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

by Ben Rehder

Later, when I asked for the check, the waitress told me it had already been taken care of.

  Heidi. What a gal.

  Three days passed and I learned various tidbits from Heidi.

  Leo Pitts had been arrested, but he was maintaining that he didn’t know anything about the coins. Typical. They’d searched Pitts’s house, but Heidi didn’t know the results of the search, other than the fact that no more hobo nickels had been found. The quantity of coins hidden in the chlorine tablets was about a dozen shy of Alex Dunn’s last inventory. Not all of them, but pretty damn close.

  I left a message for Ruelas—just out of sheer curiosity—to see if he was making any headway on the Alex Dunn homicide, but he never called me back.

  Where’s a cop when you need one, right?

  Meanwhile, no new cases came in, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I went out with Kiersten one night and stayed at her place again. I was getting spoiled.

  I thought about Mia a lot and tried to check on her without being nosy. It was a delicate balance. She never said anything else about Garlen and I didn’t press it.

  I read. I napped. I went to a Texas Longhorns baseball game. I went for a weekday swim at Reimer’s Ranch, where I had a long stretch of the Pedernales River all to myself.

  Then I finally called Mia’s friend Abby, the realtor.

  “I’m surprised it’s still on the market, to be honest, and I’m not just saying that,” Abby said.

  I was taking another look at the house on Raleigh. We were in the kitchen.

  “If I was going to make an offer, what do you think that offer should be?” I asked.

  She hemmed and hawed and quoted various comparables, but she finally spat a figure out.

  It was doable, but I didn’t want to go any higher. I told her so.

  “They’ll counter-offer, most likely,” Abby said. “You should be ready for that.”

  “Could we start with a lower bid?”

  “I wouldn’t. They’ll think you’re not serious.”

  “Then what I’d want you to do,” I said, “is present the offer as a take-it-or-leave-it type of deal. That’s the way I prefer doing it anyway.”

  “I guess we could do that,” she said. “Have you already pre-qualified for a mortgage?”

  I could tell she was anxious to move this process along. She was a snappy dresser and an attractive woman, but she wasn’t quite as smooth or professional as Kiersten had been when she’d shown me the place. I felt like she was representing herself, rather than representing me.

  “I stopped at my bank yesterday,” I said. “I’m all set.”

  “You qualify for the amount of the offer?”

  “I was as surprised as you are. That’s what happens when you drive a junker and live in a cheap apartment. You can save up.”

  She laughed, then said, “Well, what do you think? Got any additional questions or concerns?”

  I pulled a quarter from my pocket.

  “Heads we make the offer, tails we don’t,” I said.

  She laughed again.

  I looked at her.

  “Seriously?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  I flipped the coin into the air and let it drop to the floor, where it bounced and rolled and finally came to a stop next to the stove.

  27

  Two days later, we finally got another case, or I did. A fairly easy one, too, which is nice on occasion.

  According to this client—who, like Heidi, supervised a claims department at a large insurance company—a shady chiropractor had devised a simple but effective scam.

  The chiropractor’s office manager would distribute coupons for a free 30-minute massage, and when a recipient redeemed a coupon, the chiropractor would gather the recipient’s insurance information and later bill for a variety of services that weren’t delivered—like traction, hot or cold packs, spinal manipulation, or myofascial stripping, whatever that is. Of course, the recipients were served by a variety of insurance companies, so the chiropractor probably thought the scam would be hard to catch. Only problem was, one of the “patients” worked in the medical-billing field and was savvy enough to understand the codes on the statement that followed her visit to the chiropractor’s office. Now several insurance companies had banded together to sting this chiropractor and shut the scam down.

  My client had gotten her hands on one of the coupons. My job was to go get a free massage and capture it all on video. When I called the number on the coupon to schedule the massage, what do you know—they had an opening that very afternoon. What were the odds of that?

  Shortly after I hung up, Mia texted about another new case from Daniel Ivy. A woman had reported a valuable diamond bracelet as missing—either lost or stolen—but Daniel was skeptical, because this woman had a history of “losing” valuable jewelry. He wanted Mia to check into it—maybe shadow the woman for a few days—and see if she wore the bracelet in question, or any of the jewelry she had reported missing on earlier dates.

  Perfect. Neither of these new cases required two people, so we both had one to keep us busy.

  The chiropractor’s office was on South Lamar, near Bluebonnet. Before my massage, I decided to made an impromptu stop at a certain bungalow in Barton Hills.

  Colin Kelly answered the door again, but this time, after recognizing me, he was much friendlier. In fact, he stepped onto the porch and gave me a bear hug.

  “Dude,” he said. “You are awesome.”

  “Thanks.”

  I still wondered about that perfectly round scar in the center of his forehead—but I didn’t wonder enough to ask about it.

  “You nailed that little fucker,” he said. “That Leo Pitts guy.”

  “Yep.”

  “But I heard he’s denying everything.”

  “So far, yeah, but that won’t work. His lawyer will advise him to accept a plea, and he will.”

  “Think he’s out on bond?”

  “Probably.” I knew what Colin was thinking. “Best that you don’t pay him a visit. You’ll only get yourself in trouble.”

  “Yeah, okay. Wanna come inside? It’s hot out here.”

  “Is Serenity home?”

  “Not right now. She should be back in about an hour.”

  “Just tell her I stopped by to say hello, okay?” I said. “I’ll catch her some other time.”

  Was that why I was here? To say hello? The case was closed. How come it didn’t feel closed?

  “You got it, bro. Thanks again.”

  I realize this probably makes me a pig, but I’d been hoping the chiropractor, named Stacy Belmont, would be a lithesome beauty with a soothing voice and tender hands. He was not. Stacy was about 50 years old, with thinning hair, a beer belly, and the stench of cigarette smoke in his clothes. He wore a white medical smock to give him credibility. Didn’t work.

  “Got any joint problems?” he asked. “Back problems? Pain or discomfort anywhere?”

  I was already on the massage table, naked, on my stomach, with a towel draped over my backside. My face was in the circular ring thingy, which left me a beautiful view of the carpet below.

  “None at all,” I said. That’s how the client had instructed me to answer.

  “No aches or pain at all anywhere?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Never sprained a ligament or hurt any cartilage?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s rare. Any surgery of any kind?”

  “Had my spleen removed after I got shot in the chest,” I said, because he was going to see the scar eventually anyway. “But it doesn’t hurt.”

  Important to deny any pain, so he couldn’t later claim that we’d agreed on any treatment beyond the massage.

  “Jesus, really?” he said. “What happened?”

  He placed his hands on my shoulders and began the massage.

  “Long story,” I said. “But it’s all good now. Healed up perfectly.”

  “Wow. Okay. That’s wild. I don’t think I�
��ve ever met anyone who got shot.”

  My clothes were stacked in a chair in the corner, and on top was the baseball cap I’d worn. It had a built-in pinhole video camera that was recording all of this. Not the greatest quality, but it would do.

  I was hoping to limit the conversation from here on out, but he kept at it, saying, “I feel a pretty big knot right there. Any discomfort?” He was working on a spot beneath my left shoulder blade.

  “No, it feels fine,” I said.

  “You’re carrying a lot of tension right there,” he said. “Really bunched up.”

  “Funny, I don’t feel it at all.”

  “Might be a pulled muscle,” he said. “Been doing any lifting lately?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sports? Tennis or golf?”

  “My biggest exercise lately is reaching for the remote. I’m all good, though. No complaints. All I really need is the massage.”

  For ten more minutes, he probed—both physically and verbally—trying to build a good reason to bill my insurance company for treating an injury, whether I agreed to the treatment or not. I didn’t give him one. Finally he shut up and just went about the massage.

  I lay there in silence, and my mind wandered to the house on Raleigh Avenue in Tarrytown. The coin toss had come up tails, which meant I wasn’t supposed to make an offer, but I’d made an offer anyway. The seller had turned it down in a matter of hours, without a counter-offer. Of course, I’d instructed Abby to tell them it was a take-it-or-leave it offer, and they must’ve taken me at my word. Abby had asked if I wanted to go full price, but I hadn’t decided yet.

  After the massage, I went back to my apartment and sent the video—which looked like footage from some undercover prostitution sting—to my client. Now it was simply a waiting game. Would Stacy, the cigarette-smoking chiropractor, file fraudulent claims after my visit? I figured he probably would, because anyone who thought he could get away with such an unsophisticated scam—especially in the digital age—wouldn’t let a pain-free patient foul things up.

  Just as I was finishing up, I heard a knock on my door. Strange, during working hours on a weekday. Turned out to be Rita, my neighbor directly across the breezeway. She was a cashier at Whole Foods and had an ever-changing work schedule.

  She stood about five feet tall and had six piercings running up one ear, another piercing in her lip, and one in a nostril. I’d learned that she was 23, but she looked about 15. I knew from previous conversations that she was damn bright, but also kind of flighty.

  “You doing all right, Roy?” she asked.

  “Not bad. You?”

  “Good, but somebody woke me up earlier banging on your door.”

  “Yeah? Any idea who it was?”

  “Some guy.”

  “Seriously? Because I just saw some guy driving next to me on Barton Springs Road. Then I saw some guy riding a bike in Zilker Park.”

  She grinned.

  “Yeah, okay. He was about your age, but not as cute. Wearing khakis and, you know, like those shirts golfers wear.”

  “So a golf shirt.”

  “If that’s what they call them.”

  “Was he missing an eye?”

  “What? No. I would’ve said that first. He asked if I’d seen you today, but I said no. Which was true.”

  I already knew who it was, but I asked anyway.

  “Good cologne? Nice tan? Looks like he models for LL Bean?”

  “Exactly. So you know him?”

  “He’s a hit man for the Texas Mafia. True story.”

  “You’re so full of it.”

  “His name is Garlen,” I said. “He’s my partner’s ex-boyfriend, as of just a few days ago. He’s not taking the break-up well.”

  I figured he had continued to contact Mia, and she had probably put her foot down earlier today and told him to take a hike. That’s why he was looking for me—to vent his anger.

  “But why is he mad at you?” Rita asked.

  “Well, I might’ve, uh, facilitated the split. Just a little bit.”

  “I’ve seen your partner,” Rita said. “I don’t think I’d let her go easy, either.”

  28

  Of course, this news from Rita made me want to text Mia, and I had a good work-related excuse. So I said: Done with massage. How’s your case?

  Three minutes later, she called, sounding excited.

  “Last night I checked this woman’s Facebook page, but her privacy settings were too tight. So I randomly went to some of her friends’ pages, and then to her sister’s page, and I saw a photo from last week where I’m pretty sure she’s wearing the missing bracelet.”

  “The woman or the sister?” I asked.

  “The sister. The photo is kind of blurry, but I think this woman—the one who’s claiming the bracelet went missing—gave it to her sister.”

  “What if they have identical bracelets?”

  “That’s a possibility, I guess, but the sister is insured through the same company, and she doesn’t have a bracelet like that on her policy. Makes me wonder if that’s what happened to the other items that went missing—she gave them to her sister, who may or may not know what’s going on.”

  “How blurry is the photo?” I asked.

  “Enough that I can’t be sure. So right now I’m sitting outside the Four Seasons, waiting for her—the sister—to finish with brunch or whatever she’s doing. When she went in, it looked like she was wearing the bracelet. I’ve got the super-zoom ready.”

  We both had kick-ass Canon cameras with a 50-power zoom lens. If Mia could get a good photo of the bracelet, and if it appeared identical to the one that was missing, she and her client would then have two options: offer the sisters the chance to stay out of trouble if the bracelet was suddenly “found,” or turn the photo over to the police and let them turn up the heat.

  “Don’t let me screw up your shot,” I said.

  “I’m on speaker,” Mia said. “Believe me, the camera is ready to go. What’s going on with you?”

  I told her a little more about the persistent chiropractor, then changed the subject by saying, “I hate to pry, but I’m going to ask anyway. What’s the status on Garlen?”

  “Any particular reason you’re asking?”

  “Actually, yeah. My neighbor said a guy matching his description was knocking on my door earlier this morning.”

  Mia let out a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s not your fault—but can you tell me what’s up?”

  “I saw him drive past my house a couple of times this morning, so I went outside and waited at the curb. When he came by again, I stopped him. I said what he was doing could now be considered stalking, and that I had reached the point of zero tolerance.”

  I groaned.

  She said, “I reminded him that I’m great at gathering evidence, and that I’m also damn good at defending myself. He tried to talk and I said nope, we’re done, and that if I saw him again, it would be the worst day he’d had in a long time. Then I went back inside. He drove away and that was it, I thought. I’m sorry he showed up at your place.”

  She wasn’t emotional. Just hard-nosed and matter of fact. I was glad about that. She was done with him, and there would be no going back. I knew her well enough to be confident about that.

  “I can handle it,” I said. “In fact, I had to handle it once already.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  I hadn’t told her about the incident with Garlen in the parking lot outside my apartment the previous week, but now I shared every detail.

  Mia immediately said, “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

  “I was hoping you were done with him, in which case there was no reason to upset you with it.”

  “Damn it, Roy. That’s not fair. You need to tell me these things.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “So that’s why his nose was red and swollen. You know what he told me when it happened?”

 
; “What?”

  “That he’d been stung by a bee.”

  “Well, in a manner of speaking, I’m kind of—”

  “Not in the mood for it,” Mia said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I waited for her to say something. She finally said, “I should probably remind you that he has a concealed carry permit.”

  “I remember. You think I should be concerned?”

  “Hang on.” There was a short silence. Then she said, “Sorry, wasn’t her. Honestly, no, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about—but then again I didn’t think he’d take the break-up as badly as he has. I didn’t think he’d be such a jerk. Just be careful, that’s all. Especially since you already kicked his ass once.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Another pause.

  Then Mia said, “I just don’t understand how there can be two sides to a person like that. He was so sweet and thoughtful.”

  And also a liar and a stalker, I wanted to say, but I kept quiet. She already knew what he was. No need to make her feel worse about it.

  Instead, I decided to invite her to dinner tonight. Get her out of the house. Take her mind off Garlen.

  “Mia, why don’t we—”

  “Oh, there she is. I’ll call you later.”

  She hung up, and I waited.

  Less than five minutes later, she texted me: Boom! Done!

  I replied: Got your shot?

  Yep. Compare. Here’s a pic from the client.

  She sent a photo of a bracelet with a lot of diamonds. It was impressive, but, honestly, I had a hard time believing how much it was worth. I can never see much difference between a piece of jewelry that’s worth a few thousand bucks and a similar one that’s worth a hundred thousand bucks. And what about fakes? Who could tell whether the diamonds were real without using a loupe or a microscope?

  Now Mia sent the photo she had just taken.

  Twins, I said back. I might not be able to judge the value of jewelry, but it was easy enough to see when two pieces appeared identical.

  I’d say I’m done then, she said.

  I agree.

  What were you about to say earlier? she said.