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First Light

A John Bekker Mystery

by

Al Lamanda

Chapter 1

It was a perfect early summer afternoon for trying on wedding dresses. I had a front-row seat to this extravaganza at the patio table in my bride-to-be’s backyard. Armed with a mug of coffee and Molly, the stray cat I adopted a year ago, I watched the fashion show unfold before me with clockwork precision.

The wedding dress consultant marked the dress Janet wore with white chalk, then pinned and tugged. Janet is not your typical forty-seven-year-old bride, in that she’s tall and extremely fit, so the consultant was having problems with the dress because it belonged to Janet’s mother, who was neither.

Making matters worse, my nineteen -year-old daughter, Regan, was being a first-class pain, insisting in her limited way that her bridesmaid’s dress match Janet’s in style and color.

Molly went from my lap to the table for a better view of the show. I scratched her ears, which she appreciated highly, and watched along with her, although she was more interested in her ears than fashion.

Janet was close to tears. Regan was stomping her foot. The consultant was doing her best to calm the situation and restore order.

Molly purred.

I sipped coffee.

In desperation, Janet turned her eyes to me. “What do you think?” she said.

“I don’t even have an opinion,” I said. “I’m just here for the free coffee.”

Janet looked at my daughter. “He’s useless, Regan.”

“Pretty much,” I agreed. I scratched Molly’s ears. “But the cat loves me.”

I glanced at the sliding doors that led to Janet’s kitchen and saw Mark, Janet’s fourteen-year-old son from her first marriage, peeking out. He had the good sense to stay out of the line of fire.

As the groom, I had no choice but to jump into the frying pan.

An eternity ago, I was married to Janet’s sister Carol. We had one child, Regan. I was a detective assigned to Special Crimes. When Regan was five years old, Carol was murdered in our home by a mobster’s son. Regan was forced to watch from her hiding spot in a closet.

Regan spent the next twelve years in an institution for traumatized children and didn’t speak a word until just six months ago, when I sobered up from a ten-year-long booze binge and began visiting her on a regular basis.

Once sober, I reestablished old ties with my former sister-in-law. She became Aunt Janet, then just Janet, and finally girlfriend and soon-to-be second wife. Along the way, I opened the door to my friend and ex-partner Walter Grimes and he stepped through it as if time stood still. I was too old and too long away from the job for reinstatement, so a private investigator’s license seemed the way to go to supplement my meager pension.

After I’d solved a few high-profile cases and nearly gotten killed in the process, Janet agreed to marriage only if I found a new profession. I agreed and the funny thing is I don’t even remember proposing.

It’s a good match. Regan loves Janet as a mother and Janet loves Regan as a daughter; Mark calls my daughter his sister; and Molly loves everybody who scratches her ears.

What isn’t a good match is a middle-aged man in search of a new career when all he knows how to do is his old one. Too young to retire, too old to teach new tricks to, a third of my salary in pension benefits, and no other source of income—none of that is exactly the way I figured to walk down the aisle for the second time.

Still, I’m sober more than a year now, in reasonable good health, not as smart as I think I am, and not as dumb as I make out to be. It all kind of works for me in a strange, unexplainable way.

After another twenty minutes of chalk lines, pins, arguments, and sobs of stress, Janet and Regan were down to bare feet and white slips. At five foot nine or ten inches tall, Janet towered over Regan, but there was no mistaking that both were one hundred percent women—Janet in a mature way, Regan in a budding soon-to-be way.

That a woman like Janet loved and wanted to marry me made me feel decades younger than I had a right to feel, given my circumstances.

Seeing my daughter side-by-side with Janet and realizing that she was no longer a little girl made me feel like the ancient mariner I would soon become. Still, I felt pretty good about it. I missed so much of Regan’s life while she was institutionalized and I was off trying to destroy my liver, and I can never get it back. But my daughter loves me and calls me Dad, and even though I didn’t earn the title, I’ll take it.

“Hey, tough guy,” Janet said as the consultant was packing up. “We have to leave in twenty minutes.”

“And why do you think I’m sweating inside this suit and tie?” I said.

“Give me ten and I’ll be right out,” Janet said, and dashed into the house.

Regan came over to the table. Molly dashed to her side.

“So what are you and Mark going to do while we’re gone?” I said.

Regan looked at me for a moment. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”

“I know you will. I left money for two pizzas on the kitchen table. We should be home by eight or eight thirty.”

Regan nodded, gave me a kiss on the cheek, and took Molly with her when she went inside.

Alone, I finished my coffee. When the cup was empty, Janet appeared wearing a light blue summer pantsuit with matching shoes.

“How’d you get ready so quick?” I said.

“A woman never reveals her secrets,” Janet said.

I smirked. “Never?”

“Well, not all of them.” Janet tossed me her car keys. “You drive.”

I never argue with a woman, especially mine.

I drove.

Chapter 2

I drove Janet’s two-year-old Ford from her home in the suburbs to the grand ballroom of the Bayside Hotel because she claims my ten-year-old Marquis smells like an ashtray.

I didn’t argue the point. It does.

Janet is patient with my smoking. As a veteran of twenty-plus years nursing in major hospitals, she’s seen it all and knows the value of a good vice when trying to kick another vice.

My body’s been alcohol-free a year now and for that Janet and I are grateful to the powers that be, but a good cigarette with a mug of coffee is too much to sacrifice at the moment.

I’m weak.

Janet knows that.

We both deal with it, but there are rules I must follow. No smoking around Mark, and if I have to light up around Regan, I must be outside and downwind. Hey, life is compromise.

I smoke by the rules and I don’t get nagged. It’s a sweet deal.

We chatted on the drive.

“How does Regan like her room?” I said.

When first allowed to leave the institution under supervision, Regan would stay overnight. She slowly worked her way up to weekends until finally she was comfortable with large doses at a time. Janet reconverted her office back to a third bedroom, and now she and Regan live under the same roof as mother and daughter. Along with Mark, it’s a really good fit. So good in fact that I often wonder what I’m needed for, since I’m not allowed to sleep over until the wedding.

Janet glanced over at me. “Jack, it’s nothing to feel slighted over.”

Most people call me John. Janet is one of the few who calls me Jack, unless she’s pissed at me for something, then it’s John!, said with a quiet tone that reeks of a don’t mess with me smolder I can’t help but find sexy.

“I don’t feel slighted,” I said. “Just not included.”

“Explain to me the difference.”

I thought about it and couldn’t.

“If it makes you feel any better, I talked to Father Tomas about it,” Janet said.

Father Tomas is the priest and psychiatrist in charge of the Catholic institution where Regan spent twelve years. Although she’s been living with Janet for months now, Regan still sees Father Tomas once a week for counseling.

“And?” I said.

“Do you really want to hear this?”

“Yes.”

“Regan is nineteen and even though she’s made leaps and bounds the past year, maturity-wise she’s right around Mark’s age,” Janet said.

“Fourteen?”

Janet nodded. “Right around the age when little girls grow noticeable breasts and curves, and start to hide things from Daddy for fear they will no longer be seen as Daddy’s little girl,” she said.

“I think I have to think about that one,” I said.

“Two thinks in one sentence, you’ll hurt yourself,” Janet said.

I sighed.

“Don’t sigh,” Janet said.

I pouted.

“And don’t pout.”

“For Christ’s sake, is there anything that I can do?” I said.

“Yes,” Janet said. “You can marry me and allow Regan to grow to maturity at her own pace.”

“I can do that,” I said.

“And not be too upset that she has her first date this weekend,” Janet said, so casually she might be ordering a hamburger from a menu.

“What?”

“Watch the road, Jack.”

“I am watching the road.”

“More importantly, stay on the road,” Janet said.

I said, “When were you going to—”.

“Today.”

“And with who is—”

“My neighbor’s nineteen-year-old son.”

“What’s his—”

“Justin Lester and he’s a really nice kid, Jack.”

“When do I—”

“Saturday afternoon if you’d like.”

“No shit I’d like,” I snapped.

“The road,” Janet said.

“Where are they going on this date?”

“The movies.”

“Have you told him I’d—”

“Yes, and he’s okay with meeting you,” Janet said.

“Why am I the last one to know?” I said.

“All dads are, silly,” Janet said. “Now please watch the road. I’d like to get there in one piece.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Don’t pout,” Janet said. “This is a big night for your closest friend.”

“Should I sit up straight and eat all my peas?”

“That would be nice.”

“I hate peas,” I said.

“But you love your friend.”

Chapter 3

It doesn’t happen often that a police lieutenant is promoted to the rank of captain and precinct commander in the same breath. When it does occur, it’s treated as a really big deal, which it is in police circles.

When it happens to your ex-partner and closest friend, it’s more than a big deal; it’s something very, very special.

Two hundred and fifty attended Walter Grimes’s promotion dinner at the Grand Ballroom in the Bayside Hotel. Fellow cops, their spouses and children, friends and relatives, some media, the police commissioner, and the mayor composed the guest list.

Walt wore his dress blue uniform and did it proud, right down to the white gloves and polished buttons. At the podium, Walt accepted the promotion from the commissioner with a simple, humble thank you and reserved his speech for after dinner.

While waiters served the soup and salad, Walt made his way around the tables. Janet and I were seated in front, a few tables from the one reserved for Walt’s family. He stopped by to see me first.

After a kiss on each of Janet’s cheeks, Walt shook my hand. “Should have been you, Jack,” he said to me. “We both know that.”

I shook my head a bit. “The right man got the job,” I said.

“Thanks, Jack,” Walt said. “Well, my fan club waits.”

Walt moved on.

I ate some salad, followed by some soup.

While the empty plates and bowls were being cleared to make room for the main course, Janet said, “Did the right man get the job, Jack?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

Walt has something I lack. Call it inner strength. If it was Elizabeth, Walt’s wife, who had been murdered and his two daughters went the way Regan did, he would not have spent a decade as a drunk mourning their loss. He would have acted like a husband, father, and cop, and dedicated himself to finding the guilty and punishing them.

Yeah, the right man got the job.

After a main course of baked chicken with dirty rice, Walt made a perfect, fifteen-minute speech, followed by dessert.

It was a grand occasion.

Janet and I stopped by Walt’s table, where Janet and Elizabeth chatted weddings while Walt and I talked his new position.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for command,” Walt said.

“You’re ready,” I told him.

The evening ended on a high note when we posed with Walt for photographs.

Afterward, Janet and I drove home in silence. I was pouting and she let me.

Gotta love that woman.

Chapter 4

I was having morning coffee at the card table in front of my beachfront trailer. The tide was rolling in quickly and the waves rumbled like distant thunder when they crashed along the hard sand.

I’ve owned the trailer going on nine years. It’s tiny and cramped, but while I was drinking, space didn’t matter much. Neither did time, so it was a perfect place to drink my daily bottle in peace while the world passed by.

My only neighbor, a seventy-year-old black man named Oz, occupied a similar trailer a hundred yards to the right of mine. We drank away many a night watching baseball games on my old television. I’d bring it outside and we watched and sipped. Occasionally we would even eat something with our nightly bottle.

As Oz neared me, I could see two surf-casting poles in his right hand and a bag of donuts from Pat’s Donut Shop in his left. It was only seven thirty in the morning. When did Oz find time to roll into town for donuts? He doesn’t have a car and it’s a half mile to town, another quarter mile to Pat’s.

“When did you find the time to hit Pat’s?” I said to Oz when he arrived.

“Yesterday,” Oz said. “I stuck them in the fridge overnight and nuked them fifteen seconds this morning. What do you want to do first, eat donuts or dig for worms?”

“It’s more pleasing to the senses to dig for worms with donut residue on your hands than vice versa,” I said.

Oz set the poles down beside the card table and the bag on the table. “Got fresh coffee?” he said.

“Always.”

We ate Boston creams, lemon creams, and crullers, drank coffee, and watched the tide raise the surf to the breaking point. Life is better when you wake up instead of come to after a night where you go to sleep instead of passing out.

Life is better when you can actually taste a donut.

We dug for sandworms and used them for bait to cast out the surf rods. I toted folding chairs and a thermos, and we sat and watched for bites with the sun on our faces.

“How goes the job hunt?” Oz remarked casually.

“Honestly, I’m finding I’m qualified for very little outside of police work,” I said.

“Want I should call my brother at the DMV?” Oz said. “He might have something for you.”

“God, no,” I said.

“Honest work,” Oz said.

“Honest and about as interesting as a Bruce Willis haircut. Thanks, but I’ll keep looking on my own.”

“Maybe you could keep working and not tell Janet about it?” Oz suggested.

“Secrets from my new bride,” I said, “is no way to start a relationship.”

“Neither is broke and unemployed,” Oz said.

“It’s not that bad. My pension is a third my old salary a year for life, plus a one-point-five-percent cost of living adjustment annually.”

“So you’re fine unless you want to take her to dinner, buy her something, have Christmas or take a vacation?” Oz said.

“I have—you’re getting a bite—almost a hundred grand in the bank,” I said. “Maybe I’ll play the stock market?”

Oz stood up, grabbed his pole, and gave it a good tug. “Do that and you’ll wind up with a hundred thousand pennies in the bank.”

My pole jerked suddenly. I stood up and tugged, and the striper bass on the hook tugged back. Oz reeled his in and so did I. We landed two official keepers in the stripers department.

“Shall we catch some more?” Oz said.

“We shall,” I said.

“This beats working, anyway,” Oz said.

“It do,” I said. “It certainly do.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I looked at my friend. “No,” I said. “But lying to myself is better than lying to Janet.”

Chapter 5

Saturday began the way I usually start my days, with a workout on my hanging heavy bag, a slew of elevated pushups, several hundred stomach crunches, and a three-mile run along the beach in ankle-deep water.

I followed up the workout with two cups of coffee and two cigarettes taken at the card table, where I listened to the battery-powered radio for company.

After that, a shave, and a shower, I was ready to go. I left the trailer and entered the Marquis wearing tan chinos and the nifty teal polo shirt Janet gave me because I needed to start dressing better. Black Reebok walking shoes completed the look.

*****

Justin Lester was about my height, but a hundred pounds less than my weight. To say he was a gawky kid would be an understatement. His sandy hair was over his ears, his brown eyes stared at me softly, and his face was bumpy with pimples. My daughter gazed at him as if he were Tom Selleck circa 1980.

Janet and I were in the kitchen whipping up a late lunch. I glanced out the glass sliding door at the patio table where Regan and Justin sat with glasses of iced tea.

“She’s not going to break, Jack,” Janet said.

“For Christ’s sake, he has pimples,” I said.

“And you didn’t when you were nineteen?”

“No, and I was never nineteen.”

“Well, the good news is we’re going with them,” Janet said.

“What’s the bad news?”

“We have to sit far enough in back of them we can’t spy on their conversation.”

“Whose idea was this?”

“Regan’s,” Janet said. “She told me she wasn’t ready to be totally alone with a boy just yet.”

“She tells you a lot of things,” I said.

Janet cocked an eyebrow my way. “Are you jealous?”

“No,” I said. “Maybe. Okay, but just a little.”

Janet kissed the tip of my nose. “She’s growing up, Jack,” she said. “It’s some kind of miracle she is where she’s at, don’t you think?”

“I do.”

“Yet?”

“I’ve missed so much,” I said.

“She’s only nineteen, Jack,” Janet said. “And she has a great deal of growing to do. After the wedding, when we’re all under one roof, you’ll see, it will be good.”

“Speaking of under one roof, where’s Mark?”

“At Clayton’s for the night,” Janet said. “So I wouldn’t need a sitter.”

“He’s fourteen,” I said.

“And capable of getting into all kinds of trouble left to his own devices.”

“Let’s have lunch,” I suggested.

“Let’s,” Janet said.

I grabbed the plate loaded with smoked turkey sandwiches and was about to slide open the glass doors when Janet said, “Hold on a second, John.”

“I’m in trouble,” I said. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, why?”

“When Jack becomes John, I screwed something up. What?”

“You didn’t, and shut up,” Janet said.

“So what is it?” I said.

“I want you to do something for me,” Janet said. “As a . . . favor.”

“Sure. What?”

“Now listen, before you throw it back in my face. I know I said I didn’t want you to do any more investigations, but this is an exception,” Janet said. “Just this one last time.”

“What is an exception?” I said.

“You’re not angry?”

“No. Do you want me to be? I can fake it if you’d like.”

“No, I do not and don’t.”

“Then maybe you’ll tell me what you’re talking about.”

“After lunch.”

“No fair,” I said. “Tell me now or forever hold your peas.”

“That’s peace, idiot.”

“I know, but I dislike peas. We established that, remember.”

“I thought you didn’t like broccoli.”

“That, too, but nobody does and forever hold your broccoli doesn’t cut it. So, what is the favor?”

“I need you to come to the hospital with me and talk to my boss.”

“Who is?”

“Bob Gordon.”

“Robert Gordon?” I said. “The chief of medicine at your hospital, that Robert Gordon? He’s everybody’s boss there, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“What does he want to talk to me about?”

“I’ll leave that between you and him.”

I looked into Janet’s eyes. They told me ask no more questions. “Okay. When?”

“Tomorrow,” Janet said. “I’m on four to midnight.”

“Will there be payment?” I said in my wiseass tone.

“I’ll stop by what you call a home around two tomorrow and advance you some premarital flesh,” Janet said. “How’s that?”

“I warn you, I do keep expense records,” I said. “Detailed.”

“Oh, shut up and serve lunch,” Janet said.

I served lunch. Justin Lester, for all his slight build, ate like a starving plow horse. Conversation was at a minimum, mostly because Regan was too busy eyeing Justin with adoring glances and Justin was too busy stuffing his pimpled face.

After lunch, Janet and I sat fifteen rows behind Regan and Justin and watched Johnny Depp play pirates one more time on the silver screen. Or I should say, Janet watched Johnny Depp play pirates one more time and I watched Regan and Justin hold hands for the two-plus hours it took old Johnny to prance around on screen.

Janet took my hand and felt the tension in me. “Would you relax,” she whispered. “It’s better she grows up than stays a child for the rest of her life.”

I thought about that for a moment. I relaxed a bit. “Must you always be smarter than me?” I whispered.

“I can’t help it,” Janet whispered. “Look who you’re comparing me to.”

Chapter 6

Robert Gordon had a large and cluttered office on the sixth floor of the hospital, the floor reserved for administration.

I wasn’t sure if Gordon was late for our meeting so I would have time to browse his wall plaques, certificates, awards, and photos, or because something somewhere in the hospital required his attention.

It didn’t really matter. I was alone in Gordon’s office and perused the walls. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Gordon served four years in the army overseas in a combat zone before returning home and assuming private practice. In conjunction with his practice, he joined the hospital as a surgeon on call and chief of medicine.

One certificate impressed me the most. Four years ago, the army medical staff in Iraq came across a three-year-old girl who needed immediate open heart surgery to repair two faulty valves. The girl was flown from Iraq to the hospital where Gordon performed the surgery and treated the girl afterward for two months until she was well enough to return home, and it was all done as a charity case, free of charge.

I would have read more, but the office door opened and Robert Gordon walked in with a container of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in his hand.

I’d met Gordon once before, at some hospital function Janet dragged me to about six or seven months ago. At that time, he stood about six-two or -three and went maybe two-twenty in weight, with thick snowy white hair. The Gordon who entered his office and looked at me through liquid brown eyes couldn’t weigh more than one-forty and had hardly any hair at all.

Something was killing him, and quickly.

“John Bekker?” Gordon said softly.

“Yes.”

He extended his right hand. We shook. The handshake should have been firm. It wasn’t.

“Sit, please,” Gordon said. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”

“I would,” I said. “Coffee with milk, no sugar.”

Gordon took a seat behind his desk, picked up the phone, and made a quick call. Within sixty seconds, a woman entered with a DD large and brought it to the desk.

“Hold all nonemergency calls for a bit,” Gordon told the woman. “I’ll let you know when.”

She nodded at Gordon and left us alone.

I picked up the coffee and opened the tab. “Is there a DD in the hospital?”

“No.” Gordon smiled. “However, I won’t drink the swill they pass for coffee in the cafeteria, so I have a Box o’ Joe delivered every morning with cups.”

I sipped. It was good.

Gordon also sipped. I could tell he thought it was good, too.

“So, Mr. Gordon, what can I do for you?” I said.

“Janet tells me that you are very smart and very good at what you do,” Gordon said.

“Maybe you can get her to tell me that,” I said.

Gordon allowed a tiny smile to cross his lips. Then it faded. “I want you to find somebody for me, quickly and quietly. Can you do that?” he said.

“Missing person?”

“Sort of,” Gordon said. “It’s complicated.”

“Mr. Gordon, I have a few rules when I work,” I said. “I never break them, and if I see the work calls for breaking them, I won’t take the job. First rule, no lying, no holding back. Second rule, if I don’t like you or what you’re hiring me to do, I won’t take the job. Money won’t make me break those rules. Simple rules, but I’m a simple guy. So, tell me what you think I can help you with.”

“I’m sixty-two years old, Mr. Bekker,” Gordon said. “Inoperable cancer in the lining of my lungs will soon take my life. Three months at best.”

Gordon paused to sip some coffee.

My mind went backward in time to Eddie Crist, a mobster with months to live from the cancer that ate away at his flesh, who wanted to go out with a clear conscience.

“I won’t help you clean your dirty underwear,” I said. “I don’t do that.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Gordon said when he was done sipping. “I haven’t earned that right and I don’t expect to.”

“So back to the beginning, how can I help you?” I said.

“Forty years ago, I married my high school sweetheart,” Gordon said. “We had an agreement. She would work full-time while I went to medical school. The best-laid plans of mice and men and all that.”

“What happened?” I said.

“A baby happened two years into the marriage,” Gordon said. “And as things turned out, my wife had a heart defect that took her life on the delivery table. The baby, a girl, lived.”

I sipped some coffee.

Gordon sipped some coffee.

We looked at each other.

“I was twenty-four at the time, a full-time student and unemployed,” Gordon said. “My father’s brother, my uncle, is—or was—an attorney. I spoke to him about giving the baby up for adoption. He suggested a quicker, more profitable avenue to travel.”

“You sold the baby on the black market,” I said.

“My uncle did,” Gordon said. “I allowed him to do it.”

“I can’t help you,” I said and stood up.

“Wait,” Gordon said. “Hear me out. Please?”

I sat back down. “Clock’s ticking.”

“I don’t want you to find her so we may have a deathbed reunion,” Gordon said. “I want you to find her and wait until after I’m gone, and then have my attorney Percy Meade contact her with my final will. She will be left all that I have minus some gifts to charity. I’m not looking to win a seat at the big table, Mr. Bekker, but maybe I can make her life a little bit better after I’m gone.”

“Any clues as to her whereabouts?” I said.

“None.”

“What about your uncle the lawyer?”

“Mr. Meade will answer all your questions, give you a contract and expenses, and work with you start to finish,” Gordon said. “After today, we will probably never see each other again.”

“Where do I find Mr. Meade?” I said.

Gordon slid open the top desk drawer and pulled out Meade’s business card. “He’s expecting your call,” he said.

I looked at the card.

Chapter 7

“I didn’t know,” Janet said with a mixture of surprise and disgust in her voice. “If I had, I would have told him you were retired.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge,” I said. “I’m guilty of practically the same thing.”

“I’d hardly call a little girl witnessing her mother being murdered and you having a breakdown over it the same thing as selling your own flesh,” Janet said.

I dumped some hot sauce on my scrambled eggs and stirred them around a bit.

“He sold a newborn instead of placing her for adoption,” I said. “That means he sold her to a family with money and the ability to provide. Who knows where she would have wound up had she gone through regular channels?”

I ate some hot sauce–spiced eggs.

“Don’t tell me you approve of what he did, Jack,” Janet said. She pointed to my eggs. “And that’s disgusting.”

“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I don’t. However, as I am as weak as the next guy, I can understand it a bit better.”

“You’re not weak, Jack,” Janet insisted.

“No,” I said. “I married your sister and at our reception I ogled you and a few decades later, we’re getting married, what would you call it?”

“Stupid, but not weak,” Janet said. “And nobody uses the word ‘ogled’ anymore.”

“What do they use?”

“Leer. Smirk. Snicker. Sneer. Simper. Eye-bang and a host of others.”

“Eye-bang?” I said.

Janet shrugged. “It’s a new century.”

I tossed on some more hot sauce and Janet rolled her eyes. We were in her backyard, having Sunday brunch. Regan and Mark were playing a video game in the living room and every once in a while I could hear Mark snap, “Quit cheating.”

“But an old me,” I said.

“Not so old yesterday afternoon,” Janet said.

“I’m still recovering,” I said. “I pulled a muscle.”

“So you’re going to do this?” Janet said.

“Somewhere out there is a woman, possibly a wife and mother, who would benefit greatly if I did,” I said. “So yes, I’m going to do this.”

“Can you do it by our wedding?” Janet said.

“Afraid I’ll turn into a pumpkin?” I cracked.

“No,” Janet said and turned her head away from me. “Just afraid that I’ll lose you.”

Chapter 8

Percy Meade’s office was located a few miles from the hospital. He had a view of the ocean from his fourth-floor window. It was cluttered with law books, file cabinets, legal pads, and files.

He worked alone with just a plumpish, middle-aged paralegal who manned the outer office. When I arrived, she stood from her desk and ushered me into Meade’s office, then politely closed the door behind her.

Meade was looking out his office window. “Come see this,” he said.

I went to the window and stood beside him.

“The sailboat passing by,” Meade said.

A forty-foot sailboat with bright blue sails cruised by at maybe fifteen knots.

“Ever see blue sails like that before?” Meade said.

“No.”

He shook his head, turned to me and extended his right hand. “Percy Meade.”

“John Bekker.”

We shook, broke apart, and Meade went behind his desk. I took one of three leather-back chairs facing it.

“How about some coffee?” Meade suggested.

“Sure.”

As if on cue, the door opened and the plumpish paralegal returned with a tray that held two mugs of coffee. She set the tray on the desk and silently retreated from the office a second time.

“I took the liberty of doing some background gathering on you after Mr. Gordon told me he wanted to hire you,” Meade said.

“And what did you find out?” I said as I reached for a mug.

“Highly competent, used to be an excellent police detective, had a few bad breaks, rebounded nicely, and most of all you’re honest,” Meade said.

“You left out drunk,” I said.

“Not for the last thirteen months,” Meade said. “I hope,” he added.

“No.”

“So Mr. Gordon briefed you on what he wants of you?”

“Yes.”

“I took the liberty of drawing up a contract for your approval,” Meade said. He opened a desk drawer, removed a folded document, and slid it across the desk to me.

I picked it up and read the one-page agreement. It was the standard private investigator–attorney contract. Billable hours submitted to Meade, advance on expenses, keep and file all receipts before additional expense money is advanced. If the investigation exceeds ninety days, the hourly rate increases by fifteen percent to compensate for lost jobs from new clients.

I set the paper down on the desk. “What can you tell me about Mr. Gordon’s request?”

“Nothing,” Meade said. “I first became aware of it when he came to see me two weeks ago and told me he wanted to hire a private investigator.”

I sipped coffee and nodded. “How much is Gordon worth? Ballpark figure.”

“Five-point-seven million,” Meade said. “That includes two luxury homes, insurance policies, investments, automobiles, furnishings, and cash.”

“So it’s a big league ballpark,” I said.

“Bigger once the insurance policies kick in.”

“The only starting point I have so far is Gordon’s lawyer uncle,” I said. “Know where I can find him?”

“Actually, I do,” Meade said. “That would be Donald Gordon. He’s eighty-seven and lives in a nursing home for Alzheimer’s patients. The Hillcrest Estates, about an hour’s drive north. I’ll give you the phone number and address.”

I nodded and took a pen from my suit jacket pocket to sign the work agreement. “Expenses?” I said.

Meade took the signed agreement and placed it in his desk. From the same drawer, he removed a white envelope and passed it to me. “Ten thousand,” he said. “Please keep accurate records and receipts of all expenses and, of course, your time to the nearest hour.”

I placed the envelope in my jacket pocket. “I’ll keep you updated as things progress,” I said.

“Mr. Bekker,” Meade said. “I’ve known Bob Gordon three decades. This isn’t his valediction, if that thought crossed your mind. The crime isn’t that he gave his infant daughter away to a better life than he could have provided at the time. The crime is if he kept her and never became a doctor and saved thousands of lives in the process. Keep that in mind as things develop.”

“Mr. Meade,” I said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about people, it’s that nobody ever really knows anybody.”

Chapter 9

When there is very little in the way of facts, information, clues, or leads to work with, go fishing.

Not the kind Oz and I did the other morning at the beach, but the kind done with a computer at the library. Since my trailer didn’t have cable, the library was my source for all my computer needs.

Armed with a container of coffee, a legal pad, and pen, I sat at one of eight terminals and did some fact-finding to fill in the blanks. Not that I held any illusions about finding any real clues to the whereabouts of Gordon’s daughter. I just wanted some background material on the principal players.

A search for Robert Gordon brought up thousands of links. I whittled it down to a manageable hundred and read the ones that gave insight into the man’s character. If you were stricken with heart disease and required the best care and surgery, Gordon was your man on the East Coast. In addition to running the hospital, Gordon owned three private practice offices throughout the state. Known for charity work, his private practices often treated patients with little money and no insurance pro bono. One report claimed that in his lifetime, Gordon had so far performed six million dollars’ worth of charity operations. He never remarried. His life was medicine.

Donald Gordon was a horse of an entirely different color. For most of his legal career, Donald was a TV-advertising, ambulance-chasing second-rater. His ads ran on late night, the angry guy saying if you’d been injured in an accident, you owed it to yourself to get what was coming to you. He made gobs of money, and from what I read of him, few friends. He outlived his wife by twenty years and had one daughter named Sylvia. I did a people search and located Sylvia, who lived in her father’s home in the suburbs.

I printed some things I wanted to keep, made some notes on questions I wanted to ask, finished my coffee, and left the library.

On the drive back to my trailer, I made two quick stops. The first was at the Italian deli in town for two meatball subs and a large bottle of ginger ale. The second was at the potato chip factory store where they made a fresh batch of chips every fifteen minutes in a dozen different flavors. I picked up a pound bag each of barbeque chips and vinegar.

I park the Marquis in one of two places when I’m home. The first is at the municipal lot adjacent to the beach entrance. The second is in front of my trailer. Today I opted to drive the half mile across sand to my trailer since it was an overcast day and foot traffic was light.

I left the foil-wrapped subs on the kitchen counter and changed into gray sweats. I do my best thinking sometimes when trying not to think at all and working up a decent sweat.

Outside, I warmed up with some jump rope, then moved over to the heavy bag for twenty minutes of hard pounding. After that, I switched gears to push-ups and crunches, then took a three-mile run in ankle-deep water along the beach.

When I returned to my trailer, Oz was in his customary chair, waiting on me. He tossed me the towel on the card table as I flopped into my seat.

“I got subs,” I said.

“Meatball from that Eye-talian place?”

“Of course.”

“Chips?”

“A bag for each of us.”

“What you waiting on?”

I went in, removed the foil from the subs, heated them for one minute in the microwave, and toted them out with the bags of chips, glasses, and ginger ale.

Oz dug right into his sub and didn’t mind at all when sauce dribbled down his short, gray beard.

“Feel like working?” I said.

“I retired, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Oz said as he cracked open the vinegar chips. “Work and feel like are unrelated to each other.”

“Twelve bucks an hour to keep records, answer the phone, and write reports,” I said.

“Nobody gonna shoot me like last time?” Oz said as he licked sauce off his fingers. “I’m too old to be getting shot again.”

“Missing persons case, and unless the missing person shows up with a gun and a grudge, I’d say the odds are pretty slim on that happening,” I said.

“What about my expenses?”

“Expenses? All you have to do is walk from your trailer to mine.”

“Wear and tear on the feet,” Oz said.

“Twelve an hour plus one free bag of chips a week,” I said.

“Two bags,” Oz said. “Least you can do seeing as how I was almost killed for you twice for free.”

“Deal,” I said.

“When I start?”

“Right after you wipe the sauce from your beard.”

“I get a gun?”

“No, but I’ll toss in a third bag of chips.”

“Deal,” Oz said.

Chapter 10

Later in the afternoon, after Oz put together a logbook for calls, another for receipts and expenses, and a third for notes, I left him to finish his bag of chips, and probably mine along with it, and took a walk to town.

When I reached the pavement, I walked a few blocks to Main Street, turned left, and went a few more blocks to the Ames Family Owned Jewelry Store since 1959, and entered.

The grandson of Ames, the founder, stood behind a long glass counter and greeted me with a bright smile that reeked of can’t wait to take your money. “Mr. Bekker, nice to see you again,” he said.

I pulled the stub from my pocket and gave it to grandson Ames. “Is it back yet?” I said.

“Came in this morning,” grandson Ames said. “I’ll get it for you right away.”

It was my mother’s diamond wedding ring that I had reset into a modern setting in Janet’s size. It set my father back a year’s salary nearly six decades ago. Along with my mother’s ring, I had my wife’s diamond ring set into a pendant on a thin, eighteen-karat gold chain.

I’d left a deposit of half a few weeks ago. I paid for the balance in cash and then started back to the beach. Along the way, I stopped at Pat’s Donut Shop and bought a half dozen mixed for tonight’s ball game. Nothing says night baseball like a gut full of fried donut.

The beach was empty except for a few die-hard surfers catching the afternoon break and some gulls searching for snacks. The gulls must have caught wind of the bag of donuts in my hand, because suddenly I was extremely popular. I shooed them away and reached my trailer with me and the bag in one piece.

After tucking the Pat’s bag in the fridge, I made some fresh coffee and took a mug and my cell phone outside to my rusty lawn chair. I rested the mug on the card table, lit a cigarette, and scanned my notes for Sylvia Gordon’s phone number.

I punched in the number and listened to an electronic voicemail box tell me to press 1 to leave a message or press 2 to leave a callback number. I pressed 1 and left a message for Sylvia to return my call in regards to her father.

I drank my coffee and finished the cigarette. Three refills and four cigarettes later, my cell phone rang.

“John Bekker,” I said.

“Mr. Bekker, Sylvia Gordon returning your call,” Sylvia said. “Your message said you wanted to speak to me about my father.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a private investigator employed by a law firm to track down a missing person who may have had contact with your father when he was practicing law. I know it’s a long time ago, but if you can spare some time I’d like to talk with you.”

“Oooh, intriguing,” Sylvia said. “Tell you what, Mr. Bekker. I’ve just walked in the door. I need a shower and a change, so why don’t you meet me in, say, an hour. Know where I live?”

“I have the address,” I said. “I’ll find it.”

“Don’t be late,” Sylvia said. “I have a dinner appointment at eight.”

The phone went silent. I set it aside and lit a fresh cigarette.

The donuts would have to wait until later.

Chapter 11

Sylvia Gordon’s home wasn’t in the mansion category, but definitely out of reach of the working middle class. My untrained eye put the home in the seven-hundred-thousand-dollar range.

I parked in the driveway beside a late-model Mercedes and walked past a manicured lawn to the front door. I rang the bell and waited. An intercom mounted beside the door crackled to life.

“Walk around back, Mr. Bekker,” Sylvia Gordon said over the intercom speaker.

I did as instructed and followed a stone path that cut in half a lush green lawn with a dozen flowerbeds. I found Sylvia Gordon seated at a shaded patio table that overlooked a decent-size swimming pool. A wireless remote for the intercom rested on the table.

“John Bekker,” I said.

Sylvia Gordon was about fifty years old, dressed in a lightweight silk pantsuit that shimmered teal when she stood up to greet me. Her eyes were green, her hair too black to be real, and her body as tight as a taut bow string.

“I just got home from Zumba and kettlebell class when I returned your call,” Sylvia said as she shook my hand with a firm grip. “I’m having a screwdriver before I leave for dinner, care to join me?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Would you like to see my ID before we start?”

“I did an online search of you before I called,” Sylvia said. “You’re real or I would have deleted your number. Sit, please.”

I sat. So did Sylvia.

“So how can I help you?” Sylvia said. “My father has been in a nursing home for Alzheimer’s patients for a decade now.”

“I think I know what kettlebell is, but I’m not so sure on the Zumba,” I said.

“It’s something that keeps my ass firm and tummy flat, and that’s not easy to do at my age,” Sylvia said.

“I think it isn’t easy at any age,” I said.

“I don’t know, from what I see of you, you look pretty hard,” Sylvia said.

“I do my best,” I said. “So, how bad off is your father?”

“Good moments of clarity, bad moments of pure vegetable,” Sylvia said. “No way of knowing when he’ll have a good or bad moment, so it’s a crap shoot he’ll remember me, or anything for that matter.”

I nodded. “Were you ever involved in his practice prior to his illness?”

“My father was an ambulance-chasing son of a bitch, but he knew how to make money,” Sylvia said. “For his clients and for him. The only involvement I ever had was in spending what he earned. He provided me with a first-class education that I never had to use in the form of employment. He left me everything and I plan to spend every red cent before I check out because what else am I going to do with it?”

“Ever been married?” I said.

“Why, are you asking?”

“No,” I said. “Just thinking a few questions ahead.”

“Such as?”

“Any of your husbands close to your father?”

“Number one was fairly close. Worked for Dad for a while until they had a falling out,” Sylvia said. “Two and three barely spoke to him.”

“When was number one?”

“I was twenty-two,” Sylvia said. “Almost twenty-nine years ago.”

I nodded. “Is your father up for visitors?”

“Like I said, most of the time he doesn’t know you’re in the room.”

“What’s husband number one’s name?” I said. “And what was the falling out about?”

“You like to jump all over the place, don’t you?”

“It’s an interviewing technique designed to keep the subject off guard and prevent prepared answers,” I said.

“Am I your subject?” Sylvia said.

“No. Did your father keep any records in the house?”

“Not until he closed his offices about ten or eleven years ago,” Sylvia said. “That’s why my car is parked in the driveway. The garage is filled with his cartons.”

“Three more quick questions and I’ll be out of your hair,” I said.

Sylvia took a sip of her drink. “You’re not in my hair,” she said. “In fact, if you’d like to stick around and get in my hair, I’ll skip my dinner plans.”

“Can’t,” I said. “What’s your first husband’s name and where can I find him, and can I have a look at the cartons in the garage?”

“Jonathan Levine and you can find him in the book,” Sylvia said. “He still practices law. I don’t know what the falling out was over. Ask him. As for the garage, you could do me a favor and clean it out for all I care.”

I didn’t clean out the garage. I did, however, find three cartons of files from twenty-nine years ago and loaded them into the back seat of the Marquis.

Sylvia watched from the edge of the driveway as I went through rows and stacks of cartons before finding the three I thought useful. “I could use an escort for dinner,” she said when the third was safely in the back seat.

“Tell you what,” I said. “When I return these boxes, I’ll spring for lunch. How’s that?”

“Just lunch?”

“Three months I’m a married man,” I said.

“A lot can happen in three months.”

“And a lot can’t,” I said. “Do me a favor and check with the nursing home and find out if I can see your father.”

“Better be some fucking lunch,” Sylvia said.

I got behind the wheel of the Marquis and drove away as fast as my six-cylinder engine would allow me.

In the rearview mirror I caught a glimpse of Sylvia giving me the finger. It was nice to know I made somebody’s day.

Chapter 12

“I think this should count as overtime,” Oz said.

“I’ll owe you a donut and a half,” I said.

“We been at this four hours,” Oz said. “Is there some point I’m missing?”

“No.”

Since eight p.m., Oz and I had sat at my tiny kitchen table and rifled through the three cartons of files I took from Sylvia’s garage. Almost three-decade-old legal cases involving mostly auto accidents, hit-and-runs, pedestrians and buses, kids on bikes, pedestrians on wet pavements, and the usual fanfare one would expect to find in the files of a lawyer who sued and settled for a living.

Donald Gordon worked as most accident claim lawyers do, on contingency. They file a lawsuit and settle out of court because it’s cheaper for the company being sued than the cost of a trial, and the companies just pass the costs on to clients anyway. For his time and trouble, Gordon took a third of all money paid to the victim.

Even back then, Gordon made a lot of money by today’s inflated standards. His average settlement was nine thousand. In a good month, he settled thirty cases. He was making a million dollars a year before seven figures deflated to six figures in buying power.

“What are we looking for exactly?” Oz said.

“Good question,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“But you’ll know it when you see it,” Oz said.

“Kind of like not knowing anything about art, but knowing a masterpiece when you see one,” I said.

“We looking for paintings?” Oz said.

“No, clues.”

Oz sighed and ate another donut.

Around one-thirty in the a.m., Oz knocked off and went home. We were done anyway and accomplished nothing of consequence in our research. All I wanted to see was how avid a player Jonathan Levine was when employed by his father-in-law. In seventeen months, Levine was involved in sixty-seven filed lawsuits against insurance companies, three against townships, and two filed under “Other.”

Then he fell off the Donald Gordon grid.

The “falling out.”

I took a can of ginger ale and my smokes outside and sat in my lawn chair. I sipped, smoked, and listened to waves crash against the dark beach. Off in the distance, a few lights from town glowed softly.

A falling out over what?

Perhaps Jonathan Levine grew tired of the ambulance-chasing business and wanted to practice real law?

Maybe he didn’t like selling flesh?

The best way to get an answer was to ask the question.

Chapter 13

I called Janet early the next morning to set up a dinner date at her house for tonight. Then I ventured out in the Marquis to find the law office of Jonathan Levine.

Levine had moved his office about fifteen years ago to a squat, one-story building on Main Street two towns over. I parked at a meter, fed it enough quarters to last two hours, and paused on the street long enough to smoke a cigarette.

The street was quaint, lined with fenced-in trees and with parking at a forty-five-degree angle to allow more room for cars. More cars equated to more tourists during summer months, and nothing attracted tourists like a beach with an amusement park, which this town held bragging rights to.

I tossed the cigarette into the very clean street, then walked up and opened the door to Jonathan Levine’s office. I stepped into a cluttered reception area that was presently unmanned. Directly behind the reception desk to the left was a closed door with Levine’s name printed on it in bold, black lettering.

I went and listened at the door. A man I presumed to be Levine spoke in hushed tones on the phone. I waited until I heard him say goodbye, then I knocked once and opened the door before he could respond.

Jonathan Levine sat behind a desk so piled with folders and files, it was impossible to see where the desk began and the clutter ended. Startled, Levine looked at me with wide, owl-like eyes.

“I’m not here to rob the place if that’s what you think,” I said.

“Is Jennifer not at her desk?” Levine said.

A muffled sound of a toilet flushing came through the walls.

“No,” I said. “Unless her desk is in the bathroom.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Do you require the services of an attorney?”

“Let’s talk about that,” I said.

“I don’t understand,” Levine said. “Talk about what?”

I removed my license from the nifty plastic wallet I keep in my pocket and showed it to Levine. He scanned it quickly and I put it away. “I’ve been employed to find a missing person,” I said.

“A missing . . . who?” Levine said.

“Why don’t you send Jennifer for coffee?” I said.

Levine looked at me.

“I wasn’t asking,” I said.

Levine continued to look at me for a moment or two, and then he picked up his phone and hit the intercom button. “Jenny, would you be a dear and grab two large coffees for me and my guest.” He looked up at me.

“Milk, no sugar,” I said.

“Two with milk, one with sugar,” Levine said and hung up the phone.

I took one of three hardback chairs in the room. “You were married to Sylvia Gordon and worked for her father in his practice,” I said. “That’s what we’ll talk about.”

“Are you asking?” Levine said.

“No.”

“Yes to both questions,” Levine said. “What does that have to do with your missing person?”

“I went through every case you filed for Gordon while you were employed there,” I said. “Looks like you averaged about eleven grand a month in income from settled lawsuits. What do you pull in now thirty years later, maybe sixty K after expenses and payroll?”

“I don’t see how that’s—” Levine said.

“You quit a lucrative gig to enter a meager private practice. Why?”.

“Sylvia and I were having marital problems,” Levine said. “It didn’t sit right with me to keep working for her father. What does that have to do with—”

“What were the marital problems about?”

Levine glared at me. “I’m one step away from calling the police.”

“Which puts you a half step away from a broken arm,” I said.

“I have a gun in my desk,” he said.

“Hey, go for it,” I said. “You’ll have a broken neck before it’s halfway out. Now answer the question.”

“We married too young,” Levine said. “We argued a lot and fell out of love. Now answer mine. What does that have to do with your missing person case?”

“Bob Gordon had a little sideline that I think you found out about and disapproved of,” I said.

“I don’t know what—” Levine said.

“Gordon knew his way around the black market baby circuit,” I said. “He sold newborns to couples with the means to pay what the market demanded. I know this as fact. What do you know?”

Levine thought about sighing and decided not to. “I found out about it when there was an appointment mix-up and a young couple came to my office by mistake. I confronted Donald about it and we had a falling out, which led to my resignation and divorce.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I said. “Selling infant human beings is trafficking. Gordon would have gotten twenty-five to life.”

“That first night I went home after finding out,” Levine said, “I wanted to tell Sylvia, but I decided to wait until morning. Shortly after we went to bed, I heard a noise downstairs. I thought Sylvia’s cat got into something in the kitchen. I turned on the light and three men in ski masks were sitting at the table. I knew I was in trouble right then and there.”

“What happened?” I said.

“The spokesman of the group told me I should forget anything I knew or thought I knew about Donald Gordon,” Levine said. “He said if I wanted to keep breathing, I should divorce Sylvia and move on and keep very quiet about their visit. Then to make their point, the spokesman stood up and put a pistol in my mouth. I did as I was told and have never been visited since.”

“I can’t say as I blame you,” I said.

There was a soft knock on the door. It opened and a middle-aged woman I assumed to be Jennifer entered with two containers of coffee. She set them on the desk, gave me a quick glance, and said, “Will that be all, Jon?”

“Yes,” Levine said. “See if you can finish that Werner contract agreement before you leave for the day.”

Jennifer nodded and left us alone.

I picked up my coffee, lifted the tab, and took a small sip.

“I’m not a coward,” Levine said. He picked up his coffee. “But you can’t fight armed, masked men who appear unexpectedly in the night with principles and expect to win.”

“No,” I said.

Levine took a sip from his container. “I assume your missing person was a baby Gordon was involved with placing,” he said.

“Selling, and yes,” I said. “What did he charge for his services?”

“The one I knew about, the young couple was prepared to pay seventy-five thousand for a newborn.”

I did a quick inflation adjustment in my head on seventy-five thousand in today’s market. “A lot of money,” I said.

Levine nodded. “Don was always good at making money. As you can see, I’m not.”

“Did he keep records somewhere of the children he arranged sales for?”

“I assume so, but I can’t say where,” Levine said. “How long ago are we talking about?”

“Almost forty years,” I said.

“I can’t help you with that,” Levine said.

“I know.”

“Then why the visit?”

“Reinforce what I’ve been told,” I said. “I used to be a police detective and I don’t like unconfirmed details.”

“We all used to be something,” Levine said. “I used to be a real lawyer.”

I left Levine with that and drove home.

Chapter 14

When a beaming Janet showed her diamond engagement ring to my daughter, Regan scolded me by explaining the ring and proposal are supposed to be done at the same time and from bended knee.

“Couldn’t be helped,” I said. “The diamond needed a new setting and my knees ain’t what they used to be. Besides, I had to wait for this.”

I produced the gift box and placed it in Regan’s hands. “On the big day, when you walk beside Janet, I would like you to wear this. It belonged to your mother.”

Regan opened the box and looked at the diamond necklace. She stared at it for many long seconds, gently closed the box, and started to cry silent tears. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her forehead.

“I’m a lucky man to have two such beautiful women in my life,” I said.

I heard a soft sob and looked over at Janet just as she wiped away a teardrop.

That moment, Mark poked his head into the living room where we had gathered. “What’s all the weeping about?” he said. “I’m hungry.”

“Never mind weeping,” Janet said. “Go change that shirt to something clean.”

Regan decided to change as well. Janet and I had a few moments alone and we took advantage of them by waiting in the cool breeze blowing in the backyard.

“It’s beautiful, Jack,” Janet said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Also beautiful what you did for Regan,” Janet said. “Sometimes I swear your insides are nothing but one big pile of mush.”

“That’s me, good old mushy,” I said.

“Well what does old mushy want in the way of dinner?” Janet said. “We could break our reservation and go for something new.”

“Let the young ones decide,” I said.

“That could wind us up at Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Maybe we better stick to our reservation, then?” I said.

“Yes, maybe. Oh, by the way,” Janet said, “our guest list may be upped by one.”

“Who?”

“Justin Lester.”

“No,” I snapped.

“Jack, he and—”

“Still no.”

“Jack, shut up and listen to me,” Janet said. “You want Regan to have a normal life and become a whole person like she was meant to be, or do you want her to stay as she is? Dating boys is part of her progress, Jack. If you really want her to continue to grow, you’ll allow her to bring Justin as her date.”

I sighed in defeat. “There you go being right again.”

“I can’t help it, it’s a bad habit,” Janet said.

“Does she know . . . I mean, what if he tries . . . I mean, she has been sheltered by nuns and priests all her life,” I said.

Janet did her best not to laugh at me. She failed. “Oh, Jack,” she giggled. “Sister Mary Martin gave her the birds and bees lecture years ago.”

“A nun gave Regan the facts-of-life talk?”

“Nuns are people, too, Jack.”

“Yeah, well, someone telling you what it’s like to drive a Ferrari is not the same as driving one yourself,” I said.

“Am I your Ferrari, Jack?” Janet giggled again. “Would you like to go for a ride?”

Before I could think of a quick-witted response, Mark and Regan came outside looking for us. “Quit giggling like kids, you two, and let’s go eat,” Mark said.

“To be continued,” I told Janet.

“Oh, most definitely,” Janet said and took my arm. “The engine is just warming up.”