‘Line, did you say something stupid? Did you laugh too much? Did you not laugh enough? Was your hair sticking up in back? Was the bra you were wearing too thin? Was he just nice to you because he works with Clive?’ On and on. My favorite thing, let me tell you.

He put me out of my misery by calling the bakery the next morning and asking me out for that very night. He suggested Sushi Zanmai, and I said I’d meet him there. I wanted to do something special for him, so I made mango Napoleons (recipe at the end). Lots of the sushi at Zanmai has little slivers of mango on top, so that place always makes me crave it in larger quantites. My intention was to bring him up to TwoLines after dinner, as the restaurant is only three blocks away from the bakery.

The date was wonderful. I don’t mean good sushi nice conversation wonderful. I mean conversations about Stella and Clive, his family, my mother (who I almost never talk about) – people we both know, the way we feel about our jobs, and our opinions on sake. He’s for, I’m against, just for reference. I don’t open up like that, usually, and from the way he was acting I believe he was surprised by it as well.  Plus, it was good sushi.

As we walked up to TwoLines, I told him about the bag and boots.  I kept trying to explain the creepiness of Brian Richards and wasn’t able to fully articulate it. Also, I kept giggling. I’m not much of a giggler, but apparently Jacob brought it out in me.

“Let’s swing by the house. I want to see him, maybe he’ll be outside, and my car is right here.” Jacob said when we were a block from Zanmai.

“It’s 9:30 on a Tuesday! Why would he be outside, silly?”

“Night gardening.” He looked at me without cracking a smile. “It’s becoming more popular. Gives you time to….um….” He burst out laughing. “Damnit. I couldn’t think of what the benefits of night gardening would be. I had you until then though, didn’t I?”

“I recently read an article about it in Domino, actually. It is a real thing – I was just surprised you’d heard of it.” He looked at me suspiciously when I said that, but I kept a perfectly straight face. Then I grinned and said, “ok, lets go. Maybe he read the same article, you never know.”

Jacob fake punched my shoulder and unlocked the car.

When we got to the house that I’d been at two days before, I remembered the stuffed animal Stell had given me.

“Jacob, you’re so smart. You must’ve known I still had something to return.” I showed him the little stuffed giraffe, dirty and well played with.

“Psychic. I know exactly what you’re thinking right now, as a matter of fact…” As he said that, I was twisted around trying to get my purse into the front seat so I could take the giraffe out. When I looked up to make some smart-ass retort, his face was right in front of mine. Damned if he didn’t look even better from up close. He leaned in and I inhaled through my slightly parted lips. Then he kissed me. On the nose.

“Look!” He exclaimed, pointing behind me to the house. “What the hell is that?”

Brian Richards was backing slowly out the front door, dragging something behind him. His porch light was off and the nearest streetlight was a few houses down. I squinted.

“A rug? Or his garbage?”

“I don’t know, Line, it looks awfully heavy to be a rug. And who do you know who drags garbage? I know this sounds weird, but look at the shape.” I looked at it, trying to figure out what he meant. After a second I got it.

“You think it’s a body? Get out of here, dude. He’s not dragging a body from his house in the middle of Boulder.”

“Oh, cause bad stuff never happens here?” Brian turned towards us as Jacob was speaking, and instinctively we both froze. He scanned the street, then in a rush dragged whatever it was down his front stairs. Once he was in the shadow of the car parked out front, he popped the trunk. Jacob and I watched him wrestle the oddly shaped thing into it and slam it shut, then look around again.

“Guess it’s not garbage,” Jacob whispered without moving his lips.

Brian went back into the house. Jacob was trying to convince me that now was not a good time to drop off the giraffe when Brian opened his front door again, carrying a much smaller package. This too looked like a rug, but it was more the size of an entry rug.

Or a baby.

“Shit. Let’s get out of here.” I poked Jacob and he took off.

I guess this would be an appropriate time for me to talk about my love life – or lack thereof. Em and I started TwoLines about a year and a half ago, and since then I’ve been on maybe three dates. There are a lot of reasons, of course, and some of them are even good. For example, working as a pastry chef for a bakery means getting to work at 4 or 5. Which means going to bed at 8 or 9. Not exactly the recipe for a hot date. Also, a new business requires a lot of time and attention. Em does most of the bookkeeping and business planning, but I do the marketing and that’s a full time job all by itself.

Also, I’m a big ol wuss when I comes to dating. That’s probably the biggest roadblock, honestly. It’s not that I’m not cute. I mean, I’m no supermodel. Boulder is one of the fittest cities in the nation, and I’m not what you’d call ‘Boulder sized’, but I’m not shopping in the plus size department either. You try working with butter and sugar all day and staying below a size 10, honestly.  I’ve come to terms with being bigger than most of my friends, and I find that my curves are appreciated by most men. I have a theory about that, actually. Not particularly original, but here goes: men do not care as much about womens weight as women think they do.  I know, give me the Nobel prize, right? Anyway, women with a few extra pounds frequently have great breasts, and I’m no exception. And I have GREAT hair. When we were little both Em and I were blond. Em’s hair has darkened to a medium brown, but mine is still blond. I’ve been growing it for a few years now, after an ill-advised pageboy experiment, and it’s down to my mid-back and wavy.

As you can tell from that little ‘pro-me’ soliloquy, I’m not exactly shy about my looks. There’s just something about flirting that escapes me. So I rarely start a conversation with a stranger, and I hate being put in the position of having to.

Which is what Stella and Clive had just done to me.

The guy sitting on the back patio with them wasn’t somebody I’d seen before. He had dark hair and was cuter than I was comfortable with, particularly when I was wearing the same baking outfit I’d had on the day before.

I waved and hollered something about a shower, then ran inside. My hope was that he’d be gone when I finished my beautifying, but no such luck.

“Line, this is Jacob. Jacob, Line.” Stella avoided looking at me while she introduced us. I don’t know if she was worried that she’d laugh or that she’d have to see my dirty looks, of which there were plenty.

“Hi.” I held out my hand, hoping that he’d take the conversation from there. Gosh, he really was cute. His hand was cold from the beer he’d been holding, and I got the shivers even though it was in the mid-sixties.

“Hello Line. It’s nice to meet you. I hope you don’t mind a strange man appearing at your house – I’ve been working with Clive and he suggested we knock off early and take advantage of the weather and his new grill.”

Now it was Clive who wouldn’t look at me. Our grill was not new, hadn’t even been new last year. This was a lame ploy and it would serve them right if I said I had somewhere to be, but I didn’t. Didn’t have anywhere to be, obviously, and also didn’t lie and say that I did.

I opened a Sweaty Betty (best beer ever) and sat down, listening to the three of them resume the conversation they’d been having. Clive is an electrical engineer who decided a few years ago that he’d rather work as an electrician, and he’s now in very high demand. Apparenlty people find the degree reassuring. Even in the recession, he’s not having any trouble finding work. It develops from the conversation that Jacob is an interior designer. Not a decorator, but a designer. I’d never heard of this before, but apparently it’s halfway between architect and decorator.

“That sounds like a fun job.” This was my first contribution to the conversation since ‘hi’. Witty, I know. Stella and Clive smirked and I resisted the urge to throw potato chips at them.

Jacob turned to face me directly.

“It really is. I think it’s more rewarding than being an architect because you can affect the feel of the house more. It’s probably not as fun as baking all day though. What’s that like?”

We chatted about baking and I started to relax a little – talking about my job always does that for me.

By the end of the night Jacob had requested my phone number. I’m a little giddy at the thought of it. I do think he’ll call… and when he does, I’m pretty sure I’ll answer.

Sunday morning was foggy and misty when I went into work. I generally try to take at least one day a week off, but it’s almost never a Sunday. We started doing cinnamon rolls on Sundays and even though we make the dough in advance and leave it to proof overnight in the fridges, it takes two people to deal with the volume of rolls Boulderites are capable of eating.  Not to mention the pounds of cream cheese frosting that are consumed.

At 11 the last two trays of rolls were cooling and Martha (the other baker working with me) had everything under control.  I was considering going home and taking a nap when I saw Joanie come in. The kitchen of TwoLines is open to the ordering and eating area, which is good for business but bad when you’re hoping not to be seen. I went up front.

“I’m going over there now, Line. I’d like to get those bloody boots out of my car as soon as possible.”

“Ok. Let me come with you. If something bad happened, I don’t want you to have to deal with the family alone.” After noticing the blood on Saturday, we’d tried to construct a story that didn’t involve anyone getting hurt, and couldn’t come up with one. Best case scenario was that someone had sustained a minor but bloody injury and was carried down the mountain, leaving the heavy shoes and pack behind.  I took off my apron and wished I was wearing something other than my standard baking outfit – old jeans, Danskos, and a teeshirt with very faint lime curd stains on it.

When we arrived at Lynn Richards’ house, it certainly didn’t look like a place that had recently experienced tragedy. It was a little blue house with a gorgeous xeriscaped front yard. The front door was open and Blue October was blasting. As we got out of the car, we saw that there was a man on the porch with a beer in one hand and a cell phone to his ear.

He held his hand up to us, palm out, like ‘hold on’. It was  little rude, honestly, and I hate people who are rude to strangers. Then he gave me one of those top to bottom inspections that I hate even more. Whoever this guy was, he was rapidly making it tempting to just leave the stuff on the sidewalk and bail.

Joanie cracks me up sometimes. She stepped up onto the porch without being invited and said, ”Excuse me, but I believe we have some things that belong to you and we’re in something of a hurry. Would you mind paying attention for a moment?”

“Hold on a second. Can I help you ladies?” The first was directed into the phone, the second at us. The ‘ladies’, rather than sounding courtly, sounded dismissive. Jackass.

“Hello. My name is Adeline. My friend Joanie and I found some things on Sanitas yesterday that we think may belong to a woman who lives here, Lynn Richards. Is this her house?”

He stared at me for a beat. It seemed that my statement had struck him strangely but I couldn’t see why it would have. Then he shook whatever it was off, and hung up the phone without even saying goodbye. He stuck out his hand.

“I’m Brian Richards. Lynn is my wife, but she isn’t here right now. What did you find?”

“A baby pack and some hiking boots.” Joanie was back at the Rover, pulling them out of the trunk as I said this. “We were a little worried, it looks like whoever was wearing the boots was bleeding. And we couldn’t think why the pack would have been left behind. Do you have a child?”

“Yes, we do.” He didn’t say anything more.

“Um. Ok. Well, is your wife ok?”

“She’s fine. As I said, she’s not here right now. She’s out running errands with our son.”

“Did she hurt herself or something? It seemed like the stuff had been there overnight at least. How did she get down without her shoes?”

Again, I got the stare. I was genuinely curious about how Lynn had gotten down the mountain and how she was doing, but more than that I was starting to think this guy was hiding something from me and I wanted to know what it was.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern. As I said, she’s fine.”

Yep, definitely hiding something. The corners of his mouth were tightening with each question I asked, and I could tell he wasn’t going to tell me any more than that.

Joanie huffed onto the porch, carrying both the boots and the pack.

“I think these boots are going to have to be thrown out, honestly,” she said, “but we brought them back anyway. Did I miss the story of what happened?”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, I need to continue my phone call. Thank you for returning our things. I’m sure Lynn will appreciate it.”

Joanie looked at me like ‘what the hell is his problem’ but said, “Ok then. Have a nice day,” and returned to the car.

I pulled out one of our TwoLines bakery cards, the ones that are good for a free cup of coffee.

“I’d like to meet Lynn. Would you give this to her? I’m at the bakery most days until around 2, and I’d be happy to have a cup of coffee with her.” I wasn’t sure why I was doing this, but I wanted to see this woman for myself. Her husband was not being particularly reassuring.

“Actually, she’s going out of town this afternoon and she’ll be gone for a few weeks. I’ll give it to her but don’t expect to see her anytime soon.”

Joanie and I left without saying much more. Once in the car, we talked about him and confirmed that he’d creeped us both out, although we coulnd’t quite figure out why.

When I got home that afternoon, Stella was waiting for me. She gave me a stuffed animal that Al had apparently pulled from the pack. It had clearly been washed many times and I was pretty sure the little boy was going to be upset when the pack came back without it, so I tucked it into my backpack with the intention of heading back over to the house the next day.

__________________________________

When I left TwoLines on Saturday I ran home to grab my girls. Samson loves them and I thought maybe they could find him when Joanie and I couldn’t. Stella, my best friend and half of the couple whose basement I live in, leashed up her dog Al and decided to come too.  She doesn’t really know Joanie but Samson has stayed over a few times, and he’s such a happy boy you can’t really not love him once you meet him.

Our house is at the base of Boulder Canyon, on Arapahoe. It’s possible to walk to Sanitas, but it’s kind of a hike and since time was of the essence we all piled into Joanie’s land rover.  I knew that we’d probably be over capacity if we found Samson, and I was debating whether saying it out loud would sound positive or negative when Joanie screeched into the parking lot and hopped out of the car without even turning it off.

“Sammy!” Sure enough, he was there, sitting by the trailhead. Tail wagging, covered from head to toe in mud mixed with pine needles, and collarless, but there. “Samson Fauntleroy Burnett, you are in SO much trouble right now!” Her unstoppable hugging and kissing of him sort of took away from the threat, and he certainly didn’t look upset. Stel and I chortled a little when she said Fauntleroy, but I don’t think she heard us. Which is probably good.

After a few minutes of the scolding and smooching, I asked “J? You wanna rig up his leash and see if we can find his collar, or do you think it’s a lost cause?”

“Actually, I do if you girls don’t mind. I just got it at Whole Pets last week and it’s got these little fish on it, it’s really really cute. I know we probably won’t find it, but maybe it will just be waiting for us on the side of the path like he was.” She scratched his ears when she said that, clearly thinking he was a brilliant dog for waiting for her at the trailhead. I guess so – a truly brilliant dog wouldn’t have gotten lost in the first place, in my opinion. You know, truly brilliant like my two – the two smartest dogs on the planet, of course.

We had a lovely hike and did not find the collar (shocking, I know).  What I did find, when I was a few feet off the path looking for the telltale glint of a dog tag, was this:

I didn’t take a picture of the real one, because it felt sort of weird, but I found this shot online. It’s a baby carrier with a removable diaper bag – you can see it’s a nice one. It was full of stuff – diapers, baby clothes, baby food and bottles, energy bars, and two bottles of water. Sitting beside it was a pair of women’s hiking boots. Both the pack and the boots were damp, and it hadn’t rained since the evening before, so they’d clearly been out there awhile.

One of the boots had one of those ID and key carriers on the laces. There was no key in it, but inside was a name and an address:

Since it hadn’t just been left behind, we decided to carry it down with us and drop it at the address listed. Stel slung the carrier over her shoulder, and I took the boots – Joanie was still keeping a close eye on Samson, especially with his makeshift leash.

When we got back to the base Stella said, “Girls, I would love to return this stuff with you but I seriously have to pee. Can you drop me off and take it then?”

“Of course you do.” Stel is ten weeks pregnant and has to pee roughly every fifteen seconds. I keep telling her she should just start wearing adult diapers, since it would give her good diaper practice, but so far she’s not interested. Can’t think why. “Joanie, why don’t you just drop me and Stel off and I’ll take it over to this Lynn person later on? The car is going to be pretty crammed with all of us.”

“Of course.” As I put the boots into the back of the Rover Joanie inhaled and said, “Line, did you cut yourself on a bush or something?”

“Nope, I’m fine. Why?” As I was saying it I looked down. My left hand, the one that had been holding the boots, had blood on it.

It wasn’t mine. It had come from inside the boots, and there was a lot of it.

So not the point – sorry.  I’m a little freaked out by what happened after that and I’m having a hard time concentrating.

Joanie came in right when the crackers had cooled enough to eat and I’d put them on the counter. Joanie volunteers with my sister Emeline at the Boulder Humane Society, and once she found out Em and I own TwoLines she started coming in a few times a week.

I see her and say “Hi J – have some of these”. I tell her that I did a whole sea salt thing that I didn’t do last time she had them and she just looks at me like I’m speaking russian. Which, as far as I know, she does not speak.

“J, whatsa matter? I’m pretty sure you dug these last time I made them AND they’re free!” Not the point, as Joanie has serious family money.  I was trying to tease her into a good mood but I clearly failed because she goes:

“Line, can you help me? I mean, are you done here? I know you usually don’t leave until later but…” and then she started to cry. It slays me when women who could be my mother’s age cry.  I walked around the counter and hugged her, floury chocolately apron and all, and she told me that Samson had gotten away on Sanitas.

To be clear – Samson is a German shepard, and Mt. Sanitas is a hike that’s only blocks from TwoLines. I have a shepard too, as well as a lab, and we sometimes have doggy play dates with Samson. I’ve lost track of my girls a few times and I can remember that panicky feeling you get – the thing where you know that if they were fine they’d be finding you, so where the hell are they?  So I asked the new counter guy to take over and said I’d be back in a bit.

The view from Mt. Sanitas.

We found Samson. But we found something else too. I’m trying to figure out what to do about it right now – I’ll write again once I have some idea.

Oh right, I said I’d post the recipe. I’ll give you the recipe for one tray, but if you’re making it for more than two people and you want it to last for more than an afternoon, I’d suggest at least doubling it.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter (2 sticks) *unsalted if you have it
• 1 cup brown sugar *light or dark depending on your preference. I go dark every time
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4-6 sheets of matzoh or one sleeve of saltines
• 1/4 tsp salt if you used unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips *any kind you like, about 3/4 of a package
• Sea salt (only if using matzoh)

Heat the oven to 350 and get out a baking sheet. Cover it with foil AND parchment paper if you have it, because this gets sticky. Stickily delicious. Put the matzoh or the saltines in a single layer on the baking sheet, breaking the matzoh if necessary to fit it in nicely.

Throw the butter and the brown sugar into a little pot and put on medium heat until the butter melts, then turn it to medium high until it starts to bubble. Let it bubble away, stirring pretty much constantly, until the butter stops sitting on top in a big delicious lake o butter. Stir in the vanilla and the salt if you used unsalted butter.

Once it’s all pretty much mixed together, pour it all out onto the middle of the crackers and spread it out using a spoon or a spatula. If you’re using saltines they’re going to want to move around, so be gentle. Throw them in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until the caramel is bubbling all over.

As soon as you pull them from the oven, sprinkle the chocolate chips on top. The caramel is HOT so please be careful. Give it three or four minutes and then spread out the chocolate, which will now be all melty and delicious.

Sprinkle with anything that makes you happy – I personally like almonds or coconut.  Let it cool until it’s solid, and then break, eat, and smile.