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Thinking of Sergeant Cruz on the trip home made me feel guilty. I’m sure if Julie wouldn’t mind if she were watching from above, but it didn’t make me feel any better. My mind soon drifted on to the more pressing problem of where my next paycheck was coming from when Fred started pacing back and forth in the rear seat. We were approaching Evergreen Lake and he wanted out. “Hold on, Freddie, let me park the Jeep first. Okay?”
I parked just below the dam, so we could take the stairs up the backside of the lake. I figured we’d have a better chance of not being seen by any park rangers if we didn’t walk past the boat house. Fred didn’t let the chilly air bother him and jumped into the pool at the bottom of the dam. I was about to call him back when my cell rang.
“Hi, Bon, what’s up?”
“Tell that woman you were working for where she can put her drywall, Jake. Margot wants to hire you. She even said she’d give you an advance.” I couldn’t see Bonnie, but I could imagine her jumping up and down from the excitement in her voice.
“An advance?” I asked, silently crossing myself. “How much of an advance?”
“How much do you need?”
I quickly calculated the more pressing past-due bills. “Five hundred would be nice.”
“Hold on,” she answered. Then, less than a minute later she came back on the line. “I told Margot you couldn’t do it for less than a thousand. She’s said she’d wire the money to my bank and I could write you a check on my account. You can pick it up tonight when you get back.”
“She’s there with you?” I thought about asking why Margot couldn’t write the check instead of Bonnie, but didn’t want to press my luck. Chances were she didn’t carry cash or a checkbook.
“Yeah, we’re at the little coffee shop in town. She cried when I read the letter over the phone to her and wanted to come up and see the others. Wait...hold on. Yes?”
I wanted to cross myself again while Bonnie spoke to her sister, but decided not to press my luck.
“She said she’d give you another thousand when you track down the rightful owner of the letter.”
I started walking toward the highway to get a better view of the shops. “Great, Bon. Tell Margot I’ll get started with a real search once I get home. There are sites that have a lot more information, now that I can afford to pay for it. I’ve also got some other news I’ll tell you about later.”
Fred saw me and must have thought I was leaving, so he got out of the water and ran toward me. I managed to find a stick and throw it into the water before he made it ten yards. It was all the time I needed to end the call with Bonnie and step out on the road where I could look down the street to the coffee shop, and didn’t see the truck that nearly ran me down. I thanked Fred’s guardian angel that he had gone after the stick instead of me.
Once I had Fred in the Jeep, I locked it and began walking toward the coffee shop. I couldn’t wait to see the expression on the sisters’ faces. Fred was upset I didn’t take him with me, but he was too wet. It’d be my luck he’d start shaking and shower someone wearing a new Armani suit.
Bonnie’s Cherokee was nowhere to be seen in the parking lot next to the coffee shop. That didn’t surprise me, for knowing Margot, they had probably come in her car, and I didn’t have a clue what it would be this week. She had a good friend who was one of Denver’s biggest car dealers, and traded cars as often as most people upgrade their cell phones.
There was no sign of Bonnie and Margot in the coffee shop either. Its only customers were sitting at a window table and were much too young to be the sisters, so I decided to ask the girl behind the counter. “Hi, Shelly,” I said after reading her name tag. “I’m looking for a neighbor of mine who’s supposed to be here with her sister. Have you seen two older ladies that look alike?”
Shelly stopped wiping down an already spotless counter and gave me a puzzled look. Then she glanced at her name tag and smiled. “Oh, I forgot I was wearing that. Most people call me Miss or Honey. For a minute there, you had me wondering where I knew you from.”
The poor kid couldn’t be much older than my own daughter and had probably thought I was hitting on her. “Sorry about that. Hope I didn’t startle you. But have you seen them by any chance?”
She went back to wiping the counter and tilted her head ever so slightly, the way some people do when they try to remember something. “No one matching that description’s been here,” she said. “At least not since I started my shift at two.”
I took a couple dollars from my pocket and put them in her tip jar before leaving.
***
BONNIE SEEMED SURPRISED when Fred and I knocked on her back door after taking the path from our cabin to her place. “Wow, Jake, how’d you get home so quick? Good thing I saw Fred with you, or I might have called the cops,” she said, letting us in.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, but to answer your first question, we were at the lake when you called. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to surprise you and Margot.”
“You were in town?”
“Yeah. And you weren’t, were you? And I suppose neither was Margot, was she?”
Bonnie turned away without saying anything and went over to the cabinet where she kept her Jack Daniels. “I’m sorry, Jake,” she said, opening a new bottle and filling her glass.
I walked over to her and put my hand over her glass. “It’s okay, Bon, and this won’t help.”
Bonnie finally found the courage to look at me. Her eyes were wet. “I can afford it, Jake, really I can. I knew you wouldn’t take the money if you thought it was me paying, so I had to make up that stupid story.”
She picked up a check that been laying on her kitchen counter. “Please take this and find Mary’s grandkids for me...please.”
I took the check and tore it in half. Then for good measure, tore the halves again. “You can’t afford this any more than I can, Bon. But if it really means that much to you, I’ll find them.”
Fred wasn’t too happy leaving without dinner, but he’d have to suck it up. I knew it was time to leave, even if he didn’t.