Tara Holloway 01 - Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure (10 page)

I slingshot the thong into the suitcase and added my oh-so-sexy red silk nightgown. I wasn’t sure whether the panties or nightie would actually be used this weekend, but best to be prepared for all eventualities, right? I zipped the bag shut.

*   *   *

I woke early the next morning to get ready for the trip. I dressed in sandals, jeans, and a ruffled red cotton blouse that accentuated the auburn highlights I’d paid my stylist two hundred bucks to carefully and strategically streak into my brown hair. You know, for that natural look.

Dr. Maju had removed my stitches a couple days ago, but a raised pink line remained on my forearm, marring my skin. He’d told me to take it easy and recommended an over-the-counter antiscarring cream to reduce the visual effects of the injury. I slathered a healthy coating over the area. At least my nails were perfect.

I grabbed my suitcase and makeup bag and headed downstairs to my living room.

Brett arrived promptly at eight, wearing neatly pressed navy chinos and a navy-and-tan striped golf shirt that were slightly at odds with his scuffed, ankle-high work boots. Annie hid, as usual, but when Henry saw Brett he trotted into the foyer and began winding around Brett’s ankles. Brett picked up the furry, demanding beast and cradled him in his arms, scratching him under the chin. Henry launched into a loud, rumbling purr.

I glared at my cat. “Ungrateful brat.”

Brett chuckled, set Henry down gently on the parquet floor, and relieved me of my luggage.

“Thanks.”

Henry shot me a go-to-hell look and wandered off, his fluffy brown tail twitching.

After double-checking to make sure the cats had plenty of food and water, I locked up the condo and followed Brett out to his SUV. He lifted the back door to put my bags in the cargo bay, pushing aside a large cardboard box bearing the logo of a local printing business. He slid my luggage in next to his golf clubs. His was an extensive, top-of-the line set, the heads of the woods covered with cloth protectors that matched the black-and-white bag.

Brett closed the hatch and we stepped around to the passenger side. On the door was a small round dent that might be easily overlooked if not for the circle of white paint drawing attention to it.

“What happened here?” I asked, pointing at the recently acquired ding.

Brett cringed. “That’s what happens when you park too close to the green during a junior tournament.”

“Ah.” I could relate. Once, when we’d been doing target practice back home, my oldest brother accidentally put a bullet through my mother’s ornamental windmill. Boy, had she been pissed.

Brett leaned in to give me a warm kiss once I was settled.
Mmm.
This trip was starting off great.

After climbing in the driver’s side, he turned to me and smiled. “You’re mine for the whole weekend. I must be the luckiest guy on earth.”

“You might not feel so lucky when the weekend’s over.” Though I was joking, I knew this trip represented a benchmark for our relationship. Traveling, spending extended periods of time together, was a proving ground for a relationship. If a couple could not only tolerate, but take pleasure in, each other’s company for two days straight, their relationship had a real chance of succeeding.

He backed out of my driveway, commenting on the sad state of the single, malformed evergreen bush that constituted my front yard landscaping. I’d tried to trim the darn thing, even given it some plant food, but nothing seemed to help. I probably should’ve dug up the ugly shrub and replaced it with something more attractive, but between the long hours I’d worked at the CPA firm and the demands of my training at the IRS, I simply hadn’t had the time.

We wound our way out of my neighborhood, noting the new buds developing on the trees. A couple more weeks and north Texas would be in full bloom. Pollen counts would reach critical mass, creating a beautiful hell for allergy sufferers.

“The bluebonnets will be out before long,” Brett said, referring to the bluish-purple flower that carpeted the state late each spring. “We’ll have to take a drive down to the hill country soon, check out the wildflowers.”

“Sounds great.”

We headed east out of the city on Interstate 20, the same interstate I’d traveled many a time with my mother on shopping excursions into Dallas, the pinnacle of our mother-daughter bonding experiences. Twice each year when I was a teenager, Mom and I would make the three-hour drive to Dallas from our home in Nacogdoches, our destination the Neiman Marcus flagship store, dishing up designer delights since 1908, looming like a high-fashion Mecca on the western horizon. Years later, passing the CPA exam had given me confidence, but it paled in comparison to the day Neiman’s issued me a credit card with a thousand-dollar limit.

Brett and I continued on until we were a dozen miles past the extensive suburban sprawl of Dallas. He turned off the interstate onto a two-lane highway. Half an hour later, we headed along a narrow, tree-lined county road running around the perimeter of Cedar Creek Lake. Brett punched a button to turn on his car’s GPS system and a map appeared on the screen.

We drove for another mile, passing Lakeside Lane, Lakeshore Lane, and Lakefront Lane before the GPS directed us to turn right onto Lakeview Lane. Someone with a real creative mind had named the roads out there. Bet it was hell on the mailman keeping it all straight.

Brett turned onto the street and we entered a neighborhood of massive mansions, each with its own unique style. A sprawling, tile-roofed Mediterranean flanked with imported palms sat next to a stately English Tudor with topiary horses rearing up on each side of the gated driveway. I wondered if the horses dropped leafy piles of topiary poop for the owners to muck.

Halfway down the street, Brett rolled to a stop in front of a two-story lodge-style house built atop a small rise overlooking the lake. “Here we are. The Sheltons’ place.”

Although the house was newly built, it was designed to appear aged and rustic, in the traditional understated style of Texas luxury. The exterior was light-colored Austin stone accented here and there with natural wood trim. A black iron rooster-shaped weather vane perched atop the pinnacle of the roof, pointing east in the light wind. Rough, unfinished shutters framed the plate-glass windows.

Near the main road were wide tire tracks, probably from trucks used to haul materials to the construction site. The ground immediately surrounding the house had been cleared to build the house, but several stray pieces of lumber and a number of large dirt clods were scattered farther out. A stand of small, scrubby mesquite trees remained along the edges of the large lot.

Brett pulled onto the shoulder of the road and parked the SUV. We climbed out, greeted by a cool breeze carrying the refreshing scents of cedar trees and lake water. I stood behind the car while he retrieved his camera equipment from the back. As Brett pulled out his camera bag, the black nylon strap caught on the top of the printer’s box and pulled it off, the lid falling to the ground at my feet.

“I’ll get it.”

Brett slung the camera case over his shoulder. “Thanks.”

I knelt down to pick up the cardboard lid before the wind could catch it and carry it off. When I stood to put the top back on the box, the stack of colorful glossy brochures inside caught my eye. I took one out and skimmed over the paper.

The pamphlets advertised an investment seminar sponsored by a firm called XChange Investments. Normally an investment seminar wouldn’t catch my attention. I was still paying off those pesky student loans from college and had little money to invest. But this seminar involved foreign currency exchange, or “Forex,” a hot topic at the Treasury Department given the large number of scams that had surfaced in recent years. Con artists had duped investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars with promises of high returns with little to no risk. Many of the investors ended up destitute, losing their life savings to these swindlers. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC for short, was charged with regulating the Forex market. Unfortunately, with so many investors falling for the too-good-to-be-true promises of unscrupulous promoters, the CFTC simply couldn’t keep up.

Though profits could be made by taking advantage of the price differentials among foreign currencies, Forex posed high risks relative to other types of investments. With the stock market, the price of one stock didn’t depend on the price of the others. In theory, in a bull market, all stocks could increase in value and everyone could be a winner. But Forex investment was what insiders called a “zero-sum” game. Currency investment functioned like a seesaw—when one currency went up in relative value, another went down by an equal amount. If one Forex trader gained, another lost. No wealth was created overall. What’s more, the legitimate Forex investment programs were generally offered by the larger brokerage houses, which carefully screened investors to ensure those putting their money in foreign currency could afford to lose it. Legal Forex futures were traded on established exchanges or boards of trade approved by the CFTC.

The flyer noted the investment seminar was scheduled for early May at a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana, a two-hour drive east of where we now stood. The fact that the presentation would be held at a hotel wasn’t necessarily unusual, but the brochure gave no permanent address or phone number for XChange Investments, only a Web site address. Seemed as if the company, and its officers, preferred to remain untraceable, raising a huge red flag.

Why would Brett have a box of these brochures in his trunk?

I held the flyer up. “What’s this?”

Brett glanced over at me and shrugged. “Stan asked me to drop those off here.”

Hmm. An odd prickle ran up my neck. The IRS had provided me with a Kevlar vest, a Glock, and a laptop when I’d joined the agency, but the best tool a special agent had was intuition. My intuition said I should look further into this XChange Investments. When Brett turned away, I quickly folded the flyer and slid it into the back pocket of my shorts. Surely they wouldn’t miss one copy, right?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Suspicion

After closing the trunk, I stepped around the car to stand next to Brett. He stared at the house for a moment, concentrating, his face intent as he tried to visualize the house with different types of landscaping.

“You know what would be perfect here?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“Pink plastic flamingos.”

Laughing, Brett put an arm around me and pulled me to his side. “I don’t think plastic flamingos are exactly the style my client is going for.”

Being pressed up against him felt nice. His body felt warm and firm through the fabric of his shirt, which had me wondering how much warmer and firmer he’d feel without the shirt, chest to chest, skin to skin. Would I soon find out?

He dropped his arm from around me and raised his digital camera to take photographs of the house. He snapped several shots from the road, then several more as we made our way across the dirt to the front porch. He’d been smart to wear the boots. Before I realized what he was doing, Brett turned around and snapped a photo of me.

“Hey!” I put my hands on my hips. “You’re supposed to give a lady some warning.”

“It’s more fun to catch you off guard. Keep you guessing.” He shot me a wink. He stopped before the oversized front door and fumbled through his pocket. “The Sheltons gave me a key and the security code so I could go inside, get a feel for the place, and check out the views. They’ve got houseguests staying here, but they’re out for the day.” Finding the key, Brett unlocked the heavy front door and stepped into the house, punching numbers on an electronic keypad mounted on the wall inside to deactivate the alarm.

“Whoa.” I stepped into the foyer, which extended thirty feet up to an enormous deer-antler chandelier suspended from the second-floor ceiling. The air inside the house was cool. The walls were lined with the same rough, natural stone as the outside, giving the house the indomitable feel of a fortress and giving me flashbacks to my fifth-grade field trip to the Alamo. I’d bought a velvet sombrero and a pair of hand-painted maracas as a souvenir. So did most of my classmates, to the chagrin of the chaperones, teachers, and bus drivers. We’d cha-cha-chaed the entire three-hundred-and-fifty-mile trip home.

To the right of the door sat a small white cardboard box bearing the name
STAN SHELTON
and
PERSONAL
written in large block letters with thick red marker. The entire box appeared to be wrapped in clear tape. Whoever packed it had made damn sure the thing couldn’t be opened without a lot of effort. It would take a machete to hack into that box.

The flooring under the box was composed of thick planks of honey-colored pine. Brett and I walked forward, descending three wide steps into an expansive living room with a vaulted ceiling, our footsteps echoing in the empty expanse. I glanced around, noting that other than a folding table and chairs in the kitchen, the downstairs was not yet furnished. I walked over to the fireplace and stepped inside, having to duck only slightly to fit.

“This fireplace is bigger than my cubicle at my last job.” Only managers and partners had offices at Martin and McGee, and only partners had offices with windows. We peons had been crammed into tiny cubicles and saw natural light only before eight
A.M.
and after six
P.M.
I got out and about much more in my new job with the Treasury, one of the many things I loved about being a special agent.

Brett stood in the center of the room, scanning the surroundings, too, though he seemed less impressed. Of course, given that he worked for one of the most prestigious architecture firms in Dallas, he was likely used to this type of luxury. He walked over to the plate glass that made up the back wall of the living room, offering an unobstructed view of the lake a mere fifty yards beyond the house. “Nice view.”

What an understatement. The view of the blue-green water, adorned here and there with small whitecaps, was nothing short of spectacular. The triangular sails of sailboats rose off the water in the distance. A few grayish birds skittered along the water’s edge while several more hung over the water, floating in the breeze.

Brett snapped several photos of the view from the living room, then made his way past the portable card table in the breakfast nook. I followed him into the kitchen. The extensive maple cabinets housed a glass-front wine cooler large enough to hold at least fifty bottles of wine. The countertops were pink granite, native Texas stone like that used at the state capitol building in Austin. The faucets and fixtures appeared to be made of copper. Brett took a small pad of paper and a pen out of his pants pocket and jotted down a few notes.

The rest of the house was equally impressive, from the ten-by-ten walk-in closets to the enormous whirlpool tub in the master bathroom, big enough for two. Daydreaming, I imagined Brett and me naked in the huge tub, bubbles up to our chins, the white froth obscuring the fun going on underneath, a tickle here, a caress there, enough to make a rubber ducky blush.

When I looked up, I found Brett watching me. He gave me that sly smile of his. Was he thinking what I was thinking? I think so. And I think I liked it.

A guest bedroom upstairs contained only a king-sized brass bed covered with a crumpled black satin comforter and a distressed-wood dresser on top of which sat half-empty bottles of Bacardi and Jack Daniel’s.

Next to the bed stood two large blue hard-sided suitcases, no doubt belonging to the Sheltons’ houseguests. The suitcases were horribly scratched and battered, as if they’d endured lots of use by their owners and abuse by airport baggage handlers. From the handles hung white paper tags with “DFW” printed on them, evidence of a recent flight into the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. There was also a customs sticker on each suitcase showing an inspection had taken place at the departure point, designated as “SJO.” What did SJO stand for? San Juan? St. John’s? San Jose?

“Let’s go out back,” Brett suggested. We’d finished touring the inside. Time to check out the backyard. We made our way down the wide staircase and into the living room. French doors led from the living room onto a wide rectangular patio that was made of the same stone as the house and spanned the width of the structure. The bare backyard sloped gently down to the lake. Without the house to block the wind, the breeze was stronger out back, tossing my hair about my face, making short work of the effort I’d put into styling my locks. Once we’d reached the water’s edge, Brett turned and spent a few minutes considering the back of the house. He took several more photos, then packed his camera equipment back into the bag and zipped it closed.

“Decks,” he said finally, thinking aloud. “This house needs a series of wooden decks and walkways leading down to the water. A rustic gazebo with an outdoor kitchen for entertaining. Colorful ground cover for the slope, to prevent erosion. Live oak trees, mature ones along the sides to provide shade without disrupting the view of the water.”

I looked at the house, trying to visualize the design Brett had described. “Sounds beautiful.” His plans had me thinking again about my yard. Hopefully I’d find time for gardening this spring now that I’d no longer spend day and night cranking out tax returns. As a girl I’d loved gardening with my mother, and I missed the simple pleasure of digging in the dirt, nurturing a plant until it rewarded me with beautiful blooms, transforming raw earth into a small paradise. I could definitely see why Brett found landscape architecture so gratifying, knowing his concepts, sketches, and plans could turn a yard full of dirt clods and scrubby trees into a gorgeous backyard haven.

Brett pulled the notepad out of his back pocket again and jotted more notes. “The crew will need an excavator. A rototiller. A backhoe to dig the holes for the trees.”

While Brett wandered around the yard with his measuring tape, obtaining the dimensions of the property, I stood at the water’s edge and watched two sailboats racing across the lake in the distance. Looked like fun.

When Brett finished his measuring and note-taking, he walked over to me. “I’ll have to come back again later this afternoon to see how the sunlight hits at different times of the day.”

“Why’s that important?”

“Knowing how much sun a space gets helps me determine which types of plants will grow best.”

“Oh.” Made sense.

He checked his watch. “We should be able to check into the hotel now. I just need to do one more thing before we go.”

He led me back to the front of the house. Stowing his camera equipment in the back of his Navigator, he grabbed the box of pamphlets and carried it to the front door. I waited by the car as Brett opened the door, set the box on the floor in the entryway, then punched in the code on the wall keypad to reset the alarm. He grabbed the small taped box I’d noticed earlier and tucked it under his arm before closing the door. When he returned to the car, he shifted the box to his other arm to help me in.

I tried to sound nonchalant, but first the brochures and now the box had me buzzing with curiosity. I gestured at the package. “What’s in the box?”

Brett shrugged. “No idea. Just playing courier for Stan and his houseguest.” He closed the door on me.

Hmm … So Stan Shelton was somehow involved with the foreign currency exchange deal. Not necessarily unusual for a banker. But I hadn’t noticed the name of First Dallas Bank—the bank Stan Shelton was president of—anywhere on the brochures. My recent training in financial scams probably made me overly suspicious, but something had my senses buzzing.

Brett climbed into the car, sliding the small box into the glove compartment in front of me, the word
PERSONAL
in bright red letters mere inches from my face, taunting me. Was I just being nosy? Or was there something going on? And did I really want to spend my first weekend away with Brett thinking about tax fraud?

The only one of those questions I could answer definitively was the last one, and the answer was a big, resounding, “Heck no!”