Death, Taxes, and a Chocolate Cannoli (A Tara Holloway Novel) (30 page)

I wasn’t due at Benedetta’s until two o’clock, so I did my usual Neiman Marcus maneuver, parking in the garage downtown across from the store and pinballing my way to my office at the IRS.

I stepped off the elevator and headed down to Lu’s office.

“Good morning,” I said to Viola, Lu’s administrative assistant.

Viola returned the greeting, assessing me over her bifocals. “Your roots could stand a touch-up.”

Sheesh.
I’m out risking my life going after a mobster and all I get is a rude comment about my hair? But it wasn’t worth getting upset over it. I had bigger things to worry about. I might have to stop by the pharmacy for another box of hair color, though. “I’ve missed you, Viola.”

I rapped on Lu’s door frame and she looked up from her desk.

“How’d your date with Jeb go?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I suppose I had a good enough time. But he’s really not my type after all. I think I just agreed to go out with him because he was so easy. You know, low-hanging fruit.”

Ew.
I really didn’t want to think about Jeb’s low-hanging fruit.

“Got an update for me?” she asked.

I filled Lu in on the developments in the Fabrizio investigation, and on my plan to plant the fitness tracker/recording device in his office.

“Be careful,” she said, “sounds like he’s got lots of experience disposing of bodies where they’ll never be found.”

That’s a lovely thought with which to begin the workweek, huh?

The mobster case dealt with, I told Lu about the plans I’d made with Harold and Isaiah to nab Adam Stratford, aka Tripp Sevin.

“I love it!” she said. “Count me in.”

I went to my office to set the plan in motion. After closing my door, I ran a search of the tax filings. While I found that Adam Stratford had filed tax returns, the only income he’d reported over the last few years was around thirty-five grand in wages from a warehouse job at a local big-box store. When he wasn’t driving the van, he was driving a forklift. The fact that he hadn’t reported any of his earnings from the vacation scam put him on the hook not only for fraud, but also tax evasion.

I used my trusty old IRS-issued cell phone to call the number I’d seen on the Ozarks Express postcards.

A man answered. Sure enough, he had that Cajun accent that Isaiah, Jeb, and Harold had mentioned.

“Hello,” I said, adding a warble to my voice in the hopes I’d sound aged. “My name is Melvina…” On the spot like that, I couldn’t think of a last name.
Ugh!
I should’ve thought this through better before I’d placed the call. I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Cannoli.”

I slapped a palm to my forehead.
Cannoli? Really?
That was the best I could come up with?

“How can I help you, Mrs. Cannoli?” Stratford asked.

“I saw your Web site online,” I said, continuing the warble. But rather than making me sound elderly, it made me sound as if I were gargling. I coughed as if to clear my throat and spoke in my regular voice. “Me and a group of my friends would like to plan a trip to the Ozarks. Maybe make a stop in Hot Springs along the way and visit the bath houses. Is that something you could help us with?”

“I sure can,” he replied.

“We saw that you offer transportation and hotel packages for two nights?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Only four hundred dollars for the whole enchilada.”

“Oh, I don’t like enchiladas,” I said, screwing with the guy. “All those spices give me heartburn.”

“What I meant,” he said after a moment’s pause, speaking slowly as if he thought I was an idiot, “was that the fee includes both the van and the two nights’ accommodations.”

“Oh! Okay. Okeydokey.”

“When would you like to depart?” he asked.

I chose a random date in June. “How about June seventeenth?”

“Let me check the bookings to make sure the van’s available then.”

Yeah, right.
I had a feeling no matter what date I’d tossed out he’d tell me the van was available.

“You’re in luck,” he said a few seconds later. “That date is open.”

Just as I’d suspected.

“Summer vacations are booking fast, though,” he said. “In order for your group to reserve the van, I’ll need to collect half of the fee up front from each traveler as a deposit. I can accept payment in cash, or traveler’s checks if you prefer.”

Or you can accept it in my orthopedic shoe up your ass, you conniving little whippersnapper!
Eighty-seven years on this earth and the fictional Melvina Cannoli hadn’t lost her girlish sass.

“You’ll come by to collect the payment, right?” I asked. “I’m not comfortable putting cash or traveler’s checks in the mail and I’m sure my friends will feel the same.”

“Certainly. I’ll just need an address.”

I couldn’t give Adam Stratford the address of Whispering Pines or he might realize it was a setup. Instead, I gave him the address for the apartment complex where Alicia and I had lived when we’d first moved to Dallas after college. I’d be sure to be waiting outside when he arrived so that he wouldn’t have to knock on the door and bother whoever actually lived in our unit now.

“How’s Friday morning?” I asked. I had Friday off from the bistro and wasn’t scheduled again to work until the following Monday. “Around ten o’clock?”

“That works fine,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

Yes, you will. And you just might be surprised by who else you see.

*   *   *

At eight that evening, Tino called the bistro. I took the call. He asked for a meal to be delivered to his office.

“What can I get you tonight?” I asked.

“Surprise me.”

Oh, I’d surprise him all right. With a disguised recorder.
Hee-hee!
Finally I’d get a chance to plant the darn thing.

“See you soon.”
You sorry excuse for a human being.

I walked back to the kitchen, where Dario stood at the stove, beginning to wind things down for the night. “Tino said to surprise him.”

“I can do that.” Dario proceeded to fill a container with the remaining mushroom ravioli, covering it with a combination of Alfredo and marinara sauces, improvising a parma rosa, though rather than mixing the two sauces together he applied them in distinctive red and white stripes.

“Creative,” I told him.

Benedetta looked up from her desk in her open office. “What did he do?”

“He made stripes with the sauce.” I carried the box in to show her. “See?”

“Interesting presentation. I like it.” She raised a hand and motioned to her chef. “Dario, come in here, please.”

He hung the hooked ladle over the side of the large pot and walked into her office, his expression wary.

“I know you’re thinking about taking another job,” Benedetta said, giving him a pointed look. “Tino overheard you on your phone out back.”

I’d known Dario was job-hunting, too. Of course I hadn’t shared that tidbit with Benedetta or she’d have wondered how I’d gotten the information. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was an undercover IRS agent and that one of my colleagues had followed the guy.

“I don’t fault you for considering your other options,” she told Dario. “Sometimes I think you are an ass and that I should send you packing anyway. But the fact of the matter is that you are a talented chef. Other than myself, no one else has been able to make my grandmother’s recipes as well as you do. I don’t want to lose you.” She paused a moment to let her words sink in. “What’s it going to take to keep you here? You want more money? More creative freedom? Is that it?”

His expression changed from wary to thoughtful to eager. “I’d love to create some of my own dishes,” he said. “Your grandmother’s recipes are delicious, but I’ve been cooking them for years now. I’d like to try something new.”

“Come up with some dishes, then,” Benedetta said. “We’ll make them the daily specials, see which ones are a hit with the customers, and add the best ones to the menu.”

Dario grinned. “I’ve got an eggplant lasagna idea I’d like to try first. And then maybe I’ll try Tori’s idea and toss fried mushrooms on top of spaghetti marinara.”

I raised a finger. “I want credit for that one.”

“Of course,
cara.
” As she spoke, Benedetta looked up and reached up with one hand, fingers splayed, moving her hand from left to right if reading the words on a theater marquee. “We’ll call it Tori’s Mushroom Pasta.”

Tori’s
Mushroom Pasta? Great.
Tara Holloway
was the one who’d come up with the idea, but my fictional alter ego would get the naming rights. Oh, well. There was nothing I could do about it.

I packed the pasta surprise, a couple slices of toasty garlic bread, and a chocolate cannoli into a bag, along with a napkin and silverware. While my hands were in the bag, I tugged the fitness tracker out from under my sleeve so I’d be able to pull it from my wrist quickly and easily once I was in Tino’s office. I pushed the button on the end to activate the recorder. With one last deep breath to steel myself, I headed next door.

As I walked over, I spotted Tino’s and Eric’s vehicles in the lot. Patrol car number six sat in the lot, too, Cole Kirchner having yet to set out on his rounds for the night. I wondered if tonight would be the night Tino’s goons made a move on Looking Good Optical or the optician. Part of me hoped it would be. I missed my apartment and my cats and spending time with Nick. I wanted this case resolved ASAP, assuming, of course, that no one would get hurt.

I punched Benedetta’s code into the keypad.
Two-three-six-three.
Though I heard the automated lock release with a click, the door wouldn’t budge. Looked like someone had locked the dead bolt.

I rapped on the glass.
Rap-rap-rap.
“Tino?” I called, hoping he’d be able to hear me through his half-open door down the hall. “It’s Tori. I think the dead bolt is locked.”

A moment later, he appeared in the door to his office and headed my way. He released the dead bolt and opened the door for me. “Force of habit,” he said. “You work in the security business, locking doors is second nature.”

Maybe. Or maybe he’d locked the door because he didn’t want his wife or daughters or anyone else walking in on him and overhearing something he didn’t want them to know.

Lest he simply take the bag from me, I looked down into it and began to rummage around as I headed toward his office. I realized as he rounded his desk that it was the perfect opportunity for me to drop the tracker and kick it under the piece of furniture. Thank goodness his office was carpeted so it wouldn’t make much noise. I slid it from my wrist and dropped it to the floor, crinkling the takeout bag to cover any sound.
Crinkle-crinkle.
Just as it hit the carpet, he turned to face me.

Had he noticed?
I eyed him for a moment.
Nope.
No signs he’d seen me drop the device.
Thank God.

I simultaneously unpacked the bag and used my toe to push the recorder under the drawers of his desk. The desk sat too low for a vacuum to get under the drawers, but if the custodians used a hose attachment they might suck the tracker out from under the desk. “
Buon appetito!
”
And speak up loud and clear.

As I left the room, I said a quick and silent prayer that the cleaning crew would do a half-assed job.

chapter thirty-nine

K
eeping Our Eyes and Ears Open

Tuesday came and went without an opportunity for me to get into Tino’s office to retrieve the recorder. I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. The longer the device was in Tino’s office, the more information it could gather for us. But the longer it was in place, the greater the likelihood that we’d miss time-sensitive information, such as plans to do harm to a client.

While I finished removing the soiled tablecloths from the tables in the dining room, Benedetta stepped out the front door of the bistro and used her key to lock it. Standing on the sidewalk, she reached up to pull the security doors down over the windows. The loud rattle as they rolled down their tracks was muffled by the glass but still audible.

Elena glanced over at the covered windows. “I know those doors are supposed to make us safer,” she said, “but I don’t like them. I feel like I’m trapped in a cage.”

I’d had the same feeling each time they’d been lowered before. Despite the spaciousness of the dining room, it gave me a sense of claustrophobia. The outside world was being shut out and we were being shut in.

Separated.

Confined.

Entombed.

With the security gates locked in place, the back door was the only way out.

No word came in from anyone on the Operation Italian Takeout team on Tuesday night. It was both good news and bad news at the same time. Good news that nobody had been hurt or robbed or killed. Bad news that there’d been no break in the case and none of us agents had made an arrest.

My accounting exam on Wednesday morning went well. Given that I was the first to finish my test, I daresay I earned the highest score in the class. Then again, maybe I was being overconfident. That was never a good thing. In fact, it was often when tax evaders got overconfident and cocky that they screwed up, giving us special agents the evidence to nab them.

When I arrived at the bistro at eleven, a man I didn’t recognize was in the kitchen. He was dressed in navy pants and a blue button-down shirt. He stood in front of one of the two fire extinguishers mounted on the kitchen walls and wriggled it free from the support bracket.

As he headed for the other fire extinguisher, I stepped over to Brian and asked, “Who’s that?”

“Safety inspector from the fire department,” Brian responded without looking up from the bomboloni he was filling with raspberry goo. “They come by every so often to make sure things are up to code.”

That made sense. It wasn’t uncommon for restaurants to have grease fires. Without proper safety equipment, flames could spread quickly and endanger the lives of the staff and customers.