Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(3)

~

Ida lay on the bed sobbing long into the night before her tears ran dry and sleep finally overcame her. In the morning she woke with her eyes crusted and her hair matted, but during the night she had come to the realization that she needed help if she wanted to do anything more than simply wish for James to come home.

She called Sam Caldwell first. He was not someone she knew but simply a name taken from the yellow pages of the telephone book. “Investigations and surveillance” the ad said. Then it told how Sam had been in business for more than twenty years and was registered with the county and state. But it was the tagline that convinced Ida to make the call. At the bottom of Sam Caldwell’s ad in a seemingly handwritten script it read, “Missing Persons Specialist.”

When Ida Jean Sweetwater walked into Sam Caldwell’s office she was prepared to answer questions about her missing son. She’d brought along a picture and a shirt she’d taken from his closet. She thought she was prepared for anything, but she wasn’t prepared for the sizable price tag hanging on Sam Caldwell’s services.

“It’s an eight hundred-dollar retainer to cover the first two weeks,” he said, “then three hundred a week for as long as I’m actively working the case.”

Ida gasped. “Doesn’t that seem rather high?”

“Not really,” Sam answered. Then he explained that expenses were extra.

Ida hesitated for a moment, picturing the balance in her checking account. “How long do you think it would take to find James?”

Caldwell shrugged. “Could be days, could be months.”

Ida pictured the bank account again. There had been so many expenses: Jim’s illness, the doctor bills, the funeral. She could swing two months if she cut back on groceries and Sam’s expenses didn’t cost too much.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re hired.”

She pulled out the checkbook that still had Jim’s name on it and in a shaky hand wrote the check for eight hundred dollars. She had never in all her life written a check for that much money.

~

That night Ida heated a can of chicken rice soup for her dinner then sat down at the table with her checkbook and stack of bills. On a yellow tablet she wrote columns of what had to be paid and what could wait, what was necessary and what could be considered a luxury, and in very small box at the bottom of the page she added up any income she expected. With Jim gone the Social Security would be considerably less, and most of their savings had gone to pay doctors during Jim’s long illness.

On a second sheet of paper Ida began to list the things she might do to make some money. First she’d sell the little bit of jewelry she had, all but the thin gold band Jim placed on her finger the day they were married. That she’d never sell. It no longer fit her arthritic finger, but it dangled from a chain around her neck and nested in the crevice between her breasts. As the hours of the evening slid by, Ida added any number of other thoughts to the list: babysitting, sewing, light housework, homemade pies.

When she crawled into bed that night Ida knew that somehow, someway she would find the money to pay Sam Caldwell for as long as it took to find James. Whatever she had to do, it would be easier than living with the silence of the house.





Pies, Lies, & Max





A week passed before Ida heard back from Sam Caldwell, and even then it was just a piddling bit about how James had left Plainview in 1958 and moved to Lodi, New Jersey.

“He left Lodi in sixty,” Sam explained, “and it looks like he moved down to Nashville.”

“That’s quite possible,” Ida answered. “James always liked music. In high school he played a saxophone in the band.”

When Ida began to sound a bit too optimistic, Sam said, “Bear in mind this was twenty-nine years ago. A lot could have changed by now.”

“Oh.” Ida sighed. “I’d rather hoped…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll find him. It’s just a question of time.”

Although she didn’t say it aloud Ida thought, Time and money. Hopefully she wouldn’t run out of either before he found James.

~

Two days before she had to make her first three-hundred-dollar payment to Sam Caldwell, Ida walked into Suzanne’s Bake Shop with two pies, one apple and one peach. She set them on the counter and said, “I thought you might be interested in ordering some homemade pies.”

Suzanne laughed. “I sell pies, not buy them.”

With her bank account going down faster than the lake in a drought season, Ida reached down to the soles of her feet and hauled up enough courage to say what she’d come to say. “You don’t sell pies like these.”

Suzanne chuckled. “Says who?”

Ida pulled a pie server and small china plate from her tote bag. First she cut into the apple, which was her particular favorite, carved off a good size slice, and handed it to Suzanne. “Taste this. If you don’t agree, I’ll leave and not bother you again.”

The bakeshop owner forked a bite into her mouth and chewed. After what seemed to Ida an excruciatingly long time Suzanne looked over with a raised eyebrow. “You make this yourself?”

“Yes, indeed,” Ida answered. “And there’s plenty more where that came from.” She explained that she wanted three dollars each for pies that could easily be sold for six. “I’ve got apple, peach, and blueberry, and I can do nine pies a day.”