Death, Taxes, and a Chocolate Cannoli (A Tara Holloway Novel) (20 page)

Damn if he hadn’t hit the nail on the head. It all bubbled to the surface then.

“Everyone’s settling down,” I said. “Alicia’s getting married next month, and Christina and Ajay are engaged. Next thing you know everyone will be having babies, and driving minivans, and joining the PTA.”

Nick chuckled. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“I know.” I sighed. “It’s just that I have a hard time visualizing
us
in those roles. Think about it, Nick. If we were married with children, we couldn’t be working a case like this. Not both of us, anyway. Someone would need to be home at night to tuck the kids into bed and read them a story.” It was one thing for me to leave my cats in the care of my roommate, but children would be an entirely different matter. I wanted to be a top-notch special agent, but I’d want to be a good mother someday, too. I couldn’t pawn my kids off on my mother for weeks at a time while I went undercover to catch a mobster. But I wasn’t sure I could see myself entirely sacrificing my career, either. I’d worked hard to get where I was, and my job had become a part of me, a critical piece of my identity.

Nick draped an arm over my shoulders and pulled me closer. I rested my head on his shoulder.

“You worry too much,” he said. “We’ll figure it out when the time comes.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I’m
always
right.”

“You are not,” I said. “Remember when you thought sushi was going to be gross and then you tried it and liked it?”

“Well, I’m not wrong about this. Everything will be okay.”

When Nick leaned in and put his lips to mine, I knew it would … so long as I had him.

“Tell you what,” he said when we came up for air. “When this case is over, we’ll spend a whole night watching movies of your choosing. We can even watch something with that guy you’re so crazy about. What’s his name? Charming Taters?”

“Channing Tatum.”

Nick snorted. “Like that’s any better.”

*   *   *

I was scheduled to work the four
P.M.
to ten
P.M.
dinner shift at the bistro on Monday, which would leave my early hours free to check in on my other pending cases. That morning, I got up bright and early and went to my class at DBU. I noted no tail this morning, no one in the hallway peeking into the classroom, no one following me across campus to the parking lot. But just in case I had a tail I wasn’t aware of, I performed a series of evasive maneuvers on my drive back into the city. For a mile or two, I drove much slower than the posted limit, which would force any tail to either pass me or slow down and reveal himself. I made a last-minute lane change to take a random exit, and circled back on the overpasses to continue on my way. Nope, no one was following me.

With that same abundance of caution, I parked in a downtown garage across the street from Neiman Marcus, and went into the store, exiting on the opposite side. I hopped onto a city bus that was waiting at the stop, rode it for a couple of blocks, then got off and made my way to the IRS building, cutting through the lobbies of several other buildings on my way.

I grabbed a cup of coffee from the kitchen and made my way back down the hall to my digs. Most of the offices I passed were dark and empty, the special agents who normally occupied them out working the Fabrizio case. What a harsh taskmaster I was, huh?

I plopped down in my rolling chair, took a huge slug of coffee, and noticed the light flashing on my desk phone, indicating someone had left me a voice-mail message. I picked up the receiver and dialed into the system.

A paralegal from the Triple 7 Adventures domain registry had called. I phoned her back right away.

“Got some information for me?” I asked when she came on the line.

“I do,” she said. “The credit card number.”

She rattled off sixteen digits.

“And the name on the card?” I asked.

“Same as the name on the registry,” she said. “Tripp Sevin.”

Ugh.
The made-up name told me the credit card was one of those prepaid types that would work regardless of the name given. I thanked the woman for her time, figured out which bank issued the card, and coerced Ross into accompanying me back to court for another order. Judge Trumbull was in the middle of a hearing, but took a quick break to sign the order for me.

Back at my office, I scanned the order and e-mailed it to the bank’s legal department. I hoped it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out where the card had been sold. With that information, I might be able to figure out who’d purchased it. Meanwhile, it couldn’t hurt to check in with the prepaid phone company and see if they’d made any progress.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?

An attorney in the company’s legal department said, “Oh, hello, Miss Holloway. I was just about to call you.”

Yeah, right.
“What have you found out?”
Squeak-squeak.

“The phone service was activated in December. It was deactivated last month.”

“How were the service fees paid?” I asked.

She hesitated a moment as she looked at the information. “Via credit card.” She rattled off the number, which was the same one the paralegal at the domain registry had given me only an hour or two earlier.

“What name were you given for the card?”

“Tripp Sevin,” she said.

“Do you know where the phone was purchased?” Maybe I could swing by the store and review their security footage.

“Just a sec.” There was a sound of papers ruffling. “Looks like the phone was part of a shipment sent to a Kmart store located in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

Tulsa was a five-hour drive from Dallas. It would be impossible for me to go to the store in person, but I could at least give them a call.

After wrapping things up with the attorney, I phoned the Kmart store and was transferred to the manager. “Any chance you can determine when the particular phone was purchased so we can pin down the security footage?”

“No can do,” he said. “I’ve been asked the same thing by law enforcement before. Our system can show me when that type of phone was purchased in the store, but there’s no way for me to determine the phone number that was assigned to a given phone.”

Short of watching the security footage taken at the time of each and every phone purchase, I was out of luck. Chances were that even if I saw the suspect on the screen, I wouldn’t be able to identify him, and it was unreasonable to expect the manager to provide me with dozens of video clips.

Frustrated, I thanked the man for his help and hung up again. My only open lead at this point was the prepaid credit card, and I knew the odds of it leading me to the culprit were about the same as my odds of hitting a triple seven on a slot machine. Slim to none. At least gamblers got free drinks. All I was getting for the efforts I was putting into this case was a headache.

I went down the hall to give Lu an update.

When I rapped on her door, she glanced up from her desk. “Uh-oh. Did somebody die?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“You’re dressed all in black, like you’ve been to a funeral.”

“It’s the bistro,” I said. “Black is their standard color for the servers.” I told her I’d run into walls on Triple 7 Adventure’s domain/Web site and prepaid phone.

“Rats. I hoped one of those leads would pan out.” She stood from her desk and retrieved her purse from a drawer. “I’ll go back out to Whispering Pines. Bad news is best delivered in person.”

As if.
Did Lu think I couldn’t see through her? She just wanted to see Jeb again. But I didn’t call her on it. She’d let a few things slide where I was concerned. More than a few, really.

I went back to my office and took care of some loose ends on several of my smaller pending cases. Since there was nobody here to go to lunch with, I ordered takeout at a nearby deli and took it back to eat at my desk. As I finished up, Lu returned to my office.

She batted her false eyelashes. “Guess who’s got a hot date for Saturday night?”

It certainly wasn’t me. Come Saturday night, I’d probably be back on my couch at my apartment, watching television and window-shopping for shoes online. I was happy for Lu, of course, but I didn’t want her to put too many eggs in Jeb’s basket.

“Jeb’s a nice guy and all,” I said, “but I suspect he’s a bit of a flirt.”

Lu waved a hand dismissively. “Flirt, schmirt. Who cares? It’s not like we’re getting married. Besides, he’s taking me to Abacus.”

I’d been to the restaurant once. It was the type of place where food was presented like works of art and you were never really sure whether you were supposed to eat some of the things on your plate. “A nice meal like that,” I warned her, “he’s going to have expectations.”

Lu scoffed. “It wouldn’t be the first time I traded sex for steak.”

“Lu!”

“Want to hear what I once did for a filet mignon?”

I covered my ears with my hands. “No!”

“Just getting your goat, Tara,” she said, laughing before she turned a pointed gaze on me. “I’m a big girl, you know. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I think of you like a—”

“Big sister?”

I’d been about to say a second mother or an aunt, but no sense bursting her bubble. “Exactly.”

She took a seat in one of my chairs, and we spent a few minutes mulling over where to go from here on the Triple 7 investigation.

“That Cajun accent could be an important clue,” Lu suggested. “You could check with authorities in Louisiana, see if they’re familiar with someone running a scam like this there.”

“Not a bad idea.” I looked out my window, watching a pigeon who’d landed on the outer sill. “I suppose I could run a search on fifteen-passenger Chevy vans, too. After all, how many could there be in the Dallas area?”

chapter twenty-five

C
hasing Cars

One hundred eighty-seven, as it turned out. I discovered this when I ran a search on the DMV’s site.

Of those 187 vans, 39 were listed as gray. Of course it was possible this so-called Tripp Sevin had painted the van a different color after he’d registered it, or that the van wasn’t even registered in the state of Texas, but I had to start somewhere, didn’t I?

I ruled out a dozen that were owned in the name of Winging It, Inc., which operated an airport shuttle service. I’d seen their vans around town. They were all painted with the company’s logo, white wings that stretched all the way down the side from the front fender to the back bumper. There was no way the van in the video footage from Whispering Pines could have been one of theirs.

I also ruled out seven vans registered in the name of Kiddie Corral, Ltd., a partnership that ran a chain of day cares with a ranch theme, their buildings painted red to look like barns. Another van was registered in the name of a Methodist church. That left nineteen vans in the names of individual owners or cryptic business names, such as Cargill Brothers Enterprises.

Two of the vans remaining on the list would be on my way to Benedetta’s Bistro, including the one owned by Cargill Brothers. I decided to stop by and take a look at them next time I had a spare moment.

Before heading out of the IRS office that afternoon, I ran an Internet search for travel businesses offering overnight charter trips. Four popped up, but when I tried the phone numbers listed, one was answered by a computerized voice that directed my call into an automated messaging system, one was answered by a man with only a slight Southern drawl, and two of them were answered by women, neither of whom had a Cajun accent.

“Sorry,” I told the people who’d answered my calls. “I was looking for someone named Becky. I must have misdialed.”

Next, I tried the Louisiana Attorney General’s office and spoke with their Consumer Protection Division. The investigator to whom I was transferred couldn’t tell me much.

“We’ve had hundreds of complaints against vacation outfits,” he said. “Mostly companies that sell time-shares or packages that include flights to foreign locations like Mexico or the Caribbean. ’Course we only go after the big offenders. We don’t have the staff or time to pursue them all.”

The truth of the matter was that, due to limited government resources, law enforcement couldn’t pursue every con artist, and many small-time crooks got away with their crimes. The only upside was that because of the lax enforcement, some experienced con artists became complacent and lazy after a while, and took few, if any, measures to evade identification and apprehension. I could only hope that Tripp Sevin was one of these types and that he’d slip up somehow and give us a way to nab him.

The investigator continued. “I’m not aware of any complaints against charter van companies in particular, but I can ask around and get back with you.”

“I’d appreciate that.” I gave him both my phone number and e-mail address.

When I’d finished the phone calls, I walked briskly back to the parking garage across the street from Neiman’s and retrieved my Hyundai. I drove on to Benedetta’s Bistro to start my shift.

Given that it was only four o’clock, there were only two tables occupied in the dining area. Another customer, a man in a business suit, sat at the bar, enjoying a cocktail while he reviewed e-mails on a tablet. Elena stood behind the dessert case, resting her elbows on the top and her head in her hands, a wistful look on her face as she gazed across the parking lot toward Gallery Nico.

“You okay?” I asked, turning my head to follow her gaze out the window.

“Mm-hm,” she murmured dreamily. “I met the art dealer on Saturday. His name’s Nicolas. He’s really hot.”

And now so was I. When we’d had our powwow yesterday, Nick hadn’t mentioned that he’d interacted with Elena.
Grrr.

“Did you get to talk much?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said, standing up straight. “His business partner interrupted us and they went into the back room. I didn’t want to look desperate just hanging around waiting for him so I came back here. I was hoping he’d place an order today, but he hasn’t.”

Maybe the fact that Nick hadn’t mentioned Elena stopping by the gallery meant she hadn’t made an impression on him. But, really, how could a beautiful, busty young woman
not
make an impression? Especially on a red-blooded American male like Nick? Even so, just because he might have noticed that she was attractive and interested in him didn’t mean he’d act on it. Nick loved me for my special kind of spunk, and few women had it.