Tara Holloway 01 - Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure by Diane Kelly

with fury and before I knew what was happening, Christina had wrapped her arm around my neck and pulled me into a headlock. “No,” she hissed in my ear, her voice now low and tinged with a sharp Spanish accent. “I’m not kidding you at all.”
    So Barbie had spunk.
    Agent Marquez and I had received the same training, so within seconds I’d performed the evasive maneuvers needed to slip out of her grip, skipping the stomp on the instep so as not to mar her adorable patent leather pumps with polka dot bows on the toe. I faced her and held out my hand. “I’m sorry. That was inexcusably rude of me. It’s just that you don’t look at all like a DEA agent.”
    She took in my delicate facial features, my tastefully drab olive-green linen pantsuit, my hair pulled back with a tortoiseshell barrette. “Well, you look exactly like an IRS agent.”
    “Touché.”
    We traded smiles. She took my hand and gave it a firm shake, all forgiven.
    After we received our orders, we slipped into a booth at the back of the shop. Christina handed me a manila envelope. Inside was an enlarged driver’s-license photo of Joseph Cullen, aka Joe Cool. Joe had a goofy smile, an acne-pocked face, and the worst haircut I’d ever seen. “The guy wears a mullet?”
    Christina nodded. “We may have to kill him.”
    I smiled. The girl might be annoyingly bubbly, but at least she had a sense of humor. This bust could be fun.
    The printout indicated Joe was only five foot six and a hundred and forty-five pounds. Two female agents should be able to take him down easily. Of course I’d never expected a porker like Jack Battaglia to move as fast as he did, either.
    “HUD foreclosed on a crack house in the middle of Joe’s ice-cream route,” Christina said. “I had keys made for us.” She pulled a key out of the envelope and slid it across the table to me. “We can use the house as our base of operations.”
    “Good idea.” I handed the file back to Christina and tucked the key into my purse.
    “If we’re going to run a successful stakeout in that neighborhood, we’ll have to make some adjustments to our appearance. If we go in dressed like this”—she gestured at our clothes—“Joe and everyone else will be on to us in a heartbeat.”
    Looked like it was time to get back in touch with my blue-collar roots.
    We left the bagel shop, ready to get started. “I just need to run these by my office.” I held up the white paper bag containing Eddie’s bagels. “They’re for my partner.”
    Christina and I walked to my office, her heels click-clacking on the sidewalk as she all but skipped along next to me. When we reached the homeless man, asleep again on the sidewalk, I tucked a second bag containing a nutritious whole wheat bagel and a bottle of orange juice under his arm.
    We arrived at the Treasury building and made our way down the hall. Viola assessed Christina with a sharp eye as we approached her desk. Like me, Christina was deceptively benign looking. She’d already proven that when she’d taken me down at the bagel shop. When we drew near, Viola turned her pointed look from Christina to me. “Lu’s looking for you.”
    Dang. She must’ve received her copy of my firearm discharge report. I’d known this was coming. I’d just hoped for a longer reprieve.
    Christina waited in my office while I went to see the Lobo. I took a deep breath and rapped tentatively on the door frame.
    Lu looked up from the stack of paperwork on her desk. And she didn’t look happy. “Well, well,” she said, picking up the cigarette from her ashtray and taking a deep drag. “If it ain’t the Annie Oakley of the IRS.”
    I stepped into her office. “Didn’t Eddie tell you what happened? That Battaglia attacked me with a box cutter?” I knew my partner would back me up. Eddie and I hadn’t worked together long, but we’d gelled instantly. His loyalty was one of the few things I could count on these days.
    Lu blew smoke out her nose, like a