by Bo Thunboe
“I know, you’re right. But remember Mr. Houser? My dad’s friend? He’s the one who told us about… Dad. He sent over this woman who’s, like, the only person my mom still talks to from high school. She asked a lot of questions.”
“Like she was undercover? Trying to get secrets from your mom? I thought that Houser guy was your mom’s friend, too.”
“Everybody picked sides when they got divorced. According to Mom, anyways.” April sighed. “Mr. Houser will be chasing your dad next.”
“My dad?”
“Because of their argument a—”
“But they straightened that all out months ago.”
Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “But then he got that email last week about the big bars.”
Shit.
Conner occasionally read some of his dad’s emails. A while back, after his dad lost his job and started acting weird, Conner snuck monitoring software on his dad’s computer and captured his passwords. He wished he hadn’t; as a result of it, he’d learned some things about his dad he’d rather not have known. But it didn’t stop him from checking his dad’s email from time to time.
“That email was just a hypothetical,” he said.
“But what did your dad think when he read it? I mean—” April stopped, then whispered, “I think Mom’s awake. I gotta go.” She hung up.
Conner swiveled the chair back to face his laptop. But he couldn’t refocus. April’s question had struck a nerve. What would his dad have made of that email? Conner was sure he would have read the email the same way April had.
And he would have been just as pissed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Paget County Coins was on North Kirwin Road, occupying the end unit in an old strip mall behind a corner gas station. Jake remembered when the strip was first built out in the empty lands between Weston and Kirwin. Now bigger and shinier strip malls surrounded it, and the parking lot was cracked and potholed.
Jake parked the Crown Vic in a dark spot between the glow of two overhead lights, and checked his latest text from Erin: Cowboy not in patrol logs but maybe his truck. A big white pickup with Texas plate TH TEX noted twice in logs over the last week. In the lot behind Henry’s and once on West Douglas near Jefferson. Truck owned by Texas Corporation TH Inc.
A truck from Texas. Texas was full of cowboys. It was a small leap to assume, for now, that the truck belonged to Cowboy.
Jake forwarded the text to Callie and asked her to re-canvass for any sightings on the truck.
He put his phone away and observed the coin shop. Its name was painted in green Gallic script on the middle pane of a wall of windows, and beneath it was a pot of gold under a rainbow. Beyond the glass was a vast space filled with antique furniture and bordered by display cabinets.
Jake folded the receipt from Henry’s file, slid it into his pocket, and got out of the car. His holster dug into his side, and he adjusted it without finding a more comfortable spot. That was okay. Carrying a gun shouldn’t be comfortable. A cop should feel it, to remind him why it’s there and what it can do.
A bell jangled above Jake’s head as he opened the door. A heavyset man on a high stool behind the back counter shot a glance his way, then turned back to watch three customers who ranged along the display cabinets, hunched over and peering down at whatever was below the glass. Jake wandered the floor to get a feel for the place. The store was stuffy and too warm, the air scented with the sharp tang of a lemony wood polish. No piped-in music, no conversations. Just an uneasy silence.
The furniture was of a hodgepodge of styles and qualities. To Jake’s untrained eye, it didn’t look any nicer than the junky stuff jumbled in Henry’s basement, but everything was priced like a prized antique. He crossed the floor and looked into the glass-topped display cabinets. The cabinets themselves were real antiques—solid oak with carved detail and thick glass tops scratched over decades of use—but Jake was less impressed by the items for sale under the glass: watches, pens, jewelry, political buttons. Maybe to the right buyer it was valuable, but to him much of it would look at home in a junk drawer.
Jake felt eyes on him and lifted his gaze to find the big man watching him. Flipping open his badge open, he held it up. The man’s eyebrows rose, and he dropped from the stool and waved for Jake to follow him through a doorway in the back wall.
A black curtain hung behind the opening, and when Jake pushed through it he found himself in a large windowless room. Narrow tables were spread with trays of coins and jewelry, lit by cheap shop lights hanging from the ceiling. A safe the size of a minivan sat in one corner, with a wheel on its door like the helm of a sailing schooner. Two women worked the tables, the light of a camera’s flash pulsing from where one bent over an array of shiny objects.
“Sheila?” the big man said.
The older woman looked up.
“Cover the front for me.”
Sheila took off without a word. The other woman went back to what she was doing.
The big man faced Jake. “So, what now?” He leaned against a scarred wood table stacked with coin catalogues. He wore smooth black slacks and a dress shirt pinstriped in faint yellow. He crossed thick arms over a hard round belly and gave Jake a don’t-mess-with-me look.
Jake put his badge back on his belt. “I have some questions for the owner. Is that you?”
“Yes. Mark Griffin. My records are perfect and I don’t appreciate you coming in here and implying otherwise. Who are you, anyway?”
“Detective Houser. Tell me about your business. Where do you get all this old stuff?”
“This is not old stuff,” Griffin said. “These are personal treasures of people now deceased.” He picked up a brooch from the table beside him. “This came from an estate sale over in Plano. Bought a box of jewelry for $96.50. This piece alone is worth somewhere in the five- to seven-hundred-dollar range.” A small tag hung from the brooch by a white string. “See this code? With it I can tell you when and where and from whom I bought this piece and for how much. When I sell it, I plug all the sale information into the computer. The entire record is supported by scans of the bills of sale and proof of ownership, and it’s all backed up to the cloud continuously. So ask your questions and I’ll show you what I have.”
“Why did the box of jewelry go so cheap?”
“It’s a knowledge business.” Griffin stuck out his chest. “You have to know what things are worth and where to find the right buyers. That auction did a bad job finding buyers.”
“How are you with finding buyers?”
“I’m still in business.” Griffin put the brooch back. “And I don’t buy stolen goods, so just show me the photos already and we can be done.”
“Let’s sit down.”
Griffin frowned, but he led Jake to a glassed-in office in the back corner where a giant oak desk held a pair of flat-screen monitors. Griffin closed the door behind them, then circled around the desk and settled into a high-backed leather chair. He gestured for Jake to sit in the leather couch in front of the desk. The couch was low and too soft, and Jake felt like a little boy sitting in front of his principal. The air in the closed space became dense with Griffin’s cologne, a sweet balsam scent.
“Henry Fox,” Jake said.
Griffin rubbed his hands over the desk, then pulled them back to rest on the edge. “Henry refinished this desk for me a few years ago.” He shook his head. “What’s going on here? I don’t deal in stolen goods and I can’t believe Henry does either. No way.”
The clustered deception indicators—hand motion, body motion, answer avoidance, preaching his own honesty—meant Griffin was holding something back, if not lying outright.
“Did you do other business together?”
“A few years ago I sold him some old plat maps.” Griffin slapped the desk with both hands. “He used them for that outhouse project.”
Jake pulled the receipt from his pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the desk. “What’s this?” He pushed the paper across the desk. Griffin’s eyes followed it the entire way.
“It’s a receipt. Part of the documentation I told you about before.”
“For what?”
Griffin leaned forward. “I buy and sell precious metals. When prices are dropping or rising fast I do well. But it’s usually gold.” He spun the paper around, a thick finger with a glossy nail tracking the line identifying the object. “We use the metal’s abbreviation from the periodic table—you know, like from chemistry class. So silver is Ag, like here. This was a one-hundred-ounce bar of silver of 99.9 percent purity with the mint mark GWU.”
“You bought a silver bar from Henry?”
Griffin pulled the receipt back and looked across the top before jabbing it with his finger again. “Henry Fox. Paid him $2,312.”
“What else can you tell me about this transaction?”
Griffin spun toward the monitors and pulled a wireless keyboard from the back table. “Read off the invoice number and I’ll pull it up.”
Jake read it out and Griffin typed it into his system. He hit enter with a hard jab, and several windows popped up on the right-hand screen. He manipulated them with the mouse then spun the monitor in Jake’s direction. “He got the silver bar from a storage unit. He’s one of those guys who bids on abandoned units.”
Jake leaned forward to see the screen. It showed the bill of sale from the storage facility. “That only says ‘Contents of storage locker 103e.’” Jake gestured toward the screen. “It doesn’t say anything about a silver bar.”
“I also have a signed affidavit.” Griffin worked the mouse. Images popped and faded, then one froze on the screen. It was a form document, its blanks filled in by hand with a blue pen. On it Henry Fox swore he owned the “item(s) sold to Paget County Coins.” The affidavit didn’t mention the silver bar, but it did reference the invoice number, tying it all together.
“Can you print me out a copy?”
“I’ll give you my entire record.” More sliding and clicking of the mouse. The printer on Griffin’s credenza bucked to life and started spitting out paper. When it was done, Griffin snatched the pages off the tray and slapped them down in front of Jake. “There you go.” He settled back with his arms crossed.
Jake shuffled through the documents: the invoice, the storage facility bill of sale, the affidavit, a check made out to Henry, and a printout that appeared to be the shop’s internal accounting of the transaction.
“What’s this?” Jake held up the last page.
“Shows what I paid and when, and my sale of it. When it comes to commodities, I sell whenever the market spikes even a bit—especially silver, because the price bounces around like a pogo stick.”
“What do you mean by commodity?”
“Meaning it’s all the same. Gold is gold, silver is silver. Doesn’t matter what form it’s in, bars or ingots, as long as they’re all basically the same purity, the price is determined solely by what they weigh. Not like jewelry, or even a quality coin, which sells for three or four bucks more per ounce.”
“I see,” Jake said.
Griffin’s sudden cooperation after the initial bluster and denial raised a flag. Jake needed to absorb the information these printouts contained, as well as Griffin’s narrative about the metals market. When he understood them better, he was sure he’d have more questions.
But Griffin still had more to tell him. Jake settled back onto the couch and spread his arms along its back. Relaxed—signaling to Griffin that he was here for as long as it took. “What did Henry say about the silver bar?” Jake deliberately worded his question with the implicit assumption that Henry had said something about the bar.
Griffin’s chair squeaked as he turned toward the computer and fidgeted with the mouse. “I, uh… remember him saying they finally made a profit on the storage unit business.”
Here we go. “They?”
“What?”
“You said Henry told you ‘they’ finally made a profit on the business. Was someone with him on it?”
“His daughter was with him.” Griffin swiveled his chair and rubbed his face.
Two indicators of deception—the anchor point movement and touching his face. Griffin was leaving something out or lying. Not about April being involved, because that was too easy to verify, but something.
Jake needed more information before pushing harder. He would talk to the property crime division detectives about Griffin—and he would talk with April about the sale. Then he’d take another run at Griffin.
He collected the printouts off the desk and stood. “That’s all for now.”
Jake returned to his car, feeling confident his investigation now had the focus it needed. When something new and unusual entered a victim’s life, it needed a hard look.
A silver bar was unusual.
And Henry always talked up his unusual outhouse finds.
But he had kept this find a secret.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lynn woke to a silent television, the Netflix logo bouncing across the screen. Her eyes felt crusty, and she wiped away the coarse lumps stuck in the corners of her eyes before realizing they were dried tears.
Henry was dead.
The tears came again. Then the sobs. She grabbed a tissue and pressed it to her eyes. She and Henry would never be together again. She needed to accept that she would be broke for the rest of her life. She needed to—
“Mom?”
Lynn choked back a sob and found a smile for her baby girl. “Come here, honey.” She patted the couch next to her. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. I mean… I don’t know.” April sat down so heavily it was like her legs had failed.
“We’re going to miss him, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but…” April bit her lip. “I’m worried too.”
“There’s no need to be scared, honey. Whatever your dad was into that got him killed, he—”
“He didn’t do anything to get killed, Mom. That makes it sound like it was his fault.”
“What I mean is, he lived his own life and nothing he was into—if he was into something—can hurt us.” Lynn’s legs started to shake as her mind flooded with doubts. What if that was wrong? She pressed her feet to the floor to still them.
“That’s not…” April rubbed her face, then shook her head. “I’m not worried about that, Mom. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m just—I’ll be fine. It’s my job to worry about you.”
“But the cops think you did it.”
“What?” Lynn’s mouth dropped open and her heart skipped a beat. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re the ex-wife. And you sued Dad all the time.”
“That was for child support. For you.” Lynn’s chest was hammering now, blood rushing to her face. “But I don’t get anything from—”
“Calling Mr. Coogan about the money right away made you look desperate.”
“You heard that?” But of course she had. April was a champion snoop. She’d always known what was in her presents before she opened them Christmas morning.
“You didn’t know that some trust gets Dad’s money until you talked to Mr. Coogan. So before then… maybe… maybe you thought whatever Dad had came to you.”
“But it doesn’t.”
“But you thought it might. Mom, didn’t you notice that Judy Coogan came in right after Mr. Houser left? He must have sent her in. She was probably waiting outside.”
Judy had shown up real quickly. Lynn had barely had time to tell April about her dad before Judy knocked. Damn it. “What do I do?”
“Well…”
“You have an idea. Don’t worry about making me feel dumb, just tell me.”
“Mr. Bowen.�
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“Conner’s dad? But—didn’t they work that all out months ago?”
“That was all before Mr. Bowen found out about the bigger silver bars.”
“What bigger bars?”
* * *
While Jake was inside the coin shop, the other stores in the strip mall had closed and the parking lot lights had gone dark. Now only the light spilling from the coin shop windows showed the way to his car. He hustled across the potholed asphalt, ducking his chin and holding his blazer closed against the flapping breeze. He cranked the heater as soon as he got in the car.
As he pulled out of the lot, his intent was to go talk with April about her dad selling the silver bar. But he had second thoughts. It was now after nine, and he remembered how exhausting grief could be.
He gritted his teeth. He was thinking like a friend and not a cop. The silver bar was important, and April knew something about it. He should head straight there.
But those poor women.
His grip tightened on the steering wheel, his hands wringing it like it was the killer’s neck.
Tomorrow.
They deserved a night to their grief.
Traffic was thin, and it took him less than twenty minutes to wind through town to his house on south Webster. He’d bought the two-bedroom ranch from the estate of the original owner because of its amazing location—a half block from Redhawk Field and two blocks south of downtown. He was in the process of remodeling the house, replacing its warren of tiny rooms with a single master suite on one side and a great room/kitchen combo on the other. It would kill resale, but reselling it wasn’t his plan. This house was for him. It was his second attempt to move out of the apartment he’d created in the old commercial building on Spring Street, and he planned to make this one stick.
He parked in the driveway next to the empty dumpster, then walked through the garage and the big screened-in porch into the house. The smell of freshly sawed wood always made him feel like he was making progress with the remodel. He had completely gutted the main rooms, the walls were drywalled and primed, and the floors covered in plywood underlayment. The whole space was a giant blank slate waiting for him to unleash its possibilities.