Pissed List
With a final good-night kiss, Nick ventured back across the hall to his room, his dog in tow. I snuggled down into the bed and tried to settle my mind. Not easy to do with a death threat looming over me. I felt frustrated and fearful, like things were out of my control. I wasn’t a control freak, but I didn’t like this uncertainty, either. I didn’t like being forced out of my home. But there was nothing I could do about it. Not until—and unless—I figured out who was behind the threats.
Yep, like I’d told the cop and Booth, I’d made quite a few enemies during my year-and-a-half tenure with the IRS. I had a propensity for pissing people off.
My first big case had involved a man named Michael Gryder who’d operated a foreign-currency exchange scam. He’d duped investors out of their hard-earned savings with the help of a banker named Stan Shelton. Eddie and I had ended up in a shoot-out with Gryder at Shelton’s lake house. Both of them were behind bars now. Their young trophy wives, however, were not.
Could Chelsea Gryder or Britney Shelton be the one threatening me? Maybe the two of them were even working together. They’d become close friends after they’d met through their husbands. Of course those husbands were now ex-husbands. Maybe Chelsea and/or Britney was so angry that I’d put their sugar daddy behind bars, that I’d put an end to their charmed lives, they decided to put an end to my life, or at least to make me sweat. It was worth looking into.
I’d also arrested a guy named Joe who’d been dealing drugs from his ice-cream truck. Was it possible someone related to him was after me? I had my doubts. Joe was not endearing in the least. I couldn’t imagine anyone caring enough about him to want to seek revenge against the woman who’d gotten him convicted. Still, I couldn’t rule him out.
Another potential lead was Marcos Mendoza, a man who ran a cross-border crime ring. Nick had investigated the guy three years before I arrived at Criminal Investigations. While Nick had been working undercover in Mendoza’s business, he realized he’d been made. Mendoza had figured out that Nick was a fed. Before Mendoza could end his life, as he’d done with so many others, Nick made him a deal. He’d told Mendoza that he was for sale, that if the man paid him off Nick wouldn’t share the information he’d learned with the federal government and would instead take the payoff and flee to Mexico. Of course it had been a ruse Nick devised to save his own life. Nonetheless, Nick had been forced to live for three years in exile until, when I came along, the case was resurrected, and the two of us took Mendoza down together.
Could Mendoza be behind this? Maybe his wife? She lived down in Mexico, though, with the couple’s daughter. Would she go to the trouble of coming to the U.S. to kill me? Or could the person who was after me be someone in the man’s extensive criminal network? It was possible. I’d not only put Mendoza in prison, but I’d also put away two of his goons who’d beaten up a man and his wife who operated a Czech bakery. The couple had been in debt to Mendoza’s loan-shark business. But if my would-be killer was related to the Mendoza case, why would the person wait over a year to come after me? Would the person delay all this time in order to avoid suspicion? Again, it was possible. Still, I didn’t think it was likely. Anger could fester and explode, sure. But grudges fizzled out quite often, too. Then again, Mendoza’s henchman had been linked to a former butcher at a slaughterhouse who was also a suspected hit man. There’d never been enough evidence to arrest the butcher. He might be wanting to skin me and hang me from a meat hook. But if so, I doubt he’d let me know beforehand. I’d put any Mendoza connection down as a loose “maybe.”
Another possibility was that the person making the threats was associated with the Lone Star Nation, a secessionist group. I’d had a run-in last year with their elderly, gun-happy leader, August Buchmeyer, and his wife, Betty. Our interaction involved an exchange of gunfire and resulted in the man enjoying several months’ stay at a psychiatric facility. I’d also had a slew of the members arrested when they’d held a cockfight on the purported sovereign property of the Nation. Could one of them be after me? Again, maybe. Hard to say for sure. But without their fearless leader, the group had dissipated after Buchmeyer’s arrest, and my gut told me they’d moved on to other things. Still, the Buchmeyers weren’t in jail, and August had already proven he had both a short fuse and some loose screws. Better give them a visit, huh?
In another major investigation, I’d taken down Noah Fischer, a popular pastor and televangelist who led the Ark church. The congregation worshipped in a huge building shaped like a ship, complete with a gangplank at the entry. Not only had Pastor Fischer cheated the IRS out of thousands upon thousands of tax dollars, he’d fleeced his flock as well, using their tithes for personal gain. And that was only the beginning of his sins. He’d also committed adultery, with both a pole dancer and a parishioner, the latter of whom bore him a child. As if that didn’t break enough of God’s commandments, he’d even tried to kill me in my own town house. I was certainly not sinless, but this guy took the cake.
While Noah Fischer had ended up in prison, his wife Marissa got off scot-free. Though she’d also benefitted from the improperly used funds, she had not been directly involved in the financial shenanigans. The Fischers’ assets had been seized and the two divorced, but neither the financial nor emotional toll had likely hurt Marissa much. She’d gone on to give a series of paid interviews on TV talk shows and in tell-all tabloids, but her crocodile tears didn’t fool me. She loved the attention much more than she’d ever loved her husband. He’d been a means to an end.
She’d gone on to star in the debut season of the program Do Over, which was essentially The Bachelorette but for divorced women to find a second chance at love. I hadn’t watched the show, finding much of “reality TV” to be too contrived to be believable. But according to the magazines I’d perused while waiting in the grocery-store checkout line last fall, Marissa, after much angst and deliberation, as well as many suggestive backrubs from the other contestants, had awarded her mended-heart medallion to a guy from her home state of Iowa. He owned a chain of farm-equipment dealerships and no doubt earned a nice living. I heard they’d gone on to get married. Being married to a tractor dealer was not as glamorous as being the wife of a celebrity, but no doubt the guy earned a pretty penny given all the farmland in Middle America.
When the show’s season ended, Marissa had faded from the limelight. Presumably she was living large in Des Moines, enjoying her new life brought to you courtesy of Joove, the wrinkle-fighting face cream that rejuvenates skin and “gives women a second chance to enjoy their younger years.”
Given that things had turned out well for Marissa, as well as the fact that she was living three states and seven hundred miles away, it seemed doubtful she’d come after me, even if she was angry at me for putting an end to the life she’d lived here in Dallas. But maybe Noah’s stripper girlfriend had decided to seek revenge. Surely Leah Dodd missed the luxuries Noah had been able to provide her. Then again, she’d had her time in the limelight, too, landing gigs on 60 Minutes, The View, and The Jerry Springer Show, not to mention interviews with People magazine and the National Enquirer. She’d earned a pretty penny for sharing her story.
Like Marissa, Leah lived out of state, a three-hour drive away in Shreveport, Louisiana. Would she go to the trouble of coming all this way to try to run me down and personally deliver the coffin brochure to my door? Again, I had my doubts. I couldn’t imagine her relationship with Fischer really meant much to her. And weren’t sugar daddies readily available to attractive young women? She could have replaced him in a heartbeat. Still, given her line of work, she might have access to the type of unsavory characters who’d be willing to off a federal agent for a small fee. And I supposed it could be possible that she’d been genuinely in love with the fallen pastor. Hmm …
The IRS had made a concerted effort to curb the number of abusive tax preparers in recent years, and the Dallas Criminal Investigations team had arrested a number of unscrupulous practitioners who’d helped their clients defraud the IRS. The Deduction Diva. The Tax Wizard. A guy who dressed like Elvis and operated his tax business under the name Refund-a-Rama. Heck, Nick and I had ended up in a Mexican standoff with the owner of Bulls-Eye Taxidermy and Tax Processing. I wouldn’t put it past Jimmy John McClure to come after me again, to try to even the score. But as far as I knew, the guy was still doing time. Did he have someone else doing his dirty work? Maybe one of his taxidermy clients? The thought was unnerving. I’d hate for my head to end up mounted on someone’s wall or my hide to end up as a rug lying in front of someone’s fireplace.
In addition to the fraudulent preparers, I’d gone after men who’d been funneling funds to terrorist groups, as well as the woman who’d unwittingly helped them. But all of them were still in jail, too. As was Donald Geils, the owner of a strip club called Guys & Dolls. He’d taken a shot at me once. He took four bullets in his leg in return. The incident had led to that excessive-force trial I’d mentioned, starring yours truly as the defendant. While waiting for the hearing, I’d worked audits and reconnected with a frenemy from college, Chloe Aberdeen-Jennings, whose family owned and operated a candy business. She hadn’t appreciated me showing up to audit the company. The two of us had taken a header off a catwalk and ended up in a vat of chocolate together, but she’d been contrite afterward. Or at least she’d seemed to be. Could she be the one who was after me now? She’d had a lot of personal problems, including marital ones, though I thought she’d worked through them. Did she begrudge me my impending wedded bliss? It was certainly possible. It couldn’t hurt to check in with both Don Geils and Chloe.
Of course Brazos Rivers and his parents weren’t happy with me, either. The young country-western superstar had skyrocketed to fame and fortune, and it had gone to his head. He thought he was above the law, didn’t take care of his business. He’d forced me to take care of it for him. He, too, was in prison, singing the blues. Could his parents be behind the threats? I’d met them once and they’d made it clear they had no love and just as little respect for me. While hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, in my experience a parent could be even more hellacious and ferocious when someone attacked their precious baby. Hmm …
I’d put members of a cartel behind bars, too, and one in the ground. My father had dispatched another member of the cartel. We’d had no choice. They’d had guns at the heads of Nick and Christina. Could one of their family members be after me? Or maybe El Cuchillo—the Knife—was still running the cartel from prison. Maybe he’d ordered someone to toy with and torture me.
Unfortunately, El Cuchillo wasn’t the only violent offender I’d put away who potentially had a network of killers at his disposal. Guistino “Tino” Fabrizio, the Godfather of a local mob syndicate, had several enforcers in his group. In fact, we never tracked down an unknown man who’d come to Tino’s wife’s restaurant, posing as a safety inspector from the fire department checking on the fire extinguishers. When the building was later set on fire with Tino’s wife, me, and a chef inside, we discovered the fire extinguisher was empty and useless. Could that unidentified man be the one who was after me now? Was he angry that I’d foiled Tino’s plot to kill his wife for the life insurance money? Had he been in line to be paid some of those proceeds?
My most recent cases had involved a crafty talk-radio-show host who’d formed her own bartering network, a guy who’d catfished women online and ripped them off, a human smuggler, and a young woman obsessed with a telenovela and seeking revenge on anyone who’d slighted her, just as the heroine of her favorite show did. While members of the bartering network might have been upset that I’d put an end to the exchange program when they had unspent credits, I doubted any of them would be so upset as to risk jail time for threatening a federal law enforcement officer. As far as the smuggler’s group went, I was fairly certain we’d nabbed all the major players. But they hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with information. Hmm …
I had a lot of possible suspects, but no sure answers. I also had a full caseload at work and not enough time to chase all of these leads. I supposed I’d have to go after the suspects that seemed the most likely, or the ones that I could pursue with the least amount of time and effort.
I closed my eyes and rolled onto my side. Anne curled up against my chest, purring. Henry refused to join us on the bed, furious that he’d not only been forced to move without his consent but that he was also now forced to share his digs with an inferior species. He opted to sleep atop the dresser. I could only hope he’d be a little more receptive in a few weeks when Nick and I officially blended our two fur families in our new home next door.
While I was grateful to have Nick with me tonight, if pressed I’d have to say I was even more grateful Daffodil was here. If anyone snooped around Bonnie’s house tonight, her sensitive ears would pick it up and she’d alert us to the intruders. I’d always been more of a cat person, but dogs certainly did more to earn their keep. No doubt about it.