Saturday Morning by Lauraine Snelling

their concealer would hide them.” She made a good attempt at a smile that would pacify him.
    “You’re not sleeping, and it looks to me like you’re not eating either.” He nodded to her plate, where she had been moving bits of chicken around rather than eating it.
    “You see too much.”
    “That’s what friends are for. Finish your dinner, and let’s go for a drive. I need to go look at a piece of property.”
    “Are you buying or selling?” She obediently took a bite and chewed. The chicken Marsala was delicious, and suddenly she was hungry. She finished the penne pasta and the crunchy roll, and drank her coffee, listening to him describe the lakefront property, asking the appropriate questions and enjoying the sound of his voice.
    Two days later, Fred the private investigator called. “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
    “The good. I could use some good news right about now.” She’d spent the morning in court, watching as a well-prepared radiologist was awarded custody of his children and the family home in a decision that should have gone to the wife. Julia hated to lose any case, especially when the man had squirreled away assets in advance and had the soon-to-be-trophy wife waiting for him.
    “I got a call from a young woman who had seen Cyndy’s picture.”
    Julia’s heart started to race. “Thank God.”
    “Well, yes, but … ”
    Her mind leaped ahead, and she began to shake. “Go ahead.”
    “She said Cyndy had been her roommate.”
    “Had been?” If this was the good news … “And the bad news?”
    “Cyndy left LA and headed north to San Francisco. Someone promised her a screen test. That’s all I know.”
    “When? When did she go to San Francisco?”
    “Two weeks ago. My contact said she’d call again if she hears from Cyndy.”
    Feeling a little lightheaded, Julia sat back. “At least I know she’s alive. Did the woman give any more information?”
    “Only that Cyndy had been trying really hard to make it in the entertainment industry.”
    “Did she say what Cyndy was living on?”
    “No, but I have a feeling my contact was the one providing the room and board.”
    “Did she ask you for money?”
    “Not in so many words. I have her phone number, and she said she would be glad to talk with you.”
    “Wonderful.” Julia took down the information and, after thanking Fred, hung up. Some news, not what she’d wanted, but anything was better than nothing. At least Cyndy was seen alive and well two weeks ago.
    What now? she wondered. Hire another PI in San Francisco? Or go there herself? She studied her calendar. After this next court date, cases could be rearranged, reassigned.
    Once that was taken care of, she could take a leave of absence and continue the search for her granddaughter on her own.

San Francisco
    Hope Benson, the director of a woman’s shelter known as J House, stared at the faded brick edifice that once housed a thriving congregation, which had since moved to the suburbs.
    “If only it could look as friendly on the outside as it feels on the inside,” she said, shaking her head. On the upper walls, the bricks were hidden beneath a black frosting of neglect. Lower down, within reaching distance, layers of spray-painted graffiti had been scrubbed off until the terra cotta skeleton glowed orange in the morning light.
    Hope and Adolph, her eighty-three-pound Lab-shepherd-something cohort, had just finished power-walking the sun up. Now it was time for coffee and a shower, or a shower and coffee, the order depending on how badly her husband Roger’s back ached from the previous night’s horizontal torture.
    Roger had threatened to sleep on the futon, but that hard surface gave him a headache fit to lift his thinning hair right off his scalp. During his days as a police officer, he’d learned the hard way that spines and slugs didn’t go well together, that is human spines and 9mm slugs. Though he complained very little, Hope knew he