Tara Holloway 03 - Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray (39 page)

The receptionist removed the highlighter from her mouth. “Can I help you?”

I held up my W-2. “I need to have my tax return prepared.”

“Fifty dollars per form,” the girl recited. “Ten-percent discount if you pay cash.”

“Great. Can it be done while I wait?”

“No problem. It’ll just take a few minutes.” She reached into a small cabinet behind her, retrieved a plastic champagne flute, and poured me a glass of bubbly. “Enjoy.”

“Thanks.” I traded my W-2 for the champagne. As I took a seat in one of the massage chairs, the girl carried my W-2 through the open door.

I looked down at the magazine offerings on the coffee table.
Ebony. Essence.
Oprah’s magazine
O.
I picked up the
O
magazine. I had a lot of respect for Oprah Winfrey. She was a ballsy yet classy broad, fighting for justice and fairness and generally making the world a better place. Though I shared her admirable aspirations, I could never be as classy as Oprah. I find it hard to be consistently well-behaved.

I jabbed the button on the chair control and the entire seat began to vibrate. The movement made it a little difficult to sip the champagne without spilling it on myself, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from enjoying the stuff.

“This is g-g-great,” I told the receptionist, my voice quivering along with the chair.

She smiled. “Sometimes clients fall asleep there.”

I could see why. Between the effects of the champagne and the gentle rocking, I was tempted to take a nap myself. The Diva was definitely onto something here.

I was halfway through an article on the merits of regular colonoscopies when one of the girls from the back room came out of her door with a piece of paper in her hand. A draft of my return. She rapped softly on the other door. A husky woman’s voice called “Come in.”

The coed stepped inside for a moment, then came back out, closing the Diva’s door behind her. She returned to her spot at the portable table.

Not long after, the receptionist’s phone buzzed. A voice came over the speaker. “Miss Henry’s return is ready.”

Yep, my alias was Anne Henry, a combination of the names of my two cats. I’d wanted to go with something more clever like
Gwen Down,
a veiled take on
Going Down
, but Eddie’d feared it might be too obvious.

The receptionist slipped into the Diva’s office and returned with my tax return.

I turned off the chair and looked over the paperwork she handed me. The return showed I was due a refund of fourteen cents.
Damn
. The Diva had computed my taxes correctly. I felt cheated that I hadn’t been cheated. Silly, huh? But it didn’t matter that she’d prepared my return accurately. We had more than enough evidence of her large-scale fraud to take her in.

“That’ll be fifty dollars for the preparation service,” the receptionist said as she slid back into her chair. “We can e-file it for you for another twenty-five.”

“No thanks.”

I stood, pulled out my phone, and texted Eddie.
Fourteen cent refund.

He texted back.
U want a big refund, u gotta ask for it.

So that’s where I’d gone wrong.

I’m coming in
, he added.

The receptionist stared up at me, waiting for me to pay my bill.

“You said fifty dollars, right?” I asked, stalling for time as Eddie returned to the office.

The girl nodded.

I reached into my purse, but instead of removing my wallet I pulled out the leather holder that contained my special agent badge. Eddie opened the door and came back inside, his badge at the ready.

“We’re from the IRS,” I told the receptionist. “We need to see the Diva.”

“Uh … okay.” The girl’s expression was equal parts confused and surprised as we knocked on the Diva’s door.

“Come in,” the woman called.

We opened the door and stepped inside. The Diva’s office was just as gaudy as her foyer. Red wallpaper with thick gold stripes graced the walls, her windows covered with red satin curtains. She sat behind a shiny black lacquer desk in a high-backed red leather chair.

The Diva was a light-skinned black woman, with shiny swirls of dark hair swept into an elegant updo on her head, like a pile of chocolate shavings. Her make-up was heavy yet impeccable, from her perfectly lined crimson lips to her glimmering burgundy eyelids. Her long acrylic fingernails were painted a shiny ruby color. Her voluptuous body was packed into a low-cut red dress, the bust line around her double D’s trimmed with black faux fur. She looked like a movie star on Oscar night. But she wouldn’t be going home with a bag of pricey SWAG or a gold, man-shaped trophy, her photo featured on the cover of
People
magazine. Nope, the only things she’d get today would be a mug shot, a body cavity search, and a one-size-fits-nobody jumpsuit.

Neener-neener.

At our unexpected intrusion, the Diva stood from her chair, her expression as surprised and confused as her receptionist’s. “May I help you?”

Eddie and I flashed our badges.

“We’re from the IRS,” I said. “Criminal Investigations Division.”

Now her expression was only surprised. The confusion was gone. She knew exactly why we were here. But that knowledge wasn’t going to prevent her from feigning innocence.

“What do you want with me?” She put one hand to her chest, pointing to herself. The other hand went for her bulky electric stapler.

At point-blank proximity, I wasn’t able to fully avoid the stapler she hurled at me. I only had time to duck. The device bounced off my back and onto the floor. Thanks to the padded Kevlar vest under my Mavericks tee, I hardly felt the impact.

She flung a box of paper clips at Eddie. He batted them away with both hands.

I reached down my leg and unholstered my gun. I really didn’t want to draw on the woman, but the way she was acting left me no choice. “Put your hands up!”

She yanked open her desk drawer and pulled out a metal letter opener, clutching it in a loose fist, her long fingernails preventing her from fully closing her hand.

I aimed my gun at her. “Drop it, Diva!”

“No!” She swung the blade around as if she were a Jet and Eddie and I were Sharks. But this was east Dallas, not
West Side Story
. And I certainly hoped none of us would end up dead like Riff, Bernardo, or Tony. I prefer happy endings.

In a move that would make Chuck Norris proud, Eddie stepped forward and brought up his right arm, knocking the letter opener out of the Diva’s hand. The blade sailed through the air, bouncing off the wall and falling back to the floor. Before she could retrieve it, Eddie ran around one side of the desk, I ran around the other, and together we tackled the Diva to the ground. On her back now, she kicked and rolled side to side, trying to loosen our hold on her.

“You touched my breasts!” she shrieked at Eddie.

It was kind of hard not to touch them given that there was so much fur-trimmed cleavage heaving to and fro. She raised a knee and rammed it into Eddie’s groin. He rolled aside, retching and grabbing his crotch in agony.

Poor guy. Looked like his wife wouldn’t be getting any for a while. It also looked like I’d have to handle the Diva by myself now.

The woman spun away from Eddie. Once she’d gotten herself up on all fours, I grabbed her right wrist from the back and yanked it out from under her. Ha! Roughhousing with my two older brothers as a kid had taught me some good moves. The Diva fell onto her face on the fluffy rug, sputtering and spitting fuzz out of her mouth. I climbed onto her back, straddling her as I grabbed her arms and pulled them up behind her.

“Let me go!” she yelled, squirming under me.

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s not gonna happen.” Two
click
s later, I had her hands cuffed.

The Diva’s four employees stood in the open doorway, mouths hanging open.

“OMG,” one of them said.

“Totally,” said another.

The third nodded her head in agreement. “Totally OMG.”

“Does this mean we won’t get our paychecks?” asked the receptionist.

The Diva had ripped off the IRS, but I didn’t want these hard-working college kids to get ripped off, too. It hadn’t been all that long ago that I’d been a starving student, eating ramen noodles for dinner three times a week. “I’ll let her make out your checks before we go. But cash them immediately. We’ll be freezing her accounts later today.”

Realizing she was now in deep doo-doo, the Diva switched tactics, boo-hooing and promising to be a good little girl from now on if we’d only let her go. “I’ll pay back every penny!” she cried. “I swear!”

Eddie shot her a pointed look from where he stood, hunched over, hands on his knees. “You should’ve thought about that before you busted my balls.”

Was it just my imagination, or was his voice an octave higher?

I removed the right handcuff so the Diva could make out her employees’ paychecks, clicking the cuff onto the arm of her chair lest she attempt a last-ditch effort to escape. Once she finished, I cuffed her wrists back together and handed out the checks.

“Sorry about this, girls,” I said. “But let this be a lesson to you. Keep your noses clean.”

S
T.
M
ARTIN’S
P
APERBACKS TITLES BY
D
IANE
K
ELLY

Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure

Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte

Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray

Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria

(coming soon)

About the Author

DIANE KELLY is a tax attorney by day, writer by night. A recipient of the 2009 Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award for Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements, she has received more than two dozen RWA chapter awards. Diane’s fiction, tax and humor pieces have appeared in
True Love
magazine
, Writer’s Digest Yearbook, Romance Writers Report, ByLine Magazine,
and other publications.

For more information,

visit her Web site at
www.dianekelly.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

DEATH, TAXES, AND EXTRA-HOLD HAIRSPRAY

Copyright © 2012 by Diane Kelly.

Excerpt from
Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria
copyright © 2012 by Diane Kelly.

All rights reserved.

For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

www.stmartins.com

eISBN: 9781466816022

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / July 2012

St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.