“What do you mean by that?” Uncle Homer asked. “Macomber-Calligan is a real corporation, it’s just that they don’t have any assets at present.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Steve shook his head. “Shawtex is a paper corporation. They don’t have any assets, other than the contracts they hold. Well, that’s not quite true. They own some real estate, such as the former RELI plant right now, but all of it is for sale. Beyond that, they have very little. They’re in leased office space, and given a chance I’d bet they lease their furniture, maybe even their computers. If they own much in the way of capital assets, I can’t see it.”

“What’s their cash position like?”

“It’s a little unclear with the public web sites I was able to get to, but they have some cash. However, it isn’t much, and a lot of it is distributed to stockholders at the end of the quarter. They probably keep a little reserve on hand, but it’s only a small percentage of the earnings.”

“Then where did they come up with the money to pull this deal on your friend?”

“That’s not exactly clear, but it’s other people’s money, just like this deal with Macomber-Calligan. They are highly leveraged, that much I can tell, but I can’t tell where or how.”

“Interesting,” Uncle Homer frowned. “Ann, do you have anything to add?”

“Not really, sir. The young Mr. Taylor came to much the same conclusions as I did. I’m not aware of whether he discovered that it’s a public company, but their stock appears to be held in large blocks, with little actually available for trade.”

“Ann, you must have gotten that off a site I don’t have access to,” Steve commented.

“It’s likely sir. We have paid access on several sites that aren’t otherwise open to the public.”

“I thought you were aware of that,” Uncle Homer said. “We’ll have to get you the logins and passwords. But you did well in weaseling as much as you did off of public websites, Steve. It comes down to the fact that if you’re going to find a lever, it will probably have to be through one of their stockholders, or one of their funding sources. Not knowing a thing about it, I’d expect they’re one and the same.”

“Sir, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Ann put in, “but that could be very hard to trace.”

“Let’s not worry much about it right now,” Uncle Homer said after an obvious moment’s thought. “We have other irons in the fire, and that includes things other than the Crocker deal. Ann, why don’t you put in a bid on a small chunk of their stock? Not much, a few hundred bucks’ worth at most. We’ll keep an eye on their earnings and maybe we can get a little better view of what’s going on, but beyond that, let’s shove this to the back burner for a while.”

“Yes, Mr. Taylor,” Ann agreed. “There may be an angle there but we’re going to have to wait for it.”

“That goes for you too, Steve. Don’t get me wrong. You did well to figure out that much, and it shows me you really do have a nose for this sort of thing. Besides, I have something that’s a little more important to work on, and it’s right down your alley. Our knowledge on this isn’t as clear as it was with the Hardin deal, but I have a piece of a car dealership in Pendersburg, Arkansas. Something about the audit report I got yesterday smells, and I think I want you to look into it.”

“What’s wrong with the audit report?”

“Nothing much that I can see, and that’s what smells. I mean, it’s a clean audit, but their expenses seem to be larger than I think they should be. Car dealerships have all sorts of cute ways to shuffle money around and hide it because they’re always doing a lot of deals that we would consider relatively small, and at sliding price scales. I think the books are being cooked before the auditor gets to them. If so, I’d like to know it. If not, I’d like to know why the expenses are so high. If it’s not performing the way it should, it may well be time to get out. I need your report before we decide what to do. It’ll probably involve spending some time at the site. I want you to keep this Crocker deal moving, but we need to know which way to jump on this Hansen-Baldwynn Buick-Cadillac operation, too. I’ll give you the audit report, and Ann ought to be able to fill you in on the details.”

Steve spent the next several hours going through the audit and other information that Ann gave to him, and by the time midnight rolled around he’d reached the same conclusion as Uncle Homer: something smelled, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. What he did see was that things had started to go to pot in the last two years when the management of the operation changed. It wasn’t clear to him why it had changed, but it struck him that the problems might be simple incompetence.

He was trying to figure out an angle to get down to the bottom of things, when he noticed a flash of light out of the corner of his eye and wondered what it was. His first thought was that it must have been an electrical arc; in a building as old as this place it stood to reason that there could be trouble with the wiring. He didn’t smell smoke or anything, so decided to give it a minute and turned his attention back to the computer. He no more than had his eyes there when he noticed another flash.

All right, he thought, I’d better look into this. He got up from the swivel chair – his back needed a break from the stiff old chair anyway – and went out into the hall, where he noticed near the other end of the hallway an open door that he’d never seen open before. All of a sudden there was another flash coming from it.

A little confused now, he went down to the open door and looked into the room, just in time to see Ann cover her eyes with her hand and touch a button; immediately there was another flash. It only took him a moment to see that Ann was working with some sort of a copy-camera arrangement. “Oh, Ann, it’s you,” he said softly, hoping not to scare her. “I was wondering if the place was on fire or something.”

“Oh, no, sir,” she replied. “I should have been more careful to close the door to not disturb you.”

“Just out of curiosity, what are you doing?”

“Oh, Mr. Taylor is taking a nap, sir. I decided I needed a little relaxation so I decided to come up and play with my nickels a little.”

“Play with your nickels?”

“Oh, yes,” she smiled. “It’s just a hobby. I sell nickels on e-Bay. I make a little money on it, but it’s mostly just something mindless to do, like some people do knitting, or like Mr. Taylor plays Windows Solitaire. It helps me relax and think, sir.”

“Selling nickels?” he shook his head. “That’s something I never thought you would be doing.”

“Oh, it can be fun sir,” she smiled. “A few weeks ago I found a hobo nickel dated 1913. I was surprised to see it get bid up to eight hundred dollars.”

“You still have me lost. I never heard of a hobo nickel. What was that, some kind of a special minting thing?”

“No, it was just a regular 1913 Indian Head nickel, but someone had modified it, probably with a knife and an awl, to turn it into a hobo head. Nickels are relatively soft and easy to carve, so someone carved it out as a hobby, or just to kill time. They are a specialty collector’s item, much more valuable than a regular nickel, or are at least for some artists. There aren’t many hobo nickels in circulation since they’re art objects of a sort, so it was really surprising to turn one up. It was only the third one I’ve ever found, sir.”

“You sold the nickel, I suppose, but do you have a picture of it?”

“Oh, of course, sir,” she replied, going over to a computer next to the copy camera arrangement as she continued, “I have to take pictures of all the nickels I sell on e-Bay. That’s what I was doing, getting the next batch ready to put up for bid.” She clicked on a thumbnail, and a picture of the nickel came up on the screen: a scruffy-looking hobo head, looking unshaven and dirty. “This one is signed CD,” she explained, pointing at some tiny scratches down on the hobo’s neck. No one seems to know who he was, but the most recent known coin of his work is dated 1916, so it’s reasonable to assume he died or at least quit carving nickels somewhere around that time.”

“How do you know so much about these things?”

“After I found my first hobo nickel and found out what it was, I ordered a book on them, sir.” She pointed at a book sitting nearby. “Some hobo nickels are quite beautiful, although the one I sold the other day didn’t exactly strike me that way.”

This was interesting. It was something he’d never heard of before, and even more so because Ann clearly enjoyed messing with her nickels. It was a human touch he’d only rarely seen in her before, so was worth pursuing for the chance to get beneath her cool exterior a little more. “I’ll bet you have to go through a lot of nickels to find one of those,” he said.

“Oh, yes, sir, thousands and thousands, but I have them to go through. I only sell a handful at a time to keep the market from being depressed. It’s not a great deal of money, but as I said, it relaxes me.”

“How much do you get for a nickel?”

“It depends, sir,” she said, getting up from the computer and moving a different coin into place to take another photo. “It depends on the date, the mint, the wear, and many other factors. Some are hardly worth a nickel. The majority will sell for one or two dollars. Once in a while an unusual one comes up and the price will get bid up as high as eighty or a hundred dollars.”

“For a nickel?”

“Well, these are all very old,” she said, pointing at a small plastic bucket half-filled with nickels. “There are none newer than 1928 and only a few that recent. The average date probably is around 1918, although it’s not uncommon to find a Liberty Head that dates back into the 1800s.” She glanced into the bucket, pulled a nickel out, and glanced at it. “That’s an 1892 Liberty Head out of the Denver mint,” she announced. “It’s not in particularly good shape, so it might go for around forty dollars.”

“Just out of curiosity, what does it cost you to buy those nickels?”

“Oh, nothing sir. We have thousands upon thousands, more than I could sell in a lifetime at the current rate. Mr. Taylor said they’re a pain in the neck and told me to dispose of them as I wished. It amuses him to know that I’m selling most of these at a markup of thousands of percentage points over their face value.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you from your hobby,” he replied, a little question rising in his mind, but somehow he didn’t think he wanted to ask Ann about it.

“Oh, I don’t mind talking about it, sir. In fact, if you don’t mind I’ll get on with my photography while you talk with me.”

“I’d love to, Ann.” The chance to talk with her casually about something was rare indeed. This wasn’t something personal – other than being an obvious hobby – and she clearly enjoyed doing it. In the next half-hour he learned a great deal about pre-1928 nickels, and even learned a bit about judging wear and value. There was a lot more to it than he thought, but it was nice to be able to just talk to her.

Eventually she finished with the photographs she was taking, and sat down at the computer to put up a few for bid. “I guess I’d better let you concentrate on that,” he told her. “I’d better get back to trying to figure out what’s screwy with Hansen-Baldwynn, but thank you for showing me this.”

“Oh, I enjoyed it too, sir. Mr. Taylor takes very little interest in this, and so it’s very rare that I get the opportunity to talk about it.”

Steve walked back up the hall to his office. Collecting and selling nickels was not exactly what he would have liked to talk to her about, but at least it was something other than business.

But, as usual with Ann, there was a mystery. Pre-1928 nickels? Thousands and thousands, to the point where Uncle Homer considered them to be a pain in the neck? As often happened around this place, something didn’t compute. He sat back in the swivel chair and stared at one of the computer screens for a while but was unable to get his mind on what was on it. Why was 1928 important?

He took a glance at the roll-top desk, and all of a sudden the sight seemed to bring a possible answer to that one to mind. He pulled up a new tab on one of the screens, brought up Google and typed in “Stinky Antonelli mob.” In seconds he was reading a rather detailed web page about Prohibition-era gangsters in Chicago, and there were a couple of paragraphs about Sylvester “Stinky” Antonelli running slot machines, one-armed bandits. No wonder they called him “Stinky,” he thought – it must have been hell to be a mobster with a name of Sylvester. Farther down was a mention that Stinky had been gunned down with a Tommy Gun in some sort of territorial dispute in 1928.

As usually happened with Ann, answering one question had opened up a dozen others, but these new ones were a little goofier than usual.

Rather than bother Ann, who he knew was busy putting up offers for bids, he went downstairs, got a can of soda from the refrigerator, and on his way back upstairs happened to look into the living room and notice that Uncle Homer was awake and busy playing Windows Solitaire. “Got a minute for me?” he asked.

“Yeah sure, Steve. What’s on your mind?”

“Do you have any idea why the hell Stinky Antonelli would have hidden thousands of nickels around this place?”

“It’s a total mystery to me, Steve. I have no idea. I mean, if anyone must have had the capability of laundering nickels into greenbacks it should have been him. Why the hell he didn’t is beyond me. And the hell of it is that he didn’t just stash them down in the basement or something, either, he went way the hell out of his way to hide them.”

“Why not dimes? I mean, a dime is smaller than a nickel and worth more.”

“Well, he dealt in nickels, I know that much. One-armed bandits, early pinball games, nickelodeons. You ever hear the song that goes ‘Put another nickel in?’ That must have been Stinky’s theme song. But the bottom line is he put them in the concrete basement of an old house out by the pond, then tore the house down and buried the basement. It might not have been all his doing; I don’t know and I doubt we’ll ever know.”

“How did you happen to find them?”

“Oh, that’s a long story. You remember I told you there are people who think that Stinky buried some treasure out here and want to come look for it?”

“Yeah, you told me you keep them the hell out.”

“Well for once, those people were right. Back, oh, must have been thirteen or fourteen years ago, not long after I brought Ann here, Bob and Ray told me someone had been digging out by the pond. I went out there, and sure enough, someone had been digging and hadn’t covered it up too well. I checked it again the next day, and it was pretty obvious more digging had been going on. Well, fun is fun but that was a pain in the ass, so that night I had Ann sit out in the dark and watch. For her it was about like being in daylight would be for you and me, of course. Well, sure as hell, around midnight she came back up to the house and told me there were a couple of guys digging out there. So I called the sheriff and had their asses written up for trespassing and vandalism. It turned out they’d been out here for god knows how many nights with a metal detector.”

“So they actually found something?”

“For all the good it did them, and what was more, I figured they’d be back unless I did something about it. I was still reasonably spry back in those days so I rented a backhoe, trailer, and pickup truck from a guy I knew over in Amherst, brought it over here and dug the place up, and there were all these damn nickels. I wouldn’t want to guess how many, but a hell of a damn pot full, at least a ton of them. Several loader buckets full, anyway. I thought about dumping them in the pond just to spite those guys, but I figured that if I did they’d be out there with diving gear in the middle of the night. So I hauled them up to the house and dumped them into the old coal bin through the coal chute. I left the hole open for several years, just to show those punks that their treasure had slipped through their fingers. I finally had Bob and Ray fill it in about five years ago.”

“And then Ann discovered e-Bay.”

“It was her idea,” he shrugged. “Hell, I didn’t know what to do with the damn things. It would hardly be worth the effort to roll them all up and take them to some bank to turn to cash. I mean, they’re nickels, after all. All a bank would give you is face value, and a thousand of the damn things are only worth fifty bucks as currency.”

“And besides, a banker would shit bricks if you walked in there with a few wheelbarrows full of nickels.”

“Exactly, it wouldn’t have been worth the effort. And they’d shit even more bricks if they discovered they were all old collectible nickels. The hell of it is, even as collectors’ items the damn things have barely kept up with inflation. Back when I was a kid a nickel would buy you a cup of coffee. Today it takes a buck, most cheap places. Ann probably averages around a buck profit on each nickel, so one of them is still only worth about a cup of coffee.”

“That’s sad when you think about it.”

“Yeah, inflation is a pain in the ass at best and it’s something you have to guard against. Sometimes it works in your favor, other times it doesn’t. The real value to those nickels is that they give Ann a hobby she enjoys. The actual money is diddly-squat, but she gets a real thrill when someone bids a coin worth only ten bucks up to thirty. That’s personal, where business is just business and is another thing entirely.”

“It takes all kinds, I guess.”

“Yeah, it does. Do you have any hobbies, Steve?”

“Not really. I prefer reading to watching TV, but beyond that, not much. I’ve spent a lot of the time the past few years working on my MBA, but I dumped that when the RELI thing happened. It kind of left me at loose ends.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have something to divert the mind, Steve. Maybe sometime when you get bored and frustrated you ought to ask Ann if she’d like some help with her nickels.”

“I enjoyed talking with her about them,” he said, “but I don’t think my mind runs in quite that channel.”

“You still might want to consider it, more for her sake than yours. She could stand to be a little more social than she is.”

“You might be right at that,” Steve conceded. “She doesn’t seem to loosen up much, does she?”

“No, not really, but she does a little bit when she’s playing with her nickels.”

Steve thought about it for a moment, then said, “Well, I guess maybe I’d better let you get back to your game while I get back to Hansen-Baldwynn. Thanks for telling me about Stinky Antonelli and his buried treasure.”

“It is one of the odder stories around this place, that’s for sure. Not the only one, but one of the better ones.”

Steve went back upstairs to his office, a little pleased at hearing the story. Whatever the hell Stinky Antonelli had been doing hiding nickels out by the pond was beyond him, and probably a story totally lost by now. Still, it would have been interesting to know why he did it.

Not really wanting to think about the mystery of Hansen-Baldwynn right at the moment, Steve went over the web page about Stinky again, and backed up to look at a couple other web pages that mentioned him, but weren’t as informative.

But whatever it was, it seemed to be old news, ancient history. This was the here and now, and when he got right down to it, Ann was still a mystery too – a much bigger and more important mystery to him at the moment. He’d learned a little bit more about her, not much more – but somehow, some way, he thought perhaps he’d learned more than he’d thought, if he could just figure out what it was.

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