H.J. Gaudreau - Jim Crenshaw 02 - The Collingwood Legacy by H.J. Gaudreau Read Free Book Online Page B

giving her the extra day. She made a buck fifty a day plus tips, which she split with the other waitresses and the cook. Sometimes she talked Mel into paying her to slop out the pigpen and that gave her an extra seventy-five cents. She’d been raised on a farm and didn’t mind the work, but she hated pigs.
    The sows could be mean when they had piglets and the boars could be mean just because. And she thought about what Sol had told her. She thought about having a nice place to live and her hair done by a real woman’s hairdresser. And the clothes. She dreamed about the clothes. She thought about warm soft coats, pretty dresses, the fanciest hats and real silk stockings. Mostly, Dolly thought about how close she’d come to being rich.
    They had taken the bags into the boathouse and put them on the boat. Sol had said that they were all packed and would leave as soon as he finished fueling the boat.
    But she hadn’t seen the money, and of course they were packed, she had her two bags and Sol wasn’t taking anything.
    He’d asked her to get him some razor blades while he worked. She thought about that. He didn’t need razor blades. Had he been trying to get her away from the boat?
    Maybe he had intended to leave Dolly? But why had he driven all over Detroit to find her? Had he changed his mind? Sol had sent her away for some reason she was sure of it. What was it?
    The money. Where was the money? Did he leave while she was gone, get the money and come back? But they were going to leave as soon as she returned from the market.
    Dolly mulled the thing over and over. It had only taken her about eight minutes to walk to Jefferson Avenue, turn right and go another block. A store stood on the corner there. Then eight minutes back. If she added five minutes at the store…there was no way Sol could drive someplace and be back with the money. And…he said they were all packed.
    She thought about that. She thought about it every day, every time she filled a coffee cup, every time someone only left a nickel for a tip or grabbed her bottom or when her boss told her to take the diner’s scrapes out to the pigs in back. They were all packed.
    That November, as Sol was being loaded on a boat for Europe, Dolly got her first break in months. She was pouring coffee for a sailor on the railroad ferry.
    Suddenly a man burst into the diner and yelled, “Lowel, you lazy sonofabitch, if you don’t get your shit loaded now you ain’t going to have time when we leave.” The sailor didn’t move, he just smiled and said, “Hoss, I loaded my gear last night.”
    Dolly didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. The sailor’s words hit her like a ton of bricks. It came to her. Just like that. It was so simple; she should have seen it months ago. The money was already in the boat.
    Sol had picked her up about one o’clock. He said he’d been looking for her for two hours. They’d gone to Gosse Pointe, then Hamtramck for dinner. They’d stopped at her apartment to pack, drove to his apartment and gone to the boathouse. She’d gone to the market, but Sol hadn’t gone anywhere. He didn’t have time.
    Sol was doing what he said he was doing, putting gas in the boat. He really did just want some razor blades. He must have loaded the money before he picked her up. She’d known it all along, only now she understood it. Sol had loaded it before he came to see her that day.
    The boat. She needed to find the boat.
    The world was beginning to change. The artisan was being replaced by the big company. The small car companies in and around Detroit were being consolidated. Willie Durant and Charles Stewart Mott were building the biggest company the world had ever seen. Reliant Motor Truck, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac all had been taken over, it was just business.
    It was just the same in the world of crime. The Purples were just as mean and vicious, but there were fewer of them. No new leaders had been groomed to replace Ray Bernstein or Harry