection?

  “What about Robin Beck?” I asked. Please say yes, I thought. I want to get this case over with.

  But alas, he did not say yes. Instead, he said, “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, either.”

  Having obtained all the information that appeared relevant at this point, I slid my notepad back into my briefcase and stood. “If you think of anyone else who could be a suspect, let me know. My phone number and e-mail address are listed here.” I held out a business card.

  Hoffmeyer took the card from my hand. “I’ll expect updates from you.”

  “If and when I learn something, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you’d inform the senator’s office I’ve been by to see you.”

  Hoffmeyer cut me a snide grin. “Let’s say I let them know once you’ve found the con artist who screwed me over and put him behind bars.”

  Let’s say I put my foot in your ass.

  Hoffmeyer followed me to the door. I thought he was finally showing some manners, but when he grabbed his golf clubs and squeezed out past me, I realized the only thing he was showing was how big a self-centered jerk he could be.

  I stopped at the threshold. Mrs. Hoffmeyer stopped next to me, both Fritz and the television remote cuddled against her chest. The two of us watched as her husband squeezed the key fob in his hand to pop open the trunk of his Mercedes. He laid his golf clubs in the back, circled around to the door, and backed out of the driveway at warp speed. He hadn’t even bothered to tell his wife or me good-bye.

  From next to me, Mrs. Hoffmeyer growled. “My plan is to long outlive that bastard.”

  I cast her a glance, saw the determined gleam in her eyes, and wished her longevity. “May you enjoy many years of blissful solitude, ma’am.”

  She replied with a chortle. “Take care, Miss Holloway. Thanks for your help.”

  “Bye now.” I gave the adorable little Fritz a final pat on the head.

  Mrs. Hoffmeyer wasted no time getting back to the show, aiming the remote control at the TV and punching the play button. As the door swung closed, I heard Isidora call out in Spanish, almost as if she were speaking to me. “¡Adios!”

  chapter twenty-three

  Cupcakes and Chaos Theory

  I placed a quick call to Lu. “You can tell Senator Perkins that I’ve met with Mr. Hoffmeyer.”

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “He was an ass of epic proportions. Probably anyone who’s ever interacted with the guy would have reason to wish him harm.”

  She grunted. “Well, at least you’ve had some success in the coyote case.”

  “I won’t consider it a success until the missing girls are safe and sound at their aunt’s house.”

  “We’ll call it progress, then,” Lu said.

  We
signed off. As long as I was in the general area, I decided to drive a few more miles up the freeway to Grapevine. I had a major cupcake craving, and I knew just the place that could give me a fix.

  Not long ago, Lu had tasked me with pursuing abusive tax preparers who perpetrated fraud on a wide scale, claiming all sorts of bogus deductions and credits for their clients, pulling the numbers they put on the returns out of the air, or perhaps out of a certain orifice located below and behind the belly button. Many of them used gimmicks to catch the attention of potential clients and lure them in. One called herself the Deduction Diva and ran her business out of a space decorated more like a brothel than a tax office. Another operated his tax business under the name Refund-a-Rama and dressed as Elvis, complete with a pompadour wig and a white, bell-bottom jumpsuit. It might be one for the money, two for the show, but it was zero taxes paid to the IRS and six months in the slammer for the king of rock ’n’ roll.

  One of these suspected abusive preparers had been the Tax Wizard, a former IRS employee. As it turned out, though the returns the Wizard had filed contained pure hogwash, his motives were not as sinister as we’d originally thought. He was simply an aging man whose mental faculties had begun to diminish. Needless to say, we let him go without punishment, though he was given strict orders to stop preparing tax returns and retire, maybe take up a hobby. Model trains, perhaps.

  The Tax Wizard had been operating out of the front room of a space in which a woman known as Madam Magnolia performed psychic readings in a dark, incense-scented chamber. At first, I’d thought Madam Magnolia’s business produced as much hogwash as the Tax Wizard’s. But then she’d enticed me to join her for a session and, to my surprise, she made some amazingly accurate predictions and given me information that led me to an elusive target. It wasn’t clear to me whether she could actually see into the future or just tossed out ideas, hoping something would pan out. At worst, though, I decided she was entertaining and harmless. Or as harmless as she could be given that her chamber sat right next to a bakery that made the most delicious cupcakes on the planet. If I were her, I’d weigh three thousand pounds by now.

  Luck was with me as I drove up Main Street in the historic district of Grapevine. A minivan pulled away from the curb in front of the bakery and I slipped into the spot they’d vacated. As I climbed out of my car, I glanced next door. Madam Magnolia’s place hadn’t changed since the last time I was there. Purple curtains trimmed with gold fringe hung in the windows, the psychic’s name spelled out in gold lettering across the glass of the front door.

  As I entered the cupcake shop, the bells on the door jingled. An older woman with white hair peeked out from the back room, from which wafted the delicious scent of warm vanilla cupcakes, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Heaven must smell like this.

  “I’ll be right with you!” the woman called.

  “No rush!” I called back. After all, I needed a little time to decide between the chocolate coconut, the strawberry ganache, or the butter pecan. Decisions, decisions …

  Wait!

  At the end of the row sat a new featured flavor. Sweet potato with brown sugar cream cheese frosting. Oh, hell, yeah!

  The woman stepped out, wiping her hands on her apron. “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll take a dozen of the sweet potato cupcakes.”

  She reached for a box. “These sure have been popular. I never thought I’d see a cupcake that could outsell our classic chocolate, but these have been giving the old standbys a run for their money.”

  She filled the box, squeezing in a bonus strawberry ganache to make it a baker’s dozen. I swiped my debit card through the machine, entered my pin, and took the box. “Thanks so much.”

  “Enjoy.”

  Oh, I’d enjoy them all right. And on that topic, why not start enjoying them right away? On my way to the door, I lifted a corner of the box, fished out a cupcake, and took a huge bite, frosting tipping the end of my nose. As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, I came face-to-face with Madam Magnolia. She was dressed, as usual, in bangles and beads and baubles, a bohemian skirt blowing in the breeze around her legs.

  She tilted her dark head, narrowed her green eyes, and gave me a knowing look. “Congratulations, Tara.”

  “On what?” I asked, wiping the frosting from my nose with the back of my hand. Which didn’t solve the problem. Now I had frosting on the back of my hand.

  “On what?” Madam Magnolia struck a long match and lit an incense stick before placing it in a vented burner on a pedestal just outside her door. “Your engagement, of course.”

  Wow. She’d known I was engaged? Amazing. I mean, we hadn’t put an announcement in the newspaper, and neither Nick nor I put anything personal on Facebook or other social media sites. Federal agents had to lie low. And it’s not like Madam Magnolia ran in the same circles as us. “How did you know?”

  She gestured to my left hand. “By the ring on your finger.”

  “Oh!” Duh. “How have you been?” I asked. The woman might be a bit offbeat—okay, a lot offbeat—but she was undeniably likable and you felt like she had your best interests at heart, even when she was charging you for advice and information.

  “I’ve been good,” she said, tossing a lock of her dark hair over her shoulder. “But you need to be careful. Very careful. On the day of your wedding, Mercury will be in retrograde. And you know what that means.”

  Did it mean this woman was full of hooey? “Could you be more specific?”

  “Things will not go as planned.”

  I laughed at that. With my mother and Bonnie in charge and nailing down every detail, things would go exactly as planned. But that fact aside, I felt the need to point out a flaw in Madam Magnolia’s prediction. “We haven’t even set a wedding date yet. How can you know that Mercury will be in retrograde then?”

  She gave me a long-suffering smile. “Because I’m a seer, hon.”

  Despite the fact that events in the past had played out much as she’d predicted, I harbored serious doubts about her, or anyone’s, true ability to see into the future. Still, it couldn’t hurt to get more information, just in case, right? That way I could prepare myself. “When you say things won’t go as planned, what exactly do you mean?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I can’t say. I haven’t had a clear vision, only a general sense of…” She waved her arms around as if she could make the word appear in the air. She finally completed her sentence with “chaos.”

  “Chaos?” Great. “You’re a real party pooper, you know that?”

  She raised the shoulder again. “I call it like I see it. I also see bad things in your near future if you don’t give me one of those cupcakes.” Her eyes flickered down to the box and back to my face.

  I had to laugh at that. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You want a cupcake.”

  She said nothing, just held out a hand bearing a colorful ring on each finger and four noisy bracelets around the wrist. I finagled another cupcake out of the box and handed it to her.

  She grinned. “You’re safe now. At least for the near future. But on your wedding day, watch out.”

  She might be on to something. Then again, she might be full of shit. Still, she’d had visions of where one of our targets had been hiding out, even given us the name of the campground where he’d taken his RV. And she’d purportedly visualized Nick and Brazos Rivers, a country-western star, engaged in a brawl, a premonition which also turned out to be true. While it was tempting to discount her entirely, it might not be wise to do so. The fact that she’d made me feel uneasy, though, sort of pissed me off. What was she trying to do, ruin my wedding? It should be one of the happiest days of my life, not one I looked forward to with apprehension.

  Before I could decide what to say to her, she spoke again, “Put me on your guest list. Maybe I can help out. Besides, it’s going to be crazy. I don’t want to miss that.”

  Is that what this was all about? She wanted to come to the wedding? Was all this woo-woo
stuff simply her way of finagling an invitation? “I’ll put you on the list,” I said. “But it’s going to be in east Texas. Hope you don’t mind a three-hour drive.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “It’ll be fun. I’ll take the party bus. I can do readings on the way. Your guests will enjoy that.”

  “Party bus? What party bus?”

  Her lips curved up in a knowing smile. “Talk to your mother.”

  I knew it was a long shot, and I still wasn’t sure about Madam Magnolia’s abilities, but it couldn’t hurt to see whether she had any premonitions or visions about the current cases I was working on. “Can I ask you something?”

  “About an investigation?”

  Weird that she knew what I’d planned to ask about, huh? “Yeah.”

  “You can,” she said, “but those services will cost you.”

  “How about you waive your fee and we’ll consider it your wedding gift?”

  She lifted her chin in acknowledgment. “You’re a shrewd negotiator.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” Or at least it’s what I told myself. Hey, sometimes you have to pat your own back, too. “I’m trying to figure out who issued reports of bogus prize winnings to several people in the Dallas area. I’ve got a current suspect, but I’m not sure she’s the right one.”

  Madam Magnolia placed her cupcake on the windowsill, reached out with her left hand, and placed her palm on my forehead. Closing her eyes, she raised the other hand toward the heavens. She said nothing for a moment, though after a few seconds her mouth slowly spread in a wide, toothy smile.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Then why are you smiling?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “That’s for you to find out.”

  Some wedding gift, huh? I’d been gypped.

  chapter twenty-four

  The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

  On my drive back to my place, I contemplated Madam Magnolia’s spiritually inspired smile, wondering what it meant. Like my fortune cookie had said, a smile can hide a thousand feelings. Looked like it could also hide a psychic’s inability to give detailed information. Or, more likely, she was thinking how she’d gotten away with not having to bring a gift to our wedding while still getting to have fun on the party bus and enjoy the buffet dinner and open bar.