A/N: If you aren't aware, there is a visual guide to Evergreen with pictures, maps, etc. to go along with this story. FFnet won't let me direct link it, but you can find it by googling "livejournal wenn9366 Evergreen". This is updated as new chapters go up. (There are visual guides on LJ for most of my Hazzard stories).

Also, if you are interested in such things, my playlist for this story is up on Youtube if you search "evergreen hazzard fanfiction" (I'm wenn9366 on there, as well). I actually try to list the songs in order that they correspond to the story...so there may be hints to the future chapters if you "listen" between the lines.

A big thanks to those who review - you make it worth my time to write.

Chapter 24: Best Bet

"Don't you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy, she'll beat you if she's able.
You know the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet."
-The Eagles

The temperature had fallen into the mid-50's by the time Enos stepped out of the cabin with the seasons teetering on the ragged edge of winter. There would be more hot days, but the soul of summer had gone and what was left felt like an untimely death: still warm, yet just as final. It made him think of another fall morning, back when Norman Willis had been hiding out in Hazzard. Drenched in sepia tones and covered by an avalanche of time and circumstances, he was surprised that the memory still made him smile.

Daisy hadn't accosted him this morning. Not that he'd expected her to - thank goodness those days were over.

He put the truck in gear and headed down the mountain towards town, stopping at the Quik-Trip for a coffee before making his way out to the Point. Mertle was restocking the Hostess display as he headed up to the front.

The portly woman stood and wiped a bead of sweat from above her eye. "Morning, Sheriff! Didn't expect to see you today, heard you got caught out at Saint G's all night."

"I got a bit of a late start this morning, alright." He didn't bother to act surprised anymore. Tamarack was worse than Hazzard for gossip, and everyone had a police scanner. "You heard anything about some drunk fella hanging around the museum?"

She looked out the window, as though the guy might be standing outside. "No, I haven't. They know who he is?"

"I guess not or Melinda would have said. I'm on my way to check it out." He showed her two dollar bills before he laid them beside the register. "Let me know if anyone strange comes by."

"I keep telling you to quit paying for your coffee."

He shrugged and smiled brightly. "And I'm gonna keep giving you my money."

She stepped around to the register, picked up the two ones, and brandished them at him. "It's only 50 cents, dontcha know."

They'd had this conversation before, and he suspected they would have it an infinite number of times in the future, but he always felt badly for taking her away from whatever she was busy with. At first she wouldn't accept the tips, so he'd taken to hiding them by the coffee pot until she'd given up trying to stop him. "If that drunk guy comes in, buy him a coffee," he suggested. "Then call me."

Mertle watched him leave and sighed to herself, wishing she was thirty years younger. That foreign lady up at the museum was bound and determined to sink her claws into him, and everybody knew it. Seemed a shame, though, really. He was the type of man who deserved a love story, not a shallow entanglement. Personally, she'd placed bets on that girl who'd come up from Georgia. She was a sweet thing, she was. The town knew better than to talk about the pool within earshot of the Sheriff, though. Nobody wanted to jinx it...or lose him.

The beach around the Point was still soggy, with flotsam and debris dragged far up onto the shore and littering the parking lot. Enos radioed Joy to call the road crew to come and clean it up. They were nearing the last push of tourism before the snow, and they needed visitors to be wowed by the view, not tripping over tree limbs. There were several out of state cars in the lot, and probably more down at the cafe' with people getting an early lunch before continuing to sight-see.

"Sheriff," she said, "before you go back home, would you mind stopping by the station? We got something...I don't know what to make of it."

"What kind of something? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" he laughed. Two years back, a dead armadillo found south of Shelldrake had gotten them on the national news, and he and Bruce concluded it must have hitched a ride on a train or semi to get so far north.

There was a pause, then finally she replied, "Plant?"

It wasn't like her to sound so confused. "Alright, I'll be over there as soon as I can. Unit 1 out."

Melinda must have been watching for him; she stepped out of the museum as he walked up the hill.

He nodded politely at a couple coming out in front of him carrying a bag from the gift shop, then crossed the sidewalk to stand beside her. "Hey," he murmured, not wanting to alarm any tourists, "what's going on?"

She waved down towards the beach. "Some man, stumbling around down there all morning," she explained. "There was a school group from Cheboygan, and I thought he was their bus driver, but they left and he didn't."

"Where's he now?"

"I don't know. I had to go back inside, and I wasn't able to watch him." She rubbed at her arms in the chilly air. "Maybe he saw you coming and left."

He doubted it. The road was on the other side of the hill. If the man was on the beach, he wouldn't have been able to see the Bronco until he pulled into the parking lot. "What'd he look like?" He took his notepad and pen from his shirt pocket.

"Forties, I think," she shrugged. "Messy. Jeans and a dirty white sweatshirt. It said something, it might have been Coors Light."

He dutifully wrote it down, though it could have described one of a hundred men in the area. "If he took off on foot, he might still be around," he told her. "Is Sarah here to watch the desk? If we drive around a little, we might get lucky."

She grinned and pressed him back against the wall. "Wait right there." The door closed behind her and she came out soon after, now wearing a sweater. "Should we check the coast road, first?" she wondered, pointing towards the far end of the beach. "I would have seen him if he walked up here."

"Sure," he agreed. "We'll check both. Then I'll drive you down to the station, and you can fill out a report in case he shows up again. Joy wanted me to stop by, anyway."

Daisy gathered the warm towels and uniform from the dryer, carried them into the den, and sat down on the couch to fold them. She finished the towels and put them away, but the uniform really needed to be hung up or it would get wrinkled. Problem was, there were no hangers in the spare room and no extras in the closet by the front door. In fact, she guessed there was only one place in the cabin that had an extra. She stared up at the loft.

'Stay outta my room,' he'd said.

"Well, that's just ridiculous," she snorted, and crossed the room to where the metal staircase wound up from the floor. Her footfalls rang out on the metal treads that looked like the staircase of a lighthouse.

She'd dutifully stayed away from his space until now (although she had stood on the arm of the couch once to try and steal a peek). There were scant few personal items downstairs, and she had the sneaking suspicion that he had moved in and left it completely untouched. Often, the place felt like a vacation rental instead of his home.

Her first impression was disappointment. His room was just as impersonal as the rest of the cabin, although the loft's cream colored carpet did lend a coziness to it. A full sized bed sat in an small alcove to the left with a nightstand and lamp next to it and a window on the other side. Pushed up against the wall in front of her was a weight bench with a low shelf of plates and some bars. She walked around the bed to look out the window and smiled at the view. Prime real estate, for sure - she could see all the way down to the point! Tourists the size of ants milled around on the beach below and if not for a couple of tall pines, she would be able to see the museum and its parking lot.

She turned around and stopped short. Nothing in Enos' cabin had triggered an emotional memory - until she saw the black hat hanging above his bed. It was from when he was a deputy in Hazzard - it had to be, it looked just like Cletus'. Carefully, she took it down from its hook and turned the wide brim over in her hands. A million feelings flooded through her and she knew, whatever memories she had lost of it, they had been special.

With a sigh, she hung it back up, making sure the tassels fell in exactly the same place as before.

On the opposite side of the loft from the window was a door. Suspecting it to be the closet, she opened it and was surprised to find a large walk-in instead of the narrow cubby she had expected. Stepping into it, she saw that this room had been built into the space above the kitchen, while the main sleeping area was over the bathroom and back pantry.

Here, she surmised, must be where Enos Strate had stashed the greater part of himself. At one end was a rack of clothes containing mostly uniforms and dress shirts with a couple of flannels, and a narrow chest of drawers with a mirror. The opposite end of the room was obscured by dog-eared cardboard boxes stacked up against the wall.

It occurred to her, as she slid open the top drawer of his dresser, that if he was the paranoid type and apt to lay booby-traps, she was probably going to be in hot water after this. She did it anyway.

First drawer: socks and underwear. She would have thought him a boxer kind of guy, but apparently not.

Second drawer: undershirts.

Third drawer: sweatshirts and sweatpants with LAPD insignias.

Fourth drawer: a jumbled mess of fishing line, hooks, feathers, and fur, along with a number of half-finished fly lures anchored on alligator clips set into a wooden block. She picked them up and examined each, marveling at their intricacy, and wondered if this was where all the little white scars on his knuckles had come from.

Shutting the drawer, she walked over to the other side of the room and pulled back the flaps of the top box to find more fishing stuff: loose bobbers and hooks and pliers, plastic spools, and some curious looking square poles with pulleys and flags. The lid to a five gallon bucket with a blaze orange padded top.

He must like fishing. A lot.

She peeked into the other boxes as she set them aside, but they contained mundane things and nick-naks that meant nothing to her. More fishing tackle, some old calendars and books, work schedules, planners, notebooks filled with sketches of trout flies which were kind of interesting, and a rough, hand-drawn map of Hazzard with bodies of water labeled with different fish and hash marks she assumed were how many of each type he'd caught. There were lots of hash marks.

It wasn't until she got to the last box, the one on the bottom which had been shoved into the corner of the room, that she found what she had been looking for. Beneath a light blue uniform from Hazzard County, and a black one with an LAPD patch, were two photo albums and a myriad of loose pictures. She set the uniforms and albums aside and picked through the pictures, but they were all people she didn't know or just places with no people in them. Disheartened, she picked up the albums and thumbed through them.

She didn't recognize anyone in the first album. Although there was a boy in some pictures, the narrow, white-bordered photos were from the 1940's, which would make him far too old to be Enos. There was a resemblance in some of the faces but they were all unlabeled. Strates, she assumed, or his mother's family.

The second album seemed more promising. The first picture was of two cars; one Sweet Tilly and the other a Hudson Hornet. Leaning against them were two men with big smiles, each holding up a jug of moonshine. One was her uncle as she remembered him best, younger with dark hair, and the man next to him was unmistakably Otis Strate, unless Enos was the spitting image of someone else in his family.

She flipped page after page, finally able to put eyes to what Enos looked like as a little boy. A school picture dated "1st grade, 1958" showed him scowling at the camera with a shock of dark hair that looked like it had been whacked off with rusty pruning shears. It was the only picture of him that young - the others were in his early teens. In these, he wore a smile that lit up his face, undoubtedly because they were all with his race car, or holding up a fish, or standing by his dad. Although there were several empty spaces where it looked like pictures had been removed, there were no pictures with her in them or anyone else she knew.

Facing the back of the album was a loose 8"x10" not underneath the protective plastic sheets. She turned it over.

The hunt for the elusive drunk proved fruitless, even after driving a loop down Highway 123 all the way to Paradise and back through the area where Gino Spione had met his doom. Enos' opinion was that the man had probably been a local, but if he had wandered into the lake, there wasn't much he could do other than wait and see who turned up missing. Pulling into his spot in front of the Sheriff's Department, he was more interested in seeing what had gotten Joy perplexed than hunting down Mr. Ratty-White-Sweatshirt.

"I'll get you a form and you can fill in the details about the guy," he told Melinda, as he got out. "I'd do it, but I've got to get home and clean my chimney out before it gets dark."

The station was quiet, and Joy sat behind her desk eating a sandwich. She looked up as he walked in and motioned at a red floral arrangement in a black vase that sat on the edge of the desk. "You tell me, Sheriff," she said around a bite of food, "who sends those kind of flowers to anyone?"

He shrugged, wondering if he was missing something 'because he was a guy', as Joy frequently liked to point out. "I dunno, they're pretty. I didn't know azaleas grew up here."

"At least you know what they are," she said. "But, that's not the strange-" She stopped because they were both looking at Melinda who, upon seeing the flowers had turned as white as a sheet and crossed herself. "What's wrong with you?"

Enos, well acquainted with fight or flight responses from his days at LAPD Central, saw Melinda's hand moved to the crash bar of the door and realized she was a heartbeat away from running. He put his arm around her shoulders and steered her away from the exit.

"Hey now, what's got you so upset? If you know something we don't, we're all ears. They ain't nothing but some flowers for all I know."

"Azaleas are poisonous," she explained. "In Europe, sending them in a black vase is a death threat."

"That explains this, then," said Joy. She lay a sandwich bag on the desk. "There wasn't a note, but this was stuck down into the vase. I didn't touch it, so you might be able to pull a print off it if there's one to pull."

He picked it up and studied the playing card inside before holding it up to show Melinda the Queen of Hearts with her eyes scratched out. "Who knew you helped me on the Elcid Barrett cases?"

Joy drew a sharp breath. "You think it's about the murders?"

"It's the only explanation," he told her. "Like the note in Gino's car - the one about Alice and the cards having been dealt."

Melinda shook her head. "No. The flowers were sent here, not to the museum."

"This card has two women on it." He turned it upside down to show her the second queen, which had been similarly defaced. "So I can't rule out Joy as a target, but you're the only one who understood it's meaning, and you were the one helping me search the FBI's fingerprint records." He waited, but all Melinda could do was shake her head, her eyes liike saucers. "What if that guy was hanging around the museum today because he knew you'd come here to fill out a report and see them?"

"And the whole town knows you meet Enos at the Ashbury on Friday nights." Joy's unspoken implication hung between them in the air. "I doesn't matter if you just talk about the weather, it makes you a target."

With a sob, Melinda turned and fled out the door.

Enos ran out after her and caught her just as she rounded the far edge of the building. She turned away, trying to hide her tears, but he pulled her into his arms and lay her head against his shoulder.

"I'm not about to let anything happen to you or Joy," he promised. "We'll do more patrols around the museum, and you let me or one of the deputies shadow you at night."

"You don't need to do that," she sniffed. "I'm just tired, and making...what's it called? A mountain out of a molehole."

"No, you're not. There's already been two murders in this county, and I shouldn't have let you get involved. Whether or not you want my protection you isn't up to you," he reminded her. "I'm the Sheriff, it's actually my job."

"I know it is." She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him.

"Listen, I need to talk to Joy for a minute, then I'll take you home. Wait in my truck, and I'll be right there." She nodded and stepped back.

He walked back around to the front and opened the station door. "Do you think you can figure out who sent those, and who actually paid for it?"

"I'll call around tomorrow and see what I can find out." Joy held up a piece of paper. "I've got the receipt from the delivery service, so I should be able to track down a money trail."

"Thanks. I'm going to drop Melinda at her house on my way home." He closed the door, then remembered something and opened it back up. "Joy?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you have your gun?"

She reached into the drawer in front of her and pulled out a .38 Smith & Wesson Special and laid it on the desk. "I hope you're not forgetting that I'm a police officer just because I sit behind this desk all day. This kiddo gets born, I'm going back on patrol, you know."

They had already butted heads over this topic. Joy was a pro at coordinating the department from dispatch, and her talents were wasted handing out tickets to tourists with expired tags. "We'll talk about it later." He shut the door before she thought about throwing anything at him.

At least there had been no one around to hear her bawling her eyes out.

The grief had come from nowhere, like the rogue wave that had smashed against her on the beach the day before to knock her to the ground. Her hair fell over her face and brushed the edges of the photograph laying in her lap as she rubbed at her head where it ached from crying and the blood rushed in her ears.

There was nothing special about the picture - it brought no sweeping revelation of forgotten memories or deja vu. It was just her family, sitting on the porch at the farm - as she had expected them to look when she had woken from her accident.

There was little Bo, with his head of unruly blond curls and cherub cheeks. Luke, with a smirk on his face, looking for all the world like the one in charge even though he was two feet shorter than the front door. Strong and serious Uncle Jesse and, beside him sat dear, sweet Aunt Lavinia, holding a cat on her aproned lap, her smile as warm and bright as a summer day. Lastly, herself leaning against a post, barefoot and pig-tailed, wearing too big hand-me-downs.

She didn't remember the picture being taken, but surely it must have been shortly after her memories ended because this was the Daisy she expected to see in the mirror. In her hands was the only life she'd ever known, the one where she belonged. Frozen in time and all the days beyond it a bitter afterimage, like looking away from the sun on a summer day.

With a deep, shuddering breath, she wiped her tears and put everything back in the box, then scooted it back into the corner. The other boxes she stacked up exactly as she had found them. Taking a look around to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, she turned off the closet light and left, shutting the door behind her.

After admonishing Melinda to lock her door (a rare event in the UP) and extracting a promise not to walk to work but let him take her in the morning, Enos headed back up to the cabin. His biggest concern was having the manpower to increase patrols around both the station and the museum. While he was reasonably certain that Joy could take care of herself, she had another life besides her own to think about. Rick, the new deputy, was coming along fine, but he had him patrolling Highway 123 between Paradise and Shelldrake during the day to keep the locals from drag racing.

He wondered if Joy would even tell her husband about the threat. Maybe he should give Bruce a call.

Maybe he should drive by Melinda's house a couple of times tonight.

Maybe he should stop sitting in his driveway and get busy cleaning his chimney so he wouldn't freeze to death this winter.

He opened the front door to the aroma of home cooking, and his stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten since...ding dang, had it been yesterday afternoon? Despite all that Daisy had forgotten, she had thankfully retained her ability to cook. Oftentimes, he would stop in late at night or before she woke in the morning and grab whatever she had left for him in the fridge. It was right nice of her to think of him, despite him never being around. He told himself that he'd try to show up for supper more.

There was a cast iron pot on the stove, but he didn't see Daisy anywhere. He took off his jacket and hung it in the closet before knocking on the door to the spare room.

"Daisy? You in there?"

There was some rustling and creaking of springs. "Yeah, hold on a minute."

"I just wondered where you were," he told her. "I'm gonna go change. Did you already eat?"

"No, not yet. I thought I'd wait for you. Are you hungry now or did you want to wait?"

His stomach chose that moment to growl loudly. "Starving," he admitted, "but if I don't clean the chimney while it's light, I'm libel to fall off the roof. It won't take long."

She opened the door and smiled up at him...but there was a shine in her eyes and a redness in her cheeks that wasn't a blush. His chores and hunger forgotten, he focused instead on her.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing," she said, too brightly, and turned away to straighten the quilt on her bed. "I'm just tired."

Well, that was a lie. "You look like you've been crying."

She sighed and faced him again. "Sometimes, forgetting half of my life catches up with me is all," she said, with a shrug. "I'll be alright. Do you need some help?"

"Help? With what?"

"The chimney," she reminded him, pointing at the roof. She grabbed Uncle Jesse's old denim jacket and shrugged it on. "I haven't been outside in a while, is it much colder?"

He wasn't ready to move on from whatever had upset her, but obviously she was. "It's still in the 50's, but it's supposed to get down into the low 40's after the sun sets." And now she'd changed the subject, and there was no way to navigate back to it. "I'd sure appreciate some help. If you don't mind shoveling the creosote and ash out while I clean it, it'll go twice as fast."

"I can do that."

It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't seen another jacket or coat other than the one she was wearing. "Is that the only coat you brought up here?"

She stopped buttoning it and shot an annoyed glance up at him. "It's warm enough."

"Daisy, Georgia winter is gonna feel like a balmy summer day compared to what we're about to have. Listen," he continued, seeing uncertainty blossom in her eyes, "next Friday, I'll make time and we'll go to Soo and get you some winter clothes."

The look morphed into stubborn pride. "You ain't gotta do that," she said. "Joy gave me a few things, and she said I could borrow-"

"I want to," he insisted, and he did. He wasn't sure what it was that had upset her today, but getting out of Tamarack for a few hours would probably be good for her. "Shoot, besides, you can't come all this way and not see the Locks."

He could tell she wasn't quite sold on it.

"And, I'll take you to lunch."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Fine. You'd better go change."

The days following passed without them seeing much of each other. Enos pulled nights so long they dragged into mornings, sleeping at the station. It wasn't until Thursday that he walked into the cabin when there was still daylight left in the sky. Long after Daisy had gone to bed and a fire burned low in the hearth, he sat at the table of the small kitchen piecing back together the newly cleaned Ruger single action .22 in front of him. The clock over the stove probably read some ungodly early hour - he was sure of it, and he almost jumped out of his skin when the door of the spare bedroom opened. He looked up as Daisy shuffled out in pajamas, her hair a mess of tangles.

"Don't you ever sleep?" she asked. "You're like a vampire."

"Sometimes."

She peered over his shoulder. "Whatcha doing?"

"What it looks like I'm doing," he muttered. "Why don't you run along and do whatever you got up to do."

"Run along!?" she stammered. "I'm not six years old!"

He groaned. "I'm sorry, Daisy. I'm tired and out of sorts. Something happened last week, and it's got my mind on something else."

Her anger cooled as quickly as it had sparked. "What happened?"

He shook his head. "It's late. Can I tell you about it tomorrow on the way to Soo?"

"Sure, okay."

She continued to the bathroom without another word, but stopped on her way back to bed.

"Enos?"

"Yeah?"

"Please get some sleep."

"I will. I promise."

But it was a long time before sleep found him that night.