Lone Star Santa (7 page)

Wow. Mitch had mentioned something about his accounts being frozen, but this was subzero. Kristen
backed up and tried to check out last month’s information, but couldn’t get into that, either.

So she went fishing. Back to the credit reports. This time, she studied which cards he had and which companies had requested his file.

Anderson Personnel was on top. They’d requested his file last March. Now why was a personnel company requesting Mitch’s personal credit report? His company’s profile, sure, but why Mitch’s own data? Was Mitch job hunting back then? And why would he job hunt when he owned his own company?

Kristen searched for info on Anderson Personnel and discovered it was a holding company. Okay, what and who were they holding? Texas Rhinestone Corporation. Rhinestones needed a corporation? Maybe not, because TRC turned out to be Longhorn Entertainment’s parent company. And Longhorn Entertainment owned… Kristen searched and clicked. Fruit? The Coconut Club. Big Bananas. Tutti Fruiti. Miss Melons. Cherries Jubilee.

Somehow, Kristen didn’t think she was looking at fruit-of-the-month clubs. Beefsteaks. Whipped Creme. Oh, how nice. They’d branched out into other food groups.

Her stomach growled. She ignored it.

Adult clubs. Had to be. Something about rhinestones and entertainment pointed Kristen in that direction. Frankly, she had a live-and-let-live attitude toward the adult entertainment industry as long as it didn’t live too close—or try to pawn off burlesque as family entertainment.

She briefly wondered if the sushi and salsa place was connected—that was food, wasn’t it?—but decided it
wasn’t worth the effort of researching. She’d stick with the fruits.

Now, where were these places? And how were they connected with Mitch? One of his ick-factor clients?

Why did “ick factor” immediately bring to mind Jeremy Sloane? Was it because “ick” rhymed with “slick”? She only had a high-school-aged memory, but she’d bet he looked about the same—slick in a carefully styled young-businessman-at-a-prayer-breakfast-with-the-boss kind of way.

He’d been the student council vice president, a member of the mixed chorus, the football team manager—a position reserved for those who couldn’t play but wanted to pretend they were a part of the action. Kristen had a sudden vivid memory of Jeremy handing out water to the players on the sidelines. She’d been on the drill team and they always lined up early behind the team to prepare for their halftime show. The players, oblivious to anything but the action on the field, had tossed the plastic squirt bottles and cups to the ground and dirty water had splashed onto some of the drill team’s white boots.

Kristen remembered their lieutenant yelling at the players about it. An assistant coach—the hot one they all had a crush on—sent an annoyed look first at them, and then at Jeremy. Yeah, it had been Jeremy. She remembered his carefully parted hair. And then she remembered how he took a towel and went down the line wiping their white boots as they stood at attention.

Kristen had only been relieved to get the splashes of mud off but now she wondered how he’d felt. No big deal? Or the ultimate humiliation?

She hadn’t seen his expression because they’d been trained to keep motionless and their eyes forward. And, frankly, until this moment, Kristen hadn’t given the incident—or Jeremy Sloane—a second thought.

Now she did. He was on the short side in high school, if Kristen recalled correctly. With the experience of years, she figured that he must have had short-man syndrome even then. It was easy to find a current picture of him on the Internet. Lots of pictures of him, as a matter of fact.

Kristen clicked through them, noticing the ritzy locales, the parties, the women and all the props men with inadequacy issues surrounded themselves with to feel important. Oh, she so knew the type.

Or, again, she could just be overly cynical.

However, unless he was dating only six-foot-four models, he was still short. Good-looking, though, if a woman went for the carefully groomed, capped teeth, buffed nails type rather than the could-use-a-haircut-red-Santa-hoodie-wearing type.

Hypothetically.

And because it was easier to investigate Jeremy than Mitch, Kristen did so.

Within ten minutes, Kristen had figured out their working relationship. Mitch was not in a single one of the “see and be seen” pictures. Jeremy was clearly the people person and brought in their business. Mitch must be the brains. Since in Kristen’s opinion, he was currently acting pretty brainless, it was a scary thought.

But if it worked for them, great. Only not so great if Mitch was being investigated and Jeremy wasn’t. Jeremy could make a good case for denying any knowledge
of what Mitch had been doing. Whatever that turned out to be.

Kristen reached into her file drawer and removed the bottle of water she kept out of sight. Plastic bottled water didn’t fit with the decor. After taking a swig, she put it back and stared at her computer screen. Tapping her Revlon Red nails—a new habit she kinda liked—Kristen considered her next move.

She wanted access to the private stuff about Jeremy Sloane, except there were ethics involved here. She could justify investigating Mitch because of her personal involvement with him. Or potential personal involvement. But investigating his business partner was a stretch. Mitch would have to hire Noir Blanc and Kristen knew he wouldn’t do that. There needed to be paperwork to document an investigative request and if they were subpoenaed—not likely—that paperwork would be examined.

Her father ran a squeaky clean operation and Kristen wasn’t going to jeopardize that.

What to do, what to do.

Start that paper trail, for one thing. So she was her own client. She’d be up front about it. And she’d use one of their Dating Security packets, too. She was allowed to date, right? And…and maybe she’d like to invest, too. Maybe…maybe she became interested after meeting Mitch. And…and she was thinking of using his financial services. Yeah. That would do it. Never mind that she didn’t have anything to invest. She was looking ahead. Planning for the future.

And if investigating whether Mitch was on the up-and-up—there were those nasty blocks and bars in his
records, after all—she needed to delve into his company, because of her future investing and all, well, a girl couldn’t be too careful these days. Therefore, didn’t it make perfect sense to investigate his company and, by extension, his partner in crime? Bad choice of words.

Kristen got into character. “Why, Mr. District Attorney—” insert batting of eyelashes “—when I couldn’t find out anything about Mitch, what was I to do? I mean, I could have lost my life savings as well as my virtue.”

Oh, yeah.
That
would be convincing. Maybe she should go for the cynical-burned-by-life-yet-still-hopeful type. “Mr. District Attorney, I’d been burned before—” insert Scarlett O’Hara I’ll-never-be-hungry-again expression “—and I wasn’t going to get burned again.”

Bingo. She could so sell that if she had to.

Okay. Paperwork done. Everything on the up-and-up. Commencing investigation of Sloane and Donner Financial Services.

Noir Blanc owned various software programs that provided access to detailed databases and subscribed on a per-use basis to other, more specialized services. That’s where she figured she’d find all the dirt. Kristen felt mildly guilty for running up a tab, especially when she was her own client. She should just stop. It wasn’t as if Mitch’s problems were
her
problems.

But…but she had a hunch. Carl Zaleski was a great believer in hunches and intuition and she told herself he’d be pleased. Her father claimed that hunches, intuition and the ever popular “gut feeling” were actually the result of sharpened observation skills. He’d been trying to hone Kristen’s skills by having her relieve
him on boring stakeouts and following people. Honestly, it was great acting training. But she didn’t feel detective-like, even though she thought she was a fairly good observer of human nature. And, though her father encouraged her—probably hoping she’d have some marketable skill to fall back on—she’d never intuited anything and the only hunch she’d felt was the ache in her shoulders from leaning on the steering wheel of their car.

Until now. Now, she was feeling something and it was kind of a kick. An expensive kick, she winced as she rang up a $29.95 charge for access to yet another financial database. The answers were out there. She just had to ask the right questions. And it seemed that the right questions were more about Jeremy than Mitch.

Time passed. Shadows fell. Kristen’s father called from a liquor store fifty-two miles away. As she talked with him, Kristen stretched one arm at a time over her head and then stood to get the circulation moving in her legs. “Mrs. Beckman made you, huh Dad?”

“I’m not sure. She’s still sitting in the car, poor woman. I’m hoping she’ll turn around and drive back without my interference.” Carl Zaleski sighed. “You might as well go on home. Close up for me?”

“Sure. Hey, I’m working on something. You know Mitch Donner?”

“I…uh…”

“Oh, come on. We know you and Mom and his parents have been talking about us.”

There was silence.

“Dad?”

“I can’t remember if I’m supposed to admit that or not. I’m just not good at this sort of thing!”

Kristen laughed. “Dad! You’re an investigator!”

“Right. Not a matchmaker. Oh, for the love of Mike, I know I shouldn’t have said that.” He sighed heavily.

“It’s okay. Mitch and I’ll probably hang out together.”

Sounding hopeful, he asked, “Is that anything like going on a date?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Could you tell your mother that I had something to do with it?”

Kristen smiled. “Actually, you did when you had me look into Christmas decorations. He’s working for The Electric Santa.”

“Why is he doing that?”

Kristen didn’t want to tell her father the whole story just yet. “He has issues and he told me all about them. The thing is, he’s not the kind of guy who should have these issues. Something isn’t right.”

“Kristen! You have a hunch.” Her dad sounded so delighted.

“Yeah…about that. I hired myself, since I was thinking of hanging—dating Mitch.” She waited.

“That sounds reasonable.”

“This hunch is proving expensive,” she told her father bluntly.

“It’s your first one. You’ll get more efficient. Go with your hunch until you find something or you’re satisfied that there’s nothing to find.”

“That’s just it—I’ve found a bunch of stuff, but I don’t know what it all means.”

“Well, you know, this business isn’t as easy as
people think, just the way it isn’t the glamorous job the movies make it out to be.”

Kristen rolled her eyes at his patronizing father-knows-all tone.

“What are you looking into?” he asked.

“Financial sites. I keep getting ‘flagged’ messages and ‘investigation pending, access denied’ and contact so and so with any information—”

“Kristen,” her father’s voice changed instantly. “You are not to have anything to do with—”

“No, no, no. This doesn’t have anything to do with Mitch, but with his partner and their company. But Mitch is the one the SEC and the FBI are after.”

“
Kristen
!”

“Dad, give me some credit.”

After a short silence, he grumbled. “You need to fine-tune your hunches. Tomorrow, I’ll take a look at what you’ve got if you like.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“You’re going to drive me to drink—how convenient that I’m sitting in a liquor store parking lot.”

Kristen grinned. “You’re a good dad.”

He snorted. “Say that again when your mother can hear.”

Kristen cradled the heavy receiver and was still chuckling when the phone rang again. “Yes, I’ll tell her!”

“Tell who what?” her mother’s voice asked.

“Mom!”

“Is that the way you answer the office phone?”

“I was just talking to my great and wonderful dad who is currently parked at a liquor store in La Marque.”

Barbara didn’t miss a beat. “Nora Beckman?”

“Yep.”

Her mother inhaled. “Alcoholism is such a nasty disease and this is a tough time of year. Maybe she needs a distraction. I’ll give Patsy Donner a call and see if there’s something Nora can do with the light parade.”

Kristen shook her head. “Oh, that was smooth, Mom. Were you always this slick when I was growing up?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Working Patsy Donner into the conversation so you can ask whether I’ve connected with Mitch yet.”

“I must be out of practice. So? You and Mitch?”

“Why do you care whether or not I go out with him?”

“Because you’re spending too much time sitting on the couch,” her mother answered.

“I’m working for Dad all day!”

“And sitting on the couch all night.”

Kristen groaned. “Mom.”

“Okay, we won’t talk about Mitch or your spreading hips. So that leaves the rest of your life. What’s up?”

Never mind the spreading hips, Kristen didn’t want to think about her career, or her lack of one just then. She’d anticipated the question or something like it sooner or later, but she’d really hoped for later. “Point taken. And I do appreciate you holding back on the questions for so long.”

“Kristen, you’re an adult. We’re your parents and we love you. When you’re ready to talk, we’ll listen.”

“Thanks.” Kristen had to swallow hard.

“But if you don’t talk soon, it’s our God-given right to bug you about it.”

“I know.” Time for a distraction of her own. “By the way, Mitch is a cutie. He’s working for The Electric Santa and came by today. We’re going out to dinner—after he gets paid.”

Kristen enjoyed the ensuing silence.

“Uh…”

Kristen couldn’t help teasing her mother. “Careful what you wish for!”

“Kristen…” There was a wealth of parental warning and concern in the way her mother said her name.

“It’s okay, Mom.” Kristen briefly brought her mother up to speed on Mitch’s situation. “Maybe you can help me with some of this real estate stuff I’ve found. For instance, did you know that Jeremy Sloane’s dad owns a construction company?”