Free Finding Casey by Jo-Ann Mapson Page B

in. Caddy and Dodge were in the backseat, the windows down exactly four inches, allotted snout space. They’d been getting underfoot at home, and Daddy Joe was afraid they might cause Glory to trip and fall. Eddie, on the other hand, seemed to take every step Glory made as his personal business. Which left two choices for Caddy and Dodge: go with her to pick up Topher or get locked in the outside kennel in cold weather, where they’d whine. Loudly. She unfolded a blanket for them to snuggle in. “I need you guys to be very quiet,” she said. “The last thing I need is getting busted for leaving you two in the car. So behave yourselves. Here’s a bully stick for each of you.” She handed out the leathery treats that smelled like barf, and the dogs got down to business. She locked the car and tramped through the lot to the sidewalk that ran alongside the hotel.
    She could have gone in the back way to the hotel, but it was snowing again, big fat flakes, so white and pretty. She leaned her head back and felt them land on her cheeks and nose. For more than four hundred years there had been a hotel on the corner of West San Francisco and Old Santa Fe Trail.
La Fonda Hotel
, Daddy Joe told her, was a redundant name because it translated to “the inn” or “the hotel.” Santa Fe was like living life inside a history book that was still being written. J. Robert Oppenheimer had stayed at La Fonda, and so had Archbishop Lamy, the subject of Willa Cather’s book
Death Comes for the Archbishop
, one of Juniper’s all-time favorite novels. Dozens of famous actors, including Jimmy Stewart in the Christmas movie that made Daddy Joe get all weepy,
It’s a Wonderful Life
, had stayed there, too, and even presidents. Every week the “El Mitote” column in the
Santa Fe New Mexican
reported on movie stars lunching there, or shopping the expensive boutiques in the same building. Juniper turned the corner and walked into the lobby to get warm while she waited for Topher. The one-way van ride cost twenty-seven dollars and she had paid for it. Nobody besides Topher knew she had to give him the money. So what, she told herself. This was the twenty-first century. Stuff like that didn’t matter.
    The lobby was decorated with strings of tiny white lights, making the cream-colored walls, turquoise molding, and painted murals look like pages in a book of fairy tales. Even on a national holiday, there were tourists. Loads of people spent Thanksgiving in Santa Fe, as mesmerized by the snow on adobe and farolitos glowing atop walls as Juniper was. It felt as if her life in California had happened decades earlier. Now she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else but Santa Fe, and she considered Albuquerque only temporary. Topher’s family lived on the EastCoast, a place called Long Island, which was close to New York City. He wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving because he had to finish a makeup paper for Western Civ or the prof wouldn’t pass him. He was also on academic probation. At first, that kind of surprised Juniper, because most of those required classes had been easy for her. Topher said the prof didn’t like him.
    He talked about places like Greenwich Village and Manhattan and New Haven, Connecticut, as if they were ten times more beautiful than Santa Fe could ever hope to be, which made Juniper feel a touch defensive, because to her Santa Fe was the most beautiful place she’d ever been. She didn’t let on. Topher said everything on the East Coast was bigger and better: art museums, theater, the music scene, clubs. She hoped he’d invite her out for spring break to his family’s condo in Florida, or to their cabin in the Adirondacks in summer. She’d Googled “Adirondacks” when he told her about spending summers there. Such a cool-sounding name had to be Native American, and it was, but what she learned kind of broke her