Free FLOWERS and CAGES by Mary J. Williams

there were times when a rock star even trumped the Commander in Chief.
    However, Dalton was curious. Tolliver claimed he knew the answer—and it came with a home-cooked meal. Plus another evening spent with Colleen. Midas would never be a vacation getaway, but it turned out to be better than he could have imagined.
     
    COLLEEN RARELY TOOK a lunch break. She got paid by the hour, but she had prodded Dole into adding a bonus clause into their employment agreement. The one she drew up when he tried to shaft her out of their agreed wage. If she finished a job ahead of schedule, Dole paid her a percentage of the final bill—a bill she looked over carefully to make certain it wasn't padded.
    At 11:26 a.m., Colleen earned that bonus when she finished an engine rebuild. To celebrate, she hitched a ride to her mother's, hoping to get a meal and take care of her weekly visit all in one.
    "Mom? Are you home?"
    It wasn't a silly question. Sherry McNamara Higgins never locked the back door. She hadn't bothered when they lived in Kansas, and nothing changed when they moved to Arizona. For some reason, no matter how Colleen tried, she couldn't make her mother see that bolting the front door, but not the back, was like putting sunscreen on only half of your face. The thief, like the sun, would burn you one way or the other.
    It seemed like a perfect simile for a beautician. And it worked. For a week or two. However, it wasn't long before Sherry forgot. Her husband had lived in the same neighborhood all his life. Rick saw nothing wrong with unlocked doors. When Colleen tried to reason with him, he simply shrugged, giving her what had to be the unofficial town motto. It's Midas .
    The sound of laundry churning away greeted Colleen as she walked into the house. Again, nothing unusual. Between the beauty salon and the work clothes Rick shed every night when he got home from his job on the county road crew, the washing machine and dryer were in constant use. It smelled like ammonia, road tar, and Mountain Fresh Gain.
    Sherry liked to joke that she married Rick for his house. It was her dream layout. All one level, each room flowed into the next. The master bedroom was located on the east side. To get to the guest room—Colleen's until she turned eighteen and moved out—it was necessary to walk from one end of the house to the other. She never worried about getting in late from a date. She simply left her bedroom window ajar and snuck in. Her mother never tried to crack down on Colleen's nocturnal activities. But looking back, she should have. Thank God for the free clinic in Phoenix that kept the kids of Midas supplied with condoms and birth control pills.
    "Colleen? I'm in the kitchen, sweetheart."
    Entering through the washroom door, Colleen walked to where her mother sat at the granite-covered island with a cup of coffee and her laptop. Picture perfect from the top of her frosted blond hair to the tips of her manicured nails, her mother was a walking billboard for her salon. Each morning—rain, shine, or raging flu—she refused to leave the bathroom until she put on her face. Colleen was certain there had to be a face somewhere under the face, but in all of her twenty-six years, she had never seen it.
    "What is that noise?"
    Puzzled, Sherry cocked her head. "It's just the overhead fan. I've gotten used to it so I don't even hear it anymore."
    It sounded as though the fan was powered by a dozen mice running around a very squeaky wheel.
    "Did you ask Rick to fix it?"
    Sherry flicked her wrist, her expression indulgent. "The dear man tried. He emptied a can of WD-40. All it did was leave a pool of grease on my good counters."
    Rick was a lousy handyman but a very good husband and stepfather. Her mother had hit the jackpot and so had Colleen. Doing odd jobs around the house didn't begin to pay him back.
    Taking the proper tools from the drawer in the washroom, Colleen flipped the circuit breaker. A scant five minutes later, the squeak was