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I could see why Katie hadn’t wanted to be morally responsible for delivering the glossy circular I held in my hand to her entire route.
When Katie had suggested that Hank Edwards was heavily involved in the buy-your-very-own-diamond-detector-and-find-the Lost-Crown-Jewels-of-Ireland-thereby-setting-yourself-up-for-life-of-ease-and-luxury-scam she’d presented exhibit A: a full-color image of Hank holding up the gadget in question on the cover of a bifold brochure which also offered one and all the LIMITED ONE-TIME REDUCED PRICE OF $437.28. Rex Popov’s name nor likeness was nowhere to be found on the pamphlet I held in my hand—although Jimmy the Jinx was prominently referenced. Unlike the cheaply produced photocopied “fact sheet” Rex had presented me with on the day I’d met him, this circular must have cost a small fortune to print in quantity.
“Oh dear,” I said.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’ll go have a word with Hank,” I promised Katie. “In the meantime—”
I didn’t know what to suggest in the meantime. It wasn’t like I could ask an employee of the Postal Service not to deliver the mail. There was no legal route for getting rid of those circulars. Even if I were to report Hank and Rex for attempted fraud, not even the police could confiscate the offending circulars from Katie’s mailbag.
I wasn’t about to report Hank for attempted fraud, anyway. Hank believed all manner of crazy conspiracy theories. If anything, I was afraid he was going to end up being the biggest victim of Mr. Popov, who I was quite sure was fully aware that his “diamond detectors” were useless.
While it was true that the Lost Crown Jewels of Ireland might still be hidden out there somewhere just waiting to be found, they were no more likely to be stashed in the environs of Little Tombstone than they were to be concealed under the ancient Pyramids.
I wanted a word with Hank, so I texted Hank’s wife Phyliss and asked if I could come up to see them, and three minutes later, Phyliss was down at the door of the closed Curio shop to let me in.
As we took the stairs up to Hank and Phyliss’s apartment in the attic over the Curio Shop, I asked what she thought of Hank’s latest joint venture with Rex Popov.
“I’m at my wit’s end,” said Phyliss. “We used to use diamond detectors at the shop to make sure we were getting the real thing when someone wanted to pawn their jewelry, but those diamond detectors are small handheld devices where you place a little needle directly against the stone to measure the hardness. There’s no way such a device as Rex is pushing could detect diamonds at any distance and certainly not buried underground.”
“Did you tell Hank that?”
“I tried to explain it to him, but he insists that Rex has come up with a revolutionary technology, and he’s being let in on the ground floor of something big.”
“Has Hank bought into the scheme?” I asked. “ I mean, has he given Rex any money?”
“He won’t tell me,” said Phyliss. “We got into a big argument over it, and now Hank refuses to speak to me about the whole thing.”
“I’ll have a word with him,” I said.
I wasn’t very optimistic. It’s nearly impossible to change Hank’s mind once he’s got a notion—no matter how hare-brained—into his head. I hadn’t even attempted to dissuade Hank that the alien visitors he’d been convinced I’d sent packing not long after I’d arrived at Little Tombstone were not extra-terrestrials at all.
I decided I wouldn’t even raise any doubts during this little chat with Hank. I’d just try to find out how deep into the scheme Hank had gotten himself and call it a day.
“Maybe you could pop down to the Bird Cage on some pretext or another,” I suggested to Phyliss as we stood outside the door to their apartment. “Hank might be more willing to talk if you aren’t on the premises listening in.”
“Good idea,” said Phyliss. “I’ve got a pot roast on for supper, but I’ll go down and pick up some of Juanita’s apple empanadas for dessert.”
As soon as Phyliss had placed a hospitable orange juice in my hand, she made a big show of leaving, and then I tackled Hank.
“I saw that brochure you and Rex sent out,” I said. “It looked very professional.”
When I said the circular had impressed me as professional, it wasn’t exactly a lie. I was commenting on the quality of the paper and the print job rather than the profusion of exclamation marks punctuating the breathless statements of questionable veracity.
“Yes,” said Hank as he beamed at the unexpected compliment. “Rex runs quite an operation.”
“He does seem extraordinarily determined to make his venture succeed,” I said.
“Rex is a brilliant electrical engineer. It’s just as shame he’s had to self-finance.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, he could have sold his invention a thousand times over, but he was afraid of a big corporation buying his patent only to suppress production.”
I was pretty sure there was no patent, but I decided to humor Hank.
“Suppress production? Why would someone buy the patent for something and then not exercise the rights?”
“The mining industry can’t afford to let that happen!” said Hank, warming to his subject. Hank normally looks a little unhinged, but when he really gets going on a subject of passionate interest, he has a tendency to run his fingers through his gray hair, making it stand on end, and he was doing so now, which only served to make him look downright deranged.
“So, the mining industry is colluding to keep the common consumer from getting their hands on their own personal diamond detectors?” I said.
“I knew you’d understand,” said Hank. “I tried to explain that to Phyliss but running a pawnshop for so many years seems to have poisoned her mind against new ideas.”
What running a pawnshop for years had most likely done for Phyliss was make her wise to all the ways that mankind tries to con their fellow humans out of their hard-earned money, but I didn’t say that to Hank.
“Has Rex invited you to invest?” I asked.
There’d never be a better opportunity to pose that question, although I had no idea what I could do with the information if Hank saw fit to divulge his involvement with Rex’s scam.
“He did!” said Hank, “and I wish Phyliss would have seen reason and bought in with me.”
“So, you did invest?”
“I did!” said Hank.
I couldn’t imagine where Hank might have gotten any substantial chunk of cash. As far as I knew, the only thing of real value he owned was a gold coin given to him by my Great Aunt Geraldine in consideration of services rendered, and when I’d researched the value of the coin in question for an entirely different reason, I’d discovered it was worth less than two-thousand dollars.
“Did you sell your gold coin?” I asked.
“Chump change,” said Hank. “An operation of the caliber of Popov’s requires a bigger investment than that.”
“Where did you get the money, then?
“Don’t tell Phyliss,” Hank warned.
I didn’t want to promise, but I did.
“I borrowed the money,” said Hank
“From a bank?”
If Hank had good credit, I couldn’t imagine how he’d pulled off such a feat. He’d been a tenant at Little Tombstone for decades, and nobody had inquired of me about his creditworthiness. I couldn’t imagine any merchant vendor giving a bank a positive reference on Hank Edwards; besides, most of Hank’s stock in the Curio Shop had been acquired in the eighties, so there likely weren’t even current vendor accounts in Hank’s name.
Unless the Brown-Foreman Company, which produced Jack Daniels whiskey, was willing to go on record saying Hank was financially solvent on the strength of the regularity and quantity with which Hank purchased their wares, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would consider lending Hank enough to buy even a rasher of bacon.
“The banks wouldn’t know what to do with an opportunity like this one if it bit them on the hand,” said Hank bitterly. “Banks don’t know what to do with a really innovative idea.”
“Who did you borrow from?” I asked.
“Rex was kind enough to arrange credit for me,” said Hank.
This was worse than I’d imagined. I’d have been worried enough if Hank had informed me that he’d gone to one of those pay-day loan places, not that he’d have had any paycheck to sign over unless you counted his meager social security. This was far worse: it seemed Hank had taken out a private loan with a person of extremely questionable motives.
“You borrowed money from a friend of Mr. Popov’s?”
“No,” said Hank. “These days, people do everything over the internets.”
Hank doesn’t. Hank is completely internet illiterate, but I was guessing he’d been too proud to admit that when Rex had suggested that Hank complete this transaction—whatever it was—using the World Wide Web.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said.
I think if Hank had been less worked up, he’d have recognized that I was more than a trifle skeptical; I’m not that good of an actress. But Hank didn’t notice. He plowed on with explaining his convoluted string of transactions in a loud, clear voice as if I was the one who was internet illiterate.
What had happened to Hank, I finally concluded after ten minutes of back and forth, was that Rex Popov had convinced Hank to take out a slew of low-limit, high-interest credit cards in Hank’s own name, then convinced Hank to max out every last one of those cards in order to buy (sight unseen) Rex’s entire stock of “diamond detectors” which were supposed to ship direct from a factory in China to Hank’s shop in six weeks’ time.
Before I’d interrogated Hank on the nature of his entanglement with Mr. Popov, I’d worried that Hank might end up stuck with a bunch of cheap metal detectors spray painted metallic gold and a few irate customers who’d discover they’d been had and demand a refund. I was now concerned that Hank would end up with a slew of high-interest credit card debts that he’d never be able to pay off.
“How much did you invest in total?” I asked Hank as I attempted to keep my voice steady.