No spores, unless they were invisible.

Just a piece of paper.

I fished it out, read it, and yelled.

“What’s that?” Jolie asked, jolted from sleep. Seconds later, she stood blinking at the end of the short hallway.

“It’s a check,” I answered, waving it. Doing a little dance. “Jolie, it’s a check! Get your clothes on. We’re going out for breakfast, and I’m paying!”

* * *

THE YOUTHFUL TELLER at my bank deposited Greer’s check without a quiver, but when he saw the numbers on the second one, signed by Margery DeLuca, he gulped, examined me speculatively and summoned a manager.

The pair of them disappeared into a back room, and Jolie and I waited, she tapping her foot nervously, me smiling from ear to ear. My former mother-in-law was every kind of awful—at least in context with me—but she wasn’t likely to pass bad checks. She had a position to maintain.

“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Jolie kept whispering, under her breath, like a mantra. “What will you do with that kind of money, Mojo?”

“Breathe,” I said. Of course, I wanted to set a chunk aside for security. I’d pay off that last credit card balance, too. And then I would set myself up in business as a P.I.

I already had one case, didn’t I? Okay, so the client was my sister, and it was a low-danger job. But Greer had been right when she said I’d make a good detective.

The manager returned, smiling ingratiatingly, the DeLuca check in hand. “We’d like to talk to you about some of our more elite investment programs,” he said.

“I’m sure you would,” I replied. I sounded really businesslike. Seemed like a good idea to start practicing that. “For now, just put the money in my regular checking account, please.”

“Certainly,” the manager said. I could tell he’d been building up a spiel about bank stock and certificates of deposit, and he looked disappointed at having to swallow a speech he’d spent a whole five minutes composing in his head.

“It’s time to get serious,” I told Jolie, as we walked out of the bank. My branch was in a supermarket, alongside a Starbucks, and I’d sprung for double-mocha supreme frappacinos on the way out.

It was also time to pick up Russell—Bethany had left a message on my cell phone that he was good to go—and I was glad Jolie was with me, because despite my sudden riches, I wasn’t real thrilled about facing Allison Darroch again.

We did the drive-through thing for breakfast, since we were in a hurry, and juggled our sausage biscuits and designer coffees as we drove out of town. I followed the same route Tucker had taken the day before; another reason to believe I could make the detective thing work.