Tara Holloway 03 - Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray (11 page)

“Current rates for someone with your good credit would be a percent and a half less than what you’re paying now.” She quickly ran some figures. “Refinancing would reduce your monthly payment by roughly a hundred dollars.”

“Let’s do it.” Who couldn’t use an extra hundred bucks a month? I grabbed a pen to make notes. “What do you need from me?”

She ran through a list of documents for me to fax to her. Last year’s tax return, account statements, my latest pay stub. “Once you get the documentation to me, it’ll take only a day or two to get the loan paperwork ready.”

Nick walked into my office as I ended the call and ceremoniously plunked a stack of papers on my desk. “Check these out.”

I quickly riffled through them. A vehicle registration. A birth certificate. A marriage license. A final order in a paternity suit. A divorce decree. A photocopy of someone’s ass.

I held up the ass. “Yours?”

“Nope. I found it on the copier.”

“It’s a white butt,” I said, “so we can rule Eddie out. But other than that I don’t have a clue.”

“It looks like a female ass to me. My guess would be the new clerk in the records department.”

“The one who keeps parking in Viola’s spot?”

Nick nodded.

I turned the copy one way then the other. Was I looking at a G-spot and just didn’t know it? “Maybe this is actually Viola’s butt and Vi’s trying to frame her, get the girl fired.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her. Viola’s damn upset about that parking spot.”

“So I hear.” I crumpled up the paper, tossed it into the wastebasket, and turned to the other documents.

Nick slid into one of my chairs. “The auburn-haired choir girl from the Ark is Amber Hansen,” Nick said, providing a quick Cliff’s Notes version of the paperwork. “Amber was married briefly to a marine named John Vincent Hansen. Got herself knocked up while her hubby was serving a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf.”

“So much for keeping the home fires burning.”

Nick pulled his stress ball out of his pocket and began working it. “According to the court documents, Amber claimed she got pregnant when her husband was home on leave, but the timing didn’t jibe. When her husband returned, he moved out of their house and filed a paternity suit. The DNA evidence proved he wasn’t the biological father.”

“Hence the divorce.”

“You got it.”

I glanced at the birth certificate. Although the child’s name was listed as David Jacob Hansen, the space for the father’s name was blank.

“Are there any other records?” I asked Nick. “Maybe a subsequent paternity suit filed by Amber?”

“Nothing.”

So Amber’s little boy could, in fact, be Pastor Fischer’s. Or he could be someone else’s. There had to be thousands of blond men in the Dallas area, after all, men with much less to lose than Pastor Fischer.

“I’m surprised Amber didn’t file for child support.” After all, it wasn’t cheap to raise a kid these days, even with the dependency exemptions and tax credits for child care costs.

Nick cocked his head. “I’m thinking she didn’t pursue financial support because this dirty little secret would get the father in trouble.”

“Or maybe she doesn’t know who the father is. Maybe she had a one-night stand with a guy she met at a bar.”

Nick rolled his eyes.

“I’m just saying we can’t be sure of this. We need to tread carefully.”

Because when you didn’t tread carefully, it was easy to step in it.

*   *   *

I sneaked out of the office just past eleven to meet my best friend, Alicia, for an early lunch. As always, Alicia was impeccably dressed. She wore sling-back heels with a colorful, embroidered Asian-style dress, complete with a high collar and buttons in the form of small fabric knots. She topped off today’s look by pulling her short blond hair into a small bun bisected by black lacquer chopsticks that formed an
X
on the back of her head.

Yep, Alicia was a master fashionista. I was more of an apprentice, with less of an eye for detail and a smaller budget. But I’d befriended a salesgirl with an inside track to the Neiman’s clearance rack and thus managed to hold my own.

Alicia and I had met as accounting majors at the University of Texas in Austin years ago and immediately hit it off. We’d roomed together during college and, after graduation, had both taken jobs at Martin and McGee’s Dallas office. While working at the CPA firm was the perfect fit for Alicia, the job proved to be less than perfect for me. I’d grown up a tomboy in the open spaces of east Texas and didn’t cope well with prolonged periods of confinement. I simply wasn’t cut out for the cubicle world. Nevertheless, I’d maintained my close bond to Alicia even after I’d left the accounting firm to take the special agent job with the IRS. She was a true friend, someone I could always count on. And today I needed her help.

After a quick bite at a sandwich shop, we made our way to a downtown wig store, two women with a mission—find a strawberry-blond beehive wig for my boss. We stepped inside and surveyed the room. The wigs were arranged in a veritable rainbow that spanned from one side of the boutique to the other. Blonds lined the wall on the left with reds in the center, giving way to brown and black wigs on the right.

We headed down the middle aisle. The wigs were displayed on two-tiered shelves and perched on white ceramic head-shaped figures that resembled decapitated albino aliens.

Alicia leaned into me and whispered, “This place gives me the creeps.”

I had the same feeling. “Yeah. It’s like Jeffrey Dahmer’s freezer in here. Except warmer.”

We stopped to look at three models on an upper shelf.

Alicia tilted her head, considering. “What about one of those?”

“Nope.” I pointed at each wig in turn. “Too dark, too orange, too straight.”

Alicia pointed her finger in my face. “Too picky.”

“It has to be just right,” I said, “or Lu won’t be happy with it. Her hair means a lot to her.”

Alicia picked up one of the heads from a lower shelf and turned it to face me. “What about this one? It reminds me of Debra Messing.” Alicia had been a huge
Will and Grace
fan. She’d cried when the show ended.

I shook my head. “Too curly. Lu would look like Little Orphan Annie in that thing. Or Shaun White. Or Carrot Top.”

“Okay, okay. I get it. No curls.” Alicia put the head back on the shelf.

An older clerk approached us. Given that her hair was a natural wiry gray, she apparently didn’t take advantage of her sales position to wear the merchandise. “May I help you ladies find something?”

“We’re looking for something in a strawberry blond,” I said.

“I think we can help you out.” She slid a pair of glasses onto her nose and gestured for us to follow her. “This way.”

She stopped on the next aisle in front of a straight pale blond wig with slight undertones of red. She gestured with her hand. “Here we go. Strawberry blond.”

The color was closer to Lu’s shade, but we weren’t quite there yet. “Got anything that’s a little heavier on the strawberry?”

The woman took a few steps forward and bent down to pull a display head off the bottom shelf. This wig was redder than the previous selection, but still too light. Lu’s color was a unique shade of pinkish-orange that was apparently one of a kind. We moved forward a few feet and she picked up another. Still not quite right.

I reached into my purse and pulled the lock of Lu’s hair from the inside pocket where I’d stashed it. Fortunately, her industrial-strength hairspray had held the sample together. “I’m trying to match this.”

The woman took the strands from me. “Is this from a doll? Or a stuffed animal?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s from a real person. My boss. She has cancer and her hair’s falling out.”

The woman ran her thumb over the hair. “Why is it so stiff and sticky?”

“She uses a special type of extra-hold hairspray,” I explained. “It’s imported.” Without the sturdy stuff her beehive could never have maintained its height.

We made our way down the aisle, the saleslady holding up Lu’s lock to each of the wigs. We must’ve looked at a dozen of them before she proffered one cut in a stylish shag. It wasn’t Lu’s color exactly, but it was likely the closest the store had.

“Do you have that same shade in a beehive style?”

The woman shot me an incredulous look. “Your boss not only has pink hair, but she wears it in a beehive?”

I nodded.

The woman tucked the head under her arm. “Honey, my family has owned this store for more than fifty years. The last beehive I remember seeing in here was in 1972.”

I sighed. Looked like I’d have to forgo the style and hope Lu would at least be satisfied with the color. “I’ll take it.”

*   *   *

I insisted on driving to the meeting at the Ark. Nick had offered to take his truck, but I felt that if I drove perhaps it would be a subtle reminder to him that this was my case and he was only along as backup. I had no problem with him providing some muscle if needed, but I wanted to be the brains of the operation. Besides, Lu had assigned this case to me, not Nick. It wasn’t fair for him to swoop in and start taking over.

On the drive to the church, Nick chugged a Red Bull while I ran down the strategy I’d planned. “I’m going to play the publicity card, remind them of the potential consequences if word got out that the church and Pastor Fischer were allowing the Ark’s funds to be spent improperly. The parishioners would be enraged, demand changes.”

“That tactic won’t work.”

My simmering resentment began to boil now. “Why not?”

“You saw those people yesterday, giving the guy a standing ovation, saying ‘amen’ to everything that came out of his mouth, standing in line for half an hour to shake his hand. They think Pastor Fischer walks on water. They’re not blind, they see that huge house back there, they see the limo. They think he deserves those things. They like having a celebrity pastor. It makes them feel important to be part of a popular church. They’re perfectly fine with things the way they are.”

Okay, maybe he had a point. These types of financial indiscretions were often overlooked. The public hardly batted an eye when Martha Stewart was convicted of insider trading, and they’d eagerly welcomed her back on television after her brief stint in the pokey. Money crimes seemed deceptively victimless and many people weren’t sophisticated enough to understand them. Thus, they were quickly forgiven and forgotten.

“What would you suggest, then?”

“Beat them at their own game,” Nick said. “Point out that failing to properly report earnings and pay taxes is tantamount to theft, that misreporting is not”—he formed air quotes with his fingers—
“what Jesus would do.”

Now it was my turn to point out the flaws in his plan. “That’s not going to fly, either.”

Nick crushed the now-empty can of Red Bull in one fist, squeezing his ever-present stress ball in the other. “Oh, yeah? Why not?”

“The guy obviously has no conscience or none of this would have happened in the first place.”

He grunted, which I supposed was his way of acknowledging my argument might have some merit, too. “There’s always plan C.”

“Which is?”

Nick pulled his handcuffs from the pocket of his jacket. “Say nothing, slap cuffs on him, and haul his hypocritical, tax-cheating ass off to jail.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Turning the Tables

Only a dozen or so cars were parked in the Ark’s lot today, and we were able to snag a spot not far from the doors.

Nick leaned forward, looking up at the Ark through my front windshield. “Watch out,
Titanic,
” he said. “Here comes your iceberg.”

We climbed out of the car into the scorching heat. An iceberg wouldn’t last a minute out here.

“What did you think of Fischer’s book?” I asked Nick as we walked toward the building.

“
Toss Your Net
? It made me want to toss my lunch. It wasn’t about saving souls. It was about recruiting more members for the church, more pockets for Fisher to pick.” Nick gave a snort of disgust. “Fischer stole his tips from those multilevel marketing gurus. Except instead of promising financial rewards here on earth, he claims the recruiters will be rewarded in the hereafter.”

Nick held the door for me and we stepped into the foyer, finding it dim today, no grinning greeters to welcome us. The turtle continued to slowly circumnavigate the aquarium, while the fish alternated between floating serenely on the current and darting in crazy paths through the water.

We made our way past the tank today, following the hallway back to the administrative wing of the church. Double glass doors etched with
EXECUTIVE OFFICES
led to a waiting area. The receptionist sat on a high-backed leather chair behind an expansive mahogany desk, sorting through a stack of mail and dividing it into piles. She looked up as we came in. Before I could speak, Nick handed her his business card and informed her we had an appointment to meet with Pastor Fischer at three o’clock.

“Please have a seat.” She picked up her phone and dialed an extension. “The pastor’s three o’clock is here.”

I glanced at my watch. It was 2:57. Shouldn’t be a long wait.

Nick and I sat in silence. We couldn’t exactly discuss the case in front of a church employee and, frankly, I wasn’t much in the mood for idle chitchat. I was miffed Nick had rejected my plan. He seemed to think he was smarter than me.
Grr.
This was my case and I was going to attack it the way I thought best. And if he didn’t like it, well, to hell with him.

After a few minutes of waiting, I became bored and looked over the selection of magazines on the coffee table. No
Vogue
. No
People.
And, of course, no
Cosmo
with its standard fare of sex tips. All of the offerings were religious in nature.
Christianity Today
.
Guideposts.
And, ironically,
Men of Integrity
.

I picked up
Guideposts
and flipped through the pages, stopping to read a piece about a woman who’d dedicated her life to helping abandoned children living on the streets of Romania. She embodied the true Christian spirit in action. I made a mental note to send her organization a contribution. They’d benefit from the funds and I’d benefit from the tax deduction. Win-win.