Tax Assassin (3 page)

“
I can’t be Amelie Vivian
Alvin anymore,” she said. “My father stole our name, dirtied it
with his . . . whores and johns and pimps and
political pandering and . . . You know, Mom thinks
he’s dead. She keeps saying, ‘Your father would never do this to us
– to me. He must be dead.’ She doesn’t know he’s in witness
protection.”

“
Doesn’t want to
know?”

“
I honestly think she
doesn’t know . . . and . . . they
took everything she . . . we own.”

“
The Feds?”

“
Her dresses, jewelry,
furniture, our baby clothing . . . Anything they
could sell,” she whispered as if her words were too painful to hear
out loud. “His clothing too, but who cares? Computers. My little
sister Bella’s school computer. My older sister, Éowyn? She’s not a
DA anymore.”

“
Your father got her the
position at the DA the same way he got you the position at the
forensics lab at Denver Police,” Seth said.

“
I found her curled up in a
ball in her closet,” she said. “Big bad Deputy DA Éowyn Alvin, who
always had something nasty to say about everyone and everything,
especially me, was crying her eyes out. She was crying so hard she
couldn’t leave the closet. She’s lost her house and had to move
home to live with Mom, and now this . . . They took
her clothing, jewelry, computer, and . . . even her
precious Blackberry! Bella was chucked from college. No money, no
college. Her loans are part of the fraud case and . . .”

“
And?”

“
Everyone I grew up with,
all of our neighbors, gathered around to cheer on the Feds. Even
the Mandolyns. You know, the elderly couple who took us to the pool
in the summer?” she asked. “Our neighbors . . . they
pointed and stared and gossiped and drank. Like they knew we
were . . . bad . . . all along. My
mom thought some of these . . .
people . . . were her best friends.
She . . . It’s like she’s dead inside.”

“
No pitch
forks?”

“
No torches,” she said. “At
least until . . .”

She stopped talking and looked at him. Angry
and embarrassed, she scooted away from him toward the end of the
bed.

“
Until what?” he
asked.

She stopped moving. She sat on the far
corner of the bed with her back to him.

“
I used the money you gave
me to put them up in a hotel downtown.” She glanced at him. “You
see, I’m your whore and . . .”

He slid across the bed to catch her before
she began to sob. He rocked her slightly. When she was able to
hear, he whispered: “Everything I have is yours.”

“
We’re not
married.”

“
Why
is
that?” He smiled.

“
Because of all of
this.”

“
Want to get married now?
We could be in Vegas in an hour. We weren’t supposed to leave for
our honeymoon until tomorrow. We could still make it.”

She smiled at him.

“
We have a dress, a tux.
The rings are in the safe downstairs. The flowers are still
amazing. There’s a fancy cake in the freezer. I bet I could whip up
a celebration and . . .”

“
I want to marry you when
this crap is over,” she smirked. “I’m only planning on getting
married once. I want it to be big, fun, and memorable. I don’t plan
on changing husbands like underwear. Not like
some
people.”

“
That’s low. I change my
underwear much less than that!” He clutched his chest as if she’d
stabbed him. “I divorced the crazy one. I think you’ll remember
that Bonita was killed by Saint Jude!”

For the briefest moment, even her eyes
smiled and she looked like herself for the first time since her
father’s toxic waste had polluted every corner of her life.

“
She doesn’t know it’s your
money,” Ava said.

“
Who?”

“
My mother,” she said. “I
told her it’s money I got for coming up with the treatment protocol
for the First Responder’s Toxin.”

“
You got a hefty
payout.”

“
That the Denver Police
Department kept,” she said. “But really, Seth, without your money,
she, my sisters . . . The Feds took the beds!
There’s no place to sleep.”

“
They’re tearing up the
carpets tomorrow,” Seth said.

“
Why?”

“
Looking for documents,
audio recordings,” Seth said. “He said he kept everything in a safe
at the house. That’s what they’re looking for.”

“
God.” Ava shook her head.
“There’s more?”

“
Your father was at the
DA’s office before he was attorney general. He was in politics for
more than thirty years.”

“
And dirty the whole
time.”

“
The Feds think he’s the
tip of a very large iceberg,” he said.

“
Mom blames you,” she said.
“For all of this.”

“
Me?”

“
Dad told her it was your
fault,” she said. “You were jealous because of . . .
Saint Jude, I guess. You made up the lies that got Dad killed.
That’s what she says. And . . . that’s what I mean!
It’s crazy town; she’s lost it. When we got to the hotel,
she . . . I was glad I got them separate rooms,
because the moment her door closed, Mom collapsed. It took all of
us to get her onto the bed and . . . Come dinner,
she’s up as if nothing happened. Face on, everything in
place . . . We ate dinner at Sam’s No. 3. I love
that diner. Went there almost every day when I was a uniform, but
my mother . . . she’d never been there. Kept saying
it was ‘quaint.’ But where else are we going to go? They won’t seat
us at her usual restaurants. I tried.”

Ava swallowed hard.

“
I ran here. From downtown.
I had to get out. I had to . . . see you and explain
that . . .”

“
Take what you need,” he
said. “If we run out, I’ll write another movie score
or . . . sell something.”

“
Sell
something?”

“
The house,” Seth said.
“I’m a little old to still be living in my father’s monstrosity of
a house.”

“
I thought it was Maresol’s
house,” Ava smiled.

He held her close.

“
I’m going to move them,”
she said. “Albuquerque, Las Vegas, some place smaller with a
college so Bella can finish – any place away from here. Mom told me
that she wants to start over, get her own job. I guess she was a
paralegal.”

“
Have the Feds asked about
your money?”

“
Not yet,” she said. “But I
think they know about you and me. Plus, did you know they took all
of the cars? Not mine, but my sisters’ cars and my mother’s. Gone.
If you hadn’t bought me the car, and Sandy . . . She
had the receipt and . . .”

He leaned back to look into her face.

“
Don’t I have to talk to
Sandy to get more money?” she asked.

He smiled. As part of his sobriety plan,
Sandy, his eldest daughter, controlled his money. By the grace of
God, and Sandy, he would never again have access to enough money to
fuel his self-destructive habits.

“
I’ll call Sandy,” he
said.

“
That’s okay,” Ava smiled.
“She called midday. Told me about the car. The hotel was her idea.
She’s already called real estate agents in Las Vegas and
Albuquerque to see about houses.”

“
Sounds like Sandy.” Seth
smiled at her. “What’s your older sister going to do?”

“
I don’t know,” Ava said.
“She’s . . . barely functioning. Our family name,
status; it meant so much to her. Even when we were kids, she built
a whole world around how we were State Attorney General Aaron
Alvin’s children and we . . .”

The horror of the day caught her again. She
let out a small sob.

“
Does he get to do this and
just . . . walk away?” She clutched him.

“
Looks that way,” Seth
said.

She began to cry in earnest and he pulled
her to him. While sobs wracked her body, he rubbed her shoulder,
kissed her hair, and whispered that he loved her. She cried for her
mother, for her family, for her sisters, and finally for herself.
The flood of sorrow rose and fell. When her sorrow was spent, she
slept.

He closed his eyes for what seemed like a
moment. When he opened them again, the late spring, predawn light
was staring to brighten his second-floor, mullioned windows.

She was gone.

|-||-|||-||-|||-||-|||-||-|||-||-|||-||-|||-||-|||

THREE

Unsure what to do with himself, he took a
shower. With the warm water beating on his head, he tried to
retrieve the new piece of music he could feel growing inside
him.

Nothing came.

He knew better than to force it, so he got
dressed. He was pulling on his boots, when the murder-for-hire
mystery drifted into his mind. Focused on the problem, he slipped
down the wide oak stairwell to the kitchen where he’d left the
files. He had downed two cups of coffee before he realized he had a
problem.

He didn’t have a place to work.

His father’s eighty-five-year-old home was
nearly four thousand square feet, plus the basement, in two
stories. That didn’t count the “carriage house,” which contained a
lap pool and two upstairs apartments. The house was not big by
modern standards, but since his father’s death, he’d lived here
alone. It was too big for one man.

And he didn’t have a space of his own.

Sure, he had a grand piano in the front
sitting room, his upright piano sanctuary downstairs, and the front
corner bedroom. But he’d always done his detecting in his office at
the Denver Police Department. He’d learned from his first marriage
to never bring work home; a lesson that stuck longer than the
marriage.

There was no space for him to work here. He
went to look for Dale.

He followed the smell of paint fumes until
he found the young man standing in the awkward posture of a grown
boy, not quite a man, in the middle of a small bedroom on the
second floor. Hearing Seth come in, Dale turned and smiled. He had
impossibly green eyes, straight white teeth, and brown hair that
hung in his eyes. His smile held all the charm, beauty, and angst
of youth.

He had been Ava’s best friend Beth’s fiancé.
When Beth was brutally murdered, Seth brought Dale to home where
the young man had lived ever since. In the last few months, Maresol
had tasked him with painting the interior of the house.

“
I saw Ava before she
left,” Dale said.

“
Oh yeah?“ Seth scowled at
the freshly painted white walls.

“
I asked her,” Dale
said.

Seth turned to look at Dale.

“
You know, was she coming
back?” Dale asked. “Or was she some kind of runaway bride? She
laughed. I think she’s coming back.”

Seth smiled.

“
Do you think . . .?”
Embarrassed, Dale started scraping the remnants of paint from the
rolling pan.

“
Do I think?”

“
Do you think she knows?”
Dale asked.

“
Knows?”

“
That I told that reporter
about her dad,” Dale said. “She’s the only friend I have left; I
mean, except for you, but you’re really more like my surrogate dad
or uncle or something and less like a buddy, I mean, we drink
together or I drink and you play, and I’m not saying you’re old or
too old, at least not for Amelie. I just . . .”

Dale caught Seth’s smile. He gave a
self-conscious smile in return.

“
Do you think she knows?”
Dale asked.

“
I think it’s interesting
that you believe you were the only one who called,” Seth said. “I
heard that someone called
Westword
about a week before a couple of other people
called Barton Gaston directly. I’ve asked Barton how many and who
called, but he wasn’t going to reveal his sources, yada, yada, and
all that.”

“
I
feel . . . guilty,” Dale said.

“
You shouldn’t,” Seth said.
“A lot of good people were set free, and a very bad man who lived
without consequence was taken off the streets.”

“
But Amelie and her mom . .
.”

“
The truth always comes
out, Dale,” Seth said. “What’s happening to them is a direct result
of Alvin’s actions, not yours. It’s awful, but trust me – they’re
better off. Give them a few years. You’ll see.”

Dale nodded.

“
Why are the walls white?”
Seth asked. “I thought Maresol was sick of gringo walls that spoke
to her like my father.”

“
Maresol isn’t going to
work in here,” Dale said.

“
Who is?”

“
You. This is your new
office,” Dale said. “The furniture’s downstairs. If you help, we
can set it up. Maresol bought another computer so you don’t have to
use hers.”

Seth smirked.

“
You turn off the Telemundo
stream when you use her computer. She wakes me up to get it running
again. And,” He switched into an exaggerated Hispanic accent. “If I
have to cook and clean for the old man, I should at least be
entertained.”

Seth laughed.

“
But one thing I don’t
understand,” Dale said. “About Maresol, I mean.”

“
Only one?”

“
Yeah right,” Dale grinned.
“But . . . isn’t she from Denver?”