Death, Taxes, and Cheap Sunglasses (A Tara Holloway Novel Book 8) (9 page)

SOUTHERN SAFARI GAME RESERVE

GUARANTEED KILL OR YOUR $ BACK

BIG CATS, BEARS, AND OTHER EXOTIC GAME

The outfit’s Web address and phone number were printed across the bottom.

Eddie squinted as he read the sign. “Is this one of those canned hunting places?”

“Yep.” I snapped a photo of the sign with my phone. “I didn’t put it together until after Kevin showed us those deer and oryx and I noticed the high fences around their enclosures, too.”

Though my father and brothers enjoyed hunting, they, like many outdoorsmen, frowned upon these places. Many of the animals at these canned hunting facilities were accustomed to humans and didn’t fear them. A so-called hunter could virtually walk right up and shoot the poor beast in the head without the animal batting an eye. Where’s the sport in that? What’s more, with the fences confining them, the animals had no chance of escape, essentially trapped in a cage. It was shooting fish in a barrel, and it wasn’t right or fair. Fair would be taking down the fences, dressing the animals in camouflage, and dousing them in Budweiser to mask their scent from the hunters.

Eddie shook his head. “I’ll never understand why men hunt. You want some fresh meat, just drive to Kroger. No fuss, no muss. They’ve already chopped off the head, pulled out the yucky innards, and peeled the skin off for you.”

My stomach squirmed inside me. “That’s it,” I said. “I’m having a salad for dinner.”

chapter nine

T
he Art of Lying

The first thing I did at work Wednesday morning was pull the secret phone Nick had given me from the inside pocket of my blazer to make sure I hadn’t missed a call or text from him. My hopes plunged as I looked at the screen.

Nope.

Nothing.

Ughhhhh.

I had no idea where Nick was right now. Was he still in the Dallas area? Maybe in one of the border towns? Could he be in Mexico? As I stared at the screen, I noticed my reflection. Worry lines crossed my forehead and dark semicircles underscored my eyes. Another
ughh
. I closed my lids so I wouldn’t have to see myself.

As long as my eyes were closed, I figured I’d say a quick prayer, not only for Nick, but for Christina, as well. As a woman, she would be particularly vulnerable going inside the dangerous cartel. Then again, I supposed she had more places in which to hide a weapon. She could probably tuck a small can of pepper spray between her boobs and no one would be the wiser.

My prayers floating on the airwaves to heaven, I turned my attention to my work. Sharla Fowler had been evasive when I’d asked whether anyone operating the Unic had a personal relationship with any of the five artists whose work was on display in the museum, but I had my own ways of finding these things out.

I logged on to my computer and accessed the 1099s filed by the museum for payments made to the artists. Armed with this information, I was able to determine the artists’ current addresses and find driver’s license data for all but Hunter Gabbert. The license detail provided me with their birthdates. Next, I pulled up their birth certificates.

Certificates for the two male artists were relatively easy to find. Both had unusual names—Jackson T. Reavis and Hunter Gabbert. Jackson had been born right here in Dallas in 1983, while Hunter, the artist who’d made the macaroni mosaic, had been born in Kissimmee, Florida in 2007. He was just a kid.
Sheesh.
That explained a lot, including why I’d found no driver’s license in his name.

I backtracked two generations, tracing their family trees back to their parents and grandparents.

Bingo.

Jackson’s mother, Taysha Young, was Sharla’s daughter from her first marriage, which made Taysha the half sister of Rodney Fowler and made Jackson Sharla’s grandson and Rodney’s nephew. Hunter was Rodney’s grandson, Sharla’s great-grandson. Yep, the Unic’s payments to these two young men appeared to be a classic case of income shifting, a way for the football player to claim a fraudulent tax benefit by disguising nondeductible gifts to family members as deductible charitable contributions.

I moved on to the female artists. Luckily for me, two of the three female artists were not married and thus retained their maiden names, making their records a cinch to locate. The name of the third female artist, Emily Raggio, was her married name. I was able to pull her husband’s name from their joint tax return. Interestingly, I noted that in the “occupation” space in the signature block of the return he had listed his occupation as otolaryngologist. I wondered if Emily obtained her pills and syringes and other art supplies by pilfering the cabinets in her husband’s medical office.

I used Dr. Raggio’s name to find their marriage license, which had been issued by the state of Louisiana. The marriage license told me that Emily Raggio’s maiden name had been Emily Heather Nix. Her birth certificate surfaced in the Illinois records, and I worked my way backward from there.

A half hour later, my cyber genealogy search was completed. Of the female artists, only Aly Pelham, the artist who’d painted with her tears and blood, had a clear connection to the families that ran the foundation and museum. Though Aly was half Rodney Fowler’s age, an engagement announcement in the online version of the
Dallas Morning News
informed me that the two had been betrothed for a couple of years now. The paper’s society pages, as well as the Unic’s Web site, featured photographs of Aly and Sharla standing together with their arms encircling each other’s waists. Sharla seemed to be quite fond of her future daughter-in-law, and from the smile on Aly’s face the feeling was mutual.

Interestingly, Rodney and Aly’s engagement had occurred just weeks before Rodney had formed his foundation and opened the Unic. Looked like she may have been the impetus behind the creation of the museum. My guess was that once Aly had planted the seed, an unscrupulous tax adviser had informed Rodney of the shady ways in which he could use the Unic to reduce his taxes, support his fianc
é
e’s hobby, and support his family via sham donations to the museum, which were then redistributed to his desired recipients.

Neither Emily Raggio nor Mallory Sisko appeared to bear any relation to anyone associated with the museum.

A listing on LinkedIn indicated that Aly had studied fashion design and worked as a buyer for an exclusive boutique in the Galleria. Aly’s tax schedule for her art business showed only the payment from the Unic. She’d sold no other pieces. She had, however, deducted the costs of traveling to various museums and galleries all over the world. The deductions were specious at best. I found nothing else to indicate she was a professional artist, though she was clearly an art groupie. Her Facebook page, which she’d made public as those seeking attention are wont to do, featured numerous photos of her at gallery openings and museum fund-raisers, a champagne flute in hand and a smile on her face as she posed next to one artist or another. In fact, a post on her page noted that this coming Saturday she would be attending the opening-night event at the First Church of Art, a gallery housed in a converted church in the Bishop Arts District.

With Nick and Christina gone and Alicia tied up with tax season, I had nothing better to do this Saturday evening. I decided that I, too, would make an appearance at the gallery’s opening.

Next, I Googled Emily’s name, then Mallory’s.

Although Aly hadn’t sprung for a professional Web site to promote her art pieces, Emily Raggio had. Her site featured her headshot—
dark blond, blue eyes, thin nose and lips
—along with photographs of her work and a bio indicating she had studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute. After dabbling in pottery and ceramics, she’d discovered her love for sculpture. She’d settled on medical waste as her medium after meeting her husband when she’d gone to his office seeking treatment for strep throat. Instead of love at first sight, looked like it was love at first throat culture. Her Web site further noted that she maintained a studio in a converted, detached garage behind their house which, according to the address on her 1099, was in Bedford, a city lying twenty miles west of Dallas. Her tax returns for the past several years showed varying amounts of income from her art business, ranging from a low of $23,000 one year to a high of $87,000 the next.

Hmm …
From what I saw here, Emily appeared to be a legitimate artist. What about Mallory?

My search for information on Mallory turned up three awards in regional art contests, as well as an entry in the archives of an art museum in Houston noting that one of her pieces had been on display in a student exhibit there. Her Facebook page indicated she’d earned a BFA from the University of Houston last May. The page also featured several posts in which she’d discussed her current projects. A quick look into her tax file told me that she currently worked for Pretty on the Inside, an interior design firm. She, too, appeared to be a legitimate artist, even if art wasn’t her sole vocation.

Grabbing my purse and briefcase, I headed out of the office.

On the drive to Mallory’s workplace, I pulled into a dollar store and bought a pair of sunglasses with bright red rims. They were a little on the casual side, but they were the right price.
Cheap.
I only needed them to last me until I could get to the Brighton store for an authentic pair of designer shades.

A half hour later, I pulled into a parking space in front of Pretty on the Inside, which was located in a one-story white brick strip center in the north Dallas suburb of Lewisville. Inside, a vacant reception desk greeted me. I looked around the space. A shaggy, oblong rug in a pale green sprawled in front of a peacock-blue couch. Pillows in assorted shades of blue and green accented the sofa. A large, aluminum flower with a green-hued stem and turquoise petals graced the wall space above the seating area. Though my tastes tended to be more traditional, I could appreciate the colors and style in this contemporary d
é
cor.

Through a glass wall on the left, I saw an older woman sitting at a conference table with Mallory, whom I recognized from her Facebook photos. The two pored over large books of fabric swatches, comparing and contrasting them with a striped wallpaper sample the woman held in her hand.

Mallory glanced up, apparently catching my movements out of the corner of her eye. She said something to the woman, stood, and headed my way. Once she’d stepped into the foyer and the glass door had closed behind her, she offered me a polite, businesslike smile. “May I help you?”

“I’m Special Agent Tara Holloway with the IRS,” I said. “I need to speak with you about the Unic Art Space.”

Mallory’s smile quavered. “I’m with a client right now. I don’t know how long we’ll be.”

She glanced back at the woman in the conference room, who was flipping back and forth between two pages of the book, having apparently whittled down the selection to two favorite choices.

“Looks to me like she’s nearly made up her mind,” I said, taking a seat on one end of the sofa. “I’ll wait.”

Mallory’s expression was uncertain, but who could blame her? She was less than a year out of college, only in her early twenties. What did she know about dealing with federal law enforcement?

As I sat waiting, I flipped through some of the decorating magazines on the rack next to the sofa.

It took only five more minutes for Mallory to finish helping the woman make her selections and place her order for fabric. She walked the woman to the door. “Thank you so much. I’ll give you a call as soon as the material arrives.”

The woman thanked her in return and walked outside to her car.

Mallory turned her attention to me now. “I don’t have an office,” she said. “I’m just an assistant. But the conference room is free for another hour. Let’s talk there.”

I followed Mallory into the room, slid into a seat, and got right down to business. “You probably know why I’m here.”

She somehow managed to look simultaneously sheepish and insulted and hurt. “Mrs. Fowler called me yesterday and said you might contact me. She said that you don’t think I’m a real artist.”

“That’s not exactly the case,” I said. “In fact, I loved the piece you had there.
Life’s Compost
was so…” I tried to think of the right word and came up with, “Relatable.”

Mallory smiled. “Thanks. That was exactly what I was going for. I mean, who hasn’t been dumped, right?”

I could tell I’d earned her appreciation if not her trust. I hoped she would give me some honest answers. “Look, I’ll be straight with you. I suspect that the man who set up the foundation that funds the Unic did so primarily to impress his fianc
é
e and to shift money to his relatives in lower tax brackets. Two of the five artists whose work is featured at the museum are relatives, and the third is the fianc
é
e I mentioned. You and Emily Raggio are the only ones with an art background. I’m trying to figure out whether the place is a legitimate art museum. If it is, then they are entitled to a tax exemption. If it’s just a phony tax shelter, then they don’t qualify for an exemption.”

Mallory tilted her head, her face clouding in confusion. “I don’t know anything about tax exemptions.”

“I don’t expect you to,” I said. “But you do know about art. That’s what I came here to talk to you about. Can you tell me how you got involved with the people who run the Unic?”

She turned her head upright again. “When I first moved to Dallas after college last year, I toured all of the art museums and galleries. I was trying to get a start in the business and find a place where I could display my work, build a name for myself, you know? When I went into the Unic, it had only a few things on display. I asked the woman who was in charge—that was Sharla—if they might be interested in one of my pieces. She agreed to take a look, so a few days later I brought several pieces by and she offered to buy one of them. I was really excited. It was my first sale.”

“So you didn’t know anyone at the Unic or the Fifty-Yard Line Foundation before you sold your piece to them?”