by Diane Kelly
She shrugged once more and this time the whole boob slipped out before she turned to head back to her bedroom.
Edna saw us to the door. Before closing it on us, she whispered, “I’ll keep an eye and ear out. If I hear anything strange, I’ll call you.”
“Thanks.”
We climbed back into the Dallas PD squad car and aimed for Britney Shelton’s new home in the prestigious Bluffview neighborhood, which lay to the east of the city’s smaller Love Field Airport. We pulled up to the house on Elsby Avenue. The residence was a contemporary L-shaped model with gray paint, futuristic outdoor light fixtures, and rows of solar panels on the roof. Fitting, given that Britney’s new husband, like Chelsea’s, worked in the energy industry. Malcolm Bybee, however, seemed to realize that petroleum had seen better days and that newer, cleaner energy sources were the future. He ran a growing company called Star Power Solar Systems that specialized in harnessing the power of sunshine, which we had plenty of in Texas. Too much, really. Our summers here felt as if we were living in a broiler.
We parked at the curb and stepped up to the intercom system attached to the iron security gate that enclosed their driveway and the front of the house. Booth jabbed the button and we watched the house expectantly. There was movement at one of the tall, narrow windows that flanked the front door. A moment later, a man’s voice answered, “May I help you?”
Booth leaned in toward the speaker. “Detective Veronica Booth from Dallas PD and Special Agent Tara Holloway from the IRS here. We need to speak with Britney Bybee.”
The man hesitated a short moment. “May I ask what this is regarding?”
“It’s a private matter,” Booth replied.
“I’m her husband,” the man said, as if that automatically gave him a right to know. It didn’t. This wasn’t 1920.
Booth didn’t miss a beat. “If she wants you to know her business, she can tell you all about our conversation after we talk to her.”
He paused a moment before speaking again. “Do you have a search warrant?” he demanded.
“Do you have something to hide?” the detective demanded right back.
Wow. Booth was quick and relentless. I like that in a partner.
The man hesitated again. “Just a moment, please. Let me see if she’s home.”
Yeah, right. We already knew she was home. The bright yellow Porsche 911 Turbo S in the driveway told us that. The personalized license plate read BRIT’S!
We stood there for several minutes. Keeping people waiting was a typical power play, both in business and law enforcement. But it was also a waste of my precious time. I stared at the door, willing it to open. Hurry up, you jerks. I’ve got a busy schedule.
Finally, the door swung open and Britney emerged. Like Chelsea, she was dressed in sleepwear, though Britney’s at least covered all her naughty bits. She still sported the augmented breasts and frosted blond hair I remembered, but her skin was no longer Oompa-Loompa orange. She’d either stopped using self-tanning cream or found a product that didn’t look so hideous.
Her husband, who had gray streaks in his hair and was at least twice her age, followed her to the gate. Neither made any move to open it, looking at us through the bars. I seared Britney with my gaze. If you’re the one who threatened me, I’m going to put you behind another set of bars.
“Y’all wanted to see me?” Britney asked. She looked from the detective to me, but there was no flicker of recognition. Of course I’d only met her once, at a Texas Rangers baseball game. We’d sat in the private box suite owned by the bank where Britney’s then-husband worked. She’d hardly given me the time of day, though, content to get drunk and dish with Chelsea rather than serve as a hostess.
I figured I might as well dive right in. “Did you send me a death threat?”
Her waxed brows drew together. “Send you a what?”
“A death threat.”
She scoffed. “Why would I do that? I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
Dammit, she looked sincere. “I’m the agent who got your former husband thrown in jail.”
She was as concerned about the end of her earlier marriage as Chelsea had been. She shrugged. “Things weren’t really that great between us. His trial gave me a good excuse to end things.” She looked up at her new husband with adoration. “Then I met Malcolm.” She turned back to us. “We’re soul mates.”
They were something, all right, but I doubted it was soul mates.
Booth chimed in now. “So you’re denying you mailed a death threat to Agent Holloway?”
She looked the detective right in the eye. “The last thing I mailed was my high school graduation announcements. That was five years ago. I couldn’t find a post office if you offered me a million dollars.”
A true gold digger, always thinking in terms of money. Still, what she’d said was probably true. Snail mail had become nearly obsolete, used only for wedding invitations, announcements, greeting cards, and, of course, death threats against federal law enforcement. Looked like we’d struck out again.
“That’ll be it for now,” Booth said. “If we need anything else, we’ll be back in touch.”
As we headed back to the cruiser, the couple headed back to their house.
From behind us, Malcolm snapped, “What was that about?”
“Hell if I know,” Britney said.
“A police car out here?” he said. “The neighbors are going to talk.”
“Hell if I care,” Britney said before slamming the door behind them.
As we returned to the car, I felt a bit like the baby bird in the classic children’s book Are You My Mother? But instead of searching for my mom, I was searching for my would-be murderer. Like the little bird, though, I seemed to be asking the wrong people and getting nowhere. But like the little bird, I wouldn’t stop until I found who I was looking for.
chapter fourteen
Sweet Spot
Our next stop was Cowtown Candy Company. The operation sat on a twenty-acre tract north of Fort Worth. The two-story administrative building and manufacturing facility had been painted in a black-and white-cowhide pattern, as had the company’s delivery trucks, which also featured brown eyes, pink noses, and smiling lips. Cowmobiles. The Cowtown Candy Company logo spanned the side of the trucks, the company’s name spelled in script designed to resemble rope. An old-fashioned red barn sat to the rear of the main building, surrounded by a small, scattered herd of Holsteins snacking on grass in the sunshine, a few of them napping in the shade of the trees.
As Booth pulled the squad car into the lot, I pointed to a bluish-silver Town & Country Limited minivan. “That’s Chloe’s car.”
“Good. She’s here.”
We checked in with the receptionist who called up to Chloe’s office. After speaking with Chloe, the receptionist addressed me. “You can go on up. She said you know the way.”
I certainly did. It was up some stairs and across the very catwalk from which Chloe and I had fallen while engaged in a catfight. That’s how we’d ended up in the vat of warm chocolate below. Ah, sweet memories.
I led the detective upstairs to Chloe’s office. She met us at the door, looking as darn dazzling as ever, a real-life Anne Hathaway. Her dark hair hung like silk to her shoulders, her fair skin glistened, and her eyes glimmered as if filled with stardust. She looked like Snow White, come to life. But I knew the woman had another side to her, one that was less princess and more narcissist. I’d seen that stardust glow like heated embers of hate when I’d confronted her about the company’s accounting records.
Chloe and I had lived in the same dorm our freshman year of college. I’d lent her my class notes, helped her move her heavy boxes in and out of the building, lent her quarters for the washing machines and clothes dryers. But had she ever returned the favors? Nope. Never.
Still, she’d purportedly turned over a new leaf last year after I’d audited the company and discovered some major screwups and bad behavior on her part. She and her
husband had been having trouble at the time, and she’d done some unscrupulous things in a desperate attempt to maintain her aura of perfection. I’d pitied her for all the pressure she’d put on herself to achieve an unattainable human standard, and we’d worked things out without her going to jail. She should be grateful I hadn’t gone after her with guns blazing.
“Tara!” came a cheerful male voice from down the hall before I could introduce the detective to Chloe.
I turned to see Chloe’s older brother Jeremy, whom I’d also met at the university, swinging toward us in his loose-limbed way. He flashed his adorable dimple and gave me a hug. “Good to see you! What brings you by?”
No point in beating around the bush. I gestured into Chloe’s office. “I’m here to find out if your sister is trying to kill me.”
“Again?” He chuckled, clearly assuming I was joking. “I think she learned her lesson last time. She had chocolate in her ear canal for a month.”
Chloe, on the other hand, took my statement at face value, her mouth gaping. “You think I’m trying to kill you?” she said on a breath, wrapping her arms around herself in an act of self-consolation. “Why would you think that?” She swallowed hard. “How could you think that?” Her gaze held disbelief, but it held a lot more hurt.
My intestines wriggled inside me. I felt like an absolute shit. Clearly, Chloe was not my would-be killer. She was a hardworking woman who’d once been a self-centered girl intent on achieving perfection at any price. But she’d learned her lesson. Despite the glamour she maintained, she was someone else now.
Booth came to my rescue. “Agent Holloway has received multiple death threats. I insisted she take me to meet anyone with whom she’d had a physical altercation while working at the IRS. We’re simply trying to eliminate all of the possible suspects, however unlikely they may be.”
The hurt subsided in Chloe’s eyes. “Oh. Okay.”
Booth held out her hand for a conciliatory shake. “I can see I’m clearly on the wrong path here. We’ll cross you off our list.”
Chloe dipped her shiny, silky head. “Thanks.”
Jeremy snorted. “Sure you can’t take my little sister off to jail for just a little bit? It would serve her right for all those times she hid the cookies when we were kids.”
I laughed and waved my left hand dismissively. “The statute of limitations has run out on those offenses.”
“Hey!” Jeremy grabbed my wrist. “You’ve got a ring!”
“I do.”
“You’ll be saying those words again sometime soon, then, huh?”
“October second,” I told him.
“What kind of wedding are you having?”
“Traditional,” I said. “A ceremony at the Baptist church I grew up attending, followed by a barn dance.”
“A barn dance? You mean a real, honest-to-God, gen-u-ine hootenanny?” He leaped into the air and kicked his heels together. “Sounds like fun!” Jeremy’s goofy, funny nature is part of what made him so popular in college. “It’s probably rude to ask,” he said, “but can you put me on the guest list? Chloe, too? I always like a good party and Chloe needs to have some fun. She works too hard.”
“I’d be glad to,” I told him. “We’ve got a party bus coming out, too, if you’d like to ride out on it.”
“Heck,” Jeremy said. “I’d like to drive it!”
After I shook Chloe’s hand, Jeremy walked the detective and me back downstairs and handed both of us an extralarge bag of assorted western-themed candy. Just what we need. More sugar. But I wasn’t about to pass up a bag of candy. Once again, I insisted on paying, even though Jeremy argued with me.
He raised a hand in good-bye as we headed out the door. “Y’all take care now!”
Back in the cruiser, Booth reached into her bag and fished out a Cowtown Cow Patty, a fudge dome shaped irregularly, just like the bovine dropping it was named after. I, on the other hand, went for a Licorice Lasso.
“What now?” Booth asked as she removed the wrapper. “Who else’s marriages have you ruined?”
“Marcos Mendoza’s and Marissa Fischer’s.”
I gave Booth some quick details about the cases, how I’d put Marissa’s lying, cheating husband in jail and relieved Mendoza of his left nut with a strategically aimed shot from my Glock. “That feat earned me the nickname The Sperminator.”
She issued a soft snort. “Good one.”
“The problem is Marissa lives in Iowa and Mendoza’s in jail.” Neither one seemed a viable suspect. The postmark on the card I’d received had been a local postmark. It was unlikely Marissa would drive all the way down to Dallas to send it. Mendoza could have had someone on the outside doing his dirty work for him, but who?
“Taking out Mendoza’s nut had to leave him feeling emasculated,” she said. “He could be our guy.”
“He’s in the federal correctional institute in Seagoville,” I told her. “So are Joe Cullen, Noah Fischer, Don Geils, and Giustino Fabrizio.”
The detective had been the one who’d first put two and two together months ago and realized Tino Fabrizio could be behind some unsolved murders in the Dallas area. When she realized the guy had mob connections in Chicago, she’d pulled the FBI into the case, and the FBI had later pulled in the IRS.
“I know you didn’t end Fabrizio’s marriage,” she said. “He did that himself when he trapped his wife in her restaurant and set it on fire to cash in on the life insurance policy he’d taken out on her.”
The bastard had trapped me inside the burning restaurant, as well. A chef, too. Fortunately, we’d managed to escape. It hadn’t been easy.
“But what about the other two?” Booth asked. “The Joe guy and Geils. Did you screw up their relationships?”
“As far as I know, neither of the others was in a relationship when I busted them. But as long as we’re going out to the prison, we might as well talk to them, too.” Heck, for all I knew these inmates had become BFFs and had plotted together to scare the pants off me. I visualized the four of them showering next to each other and striking up a conversation.
Joe: Hey, guys. What are you in for?
Mendoza: Tax evasion.
Geils: Me, too!
Fabrizio: Same for me. Who put you here?
Mendoza: A little bitch named Tara Holloway.
Geils: That’s the one. I tried to shoot her but I missed.
Joe: I had a loaded shotgun under the freezer in my ice-cream truck, but I didn’t think to use it. I’m such a dumbass!
Fabrizio: It’s not too late to finish the job. I got guys on the outside. What say we kill her?
Mendoza: Sure. But first, could you soap my back?
It would be an hour-long drive out to the facility southeast of Dallas, but Booth wanted to make the drive. “Might as well exhaust all potential leads,” she said.
We headed out, making small talk along the way. She regaled me with tales of her exploits as a beat cop when she was younger. “I chased a burglary suspect into the woods once. He disappeared into thin air. Couldn’t find him anywhere. Then I hear a couple of angry squirrels chattering and look up to find him in a tree. He refused to come down on his own, but eventually the limb broke and down he came anyway.”
As her story illustrated, most criminals weren’t all that smart. Unfortunately, though, some were. The guy running the rental scam was one of the latter types. He’d carefully planned his scheme, making it difficult for law enforcement to get a bead on him. But sooner or later he had to slip up, didn’t he?
As we parked and climbed out of the cruiser, a few men in the yard came to the fence, curious. I could feel their gazes boring into me. Even though I had a gun on my hip, it was unsettling.
One of the men put a hand to his mouth and blew us a loud kiss. SMOOOOCH. I pretended to catch it in the air and applied it to my ass. The others laughed.
Booth and I checked in at the front desk and provided the clerk with our badges and driver’s licenses. It took twenty minutes aft
er we arrived to get cleared.
The clerk read over the list of inmates I’d requested to see before looking back up at me. “You put all of these guys behind bars?”
“Yep.”
“Impressive. You should join our frequent felons program. Three more convictions and you’ll win a refrigerator.” He cast me a roguish grin before hitting a button and buzzing us through a secure door.
On the other side, we found a black, brawny warden. As he held out our visitor badges he said, “Got some bad news for you. Mendoza, Geils, and Cullen are here, but Giustino Fabrizio’s been transferred to a facility in Illinois. The Chicago PD’s putting him on trial for a series of murders.”
Fabrizio had already been sentenced to a fifty-year term for attempting to kill his wife, me, and the chef who’d been in the restaurant. That should keep him in the klink until he passed on to the great hereafter. But convictions occasionally were overturned. Prosecutors knew it couldn’t hurt to go ahead and try the heartless creep for other crimes, obtain additional convictions. Besides, members of his mob network had turned on him in exchange for lighter sentences for their misdeeds. The new evidence they’d provided had led to many a cold case up in Chicago being reheated. Nonetheless, I was disappointed we wouldn’t be able to confront the guy face-to-face.
The warden led us down an empty hall to a series of rooms with glass panels in the doors. Through the first two windows, we could see inmates meeting with people in business suits, probably their attorneys. The warden stopped at room number three and typed in a code to unlock the door. The lock released with a loud click. “There you go.”
After the detective and I seated ourselves in the interrogation room, Marcos Mendoza was led into the small, stale space in handcuffs. Though he had the same dark hair and widow’s peak, he seemed much smaller than I remembered him, now reduced from the dangerous, violent, and powerful international business tycoon he’d once been to a mere jailbird. Or perhaps he really was smaller. Maybe that nut I’d taken out had reduced his testosterone levels and caused him to shrink and shrivel.
Any reduction in testosterone clearly hadn’t reduced his hate for me, however. He sat down and glared at me, his eyes narrowed into little dark beams, as if he were trying to bore holes into my head with his gaze. I stared right back. You don’t scare me, you one-nut nincompoop.