Money in the Couch

The real question...

Once a year or more if he had the itch, Dean did a deep clean of his apartment. Because he lived in a luxury apartment, the task took a full Saturday. From top to bottom and front to back, he dismantled and reassembled, swept, dusted, vacuumed, disinfected, deodorized, or wiped clean everything. With this cleaning, Dean found items he previously turned the apartment upside down to find, old keepsake items he had wondered what happened to, and a few dead bugs.

His favorite task, though, was to rip off the cushions to see what was inside the couch and love seats. As a frequent host of weekend parties and grill outs, Dean opened his home to dozens of people throughout the year. He was a social butterfly and was always inviting friends over for dinner and a few laughs. Because he lived in town, his apartment was centrally located for the restaurants and clubs he frequented. His apartment was often a continuation of a gathering at one of those establishments.

Ripping up the seat cushions today, though, he swept his hand towards the back of the couch and pulled up a handful of small change, bobby pins, rubber bands, safety pins, a button, scraps of paper, lint, and three heavy gold metal bars.

“Gold bars?” Dean said out loud.

He brushed the debris off the gold bars and read the inscription, “Suisse 1 Ounce Fine Gold 999,9”. Dean flipped the bars over in his hands and tried to recall who among his circle of friends would carry such valuable bars with them and then lose them in his couch.

Why would they be carrying them around to his place?

And why didn’t they retrace their steps to claim something so valuable?

Or were they planted there for some practical joke purpose?

He calculated he was holding close to twice his yearly salary in his hands at the current market value of gold.

Then it dawned on him. Right after his last deep clean he had gone on a gold and silver buying spree based on new administration in political power. He had been doing that same thing every four years since he was able to vote. He hid the gold and silver throughout the apartment just so it wasn’t in the same place if he were robbed.

But the more troubling question was, how did the rubber bands get in that seat cushion because he had never bought a package of rubber bands in his life?