"I got it."
"Okay, then take this and buy next week's candy bars…on me."
"What a swell idea." Jim quickly slipped the money into his billfold and put it back in his pocket. "You're pretty smart, you know that?"
"Not smart enough to keep from telling Nicole about the shortage. I told my axe-murderer about it and he is worried."
"For your safety?" Jim asked. He smiled at his wife when she sat down next to him. Yet, Hanna never took her eyes off the girls running across the grass.
"Yes," Maggie answered. "I told him Nicole isn't dangerous, but he is worried anyway. If they took the deposit money, it's a federal crime and he thinks…I am not sure what he thinks."
Hanna got up when the girls got too close to the pond and left the two of them alone. "I wouldn't let it worry you too much. I don't think Nicole bumps people off. I just said that."
"Oh, I know, but I promised him I would tell you what I'm going to do, so you can watch my back."
"What are you going to do?" Hanna asked, coming back to sit beside Jim again.
"I'm going to mess up their plans," Maggie answered.
Jim sat up straight. "How? Furthermore, how can I help?"
"Well, it depends on what Nicole asks me to do, but I'm pretty sure I know what she will want, and that she'll trust me to do it. If I am right, she will…"
For the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening, Jim and Hanna helped Maggie shoot holes in her plan, just to see if they could. They couldn't, although doing what Maggie proposed was somewhat dangerous…to their jobs, anyway.
*
Monday morning came early for the investigators. While on a case, they normally didn't let a hotel maid come in and straighten the place. Empty coffee cups, plates, bowls and utensils from room service were piling up in the kitchen. None of them were bothered by it - they just couldn't take the chance that a maid might move something and they'd never find it again. The dining room table and every other table in the room held stacks of papers they'd printed out to examine.
"Let's see what else we can find on social media. Michael, you take all the Georgias you can find on twitter, Carl you get Facebook, and I'll search the job sites. She must have needed a job, wherever she went, and there are several international job sites."
"Yeah, and she would have to use her real name. How come you always get the easy stuff?" Michael complained.