Cold Call

By Ren Foster

Cold Call is a crime mystery about greed, deceit, pride and betrayal and the things that people do to avoid them, fight them, or forget them. The books characters know that money can move people. But they learn that money is just a metaphor. What is important to people is where they stand in relation to each another. Tragedy is when things do not always work out well. Crime is when someone gets hurt along the way for reasons we all know are wrong. Mystery is when you do not understand the reason.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499065183

Ren Foster

Ren Foster claims Detroit as his birthplace. The claims that people make, of course, can sometimes be affected by considerations of perception more than by considerations of fact. That is important because it was facts that drove Ren Foster to record some of the experiences of his work as a car salesman and a private investigator. These experiences come alive in Cold Call. It is not exactly a record, but a first novel. And, while it is essentially factual, some of the persons and places have been adjusted to conform to necessities. Nothing surprising in that. Not now living in Detroit, Foster is living in what he calls temporary quarters. “That’s the nature of life,” Foster says. “None of us in this world are owners. We are all renters.”

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Copyright © 2014 by Ren Foster.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4990-6519-0

                eBook            978-1-4990-6518-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/22/2014

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Contents

1 The Call

2 The Case

3 Missteps

4 Pride of Place

5 Cold Call

6 Bounce Back

7 Reframe

8 Payline

Characters

• Jack Rejevsky, repossession agent and private investigator

• Robert Rob Bates, car salesman

• Claire Asad, investor, lawyer, former stock broker

• Earl Daley, lieutenant, Major Crimes Division of the Denver Police

• Julie Davis, sergeant, Major Crimes Division of the Denver Police

• Sharon Tener, research director, Environmental Alternatives

• Dawn Ferguson (deceased), director, Environmental Alternatives

• Kendall Morris, researcher, Environmental Alternatives

• Chuck Patricks, regional office head, Sendell Oil

• Charles Lawson, managing partner, Lawson-Pierce Investments

Organizations/Companies

• Rejevsky Investigations

• Denver Police Department

• Environmental Alternatives

• North-West Power

• Clear Futures Foundation

• New Horizon Auto

• Sendell Oil

• Lawson-Pierce Investments

• CKL (a short-trading hedge fund)

• Corbett Mining

1

The Call

Jack Rejevsky, Sage Hill Springs grocery store parking lot, Wednesday, November 27, 4:15 p.m.

Clouds overhead were swirling gray on gray in the November late afternoon. Colorado’s mountain weather was usually regular and predictable, but sometimes in the late autumn it could turn moody and bring surprises. Jack could feel rain was coming. He could sense it. But he knew it would still hold for a while. He could feel it in the lightness, in the gentle chill of the air. It was always that way just about ten minutes before rain.

Jack looked toward the sky in the west, over Arapaho Ridge. The clouds were even darker there. Maybe the rain was already falling over there. Jack knew the rain would work its way into Sage Hill valley following a gentle gust of wind. He knew that gust would be his warning.

Jack had just walked out of the grocery store. He was carrying two bags of groceries. Just the things he wanted. This would keep him for at least a week in his cabin. He didn’t need much, but he had to go to the store at least once a week just for the bread. Usually, he would run out of eggs about once a week. Friday was always grocery day.

Except today was Thursday. So today was grocery day by default. There was nothing else to do. There was nothing to do on today’s list. Jack’s last job wound down for a couple of weeks and then, last week, just dragged out to an inconsequential end. Not much of a conclusion. Jack knew he would get paid but maybe not right away. Like a lot of the divorce cases he worked, toward the end, everyone was broke. Or if they had money, it was well hidden. Jack knew there would be some kind of court settlement and his fee would be in it. But right now, there was nothing. There was nothing at all this week. Not unusual. New cases would come along. Jack had to be patient. He was okay. He wouldn’t starve. The cabin was his. The Ford was his. So what? He was okay. He just had to come up with new tactics.

Jack’s Ford was parked at the far end of the parking lot, near the highway. Sage Hill Springs was just a nook in the road. It was a wide spot at a turn in the canyon where Highway 17 snaked its way through the mountains. Sage Hill Springs was not big enough to draw in the major stores. It was too close to Denver to worry about it. That’s why the locals were basically satisfied with only one small run of stores. It was just a line of little shops flanked on one end by a grocery store and the other by the only local drugstore. The stores were all huddled off to the side of the highway in a nondescript brick-themed building. It was not real brick of course. It just looked that way.

Colorado mountain communities did have some real brick buildings, but they were all built a long time ago when the only reason people lived in the mountains was for mining and hunting. In those days, buildings were sturdy because they had to be. They were designed for the elements. Nowadays, things were different. The mountain communities were filled with tourists and vacationers and pensioners. Things had to look right, but they didn’t necessarily have to be right. It didn’t matter very much. For Jack, that was okay. He was far enough away from the big city so he could feel at home in the mountains. And he was close enough to Denver that he could get to the big city if he had to. For Jack, living in Sage Hill Springs was okay.

Jack was stepping off the curb to cross the parking lot as his cell phone began buzzing and vibrating in his pocket. Walking with the cell phone in one hand and the bags of groceries clutched in the other was possible, but here in the mountains, Jack sometimes lost his phone connections. Besides, from the tone, Jack knew this call was coming in on his work phone number. He wasn’t going to lose a business call. Jack stepped back onto the curb. He looked around and then set both bags of groceries on the sidewalk pavement so he could take the call.

Jack pulled the phone out of his jacket pocket reflexively, heading off the sound before the ringer actually started. He had it set so there were three buzzes. The fourth was the ringer. Jack had it wired. He almost always managed to answer right before the ring. Never too soon, but never too late. Jack looked up at the sky, wondering what the chances were that the rain would start coming down before he got to his car.

Yeah, he said, Jack Rejevsky, can I help you?

Jack heard his own voice almost like listening to an echo. He was thinking about what it must have sounded like to someone else. Jack thought it might be better to answer business phone calls with a more definitive yes rather than a breezy yeah.

Hey, Jack, that you?

The voice sounded familiar, but Jack could not immediately fix it.

Jack, it’s Rob Bates. Long time no hear, buddy. How are you doing?

Jack tried to focus the name in his memory for a moment. Then he realized it was Robin Bates, one of the guys who used to work with him when he sold cars at the Denver Ford dealership out on Alameda Avenue. That was a long time ago. Maybe it was already seven years ago, maybe eight. The car sales job was Jack’s first real job. He had some other part-time jobs, but he started the car sales job when he was still in college. In fact, he was in college mainly because of the sales job. Jack finished his business degree, but in the end the car business did not work out so well for him. It was okay. It was a start. Now a long time later, Jack figured he could write it off as part of his education. It got him going. They say, One thing leads to another. That is true. It does not mean it has to make sense though. Sometimes it is just one damn thing leads to another damn thing. It is just that the car job got Jack in the front door. He learned a lot more from that job than from the business courses he took at Denver City College.

Hi, Rob. Hey, it’s good to hear from you. It’s been a long time. Jack was a little surprised that his own tone of voice was friendly and pleasant, much more so than usual. Where are you? What’s up?

Jack was trying to bring Rob into focus. He was trying to remember what Rob’s face looked like. There were a lot of people Jack worked with at the car dealership. None of them were very close as friends. All the car salesmen were basically hustlers, but small-time hustlers and not very talented. Some, a few, he worked with were big-time hustlers, but Jack remembered Rob was not one of those. Otherwise, he would have stood out. Not all of them were bad. Some of them were still useful to Jack. They brought him his repossession jobs, and sometimes they even brought him the private detective jobs, the gig that Jack was basing his future on now.

Jack, I am really glad I found you, Rob answered. I wasn’t sure about your phone number because we haven’t talked for so long. So I searched on the web and found you. But hey, look, I am fine. Same old same old, I mean. Actually, I was thinking about you. I wasn’t sure I could reach you because I heard that you moved some place back east. You’re still in Denver? Where are you now?

No, Rob, Jack replied, I’m not exactly in Denver, but who said I moved back East? Where did they get that? I am living in Sage Hill Springs now. But I come in to Denver all the time. I’m there a couple of times a month. A while back, Melissa and I split up and she got the house, and I just kind of wandered out here. You know Sage Hills Springs?

Not really, I guess, it’s near Aspen? Rob asked.

South. It’s about halfway between Denver and Copper River. It’s a cool little place, more like a mountain village. A few stores and some cabins. What are you doing these days? Are you still at the Taylor dealership? Jack asked, reaching down and carefully scooping up the bags of groceries while talking on the cell phone with one hand and shuffling over to the side of the store entrance to get under an overhang roof in case the rain really did start up.

No, I left Taylor’s. Now I am with New Horizon Chevy-Ford, Rob replied. After Fred Taylor died, the old lady took over. It got just too, too weird. So I moved over to Horizon just last year, last summer. Lost something on the stock option plan, but I figured that was going to go south eventually anyhow. Anyway, Horizon is fine as a company. At least it was better when I started last year. A couple months ago, we got a new sales manager. You don’t know him because he’s from Texas. He acts like it too. His idea of managing is just to change everything. He’s not going to be manager forever. A tone of laughter broke through spontaneously in Rob’s voice. Hell, he’s not even going to be alive forever if he keeps it up. The sales team is not going to take it. But as a place to work, I like Horizon fine.

Rob seemed to pause for a moment and then went on. Look, I’m calling right now about something else. Actually, I have a favor I’d like to ask you. I was wondering… you still doing that sideline thing you used to do? You know that, uh… the detective stuff?

Jack vaguely felt that Rob smoothly shifted from a Let’s just talk about old times tone to something that sounded almost business-serious to Jack.

Jack shifted his tone too. Yeah, sure. I’m doing freelance work. I’ve got my own little company. I hung out a shingle. There’s just a few of us, Jack said in dismissive tone as though he was trying to play down the size out of modesty. That seemed like a good way to steer away from the idea that in fact, what he called his company was nothing more than only him working out the kitchen of his mountainside cabin.

Jack went on. It’s going slow, but it’s building. Building. You know, mainly car stuff, repos, some process serving. A few other things. Some security stuff too. Everybody wants videos of everything these days. Everybody wants to look at everybody else. There’s a new angle too. A lot of people are asking me to help them with identity theft. People are worried about their identity. It’s incredible. Nobody wants anybody looking at them and at the same time they want to look at everyone else. It keeps me in work though. So look, what’s up with you? Jack asked, hoping to move the discussion to business if there was any business. He felt there might be.

Uh, well yeah, actually I was thinking, and Larry told me—you remember Larry Todd?—Larry told me he had seen you a while back and he knew that that you were doing some personal stuff, some family detective stuff.

Yeah, I am doing some domestic observation work, Jack said matter-of-factly. You got something going? You need some help?

Jack was safe from the rain under the overhang at the grocery store front entrance. He started to slowly pace in order to get his thoughts together, walking in a kind of circle around his bag of groceries on the ground.

People walked past Jack as they streamed out of the supermarket door, nodding to Jack in friendly mountain fashion. Then they looked up at the sky with worried expressions. One couple even scurried off for their car, the lady holding up hands as though she was prepared to fend off a rain that had not even started yet.

Well, yeah, Rob said, taking a deep breath. Jack knew that it was a good sign when someone started talking as though they were uncomfortable. It meant they needed something. When there was something really bothering the customer, it usually meant something good for Jack. In this business, it was good for Jack only when it was bad for someone else. Jack sometimes thought of that. It was as if he fed off other people’s suffering. It did not bother him much though.

Well, Jack, it’s not a problem. It’s not really a problem. Not my problem anyhow. It’s just sort of a question. And I thought you might be able to give me some advice. I mean I thought you could help me with some suggestions about something, said Rob.

Jack was getting better at sizing up clients. He knew Rob was tiptoeing around something important. He didn’t remember Rob very clearly, and he never knew him very well. But it didn’t take much to see there was something more important than Rob wanted it to sound.

Jack figured he could take the call and still carry the groceries to his car. But he was not sure. Jack was still settling into the mountains. He had grown up in Denver. But he was making the transition to the mountains. The mountains taught him a lot. In the summer when his jobs went dry, he wandered off fishing the mountain streams. He was even getting good with skitterish mountain trout. Trout was a special fish. They were agile and cagey, but they made mistakes. Jack knew that when you get a line, you do not let go. You never play it too fast. You never play it too hard, too soon. You just don’t let go. Jack gave Rob some line.

Rob, anything I can do to help?

Well, I’ve got this divorce and this property thing.

Jack was walking faster and listening carefully to the phone at the same time. Rob, just let me know what’s up and I’ll see if there’s any help you need. I can point you to some real good lawyers. They are cheap and they win. They are on the winning side. I am not saying they are always on the right side, but they’re on the winning side, said Jack.

Jack slightly winced as he heard the words coming out of his own mouth. Jack corrected himself silently. He knew he should not get too philosophical about right and wrong. Clients want to win period, Jack thought to himself. They don’t want to win only when they are right.

Jack recovered. If you need investigation, we can do it quickly. We can do it discreetly. We can put it all in a form the lawyers need. Jack was relieved that he had just said it that way. He put everything down exactly in the point-to-point business style that he wanted. That was the way to do it. As he walked, Jack looked up again at the sky. The rain was getting closer.

"So Rob, what can I do for you? You got something bothering you? You got somebody bothering you?" Jack repeated, emphasizing somebody. It was always about somebody.

Well, Jack, yeah. Actually, the reason I am calling is this. It’s not a big deal, but it’s kind of complicated. So I thought that you might be able to help with some advice. You have a lot of experience with this kind of things. Of course you remember Dawn. Melissa knew her pretty well. But we hadn’t seen you guys for such a long time. So I don’t know whether you really are… well… you remember Dawn, right? Rob asked.

Yeah, sure, Jack answered confidently.

Hearing Dawn’s name, Jack squinted slightly. He was trying to dredge up some mental image of Dawn. Dawn and Rob. That didn’t say much. Jack remembered that Rob was married. Maybe it would come back. Maybe it was way in the past, back when Jack and Melissa were together. Maybe they had even gone on double dates with Dawn and Rob. But after Melissa broke up with Jack, a lot of the past had just faded. Eventually, most of that past was almost completely written off.

Jack did not want to go back. You could fight some things. But for some things, the only real victory was when you could forget them. It was easier to let some things slide into a history that did not matter anymore. He did not want to go back to what he could not have.

As he tried to picture Rob and Dawn, Jack realized that things were harder to retrieve than he expected. He was drawing a blank. So he tried to imagine Melissa talking to another girl, thinking it might fill in his memory. But all he saw in his mind was Melissa’s face. He saw her smiling face, and he saw her shaking her blonde hair out of the way of those crystal blue eyes of hers. He saw her looking at him with that completely innocent smile. He saw her looking at him as if to say, Now how can you not trust this face?

Jack repeated confidently, Sure, I remember Dawn.

Rob took a deep breath. Well, Jack, I guess you know—Christ, everybody knows now—Dawn and I broke up. We actually broke up a long time ago. We weren’t telling everybody about it. Why should we? It’s not their business.

Of course, no reason to…, Jack murmured.

And so we were separated but not legally divorced. We just did not get around to it and, anyhow, we didn’t really see eye-to-eye about a lot of things. One of the things we didn’t clear up in the separation was the ranch. Rob seemed to clear his throat. "I don’t know if you ever saw it, but Dawn and I had this place that we got up on Coal Creek canyon road, you know, off Route 31, a couple of hours northwest of Denver. Dawn got it from her grandfather—actually, an inheritance from her grandfather. It was a good chunk of land, about ten acres, a little more actually. Some of it is just a ridge, but it also has a really beautiful little valley and creek. Dawn used it for a while when it was still her grandfather’s. After we got married, we decided to build something up there. So Dawn had some money, and we rebuilt the cabin that was there. The ranch was cool. It wasn’t grandiose. It was just a cabin in some Ponderosa and Lodgepole pine in a little valley, with a small dirt approach road and pretty far from the main roads. We always called it a ranch, but it was just a cabin and some land.

"In any event, Dawn and I just kept the ranch, but we didn’t live there much. We didn’t do anything with it at all for a long time except I used it a little during summer. It was mine. But anyhow, after Dawn and I broke up, we didn’t get divorced right away because… well, I don’t know… we just didn’t get divorced. And then, you know, Dawn got so completely weird I didn’t even want to talk to her. She got so weird she said she would never marry anybody again. And I just stayed away from her until Therese—have I told you about Therese? Jack, you definitely have to meet Therese, you will love her. She’s beautiful, and she has a sense of humor that won’t stop. And she has got common sense. Completely unlike Dawn!

Anyhow, Therese now keeps bugging me about finishing the divorce with Dawn. Therese is also bugging me about working out the ranch property and getting my half of the property—we could divide it—and at least the cabin. Therese is right. Therese is not pushing me for the divorce so much because after all, she still hasn’t finished all the legal stuff of her own divorce yet. But Therese says I ought to clear up the ranch property. Whatever. Anyhow, Therese is definitely right about the property.

Jack interrupted Rob. Wait a minute Rob, if, uh, Dawn got the property through inheritance, you are shit out of luck because you are not going to have any claim to the property at all, Jack said. I am not sure about the cabin that you built together, Jack added. That is kind of a legal nicety. Who paid for it? You probably don’t even get half of that.

No, that’s not it, Rob replied. "Actually, this whole setup was strange. You know how independent Dawn always was. She didn’t even take my name when we were married. She kept her family’s name, Ferguson. But you know how it worked out with the property? The thing is that all the time we were together, I was really close to Dawn’s family. They just loved me. I think they felt I was closer to them than they were to Dawn, especially before Dawn and I were married. I guess they thought I was some kind of common sense antidote to Dawn’s craziness. They loved it that I was a business major in college and I was trying to make my own way in the business world. And to be honest, both her parents hated it that Dawn was an art student. ‘What is an art student?’ her father used to ask me.

Dawn’s parents are of course loaded. They were really great to me. I don’t talk to them much anymore, but they were great. So when Dawn’s grandfather died and when Dawn and I were together, before we were even married, somehow Dawn’s dad finagled it so that it was a condition of the inheritance that my name was on the ranch property for joint ownership. Dawn has a bunch of other property, and I did not get on that. But I am on the ranch. Rob stopped for a moment and then went on. So the property is mine. I mean, you know, it’s ours of course. But half is mine. And Dawn is doing absolutely nothing with the property now. So why should she care what happens to it? Besides, she is off on her environmental tangent as a do-gooder. I can’t do that.

Jack laughed. Wait, Rob, how did you get mixed up with Dawn in the first place? She is a do-gooder? I always knew you were a good guy, but I never sort of pictured you as a do-gooder. I am not criticizing. I guess I just never saw that side of you.

No, well, it’s not like that, Jack. You knew Dawn a long time ago. In the past, Dawn was a lot different. She seemed a lot different anyhow. She was great when we first met in the business class at Denver City. She didn’t really belong in the business class of a city college. You know she had been doing her art at the University of Colorado, in big-league academics. And then she shows up in business class in city college. She didn’t want to be there. She was just taking it to her humor her parents, I think. She never even finished the class. But that was where we met. She was just a firecracker, and cute, Rob said, drawing the word cute out to a few long syllables. "In those days, I figured I could really go places together with Dawn. It wasn’t long after we were married—sort of a decision we took one weekend that we spent in bed the whole time. You know, never getting out. Hey, crazy days! But that didn’t last too long. All the while, Dawn had a lot of her own ideas. Maybe she just didn’t tell me. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening. Anyhow, she started seeing things a lot different than me. Then things just got stranger and stranger. She decided she did not like business at all. After she finished her art degree, she was all the time hanging around with people at DMMA—you know, the Denver Museum of Modern Art.

Then boom. She got stuck on that environmental stuff and she was gone. And get this—pretty soon, she started criticizing cars! Come on! Please! I am a car salesman. I know cars. I know cars are going to eat up the world. I know cars take up the biggest part of most people’s lives. But car sales put me through college. And yeah, I know the environment is important, but what are people supposed to do, walk? Ride in electric cars? That’s smart. Where do you get the electricity? You think that is free? Dawn started hating me for what I do, because cars are my life. Dawn’s just crazy. She thinks I should desert cars for good. She thinks I should be some kind of modern Robin Hood. She even said that Robin, Robin Hood. Get it? Rob laughed and then added, Actually I kind of sympathize with the other guy—what’s the guy’s name, the bad guy in Robin Hood?

Sheriff of Nottingham. Jack finished Rob’s thought for him.

Right, Rob added quickly. "I could be that guy, Sheriff of Nottingham. It suits me more. Anyhow, I don’t know if that was before or after you and I worked together at the dealership. Dawn and I lived in the ranch for a short while, pretending we were hippies. Dawn was doing all her crazy