Death, Taxes, and a Satin Garter: A Tara Holloway Novel

by Diane Kelly

  I gave him a huge tip. “Thanks for putting up with us all night.”

  “No problem.” He slid the cash into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Y’all were well behaved compared to some of the bachelorette parties I’ve seen. None of you puked, cried, or got into a catfight.”

  “Does that happen a lot?”

  He gave me another knowing look, this time without the smile. “You’d be surprised.”

  Our night out over, all of us changed into our pajamas for a good old-fashioned sleepover. Or should I call it a sleep-it-off-er? I dragged out every pillow and blanket I owned for my guests, and they found places to crash in my living room and on the floors of my bedroom and guest room.

  The next morning, as I snuck downstairs to make coffee, Christina sat up from her spot on the floor and stuck her tongue out. “Hair of the dog.” She plucked a piece of fur from her mouth and glared at Henry, who lay perched on top of the TV cabinet. “Or hair of the cat.”

  He merely continued to lick his paw and swipe it over his head, his morning grooming more important than Alicia’s disgust.

  Once everyone was up, we went out for breakfast at a nearby Mexican restaurant. Not ready for the party to be over yet, Alicia wore her sash and veil.

  When our waiter stepped up to our table, I circled my finger to indicate the entire group. “Mimosas and huevos rancheros all around.” Nothing cures a hangover like spicy food and more liquor.

  When we’d finished our meal, we returned to my town house so everyone could gather up their things.

  “Bye!” Alicia and I called, distributing hugs as everyone left.

  Once everyone had gone, Alicia and I spent half an hour colleting the bedding and cleaning up before flopping down side by side on the couch.

  She turned to me. “Best bachelorette party ever. How can I thank you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

  She rested her head on my shoulder. “I’ll throw you a great party when you get married, too.”

  “Take me back to see Fiero,” I told her. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing him dance some more. Besides, I wanted to ask him about my garter. Last time I’d seen it he’d been wearing it on his biceps.

  * * *

  Nick and I were watching television with Daffodil napping between us when Morgan Walker called promptly at 8:00 Sunday night.

  Daffodil woke and raised her furry head as I stood from the couch. “I need to take this call. It’s Morgan.”

  Nick grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down to the sofa. “Take it here. Put him on speaker so I can listen in.”

  I gave him a stern look. “You’ll have to be quiet.”

  “I will.”

  I accepted the call and tapped the speaker button. “Hi, Morgan.”

  “Hello, Sara,” he said. “How was your weekend?”

  Filled with half-naked men and drunken debauchery. You? “Quiet,” I lied. “Maybe too quiet.”

  Nick rolled his eyes.

  “I know what you mean,” Morgan replied. “My place seems too quiet, too. I really miss having someone else around.”

  In other words, he was hoping to find someone to get serious about—or at least pretending to feel that way. “You’re still in Oklahoma then?” I asked.

  “Yes. Finishing up some insurance paperwork. I’m planning to drive down to Dallas Tuesday afternoon so I’ll be there in plenty of time for our date.”

  Sure you will. You’re already somewhere around here, aren’t you? “Great. I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t had sushi in a while.”

  “Me, neither. It’ll be fun.” He went on to tell me that he’d attended a book signing the evening before at a local bookstore. “I had the author sign one for you.”

  Nick rolled his eyes again, looked to the phone, and whispered, “I’d like to shove that book up your—”

  I put my free hand over his mouth to silence him. “Wow, Morgan,” I said. “You’re so thoughtful.” Too bad it was all a ruse to rip me off.

  Through the window, I saw a squirrel run along the top of Nick’s back fence. Unfortunately, Daffodil saw it, too. She leaped from the couch and ran to the window, barking up a storm. Woof-woof-woof! Woof-woof!

  “Is that a dog?” Morgan asked.

  How should I explain this? Think fast, Tara! “I’m pet sitting for a friend.”

  Nick pushed my hand from his mouth, cut a glance my way, and muttered, “Friend, my ass.”

  I covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “What part of ‘quiet’ did you not understand?”

  “How nice of you,” Morgan said. “What do Anastasia and Hank think about having a dog around?”

  Who? Oh, yeah. Anastasia and Hank were my cats’ aliases. Keeping up with all these details was difficult! Good thing this masquerade would be over soon. “They’re a little jealous,” I said, shooting Nick a pointed look. “Even though the dog won’t be around long, they want me all to themselves.”

  “Can’t say that I blame them,” Morgan replied.

  Nick scoffed, drained his bottle of beer, and got up to get another from the fridge.

  Morgan and I chatted a few more minutes, but the conversation felt a little awkward and strange. At least it did to me. It was as if I’d forgotten how to flirt. I used to be good at it, too, back in the day. Finally, we ended the call. After I hung up, I turned to Nick. “You’ve ruined me for other men.”

  He grinned around the bottle of beer at his lips. “Darlin’, that’s been my plan from the first time I laid eyes on you.”

  chapter twenty-four

  Mass Mailing

  The first thing I did Monday morning was drive through a coffee shop and pick up a vanilla latte for myself and a hot chocolate for Josh. Once I arrived at work, I took his drink straight to his office.

  I stopped in his doorway and held up the cup. “More offerings for the geek god.”

  “Beats fuzzy Life Savers,” he said.

  I handed him the cup. “Any chance you’d have time this morning to whip me up a Web page for a fake restaurant?”

  He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a call scheduled for ten, but I think we could crank something out before then.”

  The two of us set about creating a fake Web page for Grand Palace Grill, an alleged Thai restaurant in the general vicinity of KCSH. Given that Flo had ordered Chinese food the time I’d trailed her delivery guy, I figured she must like Asian cuisine.

  Josh and I devised a menu by consulting other Thai restaurant sites and choosing the most common offerings. I had him add the photo Hana had used for her PerfectCouple.com profile and dubbed her the alleged owner, Pang Tidarat. According to my Internet search, Pang was a common woman’s name in Thailand. It also sounded like “hunger pang,” which seemed appropriate for someone in the food service business.

  Twenty minutes later, we had built a rather rudimentary site, but it looked like something a mom-and-pop operation would have and was sufficient for my purposes, which were to catch Flo Cash red-handed.

  Hana passed by Josh’s office and glanced inside, stopping and backtracking when she saw me sitting there, too. She frowned. “I spent an entire hour on the phone this weekend with Morgan Walker. He says he finds my conversation ‘positive and uplifting.’” She made angry air quotes with her fingers.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “But thanks.” I waved her into Josh’s office. “Look. You own a restaurant now.” I gestured to the screen where her picture and bio were displayed. According to the site, she’d grown up in Bangkok and had worked as a chef at restaurants there before immigrating to the United States.

  “I’m not Thai,” Hana said, frowning again. “I’m Korean. All Asians aren’t the same, you know.”

  “I realize that,” I said. “But I’m over budget on this investigation and can’t afford a stock photo. You’re the closest thing we’ve got.”

  “You owe me,” she said as she left.

  I thanked Josh for his help and went to my office. I prom
ptly went about setting up an account for Grand Palace Grill on the TradingPost.com Web site. I listed Pang Tidarat as the contact person. I set up a Gmail account for Pang and provided the e-mail address and my Sara Galloway burner phone number in the contact information section. I’d set the phone to issue the automated general greeting rather than a personal greeting, so the phone could be used for both purposes without giving me away.

  The restaurant set up now, I clicked on the tab to search for services and typed “radio advertising” in the box. The search provided a single link to the as yet unidentified radio station. No phone number was provided, but there was an e-mail address. I sent a message that read: I just opened a Thai restaurant and would be interested in exchanging meals for radio commercials. Please contact me. I included a link to the Web site Josh and I had just created. With any luck, Flo would respond soon.

  I spent the rest of the morning preparing letters to go out to the rest of the businesses that were either promoted on KCSH or listed on the TradingPost.com site. Of course the representatives of some of them had already claimed they wouldn’t talk without an attorney and/or court order, but there was no point in wasting the judge’s time when I had both the authority and administrative requirement to issue letters first demanding the information and documentation. Besides, until the recipients refused in writing to provide the information or missed the response deadline set forth in my correspondence, it would be premature to take the matter to court.

  By the time I finished, my entire desk was piled high with letters demanding that the recipient provide details of any and all exchanges they’d made with Flo Cash or KCSH Radio Corporation. I picked up my phone and dialed the mail room. “Hi. This is Agent Holloway. Can you send someone up here with a mail cart? I’ve got a mass mailing to go out.”

  A few minutes later, a young male mail clerk pushed the cart into my room. “Whoa. I haven’t seen this much mail on your desk since you went after that preacher and got all that hate mail.”

  My earlier investigation of Noah Fischer, a televangelist who ran a church called the Ark, had caused a virtual holy war. I’d been called all sorts of nasty names, assured I’d spend my afterlife in hell, and even received death threats. Fun times. “Lucky for me,” I said, “this mail is going out instead of coming in.”

  “Yeah,” he said, grabbing the stacks and putting them in his cart. “Lucky for you.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  He chuckled good-naturedly.

  When I spotted the notice addressed to Doo-Wop Donuts on the top of a pile, I snatched it from him. “I’ll deliver this one in person.” I’d planned to do the same with the notices to Flo Cash and KCSH Radio Corporation.

  “Suit yourself,” the clerk said. When he finished filling his cart, he rolled it toward the door. “See you next delivery.”

  “Thanks!”

  Nick popped his head into my office. “I’m ordering lunch in. You want anything?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pad thai noodles.” Working on that menu this morning had given me a hankering.

  “Thai it is,” Nick replied.

  My phone rang as he returned to his office to place our lunch order. It was Savannah Goode on the line.

  “That guy, Jack Smirnoff?” she said. “He was just here getting new head shots. I would’ve called you sooner except he didn’t make an appointment in advance. He just popped by to see if I could squeeze him in.”

  “Any chance he’s still around?”

  “No, he left already.”

  Darn. No chance of following him, then. “Did he pay cash again this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “I appreciate the call,” I told her. “Can you e-mail me his new head shots?”

  “Sure.”

  The pictures came through a few minutes later. In these photos, he sported a light goatee. Given that he’d had dinner with Hana on Thursday and today was Monday, he’d had only four days to grow it, so the sparseness wasn’t surprising. Still, the goatee, along with the leather jacket and hoop earring he wore, changed his look significantly.

  As soon as I’d looked the photos over, I shot them off to my contacts at the dating sites: Catfish alert! Please have your tech team search for these new photos. Thank you!

  Our food arrived a few minutes later and Nick brought it to my office. I ate at my desk while he kicked back in one of my wing chairs, his boots propped on the armrest of the other.

  “You know,” he said, pointing an accusing plastic fork at me, “you never did tell me about the bachelorette party.”

  Alicia’s fiancée, Daniel, had also held his bachelor party on Saturday night. Nick had been among the participants.

  “I’ll tell you all about it,” I replied, shooting him a pointed look, “right after you tell me about the bachelor party.”

  Nick’s only response was to whistle a tune and look randomly around the room to avoid my eyes.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”

  When we finished our lunch, Nick tossed his trash in my bin and headed back to his office. I cleaned off my desk and figured that, as long as my computer was logged into Gmail I might as well check to see if Flo Cash had responded to Pang Tidarat’s barter proposal.

  Flo had. My heart began to tap-dance in my chest. Progress!

  I’m willing to do one fifteen-second on-air promo for each meal provided. Please send suggested copy for the promo.

  I mulled things over for a moment before responding.

  I’d like the promo to say “Grand Palace Grill serves the best Thai food in Dallas. Dine-in, takeout, and delivery are available. They’ve got low prices, too. Grand Palace Grill gives more bang for your buck than you’d get in Bangkok.”

  That last part was an intentional tongue twister. Might as well make Flo Cash work for it, right?

  I sent the e-mail off. Not a minute later my phone rang. The caller ID readout indicated the call was coming from KCSH Radio.

  “Hello?” I said in my best Thai accent which, admittedly, was pretty pathetic.

  “Pang Tidarat, please,” Flo said.

  “Speaking.”

  “Send four orders of pad thai over to KCSH and I can get you on the air today.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Half hour for delivery.”

  As soon as we ended our call, I phoned the same Thai place Nick had ordered from and requested four more orders of pad thai to be delivered. Fortunately, they used cheap, generic containers and bags with no logo on them. Next, I phoned the mail room. The male clerk who’d been in my office earlier answered the phone.

  “Want to do me a favor?” I asked. “There’s twenty bucks in it for you.”

  “This doesn’t involve anything sexual, does it?”

  “No,” I replied. “But there will be wet noodles involved.”

  Half an hour later, the mail clerk and I were on our way to KCSH with four orders of pad thai noodles in a plastic bag. The radio was tuned to the station. A block away, I pulled over and climbed into the backseat. He took over the wheel while I hunkered down out of sight.

  “So all I do is carry this inside?” he said.

  “Right,” I told him. “Tell them it’s a delivery from Grand Palace Grill.”

  “Grand Palace,” he repeated. “I’ve got it.”

  He drove the rest of the way to the station building, climbed out of the car, and carried the food into the reception area. Seconds later, he returned to the car and drove down the street, stopping in the parking lot of a strip center so we could switch places.

  I’d just taken the wheel when Flo’s voice came over the airwaves during a commercial break: “Grand Palace Grill serves the best Thai food in Dallas. Dine-in, takeout, and delivery are available. They’ve got low prices, too. Grand Palace Grill gives more bang for your buck than you’d get in Bangkok!”

  Flo hadn’t been tripped up at all by the last sentence, but I suppose years of talking on the radio had given her a nimble tongue. Still, my trick had worked. S
he’d promoted my fictional restaurant on the air. Ha! No one outsmarts Tara Holloway.

  The mail clerk held out his hand. “You owe me twenty bucks.”

  * * *

  My cell phone rang several times Monday afternoon with people wanting to place orders for Thai food. Flo’s on-air promotions seemed to work wonders.

  “Sorry,” I told them, “we had to close. Plumbing problem. Hot water all over the floor.” Thanks to Max Brady, I had that excuse locked and loaded.

  Late that afternoon, I received a call from an executive at one of the dating sites.

  “Those new head shots were just posted on our site,” she said. “It’s a new profile.”

  “What name is he using?”

  “Bailey Chambord.”

  Irish Cream and black raspberry liqueur. What a combination.

  “Do you want me to shut his account down?” she asked.

  I didn’t want the guy to rip off any more victims, but at the same time I didn’t want him to know he’d been caught. After all, we still didn’t know who the guy was. If he was inadvertently tipped off, he might not show up for the dates he’d scheduled with me and Hana this week. We might never find the guy.

  “Can you make it look as if his profile is active,” I asked, “and allow him to reach out to others but block anyone from contacting him?” That would protect anyone else from falling into his trap.

  “We can do that,” she said.

  “Great.” Bailey Chambord was about to find himself a very unpopular guy. “Can you send me the profile he set up? I might need it for evidence later.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I thanked her for contacting me and awaited her e-mail. It arrived a few minutes later. I printed the profile out and perused it. Sure enough, it contained the photo of the catfisher with the goatee. This time around, he’d claimed to be a counselor who worked with troubled youth. Once again, he’d declared himself to be a man with open-ended interests. He’d also offered his standard assertion that he lived out of state but had plans to relocate to Dallas. But this time, rather than targeting women, he’d requested to be matched with men. Hm-m. Looked like he was an equal-opportunity catfisher. Unfortunately for him, I was an equal-opportunity ass-kicker.