Death, Taxes, and Hot Pink Leg Warmers (31 page)

Back at the office after lunch, I spent a couple of hours tying up loose ends on other cases. At three-thirty, Lu rounded me up to head to the Y for another intense workout. Nick tagged along, helping us with the weight stacks.

He spotted me on the bench press, standing over me as I pushed the bar upward. Nick had added ten more pounds to my usual load, and I grunted with the exertion.

“Come on, Tara, give me everything you’ve got,” he said in a low voice, grinning down at me. “Push it. Push it hard.”

I lowered the bar back down. “So you’re a dirty talker, huh?” I took a breath and shoved upward with all my might, releasing another very unfeminine grunt as I raised the teetering bar.

Nick reached out a hand to stabilize the weights. “Only if you want me to be.”

I lowered the bar back down. “I might like that,” I said, shoving it up again with another groan. “On occasion.”

“Good to know,” he said. “I like to mix it up a bit myself.”

Fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves imitating John Travolta from
Saturday Night Fever
in a new class dubbed Disco Aerobics. I wasn’t sure whether it was the exercise or the fact that Nick was dancing next to me, but either way my heart rate was up. At one point the instructor had us form two parallel lines and each of us took a turn freestyling our way down the center lane. The Lobo did an improvised conga, spinning her folded arms around each other while whipping her hips side to side. Nick performed some quick polka steps and turns, his arms up as if holding an imaginary partner. I followed him, doing a moonwalk followed by some gyrations I’d seen the girls at the club perform.

“Ooh, that’s hot!” the instructor called, egging me on.

When I reached the end, I slid into line next to Nick.

“You little slut,” he whispered. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“You just wait,” I said. “I’m full of surprises.”

Uh-oh. I was on the hook now. Better come up with some surprises, huh? I made a mental note to buy the latest issue of
Cosmopolitan
the next time I went to the grocery store.

*   *   *

Christina phoned my cell as I was on my way to the club.

“Good news!” she said. “Cops in Oklahoma City busted two guys today for possession with intent to distribute. Both of them had the personal phone number for one of Stillwater Spirits’ delivery drivers in their phones.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “It’s the driver who delivers to Guys and Dolls?”

“You got it.”

“Have they arrested the driver yet?”

“No,” she replied. “They don’t want to go after him until they’re sure he’ll have a large stash of drugs on him. Some of my coworkers plan to nail him after he makes his pickup at Guys and Dolls next week.”

“What about Valley Produce?”

“No luck there. The agents who have had the place under surveillance haven’t seen anything suspicious.”

Huh. Maybe I was wrong about Valley Produce. Maybe the drugs weren’t coming from them. Maybe the drugs were coming in some other way. But none of us had noticed any of the customers giving Theo or Geils any bags or boxes or any other suspicious containers. Had one of the customers brought the drugs in hidden in his pockets or jacket? Maybe unloaded them in the VIP room where Geils or Theo could access them once everyone else had left the club? It was possible that Wesley Prescott had brought the drugs to Geils. After all, I’d seen him go into Geils’s office more than once. One of the dancers could be the link, too. Maybe one of the women had smuggled drugs into the club in a body cavity. Ew. And the cleaning service hadn’t been cleared, either, though I had my doubts they’d played a role.

Christina continued. “We hope that once we bust everyone we know is involved, they’ll lead us to the supplier. Problem is, I suspect only Geils deals directly with that person, and I doubt Geils will talk.”

“Sometimes we have to settle for who we can get.”

It was unfortunate but true. Sometimes the best law enforcement could do was chip away at crime, arrest a few of the players and hope the others would eventually get their due.

We ended the call when I arrived at the club. I went inside, stashed my purse, and headed to the bar for a soda.

Aaron handed me my drink, glancing around to ensure no one was within hearing range. “Did you get the news?”

“Yep. Got a call on my way over.” I signed my credit slip, adding a dollar tip.

He slid the slip into the cash register. “I’m going to miss the tip income when this case is over.”

Heck, I would, too, not that my meager wages came anywhere close to what Menger made with his gratuities. Still, having an extra paycheck had been a nice bonus. I’d been using the additional income to buy savings bonds for my nieces and nephews. So long as they cashed them in to pay college expenses, the income would be nontaxable. Not a bad deal, huh? I’d also made another contribution to the local animal shelter where I’d adopted Henry and Anne. The place could use the funds to care for the homeless pets and I could use the tax deduction. Win-win.

Of course I’d been selfish with some of the money. I’d set aside enough to buy some new lingerie and scented massage oil. With my busy schedule, I hadn’t had time to go shopping yet, but I planned to take advantage of the Black Friday sales to stock up on sexy underthings to impress Nick. We’d gotten off to a rocky start and had to wait so long to be together. I wanted everything to be perfect our first time.

When I arrived at the cash office, I found Bernice curled up in the wing chair, a notepad and pen in her hand.

“Do you want green beans with almonds this year?” she asked Merle. “Or green bean casserole?”

I found myself smiling at the thought of green beans.

“Casserole,” Merle told her.

Bernice made a note. “Jellied cranberry sauce or chutney?”

“Chutney,” he replied.

I slid into my chair. “Are you two spending Thanksgiving together?”

“We sure are,” Merle said. “We’ve spent every holiday together since we first met.”

“Really?” I asked. “When was that?”

Bernice waved a graceful yet dismissive, hand. “Way back. We were hardly more than kids then.”

Would I never figure out how old Bernice was?

“Remember the first Thanksgiving we spent together?” Merle’s eyes twinkled with humor.

“Don’t remind me,” Bernice said, offering Merle a soft laugh before turning to me. “I didn’t know you had to thaw the turkey before cooking it. It was burned on the outside and still frozen on the inside.”

“I ate a whole plate of it anyway,” Merle said.

Bernice smiled. “You were sick as a dog later, too.”

“It was worth it.”

The two gazed at each other for a long moment.

I was beginning to feel like a third wheel and considered leaving the office when a dancer knocked on the door, bringing me her tips and interrupting Bernice and Merle’s romantic reverie. For the first time I wondered what would happen to the two of them when we busted Geils and closed down Guys & Dolls. The two had worked in this place for so long, had seen it through so many changes, the club seemed to be almost a part of them.

Would Bernice hang up her tassels and retire?

Would Merle finish his scripts?

Whatever happened, I hoped the story would end with a happily-ever-after for the two of them.

chapter thirty-eight

Nabbed

The next few days passed without incident, though Nick, Christina, Aaron, and I buzzed with anticipation, excited about the looming bust of the Stillwater Spirits delivery driver. I could hardly wait to wrap up this case so I could begin working on the investigation into the international organized-crime syndicates. Foreign intrigue sounded so much better than pursuing local perverts.

When I arrived at Guys & Dolls the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, the truck from Stillwater Spirits passed me on its way out of the lot. I glanced surreptitiously at the driver, curious what the drug mule would look like. Like the Tennis Racketeers, he was surprisingly unremarkable. Brown hair shorn short, plain face, average build from what I could tell. No aura of evil or danger.

But looks could be deceiving.

I knew that better than anyone.

I parked two spots down from Nick’s yellow Hummer and went inside.

The club was exceptionally busy for a Tuesday. Seemed a lot of men wanted to get in one last night of fun before spending the next day driving the wife and kids over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house for the Thanksgiving holiday. A large number of college-aged boys packed the place, too, sowing a few wild oats before heading home to Mom and Dad’s where they’d sleep in their boyhood beds and take a peek, once again, at that ten-year-old copy of
Playboy
they’d stolen from their father’s tool kit years ago and since kept tucked between their mattress and box spring.

I kept a close eye on Theo all night, watching for any sign he might have gotten wind that the driver from Stillwater Spirits had been busted. But when he brought me his tips, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

A generous amount of tips came in from the VIP room tonight. Looked like the johns had gotten a head start on the stuffing and cherry pie. Ew. The thought made me lose my appetite.

I crouched down in front of the safe to add a stack of bills to the large stash that had accumulated, glad to know I wouldn’t be in this job much longer. Besides the sleaze factor at the club, the tasks were mind-numbingly routine with nothing to break up the monotony. The thought that I’d soon be leaving all of this behind put me in exceptionally high spirits.

My happy demeanor didn’t get past Merle. “You seem in an unusually good mood tonight.”

Uh-oh. I’d felt a bit giddy knowing the delivery driver was being busted, but I hadn’t realized I’d let my feelings show.

“I’m excited about the holiday,” I said, hoping he’d buy my cover story. It wasn’t a total lie, after all. I was truly excited about the holiday, but more because I’d get to spend the whole day with Nick than because it would be an opportunity to overdose on squash casserole and pumpkin pie. “Speaking of holidays, does Mr. Geils give his employees a Christmas bonus?” I hoped the question would imply that I expected to still be working at the club a month from now. In reality,
nobody
would be working at the club a month from now.

“A Christmas bonus?” Merle chuckled without mirth. “Good one, Sara.”

“Rats.”

When our shift ended later that night, Christina texted me, Nick, and Aaron.
Meet at HQ for update on bust.

Once again we convened in the Dallas PD’s conference room.

Christina informed us that DEA agents, working in conjunction with officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, had pulled over the Stillwater Spirits delivery truck a few miles north of Denton, where there was less traffic than in Dallas and thus less potential for collateral damage should things go bad. The remote location also meant they’d be able to scrub the scene before news cameras would have time to arrive. The last thing anyone wanted was for the bust to make it onto the evening news. If Geils got wind of the arrest, he might hide evidence, make it harder for law enforcement to bring him down.

“Check this out,” Christina said, pushing buttons on her phone. “One of the DEA trainees recorded the bust on his phone.” She pulled up a video clip.

We crowded shoulder to shoulder and watched on the tiny screen as a DPS cruiser pulled the truck over. The state police officer ordered the driver to step out of the truck with his hands up. While the driver had initially complied, he took off running once additional law enforcement officers stepped out of the car.

The driver squeezed through some barbed wire and made it halfway across a cow pasture before a Brahma bull tearing up clover inside the fence spotted the intruder. While most bulls are castrated as calves and are nonaggressive, this particular bull was apparently used for breeding purposes and thus his pendulous ball bag was intact.

“Uh-oh.” Nick shook his head as he looked at the screen. “This can’t end well.”

The bull, having successfully knocked up each of the female cattle penned in the pasture with him, decided to put his remaining testosterone to use. Why not? The driver looked like a fun diversion from stud service.

The bull charged the delivery driver, hooked his horns under the guy’s legs, and sent him sailing into the air like a rag doll.

Aaron cringed. “That had to hurt.”

In the foreground, we noted the succeeding actions of the DEA agents and DPS troopers, which essentially involved them ROFLMAO, the
F
in this case standing for “freeway.” Heck, we were chuckling ourselves.

Despite a compound fracture in the arm that had broken his fall, the driver managed to get to his feet. He took off running again while the bull circled around and resumed his pursuit with a snort of renewed determination. The driver headed for the fence and performed an improvised high-jump maneuver, leaping backward over a gate only seconds before he would have been gored in the ass. The bull vectored off, slowed to a nut-swinging trot, then stopped to lift his tail and drop a load of cow patties.

The driver’s hard landing on the packed soil had knocked every air molecule from his lungs, and law enforcement quickly surrounded him as he lay in the dirt gasping for breath. The shaky clip showed him whipping a gun from the waistband of his jeans, but before he could get off a shot officers closed in and wrestled the gun from his hand, turning him over onto a pile of bovine droppings to cuff his hands behind him. He issued a string of particularly derogatory curses at the officers.

When the clip ended, Christina looked up. “The agents found three boxes in the truck packed solid with crystal meth.”

The driver was in deep shit, both figuratively and literally.

None of this made it onto the news, of course.

Christina went on to tell us that, once the driver was in custody, agents in Stillwater, Oklahoma, moved in on the company’s owner, with whom Nick had spoken on the phone not long ago when he’d called for a quote. “They snagged him as he pulled into his driveway after work.”