Friday morning, Hana stormed into my office. She tossed a small harmonica case onto my desk. It featured a dark-haired woman with red flowers in her hair playing the instrument. The name “CARMEN” appeared next to her, along with the name of the manufacturer, “KOCH,” and place of production, “MADE IN GERMANY.”
“Vintage harmonicas?” Hana cried, throwing her hands in the air. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
“You said to surprise you.”
“Surprise, not blindside. I know nothing about harmonicas, vintage or otherwise. When Morgan gave me the harmonica last night I had to make up some bullshit about my grandfather playing songs for me when I was a kid.”
“Aw, that’s sweet.”
“That’s the worst part,” she said. “I had to be sweet! Uck!”
As she flopped backward into one of my wing chairs, I opened the case, removed the harmonica, and held it in front of my mouth. I wasn’t about to put my lips on it. For all I knew the Führer’s vintage saliva could have coated the thing. I puckered my lips and blew at it, moving it back and forth. Twoo-twee-twoo-tweeeeee!
Hana cringed. “Don’t quit your day job.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” I returned the harmonica to the case and held it out to her.
She raised a palm. “Keep it as a souvenir.”
“Really? Thanks.” I slid the harmonica into my desk drawer and sat back in my chair. “From what Nick and I could see last night, it looked like you and Walker hit it off.”
Hana raised her shoulders. “I must’ve done something right. He asked me out for Friday of next week.”
“Friday?” I said. “He asked you out for a weekend?”
A snicker erupted from Nick’s office across the hall. A “shut up!” erupted in return from mine.
“Yeah,” Hana said, her brows drawn in question. “Why is that an issue?”
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s just that he planned our second date for Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?” She snorted. “Looks like he’s only after one thing where you’re concerned. Cash.”
I ignored both the snort and the comment. “What did you think of him? Get any clues as to who he might really be?”
“Mm-hm.” She cocked her head. “It was kind of weird, though. My gaydar was blooping all over the place. I mean, what straight man would go to an antique store to buy a vintage harmonica? He ordered a salad for dinner, too. Bloop, bloop.”
“Bloop? I thought gaydar pinged.”
She rolled her eyes. “We must have different models. But I’m guessing mine is better calibrated.” At that, she arched a brow.
“Point taken.” I mulled this news over for a moment. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me figure out who the guy was. “Did he ask for your phone number and e-mail?”
“Yeah.”
“Be sure to check your e-mail regularly,” I said. “He sent me a message after our date and he’ll probably e-mail you, too. Make sure you respond so he thinks you’re forging a connection.”
“Got it.”
“Did he mention martial arts? Say anything about earning a black belt?”
“Nope. He only mentioned liking Sonny Boy Williamson. I had to pretend to know who that was.”
Putting my fingers to my keyboard, I performed a quick Internet search. “He was a blues harmonica player in the early 1900s.” Walker had done his homework, probably hoping to impress Hana.
Hana stood to go. “We done here?”
My phone rang before we could finish our conversation. The readout indicated the call came from the Hertz legal department.
I raised a finger to stop Hana. “Wait just a minute. It’s Hertz.”
She flopped back into my wing chair as I raised my receiver and issued a greeting. “Good morning. Special Agent Tara Holloway.”
“I’m calling from Hertz,” the paralegal said. “I have the name, address, and driver’s license number of the man who rented the Mercedes.”
“Great.” I grabbed a pen. “I’m ready.” I wrote the information down as he read it off.
“His name is Kevin Michael Andersen,” he said, spelling the last name for me.
He proceeded to read off an address on Farm to Market Road 407 in Argyle, Texas, a small town that sat about thirty miles north of Fort Worth and eight miles south of Denton. My body began to hum in excitement. The address was consistent with the route Morgan Walker had taken after both dates, though he’d bypassed the exit for FM 407 last night. Of course, if he’d thought he was being followed maybe he’d driven past the road to throw us off his trail.
“What about his phone number and credit card number?” I asked.
The card number the paralegal provided matched the one Smirnoff/Walker had used to sign up on the Big D Dating Service site, so I knew that information was a dead end, unfortunately. The phone number was the same one he’d given to Leslie, Nataya, and Julia, the one that had been disconnected. Dead end there, too.
“Where did he pick up the Mercedes?” I asked.
“At our location in the Oklahoma City airport.”
I tapped the pen against my cheek. “Does the rental agreement say when he’s planning to return the car?”
“A week from this coming Tuesday.”
A-ha! Looked like he planned to make his move on me and Hana before then.
“Thanks,” I told the man. “I appreciate your help.”
As soon as we ended the call, I logged into the Texas DMV records and ran a search for Kevin Michael Andersen.
Hana leaned forward in her seat. “What’re you doing?”
“Looking up his driver’s license photo.” When his record popped up, I clicked on the link. “Huh?”
“What?” Hana asked.
I waved for her to come around my desk and take a look.
The photograph on Andersen’s driver’s license looked nothing like Smirnoff/Walker. Or at least I didn’t think it did. It was nearly impossible to tell with the bushy beard and hair. It’s not that they were unkempt; they were just thick and full of volume, the kind of hair featured in shampoo and electric razor commercials. His hair was listed as brown, as were his eyes. His physical details noted that he was five feet, ten inches tall, and weighed 170 pounds.
Hana pointed to the description. “Sounds about right. Doesn’t look a thing like Morgan Walker, though.”
“What if he didn’t have the beard and all that thick hair?”
Hana leaned in, squinted at the photo, and shook her head. “I don’t know. Hard to say.”
I squinted at the screen, too. Could this man be the catfisher? I supposed it was possible. After all, he looked remarkably different in the two sets of head shots he’d had taken at Savannah Goode’s studio and all he’d done was modify his hair and eye color and glasses. I knew from experience that facial hair drastically changed a man’s appearance. Nick had grown a goatee once to go undercover and he’d looked very different. When the men on the Today show participated in the No-Shave November event, their appearances changed quite a bit, too. And with the beard covering his jawline, there was no way for me to tell if Kevin Andersen had the distinguishing freckle near his left ear.
Hm-m …
“Let’s see what we can find about Kevin Andersen online,” I suggested.
Besides his driver’s license, the DMV records showed that he drove a Dodge Ram pickup. The Denton County Appraisal District property tax rolls indicated that Andersen owned sixty acres at the address listed on his license.
“See if he’s on Facebook,” Hana said.
I logged on to the site and searched for his name. Sure enough, he had a page. His profile picture looked nearly identical to his driver’s license photo. A pair of eyes and the tip of a nose surrounded by a mass of brown hair.
My gaze ran down the page. While Andersen had posted a couple photos of cotton fields covered in puffy white plants, most of the posts had been made by his friends. A group of men roasting hot dogs around a bonfire. A group of men posed on and around a green John Deere tractor. A group of men drinking beer on a porch. Andersen seemed to be a guy’s guy.
Hana pointed to a gray animal standing among the men. “That has to be the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s not a dog,” I said. “It’s a miniature donkey.”
“Well, if he were a dog,” Hana said, refusing to back down, “he’d be an ugly one.”
I clicked on the “photos” tab. “There don’t appear to be any pictures of him in a martial arts uniform.” I tried the About link to find out Andersen’s romantic status. “Says here he’s in a relationship.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “What woman could resist an ape-man with a tractor and a miniature donkey?”
I exited the site but found little else about Andersen on the Net. I turned to Hana. “Want to drive up to Argyle? Spy on him and see if we can learn anything?”
“Why not? Beats adding up invoices.”
As I gathered my things, Nick strolled over from his office, stopping in my doorway. “Headed out?”
“We’re going to pay a visit to Kevin Andersen,” I said. “He’s the one who rented the Mercedes from Hertz. He lives on a sixty-acre spread in Argyle.”
“Want some company?” Nick offered. “If he lives out in the country he’s likely to have guns. It can’t hurt to have another agent along.”
Nick had a point, though I suspected part of the reason he wanted to come along was merely to get out of the office. None of us agents were the types who could be happy being cooped up inside sitting at a desk all day. Fieldwork was much more fun, even if that field was a cotton field.
“The more, the merrier,” I said.
The three of us headed out to my G-ride. Hana climbed into the backseat, while Nick rode shotgun. We drove up I-35 through Carrollton and Lewisville before taking the exit for FM 407 and heading west. In just under an hour, we pulled up on the grass shoulder of the road next to a rusty metal gate. A modern-day log-style house sat back a hundred yards or so from the road, a gravel road leading from the gate to the side of the house. The Dodge pickup sat in the drive, but there was no sign of the Mercedes. Around the house spanned an expansive field of green. It would be another couple of months before the cotton bolls would open, turning the land snowy white.
Nick removed my field glasses from my glove compartment and aimed them at the house.
Hana stuck her head between ours. “See anything?”
“Just a pair of really ugly dogs.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. “They’re miniature donkeys.”
Nick adjusted the dial on the binoculars to better focus them. “You’re right. They’re a couple of little asses.” He cut a grin my way. “Not nearly as cute as your little ass.”
“Where’s Andersen?” Hana asked. “I thought farmers were always out working in their fields.”
“They are,” Nick replied, “at planting and harvesttime. They’ve also got to fertilize and irrigate and check for bugs.” Nick would know. He’d grown up on his parents’ farm outside of Houston. “But there are days when you get to just kick back and watch things grow.”
Hana scoffed. “Sounds boring.”
“I don’t know about that,” Nick said wistfully. “Farm life can be quiet and peaceful, but I never found it boring.”
As much as Nick enjoyed his job at the IRS and the things a big city like Dallas had to offer, I knew a part of him yearned to be back in the country.
He lowered the binoculars. “One of these days I’ll have to get myself a weekend spread somewhere. Ten acres or so ought to do me.” He cast a glance my way. “It’d be a fun place for kids to play.”
Was he referring to our kids? He certainly seemed to be. I had to admit I liked the idea of a weekend home out in the sticks. Nick could teach our children how to grow things and how to catch fish in the stock pond, and I could put a target on a hay bale and teach them how to shoot. Of course I was getting ahead of myself, as usual. There’d be no children until there was a wedding, and there’d be no wedding until there was a proposal and a ring. And, so far, there’d been no proposal and no ring, only some vague talking around the subject.
Movement at the door caught our attention and we all watched as a hirsute man stepped onto the porch. He wore boots, jeans, and a T-shirt, the same basic clothing Andersen had worn in his Facebook photos.
Hana snatched the binoculars and raised them to her face. “That’s him. That’s Andersen.”
“He can’t be Morgan Walker, too, then,” I replied.
“No,” Hana agreed. “There’s no way he could regrow a beard that quickly. Besides, this guy just spit in the dirt.”
“Ew.” Morgan Walker had been courteous and classy. I couldn’t imagine him spitting in the dirt, either.
She handed the field glasses to me and I peered through them as Andersen trotted down his steps and headed to a wooden barn, the donkeys following him. The donkeys waited outside the door while Andersen disappeared inside the barn, emerging a moment later with a bucket of feed that he poured into a small outdoor trough.
I lowered the glasses. “So, what now?”
“We hang around here much longer,” Nick said, “he’ll spot us and wonder what the hell we’re doing. Let’s go get some lunch and figure this out.”
I started the car and we made our way down the road until we found a small country café with a sign boasting the best corn bread in three counties. Can’t beat that, huh?
Over lunch, we three agents debated our options.
“Assuming Andersen rented the Mercedes for Walker,” Hana said, “we can’t speak to Andersen without risking him tipping off Walker.”
Nick took a long swig of iced tea. “It would be a shame to drive all the way out here and not learn anything, though.”
“Maybe we should just confront him,” I said. “Morgan Walker’s head shots didn’t show up on any of the other dating sites. It’s possible that the three women who I met with are his only victims. Maybe we’re only prolonging the inevitable and wasting our time by going out with the guy and hoping we’ll catch him in the act. Maybe we should just ask Andersen where we can find Walker, arrest the guy, and proceed on the evidence we have.”
“I’m all for that plan,” Hana said. “I’ve got better things to do next Friday night than go out with a con artist, and Tara’s probably got something better to do Tuesday night, too.”
A grin played about Nick’s lips. He tried, unsuccessfully, to hide it behind his glass of iced tea.
I palmed the handle of the gun at my waist. “Next person who says the word ‘Tuesday’ is getting a bullet in the butt.” That wiped the smile off his face.
By the time we finished eating, we were all in agreement. We’d confront Andersen and deal with this matter head-on. I’d like to say our reasons were entirely because we were tenacious and forthright, but admittedly part of it was because we were impatient. Type A personalities, all of us, at least when it came to our work.
We paid the bill, complimented the waitress on what was, indeed, the best corn bread in three counties, and drove back out to Andersen’s place. Nick climbed out to open the gate, and I drove on through, waiting on the gravel drive while he closed the gate behind us and returned to the car. As we approached the house, Andersen stepped out of his barn and walked toward us. The expression on the small part of his face that was visible said he didn’t take too kindly to strangers trespassing on his private property.
I raised a hand in greeting and forced a smile as the car rolled to a stop. Nick, Hana, and I climbed out of the car and met Andersen on the drive.
“Hello.” I extended my hand. “I’m Special Agent Tara Holloway from the Internal Revenue Service. These are my coworkers, Senior Special Agent Nick Pratt and Special Agent Hana Kim.”
Though Andersen shook our hands, his tone was wary. “What brings you out here?”
“The Mercedes you rented at the Oklahoma City airport.”
“Mercedes?” His head pulled back reflexively, his forehead becoming corrugated with confusion. “Run that by me again?”
“I was informed by Hertz that you rented a car from their location at the Oklahoma City airport. Can you tell me who’s driving that car and where I might find him?”
“I can’t tell you any of that,” he said, “because I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
I eyed him closely. “Are you saying you didn’t rent a car recently?”
“Why should I?” He gestured toward the Dodge. “I’ve got a perfectly good truck right there. Just put new tires on ’er. Spark plugs, too.”
“How would Hertz have your name, address, and driver’s license number if you hadn’t rented the car?”
“I’ve got no clue,” the man said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans and pulling out his wallet. “I’ve got my driver’s license right here.” He held it up to show us.
“So you haven’t misplaced your license, then,” I said, thinking out loud.
“Not this one, anyway,” he replied. “I went out bar hopping with some buddies late last summer and managed to lose my whole wallet. Had a few too many, I suppose. I called the bars later to see if anyone had turned it in but had no luck. I had to cancel all my credit cards and get replacements. Same for my debit card. I went down to the DMV a couple days later and got this new license.”
Had his previous driver’s license somehow made its way into the hands of Jack Smirnoff/Morgan Walker? It seemed likely. Heck, maybe the catfisher had pulled an Oliver Twist and picked Andersen’s pocket. Maybe he’d taken one look at Andersen’s hair and beard, realized that nobody could tell what the man might look like clean-shaven, and figured it would be easy to pass the license off as his own. Really, it was an ingenious idea.
“Are you sure you lost your wallet?” I asked. “Maybe someone picked your pocket.”
He ducked his head in agreement. “That’s a real possibility. I would’ve been an easy target that night. I was shit-faced.”
“What bars had you gone to?” I asked.
He looked up in thought. “The Hidden Door in Dallas,” he said. “JR’s. We ended the night at Mable Peabody’s up in Denton. I’m sure there were several more in there, but it’s been a while and, like I said, I’d had a few.” As if afraid he’d said too much, he quickly added, “I wasn’t the designated driver that night, in case you were wondering.”
I exchanged glances with Nick and Hana. Neither seemed to have any more questions for the guy.
I extended my hand. “Thanks for your time.”
He gave it another shake. “If you find out who’s using my license, you’ll try to get it back, right? I don’t want him wrecking that fancy car and sticking me with the bill.”
“We’ll do our best,” I promised.
After we climbed back into the car, I said, “I’m not familiar with the bars he mentioned.”
“Me, neither,” Nick said.
“That’s ’cause they’re gay bars,” Hana said.
Nick turned around in his seat. “You mean to tell me that when that bearded cotton farmer sows his wild oats—”
“He sows them with other men,” Hana said. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Was your gaydar blooping?” I asked. Mine hadn’t given off a single ping.
“Not at all,” Hana said. “I wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t mentioned the bars.”
I started the car. “Maybe it needs a tune-up.”