Childfinders, Inc.: An Uncommon Hero

Chapter 3

Jon Peterson slowly stroked his small goatee as he stared at the reprinted photograph of a woman with a little boy that Ben had handed him.

Longer than was necessary, in Ben’s estimation. Gloria Prescott had either come in and applied for a job in the last few days, or she hadn’t. Granted, the photograph wasn’t a very good one, but it was the only one McNair had had of either Gloria, or his son. Ben could see not having photographs of the nanny, but it was difficult for him to understand why McNair had no available photographs of his son. He supposed that the man’s excuse, that he wasn’t the kind to take pictures, held some water. But he bet that McNair had plenty of photographs of himself around.

Blurred photograph or not, Peterson knew what Gloria looked like. According to her great-aunt, she’d worked here for four years. The man was either stalling for dramatic effect, or was debating something. Not knowing him made it next to impossible for Ben to tell.

When the bookstore manager finally raised his eyes to his, Ben had the impression that he was being scrutinized far more closely than the photograph had been.

“Nope, sorry, can’t help you.” Placing the photograph on the counter, Jon pushed it back toward him. He paused as if thinking. “Haven’t seen Gloria in, what? I guess about four, five years now.” The small, dark eyes gave no indication of what was going on in his mind as they looked at Ben. “Maybe even longer.”

“Then she didn’t come here looking for a job,” Ben reiterated.

The meeting apparently over, Peterson drew his book back to him and lowered his head, effectively blocking out any noise and any unwanted inquiries.

“That would have meant I’d seen her, wouldn’t it? Sorry, she’s not here. Wish she was. Best damn employee I ever had here. She actually wanted to work, not like some of the others.” He turned a page in his book. Because Ben wasn’t leaving, Peterson raised his eyes to look at him again. This time, his displeasure was not that difficult to discern. “Anything else I can do for you?”

Ben had come across more sociable pit bulls. He slipped the photograph back into his pocket. “Would you happen to know where Gloria might have gone if she’d returned to San Francisco?”

“Nope. Never meddle.” Peterson returned to his mystery, making it painfully obvious that he considered Ben an annoying obstacle to his reading pleasure. “Keeping your nose out of other people’s lives is the secret to a long, healthy one of your own.” Bent over his book, Peterson spared him one more pointed glance. “Know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” He knew exactly what the older man meant. Get lost. Ben took one last look around the store. He’d already walked up and down the aisles methodically, not once but twice. That was how he’d happened to notice the college preppie putting the moves on the salesclerk. Not that he could actually blame him. The woman had been a looker in a classy sort of way. “Thanks for your help.”

Engrossed in the book he was reading, the store manager grunted his acknowledgment.

There was nothing for Ben to do but retreat to his car.

Rather than drive off immediately, Ben put in a quick call to Savannah and came up empty there as well.

“If Gloria Prescott’s in San Francisco, Ben, she’s not using her charge cards,” she told him.

“No paper trail of any kind?”

“Not unless she’s leaving bread crumbs behind her on her way to the forest,” Savannah quipped. “The canvassing down here’s coming up dry, too. Rusty’s been showing the photograph around in the area and he said to tell you that nobody’s seen Gloria or the boy. I’m sorry, Ben.”

“Not your fault,” he murmured before hanging up.

Putting his cell phone back in his pocket, Ben stared at the bookstore across the street, not really seeing it. He doubted that driving back to Saratoga to ask Sugar any more questions would yield any further insight into finding Gloria.

That only left one other person to talk to.

The expression on Stephen McNair’s face was far from welcoming when his secretary admitted Ben into his office. The man’s countenance made Ben think of Zeus, presiding over Mount Olympus and bringing Mercury to task for failing to deliver the message he’d been anticipating. Ben had a hunch that even the man’s furniture had been chosen with an eye toward intimidating anyone entering the office. Massive, opulent and expensive. The man certainly didn’t assume his present position in life graciously.

Sitting as straight as a spear in his gray, imported leather office chair, McNair gripped the armrests as he scowled at him.

“Shut the door.”

The tone rankled Ben, but he closed the door behind him. This was supposed to be private, anyway. The instant the door met the jamb, McNair was on his feet.

“Why are you coming to see me here?”

Definitely not a Mr. Congeniality candidate, Ben thought. In his book it would have had to have taken one hell of a greedy woman to have slept with this man for monetary gain. But then, it took all kinds, and he had yet to figure out just what “kind” his quarry was. Aside from cookies, her aunt had filled him in with stories of Gloria as well, all told with an abundance of affection and filial pride. Given the woman’s state, though, he figured he had to take a great deal with a grain of salt.

“Because I didn’t want to waste time making an appointment.”

About to say something, McNair changed his tone. “Did you find her?”

Again, “her,” not “him.” “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. McNair, you seem to be a great deal more interested in my finding Gloria Prescott than you are in my finding your son.”

“Of course I’m interested in you finding Gloria. She has what belongs to me and no one, no one gets away with that. Now, did you find her or didn’t you?”

“Not yet.” Ben wanted to add that he wasn’t a magician, but let the remark slide. It would only lead to an escalation of tempers.

“Then I repeat, what are you doing here in my office?”

Ben was beginning to feel really sorry for the little boy he was looking for. He had a feeling that McNair was probably just as cold and abrasive with the son he never actually wanted as he was with someone who was “displeasing” him. “I need more information.”

Exasperation creased the remarkably unlined brow. “I already told you everything I could think of.”

There had to be something, some tiny piece that would lead Ben to clues that would help him find the boy. He’d seen it happen often enough. The trick was finding that one scrap that eventually opened up everything. Maybe the answers he was looking for were in Gloria’s recent past. “Where did Gloria work before she came to you?”

The annoyance on McNair’s face deepened. “I don’t remember.”

He was being evasive, Ben thought, and wondered why. In any event, there was an easy-enough solution. “Check your references.”

With an angry huff, McNair turned away. There was tension in the back Ben found himself looking at. “I don’t know where they are.”

He would have thought that McNair knew how to lay his hands on almost anything that remotely concerned him. “What about the agency that sent her? Can you remember its name?”

McNair swung around. “What does where she worked before have to do with finding her now?”

It was on the tip of Ben’s tongue to say that he didn’t appreciate having his methods questioned, but he thought better of it. He hadn’t come here to argue, but to search for a lead. The sooner McNair gave him what he wanted, the sooner he could get going.

“There might be some sort of connection we’ve overlooked.” McNair looked unconvinced. “No one we’ve questioned in the area has seen her, and her only relative sent me in the wrong direction.”

“Relative?” He said the word as if he hadn’t thought that Gloria had any, Ben noted. “Well, go back to him or her and get the truth.”

“It’s a her,” Ben told him. “And I think the sky’s a different color in her world than it is in the world the rest of us reside in.”

“You mean she’s crazy?” Surprise imprinted the distinguished features.

“No, just somewhat off. Eccentric.” Ben had no idea why he suddenly felt protective of a woman he hardly knew. Maybe it was McNair’s manner. He pressed on. “What I need right now is someone else who knew her, someone who might have a decent idea where Gloria might have gone with your son.”

McNair blew out a breath as he scrubbed his hand over his face. Searching his memory. Or debating over something that he’d felt better about keeping obscure. Ben couldn’t tell.

Finally, McNair said, “I think she used to work in a social security office.”

Something to go on, Ben thought. “Locally?”

“I think so.” The scowl returned. “Look, I’m doing all the work here.”

Ben was already at the door, more than eager to leave. “We’ll arrange for a discount.” He didn’t bother sublimating the sarcasm.

It wasn’t wasted on McNair. His expression bordered on malevolence. “Damn straight you will. And don’t forget, I want to be kept posted,” he called after Ben.

“As soon as I find out anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

No one was more eager than he was to wrap this all up, Ben thought.

There was only one social security building in the county. Even if Gloria hadn’t worked in this particular one, Ben figured that with a little coaxing applied to the right people, he could find out which office she had worked in.

He didn’t need to coax.

The section supervisor, Anna Philbert, a robustly built woman in her forties who had once been an Olympic shot-put alternate if he was to believe the certificate that hung on the cubicle wall directly behind her, instantly recognized the photograph he showed her.

“Oh, sure, Gloria worked here.” She looked at the photograph again before handing it back to him. “Is anything wrong?”

He didn’t think the story he’d given Gloria’s great-aunt sounded sufficiently credible in the government building, so he had created another one on his way over.

“She’s missing and her fiancé’s very worried about her.”

“Missing? You mean kidnapped?” Anna asked, genuinely horrified. A beringed hand fluttered to her ample bosom. “Gloria? You’re kidding.” She shook her head in pure disbelief even as she clearly reveled in the drama of the situation. “The poor thing. She was the sweetest person in the world.”

Apparently Gloria’s fan club was growing. Why would someone regarded as “the sweetest person in the world” kidnap a child no matter how upset and angry she was? It didn’t make sense to him.

“It might not be a kidnapping,” he said quickly. “It just might be a case of cold feet.” He deliberately exchanged a conspiratorial look with the woman, drawing her further into his camp. “Tell me, if Gloria did want to get away, would you have any idea where she might go?”

As much as she looked as if she wanted to help him, Anna was forced to shake her head. “No, but I really wasn’t very close to her.” She thought a moment. “You might have better luck talking to Carla Wassel.”

“Wassel?” An image of the woman at the bookstore came to him. If he closed his eyes, he could see the name tag she’d worn against her shapely breast. It wasn’t all that common a name. He wondered if the women were somehow related. Maybe he’d finally stumbled onto a connection. “Is she in?”

Rising from behind her desk, Anna peered over the tops of the maze of cubicles.

“She’s right over there.” Anna pointed to the far end of the corridor, to a desk on the extreme right. “She and Gloria were pretty tight while Gloria was here.”

“Thank you.” He started to leave. “Oh, by the way, when did Gloria leave her job?”

“About nine months ago.” Anna smiled affectionately. “She always called this her day job, though you wouldn’t have known by the way she worked. I wished I had ten of her.”

Day job. That meant she was trying to make a go of something else. But what? It obviously wasn’t being a nanny. Could she have plotted to kidnap Andrew all along in order to get a stake of some sort? It sounded like a shot in the dark, but he’d come across wilder theories that had turned out to be true.

He probed a little further into the woman’s testimonial. “What do you mean? She put in a lot of overtime?”

“Oh, no, she never worked overtime. Couldn’t. She kept regular hours, but she gave a hundred twenty-five percent when she was here. I tried to talk her into staying, but she was adamant. Now or never, she said.”

Now or never. What was that supposed to mean? The nine-month time frame coincided with when she came to work for McNair. Had she seen the CEO as her ticket to better things?

He was holding two different puzzle pieces in his hand. So far, he’d gotten two unofficial testimonials. Both of which painted the image of a woman who believed in giving her employer everything she felt was due him or her. Giving, not taking. People like that didn’t just wake up one morning and steal their employer’s child.

Or did they?

Thanking Anna for her help, he made his way through the maze to Carla Wassel’s cubicle. He could feel Anna’s eyes following him.

Because there was no door, he rapped once on the side of the cubicle to get the woman’s attention. “Ms. Wassel?”

A dark-haired woman with striking bright blue eyes turned from her computer screen to look up at him. The smile tinged in curiosity came a beat afterward.

Ben could see the resemblance instantly. Not so much the hair, although both the woman he’d met in the bookstore and Carla Wassel were brunettes who wore their hair short, but in the eyes. A man didn’t readily forget eyes like that. They had the exact same shade of blue. Like bits of cobalt.

“Yes?”

“I’m Ben Underwood.” He indicated the chair within her cubicle. “Mind if I sit down?” Still curious, she gestured for him to take a seat. “I’m trying to locate a friend of yours. Gloria Prescott.”

“Gloria?” Her eyes widened. “Why? Has something happened to her?”

Ben stopped before reaching for Gloria’s photograph. He saw no reason for her to get as upset as she did. “What makes you ask that?”

Carla flushed, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, ever since my sister died, I’m afraid I overreact to things. The first thing I think of is…” Her voice trailed off as she let the end of her thought go. “Never mind.” She waved away the rest of her sentence. “Why are you trying to find Gloria?”

For simplicity, and because there was a chance he might have to return for more information, Ben gave Carla the same story he’d given her supervisor.

“Her fiancé’s trying to find her. They were supposed to go away together to Hawaii last week and Gloria never showed up. Personally,” he said, leaning in a little closer, “I think it might be cold feet, but we have to investigate these things.”

Caution entered her voice. “Are you a policeman?”

For a second he debated going that route. But the closer he remained to the truth, the easier it was to remember details. “A private one.”

Carla took the information in stride. “I don’t think I can help you. I haven’t been in touch with Gloria since shortly after she left the office.” She raised her shoulder in a semihelpless movement. “I meant to, but you know how that goes. I suppose I wasn’t much fun to be around at the time. But I’m better now.”

“Nice to hear.” He tried to sound sympathetic. Another dead end, he thought. But there was still the coincidence of the names. No stone unturned. “How do you spell your last name?”

Carla’s dark eyebrows drew together over a Roman nose. “W-a-s-s-e-l, why?”

He jotted it down in the small notepad he carried. Tucking it back into his pocket, his fingers came in contact with the cookies Aunt Sugar had slipped in. He had to remember to take them out.

“Just for the record,” he assured her. “Do you have any relatives in San Francisco?”

The answer required no extensive deliberation. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

It was probably a meaningless coincidence, but he’d learned never to ignore or omit anything that seemed the slightest bit unusual. He’d gone to the bookstore where Gloria had once worked only to run into a woman with her best friend’s last name. There could be a connection. At the very least, the woman in San Francisco might know Gloria.

“I ran into someone with the exact same last name as yours just yesterday. You have to admit, it’s not exactly in the same realm as Smith or Jones.”

Curious, Carla asked gamely, “Maybe we are related. What was his name?”

“Her,” he corrected the woman. “Gina Wassel.”

Carla turned pale and grabbed the edge of her desk. Ben saw her eyes roll toward the back of her head, and for a second he thought he was going to have to catch her to keep her from sliding off her chair, onto the floor.

He grabbed her arms. “Take a deep breath,” he ordered. “Again.” He waited until she exhaled slowly. “Are you all right?”

When she looked at him, there was an accusation in her eyes. “Is this some kind of a cruel joke?”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he’d obviously stumbled onto something. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said slowly.

“Gina’s my sister. Was my sister,” she corrected herself. The pain was obvious. “She’s been gone for ten months. Wait.” Agitated, blinking back tears that were threatening to overwhelm her, Carla dug into the purse she kept under her desk. “Here, here’s her picture.” She shoved her wallet at him and showed him a photograph of herself and her sister standing in front of an old house. A beat later he realized that it was the Victorian-looking house he’d gone to yesterday. “That’s Gina.” She indicated the slender young woman on the right.

“Who took this picture?”

“Gloria. We went to visit her aunt on her seventieth birthday.”

The resemblance between the woman in the photograph and the one he’d met yesterday was unmistakable. They could have been the same person. Folding the wallet closed, he handed it back to Carla.

“Ms. Wassel,” he began as gently as he could, “I have to ask—”

Carla cut him off. She couldn’t bear to hear the words. “I was driving the car when the camper side-swiped us. Gina was killed instantly.” Her breathing was ragged as she spoke. “It was Gloria who helped me through that, who let me sleep on her sofa and kept me sane.” Without looking, she dropped the wallet back into her purse. “If she hadn’t been around, I probably would have killed myself.” Her eyes held his for a moment. “If Gloria’s in some sort of danger, you’ve got to find her.”

Ben had a feeling he already had.

There were huge, gaping holes in the puzzle he found himself working. “You have access to all sorts of information here, don’t you?”

Carla’s expression told him she wasn’t sure where he was going with this, or what she should answer. “Depending on your level of clearance, yes.”

“Such as social security numbers.”

She laughed nervously, still uncertain. “Well, of course. We’re a social security office.”

“Does that mean social security numbers that are no longer in use?” This would have been the perfect place for Gloria to forge a new identity.

“Yes.” The single word emerged slowly.

He had a feeling he was on the right track. “Ms. Wassel, I know this might sound rather strange to you, but would you be able to give me your sister’s social security number?”

“Yes, but I already told you, Gina’s dead.” Carla began to access a program for him, then stopped and looked at him. “You think Gloria’s using Gina’s social security number.”

“Yes.”

It didn’t make any sense. “But why?”

To hide from Stephen McNair until he agreed to her terms. But he couldn’t tell the woman that. She wouldn’t give him the social security number he needed, and right now, he didn’t know if Savannah had access to inactive files.

“I won’t be able to answer any questions until I have all the facts,” he told her.

Confusion furrowed her brow as she looked at the keys, undecided. “If Gloria’s in some sort of trouble, maybe I shouldn’t be helping you.”

His voice was quiet and authoritative. “If Gloria’s in some sort of trouble, I might be the only one who can help her.”

Carla sat looking at him for a long moment, then began typing.

The electronic doors opened and closed.

The chill that ran up her back was immediate, drenching her with an icy wave. Though she was in one of the aisles, her eyes darted toward the front.

How long before that reaction would leave her? Before she could hear the doors opening and not be compelled to look, holding her breath and praying. It wasn’t natural to feel this way, as if she were doomed to cross and recross a tightrope stretched over a bottomless pit with slippery shoes.

He wouldn’t track her here, she insisted silently. He didn’t know enough about her to know about this place. And even if he did and was still looking for her, she wasn’t really here. Not the way he knew her.

She was safe.

The breath she’d been holding escaped as recognition came. Gina’s mouth curved. The man who had gotten between her and that pushy jerk the day before yesterday had returned.

What was he was doing back? When she’d left, he’d asked her to point Jon out, or rather, the store manager. That meant Jon and the stranger didn’t know each other, so it wasn’t personal. Jon hadn’t mentioned anything to her, but then, he’d been in a real rush to leave after taking that call from his brother.

He told her he had to take some time off and left her in charge, just like that.

Funny how you could work with someone for so long and not know anything about him. She’d spent all four college years working in the store, and in all that time, Jon had never mentioned even having a family. He’d been closemouthed as far as things like that went.

Pot calling the kettle black. She certainly wasn’t in a position to throw rocks right now, she mused. Jon didn’t know all that much about her, either. Nor had he asked anything, not even when she’d suddenly appeared out of the blue three weeks ago, asking for her old job back. All he’d said was sure, then added an addendum: If she needed him, he was around. To prove it, he’d gotten her in contact with a friend of his who was trying to sublet his condo. She had a job and a home within one day, thanks to Jon. He was one in a million.

He hadn’t even made any comment about her changed appearance when she came in the first day. Just asked her what name she wanted to go under. Nothing more.

Gina suspected that World War Three could probably break out right in front of the bookstore and as long as it didn’t intrude within the doors, Jon would remain oblivious to it.