Death, Taxes and Mistletoe Mayhem
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Chapter One
Betwitched
IRS Special Agent Tara Holloway
Early Monday morning my boss, Lu “The Lobo” Lobozinski, stepped into my office. A long sparkly silver garland encircled her neck like a festive, holiday boa. With one hand she tossed a loose end of garland over her shoulder. With the other she tossed a file onto my already crowded desk. “Take a look into this case. The paperwork checked out, but the auditor has a hunch this taxpayer’s up to no good.”
It was a mere two weeks until Christmas, and here my boss was acting as if she were Ebenezer Scrooge and I was Bob Cratchit. With the holiday hustle and bustle in full swing and my shopping far from finished, the last thing I needed was another case to work on. But there was no use complaining. Lu’s expectations of her staff were as high as her eight-inch strawberry-blond beehive. Besides, she punished whiners with crappy cases. The last guy who’d complained got stuck investigating a company that disposed of medical waste. Ew. The mere thought of an amputated limb had my breakfast of Fruity Pebbles creeping back up my throat.
“I’ll get right on it,” I promised.
As my boss left the room, I pulled the file toward me and flipped it open. Inside I found the last six years’ tax returns for a woman named Nadine Gramercy who operated a wholesale jewelry business under the name Gramercy Gems and Jewels. While nothing suspicious appeared on the returns for the even-numbered years, in each of the odd-numbered years she’d filed a Form 4684, claiming a sizable theft loss, the most recent in the amount of $150,000. The pattern seemed suspicious, as if she’d skipped a year between each claimed loss in an attempt to stay off the IRS radar. What’s more, her reported income in each of the loss years was forty-to-fifty percent higher than it was in the non-loss years, as if she were finagling her earnings to pay the least amount of tax. Then again, there was nothing necessarily illegal about strategically timing sales to lump profits into one year or another.
After each break-in, Nadine had relocated her warehouse, first from a mini-storage facility in Dallas to another in the southwestern suburb of Grand Prairie, then from Grand Prairie to Arlington, a suburb a few miles further west. She’d reported the thefts to the various police departments. Their reports were included in the file, along with invoices from Nadine’s suppliers that itemized the pieces purportedly taken. A dozen topaz necklace and earring sets, style number TS9876. Fifty opal pendants, style number OP7321. Thirty sapphire rings, style number SR5352. The list went on to include amethyst and diamond bracelets, emerald cuff links, and gold chains, each identified by a specific style number.
Unfortunately, yet as was typical, the police had taken a report, dusted for fingerprints, and found nothing. The surfaces had been wiped clean.
No evidence.
No suspects.
No convictions.
Also no internal investigations by any of the police departments. Repeated reports of theft by a single citizen in one jurisdiction might have raised questions, but given that Nadine had moved her inventory around the metroplex, none of the police departments had been aware of her multiple reports.
Oddly, despite the repeated thefts, the woman hadn’t bothered to purchase insurance. No wonder the auditor thought things seemed fishy. Still, it could be nothing. They say where there’s smoke there’s fire, but sometimes where there’s smoke there’s just a bagel jammed in a toaster.
I slid the file into my briefcase with my Glock, grabbed my purse, and headed out of the office.
#
Nadine Gramercy lived in Southlake, a high-end neighborhood northwest of Dallas, the type of place where “real” housewives with artificial breasts, bleached teeth, acrylic nails, and spray-on tans lived. The houses could best be described as traditional and sprawling. No cozy cottages here.
I pulled my government issued “G-ride” sedan to the curb in front of Nadine’s house, a brown brick and stone model that stretched across a perfectly manicured lawn. Both the house and lawn were outlined with a pristine row of tasteful white holiday lights, unlit currently since it was daylight. I climbed out and made my way up the flagstone path to her double front doors, which sported twin oversized holiday wreaths made of real, fragrant pine boughs held together with red velvet bows. The crisp, fresh smell reminded me of the piney woods back home in East Texas where I’d grown up.
My knock was answered a half minute later by a woman dressed in a fitted gray pantsuit that showed off her tall, trim physique. A choker-length strand of gorgeous, shiny pearls encircled her long, thin neck, while twin pearls studs adorned her earlobes. Her mahogany locks feathered about her fiftyish face, which bore a slightly perturbed expression. She hadn’t been expecting me and, from the steaming mug in her hand, it looked like I’d interrupted her morning coffee. A little hard to feel guilty about that given it was going on 10:30 AM now and I’d already been working for two hours. My morning coffee was only a distant memory. A pearl bracelet encircled the wrist supporting the coffee mug.
“Ms. Gramercy?” I asked.
She cocked her head slightly, her eyes wary as she gave me and the car parked at the curb behind me a quick once-over. “Yes?”
I stuck out my hand. “I’m Tara Holloway, from IRS criminal investigations.”
Nadine hesitated a moment as she appeared to process the information, then stuck out a hand. Another strand of lustrous pearls encircled her narrow wrist. “What can I do for you, Miss Holloway?”
For one, she could invite me inside to speak privately instead of forcing me to stand out here in the frigid air, huffing steam every time I spoke. But given that she held her ground, she didn’t seem so inclined.
“I have a few questions about the theft losses you’ve claimed on your tax returns.”
Her frown deepened and she stepped onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind her. “I don’t understand. I’ve been through all of this with the auditor.”
Defensiveness. To be expected probably. After all, who likes to be interrogated, especially repeatedly? Still, the twitch below her left ear told me there was more to this story than she was letting on.
Having been well trained in investigation techniques, I knew that sometimes the best way to get information was to sneak up on it rather than to approach it directly. Information was like a cat with a vet appointment.
“I’m performing an interdepartmental review,” I said, offering both a fib and an insincere smile. “A cross-check to make sure the auditors are doing their jobs correctly.” As if.
Her posture relaxed slightly. “I see.”
I held her file up. “I noticed you weren’t given a deduction for the cost of your property insurance.”
“I didn’t buy any,” she replied. “I got a few quotes, but the premiums were exorbitant. I decided to take my chances. Of course that turned out to be a mistake. But, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.” She offered a small smile I believed to be just as insincere as my own.
“A shame the police never found the thieves,” I said. “What do you think they did with the jewelry?”
“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe they pawned it. Or they could have sold it on e-Bay or Craig’s List.”
“Well, I hope they paid their taxes on the income.”
I chuckled.
She didn’t.
I casually lifted a shoulder. “Any idea who the thieves might have been? Could it have been an inside job? Maybe an employee?” I knew from her tax records that she worked alone, but sometimes playing stupid led to a target letting their guard down.
“Like I told the police,” she said, a little too snappily, “I’m a one-woman operation. Nobody else had a key to my unit. My guess is the thief was another tenant at the storage facility. Maybe someone saw me taking my jewelry cases in and out of the closet.”
I stared at her for a moment longer, wishing my gaze could bore through her skull and into her brain, find the appropriate memory bank and access the critical information she was clearly keeping from me. I also wished I could take a look around inside. Something about the way she’d closed the door, as if to hide secrets, had me thinking there was something in the house she didn’t want me to see. Without a search warrant, however, I could go inside only if she agreed to let me in. I had no doubt she’d refuse if I asked. I also had no doubt that if I asked and was turned down, she’d remove whatever evidence she was hiding while I was at the courthouse trying to get a warrant.
“Thanks for your time,” I said finally. “I’ll let everyone back at the office know that this case is closed.”
The flicker of relief that crossed Nadine’s face told me the case was anything but.