Death, Taxes, and a Chocolate Cannoli (A Tara Holloway Novel) (24 page)

I knew Benedetta enjoyed having her children around, but she wasn’t a control freak and seemed to value her girls’ individuality. Besides, I had some experience with this situation myself. As much as I knew my mother wished I’d remained at my safe job at Martin & McGee, she was glad I’d found my purpose in life as a special agent. “Honestly, Elena? I think it would break her heart if you didn’t pursue your dreams.”

Elena’s face brightened. “Really?”

“Really.”

We returned to the bistro and immediately checked on our tables. One of mine needed more garlic knots. Apparently, the half dozen I’d brought the two diners had not been enough. Could someone overdose on carbs? Guess I’d find out. “I’ll be right back with more.”

I grabbed their bread basket, went to the kitchen, and filled it with warm garlic knots, straight from the oven. As I began to leave the kitchen, Benedetta called for me to wait.

She handed me a bag of food. “Take this to Tino and Eric next door. The tortellini is Tino’s. The penne is Eric’s.”

“Your husband’s working late again?”

“He tells me they’re trying to land a large client,” she said. “He’s working on a bid.”

Maybe. Or maybe he was over there in his office, plotting how to extort money from one of his existing clients.

I dropped the basket of bread at the table and asked Elena to cover for me while I ran the bag of food next door. I entered Benedetta’s code in the keypad next to the front door. Two-three-six-three. The door buzzed again as I stepped inside.

The interior lights were turned off in the main foyer tonight. As I rounded the empty reception desk, I noted several things in quick succession. One, there was light under the men’s room door, indicating someone occupied it. Two, the door to Eric’s room had not been pulled fully shut. Eric probably intended to take only a quick potty break and had left the door this way so he wouldn’t have to suffer the nuisance of reentering his number in the keypad. Third, Tino’s door was open only an inch or so, not wide enough for him to spot me if I took a quick look-see into Eric’s cybercave. Of course, the camera would catch my movements, but with any luck nobody was monitoring it at the moment.

As quickly and quietly as I could, I went to the door, pushed it open, and peeked my head inside. The windowless room contained a built-in modular desk with a wide work surface. A video camera mounted directly over the door was aimed at the desk.

Affixed to the wall over the desk were six large screens, each of which was divided into smaller squares of varying numbers, probably depending on how many cameras were at each client’s location. Each square showed a live feed from a video camera. The name and account number of each client appeared across the bottom of the screen.
Tommy’s Tire Town—34762, Wexler’s Furniture—79085, South Dallas Liquor—15393,
and so on. Two more flat-screen monitors sat on the desk, along with a half-empty bottle of pink Vitaminwater. On the flat-screens were static images of what appeared to be the back door of a business with a man reaching for the knob. While no name appeared on the door, per information at the bottom of the screen, the image depicted was of
Looking Good Optical—55629.

Why weren’t these images moving like the others? Had something gone wrong with the camera feed? Or had Eric purposely frozen the image for some reason? Was he doctoring this video like we suspected him of doing with the others?

Had Operation Italian Takeout caught its first big break?

A-hem.

The sound of someone clearing his throat sent my heart into my esophagus and drew my eyes to Tino’s door.
Uh-oh.
The man stood there, staring me down, his normally friendly eyes steely and cold. “What are you doing, Tori?”

Despite the fact that my brain was spinning in terror, I knew I had to play it cool. I raised the bag and forced a smile, hoping it didn’t look like the grimace it felt like. “Just delivering Eric’s penne and your tortellini. Hope you’re hungry. It looks like your wife sent over extra garlic knots and a cannoli, too.”

I watched Tino’s face. Had I fooled him? Or had the cheer in my voice sounded as false to him as it had to me?

The door to the men’s room opened and Eric stepped out. His eyes met mine, but immediately looked away. When he spotted the door to his room standing open, his buggy eyes nearly popped out of his head. His voice sounded squeaky and panicked when he spoke. “Did you go into my office?”

Tino held up a palm, but it seemed more of a warning to Eric than a true attempt to calm him. “She’s just brought your dinner.”

I circled the bag with my left arm and opened it with my right, retrieving the container marked
PENNE
. I pulled it out of the bag and held it out to Eric. “Here you go.
Mangia.
”

Eric grabbed the container from my hand and slipped into his office, closing and locking the door behind him.

Tino chuckled, but his laughter didn’t make it to his eyes, which were still watching me intently. “Computer geeks. Odd ducks, aren’t they? He was probably afraid you’d steal his Iron Man action figures.”

I giggled and rolled my eyes. “The only thing I want is your chocolate cannoli.”

He reached out for the bag, the friendly twinkle back in his eyes now. “Then I better take it from you right away.”

I handed him the bag and turned to go, calling, “Don’t work too hard!” back over my shoulder.
Don’t work too hard. Don’t torch anyone’s business. Don’t shove anyone off a roof.
Really, shouldn’t those things go without saying?

chapter thirty

N
ow Overhear This

As I left the bistro at the end of my shift a couple of hours later, I noticed Eric’s Mustang was no longer in the lot at Cyber-Shield. Neither was Tino’s Alfa Romeo. Again I wondered if those two were up to something, plotting another criminal act, fabricating evidence that would implicate someone else and make them appear innocent.

On my drive home from work Tuesday night, I made another stop at a gas station. All this running around town had emptied my tank in short order. As I waited for the gas to finish pumping, I texted Pat Nix, otherwise known as Nick Pratt, from my new phone.
Got look into tech cave. Looking Good Optical on monitors. Next victim?

Just as soon as I’d sent the text I deleted it as I’d been instructed. No sense keeping evidence of my spying and snitching on me.

The hose stopped pumping and the automated nozzle deactivated with a
clunk.
I returned the nozzle to the pump and climbed back into my car. As I pulled away from the pump, a return text came in from Pat/Nick.
Putting eyes on it.

Putting eyes on an optician’s business. There’s some irony for you.

As I continued home through relatively sparse traffic, I took note of headlights a block behind me. Was my tail back? I couldn’t tell what type of car it was, but from the fact that the headlights sat up higher than a standard car, I suspected it might be the white pickup again.

Sure enough, as I pulled to a stop at a red light, the white pickup took a right turn into a fast-food restaurant rather than pull up behind or beside me where I could get a better look at the driver and any passengers. Clearly, whoever was behind the wheel of the truck was trying to maintain some distance in an effort to prevent me from realizing I was being followed.

When the light turned green, I continued on. A glance in my rearview mirror told me that the pickup had pulled back onto the street behind me.

Why had Tino put a tail on me again? Was it because he suspected me of intentionally snooping at Cyber-Shield earlier? If that was the case, and Tino was growing wary, it would only make things harder on the federal law enforcement task force. Tino might realize he and his men were under watch and abort any immediate plans to take revenge on a client who’d failed to give in to his extortion. Or he might try to off me. After all, he had a history of dispatching anyone who had the goods on him. The mere thought turned my insides to jelly. I’d become a human bomboloni.

I continued to drive, so rigid with fear and anxiety that the muscles in my back began to ache. With any luck, I could quickly convince those spying on me that I was only a college girl trying to do well in her waitressing job. I made my way back to my apartment complex, parked, and hurried up to my unit. I assumed whoever was in the pickup—possibly Cole Kirchner or Eric Echols—intended only to keep an eye on me, visually and virtually. But there was a chance that whoever was in the pickup intended to do me harm … as in impaled-on-a-fence, nail-gun-to-the-face, bench-pressed-into-a-pancake kind of harm.

Inside my place I glanced around, trying to figure out what I could do to make the apartment more secure. I supposed I could contact Eddie or another member of the Operation Italian Takeout team and have them keep watch over my place tonight. But that would mean taking an agent off one of Tino’s men to babysit me. If nothing happened, it would look like I was losing my edge, letting the pressure of the case overcome me. Lu might even take me off the case, put another agent in charge. I certainly didn’t want that. I’d worked too hard on this case to stop now. I’d suffered fallen arches and burned fingertips from hot plates. I needed to see this through to the end.

So instead I grabbed one of the stools from the breakfast bar and pulled it over to the door. It was too tall for me to lodge it under the knob like I’d seen people do in movies and television shows.
Dang.
I decided to lay the barstool down on its side three feet in from the door. If someone quietly jimmied the lock, they’d trip over the stool on their way in to murder me, waking me and giving me time to get to my gun. I placed the other stool on its side two feet farther into the room. If they somehow managed to avoid the first stool, surely the second one would get them.

In the bedroom, I pulled some lightweight garments from the rack in the closet and hung them from the curtain rod over the window. If someone tried to sneak in that way, they’d have to fight through several layers of cotton and polyester and spandex to get to me. I’d shoot them before they made their way through.

When I finished my preparations, I sat on the bed to think. I was terrified that Tino might now see me as a threat and feel the need to eliminate me. I didn’t like feeling scared, and my terror soon morphed into anger at the man who’d made me feel this way. He had no right to do the things he did, to make people fear for their lives.
Bastard.
I logged into my laptop, careful to aim the Webcam away from my reinforced clothes curtains, and bent over next to my bed so that the first thing anyone cyberspying on me would see was my ass.

Kiss this, Tino Fabrizio.

Thanks to his wife’s chocolate cannoli, I had more kissable ass than I’d had last week.

My buttocks having made their statement, I spent a minute or two checking my fake e-mail account for the benefit of anyone snooping on my computer. I sent responses to my fictional friends and family.

Studying for finals. Ugh! Hoping for a B in Linguistics.

My new job is great! I like my boss. She works us hard but she’s nice and gives me free desserts.

I logged back into the Neiman Marcus Web site and pulled up the Sarah Jessica Parker slingbacks. My hacker could stare at those for a few minutes while I took a quick shower and shampooed the smell of garlic out of my hair. Of course I took my gun with me to the bathroom, placing it in easy reach on the toilet seat while I showered.

I went to bed, sleeping restlessly, waking Wednesday morning alive but still tired. I righted the stools and returned them to the breakfast bar, feeling a little foolish in the light of day. It was only smart to have a healthy fear of Tino Fabrizio, but I couldn’t let it overpower me and prevent me from thinking straight. I needed all of my faculties at full capacity to deal with this case.

I attended my morning class at DBU, noting no tail today as I drove to and from the campus. Had I satisfied Tino again that I was simply the young college girl I was pretending to be? Was he thinking himself paranoid for siccing a tail on me when all I’d done was push open a cracked door to look for an employee who was expecting a meal delivery? Really, that wasn’t so unusual, was it?

Since I didn’t have access to my IRS-issued laptop and didn’t want to run a search on Looking Good Optical on the unsecured laptop the FBI had given me, I swung by the DBU library to use one of their shared computers. Before typing the name in the search bar, I quickly scanned my surroundings. All I saw were college students studying, researching, and flirting. Well, one guy was dozing in a chair, but everyone else seemed to be occupied. Nobody seemed to be paying any mind to the redhead at the computer.

I typed the name of the business in the space and hit enter. Up popped a Web site for Looking Good. I clicked on the
About Us
link.

The page featured a photo of the optician with his wife and adorable young son, whose mouth hung wide open in a natural, gleeful smile. The optician was a sandy-haired man who wore wire-rimmed glasses himself. His wife was pretty, with hair the golden-brown color of maple syrup. They looked like a happy young family. The thought that Tino Fabrizio could put a quick end to that happiness made me feel both furious and queasy. The only thing that made me feel better was knowing that multiple sets of eyes were on both the optical business and Tino’s men. With a little luck, they’d be able to catch any bad guys in the act before they could cause too much damage to the optician’s business or to the optician himself. And, if they were able to connect any would-be criminals to Tino, we’d be able to search Cyber-Shield and Tino’s home and get the evidence we needed to nail him for his tax crimes. I still wasn’t sure whether he was laundering the extorted funds or completely failing to report them, but it had to be one or the other. Either way, he’d be looking at several years in federal prison on top of whatever the other charges might bring.