by Ben Rehder
“It must’ve been quite a collection,” I said. “Frankly, I’d never even heard of hobo nickels.”
“Yeah, ten years ago, I hadn’t either. But a friend gave Daddy one on his birthday, and after that, he sort of became obsessed with them. It was like a hobby that went haywire, but he seemed to enjoy it so much. I’d go over to his house for dinner and he’d be checking his phone the whole time, keeping tabs on some auction on eBay. He was constantly buying and selling those silly coins. It’s going to be a chore to go through his records and figure out what he currently owned. It wasn’t until about a year ago that any of us knew how much the collection was worth.”
“Who noticed that the collection was missing?” Mia asked.
“That was Max. Daddy has a big safe in his study, but he never puts the coins in there because, like I said, he’s always getting new ones or selling old ones. He kept them in a big wooden box, and Max noticed that the box was gone. We looked in the safe and it wasn’t there, either, so then we searched the entire house. No box, no coins.”
“Can you think of anyone who might’ve taken the collection, other than Serenity Sweet?” I asked.
Like your brother Cole, I wanted to say.
She started to answer, but just then the doorbell rang.
“That must be Cole,” Callie said. “Excuse me for a minute.”
She rose from the couch, went into the foyer, and opened the front door. Standing on her front porch was a pair of uniformed Austin cops.
Their voices carried, so I could hear both of the cops introduce themselves, and then I heard one of them say, “Miss Dunn, may we step inside for a moment?”
“Is everything okay?”
“We have an important matter we need to discuss with you.”
That wasn’t good.
“What’s happened? Did something happen?”
Both cops were casting glances over Callie’s shoulder at Mia and me in the living room.
“It’s a private matter, ma’am. Are your visitors family members or close friends?”
“They’re friends. Please just tell me. Tell me right now.”
After a pause, the cop said, “Yes, ma’am. I’m very sorry to inform you of this, but your brother Cole was found dead earlier this morning.”
3
Mia’s house was nearby, so we went there to regroup and figure out how we were going to proceed.
Callie Dunn had been in shambles after she’d heard the news, but there wasn’t much we could do except offer additional condolences before we left. It was an awkward situation as we exited the residence, wanting to ask the uniformed cops how Cole Dunn had died, but knowing they wouldn’t have given us even the tiniest bit of information. Callie herself asked them several times what had happened, but they wouldn’t say anything while we were still there.
“Think it was an overdose?” Mia asked as I took a seat on her couch and she went into the kitchen to get some coffee started.
“The records I saw didn’t say which controlled substance he preferred, but that’s a good bet,” I said. “Whatever happened, it raises a lot of questions.”
“Such as?” she called out.
“If someone killed him, who and why? Was it related to his father’s death or the disappearance of the hobo coins? If it was a suicide, why now? Did he steal the coins and then feel guilty about it? Or was he depressed about his father?”
“Or maybe it was completely unrelated.”
“Maybe.”
She came back into the living room, and the truth is, every entrance she makes is a grand entrance, simply because she is so damn beautiful. Tall—five-ten in flats—with long red hair, prominent cheekbones, and killer dimples. Even better, she is equally attractive in the ways you can’t see right off the bat. Intelligent. Funny as hell. Compassionate. Always looking for the bright side of things.
Any wonder that I finally admitted to myself earlier this year that I am in love with her? I have been for quite some time.
Mia didn’t know that yet, despite a recent vow I’d made to myself to tell her. My daughter Hannah had come to visit earlier this summer—the first time I’d seen her since she was a little girl—and I’d planned to tell Mia how I felt as soon as Hannah had gone back home. I didn’t want to take that sort of serious emotional step until I had the time to handle Mia’s response, whether it was good or bad. But by the time Hannah left, there was a reason I couldn’t tell Mia the truth, and that reason was named Garlen Gieger. Garlen. Who the hell is named Garlen? I hadn’t met him, but I already hated his guts. Not fair, I know, but still.
Mia sat at the other end of the couch and said, “What?”
“What what?”
“That look on your face.”
I think she might’ve suspected on occasion that I’d fallen in love, or maybe she just thought I had a crush on her. Or maybe she thought I looked at her the same way I looked at Callie Dunn in her yoga pants. But it was totally different.
“Just thinking,” I said. “Trying to decide what we should do next, and how much time we should commit. For all we know, the cops have already found the hobo coins in Cole Dunn’s house. The dude—rest in peace—had a history of theft.”
“If the cops find the coins in his place, I bet we’ll hear from Heidi within a couple of hours.”
“Yep. So I vote we slack off until lunch and see what happens.”
Mia grabbed her laptop, which had been resting on the coffee table. “I want to check something real quick. Did the name Callie Dunn ring any bells for you before yesterday?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mia pecked away at her computer. I watched her, which was a good use of my time.
“Oh, this is interesting,” she said. “I thought her name was familiar. Remember when a man here in Tarrytown complained that the person who bought his house had tricked him? The buyer said he was planning to restore the home, but he tore it down instead. Ring any bells?”
I shook my head. “I don’t keep up with you ritzy Tarrytown types.”
“Well, it turned out the buyer was actually a developer, and it looked like he’d planned all along to demolish the house and build a new one.”
“Sneaky bastard,” I said.
“A lot of people got pissed off about that, because the original house had earned an architectural award when it was built in the forties. It had historical significance, but the city granted a demolition permit anyway.”
“Am I to assume the house in question is now Callie Dunn’s abode?”
“The new house, yeah.” She was reading and scrolling. “I didn’t really keep up with this as well as I should have back then, but if I remember correctly... ” She trailed off.
I sat quietly. The coffeemaker beeped, so I went into the kitchen to get us both a mug. Mia liked hers with one sugar and an ounce of hazelnut-flavored creamer.
When I came back into the living room, she said, “Check this out. The developer was a guy named Nathan Potter and guess who he used to be in business with.”
“Carrot Top?”
“Alex Dunn. Wanna know how else they were connected?”
“A secret love affair?”
“Nathan Potter was Alex Dunn’s brother-in-law at the time.”
“So Potter was married to Dunn’s sister?”
“No, Dunn was married to Potter’s sister, Alicia. She was Dunn’s second wife—his much younger wife, up until last fall. Apparently Dunn hired Nathan Potter to buy the old house, demolish it, and build the house Callie lives in now. So in the eyes of Tarrytown residents and the press, Dunn was as much the bad guy as Nathan Potter was.”
Five minutes ago, I hadn’t been much interested in this background information, but now I was starting to get drawn in.
“At one point,” Mia said, “Dunn gave a really ugly interview in which he said, quote, ‘Look, the bottom line is, I own that lot and I’m free to do whatever the hell I want with it. I plan to build a nice home for my daughter. Anybody t
hat has a problem with that can go screw themselves.’”
“Nice. So the man might’ve made some enemies.”
“I would think so.”
“And you’re thinking one of them might’ve somehow killed him?”
“Well, I’m raising the possibility.”
“But why would somebody act on that now? Why wait so long?”
“Don’t know.”
We sat for a moment and drank coffee.
“Sure would make things easy if Heidi would call right now and say the coins were in Cole’s place,” I said.
“But then we wouldn’t earn much money.”
“True.”
“Plus, you love a challenge more than anyone I know,” Mia said.
She was right. My current challenge, other than this case, was named Garlen.
“Is that your way of saying I’m stubborn?” I said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t sugarcoat it like that,” she said. “You love a challenge, and you’re stubborn.”
“Thank you very much. Are you saying we should do something productive instead of waiting around?”
“I am.”
4
Several years ago, after I broke my boss’s nose, got fired, and became a freelance legal videographer, I worked for quite some time within the confines of that job description—meaning I shot video and that was about it. Most of the video I shot was of suspected insurance scammers. You know the type of covert video I’m talking about—grainy long-lens footage showing somebody who supposedly has a back injury doing the lambada, or some bro with whiplash playing rugby on the weekends.
It wasn’t long before I realized I could do more than shoot video. No, I wasn’t a licensed private investigator, but there really wasn’t any law preventing me from talking to an alleged fraudster in the course of my work as a videographer, was there? If there was, I wasn’t aware of it. Essentially, I had found a loophole—a way to investigate insurance fraud from many angles without being a PI. Then Mia became my partner and she did the same thing, as needed. Nobody had complained yet. It’s like that old saying: It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
There were occasions, too, when we—mostly me—took steps that weren’t strictly legal, like hiding a GPS tracking unit on a subject’s vehicle, placing a covert camera on private property, or tampering with some poor guy’s spark plug wires. It would be easy to rationalize this behavior by saying, “Well, everybody does it.” But the truth is, I don’t know how other investigators do it. I just know what works for me, and there hadn’t been an incident yet where I regretted cutting legal corners. In fact, not long ago, those shortcuts helped me find and rescue a missing six-year-old girl. Hard to feel remorse for doing whatever it takes in a situation like that.
The question that often arises in the early stages of an investigation is: How should we approach it? When you’re dealing with someone like the motorcycle-riding pinhead from yesterday afternoon, that’s easy to answer. He claimed he was injured and we suspected he wasn’t, so the most reliable method was to tail him discreetly until we could record evidence proving that his injury was either nonexistent or much less serious than alleged.
But this case wasn’t nearly as cut and dried. There were a lot of players and several of them could have taken the coin collection. Plus, there wasn’t much point in following any of them around. I doubted Serenity Sweet was going to walk out of her house toting a wooden curio box and head for the nearest pawnshop.
So why not see if she’d talk? Who knew what she might be able to tell us? Surely she and Alex Dunn had shared some personal moments from time to time, beyond the whole booby slapping thing. It was possible Alex Dunn had spoken to Serenity about his family, his coins, and other personal information. We should take a chance and contact her.
It was Mia’s idea, so she’s the one who called—and got voicemail.
“Miss Sweet, my name is Mia Madison. My partner and I have been hired by Alex Dunn’s insurance company to find his missing coin collection. I’m sure the last thing you want to do at this point is answer questions from a bunch of nosy people, so let me assure you that we don’t think you took it, and we don’t think you killed Mr. Dunn. In fact, we can probably help you out. We’re very good at what we do, which means we might clear your name by figuring out what really happened. If you’d give us a few minutes of your time, I promise we won’t screw you around. You can ask us to leave at any time and we will respect your wishes. Thanks for your time. We hope to hear from you.”
She left her number and ended the call.
“Sound okay?” she said.
“Perfect.”
Mia placed her phone on the coffee table.
I checked my phone to see if Heidi had texted or called. Nothing.
“Know what I’m wondering?” Mia said. “What is the thief going to do with the coin collection? Every hobo nickel is completely original, meaning easily identifiable, so it’s not like they can list them on eBay without expecting to get caught.”
“This is where I point out that we encounter people exactly that stupid on a regular basis.”
“Know what else I’m wondering?” she said.
“How I get my shirts so wrinkle-free?”
“What if Alex Dunn was dead when Serenity Sweet found him? It would be helpful to know that.”
“It would,” I said.
“And we know who’ll be able to eventually answer that for us,” Mia said.
Ruelas.
“He won’t talk to us,” I said.
“He might talk to me.”
“Most men will. Hey, if you want to call him, go right ahead. He probably doesn’t even have anything worth sharing yet.”
She grabbed her phone off the coffee table, dialed his number, and got voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.
“Any other ideas what we can do this afternoon?” Mia said. “Because I’m not sure what—”
Her phone rang. She checked it.
“Ruelas?” I said. I could picture him responding to Mia’s call like an excited puppy.
“Nope. Serenity Sweet.”
5
I didn’t really have any preconceived notions about the type of home or neighborhood Serenity Sweet might live in, but I certainly didn’t expect her to own a well-maintained American Craftsman-style bungalow in the Barton Hills area above Zilker Park in the heart of Austin. This was the type of neighborhood where she probably had a CPA on one side and a college professor on the other.
Her home had a lush front lawn and a wide, welcoming front porch with half a dozen ferns hanging in baskets around the perimeter. As we mounted the front steps, I felt the breeze of a ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead. This place sure as hell beat the apartment I was currently living in, and it even gave Mia’s house a run for its money.
“Behave yourself,” Mia muttered under her breath.
“But of course,” I said.
I knocked, but before my knuckles even made contact a second time, the door swung open and there stood Serenity Sweet.
She was stunning.
Was I an ass for not expecting that? Well, sure. Who says a heavy woman can’t be stunning? And this was a case where there was no need to add a qualifier, such as, “She’s pretty, but she’d be even prettier if she’d lose weight.” She was pretty exactly as she was, with gorgeous green eyes and thick shoulder-length hair that was a deep chestnut color.
In all honesty, I’ll admit that I had been expecting to be overwhelmed by the attributes that earned her a living, but she was wearing a flowered knee-length muumuu that took the emphasis off her chest.
“My lawyer says I shouldn’t be talking to y’all,” she said as an introduction, and the skepticism was plain on her face. “She’s probably right. I’ll tell you this much. If it turns out that voicemail you left me was BS, I’ll toss both of you out of my house. Fair enough?”
I liked her already.
“There must be some mistake,” I said. “We�
��re here to talk to you about annuities.”
Her home had stained concrete floors throughout, and it appeared the paint was fresh on all the walls. From where I was sitting beside Mia on the couch, I could see into the kitchen, which was equipped with black appliances and granite countertops. Everything was comfortable and well decorated. Serenity offered coffee.
“No, thanks,” Mia said.
I shook my head. “It’d keep me awake during this entire meeting.”
Serenity smiled, then sat on a love seat at a right angle to the couch, so she could face both of us.
Mia said, “First thing I want to say, being completely up front with you, because you deserve it, is that we can’t promise confidentiality. I wish we could, but the truth is, if you were to admit a crime to us—which you won’t, because I believe that you’re innocent—we’d be obligated to share that information with the police. And regardless of what we discuss, we could be forced by subpoena to reveal the details.”
We hadn’t discussed how we’d approach Serenity other than to agree that Mia would take the lead. I wasn’t crazy about Mia being so blunt—and so honest—but Mia often seemed to have a sixth sense as to what would work with a particular person. She came across as trustworthy and empathetic, whereas my limited repertoire usually involved wisecracks, flirtation, or threats, depending on my audience.
“On the other hand,” I added, “outside of those circumstances, I promise you can trust us to keep it between us.”
“I have no problem with any of that,” Serenity said, “but I might not even answer your questions. We’ll just have to see. By the way, are you recording this?”
“No, we wouldn’t do that without your permission,” Mia said.
She looked at me.
I said, “I don’t need to record anything. I have a pornographic memory.”
“Roy,” Mia said.
For half a second, I thought I’d blown it. Then Serenity gave me a small grin. “I bet that works a lot of the time, doesn’t it?”