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

by Ben Rehder

  She leaned in closer and put her hand on my knee. “What’s the story with Alex and that woman?” She had a gossipy grin on her face. Her perfume was driving me nuts. It reminded me of the things we did in her condo. I realized I very much would enjoy doing them again. I began to rationalize. Kiersten couldn’t be involved in a bribery scandal, could she?

  “Serenity Sweet?” I said.

  “Great name, but what a bizarre way to make a living,” Kiersten said. “Not that I’m a prude, as you well know. Whatever floats your boat, right? I just never would’ve guessed Alex was into that sort of thing.”

  She was sounding fairly familiar with Alex Dunn. I hadn’t noticed that before.

  “How old were you when you met Callie? Was it junior high?” I said.

  “No, since first grade,” she said.

  “Really?”

  This was my plan, such as it was. Start slow. Learn more about Kiersten’s relationship with the Dunns. Then branch out from there.

  “Yep. She was very shy and quiet, so I decided she needed a friend.”

  “Callie was shy?” I said.

  “I know, right? Now look at her. The life of the party.”

  “And a fairly good model for yoga pants.”

  “Easy, now. But, yeah, she can rock ’em, can’t she? She always has men after her. When we go out, it doesn’t matter who we’re with, the guys are always drawn to Callie. There’s something magnetic about her. I’m standing there like chopped liver.”

  “I know that’s not true,” I said.

  “Come on. If you saw us together at happy hour, which one of us would you hit on?”

  “That’s easy. I’d try to get both of you back to my place.”

  “Ha! I bet you would. And we might consider it, since you’re such a smooth talker.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her.

  She said, “Tonight, however, you’ll have to settle for just me.”

  What was a guy to do? Yesterday I’d decided I probably wouldn’t see her anymore, and here I was about to sleep with her again, while also trying to get more information from her. Was that ethical?

  I saw our waitress at another table and signaled for the check.

  I am not an old-fashioned guy. If a woman has a strong libido and likes to act on it, I say more power to her. Even better if I am somehow involved in the activities. Obviously, then, I had no complaints when she stripped me down, led me to bed, and climbed on top.

  Afterward, at nearly eleven o’clock, we lay side by side in silence for several moments as we regained our breath.

  “Ooh,” she finally said. “Wow.”

  “That was nice,” I said.

  She turned onto her side and placed one hand on my chest. Very briefly, she traced the small, round scar below my left nipple. “What happened here?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  “It involves international intrigue and small, woodland mammals,” I said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “How about the short version?” I said. “I got shot.”

  “Ha. Right.”

  “I know I bullshit a lot,” I said, “but not this time.”

  “Seriously?” she said. “What happened?”

  I told her the story as briefly as possible. I had entered a darkened home at night to find an abducted girl. Took a bullet through the ribs. Lost my spleen during emergency surgery. I didn’t mention that I’d felt compelled to risk everything for this little girl because my own daughter, Hannah, had also been abducted years earlier, and it had been my fault. I’d left her untended for two short minutes at a public park, but that had been long enough. A detective found her unharmed eight days later, and I hold his name close to my heart every day.

  When I was done telling her about the shooting, her voice rose as she said, “I remember that! I can’t believe that was you.”

  “Sometimes I can’t believe it either. It seems surreal.”

  She asked several questions, and I answered them—briefly. Then I said, “Not to change the subject completely, but I made an offer on that house.”

  “You did? When?”

  “Earlier this week.”

  “And?”

  “They passed.”

  “Oh, crud. How much did you offer?”

  I told her.

  “That was a little low, but still reasonable. They didn’t counter?”

  “I had said they shouldn’t bother.”

  “Are you going to go higher?”

  Here was a good opening.

  “I don’t think so. Honestly, I’m a little worried about the way things work with those older homes.”

  “How so?”

  “All that historical landmark stuff. Doesn’t the city stop some owners from doing what they want with their houses? Or they try to, like with Callie’s house. I read an article about that.”

  “You’re talking about when an owner wants to scrape and rebuild?”

  “Yeah. Or even if I buy the house and decide to sell it later. What if there are new rules in place that limit what I can do? That could really lower the selling price, couldn’t it?”

  “Really, there’s not a lot to worry about, especially with that particular house. I checked its background when you asked to see it, and it isn’t a candidate for historical zoning. And even if it was, there are only so many things the city can do to stop you. Plus, there are ways to get what you want. You just need to know how to play the game.”

  Boom. There it was.

  I did my best to sound naïve, not accusatory. “Like how? What does that mean?”

  “It’s politics, Roy. There’s always some give and take.”

  “With who?” I said. “The city council? Don’t they have the final word on historical zoning?”

  Her hand was still on my chest, and she began to rub gentle circles with her fingertips. “Why don’t we talk about this later? How does that sound?”

  In my own defense, how would it have looked if I’d tried to continue the conversation?

  At three in the morning, I woke with a headache and went into the bathroom to find some aspirin. Searched the medicine cabinet and came up empty. I checked the top drawer in the vanity and saw nothing but make-up. Second drawer was for hair and skin care products. Bottom drawer, bingo. First aid. Still, though, no aspirin. I saw some Advil, but I’m not crazy about that stuff. Makes me queasy sometimes.

  I saw a little zippered pouch and opened that.

  No aspirin there, either.

  But I found something that made my headache even worse.

  36

  “You’re kidding me. ‘There are ways to get what you want. You just need to know how to play the game’? That’s what she said?”

  “Verbatim. I memorized it.”

  “Roy. Wow.”

  It was seven-thirty in the morning and I was driving back to my place. Despite our little celebration, Kiersten had to show a house early this morning, so she’d been up by 5:30 and out the door by seven. I hadn’t had a chance to ask her any more questions last night before she fell asleep, and it wasn’t like I could say, “Hey, thanks for the incredible sex. Now, let’s get back to the subject of historical zoning.”

  I said to Mia, “But isn’t that true even if you’re completely legit? You do have to know how to play the game.”

  “True, but come on, Roy. We already wondered if she was involved, and then she says something like that?”

  I didn’t respond right away.

  So Mia added, “I don’t mean this to sound harsh, but please don’t let your feelings for her cloud your judgment.”

  Did I have feelings for her? I liked her, sure. We had a good time together. I’d be disappointed if it turned out she made a practice of arranging bribes, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Just the end of our relationship, which might not have much of a future anyway, considering her dinner date at Salty Sow.

  “Roy?” Mia said.

  �
�Feelings?” I said. “You know I’m incapable of genuine intimacy.”

  I was on Sixth Street, directly in front of the large ad agency, GSD&M, where the famous “Don’t mess with Texas” slogan had been coined. Traffic was bad, and somebody nearby blasted his horn at a car cutting in line to turn left.

  “Where are you?” Mia asked. “I thought you were calling from your apartment.”

  Oops. She didn’t know where I had spent the night. Well, now she did. She’d figure it out.

  “Going out for donuts,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “Let’s focus on the subject at hand,” I said.

  “God, Roy. Really? You spent the night with her? Under these circumstances?”

  She might’ve sounded a little jealous. Or maybe just disgusted.

  I said, “Right now, we don’t know that she did anything, Mia. How about if we keep that in mind?”

  “Okay. Fair enough.”

  I’d moved 100 feet in five minutes. Donuts actually sounded pretty good. A reward for suffering through this traffic.

  “There’s one more thing I need to tell you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I was looking for an aspirin in the middle of the night and I found something interesting in her bathroom drawer. Keep in mind that Kiersten is close friends with Callie Dunn. They’ve known each other since grade school, and because of that, she knew Alex Dunn fairly well, too.”

  “Spill it, already,” Mia said.

  “I found a hobo nickel.”

  The resulting pause indicated that Mia had the same response I’d had last night. She was puzzled and surprised. She said, “What the hell do we make of that?”

  “I have no idea. I’m thinking Callie, or maybe Alex, gave her the coin as a gift. That’s all I can figure.”

  “But why does she have it tucked away in her bathroom?”

  “And in a small zippered pouch,” I said.

  “That makes a pretty good hiding place,” Mia said.

  I finally made it through the traffic light at Lamar.

  “Let’s let this percolate for a while,” I said, “and I’ll call you this afternoon.”

  Truth was, I needed to go home and sleep. I’m sure Mia suspected that, and she could’ve easily razzed me about it, but she simply said, “Works for me.”

  I was back on the name Riley. What did it mean?

  It was a name, right? What else could it be? But who was it?

  It was two o’clock, and after two solid hours of sleep, a shower, and some lunch, I was ready to get back at it. I was seated on my couch, laptop in hand, raring to go. But I wasn’t sure where to go.

  Riley.

  If I could get into Alex Dunn’s Hushmail account, maybe that would be the key. Maybe it would tell me whether Kiersten was involved in bribing a council member.

  I typed “Riley” into Google and got 218,000,000 hits. The first one, a Wikipedia entry, told me that Riley could mean anything from a racehorse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1890 to a defunct British car and bicycle manufacturer to a small town in Indiana, Oregon, West Virginia, or Wisconsin.

  I tried a search for “riley austin” and got 41,100,000 hits. Oh, much better. Only 41 million to sort through. Austin Riley was a baseball player. B.D. Riley’s was an Irish pub and restaurant in downtown Austin.

  Then I searched for the phrase “alex dunn” combined with “riley.” Got more than 15,000 hits. After I spent 15 minutes reviewing the first several pages, I realized it was all just random unrelated instances of Alex Dunn’s name on a page that also contained the name Riley.

  This was futile.

  There had to be a better approach—not just to figuring out the significance of the name Riley, but to finding out the true nature of Kiersten’s relationship with Alex Dunn.

  I texted Mia. Had any brilliant ideas?

  Five minutes passed before I heard back.

  Nope. We getting together?

  I said: I thought you’d never ask.

  We sat, once again, on Mia’s couch.

  Occasionally we spoke, and for long stretches we simply sat and thought or surfed the Web.

  “I spent a lot of time last night thinking about this bribery angle,” Mia said at one point. “If it’s off the mark—if there was no bribery—then I have no idea where we’d even go with it next. Anybody who was mad about Callie’s McMansion could’ve done it.”

  She looked at me, hoping I might have a fresh, creative thought. I shrugged.

  Honestly, I’d been slacking off—checking real estate listings for western Travis County. If I wasn’t going to buy that house in Tarrytown, then I was going to look for something else. I was done with my apartment. Time to move on.

  “Of course, we can’t forget that he was poisoned,” Mia said. “So I guess it couldn’t have been just anybody. They had to have had access to his medicine. And to cyanide.”

  She was covering old ground, but that was common, too. We both did it, on purpose, because there were times when you had to remind yourself of the details of the case so you wouldn’t go wandering down a path that was counter to the facts. In this instance, the fact that Dunn was poisoned pointed away from some random angry stranger and more toward someone he knew.

  “Killing someone with poison is extremely rare,” I said. “So what would motivate somebody to do it that way?”

  “Wanting it to look like a natural death,” Mia said.

  “Exactly. The standard toxicology screen doesn’t include cyanide, and they’d have no reason to suspect it—especially in a sixty-something male with a history of heart disease.”

  “How do you get your hands on cyanide?” Mia asked.

  “I’m not positive about that,” I said. “I read an article not long ago about a woman who ordered cyanide online and committed suicide with it.”

  “Was she here in the States?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Mia started typing on her keyboard, looking for the answer.

  I watched her. She was wearing black sweats, a loose baby-blue T-shirt, and very little makeup. Her hair was swept straight back and had gentle waves in it. It got that way when she let it dry naturally instead of using a blow dryer. She didn’t like the waves, but I thought they looked good.

  “That was in Pennsylvania,” Mia said. “She ordered it from a seller in Thailand.” She read some more, then said, “Apparently, it’s a lot easier to get in other countries.” Another pause, then, “Here’s an interview with Sanjay Gupta, that TV doctor, where he’s talking about how easy it is to get cyanide. It’s from twelve years ago, though, so that might have changed.”

  My phone vibrated with an incoming text and I checked it.

  Probably Kiersten. She usually texted me a sweet note after we’d spent a night together.

  Nope.

  “Heidi has another case for us,” I said.

  37

  If Heidi was right—and she usually was—a man named Abel Avilez had reported his $40,000 SUV stolen, but it hadn’t been. He had filed the police report five months ago, and his claim had already been paid. The SUV was nowhere to be seen—until a month ago, when it had been driven through a red light and a traffic enforcement camera had snapped two photos, one from the front and one from the rear.

  “All of this is in the file I’m sending over shortly,” Heidi said on the phone, “but the short version is that a Cadillac SUV just like Avilez’s ran a red light and the ticket was mailed to the registered owner—a man named Farmer. This guy Farmer knows it wasn’t him or his vehicle, so he goes outside and discovers that his license plates have been stolen and replaced with some license plates from a Mustang. He could’ve been driving around like that for months. Anyway, I’m also sending you the photos from the traffic camera and it sure looks like Abel Avilez behind the wheel.”

  Mia said, “So Avilez stole some Mustang plates, put them on Farmer’s SUV, and then put Farmer’s plates on his own Cadillac SUV.”

  “
Right. To make matters more complicated, Avilez’s wife drives an identical Cadillac SUV. Apparently he liked his so much, they got a second one. When he came up with this stupid scheme, he probably thought having two identical vehicles would keep him out of trouble. He could always say he was in his wife’s SUV, as long as they aren’t seen at the same time.”

  “Why are people so stupid, Heidi?” Mia asked. “Why?”

  “So we can earn the big bucks?” Heidi said.

  “Big bucks?” I said. “I think you might be—”

  “Okay, smart-ass,” Heidi said. “So we can attempt to remain solvent between paychecks.”

  “More like it,” I said.

  “Anyway, the cops confronted Avilez with the photo, but he said it wasn’t him. They asked to search the premises and the stolen SUV wasn’t there. That’s about all they’ll do. They don’t have much time for something like this.”

  “So you want us to find the SUV, preferably in a way that would prove Avilez has been a bad little boy.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “At this point, he might have it stashed away somewhere for the long term,” I said. “Or he decided it was time to abandon it somewhere. Could be a tough find.”

  “That’s why I only hire the best,” Heidi said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “She has a partner named Roy,” Heidi said.

  Mia giggled.

  “Well done,” I said. “Anything else we need to know?”

  “I think that’s about it. If you have any questions, let me know.”

  “Will do.”

  “You kids have fun.”

  We started with Facebook, because if there’s any chance of cracking a case in a matter of mere minutes, Facebook just might be the place to do it. But if Abel Avilez had a Facebook account, we couldn’t find it. We found one for his wife, Diana, but her privacy settings were too tight to allow us to see anything. I sent her a friend request from my fake Linda Patterson account, and then we checked their criminal records on various free and paid sites. They were both clean.