Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria (2 page)

A young African-American receptionist sat at a desk chewing on the end of a yellow
highlighter, a college textbook open in front of her. Accounting 101, an introductory
class. She wouldn’t have learned enough yet to know her boss was up to no good. The
girl’s casual coed attire clashed with the seductive office motif, but for ten bucks
an hour who wanted to suffer in heels and panty hose? On the corner of her desk was
a silver champagne bucket that contained partially melted ice and a half-empty bottle
of cheap champagne.

Behind the receptionist were two doors. The one that read “Diva” in sparkling red
paint was closed. The other one, which was unmarked, was cracked open a few inches.
Through the open door I could see a trio of young girls seated at long portable tables,
earbuds in their ears as they input data into computers. The Diva’s production staff,
no doubt.

The receptionist removed the highlighter from her mouth. “Can I help you?”

I held up my W-2. “I need to have my tax return prepared.”

“Fifty dollars per form,” the girl recited. “Ten percent discount if you pay cash.”

I had a sneaking suspicion the fees paid in cash went unreported. “Great. Can it be
done while I wait?”

“No problem. It’ll just take a few minutes.” She reached into a small cabinet behind
her, retrieved a plastic champagne flute, and poured me a glass of bargain-brand bubbly.
“Enjoy.”

“Thanks.” I traded my W-2 for the champagne. As I took a seat in one of the massage
chairs, the girl carried my W-2 through the open door.

I looked down at the magazine offerings on the coffee table.
Ebony. Essence.
Oprah’s magazine,
O.
I picked up the
O
magazine. I had a lot of respect for Oprah Winfrey. She was a ballsy yet classy broad,
fighting for justice and fairness and generally making the world a better place. Though
I shared her admirable aspirations, I could never be as classy as Oprah. I found it
hard to be consistently well behaved.

I jabbed the button on the chair control and the entire seat began to vibrate. The
movement made it a little difficult to sip the champagne without spilling it on myself,
but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from enjoying the stuff. It reminded me of
the spiked 7UP my friends and I used to drink back in college.

“This is g-g-great,” I told the receptionist, my voice quivering along with the chair.

She smiled. “Sometimes clients fall asleep there.”

I could see why. Between the effects of the champagne and the gentle rocking, I was
tempted to take a nap myself. The Diva was definitely on to something here.

I was halfway through an article on the merits of regular colonoscopies when one of
the girls from the back room came out of her door with a piece of paper in her hand.
A draft of my return. She pulled a black earbud out of one ear. Katy Perry’s voice
came through the tiny device, singing about hickeys, streaking through a park, and
dancing on tabletops. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The girl rapped softly
on the Diva’s door.

A husky woman’s voice called, “Come in!”

The coed stepped inside for a moment, then came back out, closing the Diva’s door
behind her. She returned to her spot at the portable table.

Not long after, the receptionist’s phone buzzed. A voice came over the speaker. “Miss
Henry’s return is ready.”

Yep, my alias was Anne Henry, a combination of the names of my two cats. I’d wanted
to go with something more clever like Gwen Down, a veiled take on “Going Down,” but
Eddie’d feared it might be too obvious.

The receptionist slipped into the Diva’s office and came back with my tax return.

I turned off the massage chair and looked over the paperwork she handed me. The return
showed I was due a refund of fourteen cents.
Damn!
The Diva had computed my taxes correctly. I felt cheated that I hadn’t been cheated.
Silly, huh? But it didn’t matter that she’d prepared my return accurately. We had
more than enough evidence of her large-scale fraud to take her in.

“That’ll be fifty dollars for the preparation service,” the receptionist said as she
slid back into her chair. “We can e-file it for you for another twenty-five.”

“No thanks.”

I stood, pulled out my phone, and texted Eddie.
14 cent refund.

He texted back.
U want a big refund, u gotta ask for it.

So that was where I’d gone wrong.

I’m coming in,
he added.

The receptionist stared up at me, waiting for me to pay my bill.

“You said fifty dollars, right?” I asked, stalling for time as Eddie returned to the
office.

The girl nodded.

I reached into my purse, but instead of removing my wallet I pulled out the leather
holder that contained my special agent badge. Eddie opened the door and came back
inside, his badge at the ready.

“We’re from the IRS,” I told the receptionist. “We need to see the Diva.”

“Uh … okay.” The girl’s expression was equal parts confused and surprised as we knocked
on the Diva’s door.

“Come in!” the woman called.

We opened the door and stepped inside. The Diva’s office was just as gaudy as her
foyer. Red wallpaper with thick gold stripes graced the walls, and her windows were
covered with red satin curtains. She sat behind a shiny black lacquer desk in a high-backed
red leather chair.

The Diva was a light-skinned black woman, with shiny swirls of dark hair swept into
an elegant, curly updo on her head, like a pile of chocolate shavings. Her makeup
was heavy yet impeccable, from her perfectly lined crimson lips to her glimmering
burgundy eyelids. Her long acrylic fingernails were painted a shiny ruby color. Her
voluptuous body was packed into a low-cut red dress, the bustline around her double
Ds trimmed with black faux fur.

She looked like a movie star on Oscar night. But she wouldn’t be going home with a
bag of pricey swag or a gold, man-shaped trophy, her photo featured on the cover of
People
magazine. Nope, the only things she’d get today would be a mug shot, a body cavity
search, and a one-size-fits-nobody jumpsuit.

Neener-neener.

At our unexpected intrusion, the Diva stood from her chair, her expression as surprised
and confused as her receptionist’s. “May I help you?”

Eddie and I flashed our badges.

“We’re from the IRS,” I said. “Criminal Investigations Division.”

Now her expression was only surprised. The confusion was gone. She knew exactly why
we were here. But that knowledge wasn’t going to prevent her from feigning innocence.

“What do you want with me?” She put one hand to her chest, pointing to herself. The
other hand went for her bulky electric stapler.

At point-blank proximity, I wasn’t able to fully avoid the stapler she hurled at me.
I only had time to duck. The device bounced off my back and onto the floor. Thanks
to the padded Kevlar vest under my Mavericks tee, I hardly felt the impact.

She flung a box of paper clips at Eddie. He batted them away with both hands.

I reached down my leg and pulled my gun from my ankle holster. I really didn’t want
to draw on the woman, but the way she was acting left me no choice. “Put your hands
up!”

She yanked open her desk drawer and pulled out a metal letter opener, clutching it
in a loose fist, her long fingernails preventing her from fully closing her hand.

I aimed my gun at her. “Drop it, Diva!”

“No!” She swung the blade around as if she were a Jet and Eddie and I were Sharks.
But this was East Dallas, not
West Side Story.
And I certainly hoped none of us would end up dead like Riff, Bernardo, or Tony.
I preferred happy endings.

In a move that would make Chuck Norris proud, Eddie stepped forward and brought up
his right arm, knocking the letter opener out of the Diva’s hand. The blade sailed
through the air, bouncing off the wall and falling back to the fluffy rug. Before
she could retrieve it, Eddie ran around one side of the desk, I ran around the other,
and together we tackled the Diva to the floor.

On her back now, she kicked and rolled side to side, trying to loosen our hold on
her. Her boobs swung side to side, too, though they followed a second or two after
the rest of her body. Eddie slapped them away just as he’d done with the paper clips.

“You touched my breasts!” she shrieked at Eddie.

It was kind of hard not to touch them given that there was so much fur-trimmed cleavage
heaving to and fro. She raised a knee and rammed it into Eddie’s groin. He rolled
aside, retching and grabbing his crotch in agony.

Poor guy. Looked like his wife wouldn’t be getting any for a while. It also looked
like I’d have to handle the Diva by myself now.

The woman spun away from Eddie. Once she’d gotten herself up on all fours, I grabbed
her right wrist from the back and yanked it out from under her.
Ha!
Roughhousing with my two older brothers as a kid had taught me some good moves.

The Diva fell onto her face on the rug, sputtering and spitting fuzz out of her mouth.
I climbed onto her back, straddling her as I grabbed her arms and pulled them up behind
her.

“Let me go!” she yelled, squirming under me.

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s not gonna happen.” Two
clicks
later, I had her hands cuffed.

The Diva’s four employees stood in the open doorway, mouths hanging open.

“OMG,” one of them said.

“Totally,” said another.

The third nodded her head in agreement. “Totally OMG.”

“Does this mean we won’t get our paychecks?” asked the receptionist.

The Diva had ripped off the IRS, but I didn’t want these hardworking college kids
to get ripped off, too. It hadn’t been all that long ago that I’d been a starving
student, eating ramen noodles for dinner three times a week. “I’ll let her make out
your checks before we go. But cash them immediately. We’ll be freezing her accounts
later today.”

Realizing she was now in deep doo-doo, the Diva switched tactics, boo-hooing and promising
to be a good little girl from now on if we’d only let her go. “I’ll pay back every
penny!” she cried. “I swear!”

Eddie shot her a pointed look from where he stood, hunched over, hands on his knees.
“You should’ve thought about that before you busted my balls.”

Was it just my imagination or was his voice an octave higher?

I removed the right handcuff so the Diva could make out her employees’ paychecks,
clicking the cuff onto the arm of her chair lest she attempt a last-ditch effort to
escape.

While the Diva made out the payroll, my phone beeped, indicating an incoming text.
I checked the screen. The message was from Nick, a coworker on whom I had a hopeless
crush. The text included a discreetly snapped photo of a man dressed in an Elvis costume
wearing handcuffs. The man was being led out to a marshal’s car. A sign on the office
building behind him read: “REFUND-A-RAMA.”

Can u believe this shit?
the text read.
One more idiot and I will lose it.

Nick wasn’t exactly known for his tact. What he was known for were his spectacular
pecs, whiskey-colored eyes, and take-charge style. I texted him back:
Eddie took a knee to the nuts.

The reply came back in seconds.
I’ll count my blessings.

Once the Diva finished, I cuffed her wrists back together and handed out the paychecks.

“Sorry about this, girls,” I said. “But let this be a lesson to you. Keep your noses
clean.”

chapter two

If You Cast a Wide Net, You’re Bound to Catch a Fish or Two

Once the Diva had been hauled off to jail for processing, Eddie and I headed to the
downtown medical clinic. Normally I was the one with injuries, so it was no surprise
that Dr. Ajay Maju focused on me when he entered the examination room.

The doc was an attractive Indian-American guy, only a year or two older than my twenty-seven
years. His white lab coat was unbuttoned, the gap revealing a printed tee underneath.
Open wide and say aah.

“What is it this time?” he asked, looking me up and down, searching for evidence of
injury.

“Eddie’s nuts,” I said, hiking a thumb at my partner. “He took a knee to the family
jewels.”

“Dude.” He turned to my partner and shook his head in sympathy. “Ouch.” He pushed
a button on the wall-mounted intercom. “I need an ice pack in room three. Stat.”

The nurse arrived seconds later with a plastic-wrapped blue ice pack. Eddie promptly
dropped it down the front of his pants, carefully moving it into place.

Eddie’s balls now mercifully frozen, we drove back to the federal building, sidetracking
through a Chinese drive-through and picking up lunch on the way. I suggested he order
a pair of egg dumplings to replace his damaged set of
huevos,
but he didn’t think it was funny.

“Too soon, huh, buddy?”

His only response was a scowl.

We climbed off the elevator with our take-out bags. Our boss stood by her secretary’s
desk at the end of the hall. Lu sported a pinkish-orange beehive, false eyelashes,
and bright orange lipstick, a look she’d perfected back in the sixties and stuck with
ever since. She’d recently undergone chemotherapy for lung cancer and temporarily
lost weight. Once she’d completed her treatments she’d rebounded quickly, packing
on all the weight she’d lost and then some. The neon-pink pantsuit she wore looked
as if it might burst at the seams at any moment.

Lu used a Slim Jim to stir the can of strawberry-flavored Slim-Fast! in her hand and
looked up at me and Eddie. “Did you get the Diva?”

“Yep,” I said. “Just three more to go.”

One of our remaining targets was an older man, a former IRS auditor no less. He’d
started his own tax practice years ago after electing early retirement in lieu of
being fired from the Service for excessive absences, incompetency, and, according
to the handwritten note in his personnel file, being a “weird-ass crackpot.” He called
himself the Tax Wizard and claimed he could make taxes magically disappear. As if.