[To Die For 01] - A View to Die For (2012) (7 page)

The smell of fresh-brewed coffee coming from the kitchen made me follow my sister back into the house. She went in search of the ringing phone, and I headed for the coffee pot. Wireless phones are a great invention, but they’re a pain for someone like my sister, who leaves them in places where only a psychic could find them.

I could hear her raise her voice from wherever she had found the phone. It was none of my business, so I went back outside with my coffee to watch the boats on the lake.

“That was the mortgage company. I should have known Kevin would never call this early,” Megan said when she joined me back on the deck. “Now what’s this about walking crappies?”

The sun was high enough to hurt my eyes, so I took a seat under the deck umbrella across from her. Then I told her about the signs of the intruder, but left out the part on how I measured the intruder’s height. “What’s really weird is there was no evidence of digging. You would think if word had gotten out about the coins, people would be swarming all over your hillside.”

“Maybe he wasn’t looking for coins,” she said. “Maybe he just had to relieve himself, too.”

I checked my crotch to see if I had a wet spot. “Maybe you’re right, but my money’s on the coins,” I said, realizing why Megan had made her remark. My jeans were indeed showing my age. That seemed to happen a lot lately when I drank too much the night before. I continued like nothing was wrong. “That’s quite a climb from your dock to the cave. Whoever was down there must have heard us up here and got out of there before Fred went down, or Fred would have been all over him. He was probably hiding at your dock until we left. Who else knew about the coins besides Hal and the guy online?”

Megan seemed to be trying to replay a tape in her head. Her expression went blank for a moment before I could see her eyes return to mine. “Well, there’s the pawn broker for starters, and I would think the half the town by now,” she said. “God only knows who Hal and Amy have told.”

“Did Mike tell the pawn broker about all the coins or just the one he had appraised?”

“I told you, Porky,” she answered, looking annoyed. “He only took the one. We didn’t want anyone to know about the others.”

“How about Kevin? Didn’t you say he helped with the path? Do you think Kevin and Taylor might have taken them?”

I must have hit a nerve. Her voice raised a few decibels. “Kevin wouldn’t steal from me, Jake. We all know how you feel about him. But he is my son, and I’ll tell you right now, he would never take a dime without asking. You of all people should know better than to judge a book by its cover.”

Like our mother, Megan always brought up my teenage exploits when she wanted to put me down. Before I could defend myself, we heard a vehicle coming down the driveway.

“That’s Taylor’s truck. You can hear that pile of junk a mile away,” she said without getting up. “Kevin must be right behind him.”

Fred started barking when he heard the front door open. The boys had let themselves in and joined us on the deck. I didn’t think it was possible to find a kid freakier than Kevin, but I was wrong. Taylor made Kevin look angelic. His ear lobes were stretched to accommodate what looked like wind turbines, and they actually spun when the wind caught them just right. “
Birds of a feather
,” I thought.

“Hi, Mom,” Kevin said, bending down to give her a hug while his friend went over to Fred. “Sorry I didn’t go to the jail to see you. That place gives me the creeps the way they stare at me.”

“Hey, Uncle Martin, this is Taylor,” he said without waiting for his mother to respond to his lame excuse. But the hug was all Megan needed. Her mood changed instantly. It was good to see her smile again.

“Hi,” Taylor said. He was giving Fred an ear massage, and Fred loved it. Fred started thumping his tail against the table so hard I thought he would knock it over. Maybe the kid wasn’t half bad after all.

While I had been watching Taylor and Fred, Kevin had produced a cigarette from somewhere. “What the cops want, Uncle Martin?” he asked while lighting it.

“Jake tells me that I’m still their prime suspect, and they think he’s my accomplice,” Meg answered for me, still beaming.

“No shit,” Kevin replied while expelling a cloud of smoke at the same time. I expected him to ask why, but he quickly changed the subject. “Hey, Mom. Can I use the Jeep tonight? Me and Taylor want to drive over to Party Cove, and we need some cool wheels.”

Megan’s smile faded. “Don’t you want to spend some time with us? I’ve barely seen you all week.”

“Please, Mom. Becky’s only gonna be there tonight then she has to go back to school.”

Megan sighed and got up from the table. “You’ll need gas. I suppose I’ll have to let you use my credit card.”

After Kevin and Taylor left, we spent the rest of the day catching up. Meg wanted to know why I hadn’t tried harder to keep my marriage together. She and Natalie had been good friends at one time, and they still kept in touch. I learned more about how Allison, my daughter, was getting by in a few hours than I had since the divorce. From there, we talked about our parents. She didn’t want to discuss what would happen to our mother once Father passed. She acted like as long as we didn’t broach the subject he would never die. Eventually, we got back to Mike and the coins. By that time, we all had too much to drink, and we called it a night.

Unlike Fred, who fell asleep at the foot of our hide-a-bed in Mike’s office, sleep eluded me. Mike’s computer was sitting on his desk at the end of the bed, staring at me with its Cyclops eyeball. I had thought CRT monitors were extinct. I wondered if his computer was a relic as well. “Could I be that lucky,” I said to Fred, who woke from his slumber at the mention of his name, then laid back down just as quickly.

I knew I’d never rest unless I checked out Mike’s computer, so I got up and went over to his desk. His computer was turned on its side with the monitor on top. It was running a version of Windows almost as old as the one-eyed monster it resembled. I simply booted it in Safe mode and logged into the Administrator account and changed his password. I was so engrossed in my hacking, I failed to notice Megan.

“I was getting a nightcap when I heard talking,” she said, standing outside the open door. I could feel the blood drain from my face. I felt like I’d been caught watching porn. “I thought you might have been talking to Kevin. I need to get my card back before he uses it for more than gas. Is he home?”

Fred was wide awake by now and thumping his tail on the bedcovers. Either he was happy to see Megan or thought the spread needed an old-fashioned cleaning. “Some watchdog you turned out to be,” I said to him. Then turning to my sister, I said, “No. I was talking to Fred. It beats talking to myself when I’m thinking out loud.”

Megan came into the room and took a seat next to my fierce guard-dog, so she could see the monitor clearly. She took one look at what I was doing then turned back to me with a look of shock. “You got into Mike’s account?”

“Piece of cake,” I answered while raising my head to adjust my reading glasses. “Good thing he wasn’t one for updating.”

Her initial shock morphed into admiration. It was the look I used to give my father when he would fix my bicycle. “Kevin and me tried for days to get into that computer.”

“It would have been a lot harder if he was current. These older versions of Windows are a hacker’s dream. His email is set up to insert the username and password from a cookie. I’m reading his mail now. Shall we see what he was up to?”

“Born2fish,” she said pointing to the last inbox entry. “I wonder who that is.”

“I can try a reverse email lookup, but don’t hold your breath.”

“You might as well be talking to the wall, Porky,” she said with a frown. “Skip the jargon and get on with it.”

“Sorry. Hey look at this message.” I opened the email from born2fish.

Megan read the message out loud. “I’ll have your money tomorrow. Meet me at my house after six.” She turned away from the monitor and shifted in her chair. “Do you think it’s about the coins?”

“Sounds like it. Check the date.”

“June third. The day before Mike was killed. I told you he was murdered for those coins.”

We spent another hour reading through emails, but didn’t find any more correspondence with born2fish. Megan went to bed shortly after. She had lost interest once I started reading files that only a hacker could understand.

Mike had made several web searches, trying to find the value of the coins. I couldn’t discover any searches with specific dates or mint marks, which left me clueless as to how much they were worth. I too had become bored after a few hours, and I was ready to turn in when I ran across a web page in one of his history files that had the URL of the local newspaper. I copied the link to a browser and waited for it to load. “Damn thing’s slower than you chasing a rabbit, Fred.” Once again, I woke my sentry from his dreams.

I probably would have slept until noon if not for the smell of fresh brewed coffee. I woke more confused than usual. As I suspected, the link for the local paper was the article about the murdered coin dealer and his wife. Even Fred could see the connection. Mike must have printed it on his defective printer and sent it to me. I really needed coffee if I was ever going to solve that puzzle.

“Good afternoon, sleepy head,” Megan said when Fred and I joined her in the kitchen. She was sitting at a small table. The table rested in an eating nook with a large bay window. “What time did you go to bed? You look terrible.”

“Must have been around two this morning,” I answered while letting Fred out the door leading to her deck. Then I went to the counter and poured myself some coffee. “Wow what a view.” Her kitchen looked out on the lake through a twin of the nook’s. I was tempted to take my coffee out on the deck despite a warning from a thermometer nailed to a post. It read ninety-six with equal humidity.
Thank God for air conditioning
, I thought.

“So what do we do now? Do you think born2fish is the guy sneaking around in that Bass Tracker?” she asked. I returned to the table and took a seat where I could enjoy the view without going out to the sauna.

I started to turn toward her when I saw a Great Blue Heron land on the deck. Fred had already gone down the stairs and wasn’t around to scare it off. “My thought too,” I answered while watching the bird poop on her railing. “I got nowhere with tracking him down after you went to bed. Not unless you believe Mickey Mouse did it. Oh, and by the way, I found the clipping about the murdered couple. It looks like Mike must have been the one who sent it to me.”

“What? Why would Mike do that?”

“Exactly what I wanted to ask you.”

Meg got up from the table and headed toward the coffee pot. “Maybe I bragged about you too much. I once told him how you always guessed who did it when we used to watch Murder She Wrote when we were kids.” She took her coffee pot from its burner and pushed the off button. “Just enough for two more cups. You want a refill?”

I held up my empty cup, nodding yes. “Why would he want me to solve the murder of a couple of strangers? They are strangers? Aren’t they?”

“Far as I know,” she said, filling my cup. “He never mentioned them to me. But what is this about Mickey Mouse? Sometimes your comments don’t make any sense at all.”

“Nothing I did seemed to work, so I broke down and spent the money on a reverse lookup of born2fish’s email address. It’s registered to Mickey Mouse who lives at 123 Main Street, Disneyland, CA.”

Meg walked back to her kitchen counter with the empty pot. “There must be some way to find him,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

“Of course there is. All you need to do is subpoena the records of the ISP that born2fish sent the email from. Do you have any friends at the FBI?”

She turned toward me looking defeated. “So it’s a dead-end then?”

“Maybe, Meg, it’s time to bring in a professional who has connections.”

Megan turned away from me and placed her coffee pot back in its machine. She had her back to me when she answered, so I couldn’t tell for sure, but it sounded like she was crying. “I don’t have the money to hire a private detective. You’re all I’ve got, Jake. Please, don’t quit now.”

Fred was back at the sliding door wanting in. He must have gone for a swim to cool off; he was dripping wet. “I better go out there with him before he starts scratching at your screen.” His timing was perfect. I never knew how to respond to female emotions. “And don’t worry. We’ll find a way to prove Mike didn’t kill himself.”

“Oh, Porky. You’re the best brother in the world,” she said while wiping away a tear. I was out the door before she could ask me how I planned to turn into a male version of Jessica Fletcher.

Fred gave me plenty of time to think while I waited for him to dry off. Ironically, the drier he got the wetter I became. Because of the humidity, I was soaking with perspiration. Fred didn’t have that problem. Dogs don’t sweat, nor do they worry about how to prove an in-law didn’t kill himself.

Once Fred had dried off sufficiently enough to not ruin my sister’s imported hardwood floors, Megan was nowhere in sight, but I could hear her on the phone in Mike’s office. I gave her a wave as I passed, heading for the guest bathroom to take a shower. Fred went to the kitchen where she had put out a water bowl for him. She had had the sense to put it on a large throw rug.

Megan was back in the kitchen when I finished my shower. I could hear her talking to Fred, so I wrapped myself in a bath towel and went back to Mike’s office to change into some dry clothes. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone with my insurance company. Contrary to their television ads, getting them to help in a fast and friendly manner was simply BS. They finally agreed to pay twenty-five dollars a day for a rental until the adjuster could estimate the damage to my car.

Next, I searched Truman’s twenty page phone book for a car rental. There wasn’t any, so I tried the Sedalia book. A quick call to the first listing got me a car for only thirty-five dollars a day on a weekly basis. So much for insurance.