Tara Holloway 01 - Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure (14 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

No Sale

Alicia e-mailed me that afternoon. Daniel’s case was dragging on and she wanted some company. Christina and I arranged to meet her for dinner at an Italian place in Lakewood.

Although I hadn’t shared the full details of Joe’s case with Brett, Alicia, as my longtime best friend, had been privy to the full scoop after pinky-swearing to keep mum. She seemed as surprised as I had been to see a woman like Christina working for the DEA. Yet, despite the fact that Alicia was chic and sophisticated and Christina was giggly and girlie, the two hit it off, chocolate martinis being their common denominator.

With Alicia’s financial savvy and Christina’s street smarts, I realized the two could provide some much-needed insight into the situation with Brett. Over dessert, I spilled my guts, hoping for some reassurance. “It’s probably nothing, right?”

Alicia frowned. “I don’t know, Tara. The whole thing seems odd.”

“I’m with Alicia,” Christina said. “Whether he knows it or not, looks like Brett’s their cash mule.”

Damn. I stabbed my fork into my tiramisu.

*   *   *

My cell phone chirped later that evening, after Christina and I had returned to the crack house. It was Brett.

“How was your day?” he asked.

How did one describe a day of hanging out in the ’hood, waiting for a drug dealer, being forced to abort a buy? At least I hadn’t been forced to shoot anyone today. “Today was … fine. How about you?”

“Good.” He paused a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft. “I’ve been thinking about you all day, Tara.”

My heart pogoed in my chest. “Me, too.” Of course I didn’t tell him my thoughts were equally split between swooning and suspicion. Now, though, as I heard his deep, sexy voice, the pendulum had swung back to swooning.

Brett went on to tell me that Stan Shelton had invited Brett and a guest to sit in the bank’s skybox at Thursday night’s Texas Rangers game and he’d like me to come along.

“Sounds like fun.” It also sounded like the perfect opportunity to ply Stan Shelton for more information about that foreign currency exchange program. But I’d have to be careful. If I came on too strong, he might wonder about my motivations.

I’d been flattered the Lobo had trusted me to handle Joe’s case without a more senior Treasury agent supervising me. Still, Joe’s case was chump change relative to some of the high-dollar cases in the office. If I brought in a new big-dollar case myself, I’d be a hero, the little rookie who could. There was no telling how much money could be involved in the Forex deal. But I bet it was a lot. If I were the agent to get Lu to her hundred-million goal, my career would have no limits.

But what would it mean for my relationship with Brett? If he were involved, our relationship would be over, of course. I didn’t date crooks, no matter how good-looking and sexy they might be. Even if he wasn’t involved, he’d likely be upset that I’d kept information from him, used him to get to a target. But this was my job. He’d understand, right?

After we chatted a few minutes more, I hung up the phone. I’d planned to work on my tax return tonight, but now I was too distracted by my upcoming date with Brett and interrogating Shelton to focus on numbers. Instead, I decided to wax my upper lip. Nothing turns a guy off more than a woman with beer foam in her mustache.

*   *   *

Tuesday morning, I dressed in my scuffed boots, my old jeans with the worn-out knees, and my faded 1993 Billy Ray Cyrus concert tee.

Christina eyed my shirt. “Tell me he’s not that ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ guy.”

“One and the same. My older brothers drove over two hundred miles to Houston to see him in concert.” I’d begged them to take me along but they’d refused. They had dates to impress, and showing up with their kid sister in tow wouldn’t have gotten them to second base. Back then, I’d been too young to travel so far from home, but heck, so were they. My oldest brother had turned sixteen only a week before, the ink hardly dry on his driver’s license. Knowing they’d never get permission to go, they’d told my parents they were spending the night with a friend. To appease me—and to buy my silence—they’d promised to bring me a shirt from the concert.

“You’ve come a long way, girl.”

I had. And I hadn’t. Sure, I generally wore designer labels to work and on dates, and I felt classy, stylish, and
me
in them. But I had to admit these old clothes felt very broken in, very comfortable, very
me
, too. I’d had this particular pair of jeans since I was a teenager and they’d been with me through some mighty good times. They fit like a second skin.

I thought more about the upcoming baseball game. It was generous of Stan Shelton to invite us to the bank’s skybox, and I’d like to think he’d extended the invitation simply because he was impressed by the plans Brett had come up with for the lake house. But was there more to the story than that?

Then again, maybe I was being overly distrustful again. Was it really so odd for a banker to trust a guy like Brett with a deposit, even a large one? Maybe not. Brett was clean-cut and responsible, and since bankers dealt with huge sums of money every day, maybe the deposit hadn’t seemed like a big deal to Shelton. Still, if the two knew each other only as landscape architect and client, it would be odd for Stan to entrust the funds to Brett. Right?

Ugh. I didn’t know what to think. But I planned to keep a close, discreet eye on their interactions at the baseball game. Maybe I could discern something from the way the two interacted. My gut told me Brett was one of the good guys. But my head wasn’t so sure.

*   *   *

An hour later at the house Christina launched into full yoga mode, on her back in a lavender geometric print crop top, her ankles behind her ears, her hip-hugging Lycra yoga shorts riding up, revealing the bottom curve of her butt cheeks.

“You should do that for Joe,” I said. “He’d confess all to you in ten seconds flat.”

Christina ignored me, pulled her shorts out of her crack, and shifted on her mat.

At my suggestion, Christina and I had driven to a nearby nursery that morning and bought a flat of pink and white petunias, a large bag of potting soil, and two terra-cotta pots. We spent the late morning planting the flowers, setting the pots on either side of the front door when we were finished. After watering the flowers, I used a whisk broom to clean the spiderwebs and dirt off the windows and porch. When I finished sweeping, I checked my manicure. No damage. Good.

The two guys across the street were under the hood of their Nova again. No stereo today. I couldn’t blame them. The woman who’d hollered at them before looked downright scary. Their enormous dog lay in the shade, panting and watching us.

When Christina and I were done, we stood back and admired our handiwork. The shack would never be attractive, but at least now it looked like we’d made some effort.

Christina and I made do with sloppy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. I went over more of Chisholm’s Steakhouse records as we watched Maury. His guests for the day were women unsure which of a dozen or so men had fathered their babies. Ew.

Christina shook her head and clicked off the television. “If this is the kind of crap that’s on TV during the day, I’m glad I’ve got a job.”

I consulted my watch. “About time for Joe to make his appearance.”

Christina pulled herself up off her yoga mat. “Let’s go a few blocks over so the guys from across the street won’t get in our way.”

We left the house and headed north up the sidewalk in the direction from which Joe always came.

The Latino guys across the street sat upright on the hood of the Nova. “Where you going?” one of them called after us.

“For a walk,” I snapped. Our destination was none of their business.

Three blocks down we heard the tinkle of Joe’s music. We waited in the shade of a pecan tree, standing among a scattering of hard broken shells.

Joe pulled to a stop a few houses down when a trio of dark-haired, freckle-faced girls ran out of a garage waving dollar bills. When Joe spotted Christina and me stepping in line behind the girls, a horny grin spread across his face. Once he’d served the girls, he leaned forward on the window ledge and flashed a smile that was probably intended to be seductive but, with his tongue protruding through his front teeth, was more along the lines of repulsive. The stained T-shirt and too-tight jeans he wore did nothing to add to his appeal. “What’re y’all doing here?”

Christina shrugged. “Nothin’ better to do. Decided to take a walk.”

Joe glanced over at me, taking in my torn jeans. “Gotta say, there’s something real attractive ’bout a girl with the knees worn out on her jeans.”

Urk.

“What can I get you today?” Joe asked.

Christina put a hand on the window ledge and stepped closer, her face only inches from Joe’s. “I’m not in the mood for ice cream today,” she said, her voice low but firm. “What else you got?”

The two locked eyes for a few moments. Finally, Joe looked away down the street. “All I got is ice cream.”

Christina continued her laserlike stare. “That’s not what we hear.”

Joe turned back to her and paused for a moment, considering. Then he broke eye contact again, gazing down at the floor of his van, scratching at a zit on the side of his face with his index finger. “Can’t always believe what people say.”

Christina tossed her long, dark hair. “Too bad.” She turned and walked off down the sidewalk, Joe’s disappointed gaze locked on her butt as she went.

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just trotted after Christina, catching her at the corner. “Looks like we struck out.”

“No,” she whispered. “He’s just going to make us wait. Any dealer with half a brain won’t jump on a sale to someone they don’t know.”

“You think he’s got half a brain?” Seemed generous to me.

Joe’s truck rumbled as he eased it away from the curb behind us. A few seconds later he drove slowly past, glancing wistfully at Christina through the open window.

*   *   *

On Wednesday and Thursday, we purposefully stayed inside the house when Joe’s truck came by. Christina thought it would make us seem less eager, that Joe might begin to wonder whether he’d passed up a lucrative new customer who’d since found a source elsewhere.

The extra free time gave me a chance to run by the nail salon for a manicure. I opted for blue French tips this time, with a baseball on each pinky and a
T
on each thumb for the Texas Rangers. If that showing of support wouldn’t give the team a competitive edge, I didn’t know what would.

Christina dropped me back at my town house Thursday afternoon. Anne crawled out from under the couch and met me at the front door as I came in. “How’s my girlie-girl?” I picked her up and scratched her under the chin. “Hey, Henry.” I walked under the nose of my snobby Persian, as usual perched up high on the entertainment center. He yawned and stretched a furry paw out toward me. A small gesture, but one that let me know he’d missed me. I gave his chin a good scratching, too.

After giving the cats some attention, I decided to check in with my parents. I hadn’t spoken with them in a few days. My father answered the phone. After the usual preliminaries, he asked if I’d be interested in coming home for the weekend and attending a gun show at the Nacogdoches County expo center. Not only would I enjoy seeing my parents, but the weekend could also provide an opportunity for me to get some distance from Brett, objectively evaluate the situation.

“Gun show sounds like fun.”

“It’s a date, then.”

We chatted for a few minutes, then my mother got on the line. I assured Mom I was fine, work was fine, the cats were fine. I knew what question was coming next, and even mouthed the words as she spoke.

“How are things with Brett?”

“Hard to say, Mom.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I want to talk to you about it this weekend. In person.” In case I needed a shoulder to cry on.

“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll make pralines.”

Pecan pralines, the Southern antidepressant.

We concluded the call and I went upstairs, Anne trotting up the steps behind me. After showering, I dressed in a Rangers jersey and jeans and applied fresh makeup, doing a little trick Christina had shown me with the eyeliner, accentuating my gray-blue eyes. The doorbell rang as I was putting on my earrings. “Kiss-kiss,” I told Anne, who lay on my pillow, assuring me a face full of fur next time I slept on it.

When I entered the foyer, I could see a burst of red and yellow through the beveled glass on my front door. Flowers! I yanked opened the door.

Brett wore a short-sleeved royal-blue button-down, jeans, and loafers. In one hand he held a colorful bouquet of parrot tulips wrapped in green tissue paper, in the other a white cardboard cylinder sealed at both ends with plastic caps.

“Brett! They’re beautiful.” I took the bouquet and gave him a kiss on his freshly shaved cheek, catching an enticing whiff of his spicy aftershave.

“The night we met you mentioned that you liked the parrot tulips.”

Liked them? I’d gone gaga over them. The size and variety of the specimens had been breathtaking. How sweet of him to remember.

Brett followed me to the kitchen. Retrieving a glass vase from the cabinet for the tulips, I filled it with cold water and carefully arranged the flowers. Perfect. I set them on the middle of my butcher block island, then turned and gestured to the cylinder in his hand. “What’s that?”

He grinned. “A surprise.” He waved me over to my kitchen table. Once we were there, he uncapped the tube and shook a set of blueprints out of it. He spread the thin paper out, using my cat-shaped salt and pepper shakers to anchor the top corners, grabbing two soup spoons from a drawer to hold down the bottom edges.

I glanced down at the blueprint. The structure diagrammed was unmistakably my town house, complete with the chimney on the left, the twin dormer windows upstairs, the front door with the glass oval. But in the blueprint, the awkward evergreen was gone, replaced by a row of beautiful pink rosebushes standing in a perky line, English ivy forming a lush bed underneath them. A black wrought-iron trellis stood between the front windows, covered in Carolina jessamine bursting out in yellow blooms. A small redbud tree was staked in the center of the yard, alternating red and white geraniums encircling its trunk, natural round river stones outlining the bed. On either side of the front walk, just before the porch, were two shepherd’s hooks supporting hanging baskets of multicolored moss rose.