The charge cards were all in the name of Evelyn Summers. It didn't ring any bells with Jamie. As he stood pondering the insides of his find, the elevator rang and slid to a smooth stop back on the ground floor. Before the doors could open, Jamie hastily slid the wallet under the linen tablecloth of the dinner cart. The door slid open. No one was there to see the guilty look on the seventeen year old's face. His face flushed with blood and his head throbbing with nervous energy, Jamie rolled his cart out of the elevator and started his journey to the vast kitchens of the Bayhaven Resort Complex. To take another order. As one of the new boys, he tended to get sent to the furthest reaches of the complex, often having to leave the main building and cross the common areas to the condominiums and guest villas. Try making 28 of those trips for five dollars an hour and whatever tips the Kitchen Manager would admit to.

I better do the right thing, Jamie thought to himself. I better tell Mister Rose. Mr. Rose, the kitchen manager, was a wizened, grubby, old man who ran the Kitchens at Bayhaven with an iron fist. Domineering, he bullied and intimidated everyone, except for the well-paid chefs, who kept to themselves anyway. Jared Rose took room service orders over phone lines or the touch screen television displays in each room. Guests did not have to sign or tip personally for their meals. Whatever tip they added to the room service went through Rose. The guests just had to open their door. Some took the cart right from Jamie and others preferred that he roll it over to their table and serve them. Whatever they wanted they got for three hundred to two thousand dollars a day.

Jamie rolled into the kitchen and got back in line. Three young men with carts waited ahead of him for assignment. Mr. Rose turned away from his communication station and gave them a general scowl. At seventeen, Jamie was the youngest. Most others had been there at least a year. All of them worked the short summer season, from Memorial to Labor Day at Bayhaven, the plush resort complex on Mackinac Island which sat between Michigan's beautiful Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The older boys worked the summers to save money for college; Jamie had gotten into the job because his father, an ebullient masculine good-natured Salesman of the First Water, had done the same when he was a kid. As he was worried about Jamie's reticent, shy personality; he believed that a summer away from home and long hours of dealing with people would be just the tonic Jamie needed to come out of his shell.

And so Jamie Stairs had been at the Bayhaven Resort for two weeks now, working six days a week, quartered four to a room in a forgotten corner of the complex, listening to his older roomies boasting or lying about the guests they had scored with. They pretty much ignored the slim seventeen year old, except when they needed a small loan until payday. Jamie was all right with that, he didn't need much to get by, and the cocksure way they handled themselves confused and awed him. Presumably at the end of summer he would return home with a few thousand dollars for his share of the tip money. After Jared Rose skimmed a bunch of money off the top. Everyone hated Rose and most believed that after thirty years of skimming from his room service staff he was rich himself.

Jamie spent his off day, Tuesdays, biking around the island like a tourist. No motor vehicles were allowed on Mackinac Island except for an ambulance and police and fire vehicles. Horse-drawn carriages were plentiful, although prohibitively expensive for the summer help. So Jamie biked around to see the sights, the majestic cliffs on the north side of the island, the old fort, the strip of both expensive and cheap souvenir stores, the quiet forests and sandy shores that made the island so beautiful. Guests came to the island on one of the ferry services which left every eight minutes from the mainland, only five miles away.

Jared Rose surveyed the idle boys disdainfully, then deposited pickup slips to the other boys, leaving Jamie waiting. The boys rolled their carts into Pickup to grab their next deliveries. Mr. Rose glanced doubtfully at Jamie before he turned to walk away.

"Mr. Rose?"

Rose turned and glared hard at Jamie. "What?", he answered irritably.

Jamie held out the ladies wallet. "I found this in the elevator," he said shyly.

Mr. Rose almost snatched the wallet out of Jamie's hands. He opened it and inspected the contents. His eyes lit up when he saw the cash. Remembering himself, he put his mean glare back on and addressed Jamie.

"You found this? On which elevator?", he demanded.

"Main Three", Jamie answered softly.

"Did you look in it? You looked in it, didn't you?", Rose accused. "You know how much money is here?"

Jamie tried to hold his head up to Mr. Rose, but he failed miserably. Looking off into space, he answered. "I...uh...looked into it--to see if I could find which guest it belonged to."

Mr. Rose stared at him unblinkingly, like a chameleon. "You are not supposed to look inside a guest wallet, Stairs. Your job is to deliver meals. Only meals."

"Yes sir,"

Rose grimaced. "You found it. I will take it back where it belongs. Giving you full credit for finding it, of course", he added acidly. "Next time, don't be looking inside peoples wallets when you find them lying around. You just turn it in. Get it? Watch the phones." He grabbed his suitcoat off a peg in the tiny Order Room and whirled away without waiting for an answer. Jamie watched him stalk off down the corridor to the Main Hotel to return the wallet. Then it hit him. That old man might have stolen the money if Jamie hadn't told him he knew that there was money inside. And now he was heading up to their room to return it and intercept any gratuity the owner would want to give Jamie. He stood there stunned by Mr. Rose's gall until the phone rang for yet another room service order. Jamie dutifully took the order and placed it. By the time he finished, an older boy booted him out and took over phone duty as befitted his seniority.

Fifteen minutes later, Jamie saw Mr. Rose return. He was in a foul-tempered mood. He sidled up to Jamie as he was preparing to roll away an order for one of the outbuildings. "Stairs. I returned the wallet to Mr. and Mrs. Summers in Main Building, Suite 228. The gentlemen indicated that you would deliver and wait their dinner and he would speak to you about the wallet there. You are advised that any reward given to you will be split between you and me. You for finding it; me for returning it. Understand Stairs?" Mr. Rose stared at him intently......(cont)