Tara Holloway 03 - Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray (20 page)

Their task completed, they left the room.

I grabbed a couple envelopes off the top of the pile and eyed the return addresses. One was from a Ricky Don Dupree, General Delivery, Lone Star Nation. The other was from an Elizabeth Beardsley at a Dallas address. I opened the letters. Ricky Don’s letter was written in barely legible chicken scratch and contained a verbal barrage of accusations against me, ranging from tyranny to illegal imperialism. Elizabeth’s letter was written in precise, flowing handwriting, accusing me of essentially the same things but for different reasons.

Eddie passed by my office but then retreated a few steps, doing a double take at the pile of mail on my desk. “What’s all that?”

“Love letters from the Lone Star Nation and the Ark,” I replied.

He put a hand to his forehead. “I feel another headache coming on.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”

My cell phone chirped and I pulled it from my purse. The readout indicated it was Brett. Thank goodness. I could use some moral support. I pushed the button to accept his call. “Hi, Brett.”

“You pulled a gun on Trish last night?” he said. “And called her ‘fuck face’?”

No “hello”? No “good morning”? No “how are you”?

“I thought Trish was an intruder,” I replied. As for “fuck face,” well, that was simply false bravado mixed with alliteration.

“She was only returning some tools, Tara. You could’ve shot her!”

“I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger until I identified whether she was a threat,” I said. “Besides, how was I supposed to know it was her? You didn’t tell me she was coming to your house.”

“You didn’t tell me you’d be in my house, either.”

“It was a long story. I figured I’d tell you all about it today, when we had more time to talk.” Wait. Why was I the one defending myself here? This didn’t seem right.

“What’s going on?” Brett asked, finally expressing some concern about my welfare.

I told him about the phone calls, the foreclosure notice, the
FOR SALE
sign, the big-ass stack of hate mail staring me in the face.

“I can see why you might have been feeling on edge.” His voice softened a little. “Why is it you always get assigned the cases with the nut jobs?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

He was quiet a moment. “Look. I’m sorry I jumped on you. It’s just that Trish called me this morning freaking out. You scared her half to death.”

What was I supposed to say to that? Was he expecting me to apologize? I wasn’t quite sure I was in the mood for that. I settled for, “It was just a little misunderstanding. All’s well that ends well, right?”

He hesitated a moment before saying, “I guess so.”

I was hot and bothered by that point, but I could feel Nick’s gaze on me from across the hall and didn’t want to take this unpleasant discussion any further in front of him. I forced a smile onto my face. “I’ve got to be somewhere,” I said into the phone. “Can we talk later?”

Brett let out a long sigh. “Okay.”

I hung up and gently slid the phone back into my purse, fighting the urge to hurl the thing against my wall. Nothing in my life seemed to be going right at the moment. Not work. Not my refinance. Not my personal life. Hell, I’d even woken up with an unsightly sty in my eye this morning. The thing hurt and itched and had tripled in size already, threatening to take over my entire face.

My desk phone rang then. I picked it up without checking the readout. “Agent Holloway.”

“Trouble in paradise?” It was Nick.

I looked up and my gaze met his from across the hall.

I turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Brett’s a pretty boy, Tara. He’s not man enough for you.”

I didn’t much appreciate Nick insulting my boyfriend but, at the moment, I was inclined to agree with him. So I’d pulled a gun on someone. Big deal. Nothing Brett should have gotten himself so worked up about. Still, I said nothing.

“For now,” Nick continued, “Brett thinks it’s cool dating a federal agent. But as the reality sets in, things are going to fall apart. I guarantee it.”

I turned back, glaring at him across the hall, shooting daggers at him with my eyes. “What makes you such an expert?” I spat.

“Been there myself,” he said matter-of-factly. “This job cost me a fiancée.”

“You were engaged?” My rage was instantly replaced by a surge of pure jealousy at this unknown woman, then anger at myself for feeling it. I had no right to feel possessive of Nick. He wasn’t mine.

Just say the word.

“It was a while back,” he said, “before Mexico.” He failed to elaborate further on his derailed nuptials and I didn’t push him. No doubt it was a sore subject. “Not everyone can handle a relationship with someone like us, Tara. It takes a very independent and brave person.”

“Brett’s brave,” I replied. “When I was stuck in a hole being shot at, he snuck up on the shooter and whooped the guy upside the head with a pipe.”

Nick raised a brow. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Guess I’ll have to give him some credit, then. Still, I don’t think he’s got what it takes for the long haul. He doesn’t get why you do this, does he? He doesn’t understand you.”

It was true. Though Brett respected my work, he’d never understood why I was willing to take the risks I took for my job.

But Nick understood.

Fully. Completely. Intimately.

I felt my throat grow tight. “Please don’t do this,” I whispered, my voice high and squeaky.

“Don’t do what? Tell you the truth?”

Exactly. Nick was putting into words the fears I now realized I’d harbored in the back of my mind all along.

When I failed to respond, Nick asked, “What do you see in him?”

What did I see in Brett? Lots of things. He was a nice guy, sweet, thoughtful. I admired his work ethic. But, admittedly, one of the things I liked was that he was generally an easygoing, undemanding guy. Our relationship didn’t take much effort, on my part at least. “He’s an easy guy to be with.”

“Easy?” Nick emitted a snort of derision. “Since when does Tara Holloway take the easy way out?”

“I get enough challenges every day on the job,” I replied. “I don’t need my personal relationships to be work, too.”

My intercom buzzed. I pushed the button and Viola’s voice came over the speaker. “Your parents are here.”

“Thanks,” I told her. “Gotta go,” I told Nick.

He skewered me with a pointed look. “This conversation isn’t over.”

I hung up my phone. The conversation might not be over, but it had concluded for now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Outbid

I met my mother and father in the building’s foyer, giving them each a big hug.

My dad was a weatherworn, broad-shouldered man, old-fashioned and no-nonsense. If someone were to be cast as my dad in a movie, the role would have to go to Tommy Lee Jones. Mom, too, was a bit old-fashioned, chestnut-haired and petite like me. Though she was down-to-earth, she appreciated the finer things in life, too. Reba McEntire would be cast in her role.

Dad wore his best pair of cowboy boots, a pair of starched and ironed jeans, and a classic white button-down. Mom had dressed in a blue A-line dress and low heels, sophisticated enough to fit in here in the somewhat pretentious city of Dallas, but comfortable enough for the six-hour roundtrip drive they’d make today. My hometown of Nacogdoches lay three hours to the east, in the piney woods, not far from the Louisiana border.

They’d made the trek for this morning’s government auction, but couldn’t stay the night. Dad had a load of hay to deliver to a horse-breeding facility first thing tomorrow morning.

Mom put a hand on each of my shoulders and squinted at my face. “What’s wrong with your eye?”

“It’s just a sty, Mom. No big deal.”

“It looks horrible.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re not getting enough sleep, are you?”

“I’m sleeping fine.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“You should come home for a nice, long visit. Get some rest.”

“I will,” I promised. “As soon as things slow down.” Heck, I’d love to go home and let Mom take care of me for a few days.

“Put a warm teabag over your eye,” Mom suggested. “That’ll get rid of the sty.”

The last home remedy my mother had suggested was to coat my hair with mayonnaise to get rid of lice I’d contracted from trying on a hat at a thrift shop. While her advice had worked, my greasy hair had induced a large hunting dog to knock me down and lick my head. The beast had nearly given me a concussion.

We made our way out to Dad’s pickup and loaded in. As I had since I was a little girl, I sat between my mother and father, where I’d be both safe and in easy reach should I smart off and need a corrective smack. I’d never actually received the threatened smacks, though I’d had a hostile finger pointed in my face a few times. I was much too old for insincere threats or finger-pointing now, but old habits die hard.

I gave Dad directions to the auction site, which was at the livestock barn on the Dallas fairgrounds. We arrived twenty minutes later and parked. The enormous, permanent Ferris wheel loomed motionless over us as we walked through the lot into the sprawling metal building.

During the annual state fair, the building housed everything from pigs, to cows, to llamas, to ostriches. Today, though, the space housed an assortment of items seized from deadbeats who hadn’t paid their taxes. Though the stalls had been hosed down, the place retained the faint, earthy smell of farm animals.

The Treasury Department hired a local auction service to conduct the sale. While the fast-talking auctioneers were more used to negotiating the sale of steers and sows, they did a fine job with the assorted electronics, jewelry, and tools that made up much of the seized inventory.

Dad filled out the requisite paperwork, obtained a paddle bearing his assigned number—362—and led us to three seats on the second row. As we sat, I spotted Betty Buchmeyer across the aisle. With her was a fiftyish man that must be her son. He was the spitting image of his father, both figuratively and literally. He held a paper coffee cup to his bulging lower lip, but rather than drinking from it he expelled a glob of tobacco into the makeshift spittoon. August Buchmeyer wasn’t in attendance. According to information we’d received from the district attorney, Buchmeyer had accepted a plea bargain and was serving six months in a psychiatric facility.

I glanced around the room. Several country-looking folks were seated about, but without the Lone Star Nation T-shirts there was no way to tell whether they were also members of the group. The last thing I wanted was to be ambushed. Maybe they wouldn’t recognize me with the unsightly bulge on my eyelid. Or maybe they’d think I suffered from a contagious disease and keep their distance.

We waited while the auctioneers sold off a numbered G. Harvey print, followed by a first edition of
Elmer Gantry
by Sinclair Lewis. The first went to a woman in a gauzy and colorful bohemian dress, probably an art dealer. The latter went to a stooped man with round-framed spectacles, probably a retired librarian or English professor.

Some odd things made their way onto the auction block. A canoe that had been fitted with wheels, a motor, and a steering apparatus. A half-dozen naked male mannequins. A neon sign that read
GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!
Although the Buchmeyers’ chickens had been seized by the sheriff’s department after the cockfighting incident, the birds wouldn’t be on the auction block today. They’d been rescued by an animal welfare organization and would live out their lives strutting and pecking dirt at a sanctuary. I was glad to know the speckled hen I’d befriended wouldn’t end up on someone’s dinner plate.

When the cases of Spam came up for auction, Betty Buchmeyer engaged in a brief bidding war against an Asian man wearing white pants and a white T-shirt, his clothing spotted with food stains. A fry cook, perhaps? After a bit of back and forth, the man gave up and the canned meat was once again the property of the Lone Star Nation. With any luck, clogged arteries would prevent the secessionists from launching any violent takeover they might have planned.

Finally, it was time for the guns.

The auctioneer started with the lower-ticket items, used guns in varying, and sometimes questionable, condition. Once those were out of the way, he began to peddle the brand-new guns that Nick, Jenkins, and I had seized at the Buchmeyers’ place. He began with a semiautomatic shotgun, starting the bid at a bargain price of fifty dollars. The gun retailed for twelve hundred.

Dad raised his paddle, along with a dozen other men, including the Buchmeyers’ son. After several rounds of bidding, Betty reached out a hand to hold her son’s arm down. Either they’d replaced the guns already or they’d run low on cash and couldn’t bid any higher. I was hoping it was the latter.

The group dwindled down to Dad and a deep-voiced man at the back holding paddle number 437. The man’s voice seemed oddly familiar. Was it one of the men who’d been arrested the night of the cockfight? Hard to tell when he issued only clipped bids and not complete sentences.

When the price reached eight hundred, Dad bowed out. “Too rich for my blood.”

The man with the deep and oddly familiar voice won the bid at $815.

Though Dad lost this initial battle, he later managed to snag both a short-range rifle and a handgun for rock-bottom prices. All in all, not a bad morning.

When we went to claim Dad’s new guns, I was surprised to see Nick at the front of the line. He doled out a stack of cash, signed the paperwork, and turned around, his new semiautomatic shotgun in his hands. No wonder that deep voice had sounded familiar.

Despite our earlier unpleasant conversation, Nick’s face brightened when he saw me. “Hey, Tara.”

Mom took one look at Nick, grabbed the paddle out of Dad’s hand, and began to fan herself with it. “Boy howdy,” she whispered under her breath. “Something’s giving me one mother of a hot flash.”

That
something
headed our way, stopping when he reached us. I introduced him to my parents, noticing my mother blush when Nick flashed his chipped-tooth smile at her.