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started to regale me with the information she’d acquired on her sojourn through cyberspace, “Ok, there are rewards out there for everything you can imagine.  The National Speleological Society, the NSS to those in the know, offers a reward to anyone providing information leading to the legal conviction of vandalism directly related to caves.  Like breaking off speleothems or speleogens.”
“Jeez, what’s a speleothem?”
“I haven’t a clue, that would be part of the learning process.  Cara, if you pick this little project you’re on your own.  I’m not a cave dweller.  There are creepy crawlies down there.  Bat guano in my hair is not an option.”
“I concur.”
She continued to count off the possibilities on her fingers, “We can earn a quarter of a million dollars if we can figure out who is hacking into a major computer program.”
“How long do you think it would take us to learn the skills to do that one?”
“A while.  It took me for flippin’ ever to teach you how to do email and IM”
Sometimes I wanted to thwack her!  Instead I said, “Shut-up, your gray cells are showing.  You’re going to ruin your image. You use the whole dumb blonde with big boobs thing to your advantage and we both know it.  Next.”
“Church fires?” 
I shook my head no. 
She continued, “I found a place that’s willing to pay $10,000 for a conviction in a false accusation in a divorce.  I’m thinking that one is probably some spouse that spewed venom on the person they once thought could do no wrong, but are now convinced is evil incarnate.  Domestic disputes might just be more dangerous than murders.
I shook my head, “Pass.”
“Another quarter million for voter fraud.”
“No politics.  That could be more dangerous than domestic disputes.”
Her eyes softened.  Always a bad sign.  It means that she has bad news to break to me.  True to form, she said, “Well, what I also found out is that it really does take forever to get your reward.  Remember the sniper up north?  Took two years.  The guy that spotted him and blocked his escape got only 30% of the reward.  There were over 67,000 people that wanted a piece of that money.  Chasing reward money probably isn’t an efficient way to make a living, Cara.  More like cashing in on being in the right place at the right time.”
“Shit.”
“So what’s your plan B?”
“Teagan, I don’t have one.”
“That’s not good.”

 
 
 
 
THREE
 
 
 
 
 
 
I walked in the little sandwich shop to meet my sister.  It’s a mom and pop type place that Teagan loves.  They always get your order right the first try.  Their servings are generous.  They have little white tables, made of wrought iron, complete with lots of curlicues.  They have blue and white checked tablecloths and half curtains at the windows.  It’s cute but not in that staged way that so many franchises have.  This is cute because it is right from the owner’s personality. 
My sister looked like she was born there.  She was sitting at one of the tables looking girly enough to enjoy last century and empowered enough to rule this one. 
I sat across from her, “Ok Teagan, so yesterday, after you were so mean to me, I had a stroke of genius.”
She rolled her eyes, “I wasn’t mean to you.”
“Yes you were.  You made fun of my plan.”
“You don’t have a plan.  How could I make fun of something that doesn’t exist?”
I snapped, “See, you’re doing it again.”
“I’m beginning to worry about you.”
“If you’re just beginning to worry, you’re way behind the rest of the world.  Do you want to hear this or not?”
She grinned, “Sure.  You stroked a genius.”
“Only in my dreams.  Don’t be a smartass.  I had a stroke of genius.  I sat down at the computer last night and I typed the word ‘murder’ into the search engine.”
Eye roll, “Yeah, that was brilliant.”
“Do you want to hear this?”
“Yeah, go.”
I said, “Turns out