Chapter 1 – The First Clue

You’d think finding a slightly scorched fifty-dollar bill behind the charred kitchen baseboard of the fixer-upper my granddaughters talked me into buying was pretty good luck; but if I knew then what I know now, I would have finished turning that bill into ashes.

Ulysses S. Grant looked remarkably well as I took the bill out of my wallet at my favorite coffee shop the morning after finding it. Ruby Spearman, the owner of Java Jitters, took my newfound money and handed me a twenty ounce traveler sleeved in a cardboard cozy. She looked somehow different and had either changed the tint of her face powder or was sporting a golden tan from her recent vacation to Hawaii.

“Hey, big spender,” she said, as I exchanged dough for joe, “looks like this has been burning a hole in your pocket.”

I smiled. “I heard you were back but didn’t believe it.”

“I’m going to move to the big island yet, Chip.”

“I thought you already had,” I said, as she counted back my change.

Ruby laughed then said, “I’ve only been gone a couple of weeks.”

“Is that all?” I said, taking a drink and burning my lip.

She smiled as I pulled the paper cup away from my mouth too fast and sloshed the steaming black coffee over my hand. “Is it too hot?”

“Naw,” I said, setting the cup on the counter and dragging my hand across the back of my jeans. “It just doesn’t take me long to check out your joe, Ruby. Tastes about the same as before you left. Welcome back.”

She chuckled. “You got time to take a seat? I’ll join you in a minute or two.”

“I’ve got to get to work.”

“On Saturday… Who you kidding?”

Since we did have some catching up to do and I couldn’t work any faster than my money would stretch, I found an empty seat at a table in the middle of the room and waited for her to ring up the next two customers in line. Ruby looked good for a woman as old as me, not to mention one a whole lot younger. She was a head shorter and a little wide in the hips maybe, but I wasn’t about to say anything about that. Her brown hair had a few blonde streaks that complemented her tan and I told her so as she slid into the chair beside mine. She set a white porcelain mug on the table and gave her head a shake. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s actually good to be home. Now, what’s with this you working on Saturday business? I thought you had that lawyer all paid off.”

“I do; even got my bail money back.”

“I take it not from George?”

“Let’s not ruin the morning.”

“So, Jake’s got you on another one of his big-deal jobs with a penalty clause?”

“Nothing like that Ruby, I bought a house while you were gone.”

“You’re kidding. How’d you sell your condo in this market?”

“I haven’t,” I said. “But Winston and Franklynn talked me into buying this fixer-upper over on Sharon Way not too far from the Washoe Golf Course, which is fortunate to still be standing after a meth lab exploded in the kitchen.”

“Are you looking to flip it?”

“No. I plan to fix it up and move in.”

“Is that such a good idea?”

“My granddaughters seem to think so and so do I. Although I own my condo free and clear, the HOA fees are now more each month than my mortgage payments used to be. The girls figure when I finally hang up my tool belt and have to rely solely on social security I might not be able to afford the monthly fees.”

“If in fact social security is still around and solvent.”

I nodded at the possibility. “Well, I got a good deal on the house, which is a 1922 Craftsman bungalow, one and a half stories and in pretty rough shape but, like I said, I got a pretty good deal.”

“How rough?”

“Rough enough that the previous owners couldn’t afford to fix it up. Seems they’d rented it to a young German couple who wound up losing their jobs when the economy turned south and they fired up a meth lab attempting to make ends meet. The next door neighbor dialed 911 after his side windows imploded when a batch the couple had been cooking lit off killing them both and gutting the back of the house. Then, because the owner’s homeowner insurance wouldn’t pay for the criminally related damage and they couldn’t afford to make the repairs, they boarded it up and walked away.”

“Leaving the bank to foreclose?”

“Yes, but boarded up the way it was it wasn’t long before vagrants and crack-addicts began moving in and destroyed much of the interior. They knocked holes in walls and smashed out windows, carved up the hardwood floors, and ripped out every copper pipe and electrical wire to sell as scrap for pennies on the dollar.”

“That’s tough.”

I nodded.

“And you wanted to buy it?”

“Not at first. Winston and her boyfriend, Coit Sheldon, found the place driving through the gentrified old Southwest neighborhood looking for a place to rent while attending UNR. She thought with my handyman skills I’d be able to repair it a lot more economically than most people and said I might be able to get it at a good price.”

“That just doesn’t sound like you, Chip.”

“I know, and I’ll tell you, Ruby, it took almost everything I had. But if I play my cards right, I’ll be able to fix it up before I retire and have a real nice place. It didn’t take much convincing from the girls before I wrote an offer and signed an interest only loan with a five-year balloon payment.”

“I don’t know, Chip, five years goes by pretty quick. Winston was just starting high school five years ago and now she’s a sophomore in college. And Franklynn… well she’d just turned 13, remember?”

I shook my head in disbelief and picked the traveler off the table. I’m not sure where Julie came up with the names for the girls because my ex-wife and I thought they were terrible names for our granddaughters the first time we heard them. But our daughter liked them and because George had wanted boys he agreed. My grandmother told me not to worry about it because she believed that if both parents liked the names, most likely, the girls would too. And she was right.

“Well, as I remember, you really ticked Franklynn off calling her a brand new teenager all the time.”

I chuckled and took another sip of joe.

“Now she’s what, a senior already?”

“Yes,” I said, taking a deep breath and setting the paper cup back on the table.

“Time waits for no man, my friend.”

“Unfortunately.”

“You think you can sell the condo before that balloon payment comes due?”

“I’m confident the market will turn around and it’ll all work out. It was a really sweet deal, Ruby. I was able to buy the house for more than a hundred and fifty thousand below the price of similar houses in the area. I figured that by doing the repairs myself I can get it back to market value for another thirty to thirty-five grand.”

“All good points, my friend, but the housing market is about as bad as I’ve ever seen it and how much longer can you go on working?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’m in pretty good shape and I like what I’m doing.”

“Property taxes aren’t coming down, either.”

“They never will. Except for the association fees it doesn’t feel any worse than it did during the last two recessions. We came through those and we’ll come through this. The only downside I see is that when my condo finally does sell, I’ll need a place to live and rentals these days are just unreasonable. So, soon as I get the plumbing, electrical, and heating fixed I can move in and begin working on the cosmetics.”

“You don’t need heating just yet.”

“No, but copper pipe is expensive.”

“What’s wrong with using PVC, Chip? At your age how long does it have to last?”

“Hopefully another twenty years.”

“I’m sure PVC will do that.”

“Yes, but I want to do it right.”

“PVC is right for you my friend. You don’t have to gold-plate everything. No one’s going to see those pipes. If it’s that important, the next owners can put in copper after you’re gone.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, considering how many more feet of PVC the dead president I found would buy than copper.

“So, move in and enjoy your house, Chip. You’re not as young as you seem to think you are.”

Chapter 2 – Smoky-Gray Eyes and Smoking Tires

Although Reno has nice stores, a good library, tons of restaurants and reasonably affluent people, I like to say it’s halfway between Las Vegas and reality. But who needs reality when you have high-stakes action at the craps tables and around the clock good times on Fourth Street? The Biggest Little City in the World was founded on gambling and other vices because tourists were interested in more than fake saloons and cheap souvenirs of the old west down in Virginia City or up at the Ponderosa Ranch in Lake Tahoe. Although my granddaughters had never seen the television western, Bonanza, I had fond memories of taking them to the theme park based on the popular TV show when they were children. They’d enjoyed the Conestoga wagon rides, panning for gold, and dining on Hoss Burgers. Unfortunately, when land prices were spiking more than a decade ago, the park’s owners had cashed it in and ridden off into the sunset.

Except for a four year hitch in Uncle Sam’s Navy, I’ve lived in Reno all my life; actually, let’s make that, not yet. Standing in the charred remains of what was once the kitchen of the house I’d just bought, I recalled shooting pool in some two-bit bar in Bangor, Maine with a man who looked older than Moses. He talked with that swamp-Yankee twang my high school sweetheart and ex-wife, Shari, loved to listen to on Murder She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury.

I was a young smart-ass in the Sea Bees and was feeling pretty cocky after winning the last several games when that gnarly old man hobbled up to the table using a cane and took the next five minutes getting his quarter into the slot and racking the balls. While waiting, I remember saying something like, “Live here all your life, old timer?” Well, he just squinted at me over the top of his smudged up glasses and said, “Not yet,” then proceeded to run the table. For whatever reason I’ve never forgotten that incident and suddenly wondered if the old Craftsman bungalow would be where I called it quits. If I stopped to think about it, I was certainly as old now as that old man in the bar was then. It just didn’t feel like it is all.

Being a purist, I’ve always gotten a great deal of satisfaction from repairing old homes as close to their original condition as possible. As I made a mental inventory of materials needed to repair the plumbing, I began thinking that maybe Ruby was right. Not only about my age but also about using PVC, which besides being much less expensive, was a whole lot easier to work with than copper; at least for me. Sweating on fittings was never one of my strong points. Most of the time I used compression fittings, but cementing PVC together was even easier and just as reliable. So then, I wondered, how was using copper in place of the original cast iron any different than using PVC in place of copper? The bottom line was still like Ruby said: how long did it have to last me?

Just about the time I’d calculated what I needed to get started and was ready to head off to Home Depot for a load of PVC pipe, fittings, and cement, my youngest granddaughter pulled into the driveway in her purple PT Cruiser and tooted, “shave and a haircut, two bits.”

“Hey Grampy,” Franklynn said, bumping the car door closed with her backside as I stepped out the door onto the covered front porch. She was wearing Farmer John coveralls over one of her red and blue Reno Huskies T-shirts and a pair of highly polished, steel-toed boots, which I imagined she wore working at her summer job as a framing carpenter.

My boss, Jake Du Monde, had helped her get the job with a local builder friend of his who appreciated having a woman on the construction crew payroll because it got him some kind of Federal points or something. The fact that she was also reliable and knew what she was doing didn’t hurt. Even so, her father didn’t like Franklynn working construction because he said it wasn’t lady-like, which, if you ask me, is a complete reversal in his outlook when naming her. But I thought it was cool. Not only was it something she wanted to do but enjoyed as well. Franklynn was able to earn a whole lot more than minimum wage or whatever it was she’d made at Gottschalks’ shoe department in Park Lane Mall before it was torn down.

I hooded my eyes with one hand and squinted. “I thought you were working today?”

“I am. Here!”

I stepped off the porch. “You were supposed to get time and a half.”

“Helping you?”

“That ain’t going to happen.”

“Isn’t going to happen, Grampy,” she said, paying me back for all the times I’d corrected her grammar over the years.

“Yes, isn’t going to happen,” I said, looking into her teak-brown eyes and tousling her, silky, honey-maple colored hair.

Her eyes crinkled as she smiled and ducked away.

 “So, get back in the car and go to work,” I said, reopening her car door. “I already have my day planned.”

“Don’t be silly. The sooner we get this dump fixed up the sooner we can move in.”

“What’s this we business?” I asked, somewhat surprised. “You have a mouse in your pocket?”

She laughed. “No, I’m just glad to see you.”

“Don’t be crude,” I said, and held the door open for her. “If it’s such a dump, why would you want to live here?”

“Because next week I’ll be eighteen and can legally move out of Dad’s place.

“I thought you and Deidre were getting along?”

“Only when I’m not there,” she said, pushing my hand off her car door and slamming it closed. “Now, let’s get this show on the road. Winston’s coming over after her softball game to help too. It wouldn’t be right not to have the materials on hand when she arrives.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said, suddenly becoming suspicious. “What are you two little dickens up to?”

“Nothing, Grampy, we just want to help you. That’s all.”

Before I could respond Winston pulled into the driveway in her pink Jeep Wrangler and screeched to a stop mere inches behind Franklynn’s bumper. Her smoky-gray eyes flashed at her sister as she switched off the engine and threw open the door.

“What up?” Franklynn asked. “You weren’t supposed to come over before—”

“If you ever checked your messages you’d know that’s not going to happen.”

Franklynn placed her hands on her hips. “Seriously Win?”

“I only came over because I texted you to do me a solid this morning and, like I said, you blew me off.”

“You knew I was going to be helping Grampy.”

“Well, duh! That’s why I’m here.”

“But not to help Grampy?”

“That’s right, Nancy Drew. Not to help Grandpa.”

“And you expect me to just drop what I’m doing and help you with an attitude like that?”

Winston slammed her car door closed and glared out the window. “Just forget it.” She started the engine, slapped the gearshift into reverse and chirped the tires backing out of the driveway. Fortunately there weren’t any cars coming as she braked on the asphalt, slammed the shifter into first, and smoked the tires as she took off toward town.

“What’s got into her?” I asked.

Franklynn shrugged and headed for her car. “It’s just part of her genetic code, Grampy. She’ll get over it. See you later, okay?”

Chapter 3 – There’s Something Going On

Despite the fact my granddaughters had grown up without their mother, who’d been murdered when they were seven and nine, and only had a part-time father because his sales job involved so much traveling, Winston and Franklynn had turned into well-adjusted, beautiful young women. Even so, they did have their moments when it’s difficult not to think of them as little girls – especially when they begin arguing for no apparent reason. I hoped that Franklynn was able to catch up with her sister and work out whatever was bothering her.

I’d just returned from Home Depot and was unloading PVC from the back of my truck when my cell phone began a series of clicks and whistles, sounding like one of the dolphins at Sea World. Normally, I’d just let it go to voicemail, but the annoying EeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEe was a special ring tone that Winston had installed on my phone for her sister thinking it was funny. After witnessing how distraught Winston had been because her sister hadn’t answered a text, I figured I’d better get it.

“Yes?” I said.

“You better get over here, Grampy.”

“Where’s here?” I asked, but before she could answer I heard Winston voice in the background.

“I told you not to call him.”

“Guess,” Franklynn said.

“Okay,” I said. “Try not to kill each other before I get there.”

I’ve always found it interesting that warning signs use the same colors – red, yellow, black and white – as those found in nature, which essentially function the opposite of camouflage. It seems that the vivid colors tend to protect dangerous critters such as coral snakes, yellow jackets and skunks from potential predators by making them highly visible, easily remembered, and thereby avoided. I suppose that’s also why God created some people with red hair.

Winston’s apartment was only three blocks from UNR’s entrance to the Lawler Events Center on North Virginia Street. Weekend traffic was light that time of day, so I was able to make it over to her place in about ten minutes. As she yanked the door open, the midday sun lit up her cinnamon freckles and highlighted her Burmese rosewood colored hair.

“What!”

“Suppose you tell me,” I said, brushing past her.

“Oh, just come on in,” she said, slamming the door behind me.

Her living room was a tidy collection of thrift-shop furniture, and plank and cinderblock bookshelves that were loaded with textbooks and expensive looking stereo equipment. A bigger-than-life Fathead of Derek Jeter wearing the New York Yankee’s distinctive pinstriped home uniform, with bat cocked ready to swing, filled the wall across from the door. “I Know There’s Something Going On” by Frida was playing as Franklynn emerged from the kitchen carrying a mug of joe.

“You need to tell Grampy what happened.”

Winston took a deep breath and clenched her jaw, her body language belying the casual tone in her voice. “It’s nothing, really.”

Franklynn handed me the mug. “Win says someone broke into her apartment last night while she and Coit were at the movies.”

“Are you all right, sweetie?” I asked, setting the mug on an end table beside a floral-print upholstered davenport.

“I’m fine,” she said, through clenched teeth, “and—”

“For now!” Franklynn interrupted.

“—Fran had no business calling you.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, glancing across the room at the desktop computer and flat-screen monitor perched atop a folding-leg card table. “It doesn’t look like anything’s missing. How’d they get in?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re sure they did?”

She bit her lip and nodded. Inside the apartment her reddish hair didn’t seem as ominous as in the sunlight and her freckles tended to camouflage her anger like the toxic treachery within beautiful spotted-mushrooms.

“The perv stole her underwear Grampy!”

“Are you sure one of your roommates didn’t borrow it.”

“Eeeww,” Winston said, and plopped back on the davenport folding her arms across her chest. “In case you forgot, my roommates are gone for the summer. Karisa’s in Mount Vernon, Washington and Lainey’s in Memphis, Tennessee.” Her face flushed as she crossed her outstretched ankles. “And FYI… we don’t share our underwear.”

“I don’t even want to think what that perv did with it, either,” Franklynn said, plopping into the powder blue wingback chair, accidentally knocking one of my grandmother’s lace doilies off a threadbare arm.

I could feel my face flushing a bit from a combination of embarrassment and anger. “How about your roommates’ underwear,” I asked, “any of it missing?”

“How would I know?”

“You could check?”

“I would imagine they took it with them. They packed a lot of stuff before they left.”

“But they didn’t take everything?”

“No, they are coming back you know? They left some winter clothes like coats and scarves in the hall closet and stuff they wouldn’t need this summer.”

“So go check their dresser drawers,” I said, reaching for the mug I’d set down a moment ago.

Franklynn was smoothing out the doily she’d picked-up from the floor as Winston left the room. “We need to change the locks on the doors today, Grampy,” she said, “so we won’t be able to help you this afternoon.”

“And get a security system installed,” I said, taking a drink from the mug.

“Isn’t that like super expensive?”

“Depends.”

“I don’t know if Win can get down with that, at least not by herself. Besides, it’s not like she owns this apartment.”

“Well, if the landlord won’t have it done then I will,” I said, as Winston came back into the living room.

“You will what, Grandpa?”

“Have a security system installed. Well?”

She shrugged. “Hard to tell, only some flannel PJs and wool socks in their dressers.”

“No underwear?”

“No,” she said, stopping short of the davenport and staring down at where she’d been sitting. Peeking up from the backside of the cushion was the elastic waistband of pink Lady Jockey underpants.

“What the…” she said, reaching for them.

“Eeeww,” Franklynn said, as her sister pulled the wadded panties out from behind the cushion. “Are those yours?”

Winston dropped them like a hot drill bit removed too soon from the chuck. “They were; but not anymore,” she said, heading for the kitchen. “I’m going to throw them out.”

“Not so fast,” I said, “there could be DNA on them.”

“Eeeww, Grampy, I told you I didn’t want to know what he did with them.”

“The cops could use it to find whoever did this.”

Winston returned from the kitchen door with a plastic grocery bag she’d pulled from a receptacle behind the garbage can. “They’d have to have a suspect to match it to first, and I don’t have a clue who could have done this.”

“Maybe it’s someone your roommates know.”

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, they’re not here.”

I set the joe down again, walked over to her, and wrapped my arms around her. She was trembling. “I’m not the enemy here, Winston; I’m only trying to help. You need to call the police and report this. It may not be the first time he’s done something like this. Franklynn and I will help you do whatever it takes to make you feel safe again.”

She began sobbing and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I know Grandpa. It’s just so… so ah… it really creeps me out.”

I looked over at Franklynn and she came over and joined in a group hug. “Grampy’s right, Win. After you make the report we’re going to change the locks and install a security system. Then I’ll tell dad I want to spend a couple of nights with you.”

“Or you can have your old room back in the condo,” I said.

She pushed away and picked up the underwear like a pile of doggie doo with the plastic bag. “I don’t want to live my life in fear. I know there are a lot of bad people out there but I’m not going to move back into your condo, Grandpa. So, let’s do this thing,” she said, turning the bag inside-out and tying the handles together in a knot.

*  *  *  *

The cop was just a kid and not much older than Winston, if that, which concerned me until I remembered how my grandmother used to say her doctors looked like kids even though she knew they weren’t. She didn’t want to admit they were the right age and she was just getting older. Looking at the cop I hated to think that maybe the same thing was happening to me. However, considering the alternative, it wasn’t such a bad thing. And neither was being young for a cop when I thought about all the weight they carried around on duty: bulletproof vest, gun-belt loaded with a Taser, nightstick, handcuffs, flashlight and extra ammunition, a two-way radio, cell phone, pens, pencils, a notebook, and I didn’t know what else inside his pockets. Detective Zorn once told me it added about thirty pounds to their weight and, just to give me perspective, said it would be like having to run after crooks in heavy work boots wearing a tool-belt loaded with a hammer, tape measure, framing square, battery operated drill, and whatever. He really wasn’t up on his construction tools.

“You’re sure nothing else is missing, Miss Pierce?” the officer asked, looking up from his notebook.

“You mean besides my sense of security?”

He was four or five inches shorter than me, but I figured weighed about the same. He was stocky and clean shaven with peachy-blonde hair. He glanced at me with soft-brown eyes that didn’t appear to have much experience. “Your grandfather is right about changing the locks and installing a security system, but I have to tell you that because of the high-number of false alarms we get every year, response to alarm calls has a low priority and may be delayed because of higher-priority calls.”

“So what good is it then?” Franklynn asked.

He clicked his pen closed. “Well, given the choice of breaking into two similar apartments, a burglar is always going to choose the least difficult. A security system is just one more thing for him to deal with. It’s really more of a deterrent because nothing can keep a burglar out if he’s bent on getting in.”

“Oh, that makes me feel much more comfortable,” Winston said.

He closed his notebook and stuck it in the pocket under his nametag, which said, Littlefield. “Keep in mind your goal is to make it difficult for a burglar by forcing them to take more time and to make more noise and maybe attract a neighbor’s attention.”

“You make it sound like some kind of game,” Franklynn said.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be flip.”

She looked at me with fire in her eyes. “I wouldn’t call him a burglar, Grampy, he only stole her underwear. He’s a perv! God only knows what he did with the pair he left behind or what he’ll do next. My sister isn’t safe. Officer Littlefield just said an alarm won’t keep the creep out and will have a low priority if it does go off.”