If I Had A Nickel (Roy Ballard Mysteries Book 3)

by Ben Rehder

  “Besides, if I wanted to make a romantic overture, I don’t think that’s the way I’d go about it.”

  “Well,” he said. “It seemed like—”

  “What I’d do,” I said, “is take her to her favorite restaurant, out of the blue, when she’s having a crummy day and needs a little lift. I’m sure you know which restaurant that is.”

  He blinked a couple of times. His expression said, But she likes a lot of restaurants. How would I know which one is her favorite?

  I said, “Or I might buy her a big box of a particular kind of candy, because it brings back good memories of hanging out at her grandparents’ house.”

  I would bet money he didn’t know I was referring to marzipan.

  “Or I might ask her friends to record a short birthday message, and then put all those clips together into a video.”

  Even in his tipsy state, he had now figured out what I was doing.

  “Or I guess you could take her to a zoo,” I said.

  “Hey, we had fun,” he said. “She likes the zoo, in case you didn’t know. I just want to make her happy.”

  I could tell that he meant it. Neither of us spoke for a moment. I’m sure Garlen was a decent guy. If he wasn’t dating Mia and we met at a party, we’d probably get along just fine.

  “She’s just so great,” he said. “I feel so happy when I’m around her.”

  “I can understand that,” I said.

  “I’m going to ask her to move in with me,” he said. “Or, okay, I’m thinking about it. It’s a big step. I don’t want to freak her out.”

  I didn’t want to know any of this, and it was difficult to refrain from telling him it was a bad idea, even though I didn’t know if that was true. Maybe Garlen was Mia’s perfect match—when he wasn’t drinking and feeling insecure about their relationship.

  “I think I’d better sit this discussion out,” I said.

  “Okay, yeah. I don’t blame you. Would you do me a favor and not tell her I was here?”

  “Only if you promise you won’t come back,” I said.

  “Ha. You are funny.”

  “You probably shouldn’t drive,” I said.

  “No, I’m okay,” he said.

  “Let me make some coffee,” I said. “Just hang around for an hour. Then you can drive. Fair enough?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you like it?”

  “Black is fine.”

  “Have a seat,” I said, gesturing toward the couch.

  I went into the kitchen and prepped the coffee pot. When I came back out, he was gone.

  20

  “The truth is, I’m ready to give up on this one,” I said the next morning. “We can’t solve them all.”

  “Wow. Good morning to you, too.”

  “Heidi knows we aren’t perfect.”

  “Heidi would cast your likeness in bronze if the budget allowed for it,” Mia said. “That’s how highly she thinks of you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s probably true. Must be my modesty.”

  It was eight-thirty and Mia had called to see what our plan was for the day. I kept thinking about Garlen and his visit the night before. Weird. If it was driven by jealousy, I didn’t think that boded well for their future. Then again, I’m no psychologist.

  “Let’s give it a little more time,” Mia said. “Okay?”

  “I have no problem with that,” I said, “except for having literally no idea what else we can do to find those coins.”

  The line remained quiet for several moments. We did this sometimes—linger on the phone, hoping one of us would come up with something brilliant. I was sprawled on the couch in my living room. Mia, for all I knew, was still in bed, possibly with Garlen, if he had gone to her place after leaving my apartment.

  “Give me a couple of hours to think about it,” she said.

  “’Kay.”

  “I still think we’re missing something.”

  “Oh, absolutely. A clue.”

  “Hey, I was wondering about something yesterday and I forgot to ask. Did you ever remove the GPS unit from Leo Pitts’s truck?”

  “I’m glad you reminded me,” I said.

  We agreed that that would be my chore for the morning—retrieving the tracker—while Mia spent some time contemplating new approaches to the case. If she didn’t have anything brilliant by lunchtime, I would call Heidi and proudly announce that we were miserable failures.

  I logged onto the GPS tracking software and saw that Leo Pitts was currently on the move. Or his truck was. Could be someone else driving. Location: Way the hell out in Pflugerville, moseying along Grand Avenue Parkway. I sat and watched for a while. No sense in going after him right now. Let him get closer and stay put for a period of time. He stopped at a house on Liffey Cove and stayed there for less than five minutes.

  Then he went farther north, up into Round Rock, and stopped at another house—again, for about five minutes. This is what the police would call “suspicious behavior,” going from house to house and not staying long. The behavior of someone selling illegal products.

  Finally, he began to move southward, coming down Loop 1, passing US 183, then 2222, and now I was hoping he was going home. Better yet, maybe he’d stop somewhere at a restaurant or grocery store, where I could remove the unit without stepping onto his property. Which meant it was time for me to get into the van and move in his general direction.

  I was already dressed, so I grabbed my keys and my phone and went outside. As I walked to the van, I opened the GPS tracking app on my phone. Pitts was still moving, passing Windsor Road, and then he took the Enfield exit. So he wasn’t going home. I started the van but sat for a moment, watching Pitts’s movement on my phone screen. He went west on Enfield, took a few more turns, and stopped in front of a familiar address.

  Callie Dunn’s house.

  “Let this be a lesson to us,” Mia said when I called to tell her what I’d learned.

  “Agreed,” I said. “Always be willing to skirt the law to get results.”

  “No, you goofball,” Mia said. “Never give up too soon.”

  I was back in my apartment. Obviously, we had no plans now to remove the tracker from Pitts’s truck. Later, but not now. I just had to hope he didn’t get a flat tire or need service on his truck in the meantime, because the unit would be easily visible to anyone working underneath the vehicle.

  “Okay,” I said, “we learned something new, but what does it mean? Leo Pitts was friends with Cole Dunn, and Callie was Cole’s sister, so there could be a perfectly innocent explanation.”

  “Did Callie strike you as the type of person who would hang around a guy like Leo Pitts?” Mia said.

  That statement echoed something else I had heard a few days earlier. “No, but does Alicia Potter strike you as the type of person who would hang around a guy like Cole Dunn?”

  Mia made a noise indicating I had a point. “Is he still there?” she asked.

  I checked the tracking app. “Yep.”

  “How long has he been there?”

  “Thirty-seven minutes.”

  “He’s just a few blocks away,” Mia said. “I could go over there and knock on the door. Just to see what happens.”

  “Oh my god, that’s tempting.”

  “That would shake things up, wouldn’t it?”

  “Possibly. Probably. But I think we’d better take advantage of the fact that she doesn’t know that we know he’s there. Hang loose. I’m heading your way.”

  We knocked on Callie Dunn’s door three minutes after Leo Pitts had driven away. He had been at her place for just under an hour. It was apparent she didn’t recognize us at first.

  “Yes?” she said. “Oh, hi! It took me a minute.”

  “Sorry to show up unannounced,” Mia said, “but we were driving by and we took a chance that you might be home.”

  “What brings you to this neighborhood?” she asked.

  Apparently Callie Dunn did not have a great memory.


  “I live two blocks over,” Mia said.

  “Oh, that’s right. You had the house fire.”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m so scattered. Well, come on in,” she said, opening the door wider.

  She was dressed in a similar fashion as she had been four days earlier—black yoga pants and a colorful tank top, this one lime green. No shoes. Her toenails were painted the same color as her top, and I had to wonder if she applied new polish every day. Seemed like a big hassle to me.

  She offered coffee and we both declined, and then we sat in the matching leather chairs, just as we had on our earlier visit, and Callie sat on the sofa.

  “So,” she said. “Here we are again. I just hope there isn’t another knock on the door.”

  She was referring to the cops who had shown up last time to inform her about Cole’s death.

  “We’re very sorry about your brother,” Mia said.

  “I can’t say it was a complete surprise,” Callie said, “but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. I’m putting together a memorial service for later in the summer.”

  “I’m sure you have many wonderful memories of Cole,” Mia said. She could generally find something suitable to say in situations like this one, which was a relief, because it meant I didn’t have to risk saying something clumsy.

  “We do, yeah,” Callie said. “I’m trying to focus on the good times. He had a lot of friends.” There was a short pause—a natural transition point in the conversation—and then Callie said, “I suppose you heard that woman was arrested. She had Daddy’s curio box.”

  Callie had a habit of avoiding speaking Serenity’s name. I had noticed that the first time we’d talked to her.

  “We heard about that,” I said. “And we—”

  “Don’t you agree now that she stole the collection?” Callie said.

  “It doesn’t look good, does it?” I said, which wasn’t really an answer.

  “Let me ask—do the police share information with you?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” Mia said. “But not a lot. We are by no means insiders.”

  “So they haven’t told you if they found the coins or anything else in her house?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, I’m assuming they didn’t find the collection or we’d all know by now,” Callie said.

  Again, that wasn’t necessarily true. The cops had no obligation to divulge the information right away.

  “For now,” I said, “we are operating under the assumption that the coins have not been found, and so the case is still open.”

  “She must’ve sold them,” Callie said. “Or she panicked and got rid of them somewhere. But she still had the curio box. I guess I should just be grateful she was too stupid to get rid of it.”

  I didn’t understand how she could be so convinced of Serenity’s guilt, but Mia and I had nothing to gain by arguing with her about it, especially since Serenity could in fact be the thief. I didn’t think she was, but she was still in the running, and if I had a hobo nickel for every time my intuition had been wrong, I’d be a wealthy man.

  “You mind if we ask you a couple of questions?” I asked.

  “Fire away.”

  “Some of these are going to seem kind of random.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Whatever.”

  “Did your father ever give any of his nickels to you kids? Like for birthday presents, Christmas, that sort of thing?”

  “He did at first—I think we all got at least one—but I think he figured out pretty quickly that we weren’t really into it. I mean, it was a nice gesture and everything, but it just wasn’t our thing.”

  “You still have the coin he gave you?” I asked.

  “I’m sure I do, but I couldn’t even tell you where it is. Probably in one of my jewelry boxes somewhere.”

  “And Max and Cole each got at least one coin?”

  “As far as I remember,” Callie said.

  “Would they have held onto the nickels?” Mia asked.

  Callie frowned. “As opposed to what? Oh, I see what you mean. You’re being diplomatic. You’re wondering if Cole would have sold his. Right? Honestly, that wouldn’t surprise me. I had to go over to his apartment yesterday and clean his stuff out, and I didn’t find the nickel. There wasn’t much in there at all. I took a few small things and paid the apartment manager to get the rest of it hauled away. Once Cole got really hooked, it was amazing how quickly all of his possessions disappeared. He sold it all.”

  I was wondering if she had noticed the tube of lipstick on the floor. Would the manager Doug have pointed it out and told her where it had come from? And what about Max? Would he have called Callie and relayed the conversation we’d had three days earlier? Possibly. But if he hadn’t, I couldn’t decide whether or not to ask Callie about Alicia. If we did ask, Callie would almost certainly tell Alicia about our questions.

  “Do you know if Cole was seeing anybody?” I asked.

  “Like, dating? He didn’t do much of that in the past year.”

  “So you were in touch with him regularly?” Mia asked.

  “More than Max or Daddy were. We agreed that we needed to stop rescuing Cole every time he needed money or a place to stay. Max’s solution was to basically cut off contact, but I still talked to Cole fairly often.”

  “And he never mentioned any girlfriends?”

  She held up her hands for a second. “Excuse me, but can you tell me why you’re focusing on Cole?”

  I gave her my best comforting smile. “Investigations generally take us down a bunch of dead ends, and I’m sure this is one of them. Here’s what happened. A couple of days ago, we spotted a coin for sale on eBay that might have been one of your dad’s. If it was, it’s possible it was not one of the stolen coins. It could’ve been Cole’s, so we’re trying to figure out how it ended up on eBay. We thought maybe it ended up with a girlfriend.”

  “Oh,” Callie said. “Okay. Well, if he was seeing anybody, he never mentioned her.”

  “Who were his closest friends?” Mia asked.

  “Most of his friends bailed out on him a long time ago.”

  “What about a guy named Leo Pitts?” I asked, trying to sound natural.

  Of course, Mia and I were both watching very closely. How would Callie react? Truth was, I was hoping she’d say she’d never heard of him. Lies often opened entirely new avenues of investigation. Lies can be a godsend.

  Callie said, “Oh, sure, I know Leo. In fact, he was just here earlier.”

  “You and Leo are friends, too?” I asked.

  “I guess you could say that, but he’s also my pool guy. He cleans my pool.”

  21

  We rode back to Mia’s house in silence, thoroughly discouraged.

  Leo Pitts had been cleaning Callie’s pool for years—the one at her McMansion, and the one at her previous house before that. She said he did a good job, didn’t charge much, and he was reliable. He and Cole had struck up a friendship several years earlier when Cole had been swimming and Leo had shown up to clean the pool.

  Callie didn’t seem to know that the friendship revolved around heroin. I would bet that Leo Pitts had been Cole’s dealer almost as long as they’d known each other. Or maybe they’d really been just friends at first, until Leo Pitts offered Cole some smack. And because of that, Cole had eventually died. I decided I would take some steps to bring some karma down on Pitts. Get him arrested, if I could. I just had to figure out how to go about it. And I couldn’t do it until I removed the GPS unit.

  We sat for a few minutes in Mia’s living room, brainstorming again, but coming up blank.

  Mia glanced at her watch and said, “I have to meet Garlen in a little while.”

  “Lunch again?” I said.

  “No, I have to pick him up from the body shop. He had a little fender bender last night.”

  You can bet my ears perked up.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Y
eah, he’s fine. He had to work late, and when he was going home, a deer ran out in front of him. He swerved and hit a small tree.”

  “He was coming home from work? What time?”

  “He said it was about nine. Why?”

  “Just curious. Did he report it to the police?”

  “No, he said it wasn’t worth filing an insurance claim. He’s going to pay for the repair himself.” She had already been looking at me, but now she turned and faced me full on. “What’s that expression on your face? You look funny.”

  “I’m hilarious.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She deserved to know the truth. Right? He hadn’t wrecked on the way home from work. He’d wrecked after leaving my place, tipsy as hell. Last night and this morning, I’d been contemplating whether I should mention Garlen’s visit, and I’d been on the fence, but this pushed me over.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here’s the situation. Garlen came to see me last night.”

  Now she sat up straighter. “What?”

  So I told her what had happened. All of it. I told her that Garlen had come by for a “little chat,” and he said we needed to get to know each other. And then he began to make insinuations about the canoe ride, questioning my intentions. And, yes, I told her that Garlen had obviously been drinking.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “He was buzzed?”

  “I’d say a little beyond buzzed. Not sloshed, but I sure didn’t want him to drive. I offered coffee, and he agreed to hang out, but when I came back, he was gone.”

  “What time was this?”

  “A little after ten.”

  I could tell she was disappointed, and possibly on the verge of tears. But she didn’t seem surprised. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “You okay?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Should I have kept this to myself?” I said.

  “Absolutely not.” Then, after a pause, she said, “This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I’ve caught him bending the truth before,” she said. I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.