Finder's Fee (5 page)

“And during those few minutes someone could have stumbled upon the envelope.” Judith thought for a moment. “He's thought of everything. At least if someone had gotten hold of it, they wouldn't be able to crack the password. Of course, now we have the same problem.”

“It would be something that we know,” Luke said. “Something that we could figure out but no one else could.” He rubbed his chin. “When you got your call, did the voice mention any names or numbers?”

“No … wait. Yes. A date. February 27.”

“2-2-7? What about a year?”

“No mention of a year.”

“But you know the year, don't you?”

Judith paused. Of course she knew the year of her secret. She would have preferred to have forgotten it, but that wasn't going to happen. “1984.”

“2-2-7-1-9-8-4. No good. That's seven numbers.”

“Drop the nineteen.”

“Then that leaves only five numbers. Well … maybe this way: 022784.” He entered the numbers. An error message told them the password was invalid.

“What about you?” Judith gazed at Luke. “You said the caller knew your secret. Did he use a date with you?”

“Yes.” The admission came slowly. “May 30.”

“Try it.”

Luke combined the numbers and typed 530227. Again an error message.

“What time did you get your call?” Judith pressed.

“I don't remember. Maybe 9:45, or something like that.”

Judith thought. “Mine came a little earlier. About 9:30. Put my date first.”

Again Luke's fingers pressed keys: 227530. He hit the Enter key.

The file opened.

Judith's phone rang.

J
udith almost came out of her seat. Her heart galloped. She let it ring two more times before she had calmed
herself enough to look at the caller ID display. It was Terri's office phone number. “My administrative assistant,” Judith explained and snapped open the phone. “Yes, Terri.”

“You've been avoiding me.”

It wasn't Terri. The voice belonged to Marlin Find, stepson and royal pain. “I've been busy.”

“With what? I called your cell phone earlier. I left a message for you to call me. You didn't.”

“So you thought you'd use Terri's phone?”

“I figured you'd at least answer a call from her.”

“What do you want, Marlin?”

Judith caught Luke looking at her. She lowered her voice.

“We need to talk about the upcoming board meeting. Have you read my memos?”

“Yes.”

“You haven't responded.” His words were terse and bore an edge.

“You already know how I feel about your suggestions. You're not ready.”

“I'm more than ready.”

“Not to be president of the firm. I'm keeping that job.” She turned in her seat so that her back was to Luke.

“Under my proposal, you'd still be chairman of the board and the public image of the company. I just want to take the burden of the day-to-day work off your shoulders.”

Judith felt anger rising in her like magma in a volcano. “The answer is no.”

“I have support on the board.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “It's just a matter of time.”

“When push comes to shove, your supporters will see what you're really after and side with me.”

“Gee,
Mom
, you sound like you don't trust me.”

“Trust is earned, Marlin.”

“When will you be back in the office?”

“When I'm good and ready.” She hung up.

“Ah, family,” Luke said. “Warms the heart, doesn't it?”

“Depends on the family,” Judith snapped and turned her attention back to the document. Simple in appearance, the Word page contained a list of information:

“Interesting,” Luke said. “No mention of the parents.”

“Maybe the boy is an orphan.” Judith studied the first part of the document again. “What kind of name is Palek?”

“I don't have a clue. Abel is Jewish. That part is easy.”

“He's been missing since May 9. That's last Friday. The whole weekend has passed.”

Luke bit his upper lip. “A man can travel a very long distance in two days. And that's just by car. If the abductor took the boy on an airline, they could be anywhere in the world.”

“This doesn't make sense.” Judith slumped back in her chair. “Why us? The police have better resources than we do and if the kidnapper …” she lowered her voice. “If the
kidnapper took the kid across state lines, then the Feds get involved. Right?”

“Right.”

“So why us? We're not private detectives. At least I'm not.” She looked at him.

“I told you, I trade stocks.”

“But you seem to have a knack for all this computer stuff.”

He nodded. “I admit it. I'm a geek. So what?”

“What about the other file?”

He leaned closer to the monitor as if by doing so, new facts would emerge. Judith could still hear the artificial voice of the phone call.

“Let me try something.”

Judith watched as Luke moved the cursor to the menu bar of the program and clicked on File. He then selected Properties. A window with five tabs along the top popped up.

“What is that?” she asked.

“It's a summary of the document's properties. When you install a program like Windows, it asks for certain information: name, company name, and the like. When you create a document it applies that information as well as tracks the number of words, the size of the file, when it was created, and so on.”

This time, Judith leaned closer. “I see the window but I don't see any information.”

Luke clicked through the tabs. “I don't know how he did it, but he's wiped all that information clean. This guy is good.”

“Good isn't the word that comes to my mind. Open the other file.”

“I can tell by the icon that it's a photo.” He double-clicked on the file and a picture program opened. It held three photos.
The first picture filled the screen. A young woman with long black hair that hung to the middle of her back exited a glass door. Her head was tilted down but not enough to hide her face. She looked drawn and worn. “Do you know … ?”

Luke looked at Judith then back at the photo, a motion he repeated several times.

“Yes, that's me — a long time ago. A lifetime ago.” Judith forced herself to take in the image. The picture drew old and forced-forgotten images to the forefront of her mind. The coffee in her stomach turned acidic. She moved her eyes from the screen to Luke. She couldn't read his expression. Whatever he felt, he kept to himself.

“Do you recognize the place?”

Judith nodded.

“Did you know that someone was taking your photo?”

“No. I've only been to that place once.”

“What place?”

Judith didn't answer. Luke wasn't forthcoming, and she felt no obligation to be so herself.

“I understand.” He returned his attention to the computer and clicked the arrow that would open the next photo. Judith thought she detected a slight hesitation.

The next photo was a color image of a young man with thick, shaggy hair that covered his ears and a thin beard that gripped his cheeks and chin. The background was blurred but Judith could make out a few buildings and other people. The man in the picture stood in a busy place.

“You?” Judith asked.

“Yeah. Every girl's dream, right?” His chuckle held no mirth. Then, as if talking to himself, he mumbled, “I've never seen this before. The indistinct background makes me think the photographer used a telephoto lens.”

“Can you tell where you were?”

He shook his head. “Not enough visual clues. My best guess is that it was during my graduate days. If so, then those blurry buildings belong to UC Berkley.”

“How old were you then?”

“Twenty-five. I'm forty-eight now, so that's about twenty-three years ago — ”

“Nineteen eighty-five, just like in the document we just read. My picture was taken when I was twenty-one. I was twenty-one in 1984.” She could see Luke doing the mental math. “I'm forty-five. Don't strain your brain.”

He smiled. “Sensitive about your age?”

“No. I am what I am.”

“Now you sound like Popeye.”

“Just open the last photo.”

Luke did and the sight of it made Judith gasp. Before her appeared the image of a black-haired boy. Thin, like most eight-year-olds, he sat on a gray rug with a white vein pattern. He wore khaki pants cut off just below the knee and a green T-shirt. He sat cross-legged looking at the camera. His feet were clad in athletic shoes.

“That … that must be him.” Luke's words barely crossed the distance to Judith.

Judith swallowed hard before attempting to speak. “Luke, what … what's wrong with his eyes?”

M
arlin Find paced his empty office oblivious to the passing of time. Judith —
Mom
— had once again gotten
under his skin, and he was doing a masterful job of cultivating the anger. She never should have spoken to him the way she did; never avoided his calls. But she had and she was doing it more and more.

It wouldn't be so bad if she kept her disdain of him private, but he knew,
just knew
, that others were starting to talk behind his back. The fact that his father had left the business to her and not him wounded him a hundred times a day. Find, Inc., should be his, not hers. He was flesh and blood with the old man, all she had was a marriage certificate.

He stopped his pacing, forced himself to take several deep breaths, and ran a hand over his head. His hair was brown, short on the sides, long on the top. The hair felt stiff; it was caked in gel. The longer hair on top added an inch to his height. He wanted every inch he could get.

Compensation. That had been much of his life. Compensating for low grades, compensating for being shorter than most men, compensating for being second place to the woman who moved in when he was fifteen. At ten years younger than his father, his new stepmother was only fifteen years older than Marlin. He had never accepted her. Oh, she had tried to draw him in, a ploy as transparent as glass, but Marlin never fell for it.

At home, he had played the game. Not wanting to upset his father, who had a temper he wasn't afraid to show, Marlin had played polite and obedient, and gagged on every moment of it.

Now Dad was gone, buried on the hillside of the most prestigious cemetery in Southern California. He had earned that final dignity. Although a father at twenty, his dad had worked his way from finish carpenter to founder and owner of one of the most competitive and respected interior supply
companies. During that time, perhaps because of the sacrificial hours he worked to make something out of nothing, Marlin's mother left with another man. His father once told him he had hired a private detective to find her. The man did, in Brazil, living in a small home and addicted to some kind of drug.

He never heard from her again. Marlin didn't care. The woman left when he was still a toddler. What kind of mother does that?

He grew up with no maternal influence. One mother had dumped him; the other had stolen his inheritance. Within a year of the marriage, she-who-would-steal-all had become the new figurehead for the company. His father had said many times, “Judith has the looks and personality to put the likes of Martha Stewart in her place.” In quiet moments, young Marlin wondered if that was the reason for the marriage. Did his father need a pretty face to take the firm to the next level? Maybe he never loved her.

That thought made him feel good.

His day neared. It came closer with each sweep of the second hand around the face of the clock. Marlin resumed his pacing. Vice president wasn't enough. Not by a long shot. He needed to be in control; control of everything. And only one woman stood in his way.

For now.

The last thought brought him some peace.

He had done his planning. He had counted his supporters. He had done favors by the score, and people, including several board members, owed him big time. He had to wait for just the right time, and that time would come at next week's board meeting.

T
he video editing room had an acrid, electronic smell to it. More than once, Karen Rose had suggested the need for better ventilation, but none of her immediate superiors listened. So once again, she sat in an overused-beyond-its-years secretary's chair that groaned and squeaked with every move she made. “Get it done and get it out,” she said to herself. The video recorders and computers hummed, filling the small space with white noise that most ceased to hear five minutes after they entered the room.

The equipment was a mix of new and old. Channel 2 news was a competitor in the volatile television news market but not a wealthy one. While some stations had state-of-the-art computers and software, KTOT — known to disgruntled employees as K-ROT — had to make do with videotape decks that should have been scrapped five years ago. Frugality was the wind that drove this news ship — and it was running the organization aground. KTOT's competitors in the Los Angeles market made stars of their news team, but not KTOT. Being part of the LA market gave it some credibility but those on the inside knew that reporters came to K TOT to pad their résumés and to stay only long enough to be picked up by some other station. Karen had often wondered if Lawrence Media, which owned the station, kept it for its tax-loss potential. That had to be it. Karen Rose worked for a station designed to be nothing more than a write-off on some executive's ledger book.