Tara Holloway 03 - Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray by Diane Kelly Page A

dollars.”
    “Let’s do it.” Who couldn’t use an extra hundred bucks a month? I grabbed a pen to make notes. “What do you need from me?”
    She ran through a list of documents for me to fax to her. Last year’s tax return, account statements, my latest pay stub. “Once you get the documentation to me, it’ll take only a day or two to get the loan paperwork ready.”
    Nick walked into my office as I ended the call and ceremoniously plunked a stack of papers on my desk. “Check these out.”
    I quickly riffled through them. A vehicle registration. A birth certificate. A marriage license. A final order in a paternity suit. A divorce decree. A photocopy of someone’s ass.
    I held up the ass. “Yours?”
    “Nope. I found it on the copier.”
    “It’s a white butt,” I said, “so we can rule Eddie out. But other than that I don’t have a clue.”
    “It looks like a female ass to me. My guess would be the new clerk in the records department.”
    “The one who keeps parking in Viola’s spot?”
    Nick nodded.
    I turned the copy one way then the other. Was I looking at a G-spot and just didn’t know it? “Maybe this is actually Viola’s butt and Vi’s trying to frame her, get the girl fired.”
    “I wouldn’t put it past her. Viola’s damn upset about that parking spot.”
    “So I hear.” I crumpled up the paper, tossed it into the wastebasket, and turned to the other documents.
    Nick slid into one of my chairs. “The auburn-haired choir girl from the Ark is Amber Hansen,” Nick said, providing a quick Cliff’s Notes version of the paperwork. “Amber was married briefly to a marine named John Vincent Hansen. Got herself knocked up while her hubby was serving a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf.”
    “So much for keeping the home fires burning.”
    Nick pulled his stress ball out of his pocket and began working it. “According to the court documents, Amber claimed she got pregnant when her husband was home on leave, but the timing didn’t jibe. When her husband returned, he moved out of their house and filed a paternity suit. The DNA evidence proved he wasn’t the biological father.”
    “Hence the divorce.”
    “You got it.”
    I glanced at the birth certificate. Although the child’s name was listed as David Jacob Hansen, the space for the father’s name was blank.
    “Are there any other records?” I asked Nick. “Maybe a subsequent paternity suit filed by Amber?”
    “Nothing.”
    So Amber’s little boy could, in fact, be Pastor Fischer’s. Or he could be someone else’s. There had to be thousands of blond men in the Dallas area, after all, men with much less to lose than Pastor Fischer.
    “I’m surprised Amber didn’t file for child support.” After all, it wasn’t cheap to raise a kid these days, even with the dependency exemptions and tax credits for child care costs.
    Nick cocked his head. “I’m thinking she didn’t pursue financial support because this dirty little secret would get the father in trouble.”
    “Or maybe she doesn’t know who the father is. Maybe she had a one-night stand with a guy she met at a bar.”
    Nick rolled his eyes.
    “I’m just saying we can’t be sure of this. We need to tread carefully.”
    Because when you didn’t tread carefully, it was easy to step in it.
    *   *   *
    I sneaked out of the office just past eleven to meet my best friend, Alicia, for an early lunch. As always, Alicia was impeccably dressed. She wore sling-back heels with a colorful, embroidered Asian-style dress, complete with a high collar and buttons in the form of small fabric knots. She topped off today’s look by pulling her short blond hair into a small bun bisected by black lacquer chopsticks that formed an X on the back of her head.
    Yep, Alicia was a master fashionista. I was more of an apprentice, with less of an eye for detail and a smaller budget. But I’d befriended a salesgirl with an inside track to the Neiman’s clearance rack and thus managed to