The Taxman Killeth (2 page)

“Whoa, wait, Trudy. I think you’re
getting carried away.”

“Why? It’s perfectly normal to
take someone like that out to lunch and charge it to the firm’s account.”

“I never did that with Pickle.
We used to have lunch brought in for us.”

“Naw, that would only work if we
could set up a candlelit luncheon, and I think that would be considered a fire
hazard here.”

“Trudy, he’s here to work.”

“But Amy, you’re gorgeous, he’s
gorgeous, you’re not seeing anyone...”

“Ah, but he might be. He may
even be married.”

“No ring.”

Amy laughed. Here she was,
excited about working with him, and she hadn’t even looked at his left hand.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean
that he isn’t married, Trudy.”

“Well, if I were married to that
guy, I sure would have him wear a big gold band.”

“Why don’t we compromise and be
a bit more subtle? Why don’t you call that fish restaurant we like and see if
you can get a 12:30 reservation for,” she paused. Trudy had a penchant for
jumping to conclusions too quickly. “...for Mr. Coleman and myself.” Secretly
she wished she could have used his first name.

“Done!” Trudy immediately picked
up the receiver and started punching out the restaurant’s number.

Meanwhile, Amy collected the
materials she would need for Todd. On her way back to the conference room, she
saw Trudy at the end of the hall give her the high sign. Lunch it is, then, at
12:30, she thought.

For the rest of the morning,
Todd was very business-like, and Amy tried to give him all the assistance she
could. She thought they worked well together. However, once she noticed it was 12:05, she became preoccupied with how she would introduce lunch. Finally at 12:15 Todd called for a break.

“I can see you must be eager to
go to lunch, Amy. Your mind seems to have drifted off our task. I’m going to
call a friend of mine who works in the building for lunch. Why don’t we meet
back here about 1:15? Okay?”

Amy’s body went limp. The pencil
she was holding fell to the floor. Todd leaned over in his seat to pick it up.
As he handed the pencil back to her, she managed to stammer out an “okay.”

After Todd left the conference
room, Trudy peeked in.

“Well?”

“Want to go to lunch, Trudy?
They’ll probably have the mahimahi special today.”

Neither was thrilled about
glumly sitting through an expensive meal, so they opted for the fast-food
restaurant in the lobby of the building. They hypothesized about who Todd
Coleman’s luncheon partner could be. Male, female? Female, of course. Nothing
else seemed to matter beyond that.

Amy was five minutes late
returning to the conference room. Todd was already immersed in his work.

“Good lunch?” asked Todd while
checking the time on his watch.

“Could have been better.”

Todd looked up at her and
smiled. “Same here.”

Did he mean the company he had
kept or the food he had eaten? she wondered. Maybe she could have Trudy make
another reservation for tomorrow at 12:30.

He had rolled up his sleeves,
and as Amy took her place in the seat next to him, she noticed the pronounced
veins channeling up the inside of his forearms. He must have great biceps, she
speculated.

“Something wrong, Amy?”

“Oh, no.”

“Here, you can read these
numbers to me while I check them off on this sheet.” He handed her one of the
multitude of ledgers. Her hand brushed his long fingers.

“That’s a nice ring, Amy. Is it
an engagement ring?”

Amy looked down at the pearl
ring on her left hand.

“No. It was a gift from my
sister. She owns an antique store and picked this up for me at one of the
estate sales she attended.”

He smiled warmly into her eyes, then
cast a lingering glance down at her fitted forest green cashmere sweater. Amy
knew what her assets were, and he was looking at two of them.

“Okay, read,” he said abruptly
and swung back into business mode.

The rest of the afternoon passed
swiftly. He had obviously discussed the law firm with Pickens and knew all the
pertinent information. Amy liked working with him. He was organized,
intelligent, and patient. He didn’t expect her to come up with answers
instantaneously, and because of this she found the work moved along smoothly
without the brittle interruptions and caustic comments she had been exposed to
when she worked with Pickle Pickens. By 6:30 they had accomplished as much as
it would have taken Pickens three days to do.

Finally, Todd pushed his chair
back from the table, stretched his arms up into the air and rotated his head,
first clockwise, then counter-clockwise.

“I think I’ve had it for today.
How about you?” he asked.

Amy placed her pencil on the
table, thereupon realizing that she was starting to get a cramp in her hand.

“Me too.” She sighed.

“Why don’t we close up the books
and call it quits until, say, 8:30 tomorrow morning?”

Amy smiled weakly and nodded.

“Not too early for you, is it?”

“No. I guess I didn’t realize
how tired I am; we’ve been working so intently.”

“Yeah, hardly gave us any chance
to get to know each other,” he said softly, looking her squarely in the face.

“We still have lots more work to
go,” she said, spreading her hands across the ledgers before her. We may get to
know each other yet, she thought. However, she knew that at the pace they were
working, the job would take half the time it usually took with Pickens. It was
hard for her to believe that cutting this job short could be disappointing, but
it was.

Todd started to roll down his
shirt-sleeves.

“I passed a little French
restaurant across the street today when I was coming back from lunch. My friend
said he had heard some good things about it. Are you familiar with it?”

He. So the friend was male, not
female, as she and Trudy had so tortured themselves into believing.

“It’s excellent. The partners go
there frequently for lunch. I was there once when they were celebrating one of
the staff’s promotion to partner.”

“Good. I stopped in and made
reservations for tonight. I just hope my prospective dinner date can join me.”

“The person would be a fool not
to join you.”

“You don’t look like a fool,
Amy.”

She stopped shuffling papers
around and turned toward Todd.

“How about it? Join me for
dinner.”

Amy looked straight at Todd. The
exhaustion of the day’s work seemed to fall away as her body lifted up to its
full height.

“You’re right. I’m no fool,” she
whispered in a sultry tone.

When she and Todd reached the
reception area Amy was surprised to see that Trudy was still seated at her
desk, flipping through the appointment book.

“It’s almost seven o’clock, Trudy. What are you still doing here?”

“Have to wrap up a few things. I
should be out of here within another fifteen minutes or so.”

Amy could see the question in
Trudy’s eyes as her glance shifted between Amy and Todd. While he opened the
door, Amy surreptitiously gave Trudy a thumbs up sign.

A brilliant smile caused a
twinkle to form in Trudy’s eyes. It was as if she were going to dinner with
Todd instead of Amy.

Chapter 2

Not a Bad Job

Todd opened the door to the
French restaurant, allowing Amy to enter first. The room was mainly lit by
candlelight reflected off the three mirrored walls. Ceiling lights dimly gave
off additional illumination, enabling patrons and staff to see their way in
between the closely crowded tables.

The maitre d’ hurried over to
them and, with a feigned French accent, asked how many would be in their party.

“Only the two of us,” Todd
answered, thinking that there certainly wouldn’t be room for many more than
that. Practically every table was full.

“The firm rented out the entire
restaurant for our celebration,” Amy whispered.

“I hope so.”

He watched Amy easily slip in
and out of the maze of diners. She was certainly an attractive woman, although
that had not been his main reason for asking her out. Todd wished that he could
ease his bulk as lithely as she. Instead, he managed to bump into several
tables, leaving pairs of faces scowling after him.

When the maitre d’ asked whether
the table closest to the kitchen would be satisfactory, Todd shook his head.

He felt Amy slip her arm around
his.

“We could wait for a better
table or go someplace else. I don’t mind.”

Todd pulled out several bills
from his trouser pocket and handed them to the maitre d’. The cost could be
included on his expense account.

Suddenly, they were shown to a
table toward the front of the restaurant, and a reserved sign was quickly
swiped off the tablecloth. Todd pulled out a chair for Amy, since the maitre d’
had hurried off to welcome two more suckers. Her shoulder blades swept across
the knuckles of his hand, bringing a slight static electric charge. She moved
forward and away from him instantly, and Todd found himself a bit disappointed.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“Oh, no, my fault.”

“I think it’s really the fault
of the carpeting,” he said, taking the seat across from her.

Even in the dim light, Todd
could see Amy’s face color as she nodded. God, he didn’t expect that she would
be this pretty, actually more like beautiful, he thought, as he took in the
high cheekbones and sea-green eyes. Her nose was classically perfect and the
lips full and moist, glistening passion under the flickering light of the
candle. He reminded himself that this was a job. Not a bad one, he conceded.

Finally, a waiter brought them
two menus, and Todd was able to bury his head behind two pieces of cardboard.

“Do you like escargot?” Amy
asked.

Snails. All he could think about
were those slimy shelled creatures that crawled across the back porch of his
parents’ house when he was a child.

“If you do, the garlic and
butter sauce is delicious.”

Todd swallowed hard.

“I think I’m just going to have
a salad and skip the appetizer, but if you care for something, please order
whatever you want.”

Todd was hoping she’d give up on
the idea of snails; sitting across from someone picking around in one of those
shells could ruin his good appetite.

“Since I’ve already had the
escargot, I think I’ll try something different. The sweetbreads look
interesting.”

Why did Joey suggest taking her
to this restaurant when he would have been much happier at a steak house? Todd
ran his finger down the list of items. There must be beef here somewhere. Ah! Tournedos
of beef. He wondered how cow meat was turned into tournedos. As long as they
kept the sauce simple, he’d be all right. He glanced at the table. Salt and
pepper. No ketchup. He supposed there wouldn’t be any fries on the plate when
his entree was served.

“Has your friend eaten here?”

“My friend?”

“The one who recommended this
place.”

“I doubt it.” Joey was more a
McDonald’s kind of guy.

“How did he hear about it?”

“Excuse me?”

“How did he know to send you
here?”

“We were just walking by, and he
mentioned that the place had been rated highly somewhere.”

“Gourmet?”

“No, he’s not.”

“I mean, did he read about the
restaurant in Gourmet magazine?”

“Doesn’t sound like his kind of
reading material; probably in the local paper.”

Amy nodded and ran through some
of the entrees that her fellow workers had tried.

“Trudy said the beef was a
little tough here, so you may want to skip that, but I had the fresh poached
salmon and it was wonderful.”

“She didn’t like the beef?”

Amy shook her head. Todd closed
his menu, resigning himself to stringy meat. Immediately the waiter rushed over
to take their order.

“I can’t decide.” Todd couldn’t
believe it when Amy asked the waiter what he’d recommend. He was definitely
lean and didn’t look like he ate much. As he listed several dishes, Todd
realized there was an epidemic of phony accents in the place.

She ordered the sweetbreads
appetizer, but decided to play it safe and stick to her poached salmon. Todd
watched her gawk as he ordered the beef with a small salad. The waiter cleared
his throat and suggested one of the fish dishes instead. Todd felt like
suggesting meat tenderizer but thought it better to placate both staring faces.

“I’ll have the tuna steak.”

The waiter judged his choice to
be perfect and slid the leather-bound wine list in front of Todd.

“Let’s see, we’re both having
fish, so it’ll have to be white.” A red meat man, Todd was an expert on reds. “Do
you like anything in particular, Amy?”

“They probably don’t have the
discount wines I buy.” She laughed self-consciously.

He wanted to share his lack of
knowledge. If he did, it would be opening up to a personal relationship in the
midst of this case. Damn, if he wasn’t lucky. Each wine had a picture next to
it. One a chicken, another a cow, hey, and there was a fish. When the waiter
returned he ordered that wine and was again commended upon his choice. Not too
difficult, he thought.

“I didn’t know that Mr. Pickens
was old enough to retire,” Amy said.

“He took early retirement so
that he could spend more time on his hobbies. He has quite a collection of
model trains, you know.”

Joey was the one with the model
trains, but he was sure that Pickens and this woman had nothing in common and
had probably kept most of their conversation to the work they were doing.

“I wanted a set of trains when I
was a child, but my parents wouldn’t buy it for me. They said it wasn’t
feminine; instead they bought me a new wardrobe for my Barbie Doll every time I
complained.”