[To Die For 01] - A View to Die For (2012) by Richard Houston Page A

the restaurant part-time. Her real job is a barmaid, or should I say, a barfly. Mike had been so depressed about losing his partner and business; I thought he was going to leave me for her. But then the job ended; his buddy, Ron, took a job at Tyson’s in Sedalia, and Mike went back to work on his path. That project kept his mind off his troubles and Linda.
    “Mike found the coins not long after that. You could see him change overnight. He even quit drinking for a while. Then his drinking started again after taking the coins to the pawn shop, and he found out they would barely catch up the house payments,” she said, pausing long enough to refill her drink.
    She continued after downing half a glass. “Amy had mentioned to me once that Hal collected rare coins, so I thought this would be a great way to get a second opinion on what they were worth.”
    “The nurse?” I asked.
    “Yeah. Amy and Hal are my neighbors, but I guess Mom must have told you that. She worships the ground Hal walks on. He makes me sick the way he’s always hitting on me.” Megan seemed to shudder in disgust. “I asked Amy if she thought Hal would mind taking a look at them. That same night Hal calls and asks Mike to read off the dates and mint marks, whatever that is.”
    “A mark on the coin that indicates where it’s made,” I answered. “Our mint back in Denver uses a D, San Francisco an S, etc.” I didn’t bother to go on; I could see she wasn’t really listening. “Maybe Hal stole the coins and not some mysterious online buyer.”
    “When Mike called, Hal was on his way to California. Otherwise, Mike would have taken the coins over to him instead of describing them on the phone,” she answered.
    “What did Hal say? Did he think they were worth anything?”
    “No. And he wasn’t interested in buying them either.”
    “Sounds like they weren’t collectable – like the pawn broker said. Even if Mike did find a buyer online, it doesn’t look like they would be worth killing for.”
    “Will you at least see who Mike was chatting with online? Please, Porky.”
    “Only if you tell me why you sent me a copy of that article about the old couple.”
    Megan looked at me like I had spoken in an obscure dialect. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    I explained how the copy had arrived the day before I left Colorado, and how it had the same defect as the picture she had just showed me.
    “Well, I didn’t send it,” she said after I finished.
    “That leaves Mike or Kevin,” I said. “I can’t fathom why Kevin would send me it, so I have to assume it was Mike. I wonder what he was trying to tell me.”
    My sister simply shrugged. “I think the beer is making you paranoid. I doubt I have the only defective printer in the world. Besides, what frigging difference does it make? Are you going to help me or not?”
    “Guess I’ve got nothing better to do. What do you say, Fred? Do you want to go looking for treasure?” Fred looked at me when I mentioned his name. I swear he looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

    Fred woke me early the next morning. He could be like an alarm clock with his morning ritual. At first I didn’t want to get up; I had stayed out on the deck long after my sister had gone to bed. My mind wouldn’t let me sleep. Her story of the coins and the discovery of the defective printer had erased the effects of the beer and kept me up most of the night. But I had a terrible itch to see the cave anyway, so this time it didn’t bother me to get up at the crack of dawn to let Fred out.
    Meg had said I shouldn’t go down there alone in case I fell. Neither lack of backup, nor calamine lotion, was going to stop that itch. Access to her dock on the water was by a hillside tram or by stairs from the middle deck; I preferred the tram. The stairs were more for a younger man in better shape than me. I had only gone halfway down the hill when I saw the cave. It wasn’t visible from the water or the top of the