Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria (22 page)

I gestured to the bouquet. “I take it you and Carl are hitting it off?”

She batted her false eyelashes, smiling like a schoolgirl with a crush. “He’s the
sweetest thing. We’ve had dinner three times this week.” She reached out and stroked
a rose petal before looking back to me. “I suppose I shouldn’t settle for the first
man I find, though, should I? I’ve had several more hits. I haven’t been this popular
since I was the first girl in junior high to grow boobs.” She punched some keys on
her keyboard, performed a few clicks on her mouse, and turned her computer screen
so I could see it, too. “What do you think of these fellas?”

The screen displayed photos and bios for three men. The first man was roundish and
totally bald, with a smile as bright as his shiny dome. His bio identified him as
Fred, a widower and charter bus driver. The second guy had a head of thick silver
hair with a matching full beard. His expression was self-assured but perhaps a tad
too serious. His bio identified him as Harry, a divorced upper-level manager at a
brokerage firm. It also identified him as a smoker, the last thing Lu needed after
successfully fighting lung cancer. The final match was Gerard, a stocky retired high-school
basketball coach with wavy white hair. He’d never been married. Perhaps it was presumptuous
of me, but if a man made it to his sixties without ever having tied the knot there
was probably something wrong with him.

“Try Fred,” I suggested. “He looks friendly.”

“I thought so, too,” Lu said. “Fred it is.”

Lu turned her screen away and turned her attention back to me and Eddie, all business
now. “The terrorist case. What’s happening?”

We gave her an update on the case, which took all of two seconds. It doesn’t take
long to say, “We’ve got squat.”

She put the meat stick to her lips as if to take a puff but took a nibble instead.
“If what you’re doing isn’t working,” she said, “you need to try something else.”

No kidding.
“But what?” I asked.

“That’s for you two to figure out,” Lu said. “Put your heads together and come up
with a plan.” She held out both hands and waved us out of her office. “Scoot. Come
back when you’ve figured things out. But make it quick. We’re getting backlogged.”

Eddie and I walked back to my office. I plopped down in my desk chair while Eddie
took a seat in one of the wing chairs that faced my desk. Nick sat across the hall,
talking on his personal cell phone, which meant the call wasn’t business related.
He chuckled.

How the hell could I concentrate with Nick across the hall setting up dates? I motioned
to Eddie. “Shut my door, would ya?”

Eddie stuck out a foot and pushed it closed.

“What can we do that hasn’t already been done?” I asked, throwing up my hands.

“I don’t know.” Eddie leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “We’ve got to think
of something, though.”

Viola stepped into my office with a copy of a tax return in her hand. She tossed it
onto my desk.

“What’s this?” I picked up the document and took a quick look at the front page. It
was a tax return for an elderly woman named Ora Bickerstaff. The return had been prepared
using surviving-spouse filing status, meaning Ms. Bickerstaff had lost her husband
during the tax year. He’d left her well off, through. Her return reported investment
income of fifty grand.

“Richard Beauregard is at it again,” Vi said, eyeing us over the top of her bifocals.

“How can that be?” Eddie said. “We terminated his e-filing privileges.”

Vi pursed her lips. “He filed the old-fashioned way.”

“A paper return?” Eddie snatched the pages out of my hand. “Nobody files paper returns
anymore.” He scanned the first page, then turned to the second. “Beau claimed another
fraudulent fuel tax credit.”

Which meant another taxpayer defrauded. A widow, no less. Was there no depth too low
for Beau to sink to?

Eddie handed the return back to me. I looked it over thoroughly. Sure enough, Beauregard
Financial Services was listed in the paid-preparer section.

It was one thing to be outsmarted by well-trained terrorists with college degrees
in difficult subjects. It was another to be outsmarted by an idiot with a unibrow.

“Let’s pay a visit to Ora Bickerstaff,” I suggested.

While Eddie went to his office to retrieve his jacket and briefcase, I gathered up
my purse and stepped across the hall to Nick’s office.

Nick glanced up from his computer screen. “Hey.”

I leaned on the doorjamb. “Another night, another girl, huh?”

He ducked his chin in agreement. “Yep.”

“Do me a favor, will you?” I snapped. “Have a horrible, rotten, no-good time.” It
was a mean-spirited, spiteful, jealous thing to say. I’m human. Sue me.

A knowing grin spread across Nick’s lips. “You’re eating your heart out, aren’t you?”

No sense lying about something that was so obvious. “Yes, I am. If Brett weren’t dealing
with a beetle infestation in Atlanta it would be you and me going out tonight.”

He raised a brow. “Bugs, huh? That’s what’s kept you from breaking up with him?”

I nodded. “His career’s on the line. And not just the landscaping but the nursery
business, too.”

Nick watched me for a moment, his expression thoughtful, considering. “I suppose it
would take a nasty bitch to break up with a guy who’s going through a major career
setback.”

Did that mean he understood why I hadn’t been able to move things along with Brett?
I didn’t have time to find out. Eddie walked up.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I took one last look at Nick before walking away.

He gave me a soft smile and he gave me a wink. But what he gave me most was hope.

*   *   *

Ora Bickerstaff lived in a newly constructed high-dollar high-rise for senior citizens.
The place was gorgeous, with lush gardens outside and Tuscan tile and granite accents
inside. The residents enjoyed valet parking, gourmet meals, and maid service. Who
said getting old had to suck?

“I’d love to live like this,” I told Eddie as we made our way to the security desk
to check in.

“No kidding,” Eddie agreed. “Did you see the lunch menu posted by the entrance? They’re
serving mahimahi. You know what I had for dinner last night? Macaroni and cheese,
for the third time this week.”

Mac ’n’ cheese was the twins’ favorite. Poor Eddie, stuck with a diet fit for a grade-school
palate.

We showed our identification to the guard at the desk. Once we’d been cleared, we
climbed into the elevator and rode up to the twelfth floor along with a couple of
older women carrying canvases and oil paints.

Ms. Bickerstaff lived in unit 1204, a spacious model with plate-glass windows and
a balcony that overlooked a park. Her place was filled with expensive high-quality
antiques, including an ornate grandfather clock and a baby grand piano. As for Ms.
Bickerstaff, she, too, was a high-quality antique, dressed in a tailored pantsuit
I recognized as a Liz Claiborne offering. Her silver hair hung in a short, smooth
bob. At her ankles quivered a tiny male Yorkshire terrier with red ribbons in his
hair, a canine cross-dresser.

Ms. Bickerstaff invited Eddie and me to take a seat on her couch and offered us tea.
We both thanked her but declined.

She took a seat in a wooden rocker and used her hands to lift her legs up onto a footstool
with a needlepoint cover. “Swollen ankles and arthritis,” she explained, “but I don’t
let it slow me down much.”

Good for her.

The dog waited until Ms. Bickerstaff had settled in, then leaped up into her lap.
The woman ran a blue-veined hand over the dog’s back and looked at me and Eddie. “You
said you had some questions about my tax return?”

“That’s right,” Eddie said. “We’ve been after your tax preparer, Richard Beauregard,
for a while now. We went to arrest him at his office last week, but he fled out a
window.”

“My goodness.” Her eyes grew wide and her hand stilled on the dog’s back. “What were
you going to arrest him for?”

We explained about Beauregard’s fraudulent fuel tax scheme and the nonexistent insurance
and investment companies.

Ms. Bickerstaff sat up in her chair. “Are you telling me I gave that little bugger
three thousand dollars for a gas well that doesn’t even exist?”

The dog looked up at the woman’s face, cocking his head in concern.

“Sorry,” I said, “but yes. That’s exactly what we’re telling you.”

She shook her head. “My husband must be rolling over in his grave. He always told
me I was too trusting. That’s why he took care of all of our finances while he was
alive.”

We asked her how she’d hooked up with Beauregard.

“I saw his ad in
The
Greensheet,
” she said. “It caught my eye because it said he’d come to his clients. I don’t drive
much anymore.”

“So he came here?” I asked.

She nodded. “Prepared my return right there at my kitchen table.”

“Any chance you’ve got that
Greensheet
?” I asked. Beauregard’s old phone numbers had been disconnected and he hadn’t listed
a new phone number on the tax return. If we could get a copy of the ad, we’d know
his new number and could possibly use it to track him down.

Ms. Bickerstaff gestured toward her pantry. “Check the recycle bin in the bottom.
I think it’s still in there.”

I opened the pantry door and bent down to rifle through her plastic recycle bin. I
found a
Greensheet
near the bottom, under a week’s worth of the
Dallas Morning News
. I quickly perused it. Beauregard’s ad had been circled in pencil. “Found it!” I
called.

We thanked the woman for her time and told her we’d let her know when we tracked Richard
Beauregard down …
if
we tracked him down. Our targets seemed to be doing a good job of staying out of
reach lately.

chapter twenty-two

Vroom-Vroom Kaboom

Eddie and I headed back to the G-ride in the parking lot. As I approached the car,
I flipped through
The
Greensheet,
perusing the singles section to see if I could find a new love interest for Alicia.
One of the pages slipped out, dropping to the parking lot. As I bent to pick it up,
I noticed something odd lodged behind the back tire of the car. The thing was plastic,
circular, and flat, like the tortilla warmers used in Mexican restaurants. I assumed
it was trash, though I wasn’t sure how the trash ended up behind the tire and I wasn’t
sure why someone would throw away what appeared to be a perfectly usable tortilla
warmer.

Being the upstanding citizen I was, I grabbed the thing, carried it over to a nearby
metal garbage Dumpster, and tossed it over the top of the bin. I turned and was headed
back to the car when
KABOOM!

I dived behind a nearby Impala. Garbage sailed into the air and the Dumpster rocked
backward, its metal sides bowing out, the impact blowing a hole completely through
the far side.

“Holy shit!” Eddie ducked behind the fleet car and held his briefcase over his head,
shielding himself against the deluge of yesterday’s cheese tortellini raining down
from the sky. “What the hell did you throw in that Dumpster?”

I was guessing it was not a tortilla warmer. I was guessing it was some type of land
mine.

Someone had followed us to the high-rise without our knowledge, someone who wanted
me and Eddie dead.

That much required no guesswork.

I ran to Eddie, grabbed him, and dragged him away from the car. “There might be more
explosives. We’ve got to call the bomb squad.”

Eddie and I put a safe distance between us and the car and called 911. A couple of
men from the building’s security team raced outside. We waved them over and told them
what had happened. They took one look at the blown-out Dumpster and the vehicles splattered
with leftovers and gaped.

“Jesus Christ,” one of them muttered, shaking his head. “Didn’t expect nothing like
that on this job.”

One of the men stayed outside to prevent cars or people from entering the lot, while
the other returned to the building to evacuate the residents. Better safe than sorry.

In minutes, three police cruisers and two fire trucks were on the scene, along with
dozens of cops and first responders. Soon afterward, the bomb squad arrived with a
frisky black Lab trained to sniff out explosives. The dog put his nose to the ground
and set right to work. Looked like we were in good hands. Or should I say good
nostrils
?

A steady stream of residents exited the building, some in wheelchairs, others making
their way down the sidewalk as quickly as they could with their walkers and canes.
A group of women in bathing suits and rubber swim caps came out together, the bomb
having interrupted their water aerobics class. The residents gathered on the far lawn
to watch the activity in the parking lot, the sound of their excited chatter drifting
across the lawn.

A fortyish plainclothes cop headed our way, identifying himself as a detective. He
whipped out a mini tape recorder and notepad. “Mind if I ask you some questions?”

An hour later, after Eddie and I had provided all the information we could to the
detective and the bomb squad had determined there were no other explosives in the
vicinity, we were cleared to leave. I demanded that Eddie stand back while I started
the car, just in case. If I was blown to smithereens my parents and siblings would
lament my death, but if Eddie died he’d leave a wife and two young children behind.
I wasn’t about to take that chance.

I closed my eyes, held my breath, and crossed the fingers of my left hand as I turned
the key in the ignition. The engine started without a hitch.
Phew.
I glanced upward. “Thanks, Big Guy.”

Looked like Eddie and I would live to fight crime another day. Of course whoever put
the explosives under the tire would no doubt soon be back at work trying to find another
way to kill us.