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

The Ark also paid for lawn and pool service, along with a full-time maid and cook. Heck, the Ark even provided Fischer with a limo and driver.
    Several years ago, the Dallas county tax collector had deemed the parsonage ineligible for a property tax exemption because the home was far beyond what was necessary for use as a residence. The tax office had issued an assessment to the church, but the church refused to pay. When the tax collector pressed the county attorney to pursue the unpaid property tax bill in court, the county attorney had balked.
    In Texas, as in many Southern states, a wide variety of public offices are filled through elections rather than appointments. This system had been in place since just after the Civil War and was designed to keep power in the hands of the locals and prevent those pesky Yankees from appointing their cronies to office.
    Problem was, the elected officials were now controlled by their financial supporters. In the case of the county attorney, a number of those who’d made significant contributions to his campaign attended the Ark Temple of Worship. Rather than risk alienating his supporters and losing his reelection bid, the county attorney wimped out and did nothing. Frustrated, the tax assessor had referred the case to the IRS, hoping the feds would take action.
    After the case was referred, IRS auditors performed a thorough investigation and issued an income tax assessment of over five hundred grand to Pastor Fischer. Just as the Ark had ignored its property tax bill, Fischer refused to pay his federal income tax bill. Although collection action could have been taken, the head of the Dallas collections department realized he’d be in the hot seat if his department seized the pastor’s assets. The buck was passed once again and the case was moved up the Treasury’s chain to Criminal Investigations.
    The case was sure to be a political nightmare for the IRS, just as the federal government’s raid at the cult compound in Waco, Texas, years ago had caused untold amounts of grief for people at all levels of government, from low-level agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms all the way up to then Attorney General Janet Reno. But unlike those who’d come before her, the Lobo didn’t scare easily.
    Neither did I.
    The buck stopped here.
    I reviewed the pastor’s dossier next. Actually, it was just a bunch of copies of personal documents crammed into a reused manila folder on which another taxpayer’s name had been crossed through and “Noah Fischer” written above it. But “dossier” sounds much more classy, doesn’t it?
    According to the information in the file, Noah Fischer had been born in Dubuque, Iowa, and raised in government-subsidized housing. His father was a disabled Vietnam veteran, a former electrician for the Army Corps of Engineers who’d been injured in a fall and could no longer work. His mother was employed sporadically as a housekeeper. Their meager income was subsidized with benefits from government entitlement programs, including food stamps, Medicaid, and social security supplements.
    Fischer had graduated in the bottom quarter of his high school class and engaged in no extracurricular activities, though he had been awarded an honorable mention in the school science fair his junior year for powering a low-watt lightbulb with an improvised potato battery. No doubt his father had helped with that project. Fischer’s senior high school photo showed a scrawny, bucktoothed boy with white-blond hair and a disproportionately large nose.
    During his late teens and early twenties, Noah had floated from one menial part-time job to another, flipping burgers, delivering pizza, detailing cars at a Cadillac dealership. A slacker. Not exactly the kind of background you’d expect of a guy who’d successfully built and led one of the largest churches in the metroplex and whose sermons were broadcast nationwide every Sunday morning to hundreds of thousands of