Death, Taxes, and Cheap Sunglasses (A Tara Holloway Novel Book 8) (33 page)

My mother put her hands on her hips. “You complaining?”

Dad raised his hands in surrender. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Just making an observation.”

Mom walked us out to Dad’s truck. “Y’all be careful.” She turned to me. “Call me the minute you get things taken care of. I don’t want to be sitting here worrying over nothing.”

Worrying over nothing was what Mom did best, but pointing that out wouldn’t earn me any brownie points. Instead, I promised, “We will.”

Dad and Eddie took seats in the front of the cab, while I lay down in the back with the bed pillow under my head, the ice packs on my rear end, and the picnic basket and cooler on the floorboards beside me. Eddie told my father which way to go, and we headed out.

While Dad and Eddie talked sports and ate sandwiches and pickles, I dozed, still exhausted from my late-night escapades. Sometime later, the
plink-plink-plink
of gravel hitting the truck’s undercarriage woke me. I lifted my head to see that we’d turned down the county road that led to Southern Safari.

Blinking to clear my eyes, I wriggled gently until I was sitting on the bed pillow with my hemorrhoid doughnut cradling my fractured coccyx.

Dad looked up at the high fence and shook his head. “That’s just plain wrong. This place is nothing more than an oversized cage. No self-respecting hunter would shoot anything here.”

We passed the sign for the hunting ranch and pulled up to the automated gate, which swung inward to let us onto the property. We drove down a short road also lined with the high fences until we reached a building with a sign designating it as
SOUTHERN SAFARI SPORTSMEN LODGE
. Though the outside was made of rustic wood, it was clear from the fancy light fixtures and heavy, high-end furniture on the porch that this was no typical hunting shack.

Parked in front were several vehicles, all top-of-the-line SUVs. A gray Toyota Land Cruiser, sticker price upward of $75,000. A silver Lexus LX 570 SUV, which came standard for around eighty-two grand. A Range Rover, which, brand-new, cost around $180K, as much as a nice house in the Dallas suburbs. Nope, these were no soccer-mom SUVs. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say these cars belonged to corporate bigwigs from Dallas who’d come out here to hunt as some sort of team-building exercise or to get in touch with their Paleolithic side. City slickers trying to act tough, test their mettle—so long as it was in a safe, controlled environment.

A Polaris multipassenger hunting vehicle pulled up. A thirtyish guide was driving, while the other seats were occupied by men with perfect haircuts, expensive sunglasses—no cheap frames for these guys—and designer camo gear they’d likely purchased at Cabela’s. WalMart T-shirts might be good enough for my father, but not for this crew.

On the flat bed behind the seats lay a dead-eyed scimitar-horned oryx, its white fur stained with blood. My heart writhed in my chest. I fought the urge to turn my gun on the men, yell “on your mark, get set, go!” and chase them until they were backed up against a fence with no means of escape.

Chattering excitedly, the men climbed out of the vehicle, leaving the guide to take care of the carcass. No sense getting their hands dirty, right? The men climbed the two steps to the porch of the lodge and went inside.

As my father parked, a man stepped out from inside the building. He wore a khaki outfit with a tall khaki hat and brown boots. I half expected Curious George to peek out from behind him.

Eddie had a slightly different take on the man. “If he starts singing that ‘Happy’ song, can I shoot him?”

“You don’t like Pharrell Williams?”

“I did,” Eddie said, “the first ten thousand times they played that song on the radio. But ten thousand and one sent me over the edge. Besides, my girls keep singing it in the car on the way to school. It gives me an ear worm all day.”

“Is that why I saw you skipping to the copier last week?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d just thought you’d had too much of Viola’s coffee.” The stuff was like caffeinated tar.

The man in the hat raised his hand high in a friendly greeting. “Welcome, folks!” he called. “You must be the Galloways.”

Dad, Eddie, and I climbed out of the truck.

“Gary Galloway,” Dad said, sticking out his hand.

The man took it and gave it a firm shake. “I’m Norman Peele. I’ll be your hunting guide today.”

Good.
My earlier research told me that Peele was the sole owner of Southern Safari Game Reserve, Inc. If there had been any financial games, this guy would have been in the middle of them, right up to his boot tops.

Dad turned to introduce me. “This is my daughter, Sara.”

“Right,” the man said. “You’re the one I spoke to on the phone.”

I’m also your worst nightmare,
I thought, giving myself a silent pep talk. Probably that wasn’t true. I mean, having an undercover IRS agent show up and try to implicate you in charity fraud was no walk in the park, but having your throat ripped out by rabid wolverines would be a worse nightmare. So would being anally probed in an alien invasion. And I had that terrifying, recurring nightmare where I was suddenly standing in a spotlight on a stage, not a stitch of clothing on. Okay, so clearly I wasn’t the worst nightmare he could have. But I still bet I could put the fear of God in this guy.

Dad turned to introduce Eddie. “This is my hunting buddy.”

“Teddy,” Eddie said, also shaking Norman’s hand.

Introductions now completed, Norman clapped his hands together. “I’ve got a great afternoon on tap for you folks. But first there’s a little matter of payment.” He turned to me. “Let’s go inside and run your credit card.”

chapter thirty-two

M
eow

Norman Peele led us into the lodge. The place had wooden walls, a wooden ceiling, and a wooden floor. It was like being inside the hollow of a tree or a beaver dam.

The open foyer resembled a pro shop. Rounder racks of camo gear and T-shirts. A display of hats, including a souvenir cap with plastic antlers that said
I SHOT MY TROPHY AT SOUTHERN SAFARI
! A bookshelf with various nonfiction offerings on hunting-related topics, as well as several novels with hunting themes.
Green Hills of Africa
by Ernest Hemingway.
Moby Dick. My Side of the Mountain
. But, sadly, no
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
. One of my favorites,
The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing,
was also absent.

An open doorway on the left side of the room led to a cozy lounge where the men I’d seen outside now sat in leather barrel chairs around a circular table, toasting each other and their successful hunt with amber liquid in highball glasses, just as Paleolithic men toasted each other with cholera-laced river water.
Clink! Clink! Clink!

Peele stepped behind the sales counter. The wall behind him was hung with photographs of trophy hunters and their dead prey. A couple of beefy men with another of the scimitar-horned oryx. A tall, thin woman holding on to the antlers of a barasingha deer. A smiling young boy, who appeared to be no older than ten, with his arm draped over the gaping mouth of a bear with lifeless eyes. The images were disturbing enough, but knowing the animals had been trapped inside the fences with no possible means of escape made their deaths seem unacceptably unfair.

Peele looked at me expectantly. “Got your card handy?”

In preparation for today’s sting operation, I’d had Viola order me up a credit card under my alias. I pulled it out of my purse and handed it to Peele. He sat down, ran it through a little black scanner, and handed the card back to me. When the screen popped up with the authorization, he pushed the button to print out a receipt for me to sign.

He handed me the receipt along with a pen. “I just need your John Hancock and we’ll be on our way.”

I looked down at the slip and nearly choked.
Six thousand five hundred dollars? Holy crap!
It was more than the man had quoted me on the phone, but no sense arguing with him. I’d have the charge reversed anyway, so what did it matter? I signed the slip and handed it back to him in exchange for a copy.

He led us back out front. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

He stalked off in the direction of a detached prefabricated building that resembled an airplane hangar. He slid the wide front door open and disappeared inside. There was a roar as an engine fired up and, a moment later, Peele emerged, sitting atop a tall, open hunting vehicle that provided a wide field of vision, giving his customers another advantage over their prey.

“How about I take y’all on a tour of the place?” he suggested, his gaze running from one of us to the next. “You might see something else you’d like to shoot.”

Oh, I saw something else I’d like to shoot, all right.
Him.

My father glanced over at me for direction. I nodded. Might as well get a better sense of the place if I planned to implicate this man in tax evasion.

Dad looked back up at Peele. “Sounds great.”

“Fan-damn-tastic!” Peele said, virtually salivating. “I can just add your kills to your bill when we get back.”

I quickly retrieved my pillow and foam doughnut from Dad’s truck, and the three of us climbed up to the benches. Dad sat next to Peele in front, while Eddie and I took spots on either side of the bench behind them. I slid the pillow and doughnut under my hindquarters and my cheap rectangular sunglasses onto my face.

Peele punched the gas, taking off down a dirt path, seeming to hit every possible hole or bump. We bounced along, sparks of pain shooting up my spine. After several attempts to find a comfortable position, I discovered that if I leaned on the safety bar to my right, it would take the pressure off my tailbone. Of course I risked falling over the edge of the vehicle and breaking my neck, but at least that would be a quick, painless death.

Peele stopped after driving a hundred yards or so, and pushed a remote control to open an extra-tall gate. The two sides separated, swinging inward with a jerking motion until stopping with a clang. After he’d driven through, he turned in his seat and aimed the remote once again at the gate. The gate swung shut behind us, emitting another clang as it closed us in with the animals.

Like Paradise Park, the land here was equal parts open grassland and stands of scrubby trees, mostly cedars and mesquites. From our vantage point atop the hunting vehicle, we could see for quite a ways into the distance. Mostly what I saw was animal scat and haylike grass.

As Peele drove, he gave us some details about the game ranch. “We’ve got two hundred acres here. Three large stock ponds. Fifteen species of game.” He then proceeded to drop names like the deer had dropped their dung. “A number of famous people have hunted here. Dick Cheney. Shaquille O’Neal. That country star, Brazos Rivers. You hear about him? Got his-self thrown in jail for something or other.”

“Yeah,” I said, exchanging a knowing glance with Eddie. Nick and I had been the ones to take down the singer for tax evasion. Boy, had that case been a fiasco. “I heard about that, too.”

Just ninety seconds into our ride, our guide lifted his foot off the gas and let the vehicle roll for a moment before applying the brake. “Looky there.” He raised a finger and pointed toward the horizon slightly to our right. “A herd of barasingha at two o’clock.”

I squinted. “Looks more like two-fifteen to me.”

The man glanced back and gave me an odd look. Not everyone gets my sense of humor. He turned to my father. “What do you say, Gary? Want to take one of them barasingha home with ya’? Hang the head on your wall? I’ve got one on my wall at home. Makes a nice conversation piece.”

How, exactly, would that conversation go?

Norman: Do those antlers on my wall make my dick look bigger?

Hunting buddy: Hell’s yeah! Now pass me another beer.

Dad raised his field glasses to his eyes, took a look at the herd, and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve hunted deer for years. One species seems pretty much like another. Hard to get too excited about that.”

Gary turned back to Eddie. “How ’bout you, Teddy? You look like a man who might enjoy taking down a large deer.”

“No, thanks,” Eddie said. “I’m with Gary on this one. A deer’s a deer.”

For a guy who’d never been on a single hunting trip, Eddie played a pretty convincing hunter.

Disappointment darkening his eyes, Peele turned back around and slid the truck into gear.

“You didn’t ask me if I wanted to bag a deer,” I said to the back of Peele’s head.

He slid the truck back out of gear, his face brightening again with the thought of padding my bill. “You want to take a shot?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m more of a gatherer than a hunter.” It was true. I had quite a shoe collection. “I just wanted to be asked. Women’s rights and all that, you know.”

The man simply stared at me for a moment, as if trying to get a read. “Right,” he said finally before proceeding on.

We drove on for another minute or two, passing a couple of automatic feeders, before we came upon a trio of oryx drinking on the other side of a stock pond.

Peele braked to a stop and cut the engine. “What about one of them?” he said in a whisper as if afraid they’d flee. Little chance of that. Two of them glanced up at us and went right back to drinking, our presence barely registering with them. The third didn’t even bother to look up. Obviously, they didn’t consider us a threat. They were used to humans coming around, filling the feeders, checking on things.

Dad stroked his chin. “They sure are pretty. I think maybe I could see one of their heads on my wall.”

Buoyed by the possibility of more profits, Peele said, “Their hides make a nice rug, too. Wouldn’t a skin like that look great in front of your fireplace?”

Dad narrowed his eyes. “Let me think about it. I’ve kind of got my heart set on hunting that lion. I’ve never hunted something that might want to hunt me back. That’s gonna be quite a thrill, I expect.”

“Oh, it will be,” Peele said with a certainty that didn’t reach his eyes. “’Course my insurance company puts all kinds of rules on me. They don’t want any of my clients getting eaten out here.” He followed his words with a forced chuckle. “Heh-heh.”