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

by Ben Rehder

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  23

  The next morning, Mia and I convened in the spare bedroom in her house that sometimes acts as our conference room. “Sometimes” means exactly never, as far as I can remember. That’s because we don’t typically need a conference room in our line of work. We usually just gather in her living room and use our laptops as necessary.

  But on this occasion, I wanted to take advantage of the large dry-erase board I had installed on one wall.

  “What do we need a dry-erase board for?” she’d asked at the time.

  “So I have a place to write my witty remarks,” I’d said.

  “Does that mean you have a dry wit?” she’d asked.

  “Ooh,” I’d said. “Well done.”

  We hadn’t used the board since then. It still said, “Roy’s witty remarks go here” in Mia’s elegant handwriting at the top.

  But now I felt the need to map out the Alex Dunn case in a visual manner and see if that could provide any clarity or untangle the cobwebs in my head.

  “This has been a tough one,” I said, “but we keep learning new information, and I think it’s just a matter of time before we figure it out. Here’s the question right now: Based on what we know, who would you say is most likely to have stolen the coin collection?”

  Mia was seated nearby in one of two black faux-leather club chairs we’d bought at the same time as the dry-erase board. There were windows in the west and south walls, flooding the room with plenty of natural light.

  I’d already told her about my conversation with Leo Pitts in the pizza joint, the message I’d received from Alicia Potter, and the juicy gossip I’d learned from Kiersten about Max Dunn’s separation from his wife. The truth was, what had seemed like big news last night didn’t seem all that relevant this morning. Really, there was no reason for Max to have told us about his marital problems—it was, after all, a personal matter, just like his bankruptcy.

  On the other hand, he’d said some things that seemed intended to cover up the separation. Like the bit about moving to Lost Creek to keep the kids in the same school district. According to Kiersten, Max’s wife and kids were already living in a rented house in Lost Creek, and the wife had no plans to let Max join them there. Was Max Dunn in denial about that, or had he intended to misdirect us? Could be either.

  Mia said, “I’d say Cole Dunn or Max Dunn. Unless it was Serenity.”

  I wrote the three names as a list and said, “Okay, but that’s three people.”

  “It’s a toss-up,” she said.

  She hadn’t said anything about Garlen this morning. I hadn’t asked. However, it was obvious she wasn’t her usually perky self. She hadn’t even asked why I’d seen Kiersten again. I hadn’t mentioned that Kiersten and I were dating.

  “If you had to choose just one... ” I said.

  She was studying the names on the board. “Max Dunn, I guess. Between the bankruptcy and the split with his wife, he’s under a lot of pressure. He needs money.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Good. Makes sense.” I wrote another name on the board, under the first three.

  Alicia Potter.

  “Thoughts on her?” I said.

  “I think if she still had access to Alex Dunn’s house, she would’ve been caught on the security camera. Ruelas would be all over her.”

  “But some of those systems only save a few days’ worth of video,” I said. “Or sometimes a week.”

  “They’d track the location of her cell phone and see if she went over there anytime recently,” Mia said.

  “If they could get a warrant,” I said. “Which I doubt.”

  “There’s zero evidence she stole the coins, Roy.”

  “But she might’ve killed her sister,” I said.

  “Zero evidence of that, too,” Mia said. “I think you’re grasping at straws. In fact, I don’t think we have enough information to draw any conclusions about any of these people. We could sit here and build all kinds of wild scenarios that would make any of them guilty—or innocent.”

  “We’re just brainstorming,” I said.

  “Yes, but I think we’ve done enough of that in the past few days.”

  “What do you suggest as an alternative?”

  She looked out a window and contemplated that question. She was silent long enough that I thought she had gotten sidetracked by a daydream, or she was ruminating about her problems with Garlen.

  “Mia?” I said.

  “I don’t know, Roy,” she said. “Maybe you were right the other day.”

  “Of course I was. About what?”

  “Maybe it’s time to give up.”

  I sat down in the matching club chair. The faux leather made noises like real leather.

  “You are seriously bringing me down,” I said. “I was trying to be all optimistic and upbeat. Rah rah rah and all that.”

  She gave me a weak smile. “Sorry.”

  I set the dry-erase marker on the small table between the two chairs.

  “I wasn’t just blowing smoke, you know,” I said. “I really do think we’ll nail this one eventually.”

  “You were ready to give up yesterday morning,” she reminded me.

  This wasn’t her typical mood. She was down, and I had no idea whether I should try to offer any consolation or not. But there was nothing wrong with a pep talk.

  “Well, yeah, but that’s me,” I said. “A quitter. A loser. Always ready to throw in the towel at the slightest hint of difficulty. But you? Come on. We both know you’re better than that. You’re a force of nature. An ass-kicking machine. I rely on you to smack me around and tell me to stop being a wimp.”

  She gave me a look: I appreciate your bullshit, but not right now, okay?

  I grabbed the marker and went back to the board.

  “It’s one of these four people,” I said. “But I’m gonna concede what you said about Alicia a second ago and strike her from the list.”

  I drew a line through Alicia’s name.

  “Next,” I said, “I’m gonna get all ballsy and say we can strike Serenity off the list, too. That’s an executive decision on my part, you understand, based purely on instinct and perhaps a little telepathy. She appears innocent and I don’t think she’s lying. You okay with that?”

  “Even though they found the curio box at her place?”

  “That seems like a frame job. You don’t agree?”

  “I can only say probably. Or she did it herself, trying to make it look like someone was framing her. She’s smart enough to do that.”

  “Yeah, she is,” I said. “Do you think she did?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Same here. So we can strike her?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I drew a line through Serenity’s name.

  “Now we have two,” I said.

  “You always were a math whiz,” Mia said.

  Ah. A sign of life. Spunkiness.

  “I’m going to make another bold move here, Mia. Ready for it? Because if you aren’t, I don’t want to blow your mind. So let me know.”

  She rolled her eyes, but nodded her head impatiently.

  “Bam!” I said, drawing a line through another name. “Max Dunn is gone. Off the list. Want to know why?”

  “The anticipation is killing me,” Mia said.

  “As we have postulated—excuse that high-dollar word—but as we have postulated several times, the three kids knew it would be very hard to sell the coins without getting caught. Max has big money troubles—and more coming, if he gets divorced—but he would’ve known the coins wouldn’t have helped him. In fact, ipso facto, they would’ve gotten him arrested.”

  “Ipso facto?”

  “Certainly, and habeas corpus maximus.”

  “But the same logic applies to Cole, who is the only remaining name on the list.”

  “Aha!” I barked, making her jump. “It doesn’t apply to him. And here’s the difference... Both men were desperate, but Cole
was driven by addiction. And when you’re an addict and you need your next fix, there comes a point where nothing else matters. You can’t think rationally, and you take stupid chances. I think that’s what Cole did. He’d been stealing his dad’s coins, one by one, over the years—occasionally using them to buy dope from Leo Pitts—and he finally decided to go big and take the entire collection. The addiction was stronger than his fear of getting caught. Plus, he was willing to gamble that his dad would let it slide.”

  Mia thought about it. She said, “If he did it, he had to have access to his dad’s house.”

  “Yes, and Callie said her dad hadn’t been as stringent at cutting Cole off as Max had. Alex Dunn probably hadn’t changed his locks or his security code.”

  “And you’re assuming Cole stole the coins sometime shortly before his dad died.”

  “Right.”

  “Couldn’t he have stolen the collection weeks or even months ago?”

  I thought about that. “Yeah, I guess he could have, but at some point, Alex Dunn would have been committing fraud himself by continuing to insure an item he no longer possessed. He would’ve needed to either report the crime or remove the collection from his policy.”

  “Still, though, there’s no reason Cole couldn’t have stolen the coins, say, last month, or the month before that. We’ve been assuming the theft and the murder are possibly related, and so the coins must’ve been stolen recently—but that’s not necessarily the case. Agreed?”

  I was getting excited that we were discussing fresh possibilities that hadn’t occurred to us before. Mia also seemed more invested in the conversation now.

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “So let’s say we’re right. Cole stole the coins. Where would he have stashed them?” Before I replied, she said, “His apartment, right? Where else? He wouldn’t have had the money to put them in a safe-deposit box or anything like that. He’d want them nearby and easily accessible for a quick sale, when he needed drugs. So what we need to do is create a separate list.”

  “People who could’ve taken the coins from Cole’s apartment after he died,” Mia said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Whoever that might’ve been, they had to have planted the box at Serenity’s house, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  I wrote:

  Callie

  Max

  Leo Pitts

  Alicia Potter

  Mia rose, took the marker from my hand, and wrote:

  Doug, the manager

  24

  We found him squatting beside a condenser unit to the rear of the apartment complex. He had the housing removed and was working with a variety of tools and gauges that, quite frankly, surprised me. Here I thought Doug probably sat around all day eating potato chips and watching television. Maybe I was projecting what I would do if I were an apartment manager.

  “Hey, there,” Mia said as we walked up behind him.

  He looked up at us, squinting into the sun. He still needed a shave. “Yeah? Oh. Hey.”

  “How’s it going, Doug?” I said.

  “Problem with the AC?” Mia asked.

  “Yeah, and the residents ain’t happy. At least the ones home right now. Gonna be mid-nineties today.”

  “You know how to fix stuff like that?” Mia said. “Impressive.”

  “I picked up a few things over the years,” he said, standing up. “Better than waiting around for a service guy.”

  “Bet it’s that round gizmo,” I said, pointing. “Round gizmos are the worst.”

  “The run capacitor,” he said. “You might be right. Air blowing, but it ain’t cool. Good news, is, I keep an extra on hand.”

  “You mind a few more questions?” Mia asked.

  “About capacitors?” It was his idea of a joke.

  Mia laughed a fake laugh, then said, “We’re still looking for that coin collection.”

  “Those hillbilly nickels?” he asked.

  He was either confused or pretending to be.

  “Hobo nickels,” Mia said.

  “You ain’t the only one,” he said. “Cops’ve been around a couple more times, and his sister came to get his stuff. She didn’t find nothin’ either.”

  “What we’re wondering,” I said, “is who had access to Cole’s apartment on the day he died?”

  “Same question the cops asked,” Doug said. “And man, I wish I knew. Anybody could’ve been in there.”

  “Did you see anybody?”

  “No.”

  “Did he routinely have a lot of visitors?”

  “Not many.”

  “How did you learn he had died?”

  “What happened was, I got back from Home Depot and this guy Leo knocks on my door saying he thinks Cole overdosed.”

  “Leo Pitts?” I asked.

  “Yeah. He said he found Cole on the living room floor.”

  “Who called 9-1-1?” I asked.

  “I did.”

  “And then what happened?” Mia said.

  “The cops came, and an ambulance, and they checked him over, and then they put him on that rolling thing... ”

  “Gurney,” Mia said.

  “Right, and then they hauled ass.”

  “Where was Leo all this time?” Mia asked.

  “Oh, he took off right after he told me what happened.”

  “He just took off?” I said.

  “I told him he’d better hang around, but he said he didn’t know any more about it than I did, and he said he had work to do. So he left. I told the cops, but I didn’t know his last name at that point.”

  “How long were you gone to Home Depot?” I asked.

  “About two hours. I had to go to the bank, too.”

  “Had you seen Leo before you left?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you see anybody else hanging around Cole’s place?”

  “Nope. His blinds were drawn. That always meant he was holed up in there.”

  “Getting high?” I asked.

  He gave me a sharp look. “Man, I don’t know anything about his drug use, okay? It was obvious he was a user, but it’s not like I knew his personal habits, so I would appreciate it if you’d stop asking me questions like that.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “So his blinds were drawn and nobody was around when you left.”

  “Right. Then I got back from my errands, and five minutes after that, Leo knocks on my door. He was freaking out pretty bad.”

  “Had you ever met Leo before?”

  “Well, I’d seen him around and said hi. I always try to do that with strangers, so they at least know I’m watching. He’d told me he was a friend of Cole’s.”

  “So you have no idea how long Leo was in Cole’s apartment before he came and knocked on your door?” Mia asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You went into Cole’s apartment to see if he was okay?” Mia asked.

  “Yeah, of course. I found a heartbeat, but I couldn’t get him to wake up. That’s when I called for help. And there was drug stuff lying around.”

  “What kind of stuff?” I asked.

  It was already getting damned hot out here on the southeast side of the complex.

  “A syringe and some of that tubing. Plus a spoon. And some other stuff that I don’t know what it was.”

  “Before that, when was the last time you were in that apartment?” I asked. I knew he wouldn’t like that question.

  His tone of voice changed. “At least a month. Why?”

  I took out my phone and showed him a photo of the curio box.

  “Did you ever see this wooden box in Cole’s apartment?”

  “Nope. I don’t steal from the fuckin’ tenants, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean that—”

  “If I did that, I’d lose this job in a heartbeat, if I didn’t get shot first. Somebody would pick up on what I was doing. It’s not like I have the run of the place. There’s always somebody hanging around, w
atching. They sit out in the courtyard for hours.”

  “Who does?” Mia asked.

  “Just some of the residents. A lot of ’em sit out there during the day and bullshit or drink beer. I’m fine with that, as long as they keep it quiet and don’t cause any problems. Point is, they know what I’m doing as much as I know what they’re doing. They see me coming and going.”

  So the residents were, in effect, a security system. Not quite as good as a network of video cameras, but better than nothing.

  “Were any of them sitting in the courtyard when Cole died?” I asked.

  “Yeah, some.”

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Tell me who was out there.”

  We spent a solid hour knocking on doors—or door frames, because many doors were wide open, due to the AC problem—and interviewing residents in the complex. We talked to some of the people Doug had named, plus anybody else who was around.

  We found that about half of the residents were home, which seemed high on a weekday morning. Didn’t these people have jobs? Maybe they worked at night or on weekends. Yeah, right. Ever scroll through the mug shots on a police website? Those were the people living at this place.

  It was a memorable morning, but ultimately we learned nothing more—until we spoke to the last person on the list Doug had given us. She was a tall, slender woman in her forties, originally from a small island in the Caribbean. Beautiful accent. Beautiful woman, for that matter. She looked out of place here.

  We told her who we were and why we were there, and she was happy to talk to us. I got the feeling she was happy to talk to anybody about almost anything, because we knew, within five minutes, that she was an office manager at some sort of small manufacturing facility, and she was trying to get back on her feet after her husband had died suddenly of a heart attack. She was standing in her open doorway while we stayed outside. I’m sure she would’ve invited us in if the air conditioner had been working.

  “You were in the courtyard when Cole died?” Mia asked when she finally had an opening in which to insert a question.

  “I was. Horrible day, but it was no surprise. No surprise at all. Cole was a good man, but he had the demons after him.” She leaned toward us and whispered. “Drugs. I don’t know what kind. A lot of that in this neighborhood, you know.”