HEINZ NOONAN
and
Captain Heinz Noonan, the "Bearded Holmes" of the Sandersonville Police Department, was well into his second cup of coffee of the morning, vicious though it was without his usually generous helpings of cream and sugar. It was not that the weight monster was ruthless attacking him, rather that the Christmas season was upon him and he anticipated numerous gatherings at which he would be expected to consume fattening substances. This, he considered was not only a God-given right but a political necessity. The former he relished while the latter he detested. Overall he didn’t object to the ingesting, just the aftermath in January when he would have to increase his visits to the gym and reduce his carbo-rich diet at his favorite Italian restaurant, Lorenzo’s.
Coffee without the usually rich helpings of cream and sugar was not the pleasure he anticipated so he ceased imbibing at the second sip. Actually, before the second sip. Then he set the cup down which, in this instance, was fortunate as the phone rang as his cup made contact with the table.
“Noonan,” he said as he picked up the receiver.
“Captain Noonan?”
“Better be,” replied the detective. “Or I’m paying someone else’s bills.”
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. “I’m paying enough bills for both of us so maybe this is your lucky day.”
“The last time I had a lucky day my wife came home from shopping empty-handed because she had lost her wallet.”
“Did she ever find it?”
“You mean where I hid it under the sofa cushion to discourage her from going shopping at all? Yeah, about five minutes after she got home.”
“Then she went back to the mall?”
“Broke a nail trying to get the key into the ignition too fast. I had to pay for that too.”
The male voice chuckled again. “Well, I’m glad you’ve got a sense of humor because I’ve got a doozy of a case here. I’m Detective David Solomon in Riverside, California . . .”
“Home of the Mission Inn, right?”
“You got it. Orange capital of the world. Except for Florida and Hawaii and a whole bunch of other places.”
“Yeah. I’ve been there. I was at a conference there last year.”
“That’s right. That’s why I’m calling. My Chief met you . . .”
“That’s the way these things always start. I hope it’s a bizarre case because, frankly, I haven’t had a good whodunit in a while.”
“I heard you specialized in strange cases and this one, I’ve got to say, is very different.”
“How different?”
“Let’s see. We’ve got a vegetarian anaconda, two clowns, three bichon frise and . . .”
“. . . and a partridge in a pear tree?”
“Close enough for this season. We’ve got five antique rings and a faux Faberge’ egg.”
“Quite a collection. Am I supposed to believe it?”
“Unfortunately, I hope so. If I hadn’t been a party to the events, I wouldn’t have believed it either.”
“There is a crime involved in this, right? I’d hate to work my brain for a practical joke.”
“Oh, there’s a crime here. At least we think there is. We’re talking about five antique, one-of-a-kind rings that are collectively worth about $20,000.
“I’ve worked on stranger cases. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
“The story is a bit strange.”
“Wow! What a surprise!”
“Putting the pieces together slowly, it appears that there were two robberies at the same time in two different parts of Riverside. We know that both are related because both robbers hit the stores dressed as clowns. They were a real Mutt-and-Jeff outfit, if you can use that term to describe two people not together. One was well over six foot six and the other might have been five feet tall.”
“You sure they were on the same team, so to speak?”
“Absolutely. They were both dressed as clowns, stayed in the stores less than 90 seconds, came on foot, escaped on foot, both used pistols, both had heavy face make-up.”
“Were the costumes similar?”
“Other than they were clown outfits, no.”
“Then this could be one heck of a coincidence.”
“We don’t think so. Both clowns left a rubber chicken with the same note. The notes read, ‘I’ll be back.’” Detective Solomon read the word “back” as if Arnold Schwarzenegger would have said it “bahhhk.”
“Sound conclusive to me.”
“That’s the way we looked at it too. But the taking of the rings was strange. They were antiques and had all been insured. That means that all of the rings had been fingerprinted, if that’s the correct term for rings.”
“Close enough. You mean that all of the diamonds in the rings had been spectrographed so if they turn up again, you’d know it.”
“Right. So the jewelry is easily traceable. The thief knew what he was doing. He actually took the traceable rings and left the real valuable stuff alone.”
“Whoa! You said he. Do you know it was a he? And you used the term in the singular.”
“Actually no one knows the sex of either clown. They didn’t speak. They just arrived with guns, took what they wanted and left. There were two robberies. One was the jewelry store and the other was an antique store. At the antique store, all that was taken was the faux Faberge’ egg.”
“A fake one, humm. What’s the worth?”
“Maybe $500.”
“Is there any connection between the antique rings and this faux” – Noonan accented the term as if it were a gourmet French pate’ – “Faberge’ egg?”
“Other than the clown robbers, not that we can see.”
“I’m waiting for the vegetarian anaconda. I know this is a crazy question but was there a circus in town at the moment?”
“Yes there was, and is, as a matter of fact. That’s the reason the robbery went so smoothly. We’ve had clowns and ballerinas all over town hyping the circus so a clown on the street was no big deal. But neither of the clowns were from the circus. We checked. From the midgets to the thin man. We also checked with the last three cities where the circus performed. No robberies remotely similar to these.”
“I’m dying to hear about the vegetarian anaconda.”
“That’s where the story gets more bizarre.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“The two robberies were held at the same time. And I mean the same time, the same 90 seconds. The perps grabbed two cabs for the circus. It’s down town so the cabbies didn’t know they were carrying thieves. We found out about 30 minutes later. Both cabs went to the same location, the kennels for the bichon frise. Those are . . .”
“Yeah. I know. Those are the little white dogs that do all the circus tricks.”
“You are amazing well-educated in circus lore.”
“No. My brother-in-law has two of them.”
“Oh. OK. At the Frise kennels the pair dumped their disguises. They clearly knew what they were doing because the Frise kennels are the only ones in the circus that have an open flame for heating.”
“Sorry?”
“Heating. The circus is in a huge tent that’s heated. All of the crew and the animals are housed in vans and tents behind the main circus tent. When it gets cold this time of year the animals are kept in their heated vans until they are ready to perform. But there are a number of 55-gallon drums around the compound that have open fires in them. That’s to keep the crew warm when they’re working outside. One of those drums is near the Frise kennels. Apparently the dogs don’t care one way or the other about an open flame.”
“So the perps dropped their disguises into the fire in the drum?”
“Yup. By the time we found them, there wasn’t much left. Not enough for a DNA match anyway and the fiber evidence, pfffffft! A clown in a circus is invisible, so to speak. Once they pulled off their costumes they could blend in with the crowd and be invisible in another sense.”
“Any other evidence at the Frise kennels?”
“Lots and lots of footprints.”
“I would have suspected that.”
“Then we got the call about the vegetarian anaconda.”
“This I have been waiting to hear.”
“Whether by accident or circumstance, our perps made it into the serpentine through an unlocked door. It’s really warm in there, you know, with all those reptiles.”
“Just snakes?”
“The circus isn’t that large so there aren’t that many. The big one, of course, is the anaconda. It’s about 15 feet long and about as active as a dead tree in a swamp.”
“Unless it’s feeding time.”
“That’s right. Speaking of feeding, this particular anaconda has a metabolic difficulty. It can’t digest raw meat with any efficiency so the zookeepers have been feeding it a mixture of things of vegetarian foodstuffs all gooed together to be made to look like a small animal. Then they wrap the goo in rat skin . . . .”
“Rat skin?”
“Yeah. They skin a bunch of house rats and use the skin to surround the vegetarian goo. It fools the snake into thinking its eating a rat. At least it must because it’s working. The snake eats what it thinks is a rat. Apparently it doesn’t have taste buds to clue it otherwise. Whatever. The anaconda has been eating the vegetarian gunk and gaining weight.”
“Is there a reason you’re telling me about the vegetarian anaconda?”
“There is. We suspected that the perps put the faux Faberge’ egg into the vegetarian goo and the anaconda swallowed it. We’re not sure if the perps hid the loot in the goo and were planning on coming back or expected the anaconda to swallow the haul so they could, er, retrieve it at a later date.”
“I see. How did you know that the anaconda swallowed the loot?”
“The snake was having digestive problems the day after the robbery so the vet took an X-ray and, poof, there was a metal obstruction. So the vet operated.”
“He found the stolen egg?”
“Nope. He found the gold rings. The egg is still missing.”
“Let me get this straight. You were following the Mutt-and-Jeff act after the theft of the faux Faberge’ egg worth all of, what $500, and found $20,000 worth of rings?”
“That’s the size of it. The reason I’m calling you is to ask ‘What’s going on here?’”
NOW THAT IS A GOOD QUESTION.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
WRITE DOWN YOUR SUSPICIONS . . .
. . . AND READ ON!
“Now that is a good question.” Noonan thought for a moment and then said. “I’ve got some preliminary questions.”
“Shoot.”
“How much press coverage has the vegetarian anaconda received? Were both the robberies caught on security cameras? How far apart were the two robberies? Who was actually in the stores when the robberies occurred? Which robbery did the tall perp pull off? Are you sure the Faberge’ egg is faux? Were the egg and/or the rings insured? Did you do a background check on the owners of the rings? Is there any connection between the antique store owner and the jewelry store owner? How long has the circus been in town? Where did you look for the egg at the circus? Does anyone at either store have a criminal record?”
“Some of that information I have. The two robberies were exactly a mile apart. I know that because the Jewelry store was on the corner of Main and First and the other was at Main and Fourteenth. At 14 city blocks to a mile, that makes them exactly a mile apart. Both stores were hit early in the day. There were no customers in the jewelry store at the time and that robbery was caught on video. I’ve seen it. The tall perp comes in and waves the clerks – two of them – onto the floor. The perp walks behind the counter and pops open a drawer, the whole time holding the clerks down on the ground with a pistol. Then he’s gone. Under 90 seconds. The instant the perp is out the door, the clerks are up and calling the police.”
“No alarm?”
“No. That alarm is activated by the clerks. Since the robbery was over they just called 911.”
“The perp went right for the rings? He didn’t look around and then decide to go for the antique rings.”
“He went right for the rings. Straight for them. As soon as we got there we got the names of the owners and ran them through NCIC. Got some solid hits, interesting but nothing punishing. One is owned by an old lady in Victorville, a town in the desert, who wants to give the ring to her granddaughter. The second ring is owned by a retired underworld character that has been clean for 40 years. He lives in Las Vegas. The other two rings come from a large jewelry operation in San Diego. The rings were in Riverside on consignment. The rings were actually owned by two people and here’s where it gets interesting. One is part of Al Capone’s jewelry collection that has just been liquidated. It was a pinky ring and was purchased by an organized crime figure on parole. He swears he had nothing to do with the robbery but we’re not sure. He lives in Arizona and the Tucson Police are keeping an eye on him. The other ring is owned by a small antique jewelry cooperative run by a couple that has, collectively, records that include money laundering, receiving stolen property, extortion, obstruction of justice and retail fraud running back to three decades.”
“Where does that couple live?”
“Right now. Phoenix. But they lived in San Francisco recently and were briefly considered suspects in a major diamond robbery in Denver. But they were eliminated, reluctantly I was told, because they were not in Denver at the time.”
“Do you have any detail about that robbery?”
“Not that the Denver Police would release. Just what was in the newspaper. A diamond merchant was robbed of about a million in gems. No one was hurt and the insurance company paid off. The diamonds were probably cut up because none have surfaced.”
“Why was the couple suspected?”
“Jewelry is an incestuous business. It takes a chunk of change to get started, particularly if it’s a small operation. So everyone knows everyone else and there is trading of jewelry on consignments, mixing and matching of antiques. That kind of thing. Their name came up on paperwork which, surprisingly, turned out to be legitimate.”
“How about the underworld figure in Las Vegas?”
“In his 90s. Used to be, or, rather, alleged to have been, a torpedo for Al Capone, interestingly. He’s still ambulatory so the Las Vegas police are watching him.”
“How about the egg?”
“Just a faux Faberge’ egg. It pops open to show a carriage. It looks good from far away. It wasn’t insured, by the way.”
“What’s a faux Faberge’ egg doing in an antique store?”
“Part of an estate sale. ‘Antique’ is a nice way of referring to that store, by the way. I’d call it more of a high class oddity shop. It’s got some good stuff but the owner doesn’t have a lot of money so he’s moving anything he can get. He’s got some high priced painting from local legends, 20s furniture, lots of heirloom jewelry but nothing into the $10,000 and above range. He’s been in business in Riverside for a decade. No record. There’s no business connection between the antique store and the jewelry store that got robbed. But it’s hard to believe the owners don’t know each other. Both are active in the Downtown Business Association and other nonprofits.”
“Does the antique store have a security camera?”
“No. It’s a small operation. The perp, the short one, came in with a gun just as the store opened. The perp duct taped the owner, took the egg and vanished. His wife found him half an hour later. That was when we knew we had two robberies.”
“How long has the circus been in town?”
“Two weeks. It has another week to run. I don’t know anything about the vegetarian anaconda so that information I’ll have to research. I can’t remember if there was another question.”
“Where did you look for the egg at the circus?”
“We did a search but I wouldn’t call it thorough. There have been crowds there 15 hours a day.”
“Does the outside crew at the circus feed the animals?”
“I presume so.”
“Do any animals there eat an oat or barley mix? Something that would have to be fed with a shovel.”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out.”
“Don’t bother. Look for that faux Faberge’ egg in the mix. Make sure it’s not a real Faberge’s egg and then hold onto it for the moment. Were the rings returned?”
“Not yet.”
“Hang onto them too.”
“OK. Any other questions?”
“A couple of more. See if you can get any more information on the heist in Denver. Was it ever solved? If not, exactly what was stolen? Also see what else was in the Capone liquidation.”
“You mean, like a faux Faberge’ egg?”
“It crossed my mind. And don’t forget the press coverage for the vegetarian anaconda.”
“You really like that, don’t you?”
“I’ve never heard of a vegetarian snake.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
WHAT IS NOONAN THINKING?
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
THIS CASE HAS ALL KINDS OF TWISTS . . .
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING ON?
WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS AND READ ON!!!!!
Three hours later and yet another attempt at black coffee, Noonan got a follow-up call from Riverside.
“I have some good news and bad news.”
“Let me guess. The good news is that you found the egg; it’s the faux egg as identified by the antique store owner. The bad news is that everything else is a dead end.”
“You’ve been here before.”
“Sort of. Where did you find the egg?”
“In an oat mix for the elephant. It wasn’t that hard to find once we started digging into the feed mix.”
“I kind of thought that would be the case. About the anaconda?”
“There has been quite a bit of press coverage. This is the only vegetarian anaconda on earth and the local papers went into quite a bit of detail on the snake. I’ve got all kinds of information on the vegetarian goo. Do you want that?”
“No. What did it say about how the snake is handled?”
“Just that it is carefully watched because it is so valuable as the worlds’ only vegetarian anaconda. It is X-rayed frequently to make certain nothing is going wrong inside and it consumes lots of rat skins. It also gave a feeding schedule for local vets.”
“How about that Denver robbery?”
“Nothing has turned up. I asked what was stolen and I was told it was about a handful of gems if the certificate of authenticities and individual envelopes were eliminated. Quite a haul though.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense! If you knew where the egg was to be found, you know what happened.”
YOUR MOMENT HAS COME!
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING ON?
WRITE IT DOWN AND COMPARE YOUR NOTES
WITH THOSE OF
HEINZ NOONAN
Noonan continued, “I’m a long way from where you are but I think the reason you’re having a hard time making sense of what is going on is because there are two different robbery scenarios at the same time, one of which never happened.”
“Huh?”
“First of all, your clown robberies were probably staged. Here’s what I think happened. The owner of the antique store disguised himself as a clown and put on some kind short stilts. He didn’t have to be too good on the stilts because he was only acting for the security camera. By being seen on the security camera as about six foot six that would put him in the clear and lead the police to look for a tall man that never existed.”
“But the short thief?”
“Never existed. The only person who saw the short thief was the antique store owner. I’ll bet his wife dressed up as the short clown and took a cab to the bichon frise kennels at a specific moment, just in time to meet her husband. She could not have been caught because she had not reported the robbery of the antique store yet. She might have even had some business cards in her pocket just in case she was stopped so she could say she was advertising the shop. Since she owned the faux Faberge’ egg, it wasn’t stolen.”
“If that’s the case, why did she report the egg stolen?”
“I’ll get to that in a moment. When she got to the bichon frise kennels, she stripped off her disguise and dropped it in the open fire. Thus she accounted for the second clown. She took the egg and deposited it somewhere it would remain safe and still be found intact. The most logical place was a feed box or pile where it would be discovered when the animals were fed sometime during the week. The egg you found, by the way, is not the egg that was allegedly stolen. I’ll get into that in a minute.”
“But, but . . .”
“Let me finish. While she was hiding the egg, her husband dressed as a clown took a cab to the bichon frise kennel. I’ll bet when you check the 911 call you’ll see that there is a gap between the time the robbery occurred and the call was made. That was to give the perp time to get to the kennels and burn the costume. Once the second costume was being burned, there was proof of both robberies. The perp may have even used a cell phone to call the jewelry store to say he was in the clear.”
“Why did they need two robberies?”
“Because there were, in fact, three crimes and the two robberies were meant to cover up the third.”
“I’m lost.”
“OK. Let’s take this backwards. Think of the two clown robberies. We’ll call them the clown robberies. Everything that was stolen was recovered. There was no insurance loss. Those robberies were simply designed to create a distraction. They did their job well. You investigated all kinds of people who had nothing to do with the clown robberies. You found the rings in the vegetarian anaconda. You were meant to find the rings. The perps knew the anaconda was going to be X-rayed so they knew the rings would be found. They knew the egg would be found as well. When the rings and egg were found, the police would think the robberies were a prank. No loss, no crime. Even if you caught the clowns the antique store couple and the jewelry store owner would have called it a publicity stunt. There wouldn’t be much you could do because if nothing was stolen, no insurance collected.”
“Rrrr-ight. But why did they do it?”
“Because there was a second robbery in progress at the same time. Remember that heist in Denver?”
“For a million, yeah.”
“Well, I’m betting that the rings were a distraction from the faux Faberge’ egg. The egg had no value so the police wouldn’t care about it. But someone else would. It wasn’t the egg that was valuable. It was what was inside. I’ll bet there were a million dollars worth of diamonds in that egg, the million from the Denver heist. Here’s what I think happened. Your fine couple in Phoenix is the fence for those Denver diamonds. But they can’t take them directly. They need a paper trail. So they contacted the jeweler there in Riverside. I’ll bet he’s small. He may be crooked but he’s still small. He could leak the stones out slowly enough to allay any suspicion but he couldn’t put them in his inventory. That many stones was too risky. So he subcontracted, so to speak, to the antiques dealer. There isn’t a record problem with antiques dealers. It’s a cash and carry kind of business. That was how the diamond deal was supposed to work. The gems from the heist would slowly go through the antiques dealer books to the Riverside jeweler to the Phoenix couple with the Riversiders taking an administrative fee. Everyone would have paper on the gems just in case the police got nosey.”
“That still doesn’t tell me how the egg is involved.”
“The diamonds came to the antique dealer in the faux egg. But not the egg you have in your hand. The diamonds went into a faux egg and that egg went to the antiques dealer to start the process.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because there is no other reason for the egg to have been stolen. It was stolen to make the Phoenix couple believe that the diamonds had been stolen in an elaborate robbery. That way the diamonds disappear. Someone stole them from the antiques dealer. As long as the antiques dealer doesn’t get suddenly wealthy, the Phoenix couple is out $1 million in diamonds and can’t find them. The stealing of the egg was to convince the Phoenix couple the egg had been stolen and therefore, by extension, the diamonds had been stolen as well.”
“If that was true, why was the egg recovered?”
“The real perps, the antiques dealer couple and the jeweler need to show the Phoenix couple that they don’t have the diamonds. If the egg just disappears, there will always be the suspicion that the Phoenix couple was double-crossed. If the egg turns up and is empty, that suspicion goes away. I’ll bet that the antiques dealer will figure out some way to pop the figurine in the egg out to show you the egg is empty. He might even give it to the local museum as a donation. Anything to get a line in the newspaper that the egg is empty. Ergo the diamonds have been stolen.”
“Then the antiques dealer and the jeweler can sell the stones slowly and keep the profits for themselves.”
“Yup. The rings were stolen to draw attention to the egg. The egg was stolen to double-cross the Phoenix couple. The vegetarian anaconda was used because it was X-rayed frequently which meant the rings would be found quickly. Once the rings and the egg were found, the case would go cold. It was a very clever scheme because if either of the clowns had been caught at any point during the alleged robbery, there was a logical explanation. Thus there would have been no crime.”
“Well, where are the diamonds?”
A VERY GOOD QUESTION
WHERE DO YOU THINK THEY ARE?
“I’d say the antiques dealer still has them. I’m betting that they are still in a faux Faberge’ egg, possibly even out in the open in a display case. He probably has a collection of them. The jeweler can’t keep the diamonds because he’s subject to audits. I’ll bet if you searched the antique dealer's store you’d find the diamonds.”
“We can’t do that without a warrant.”
“True. But you can make everyone’s life miserable by returning the egg to the dealer without letting him pop it open. Have him identify it and just give it back. Tell the press it was returned unopened and make sure they write it up. Then keep a very sharp eye on the antiques dealer because things will start popping right away. That Phoenix couple is going to figure out they are being double-crossed. If they get real mad, you could get all the fish in one net.”
“Everything makes sense but I’ll have to think about it. But I like the way you think. By the way, what tipped you? Was there any one thing?”
“Well, a couple of things. First, why should the clowns bother to leave notes? And particularly ones that said they would be bahhhhk.” Noonan said “back” like Arnold Schwarzenegger. “There was no reason. Ergo, the notes were to definitively link the two robberies – as if the clown outfits were not enough. Then there was the description of the second clown, the alleged one. The dealer described the perp as five feet tall. There are not that many people that small and that raised my suspicion. You can make someone appear taller but not shorter. Since the taller perp was caught on the security camera and the short one wasn’t, that solidified my suspicions that the short one never existed. If one perp didn’t exist, then why invent him? To give the second perp credibility. My conclusion was that the clown robberies were for not for profit – and there is no such a thing as a robbery that does not involve profit for someone. So, there must have been a second robbery for profit somewhere in the background.”
“So you found the money and followed it.”
“Right. When you don’t know what to do, follow the money. I did. Now I want to make sure that the perps end up with egg on their face, so to speak.”
“That was a cruel pun.”
“Not as cruel as what will likely happen when the Phoenix couple comes to Riverside. They do not sound like pleasant people. You might have antiques couple and the jeweler knocking on your door with a confession.”
“Now that’s my kind of a happy ending.”
“Snakes alive!” Noonan said. “It’s time for me to slither out of here!”
“Well,” came the reply, “thanks for the help and I’ll snake on down to a press conference. Who knows? If I can speak enough truth with a forked tongue I might be able to draw someone out of their snake’s den.”
“Don’t take any tofu rats, though. I hear they are hell on the digestive system. A lot like black coffee.” And with that, the Chief of Detectives of the Sandersonville Police Department hung up.
HOW DID YOU DO?
COULD YOU HAVE SOLVED THIS ON YOUR OWN?
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