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interesting facts.
    He called back mid-afternoon with his report. Amy had grown up in a lower-middle-class household, lost her father when she was young, and lived with a grandparent when her mother moved to L.A. with a new husband. She got a business degree from the University of Denver, where she attended on a full scholarship, but seemed to make little professional progress despite her academic success. She’d worked as an accountant in Pueblo, a small industrial town south of Denver; and then in marketing for a downtown hotel in Billings, Montana. For some reason, she moved back to Denver, where she went back to accounting for a small hotel chain for a while, and finally, she moved to Palm Springs.
    “That’s when everything starts to make sense,” Kent said.
    “What do you mean?” Rick asked.
    “Well, she starts to be referred to in news stories and local gossip blogs as the girlfriend of one Rob Martin, who was, at that time, a TV anchor at one of your local stations. Now, it appears he’s in L.A. So I followed Mr. Martin back in time, and guess what?”
    “He lived in Pueblo and Billings and Denver, too.”
    “Right-oh, good friend of mine. So maybe she’s not that available anyway. Maybe you don’t have anything to worry about!”
    “Were they married?”
    “Apparently not. No marriage license in any of the counties where they lived.”
    “I’m sure I met that guy a few times at charity events,” Rick recalled. “I don’t remember her being with him.”
    “Maybe she doesn’t like to go to those things much,” Kent suggested. “I didn’t find any pictures of him with her in old Palm Springs Life issues.”
    That was good news and bad news, Rick thought after hanging up with Kent. He sat and thought through the information. It was a lot of “on the one hand, on the other hand, and back to the first hand ...”
    If she hated society events, maybe they had more in common than a soft spot for injured dogs. But on the other hand, perhaps her separation from Mr. TV Anchor was just temporary, and when she said she was looking for a job, maybe she meant in L.A. Maybe they were still an item. But if they were still an item, then there would be no harm hiring her and calling it temporary. But if they were still an item, what real motivation did he have for helping her out?
    Rick shook his head and headed out the door. He’d have to figure this out on the job. He had three construction projects underway, and as the general contractor, he never let a week go by without spending a few hours on each site, making sure things were moving along and no one thought he wasn’t watching what they were doing.
    ~
    The first project was a single-family renovation he’d taken on for the property’s owner. It wasn’t his usual gig; usually he bought the properties he wanted to renovate, and then either sold them for a nice profit when they had been remodeled to L.A. hipster standards, or turned them over to his small hotel management company to operate.
    He’d taken on this house, though, when all of the hotel properties he wanted were unavailable. The high prices paid recently for some properties by L.A. investors around town were exorbitant, and now anyone with four shabby rooms under a leaky roof with an asphalt slab of off-street parking thought their little gem should bring them enough money to move to Cozumel and never have to swipe someone else’s credit card again. Eventually, their expectations would return to earth, and Rick could get going again, but in the meantime, he could wait them out.
    The house project was progressing fine, although as he toured the construction site, he was worried for the owner. The young man, a Silicon Valley techie with more money than any thirty-something should ever have, had asked him to take the three bedrooms of the small, mid-century ranch house and turn them into one huge master suite. That made sense for him and his partner now, Rick agreed, but it was going to make