Alice prayed for Jim as she drove through the melting snow to work the next morning. She prayed for his health and safety-and for his heart. For some reason she couldn’t understand, she felt this was especially important. It was almost time for her lunch break when Jane and Louise stopped by the hospital.
“What are you two doing here?” she asked in a voice that sounded calmer than she felt. She could tell by their expressions that something was seriously wrong.
“We thought we might take you to lunch,” said Jane in a stiff voice.
“Sure.” Alice forced a smile. “Let me just finish up this paperwork and then I’ll get my coat.”
Jane drove the three of them over to the Good Apple Bakery and parked the car in front. “They have pretty good soup in here,” she said as they all got out and sloshed through the melting slush.
Finally they had ordered their soup and were seated at a quiet corner table. Alice had a cup of hot tea in front of her but she felt chilled on the inside. “Okay, girls,” she said. “What’s up?”
Louise made a quiet moaning sound, and Jane just shook her head with her eyes downcast.
“Is Jim okay?” asked Alice, suddenly fearful that her sisters might have actually discovered him dead in his bed. Although this seemed unlikely, since she probably would have heard of it at the hospital by now. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Jane reached over and took Alice’s hand. “He’s gone, Alice.”
“Gone?” Alice glanced at Louise who now looked close to tears.
Louise nodded. “Gone. Jim is gone.”
“We drove over to the Woods’ house this morning and knocked on the apartment door,” said Jane solemnly. “We waited a good long time, but no one answered.”
“Then Mrs. Wood, Wilhelm’s mother, came out and asked if she could help us,” explained Louise.
“She said she had suspected Jim was gone again and had told her son as much. Apparently Jim’s pickup hadn’t been around the last few days. She seemed a bit concerned too. Then she got a key and took us back up there and unlocked the apartment. All his personal belongings were gone, Alice. Mrs. Wood told us that Wilhelm might know more about this, but it was plain to see that she was pretty mad.”
“So we went ahead and stopped by Time for Tea, and Wilhelm said he didn’t know anything about Jim’s leaving.” Louise nervously fingered her pearls.
“Wilhelm said that he hadn’t seen him at all last weekend, but that he’d assumed that Jim was working long hours at our house to catch up after being gone so long.” Jane folded and folded her paper napkin until it became a small neat triangle.
“Then Wilhelm told us that Jim still owes him rent from last month and this one too.”
“That’s not all,” said Jane. “We stopped by the hardware store and asked Fred if he knew anything about Jim’s sudden departure. He said he hadn’t seen him since before Christmas, but that Jim left an unpaid account with him too. I guess it’s quite large.”
Now Alice knew why Fred had sounded worried last night. She turned back to Louise. “And you already paid him his final advance?”
Louise nodded with a sick expression. “Last Friday.”
“But he ordered the slate for our roof, didn’t he?” asked Alice hopefully.
Jane just shrugged. “What do you think, Alice?”
“I don’t know what to think.” She shook her head. “It makes no sense.”
“He’s left town, Alice,” Louise spoke in a flat voice. “He owes people money. What does it look like to you?”
“That he’s a thief,” said Jane.
“We don’t know that for sure,” said Alice.
“It doesn’t look good,” said Jane. “Why would he take off without even calling? Why would he pack all his things and just disappear?”
“We don’t even know who to call about the slate either,” said Louise. “I never even inquired where he was ordering it from. I suppose I could look in the phone book and just start calling.”
Alice looked from one sister to the other. This simply made no sense.
Jane sighed. “Don’t waste your time, Louise. I’m betting we won’t be seeing that slate anytime soon.”
Alice felt tears building in her eyes. “This is just awful. Do you really think that he absconded with the rest of our money?”
“It sure looks like it,” said Jane in a tired voice.
“But he seemed like such a capable contractor,” said Alice as she dabbed her eyes with her paper napkin. “He was doing such good work, and we weren’t even that far from being finished. Why would he do this to us?”
Just then the waitress brought their bowls of soup and bread. She glanced around the table curiously, and then turned and left without saying a word.
“I have absolutely no idea,” said Louise. “But I’ll tell you this much. As soon as we get home I’ll be doing some phoning and inquiring. His business card has a contractor’s license number on it, and I plan to get to the bottom of this before the day is over.”
“We won’t be able to finish the house now.” Jane looked completely dejected as she dipped her spoon in her bowl and then just left it sitting there.
“And we won’t be able to open by Valentine’s Day,” added Louise.
Alice remembered her first impressions of Jim Sharp. For some reason she had never completely trusted the man, but it hadn’t been anything she could explain or even put her finger on. She took a couple spoonfuls of the creamy mushroom soup and then pushed her bowl away.
“This is just so wrong,” she said. “Are we absolutely sure that he’s really left us and taken our money?” She looked at both her sisters. “Maybe his family had a problem, and he had to go back and see them or help out again.”
“You really think he’d drive cross-country in his pickup truck in this kind of weather if it were a real emergency?” Jane looked angry now.
“Not to mention packing up and taking all his belongings?” added Louise.
“No.” Alice shook her head. “That makes no sense.”
“None of this makes sense,” said Louise.
“Sometimes life is just like that,” said Jane. “Sometimes people can seem perfectly good and then, when you least expect it, they turn around and stab you in the back.”
“Oh, Jane.” Alice put her hand on Jane’s arm. “Even if that’s really true. Even if Jim Sharp is nothing more than a thief … well, we just can’t let something like this completely defeat us.”
Jane laughed, but not with humor. “I don’t see how we can help it, Alice.”
Louise groaned. “I suppose we could consider calling that real estate developer. I think I still have his card. Maybe he could take the house off our hands.”
“Louise!” Alice felt shocked. “You can’t just give up.”
“Our money is gone, Alice.” Louise spoke in a tired voice. “We can’t afford to finish fixing the house. And we certainly can’t open the inn in the condition it’s in. The roof is already starting to leak again, and getting it replaced was our biggest expense. It’s over.”
“I’ll go back to working full-time,” offered Alice.
Louise shook her head. “That’s not going to make up the difference, Alice. Not in time anyway.”
“Louise is right,” agreed Jane. “It’s over, Alice.”
“No.” Alice firmly shook her head. “It’s not over until God says it’s over.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Look, Alice, I really think God is telling us it’s over.”
But Alice was unconvinced. During the next few days, she prayed and prayed that God would redeem their desperate situation. Somehow she maintained a brave front even though she felt as if she were faltering on the inside, because she knew as well as anyone that their situation did appear totally and utterly bleak.
Despite Louise’s best efforts to track down Jim Sharp and get some sort of recompense for their losses, it looked hopeless. It turned out that his contractor’s license had expired several years ago, and besides that he already had a number of unhappy customers who had filed previous claims against his non-existent bond insurance.
“That man really was a complete scoundrel,” she told Jane and Alice later that week.
“Sounds like a professional rip-off artist,” said Jane. “A scam man. I’ve seen news shows on guys like that, but I never thought I’d have a run-in with one.”
Alice looked around the interior of the partially renovated house. “But he did actually know about repairing old houses. He did good work.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “He’s still a thief, Alice.”
“I spoke to Fred about Jim’s unpaid bill,” continued Louise. “I felt as if it was partially our fault since the materials he’d purchased had been used in our home.”
Alice nodded. “It’ll take us a while to pay him back.”
“Well, that’s one of the few pieces of good news.” Louise sighed. “Fred said that it was between him and Jim and that he had insurance for this type of thing. The truth is Fred feels partially responsible for the whole nasty business.”
“Well, he should,” snapped Jane. “He was the one who introduced us to Jim in the first place.”
“Yes, but it was our decision,” Alice reminded her.
“You were against it from the start,” said Jane sadly. “Why didn’t we listen to you, Alice?”
Alice just shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“But why was that?” demanded Louise. “How did you know that he was no good, Alice?”
“I don’t even know. It just worried me that so much money was involved. I wanted to be certain he was on the up-and-up, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Once Jim started working, well, I thought perhaps my fears had been foolish.”
“But they weren’t.” Jane shook her head.
“I stopped by Nine Lives this morning,” said Alice, hoping to change the subject to something more positive. “I wanted to see how Viola was doing with her ankle, and it looks like she’s making a good recovery. She’s already back at work.”
“Good for her,” said Louise without enthusiasm.
“Viola showed me a new section of books she just started carrying.” Alice held up a large paperback book. “It’s a how-to on plumbing.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Louise.
Alice shook her head. “Nope. I flipped through it, and it doesn’t really look all that complicated. There are lots of helpful drawings and diagrams. I think I might actually be able to hook up those bathroom fixtures upstairs.”
Jane laughed. “Oh, Alice. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, I have the next few days off and I plan to give it my best try.”
“Okay, then,” said Jane with unexpected determination. “If you’re sure you want to tackle this, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
Alice smiled. “Let’s just hope that that old saying is true.”
“What’s that?” asked Louise as she set aside her knitting and rubbed her forehead.
“You know what Ben Franklin said: God helps those who help themselves.”
“Humph.” Louise shook her head grimly. “Like that rascal Jim Sharp who helped himself to our money?”
“You know that we have to forgive him,” Alice reminded her.
“Not today, I don’t.” Louise stood up and smoothed her skirt. “Today I have to give music lessons. And if you and old Ben are right, if God really does help those who help themselves, then I better get busy.”
So with Louise’s young students plunking on the piano downstairs, Alice and Jane started plunking on the plumbing upstairs, and by the end of the day Sarah Roberts could play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and one toilet was actually hooked up and operable.
The three sisters sat down to a dinner of leftovers and laughter.
“Well,” said Louise after telling them about several of her less than gifted pupils, “if we somehow manage to weather this storm, I’m sure we’ll be better people for it in the long run.”
“Not to mention plumbers,” added Alice.
“I hear plumbers make pretty good money,” said Jane.
Still, this didn’t address the issue of their leaking roof. The recent heavy snow and thaw and refreezing had created several new leaks in the attic. Alice had rounded up some more buckets from the basement and emptied them as needed, but she knew this wouldn’t solve their problem for long.