CHAPTER 4
Mac drove through town, making his way to Lainey’s.
We should also mention the thirty-six-year-old off duty firefighter, Geoff Wickham, who tried to save Bingman, succumbed to complications from smoke inhalation the day after the fire. Wickham left behind a wife and three-year-old daughter at the time. We will not forget his sacrifice.
In other news ...” Mac turned off the radio. He couldn’t stand being reminded it’d been three years since Geoff had died. And he still hadn’t found those damn coins.
His patience was running out. He’d spent the last three years taking care of Lainey’s honey-do lists, which hid the real reason he spent so much time at her house. He was really searching for where Geoff would’ve hidden the four million dollars in Eisenhower silver dollars.
Professor Bingman was a packrat of rare oddities, and when he’d fallen asleep with a faulty space heater, it was a crime of opportunity too good to pass up.
* * *
Jan yanked open the front door of the police station and marched up to the information desk. “I’d like to speak to Detective Moore, please.”
“Is he expecting you, ma’am?” the desk officer asked.
“He should be. Please tell him Jan Bingman is here.”
“Yes, ma’am. Please have a seat. I’ll call him.”
Jan turned around to the lobby chairs but remained standing.
She began surveying the accolades adorning the walls of the lobby when the door beside the reception window opened.
A younger man than Detective Moore stepped out.
He was in uniform too. “Ms. Bingman, I’m Lieutenant O’Connor.
Detective Moore is not available. Can I help you? ”
“When do you expect he will be?” She stepped two strides closer.
“I’m not sure.”
“Can you pass on a message, please?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You tell Detective Moore, I realize my nagging emails and phone messages are too easy to ignore, so here I am in person, in the flesh! I’m in town for the memorial dedication in honor of my late uncle.
But I have no intention of leaving Abilene until I find out what happened to my uncle’s valuable coin collection.
I’m retired now and going to conduct my own investigation.
I will come by here every day until Moore meets with me.
I need to know what he’s doing to recover the missing silver dollars. ”
“Can I get your number and contact info to pass on to Detective Moore?”
Jan scoffed, “He has my info. Lieutenant.” She turned and made her way towards to door. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and I’ll ask for you if Moore isn’t here,” she said over her shoulder.
Jake returned to the interior of the station. He stood in the doorway of Moore’s office. “Moore, you owe me. Now that woman is going to ask for me if you’re not around.”
Detective Moore sat typing on his computer. He removed his reading glasses. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t deal with her today. I’m trying to finish up the report for that drug bust out on Old 40 highway. She’s relentless, I know.”
“Well, she informed me she’s retired now and not leaving town until the case of her uncle’s missing coins is solved.”
Moore rolled his eyes. “The lady’s impossible, but I’ll call her.”
Jake leaned against the doorjamb. “What is she talking about? I thought the museum received everything of historical value from the Bingman fire.”
“It did.” Moore rubbed his eyes. “But she insists her uncle had a collection of Eisenhower silver dollars, some of which were individually worth thousands of dollars. However, they were never recovered.
“Many people in town have those silver dollars, being this is Eisenhower’s birthplace, but they’re not worth that much. What made Bingman’s collection so valuable?”
“According to his niece, the lovely ball buster you met today, they were in uncirculated condition, and she believes most were minted in San Francisco with no identification, which makes them worth a lot of money.”
“Huh? I’ve never heard of those.”
“When you get home tonight, look it up on the internet. I’ll let you go down that rabbit hole like I did.
” Moore sighed. “Anyway, the retired Professor Bingman made no record of them with the insurance company nor listed them in his own written records like the rest of his collections. The only person who claims their existence is Jan Bingman. I interviewed the first responders, the firemen, and the fire marshal. No one saw them, and none were recovered from the scene. It’s her imagination, and a lost cause is what I’ve decided. ”
“That’s the fire Geoff Wickham died the next day from, right?”
“Yeah, he’s the only one I didn’t get to interview.
Wickham was off duty, came upon the fire and went into the house to rescue the old bastard.
He located him, pulled his body out, but he was already gone.
Then Wickham died the next day of a heart attack from taking on too much smoke. What a waste,” Moore shook his head.
“My wife works with his widow at Central Savings and Loan. They’ve hit it off. She’s been out to dinner with us,” Jake said.
“Damn shame. She has a daughter, right?”
“Yeah, she’s six now, I think,” Jake scratched his chin.
“It’s been three years, and I’ve told Jan Bingman if I turned anything up, she’d be the first to know,” Moore leaned back in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, you owe me a thirty-pack for dealing with her today,” Jake chuckled.
“I appreciate it. I’ll stop by the liquor store on my way in tomorrow.”
* * *
Lainey pulled into the driveway to find Mac raking leaves on the front lawn. “Mac!” she called as she walked onto the lawn. “I told you, Viv and I were going to rake this weekend.”
“I know, but your gutters needed cleaning, and I’m already here.” He said, pushing the pile of dead leaves into a large compost bag.
She looked up at the roof. “I didn’t realize the gutters needed it already. Thank you.”
“No biggie. My shift at the station doesn’t start for a couple of hours. I wanted to take care of it before we get the rain they’re calling for tomorrow,” Mac said, shoving more amber and yellow leaves into the bag.
Since Geoff’s death, Mac had been popping by and taking care of things Lainey never realized she should be doing. If it weren’t for Mac, she believed her house would’ve been in complete shambles by now.
He was Geoff’s best friend since they were young and a firefighter too. Though Mac was married and she assumed trying to start a family of his own, he had really stepped up to help her and Viv. She didn’t even ask him to do half the things he did, and he just did them.
He mowed her lawn in the warmer months, and she’d given him the garage door code so he could gain access to the lawn tools if she wasn’t home.
Two springs ago, Mac dug up the entire front landscaping and replanted all new shrubbery. Lainey hadn’t asked him to, nor did she think it needed it, but it looked better than ever. He was always taking it upon himself to do maintenance and every little thing that needed fixing.
She concluded, this was his way of mourning Geoff, and she protested very little after realizing it. She took comfort in Mac always being there, whether or not she needed him. And if the shoe were on the other foot, she was sure Geoff would be doing the same for his wife.
“How’s Paige doing?” she asked.
Mac leaned his palms on top of the rake handle. “She’s good. She’s in Nevada visiting her mom right now.”
“That’s nice. I’m sure she misses Vegas when the weather turns cold here.”
“I think she misses Vegas even when the weather’s warm here.”
By his tone, Lainey could tell she’d struck a nerve, and all was not sunshine and lemonade at home. “Well, tell her I said hi when you talk to her,” Lainey started for the house.
“Out of curiosity,” Mac said. Lainey turned back. “What’d you decide to do with Geoff’s old gun safe?”
“It’s still in the basement. I talked to his dad about it, and he said when I’m ready to sell the guns, he’d help me.”
“I know I helped you go through it a couple of years ago, but I was just curious. This may be a weird question,” Mac propped his forearm against the top of the rake handle. “Geoff didn’t have any other safes in the house, did he?”
Lainey cocked her head. “No. Why?”
Mac shook his head. “I know it’s a silly question. I was thinking he mentioned a wall or a smaller safe one time,” he shrugged, “but that was years ago. I don’t know what made me think of it.”
“The file cabinet in the office is where we kept...well, I keep important documents and such. It locks and is one of those fireproof jobs. Maybe that’s what he was talking about.”
“Hmm.” Mac scratched his chin. “Yeah, that’s probably what it was.”
* * *
As Jan drove to the neighborhood where her uncle lived, she was determined to get justice — not for herself, but for Uncle Rudy too.
He promised those coins would be hers when he passed, along with the two original Frederic Remington paintings, which had survived the fire and now hung in her home back in Prescott, Arizona.
She had hired an art restoration business to repair them. They’d sustained substantial smoke damage. But now they were good as new.
If she could only find the rest of her inheritance, those mint Eisenhower silver dollars.
On their last visit before his death, her uncle Rudy showed them to her. He hadn’t cataloged them because they weren’t to be donated with the rest of his collections. They were supposed to go to her. A gift for being the executor of his will.
Apparently, he never added them to his insurance policy either. He’d kept them in three mangled cardboard boxes for years. Why he couldn’t find a better storage container, she didn’t know.
But the fact remained, they were missing. Uncle Rudy had them, and someone stole them.
She felt it in her core, yet no one believed her. Not the insurance adjuster three years ago, not Detective Moore, no one.