Bonnie of Evidence - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,3

you whiners just put a sock in it? We didn’t find the stupid thing, all right? Get over it. We’ll find it next time.” The humidity had caused her hair to frizz around her head like exploded electrical wire, giving her the look of a person who’d just had a run-in with chain lightning.

“Will someone please switch teams with me?” Dolly begged, making her appeal to the entire Iowa gang. “I’m willing to offer bribes.”

“Me, too,” pleaded Isobel.

“Hey, team.” The lone male member of Team Five waved his hand in the air. “Remember me?” He was of average height, with thinning brown hair, a weak chin, bulbous nose, neck wattle, and a little paunch belly, but his ever-present smile made up for all his shortcomings, making him appear taller, handsomer, more physically fit. His name was Cameron Dasher, and he was proving to be quite the people magnet with his self-deprecating sense of humor and upbeat mood. The unattached ladies on the tour found him particularly attractive—not so much because he was of the same generation and made them laugh, but because he possessed the one quality they were all looking for in a man.

He was still alive.

“What are we? A team of quitters?” Dasher scolded. “Tell me this—how flavorful would our food be if Marco Polo had given up trying to discover a trade route to the East? How exciting would our world surfing competitions be if Balboa had given up searching for the Pacific Ocean? Where would all of us be living today if Columbus had quit trying to find his way to the New World?”

Osmond shot his hand into the air. “Croatia?”

“Come on, ladies,” Dasher goaded. “This was only our first try. There’s eleven more sites to explore. Where’s your fighting spirit? So we messed up the first one. If we stick together, I guarantee we’ll find all the rest. We can do this! If you want to quit after just one round, I can’t stop you. But if we hang tight, one of us can look forward to a free vacation in our future! Are you with me?”

Eye rolling. Sighs.

Not surprisingly, Cameron had listed his occupation as “motivational speaker.”

“What’s our team slogan?” he prodded, cupping his hand around his ear.

“Yes, we can,” came the grumbled reply from his teammates.

“I can’t heeeear you.”

“Yes, we can,” they recited with slightly more gusto.

“Once more with feeling!”

“Yes, we can,” they chanted as they tapped into his enthusiasm. “Yes, we can!” Lucille, Dolly, and Isobel high-fived each other. “YES, WE CAN!”

“Yes, we can,” chimed Osmond, pumping his spindly arms as he boogied to the beat. Dick Teig whacked him on the shoulder.

“Cool it. You’re not on their team.”

Cameron Dasher banded his arm around Bernice and gave her a squeeze. “And from now on, Bernice promises to respect all our opinions and not hijack the whole show. Right, Bernice?”

“Good luck with that,” wisecracked Dick Stolee.

Bernice glanced from Cameron’s hand to his face, melting against him with a breathless sigh. “Whatever you say,” she gushed, fluttering her lashes like a silver-screen movie goddess.

Whoa! This guy was good. I wonder if he’d ever consider freelancing as an assistant escort on tours saddled with especially nasty guests?

Bernice’s teammates fell suddenly silent, their mantra dying on their lips as they narrowed their eyes and hardened their jaws. Unh-oh. It had been awkward enough that every woman on the tour had wanted to be on Cameron’s team, but if they started throwing daggers at each other every time he paid attention to one of them, there was going to be trouble.

“It’s decided then?” Cameron asked good-naturedly. “We’re still a team?”

“Of course we’re still a team,” Dolly assured as she looped her arm through his, smiling possessively. “And just to set the record straight, it wasn’t my idea to change teams in the first place.” Honey oozed from her voice. “It was Isobel’s.”

“Me?” Age might have ruined Isobel’s complexion and turned her hair gray, but her hearing still rocked. “What the hell have you been smoking? You’re the one who—”

Cameron raised his hands in Biblical fashion as if to calm the waters. “Laaadies, laaadies, it doesn’t matter who said what first. All that’ll matter in the end is how many checkmarks we have in the ‘Find’ column, so let’s put this episode behind us and start with a clean slate tomorrow. Fair enough?”

Bernice and Dolly took wary measure of each other as they lingered at Cameron’s sides, looking like two spurs of an about-to-be-snapped wishbone. “Fine,” they crooned