Death, Taxes, and a Chocolate Cannoli (A Tara Holloway Novel) (33 page)

I looked around and saw the solution.

“Quick!” I hollered. “We need to build a pyramid with the tables!”

Dario, Benedetta, and I moved like lightning, creating a base of four tables onto which we stacked three more, adding the final one at the top. When we finished, the makeshift steps reached nearly eight feet into the air. I grabbed the useless fire extinguisher from behind the bar, climbed the stack of tables, and stood precariously atop the pinnacle, my chest even with the bottom of the triangular grate. Using the metal canister like a battering ram, I slammed it over and over against the grate. The relatively flimsy aluminum buckled, bending more and more until the grate fell away, dropping to the asphalt outside with a clatter.

I put my hands on the ledge, sticking my head out and gulping the relatively fresh air as smoke billowed out next to me.

“Tara!” Nick ran up outside, his face frantic, Josh on his heels.

Though I wanted nothing more than to escape out the hole, I knew I had to get Benedetta and Dario out first.

I turned and hollered down to Benedetta, motioning with my arm. “You first! Come on!”

The ladle still clutched in her hand like an odd security blanket, Benedetta climbed the tables, stopping only when she was overcome by coughs. When she was standing on the table next to me, I intertwined my fingers to form a stirrup for leverage. “Hurry!”

She put her foot into my hand and I gave her a boost. Hanging on to the ledge, she pulled her legs through and then dropped from sight. It was twelve feet down to the parking lot. I hoped the fall wouldn’t break her leg or ankle, or that she’d accidentally impale herself on her ladle.

Dario came up next. “Go on!” he cried, shooing me with both arms.

While I appreciated his chivalry, as a federal law enforcement officer I felt like a ship’s captain. It was my duty to see that all innocent parties escaped safely before saving myself. If I couldn’t do that, I’d go down with the ship. Or in this case, I’d melt with the cannoli.

“I’m an undercover cop!” I shouted. Not precisely the truth, but close enough to give him the message. Besides,
cop
was faster to say than
IRS special agent
.

His already wide eyes flashed with surprise, but he didn’t waste time thinking things over. Being a cop meant I had last dibs on getting to live. Everyone knew that. He hoisted himself up and was out the triangular hole in a split second.

There was the sound of an explosion—
poom!
—as the flames engulfed something flammable, probably the cleaning supplies. Huge plumes of black smoke billowed up around me, blinding me. Eyes closed against the smoke, lungs racking with coughs, I reached out for the ledge I could no longer see. I pulled myself up and over it, hanging down the side of the building for a moment before letting go.

chapter forty-three

T
he Smoke Clears

Strong arms caught me and lowered me safely to the ground. Those strong arms, of course, belonged to Nick.

Benedetta was likewise uninjured, though she was crying hysterically on Josh’s shoulder, thoroughly freaked out. Nick had even managed to help Dario land lightly on the asphalt, despite the fact that the chef outweighed Nick by a good forty pounds.

Nick grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my watery eyes. Well, at least I assumed he did. I still couldn’t see much with all the tears my ducts were producing to combat the smoke. There was just a wavering, Nick-like blur.

“Are you okay?” he cried.

“I’m okay,” I said, punctuating my words with another rib-wrenching cough. “We all got out.”

WEE-OH-WEE-OH-WEE-OH!
A fire truck roared into the parking lot, its siren blaring and warning lights flashing. As the men hopped off the truck, I wriggled out of Nick’s grasp and ran over to them. “It’s an oil fire!”

The information would be critical to them in determining how best to battle the blaze. My earlier blunder with the sink sprayer told me that.

The men swarmed down from the truck in their yellow protective gear and set to work.

“Anyone injured?” one of the men asked.

I shook my head but coughed.

“Let’s see about getting you some oxygen.”

Nick, Josh, Dario, Benedetta, and I went over to Gallery Nico and waited inside while the firefighters attacked the flames, which had now spread to the roof. Clearly we’d gotten out just in time. While we waited, an EMT equipped the three of us who’d been in the bistro with oxygen masks.

Dario turned his eyes on me. “You’re an undercover cop?” he said, his voice muffled by the mask.

Above her mask, Benedetta’s eyes flashed in alarm and betrayal. “A cop?” she cried, her voice muffled, too. “Tori, is that true?”

I exchanged glances with Josh and Nick, who nodded.

“Yes,” I said, taking a deep breath of the pure air.
Who knew oxygen could be so good?
“I’m a federal law enforcement officer.” I gestured to Nick and Josh. “So are they.”

Benedetta’s expression was totally bewildered. “But why? Why would you be working at my bistro? And the art gallery?”

I took another hit of fresh, pure air. “We’re investigating your husband.”

“Tino?” She still looked confused. “Why? For what?”

I didn’t want to tell her too much until I saw how things panned out, so I simply said, “A lot of things.”

“You can add attempted murder to the list now,” Nick said. “Tino started the fire.”

“What are you saying?” Benedetta shrieked, her mask fogging with her warm breath as she looked from Nick to me and back again. “That my husband tried to kill us?”

“It sure looks that way.” Josh held up an odd-looking device that looked like a miniature model of the Starship
Enterprise
. “I caught him on my camera drone moving the catering truck to block the back door and tossing lit matches into the restaurant.”

Presumably, Tino hoped his act of arson would be deemed an accidental grease fire.

Benedetta launched into a litany of denial, shaking her head so violently I feared it might pop right off her neck. “No. No! No, no, no. No-no-no-no-no!”

I wouldn’t want to believe it, either, if the man I’d built a life with, the man who’d fathered my children, the man who was supposed to be with me till death do us part, had tried to make that time shorter than nature intended. Especially if it were for only half a million dollars in life insurance proceeds. Hell, a hedge fund manager earned that much each quarter.

As I watched Benedetta’s face, saw her shock and disbelief, I realized one thing for sure. Whatever Tino Fabrizio had been up to, Benedetta knew nothing about it. Otherwise, the events of this evening would not have been such a surprise to her.

Nick turned to me. “I knew something was wrong when I saw Tino come out of the bistro with your pink phone in his hand. Just in case it was nothing, we didn’t want to tip him off by following him around to the back of the restaurant. Josh had his bag of tricks with him and launched the drone from our back door. It took us a few minutes to fly the drone over the restaurant, collect the footage, and review it. Once we saw the video, we realized Tino had started a fire inside. There wasn’t much smoke yet, so we wouldn’t have known if not for the drone.”

With no open doors or windows to escape through, the smoke had been trapped inside, like us.

Nick went on. “I was trying to break through the security doors when we heard the grate fall. That was smart thinking, Tara.”

“Tara?” Benedetta said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

“I’m not Tori Holland,” I told her. “I’m IRS Special Agent Tara Holloway.”

Nick’s phone rang then. He punched the button to accept the call and put the phone to his ear. “Yeah?” A smile spread across his lips. He looked from me to Josh and back again. “Our guys have Tino. They surrounded him in his driveway at home. As far as they know, he didn’t have time to contact anyone.”

Meaning he was apprehended before he could get in touch with Cole or Eric or any of his other goons and warn them off.
Good.

“They’re bringing him back here,” Nick said. “I doubt he’ll tell us anything, but they figured they’d let us see if we could get a confession out of him.”

Benedetta spoke now, so softly we almost didn’t hear her. “Can I see the video?” she asked Josh.

Josh looked to me. I nodded. Hard as it would be, Benedetta deserved to learn the truth.

As he pulled up the video on his laptop, I scooted my chair up next to Benedetta and took her hand in mine. She needed to know that, even if she had a lousy husband, she still had a friend in me.

She watched as, on the screen, Tino climbed into her catering truck behind the bistro and backed it up until it nearly touched the back door. She watched and sobbed as he rolled a large plastic barrel over to the door and inserted the hose in it. She watched, sobbed, and hiccupped as he opened the back door the inch or two it could open, sucked on the end of the hose to get the oil moving, and snaked the hose through the cracked door. And, finally, she watched, sobbed, hiccupped, and fisted her hands as he retrieved a matchbook from his pocket, struck a match, and set the entire book on fire, tossing it through the back door into her restaurant’s kitchen.

“If I didn’t see it with my own eyes,” she said, shaking her head slowly, incredulously now, “I never would have believed it.”

A black FBI cruiser pulled into the lot. Two agents sat in the front. Tino was buckled into the rear seat behind them. From the way he sat leaning forward it was clear his hands were cuffed behind him.

Benedetta followed me, Nick, and Josh outside. The FBI agents unrolled the back window of the cruiser and climbed out.

While Josh waited with Benedetta, Nick and I stepped over to the car and leaned down to look in the open window.

“Hello, again, Tino,” I said. “I’m guessing by now you’ve been told that we’re with the IRS.”

His only reply was to cast an eat-stromboli-and-die look in our direction.

“Anything you want to say?” I asked him. “You might feel better if you come clean, maybe apologize to your wife.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to anyone,” he spat.

“All righty, then.”

As Nick and I backed away, Benedetta stepped up, stroking the ladle as if it were a kitten. Probably some type of subconscious calming ritual. “Can I have a moment with Tino?”

I swept my palm toward the car. “Be my guest.”

Benedetta stepped up to the car, stopping a foot away and staring through the open window at her husband. He looked straight ahead for a moment, but then cast a glance her way. There was no remorse in his expression, no regret. Obviously, his whole doting-husband routine had been nothing more than an act.

“You bastard!” Benedetta shrieked, pulling the ladle back and smacking him soundly across the face with it.
Smack!

He grimaced and tried to duck his head as she pulled the ladle back for another hit.

“How dare you!”
Smack!
“You thought you’d kill me and collect the insurance money?”
Smack!
“Think again!”
Smack!

As Tino tried in vain to evade her ladle lashes, we agents gathered together a few feet away.

“Should we stop her?” asked one of the FBI agents.

“Three more,” I suggested. “Sound fair?”

The other agents murmured in agreement.

Smack! Smack! Smack!

I moved forward and grabbed the ladle as Benedetta lifted it for another strike. “As much as I’d love to let you beat your husband to death, I’m going to have to stop you now.”

She turned and gave me that friendly smile of hers. “But I was just starting to have fun.”

I put an arm around her shoulders and led her back into the gallery.

“Well,” she said. “I married a real asshole, didn’t I?”

We shared a mirthless laugh before she broke down in tears again. I held her, letting her get it all out.

When Benedetta was able to calm herself a few minutes later, Nick offered her his phone. “Would you like to call your daughters?”

She nodded feebly, her lip quivering, and took the phone from his hand. She turned to me. “How do I tell them what happened? How do I do this?”

I had no idea what to tell her. I couldn’t even imagine being a mother and having to break news like this to my own children, knowing how distraught and devastated they would be. But I knew it would all come out eventually. I decided I couldn’t go wrong by suggesting she do what my mother, the best mother on earth, would do. “I guess you tell them that you love them,” I said. “And then you tell them the truth.”

chapter forty-four

H
ey, Good-looking

Once Benedetta had spoken with her daughters and we’d given our reports to the fireman in charge of the scene, I offered to drive her home in her car. As devastated as she was, she was in no condition to drive. Nick agreed to follow us so he could give me a ride back to pick up my Hyundai.

The FBI agents nodded when we told them we were heading out. “We’ll get some of our crime scene people out here to go over the bistro and Cyber-Shield,” one of them said. They’d seize the server, computers, and monitors, and, with any luck, find evidence of doctored videos.

“We’ve got a team at Echols’s house as we speak,” said the other. “They’ll be taking him in for questioning, too, and seizing any evidence at his place.”

“Great.”

It was nearly midnight when we pulled up to Benedetta’s house. It was a nice two-story model with attractive landscaping, but a residence the couple could afford with their legitimate earnings. Tino must have hidden his dirty money from his wife. Perhaps he planned to spend it all on himself after she was gone, maybe live it up on a beach somewhere. Naples, perhaps, where he’d have access to all of the cannoli he could eat. It was doubtful he’d see much, if any, cannoli in prison, though.
Neener-neener.

Tino’s Alfa Romeo sat in the driveway at their house. It probably wouldn’t be there for long. The sports car would be seized along with any of his other ill-gotten property and used to cover taxes on the unreported income he’d extorted or to pay restitution to his victims.