Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria (9 page)

The windows consisted of a large plate-glass rectangle with narrow vertical glass
panels on each side. For safety reasons only the vertical panels could be opened.
The one to the left of the center panel was ajar, the screen punched out. I stepped
to the window and took a quick look. How the heck a grown man had wriggled out through
the ten-inch space was beyond me.

I walked around the desk where Beau’s laptop sat open, his screen displaying a list
of e-mails. I hit the space bar to keep the machine active and took a seat in his
rolling chair.

The man with the ball cap had followed me back to Beauregard’s office. He stood in
the doorway, his head cocked. “You know anything about taxes?”

“I work for the IRS,” I said. “So, yeah, I know a little about taxes.”

He pulled a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his shirt. “Can you tell
me what this mumbo jumbo means?”

I took the paper from him and read over the notice he’d received from the IRS. It
informed him that his fuel tax credit had been denied.

“It means Beauregard duped you.” I offered him a consoling smile. “That gas well he
sold you? It doesn’t actually exist. Sorry.”

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” the man said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I paid good money for that well.” He glared at the open window, then looked back
at me. “What are the chances I’ll get that money back?”

“Honestly?” I said. “Slim to none.” I opened the drawers to Beau’s desk and found
a dollar and thirty-seven cents inside. I handed it to the man. “Here. Buy yourself
something from the vending machine.” Maybe some chocolate would cheer him up.

After the man left the room, I rummaged through the rest of the drawers. I found more
pamphlets detailing the benefits of financial planning, as well as application forms
for insurance policies and forms to open investment accounts. I’d never heard of the
insurance company, Alltex Allied Mutual Incorporated, or the investment company, Gulf
States Portfolio Management. Chances were good they were bogus companies, too.

Eddie came into the office then, a pissed-off look on his face. “I lost him,” he said.
“I’ve called Dallas PD so they can keep an eye out for him.”

I returned my attention to the computer, looking over Beau’s e-mail in-box. Eddie
stepped up behind me to read over my shoulder. Most of the e-mails were typical spam
from businesses trying to sell him promotional items. An e-mail from his cell phone
provider reminded him that his bill was past due. A communication from his bank warned
his account was overdrawn. He’d racked up over three hundred dollars in overdraft
fees. Some financial planner he was.

I looked up at Eddie. “How can the guy be broke?” After all, he’d cheated the government
out of over half a million dollars in the last year alone. That was like, what, forty
thousand dollars a month? “What could he have spent all that money on?”

“My guess would be drugs, gambling, or hookers,” Eddie said.

As I continued to scroll down Beau’s e-mail in-box, we found an e-ticket for a flight
from Dallas to Las Vegas.

“That narrows it down to gambling and hookers,” Eddie said.

The flight was scheduled to leave late in the day on the October 15 extended tax deadline.
Beau planned to treat himself to some fun after the mad rush, huh? Too bad for him
that Eddie and I had come along to play party poopers.

While I forwarded all of the e-mails to my account at the IRS, Eddie looked through
the filing cabinet. Other than a few paper copies of tax returns, there wasn’t much
there. Together Eddie and I packed up Beau’s things. We instructed the receptionist
to give us a call immediately if he returned to his office.

After we carried his things out to the car, I pulled up directions to Beau’s house
on my phone. Our search warrant gave us the right not only to seize evidence from
his office but to search his home as well.

We climbed back into our G-ride and headed farther south into the suburb of Duncanville.
A few turns and the blue dot on my phone indicated we were getting close. The blue
dot met up with the red dot right as we pulled up in front of a trailer park. A hand-lettered
sign in the front window of the first trailer read: “MANAGEMENT.”

“Here we are,” I said.

Eddie turned in. While many trailer parks were well kept and tidy, this one was not.
Broken toys and trash bags sat in the yards of many of the homes, some of which were
unanchored travel trailers. We slowly made our way down the cracked asphalt drive,
looking for space thirteen.

“There it is,” I said, pointing.

A rusty mailbox sunk into a plastic bucket filled with cement marked the spot. The
spot, however, was empty. Well, not totally empty. A cheap red barbecue grill lay
on its side at the back of the space, alongside a faded canvas lawn chair and a metal
TV tray. Beau’s former backyard cookout spot, no doubt. Several gray cinder blocks
lay at odd angles to the sides of the space, as if they’d been slung aside in haste.

We drove back to the entrance and pulled to the side, parking near the manager’s trailer.
Three quick raps on the door frame rousted him.

He yanked his door open. “Yeah?”

The manager wore a short-sleeved shirt hanging open over his pasty, hairless chest
and belly, along with a pair of boxer shorts and ratty house slippers. Unusual sounds
came from the television playing in the background. Lots of “oohs” and “aahs” and
cheesy music.

Sheesh.
The guy was watching porn in the middle of the afternoon?
Ew.

Eddie and I flashed our badges. “We’re from the IRS,” Eddie said. “We’re looking for
Richard Beauregard.”

The man chortled. “You and everyone else,” he spat. “That deadbeat’s been served with
lawsuits three times in the past month.”

“His space is empty,” I said. “You know anything about that?”

The man nodded. “He hooked up his camper and hauled out about an hour ago. Saved me
the hassle of evicting his sorry ass. He owes me two months’ rent plus late fees.”

Eddie and I exchanged glances. “Any idea where he might have gone?” I asked.

The man raised a finger. “Just a minute.” He disappeared and came back a few seconds
later with a piece of paper in his hand. He held it out to me, but I didn’t want to
touch it. Who knew where the manager’s hands had been before we knocked on his door?

Eddie shot me a look and took the paper, holding it where I could read it, too. It
was Beau’s rental application. In the emergency contact blank he’d listed his mother,
who also lived in Duncanville. I plugged her address into my phone’s navigation system.

“Thanks,” Eddie said, handing the paper back to him.

“You find him,” the man called after us, “you tell him to bring me my rent!”

“Will do!” I called back.

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, Eddie and I pulled up to Beau’s mother’s house, a two-story redbrick
home in a respectable, though modest, neighborhood. She was a tall woman, her once-dark
hair now much more salt than pepper. Though she was open and friendly, she was no
help.

She rolled her eyes. “I know a mother shouldn’t say this about her own son,” she said,
“but Richard just can’t seem to get it together. He’s borrowed over sixty grand from
me over the years and hasn’t paid back a penny. I’m seventy-two and still having to
waitress at the Waffle Hut just to keep my bills paid.”

“Any chance you’ve got a photograph of him handy?” I asked. If we were going to have
to pursue the guy, we’d need to know what he looked like. The auditor who’d referred
the case had described Beau as looking like Woody from
Toy Story.
Unless Beauregard had a pull string in his back, I wasn’t sure that was enough to
go on.

Beau’s mother removed a large framed photo from the foyer wall. “Here you go.”

The photo was a picture of a man who indeed looked like Woody. Unlike Woody, though,
this man had a virtual unibrow. They hadn’t quite grown together, but the two wide,
flat brows sported a distinct tuft in the middle, as if they were spelling out the
letter
K
in Morse code. Beau was dressed in a tux and stood at an altar next to a tiny blonde
in a puffy-sleeved white wedding dress with a wide, bell-shaped skirt.

Mrs. Beauregard waved her hand. “You can keep that. Richard’s wife left him years
ago after he lost all their money at that Indian casino just over the Oklahoma border.
Damn shame. She was a sweet girl, crazy about him. He managed to screw that up, too.”

So Beau was single. Perhaps he had indeed spent some of the money he’d stolen from
Uncle Sam on hookers. With those gangly limbs and that unibrow, Beau probably wasn’t
getting laid for free.

chapter nine

Double Date, Double Espresso

Since we were already out, Eddie and I figured we might as well pay a visit to a few
of the money transmitters on the lists Wang had given us.

The first was a payday loan place that ran a brisk business despite the outrageous
interest rates and fees they charged. The business was part of a chain with a corporate
headquarters that implemented strict procedures and kept a close eye on its branches.
As expected, everything was in order there.

The second was a jewelry store that paid cash for gold jewelry. Everything was in
order there, too, though I was a bit disturbed by the man next to us who’d produced
a handful of teeth and asked how much he could get for the gold fillings. Eddie and
I had made a note of his license plate and put in a discreet call to local law enforcement.

Our final stop was a convenience store operated by a pleasant middle-aged Muslim couple.
Like Zardooz, they’d suffered bigotry thanks to the radical terrorists. After 9-11
someone had spray-painted “Go home, towelheads!” on the side wall of their store.

“I was born and raised in Texas,” the man said. “I
am
home.”

Their records were in good order, fully compliant, nothing suspicious. There was no
flicker of recognition when I showed them the photos of the local men who’d been arrested,
either.

“Sorry we couldn’t be of help,” the wife said as I slid the photos back into my briefcase.

I thanked them and bought a Lotto scratch-off and a package of peanut butter crackers.

On the drive back to the IRS building, I shared my crackers with Eddie and took a
penny to the scratch-off ticket. “Hey! I won five bucks!”

“Don’t forget to report the winnings on your tax return,” Eddie said.

“Party pooper.” I put the winning ticket in my wallet to redeem later and called Wang
to update him on our investigation. He’d had no luck with the money transmitters he’d
visited, either.

Whoever had helped the terrorists move their money was still out there, waiting to
be discovered. I pictured him as a bearded man with dark hair and squinty eyes that
reflected a crazed rage. Sheesh, even I was falling for the stereotypes and I should
know better. After all, most of the people we arrested for tax evasion looked like
normal, upstanding citizens.

Back at the office, I logged into the tax-reporting system and suspended Richard Beauregard’s
e-filing privileges. We may not have brought the cheat in, but at least we could prevent
him from filing any more fraudulent returns and stealing further from the government’s
coffers.

At a quarter after five, Nick stepped into my office. “You ready to head to the coffee
shop?”

I looked up at Nick. “No flowers or candy?” I quipped. “Way to make our first date
special.”

Of course he had no way of knowing that this was, in fact, sort of our first date.
He had no idea I planned to put Brett on the back burner for him.

“If you put out,” Nick replied, a sexy grin spreading across his lips, “I’ll bring
you all kinds of flowers and candy.”

At least he was flirting with me again rather than acting angry. That was a step in
the right direction.

We rounded up Josh and the three of us headed out to Nick’s truck, an older, hail-dented
pickup that I’d bought to smuggle Nick out of Mexico a few months ago. He’d taken
the thing off my hands when we’d returned, even paid me a premium for it. The truck
might not look like much, but it ran well and had enough towing power to pull a bass
boat, an item that was on Nick’s wish list.

I sat between Nick and Josh on the bench seat. Josh fidgeted with nervous energy the
entire way.

“Relax,” I told him. “Everything will be fine. It’s just coffee. No big deal.”

Easy for me to say. He had a lot riding on this date. While Nick had received more
than fifty additional inquiries today—
dammit!
—no other women had responded to Josh’s ad on the dating site. It was Kira or nobody.

Nick parked the truck in the side lot of the coffee shop and we made our way inside.
Josh carried his personal laptop bag with him.

“You’re bringing your computer?” I asked.

“I thought I’d show it to Kira,” Josh replied.

Sheez. What a hopeless geek.

The three of us stopped inside the door and scanned the area. No blue-eyed blondes
in sight.

“She’s not here,” Josh said, his voice tinged with panic.

I checked my watch. “It’s not even five thirty yet. She’ll be here.”

We got in line and ordered drinks, Nick’s treat. I went for a caramel
macchiato.
I’d work off the calories by spending an extra twenty minutes on the exercise bike
at the gym tomorrow.

We took seats at a square table in the middle of the room where we could keep an eye
on the door. As we waited for Kira, I told Nick and Josh about Richard Beauregard,
about our visits to his office, the trailer park, his mother’s house.

Nick snorted. “Sounds like Beau’s the family fuckup.”

The front door opened then, and a young woman stepped inside. She was tall, with white-blonde
hair. Although she was clearly the Kira from the dating site, she looked almost nothing
like the innocent-eyed girl in the photo.