The Yellow Packard by Ace Collins Page B

table to the play money. Picking it up, he studied each bill. All of them had Parker Brothers written on them. Yet the money Carole picked out of this batch was real. He hadn’t put them there, so who had? Rose? He was sure of one thing. The money hadn’t been on the table when he did the taxes. Rose must have brought it in. Rushing out of the kitchen to his child’s room, he found her in the middle of her bed playing with a stuffed lion.
    “Rose, where did you find that money you brought into the kitchen?”
    “From the game.”
    George dropped the play money he clutched in his hand onto the bed. “Not this money, the money that looked like this.” Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a five-dollar bill. “There was some money you had that looked like this mixed in with the play money. Where did you get it?”
    The little girl studied it for a few seconds and shrugged.
    Sitting down beside her, George took the lion from her lap and tossed it into a chair. Holding the five in front of her face, he softly begged, “Honey, this is very important. I need to know where you found the green money. It looks kind of like what I’m holding here.”
    She said nothing. Instead she jumped from the bed and walked toward the back door. George followed her through her room, across the kitchen, and outside. It seemed spring had come early. The temperature was in the fifties, and after a long, cold winter it felt like spring was just around the corner. Thus neither he nor his daughter bothered with a coat as she led him to a place beside the garage. There, next to an old ash can, she pointed to a spot where the shade from the garage’s overhang had protected a patch of snow from the sun’s direct light.
    “You found it here?” George asked, bending over to examine the area.
    She nodded.
    “Was there any more?” he asked. “Or did you bring it all in?”
    “Just that. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.”
    “Wonder how it got here?” he whispered. Pushing the ash can to the side, he scanned the rest of the ground. Nothing! Peering into the trash bin, he saw nothing as well. But Rose had found this money, and it had to have come from somewhere.
    As he stood erect he noted the wind was blowing about ten miles an hour out of the south. Maybe the bills had blown in. Maybe someone had dropped it out of a purse or a pocket, and the wind had caught it. Maybe that was it. But ten of them? That part was hard to explain. If someone lost it, that person was going to be awfully upset. He had to find out. As much as he didn’t want to, he had to know the truth.
    “Rose, let’s go back inside and put on our coats. You and I are going to take a walk and knock on a few doors. We need to find out if someone lost any money today.”
    What he figured would be easy wasn’t. An hour and a half later they had knocked on every door within five blocks without discovering anyone who was missing any money.
    “Rose,” George said as he rapped on a final door, “if no one here is missing any money, then I guess we’ll just have to figure it fell from heaven.”
    “Or was dropped by a bird,” she added.
    George hadn’t considered that. Crows were notorious for stealing things.
    As he turned to head back toward home, George noted a scruffy man approaching. He hardly looked like someone who had ever seen a hundred-dollar bill, much less lost one, but he decided to ask nonetheless.
    “Excuse me, sir,” George said, his words stopping the man in his tracks. “I’m George Hall and this is my daughter Rose. Did you lose some money?”
    The stranger was older than George, ill-kempt, and smelling of a mixture of alcohol and tobacco. His dark eyes were menacing, and as he opened his mouth to speak, George could see that his teeth were stained.
    “How much?” the man growled.
    George pulled Rose closer to his side, trying to shield her from the man’s glare, before answering. “We found a few hundred-dollar