Let George do it

When I was a kid, there was a popular expression, "Let George do it." I don't know the origin, but it essentially was a pass-the-buck thing, the equivilant of saying, "I don't want to do it. Let someone else do it."
Well, in our case, George isn't doing it.
Today's agenda includes calling all of the Menards stores in the area to determine if George, our disappearing contractor, ever bought building materials for our theoretical garage with the very real $14,920 we gave him on May 1.
As nearly as we can tell, the last time anyone came to our house to work on the mostly demolished flawed concrete pad was May 30 and maybe June 1.
The last conversation I had with George was the evening of June 6 when he called to apologize for the lack of progress and communication. He promised to do better. He also said the heavy equipment would show up the next week to finish the demolition and the new pad would be poured arond June 14.
And, he told me he would have a crew at our place on the morning of Saturday, June 9, to get the hot tub onto the new deck and hooked up.
Of course, none of this occurred and we haven't heard from him since.
I was particularly pissed off about the Saturday no-show because I canceled my plan to ride to Asheville, N.C. for the BMW Riders Association national rally at the Biltmore that weekend to be at home for the tub move.
I took matters into my own hands the following Monday and paid a couple of guys from the hot tub store $225 to get the tub moved and connected on June 14.
But our back yard still looks like a combat zone with a big crater, wrecked concrete and twisted rebar poking up. Since we can't re-install our invisible fence dog containment system until the project is done, our dogs routinely leave the yard and have narrowly missed being hit by traffic several times.
Maria left a stern voicemail for George on his cellphone on Monday, June 11, telling him we were tired of being jerked around. She said we would assume he had stolen our money if there was no serious work done by the following Friday or if he did not provide (a.) the set of garage plans he promised a month earlier, (b.) proof of his bonding and insurance and (c.) proof that there really is $14,920 worth of building materials waiting for us in our name at Menards, also by the following Friday.
Of course, Friday, June 15 came and went and none of those conditions were met. And there was no communication from George.
So now it's time to determine what became of our nearly $15k and then decide what to do about it.
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I hit paydirt on the first call.
I check the listings for Menards stores in Indianapolis and decided the West store was the logical one for George to use.
I spoke with a guy who confirmed that George's former employer has an account there. He checked his records and found nothing for George either under George's name or under his cell phone number. Likewise, he has no record of any transactions under our name.
He was very sympathetic and said he would discuss the situation with the guy in their office who handles Bob's account and see if he could get any more information. He promised to stay in touch and recommended another contractor and an attorney.