However Many More

by Bo Thunboe

  “And they jibe with the real numbers from the books?” Jake asked.

  “To the penny.” Ryan worked the cursor down the spreadsheet. “He pieced together a decent living with the odd jobs and the outhouse book. The one thing I find curious is he doesn’t show any income from excavating the pits themselves. Wasn’t some of the stuff he found worth money?”

  “It goes to the landowner. Henry’s deal is he gets to write about what he finds and keep one souvenir of his choice.”

  “Then so far everything does jibe.”

  “What about the storage unit business? Do you have that figured out?”

  Beck nodded. “Erin told me to start there. Each time Mr. Fox bought the contents of a storage unit, he assigned it a number and made a new manila folder with the number on the tab. There’s a spreadsheet of expenses and revenues for each unit organized by that assigned number.” Beck rolled his chair to the filing cabinet, the wheels making a hollow rumble across the wood floor. He pulled a file from the drawer for the storage business. “If I enter this file number…” He entered the digits penciled on the tab into the computer, then clicked through a couple screens of data. “You get this spreadsheet.” He pointed to the file and back to the screen. “This unit netted $340.57, represented by these two entries, one for $170.39 and the other $170.38. While the other guy was involved, Mr. Fox always gave him the extra penny.”

  “What other guy?”

  “His partner.” Ryan clicked the mouse a few times, then pointed to the monitor, which displayed a check from Fox Handyman Service, LLC, to Jim Bowen. “Bowen also provided the start-up capital: five thousand dollars.” Ryan clicked the mouse and typed in a few characters to reveal the check from Bowen.

  Jake wrote down Bowen’s name, address, and phone number from the check, his energy surging. This guy was his next visit.

  “You said while he was involved.”

  “Yeah, it looks like sometime in June Mr. Fox went solo. No more splitting the profits.”

  “Had he paid the front money back to Bowen?”

  “Not yet.”

  Jake pulled out the file with the receipt for the silver bar. “Tell me about this one,” he said. “File thirty-seven.”

  Beck pulled up a spreadsheet. “Let’s see. He bought the contents of that unit from Weston Self Storage on May eighth for $115, and sold it in different lots for a total of $300. Profit of $92.50 each.” He scrolled down. “Wait a minute. Then on June fourteenth he entered another $2,312 coming in from ‘PVC,’ then issued a pair of checks for $1,156 each.”

  The proceeds from selling the silver bar. “Why separate checks?”

  Beck shrugged. “Mr. Fox always waited until he’d liquidated everything before issuing the checks. This is the only time he issued two checks on a storage unit. That I’ve seen, anyway. And look here. The $2,312 came into the account as cash, not as a check from PVC. Hang on a minute.” He typed and clicked. “Yeah. Mr. Fox has sold a few other items to PVC—furniture and some jewelry—and always got a check. Never cash, except here.” He sat back. “Do you want me to go deeper into this one?”

  “Do it. And take a close look at these while you’re at it.” Jake pulled out the documents Griffin had given him about the transaction.

  * * *

  Grady signed Jake out of the crime scene, and Jake’s tires threw gravel as he goosed it down the narrow driveway. Bowen only lived a couple miles to the west, and an early-morning visit from a homicide detective might shake him enough to spill everything he knew.

  As Jake drove, his conversation with Griffin came back to him. Griffin had said they finally made a profit on the storage unit business. Jake had assumed he was referring to Henry and April, but maybe he’d meant Henry and Bowen. Jake played the conversation back from memory but wasn’t sure if Griffin had sidestepped the question or if Jake had led the man away from the truth with his follow-up questions. Griffin would get another visit.

  But first, Bowen.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jake climbed the concrete steps to Bowen’s front door, his left hand pressing the gun to his side to stop it from bouncing. Touching it called up an image of Royce Fletcher, blood bubbling on his lips as he died from a sucking chest wound. A nauseating reminder of what a gun could do.

  As he hit the top step he pulled his hand off the gun and refocused. Bowen was involved in the silver, and the silver had killed Henry. Literally. It was time to find out what Bowen knew.

  He rang the bell, stepped back, and worked up the right amount of smile.

  The door cracked open and stopped with a clank against the security chain. A woman, presumably Bowen’s wife, appeared in the crack, then the door closed while she unlatched the chain before opening wide. She was within a few years of Jake’s age, maybe forty-five, and wore a thick white robe held tight to her chest with a hand near her throat.

  “Yes?” She smiled and tilted her head, straight brown hair draping across her shoulders.

  “Good morning,” Jake said. “I’m Homicide Detective Jake Houser with the Weston Police Department. I’m looking for Jim Bowen.”

  The woman’s face drooped on the word “homicide.”

  “Henry Fox,” she said. “We heard about it on the radio this morning.” She stepped away from the door, slippers scratching on the slate floor, and waved for him to come in. “I’m Susan. Jim’s wife. I’ll get him for you.”

  Jake stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The sugary scent of cinnamon buns wafted in from the kitchen straight ahead, and he spotted a monstrous pan of them on the stove. A wheeled suitcase with a laptop bag propped against it stood against the wall next to the kitchen entry.

  His pulse ticked faster.

  “Someone traveling?” he asked. He kept his tone conversational, polite curiosity.

  Susan tracked his gaze to the luggage. “Oh, those are mine. I got back from a trade show in Cincy late last night. Haven’t unpacked yet.”

  “How long were you gone?”

  She scratched her jaw, then took a half step back. “Three nights.”

  Bowen didn’t have his wife for an alibi.

  She leaned down a stairway to the left and called out, “Jim, can you come up? There’s a police officer here to see you about Henry.”

  After a short silence, a door squeaked.

  “Here?” a man’s voice called. It was deep and scratchy.

  “Yes.”

  “Send him down.”

  “Why don’t you come up? I’ll make more coffee.”

  “No.” Bowen’s voice was suddenly sharp. “I’ll talk to him in my office.”

  Mrs. Bowen shrugged apologetically to Jake. “First door on the left.”

  Jake thanked her and took the stairs down, wondering why Bowen wanted to talk there. Given the choice, most people wanted a family member with them when talking with the police.

  But not people with secrets.

  The door Mrs. Bowen had indicated stood open. Jake stepped through and found Jim Bowen sitting behind his paper-choked desk. He was dressed in khakis and a soft green sweater—cashmere, maybe—over a blue button-down. He looked like a former high school offensive lineman gone soft. He was closely shaven, and with the door closed, the woodsy scent of his aftershave filled the room. Why did all men’s colognes smell the same?

  Jake extended his hand across the mess. “I’m Detective Jake Houser, Homicide. It’s okay if you want your wife to sit in with us.”

  “We’re fine.” Bowen grabbed Jake’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze and release. His hand was soft and slippery with lotion or sweat. Jake fought the urge to wipe his own hand on his pants.

  “Sorry for the mess.” Bowen waved his big soft hands across the desk. “Battling a deadline.”

  “No problem. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.” Jake spotted a folding chair
pushed into the narrow space between a bookshelf and a stack of boxes. He pulled it out, unfolded it, and sat down.

  Bowen frowned, then came around the desk and closed the door, separating him even further from his wife’s support. He definitely had a secret. The wife seemed to already know about Bowen’s relationship with Henry, so that wasn’t it.

  “That’s a nice chair,” Jake said, nodding at the Aeron behind the desk. It was a twin to Henry’s. They must have found them in a storage unit during the partnership.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Mr. Fox has one exactly like it,” Jake said, offering Bowen an easy way into the storage unit business.

  Bowen didn’t take it.

  Instead, he sat down and swiveled to face the computer on the return between the desk and a credenza clustered with equipment and reference books.

  Jake pulled out his notebook, opened it to a blank page, and tapped his pen against the paper. The strategy often led to subjects giving him something worth writing down.

  But Bowen didn’t bite, and the silence lengthened.

  Jake waited.

  Finally, Bowen spoke. “We heard about Henry. Couldn’t believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I mean, it’s hard to believe anyone I know might be murdered. But Henry… he’s about the nicest guy I know. Always helping people out.”

  Bowen still hadn’t mentioned the storage unit business.

  “How did you know Mr. Fox?”

  “Well, I’m trying to be a writer—no, I am a writer. I’ve got to own that. And he got his book published, so I thought he could help me.”

  “Was he able to?”

  “Not yet. He writes—wrote—non-fiction. I write fiction. This is a thriller.” He pointed at the screen.

  “Is that what you do for a living, Mr. Bowen? Write novels?”

  Bowen grunted a laugh. “Not for a living. I’m retired from sales. Not by choice. I picked up writing to fill the time.” He shrugged. “But you never know.”

  “So what’s the deadline?”

  “One thousand six hundred and sixty-seven words a day, every day, all month.” He scratched his chin. “Sounds silly, I suppose, but that’s the goal for Na-No.”

  Jake was familiar with the term. National Novel Writing Month. The local newspaper wrote it up every November. Thousands of people across the country trying to write a novel in one month.

  “How’re you doing so far?”

  “I’m hitting my numbers.”

  “So your connection to Henry was the writing?” Jake tapped his notebook, warning Bowen any lies would be written down.

  Bowen nodded. “I think he could have helped when I’m ready to publish.” He shrugged, then swiveled toward his computer, his fingers finding the keyboard, his eyes wandering to the screen, where a cursor blinked at him from the end of a short paragraph of text. Antsy to get at it—like his daily word count goal was a real-world deadline.

  Jake sat quietly, waiting. It had to be obvious to Bowen that the writing connection was news to Jake, and that something else had brought him here. As the silence lengthened Jake almost smiled. Bowen had a secret weighty enough to risk this deception when the connection was so easy to find.

  Bowen typed a few letters into his document, then stopped. His eyes shifted to Jake, then toward the door. “If there’s nothing else, Detective?”

  Nothing else? They hadn’t exchanged fifty words.

  Jake put an angry edge into his words. “You can’t really think I came here to talk about your book. I’m here about the storage unit business.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jake got the result he expected. Bowen snapped to attention. He swallowed and spun his chair to face Jake.

  “I, uh…” Bowen shut his mouth and gathered himself, then pushed his chest and chin out and got loud. “What about it?”

  Confront. Defeat. Bowen had definitely played football.

  “Tell me how you came to be Mr. Fox’s business partner.”

  “Well, I thought his book, Outhouse Archaeology, was fascinating. I like old stuff like what he found in those pits. So when I heard he was doing a second book I asked if I could partner with him—but he wanted to keep that for himself.” Bowen settled into his chair, as if calmed by having told some truth. It must have felt good, because he continued.

  “But then he asked me if I’d ever seen the reality show where people bought the contents of abandoned storage units. He wanted to get into that but didn’t have the start-up money, so he invited me in. It sounded like fun, so I gave him the start-up money and off we went.”

  “Other than the money, what was your part in it?”

  “I was going to help with all of it. Go to the auctions, move the stuff out of the units, go through it and sell it. But I have a bad back, so I stopped helping with the heavy lifting after a few units. And Henry was better at the bidding—he knew what the stuff was worth—so then I mainly helped with selling the stuff. Taking it around to the places Henry said would buy whatever the thing was. But Henry didn’t really need me for that either, so we ended the business.”

  “But he kept going on his own.”

  “So I heard,” said Bowen, a blush of anger reddening his face.

  “How much did you front him for the business?”

  “Five thousand. Way back in February.”

  “Did you get it back?” Jake asked, knowing he hadn’t.

  Bowen licked his lips and turned toward the blinking cursor on his computer screen. “We’re okay.”

  That was a lie. And the man had still not mentioned the silver.

  “It seems like an interesting business.” Jake scribbled in his notebook as he floated his next line. “I bet there’s some unusual stuff in those storage units.”

  “That’s why I got into it. But we never found anything really cool. We did okay, money-wise, with the furniture and old toys and books. Henry knows that stuff. But we also got burned a few times. Twice, boxes were filled with old patient records, which cost us because Henry insisted on shredding them. Forty bucks a box.”

  “What’s the most interesting thing you guys found?”

  Bowen’s gaze wandered away, and he rubbed his face while he set the chair twisting again. Three indicators of deception. Lies were coming.

  “Henry got excited about old books a couple times, but none of those were worth real money.”

  Bowen turned back to the blinking cursor.

  So much deception here. Maybe Jake had already found Henry’s killer.

  Jake leaned back, his hand falling to his waist and hitting the hard lump of his gun. He snatched his hand back. He wasn’t going to need the gun with a faded athlete like Bowen. Then again, maybe that’s what Henry had thought.

  The silence lengthened, and Jake waited for Bowen to fill it. But Bowen must have convinced himself the silver was still a secret. He slapped his hands down on his desk and started to stand. “Well, if that’s everything…”

  “Tell me about the hundred-ounce silver bars.”

  Bowen flopped back down in the chair. His face flushed. Then he shook his head and pulled himself up to the desk, his expression suddenly hard. “What about them?”

  “Were you unhappy with your cut?”

  Bowen raised his voice. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” His words, his tone, his behavior screamed deception. “Henry’s the one who—”

  The door burst open. Bowen’s wife. She looked at her husband, then at Jake, then back. Both of them silent now.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  “I asked your husband about the silver.”

  Mrs. Bowen opened her mouth, then closed it. Her face darkened and she shot a long look at her husband before turning back to Jake. “You need to leave.”

  “I’m trying to understand the rela
tionship between your husband and Mr. Fox.”

  “Relationship!” She stiffened, straightening to her full height. “They were business partners. Nothing more!”

  “Mrs. Bowen, if your husband answers a few questions I can strike him from my list.” No one wanted to be on a cop’s list. “If I leave now it’ll be with the suspicion that Mr. Bowen murdered Henry Fox in a dispute over the silver bars they found in a storage unit.”

  “Out!”

  Jake stood and faced Bowen. “We can clear this up right here if you tell me where you were night before last.”

  Bowen’s eyes went to his wife, then back to Houser. “I need an alibi?”

  Mrs. Bowen glared. “Tell the detective where you were.”

  “I don’t have to tell him anything.” Bowen’s face bloomed red and sweat trickled from his temples.

  “Then I’ll note you don’t have an alibi for the murder of Henry Fox, your business partner in the discovery and sale of the silver bars.” Jake turned and left the room.

  Susan Bowen followed him as he returned to the main level. A young man sat on the stairs leading up to the next floor. He was skinny and pale, with thick dark hair that swirled around his head like a mop. He gripped a smartphone in both hands, thumbs flying, and looked up from it with hooded eyes.

  “Get out!” Mrs. Bowen yelled as Jake reached the top of the stairs.

  He left.

  * * *

  Lynn woke to thoughts of Henry—and immediately started crying. But then she remembered the big silver bars. Henry had made April keep them a secret. He was always making her keep little secrets, undermining Lynn’s relationship with April and making him the fun parent.

  A sob broke through her anger. “He was the fun one.”

  Still, that silver…

  It would solve all of Lynn’s problems, and more. Five hundred giant silver bars! Each one ten times as big as the little bars Henry had found, which meant they were worth ten times as much. Twenty thousand dollars each. Ten million dollars. Lynn had had trouble even imagining it at first, but after a night dreaming about it she had their future all laid out. A big house in the Weston Historic District, a nice little shop downtown, a pair of fancy cars.