Page 92 of Mission: Possible

Solomon nodded. "It's pretty likely. He told us he's often in the room when people access their boxes."

"But he also might have known the item had to be stolen in the first place. He asked the agency to retrieve it for his client but we're reasonably sure Bagshot is already dead so that can't be true." I paused, contemplating my deduction. That only left one motive for Charlie. "If it's all true, if it was Bagshot’s box, then Charlie doesn't want to return the item either to the client or to his employers. He wants to keep it for himself," I inferred.

"It also explains why he wouldn't tell us what the item is. If he did, we might research it and find out it's stolen. He couldn't be certain we wouldn't refuse the case on that basis, or turn it over to the police, thereby landing him in hot water with his employers," said Solomon. "People, be careful. There's already one murder and one attempted murder attached to this case. Be aware and stay alert."

"I'll have something for you within the hour," I said. "Can I call on Lucas if I need help?"

"Sure," said Lucas. "You know where to find me."

Lucas, Fletcher and Flaherty took off together. Lucas headed upstairs and I was pretty sure I wouldn't see the other two PIs for the rest of the day.

"This is what we've currently got on Charlie," said Solomon, passing a thin file to me. I opened it, noting only three sheets of paper. The top one held his personal information. The next his resume. The last sheet was a rundown of his financial report.

"You already checked his financial records?" I asked, skimming over the figures. A mortgage of twenty thousand on a house valued at eight hundred thousand. That made sense for a man close to retirement who apparently lived at the same address for twenty-two years. A savings account with ten thousand, and a credit card with five hundred on it. His car didn't have any payments left. While he wasn't well off, he lived adequately within his means.

"It seemed prudent too," said Solomon. "I didn't notice any red flags but I didn't dive too deeply either."

"For a bank manager, I guess I expected him to be more savvy. Why doesn't he have any investments? Say, a rental property or stock shares? A larger savings balance? I would have assumed he planned ahead to enjoy a more luxurious retirement."

"Perhaps he simply enjoyed what he had when he had it? If you find out anything that raises suspicions, tell me immediately."

"Sure," I replied. I took the file back to my desk and moved the Takahashis' out of the way. I needed time to think about the information I gathered but also to focus on something else for a while. Hopefully, Austen was too busy conferring with his wife's doctors about her recovery to wonder about my next check-in. Looking into Charlie Sampson was the perfect distraction to refresh my mind.

I already had a headstart, thanks to Solomon's notes, so I didn't need to dive into more research into his financials or his true address. There were a few notes regarding his wife, and two grown-up children who had long since moved out. The wife worked as a librarian and earned a steady income. Solomon noted Charlie's career was solid but far from extraordinary and after dutifully climbing the banking career ladder to become manager, he just plateaued.

There was nothing about Charlie's personal life, which only made me curious: what kind of man was he? I doubted a man his age would be a social media user but I typed his name into a search engine anyway and waited to see what came back. I was pretty sure he wasn't a rodeo champion bull rider so I added “Montgomery” and this time, he popped up in the images function. I clicked on that and found a couple of small news articles. In the first one, Charlie was photographed with his wife after winning some kind of small cash prize. The caption beneath their image read, "Local couple Charlie and Sandy Sampson's surprise win on their anniversary." Charlie's arm was around Sandy's waist, and both of them were smiling happily. The second was from a talk Charlie gave to Montgomery's Amateur Coin Collecting Society on the topic of the evolution of American coins. The accompanying photo had him surrounded by several men and one woman as he proudly held up a rare coin that a member of the society discovered in their backyard and sold for a very large sum.

Something about the article made me read it again but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. Certainly not for how exciting it sounded. His whole talk seemed more like a snooze fest to me. All the same, I clicked the link for Montgomery's Amateur Coin Collecting Society website and prepared to die of boredom. Five minutes in, I was almost there. Not only was the website black with an eye-watering, yellow font but it was also entirely disorganized. It appeared to have been written by someone unable to get to the point. Wading through a couple years of blog posts that mentioned Charlie more than once, I noticed that some featured a snapshot of him and his personal collections. Apparently, he gave two other talks to the society and conducted a short summary of excursions the society took to the Museum of Fine Arts and the Money Museum of Boston. That ended my research. Who knew so many people were that interested in rare coins? The only time I ever had any interest in them was when I didn't have enough change for the parking meter.

I clicked back to the article about the coin that fetched a large sum. Apparently, it was sold through an auction house in New York. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the auction house website and searched for the listing. Six months ago, the sale apparently caused quite a buzz when a large West coast museum won the bid. I scribbled the sum on my notepad and briefly wondered what I would do if I were to suddenly receive so much money. It was crazy how a single coin could be worth so much.

"Oh," I breathed, the light bulb switching on at last. Of course! How could I have missed it? "Solomon!"

Solomon ducked his head around the door. "Yes?"

"Can you bring me the log from the bank vault?" I said, waving him over. "I've got it!"

"Sure." As Solomon moved to grab the list I made and I waited, I was thinking it through again. I was sure I had it. "Did you find something?" he asked from behind me.

"I think so," I told him. "See here? Charlie knows a lot about coins. It's his hobby. He collects them, lectures at a coin society and often takes excursions with them to coin museums."

"Okay?" Solomon frowned.

"He knows all aboutcoins," I said, taking the list from him. I scanned it, then flipped to the next page. There it was! Something so innocuous, I totally ignored it. "There was a coin magazine amongst the things we salvaged in the vault but where were the coins? Nowhere to be found. That’s because there weren't any. Not a single one."

"A magazine? That's your bright revelation?"

"There's no point in keeping a coin collector magazine in a bank vault. It's worth even less than the five-dollar cover price someone paid for it. But I'll bet the content is valuable information. That’s why it was folded up and stuffed inside."

"You're way ahead of me here. Are you saying the stolen item is a coin?"

"Yep! That's exactly what I'm saying. A coin is small and portable. It would easily fit into that box and is the type of thing Joe Bagshot would steal, right? Small, valuable and highly portable. It could be worth a fortune to a private collector and Charlie would know that. He said he occasionally remained in the room while people were putting their precious items inside their boxes. What if he saw a rare coin and realized what it was? Except he couldn't get it as long as Bagshot were alive. He might have even researched it in advance. When he realized Bagshot's box was the target, he knew what was stolen and also that Bagshot wasn't coming back for it."

"So he hired us to track it down in order to claim it for himself. No one could deny it wasn't his all along. He could probably justify our fee in the bank records as investigative security measures or some other plausible excuse."

"He relied on us not realizing its value or provenance. We might find the robbers and the stash, never bothering to recognize a little, tiny coin."

"You might have just cracked the case," said Solomon, leaning down to plant a kiss on my cheek. "I knew hiring you was the best idea I ever had."