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

I could tell from the defeated expression on her face that the answer wasn’t good. “It’s possible. Alex would sometimes show me the coins he’d bought. I might’ve touched the lid of the box.”

  This was new information. Why had she not mentioned that during our first interview? She might not have considered it relevant, but it was.

  “When was the last time you touched it?” Mia asked.

  Serenity shrugged. “Could have been as recent as a couple weeks ago.”

  “None of this matters,” Colin said, “because somebody planted that box in her shed. That should be obvious to any motherfucker with a brain.”

  Serenity gave him a sharp glance, presumably because of his language.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is just such... bullcrap.”

  Obviously not his first choice of words.

  “It’s horse hockey, is what it is,” I said. “Possibly even cow fritters.”

  He gave me the glare again, but only for a moment, and then he smiled—just a little, and it was a reluctant smile, but it was a smile nonetheless.

  “He’s right that it wouldn’t have been hard for somebody to get back there,” Serenity said.

  She didn’t have to convince me, considering I had broken into Leo Pitts’s rental unit the night before.

  “Was there a lock on the shed?” I asked.

  Serenity shook her head.

  “A lock on the gate into your backyard?”

  “Yes, but the fence is only four feet tall. Easy enough for someone to jump over it.”

  “I’ve been saying you need to get a dog,” Colin said.

  “But the lock wasn’t cut?” Mia asked.

  “No,” Serenity said.

  “I never noticed—can you see the shed from the street?” I asked.

  “You can, from one spot, looking through the trees.”

  “She needs some security lights,” Colin said. “I’ve been meaning to install some, and maybe some security cameras. Considering her line of work, we don’t need anyone thinking they can come around and pay a visit.”

  “Do you know if any of your neighbors have cameras?” Mia asked.

  “I haven’t ever noticed,” Serenity said.

  “I think the house on the corner has some,” Colin said, pointing south. “The house on the right.”

  “Before or after the stop sign?” I asked.

  “Before. The northwest corner.”

  “We’ll check that out,” I said.

  Colin nodded.

  “Did you see anyone hanging around lately that made you suspicious?” I asked.

  She began shaking her head.

  I was contemplating warning her that the cops would be back with a search warrant for her house—possibly any minute now, or this afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest. But her lawyer had surely told her that would happen.

  I tried to think of questions we hadn’t asked the first time we’d interviewed her.

  “Have you ever met any of Alex Dunn’s children?”

  “No.”

  “How about Alex Dunn’s second wife, Alicia Potter?” Mia asked.

  “You kidding? My clients generally don’t want me to meet their wives. Besides, isn’t she his ex-wife now?”

  “Yeah, she is. Did Alex talk about her much?”

  “He mentioned her now and then, but nothing ugly. In fact, I think they had dinner occasionally.”

  “Did she come to his house?” I asked.

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Did he talk about his kids?” I asked.

  “Some.”

  “Did he ever say anything that now, in hindsight, seems like it might’ve been related to his death, or to the disappearance of the coins?” I asked.

  “Sorry, no. Nothing I can remember.”

  “Any chance you know a guy named Leo Pitts?” I asked.

  “Don’t think so. That name isn’t familiar. Who is he?”

  “One of Cole’s friends,” I said. “Nothing important. I’m just fishing. You haven’t seen a gold Mazda truck in the area lately?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “How about a red BMW?”

  “Same thing. Don’t remember one.”

  “We’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for scumbags now,” Colin said. “I live way the hell out in Leander, but I’m gonna stay here for the time being. Let ’em try and come back. I’ll be ready. I’ve got a shotgun in the bedroom.”

  It was hard to tell whether Serenity was happy with that arrangement. I didn’t point out that it was unlikely that the person who had planted the curio box—if that was indeed what had happened—would ever return.

  “Just, uh, don’t, uh—” I said.

  “You carry a gun?” Colin asked.

  “I usually fight people off with my scathing wit.”

  “So you don’t carry one?”

  “Honestly, Colin, that’s not something I discuss with anyone.”

  “Yeah, okay. That’s cool. I gotcha.”

  He actually winked at me, like we were new pals sharing a secret.

  I looked at Mia to see if she had any other questions. She didn’t.

  “Thanks for talking to us,” I said to Serenity.

  “What exactly are you gonna do to help her?” Colin asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “That sounded shitty and I didn’t mean it that way. What I’m saying is, whatever you’re gonna do, if you need some backup, just let me know.”

  Mia cleared her throat. Her way of saying, I’m his backup, you oversized cretin. And he is mine.

  “I will certainly keep that in mind,” I said.

  18

  Colin was right. The house on the northwest corner of the nearby intersection did have at least one security camera. I could see it mounted in a corner of the ceiling above the covered porch. But when Mia and I ascended the steps, I was in for a letdown.

  “Pretty sure that’s a dummy,” I said.

  You could buy fake security cameras for about ten bucks online. Did they deter burglars? Possibly. But I was familiar enough with the most common models, both real and fake, that I could generally distinguish between the two.

  “You sure?” Mia asked.

  I got closer, craning my neck upward. “Yep.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Mia said.

  We turned around and left. We checked other homes in the vicinity, but we didn’t see any other cameras. Disappointing.

  “I think this might be the most frustrating case I’ve ever experienced,” I said after we were back in the van.

  Mia didn’t say anything. I looked over and she was checking her phone, smiling.

  “What?” I said. “Did Ruelas call back?”

  “Oh, no, sorry. It’s nothing.”

  ‘Nothing’ probably meant a text from Garlen.

  A moment later, she said, “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. Any suggestions?”

  “Roy, what’s the deal?”

  “About what?”

  “About you. For the past few weeks, you’ve seemed so touchy, like something’s bothering you.”

  “Sorry. Must be the whole Mercury in retrograde thing.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Just moody, I guess,” I said, dead serious now. “It’ll pass. Now, any suggestions on what we should do next, because I’m at a loss.”

  We reached Barton Springs Road and I turned right, then left a minute later on Lamar.

  “Based on what Max and Serenity have both told us, it sounds like Alicia and Alex had fairly regular contact after the divorce,” Mia said. “Makes me wonder if she sometimes went to his house. Did she have a key?”

  “You’d think she’d know those coins wouldn’t be easy to sell,” I said.

  “We’ve had this conversation already about the kids,” Mia said.

  “Yep.”

  We crossed Town Lake—now known as Lady Bird Lake—and it was shimmering like a jewel with late-morning sunlight
. Then I caught a green light at the intersection of Sixth Street and turned westward.

  Then I totally changed my mind and hung a U-turn on Fifth Street, then went south on Lamar.

  “Roy, where are you going?”

  I turned west on Barton Springs.

  “Roy? Are we going back to Serenity’s house?”

  “Let’s take a break,” I said. “Do something completely different. Maybe that will help.”

  Mia was always a sport in moments like these. She could roll with the flow with the best of them.

  “And what might that be?” she asked.

  We were now in Zilker Park, and I took a left, followed by another quick left.

  “Are we going to the pecan grove?” Mia asked.

  “Nope,” I said.

  Then she looked to her right, toward Barton Creek, and saw a banner that read: CANOE RENTAL IS OPEN. She began to grin.

  Mia sat facing me, while I paddled slowly backwards.

  “You can’t see where you’re going,” Mia said.

  “Warn me if I’m about to hit an iceberg.”

  “Don’t you want to see the water ahead? It’s beautiful.”

  “The view this way is pretty nice, too,” I said, looking right at her.

  “You’re sweet,” she said.

  There were a few other canoes on the water, along with a handful of paddle-boarders, but the closest was thirty or forty yards away.

  I stopped paddling for a moment and just drifted. We were on Barton Creek, east of the famous Barton Springs Pool. Roughly a third of a mile ahead of us, the creek fed into the lake. We’d go that far and turn around. There was no reason to rush.

  “The sun feels great,” Mia said. “Not too hot yet. And a nice breeze.”

  I could imagine being here under different circumstances. I could picture us tying up under a shade tree and eating lunch out of a cooler. Maybe pouring ice-cold champagne into plastic cups. Holding hands. Kissing. Slowly and gently at first. Then making out like a couple of teenagers until we couldn’t stand it anymore and had to hurry back to the car.

  Yeah, I could imagine that.

  We hadn’t spoken for several minutes when Mia said, “We’re overlooking something, Roy. There’s some connection we aren’t making.”

  I didn’t have to say anything. She knew I agreed.

  “Have you checked eBay for any other hobo nickels?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Several times a day. Nada.”

  I began to paddle again. It felt good to work my shoulder muscles.

  “I wish Ruelas would call us back,” she said. “Maybe the case against Serenity is stronger than we suspect.”

  “Guess we’ll know more when they search her house.”

  “I’m a little worried about that, to be honest. If she’s innocent and someone planted the curio box, what if they put something in her house, like a couple of the hobo nickels?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. Frankly, the sun was making me drowsy and I wasn’t inclined to think about the case just then.

  “What are we missing, Roy?”

  For some reason, I responded in a Humphrey Bogart voice. “Wish I knew, shweetheart. Wish I knew.”

  Four hours later, Mia received a text from Serenity that the police had arrived with a warrant and were currently searching her home. By then, Serenity had had plenty of time to search the house herself for any planted evidence, and to remove any documents that would implicate her massage clients, assuming she kept any records that could identify them.

  The cops were gone in two hours. According to Serenity, also via text, the only thing they had taken—as far as she could tell—was her computer, but she was confident there was nothing of relevance on it and there never had been. The tone of her texts seemed upbeat, as if she’d been proven right.

  So Mia and I explained to her that the cops wouldn’t necessarily have to tell her if they’d found the hobo nickels or any other possible evidence that could have some bearing on the investigation of Alex Dunn’s homicide. They could choose to keep the results of the search to themselves for the time being, if they thought sharing the information might impede the murder case. Serenity’s response? Well, that sucks. When will this end?

  19

  That evening, I set out to learn everything I could possibly learn about Alicia Potter.

  Criminal history? She was once arrested for trespassing at the age of nineteen. The charge was ultimately dismissed. I Googled the address where the infraction was committed and found that a water tower stood at that location. So she—along with some friends, most likely—had climbed a water tower, or attempted to. Teenage shenanigans. Beyond that, she had nothing except a few traffic tickets.

  Her credit was outstanding.

  She was a registered voter.

  The home she owned was hers outright, with no mortgage.

  Alex Dunn had been her second husband. She had been married once before at the age of 23, for sixteen months.

  At least 90 percent of the relevant links had to do with the death of Alicia’s sister, but I didn’t find anything new about that tragedy or the subsequent investigation. The widely held conclusion was that it was an accident.

  I got lost in my work and the hours went by quickly. But I didn’t make any real progress on the case.

  Finally I went back to that message I’d sent to Alicia Potter on Facebook. Still no reply. So I sent another one, saying that I simply wanted to ask a few questions about Alex Dunn’s coin collection, and promising that I would only take a couple minutes of her time. If she wanted to do it by phone or email, that was fine with me.

  It was fifteen minutes after ten when I heard a knock on my door.

  I wasn’t expecting anyone, so I expected it to be someone at the wrong address. That happened occasionally in this apartment complex, especially later in the evening. Someone would think they were at Building B when they were at Building C, and they would be looking for the second door on the right down the breezeway on the second floor. Oh, wait. This isn’t Sally’s apartment. Sorry to bother you.

  I opened the door and was met by a handsome face. The face was on a man in his mid-thirties, with a nice tan and white teeth. He was wearing khaki pants, loafers, and an expensive golf shirt. He stood about six feet tall, with a slender but athletic build.

  I recognized him from photos Mia had shown me, but I pretended I didn’t.

  “Roy?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Garlen Gieger,” he said.

  “Oh, hey,” I said, shaking the hand he now extended. “How’s it going?”

  I’m sure I appeared slightly puzzled, which wasn’t pretense, because I had no idea why he was here. For a moment I wondered how he had gotten my address, until I remembered that I’d invited him to a small barbecue I’d hosted a few months ago. Mia had come alone, which hadn’t bothered me a bit.

  “Hope I didn’t wake you,” Garlen said. “You got a minute?”

  Right then I could smell the beer on his breath. I was guessing Garlen had been out to happy hour earlier, and that had turned into a longer evening, and now he was here, for some reason.

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  I closed the door behind him, and he declined an offer to sit, saying this would only take a minute. I didn’t bother offering him anything to drink.

  “You doing all right?” he asked.

  “Sure. You?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Good.”

  “Look,” he said. “I just wanted to come over and introduce myself, because Mia and I have been seeing a lot of each other lately. Obviously, I hope that continues, and if it does, I thought you and me should have a little chat. Kind of get to know each other. So we both know the lay of the landscape, as it were.”

  Perhaps Garlen was a little more inebriated than I’d first thought.

  I said, “I, uh—”

  “First things first,” Garlen said. “I understand that the two of you are partners, and even m
ore than that, you’re friends. I totally respect that.”

  “You do?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I could smell his cologne. It was honestly quite pleasant.

  “That’s comforting,” I said.

  Garlen swayed a little on his feet. Just a little.

  “She thinks very highly of you, Roy,” he said. “I think she even loves you in the same way a sister loves a brother, and I bet it goes both ways. Of course, I’m hoping that’s—well, how can I say this? I’m here, right now, because—how was the canoe ride today?”

  “The canoe ride?”

  “She said you went on a canoe ride.”

  “Well, yes, we did, in the sense that there was a canoe, we were both in it, and it was on the water.”

  “That’s cute.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But why?”

  “It was cute because I have a clever way of looking at things.”

  “No, come on, Roy. You know what I mean. Why a canoe ride?”

  “The kayaks were all taken.”

  He shook a finger at me, like I was quite the mischievous rascal. “She’s told me you’re funny—and she’s right. But let’s get serious for a moment, okay? Can we do that?”

  “You go first.”

  “Okay, cool. Look, I guess I’m making this into a big deal, and that’s not my intention at all. But going on a canoe ride—that doesn’t seem like a partner thing, or even a brother-and-sister thing.”

  He stopped talking. I waited. He lowered his head and looked at me meaningfully.

  “Roy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the deal on the canoe ride?”

  “Garlen?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking me. Are you under the impression that I took Mia out in the canoe today as some sort of romantic overture?”

  “That’s, yes, what I’m wondering. Am I off base?”

  He was going to wake up tomorrow with a hangover and a lot of regret for having come over here.

  “Yes, you are,” I said.

  He blew out a big breath of relief. “That’s good to hear.”

  “Not that it’s really any of your business,” I said.

  If this situation was going to get ugly, here is where it would start.

  “I guess not,” he said. “Fair enough.”