Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte

by Diane Kelly

  “That’s my boyfriend downstairs!” I hissed, pointing at the door. “Get out of my bedroom.”

  Nick chuckled. “Guess this could be a little hard to explain, huh?”

  Why I had a naked Val Kilmer lookalike in my bed? “Yeah.”

  He climbed out of my bed. Turned out he was wearing underwear after all. Blue boxers. They covered more than the Speedo had. I tried really hard not to be disappointed by that fact. He quietly slunk out the door and into my guest bathroom.

  I grabbed my bathrobe, slipped it on, and hurried downstairs to let Brett inside.

  He was dressed for landscaping work in hiking boots, cargo shorts, and a T-shirt. “Sorry if I woke you. I had to see for myself that you got back okay.”

  I’d texted him from the convenience store yesterday, letting him know we’d cleared the border. His response? Thank God. Now I can breathe again.

  He held up a large paper cup. “Brought you a latte.”

  “Skinny? No whip?”

  He shook his head. “I figured you deserved the real thing today.”

  What the hell. I’d earned it.

  I took the warm cup, gave Brett a kiss on the cheek, and jerked my head toward the kitchen. “I’ll fix you breakfast.”

  We’d just sat down to two bowls of Fruity Pebbles when we heard the sound of the shower turning on upstairs.

  Brett looked up at the ceiling. “Is someone here?’

  I mentally squirmed. Still, it made sense for Nick to stay at my place, didn’t it? No one else could know he was back, not even his family. It could jeopardize the case. “Yeah. It’s Nick. He’ll have to stay with me until we complete Mendoza’s arrest. He slept in my guest room last night.” Part of the night, anyway.

  “Makes sense.”

  My gosh, Brett was so trusting. Maybe too trusting. Nothing had happened between me and Nick, but I felt a little guilty nonetheless. Also a little insulted. Shouldn’t Brett be just a wee bit jealous? “Working at the Habitat House today?”

  He nodded.

  “Is Trish working with you?”

  “I think I saw her name on the schedule.”

  Grr. “What are you doing out there?”

  “Laying sod.”

  As long as he didn’t lay Trish I guess I had no right to complain. Still, couldn’t she find another charity to support? Maybe she could go help some orphans, preferably overseas.

  A few minutes later, footsteps sounded on the stairs. Nick stepped into the kitchen. He wore the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, the only ones he had. We’d have to do some shopping today, buy him some new clothing, maybe a razor for that manly stubble on his cheeks.

  I stood and introduced the two men.

  They shook hands amiably, but it was clear they were subconsciously sizing each other up. Brett stood as tall as possible, and Nick’s chest stuck out so much he looked like a rooster.

  Men.

  Sheez.

  Still, it was flattering. I knew they wouldn’t be acting like this if I wasn’t around.

  I offered to make Nick some coffee, but he declined, opening the fridge and grabbing the carton of orange juice instead. I retrieved a glass from the cabinet, our fingers touching as I handed it to him. I felt a warm blush on my cheeks and hoped neither of them would notice.

  Lucky for me, my cell phone bleeped, giving me an excuse to turn away and dig through my purse on the counter. The readout indicated it was Josh calling. “Hey, Josh.”

  “The software is loaded,” Josh said. “I finished that up yesterday afternoon. I programmed it to send the data directly to me. I’ve been keeping an eye on Crescent Tower, but Mendoza hasn’t made a move today.”

  “We’ll be over in a couple hours to relieve you.”

  “Roger that.”

  Brett stood then, rinsing his bowl and spoon in the sink and putting them in the dishwasher. “I’ll let you two get to work.”

  Nick lifted his chin once in acknowledgment. “Later, man.”

  I walked Brett to the door. “Thanks for the latte.”

  “It’s the least I could for my woman,” he said, a bit louder than necessary. He pulled me to him, giving me a warm, possessive kiss. When he released me, his eyes cut to the kitchen, to Nick. “Be careful,” he whispered.

  “You, too,” I whispered back. Keep Trish away from your equipment.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  My New Partner

  While I took a quick shower, Nick removed the license plates from my BMW. I’d followed Mendoza in the truck quite a bit recently and figured it would be a good idea to use a different vehicle.

  “I’m ready.” I hefted my purse onto my shoulder as I stepped into the garage.

  “I’m not,” Nick said. “I need a weapon.”

  “I’d figured as much.” I pulled my Glock from my purse and handed it to him along with a clip. “Here you go.”

  He slid the gun into his waistband, the clip into his front pocket. “You got something for yourself?”

  I pulled my purse open so he could see my thirty-eight tucked inside.

  “Nice piece,” he said. “One of these days you and I need to have a go at the firing range. I hear you’re a pretty good shot.”

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  He slid a sly grin my way. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  Before heading to Crescent Tower, Nick and I drove to a western-wear store. All of Nick’s bank and credit card accounts had been frozen by the government when he’d fled to Mexico, so I had to play sugar mama, paying for his jeans, pearl-buttoned shirts, boxers, and socks.

  “I’ll pay you back once we clear things up,” Nick promised.

  “Okay,” I agreed, steering him to the section with the cowboy hats. “But the white hat is on me.”

  We also stopped by a cell phone store. I added Nick to my plan and he selected a top-of-the-line smartphone complete with GPS, a data package, and dozens of preloaded apps.

  “Did you have to pick the most expensive phone?” I asked as we climbed back into my car.

  He plugged the charger into my cigarette lighter and inserted the other end into his shiny new phone. “Don’t fret. You can have it when we wrap up this case. I think it has a vibrator feature.”

  “I’ll choose to ignore that comment.”

  Nick chuckled.

  “Why can’t you buy your own phone? Don’t you have access to Mendoza’s bribe money?”

  Nick’s eyes darkened with anger. “I’m not touching one more dime of that dirty money than I absolutely have to.”

  Understandable.

  A half hour later, we pulled up across the street from Josh’s black rental car. He’d parked on one of the side streets with a view of the Crescent Tower parking garage.

  Nick called Josh from his new cell phone, activating the speaker so I could hear the conversation.

  Josh waved through his window. “Welcome back, Nick.”

  Nick raised a hand back at Josh. “Thanks, man.”

  Josh continued to look at Nick through the glass. “For what it’s worth, I never would have believed you’d turn on us.”

  “That’s worth a lot, Josh.” Nick made a fist and bumped it twice against his chest, guy shorthand for You’ve touched me emotionally, but I’m a man so I can’t say such girlie things and have to beat my chest like a gorilla instead. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Over and out.” With that, Josh drove off.

  Hmm. So Josh wasn’t the one Nick had stayed in touch with. It was clear Nick had been well liked when he’d worked at the IRS. It wouldn’t surprise me if his contact had been one of the other female agents. His manly charms were damn hard to resist.

  Nick repositioned his white hat to better hide his face and slid on the pair of cheap sunglasses he’d snagged from the display at the store’s register. He focused on the exit of the parking garage. “Come on, Mendoza. Show your ugly face, you cock-sucking motherfucker.”

  Not exactly polite language to use aroun
d a lady, but who could blame him? Mendoza had taken three years of Nick’s life, forced Nick to leave behind his family, his dog, the electric slide. If a person who’d do that wasn’t a cock-sucking motherfucker, I didn’t know who was.

  Unlike Eddie, who abhorred country music, and Brett, who merely tolerated it for my sake, Nick liked country. Although Nick looked like Val Kilmer, his voice was one hundred percent classic Waylon Jennings. We sang along with the songs on the radio as we waited to see if Mendoza would make an appearance.

  Eddie was right. Nick and I had a lot in common.

  More in common than me and Brett.

  An hour into our watch, when I’d dozed off in the warm afternoon sun, Nick slapped his hand down on the dashboard, the noise jerking me from my slumber. “There he is.”

  I sat up, stretching and shaking my limbs to wake myself up. Nick leaned forward in the seat beside me, all raw nerves and barely contained energy. I now understood why Eddie had called Nick “intense.” From Nick’s behavior, I could tell he’d love nothing more than to hurl himself at Mendoza’s Mercedes, rip off the door, and tear the evil man inside limb from limb.

  I started up my car, eased away from the curb, and followed Mendoza from a safe distance. Today he hit the library in Oak Lawn, one of the larger branches. He probably thought that using computers at different libraries would make his use more difficult to trace. Since all of the libraries were linked by a single network and central server, however, his game of musical chairs wouldn’t slow us down.

  While he pulled into the library parking lot, I drove on past, turning into a fast-food place a block away. Now that the key logger software was in place, there was no sense in taking unnecessary chances. I pulled out my cell and called Josh. His voice sounded tired. Must’ve woken him from a nap.

  “Mendoza’s in the Oak Lawn library as we speak.”

  “Logging on.” I heard some clicking noises as Josh tapped the keys of his laptop. “Let’s see.” Click. Clickety-click. “That branch has thirty-two public computers. I’m capturing the data.”

  Gotta love technology, huh?

  Mendoza spent only a short time in the library today, emerging thirty minutes later.

  I called Josh from my cell. “Mendoza’s left the library.”

  “Roger,” Josh said. “I’ll send you the data for the last half hour. Let’s meet up to look it over.”

  * * *

  Nick and I met up with Josh at a coffeehouse. Fortunately, now that it was mid-afternoon, the place had few patrons.

  Two young women at a table near the front bore the telltale signs of a fun-as-hell Saturday night and a not-so-fun Sunday morning hangover. Bloodshot eyes, black raccoonlike rings of mascara around their eyes, slouching postures. They wore clothes they’d clearly slept in, one of them wearing a ribbon pronouncing her the BRIDE-TO-BE. Must’ve been one heck of a bachelorette party. Despite their exhaustion, the two glanced up appreciatively as Nick passed.

  While Nick and Josh set up shop at a small round table in the corner, I ordered a skinny no-whip latte for myself, two regular coffees for the guys, and three club sandwiches. I carefully maneuvered through the tables with the loaded tray.

  After unloading our lunch, I took a seat between the two men. Nick scooted his chair closer to me so he could see my laptop screen. I ignored the fact that Nick’s knee brushed against mine, ignored the frisson of heat that raced up my thigh, ignored the heat coming from his arm draped over the seat behind me. A kick-butt special agent wouldn’t let herself be distracted by such things, right? Business before pleasure. Not that there would be pleasure later, but you know what I mean.

  Josh began maneuvering his wireless mouse on the table. “You and Nick look over the activity on computers one through sixteen. I’ll review the others.”

  I booted up my laptop, logged on, and, between bites of my sandwich and sips of my latte, began reading over the key logger data Josh had sent via e-mail. The keystrokes were somewhat difficult to decipher out of context. Without seeing the screen to which the input responded it was like hearing only one side of a conversation. But after a minute or two, when I’d become accustomed to the format, things became more clear.

  Nick polished off his sandwich in six bites, drained his coffee, and leaned in to read my computer screen.

  “Ew,” I said. “Here’s an e-mail where someone asks how penis enlargement works. Think that’s Mendoza?”

  “Nah,” Nick said. “The guy’s already a big dick.”

  Josh snickered. “Good one.” He leaned over, trying to read my screen. “How does it work, exactly?”

  Nick’s lip curled back. “Dude.”

  Josh turned pink and turned back to his own screen.

  Nick’s eyes skimmed the screen while his finger ran down it. “Got someone researching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Somebody watching squirrels having sex on YouTube. That’s some stupid shit, huh? Somebody looking to hook up on the dating sites.”

  The key punches from the next computer seemed odd, like words but … not exactly. “I can’t make heads or tails of this data.”

  “Yo puedo.” Nick slanted a grin my way. “For gringos like you, that means ‘I can.’”

  “You speak Spanish?”

  “I lived in Mexico the last three years, remember?” His expression said duh.

  “Oh. Right.” Guess I’d deserved the duh.

  Nick’s eyes skimmed over the information, his hands fisting and unfisting with nervous energy. “This is him. This has to be Mendoza.”

  Josh pulled his chair and laptop closer. Josh’s knee bumped mine, but his bump caused no frisson of heat to rush up my leg.

  The data indicated Mendoza had accessed Web sites for a bank in Mexico and several others spread across Latin America. Bolivia. Guatamala. Peru. I pulled a pen and notepad from my purse and jotted down the URLs for the Web sites, along with the user IDs and passwords Mendoza had used to access them. Mendoza had also logged on to sites for three large American banks. I set the pad next to Josh so he could read my notes.

  While Nick continued to review the key logger data, Josh pulled the bank sites up on his computer, re-creating the steps Mendoza had gone through. His brows drew together. “The accounts in the Latin American banks are all business accounts with nominal balances, just a few dollars in each.”

  I leaned over to look at the account information on Josh’s computer screen. All of the names of the businesses were in Spanish. Servicios Financieros Peruanos. Turismo Internacional Exclusivo. Anuncios Publicitarios Creativos. None sounded familiar.

  “Any of these names ring a bell to you?” I asked Nick. I rattled off the names on the accounts, doing my best to pronounce them properly.

  He shook his head. “The names are for a travel agency, an advertising firm, and a financial services company.”

  All service-oriented businesses that would require only a minimal physical presence in the countries, no factories or large staff needed.

  “Think Mendoza owns them?” I asked.

  Nick shrugged. “Who knows?”

  I turned back to the computer screen, using Josh’s mouse to page back and forth between the accounts. “Looks like there was a large withdrawal from each of the accounts last Monday.” Monday had been the first banking day following Mendoza’s exchange with Eddie at Crescent Tower. Was it mere coincidence? Or was there a connection between the two events?

  Josh pulled up the sites for the American banks next. He let out a whistle. “There’s over two million in one of these accounts, one point eight in another, and six hundred G’s in the last one.”

  Nick stopped typing on his computer and leaned forward, looking past me to Josh. “What name is on the accounts?”

  Josh turned back to his screen. “Claudia’s Accounting Service.”

  “Address?”

  Josh frowned. “It’s a post office box.”

  “What’s the Zip Code?” I asked.

  Josh rattled it off and I plugged it
into my computer, locating the post office. “The Zip is located in southeast Dallas.”

  Nick jerked his head at Josh’s screen. “Can you get Claudia’s full name from any of the banking sites? She’s Mendoza’s new puppet. We need to find her. ASAP.”

  “I’ll see what I can dig up.” Josh squinted at his screen, looking over the bank’s site for a menu that might lead him to the information he sought.

  Meanwhile, Nick and I continued to review Mendoza’s key logger data. The next entries indicated he’d accessed his e-mail. The communication had been sent from a Gmail address listed as chief_financial_exec to a Hotmail account for claudiasaccounting. The e-mail began with Mi cariño Claudia. I understood a few words of the communication, such as banco, dolares, and mañana, but beyond that the Spanish was Greek to me. In several places there were dollar amounts listed, in one place a series of ten numbers beginning with 214.

  Nick read from the screen, pointing at the ten-digit number. “He’s sent this Claudia a new contact phone number.”

  I’d shown Nick the cell phone Mendoza had discarded in the library’s men’s room a few days earlier. It made sense he’d have a new phone and new number. Too bad there wasn’t a decapitation code we could dial to make his phone explode when he answered. Why isn’t there an app for that?

  Nick’s finger moved to one of the dollar figures. “He’s instructed Claudia to go to the banks first thing in the morning and move the entire account balances to something called CIB&T.”

  “That’s got to be Cayman Islands Bank & Trust,” I said.

  The e-mail was signed only “CFO.” Not surprising. Mendoza wasn’t dumb enough to sign the thing “with all my love, Marcos Mendoza, Professional Money Launderer and Murderer.”

  “Seems odd that he’s moving all of the money at once,” I said. “That’ll leave a paper trail.” Small transactions required no reports to the government and could be accomplished online, but transactions of the size Mendoza had proposed would require his puppet to provide identification and fill out all kinds of forms at the bank.

  “I’ll check the account history.” Josh maneuvered his mouse to pull up the account activity.