Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007 Read online

  By a mere two minutes, actually, but to Will Stafford, no minutes of his life ranked as “mere.” Without further preamble, he said, “New kid on the block. Just moved back from eighteen years in Colorado. Maintained a residence here, which qualifies him to run for freeholder. Already sent in the paperwork. Registered as a New Visions candidate. Thirty-eight years old. Widower with one child. Good-looking guy. Get something on him quick.”

  “Name?”

  “Greg McKenna.”

  Energized by the anticipation of hunting new quarry, Will tipped his hat and strolled briskly out of the park. Depressed about going after a widower with a child, I stared at the ducks for a while before calling Eve, the computer whiz, on my cell phone. In terse Stafford-speak, I said, “Greg McKenna, thirty-eight years old, Colorado.”

  Two hours later, Eve tossed a printout on my desk.

  “I found only one Greg McKenna and he’s from Glenwood Falls.”

  Reluctantly I read the information, then relaxed. St. Peter himself would usher this guy right through the Heavenly Gates.

  “You found a real saint,” I said. “Choir director, Boy Scout leader, on-time taxpayer, thirty-five years at the same sporting-goods company. Not a parking ticket nor a complaint about a barking dog.”

  Beaming, I reached into my handbag and handed her the usual cash payment.

  Eve scowled. “You’re not very sharp today.”

  “Oh, did I miss something?”

  “Maybe math isn’t your forte,” she answered. “Check out Greg McKenna’s work record — thirty-five years with the same company. He must have started there when he was three years old. Your guy is thirty-eight, right?”

  She shoved the money into her backpack. “Some kind of scam is going on, but I have absolute confidence that you’ll snuff it out. Ciao.”

  Identity theft, of course. For the first time since reading Jeffrey Cobb’s write-up on me, I welcomed the thought of nailing another opponent. In fact, I intended to have some fun. Before I’d pass this data to Will, I’d schmooze a bit with the fake Greg McKenna at the Meet the Candidates reception the next day.

  Feeling downright sadistic — a much more uplifting feeling than Jeffrey Cobb-inspired guilt — I breezed into the Shelton Hotel. As I was checking my coat, Will Stafford tapped my shoulder.

  “What have you got for me on that matter we talked about yesterday?”

  “Nothing yet, but I’m working on it.”

  “Don’t dawdle. I want a full report by Monday.”

  Nodding toward the banquet room, he added, “Get some face-time with the Colorado Kid. Over by the nonalcoholic punch bowl.”

  I waited a moment until Will had floated into a sea of sycophants before heading toward the punch bowl, where I witnessed an enchanting sight: A tall, slender man bowed to a little blond-haired girl and in a princely gesture handed her a cup of juice. She in turn curtsied to him. Registering my first sight of Greg, widower and father of a four-year-old, sapped some of my oppo resolve. When he glanced at me and smiled, I saw an adult version of Jim Driscoll, my first love in high school. In complete meltdown, I focused on a three-tiered plate of cheese cubes and nervously stabbed at them, creating a pyramid on my dish. And I don’t even like cheese.

  Chiding myself for this foolish reaction to a good-looking man, I put my plate on an empty table and headed toward the lounge to comb that man right out of my head. With each fierce swipe I reminded myself that this sweet-looking guy had stolen the identity of Greg McKenna and that he mustn’t be too swift in the brains department not to realize that we’d spot the deception within hours of his filing his candidacy. Regaining my oppo resolve, I pledged to demonize him.

  Having mentally rejoined the battle, I marched over to the drinks table and seized a glass of white wine. On my first sip, a bump against my arm sent the soothing liquid down my skirt. I whirled around and saw the handsome prince hug his little princess and tell her that it was Daddy’s fault that the punch spilled on my skirt.

  “I bumped your arm, sweetheart,” he soothed. “I’ll tell the pretty lady I’m sorry.”

  Clumsily, he grabbed several napkins from the table and thrust them at me, accompanied by a chorus of “I’m sorry” and “I’ll ask the waiter for club soda.” Blushing and mumbling for him not to bother, I dabbed at my skirt and joined the regulars paying homage to Will, who scowled at me for leaving Greg McKenna. For the first time in our relationship, Will’s displeasure didn’t faze me. I needed time to reclaim my oppo persona before I did my job and morphed the handsome prince into a frog.

  Perhaps pricking my thumb as I arranged the roses Greg sent to my home the next day should have served as a warning about succumbing to fairy tales, but it didn’t. Heart fluttering, I read the attached card:

  Dear Anne,

  A kind schoolteacher who is quite the political activist saw my dilemma over the spilled wine and gave me your address. Please accept these roses from Melissa and me. (She still feels responsible.) Melissa is hoping that she can treat you to lunch at McDougal’s. I’ll call tomorrow to see if you’ll agree.

  Greg McKenzie.

  Greg McKenzie! Not Greg McKenna! I grabbed my roses and danced around the room, ignoring the little drop of blood that fell on the carpet. One of Will’s cronies had goofed. I waltzed over to the phone to call Eve and order a search on the real name, but skidded to a stop. No, I would not call Eve. At that moment it didn’t matter to me what the party needed to know about Greg McKenzie. I had learned all I needed to know about him from a spilled glass of wine.

  And from a spilled container of French fries. How graciously he scooped up the mound that my elbow had sent to the floor of McDougal’s.

  “Just want to lighten the clean-up load of the minimum-wagers,” he smiled as he dumped them into the trash bin.

  “Daddy always says we should help people we don’t even know,” Melissa said. “Do you help people you don’t even know?”

  “Well, I try to,” I told the sweet child, and blinked away memories of hatchet jobs on strangers, grateful that a misspelling had kept her father’s head off the block. And such a nice head it was, I thought as he grinned at me, slid back into his seat, and put on his political hat.

  “There are so many items on my agenda,” he said, “but I am a complete unknown here. I’ve been away since high school. I have no name or face recognition. I need something big to get my candidacy out there. I almost don’t know where to start.”

  But like a seasoned politician, he did start, and sometime during Melissa’s sundae, he got the cue that I thought came too soon. His daughter yawned.

  “She’s preparing me for the reaction of constituents to long-winded types,” he laughed. “It’s time to take the princess back to the castle.”

  Protesting non-fatigue, Melissa dimpled at me before turning to Greg and saying, “But we will see Anne again, won’t we, Daddy?”

  “I sure hope so, Princess,” he answered.

  “Maybe a trip to the zoo?” I offered to show my willingness to include Melissa in a future relationship, a suggestion I later regretted not because of the child, but as evidence of my utter naiveté. She clapped her hands and Greg smiled. We made a date for the following Tuesday.

  As a trio that focused on Melissa’s needs, we arranged to visit other child-friendly spots as soon as we left the previous one. My feelings for Greg blossomed as I witnessed his love for his daughter and experienced his gratitude for my presence at these outings. At the zoo, he held my hand as we sat on a bench and watched Melissa laugh at the monkeys. In the darkness of the aquarium, he put his arm around me as I shuddered at the sight of the sharks at feeding time. When leaving Bo-Peep Land, he kissed my cheek before settling Melissa into her booster seat to return her to day care and to go to his job at a law firm.

  Those signs of affection helped to quiet the nagging thought that I might as well be auditioning for the job of Melissa’s nanny. True love, as my forty-seven-year-married mother used to say, starts
as an ember and turns into a flame. Easy does it, I told myself. Besides, those child-oriented “dates” served my purposes well. None of Will Stafford’s inner circle hung out at Bo-Peep Land or any of our other venues to report to the chief that his oppo was consorting with the enemy. And whoever was managing Greg’s campaign was doing a wonderful job of keeping him away from the age group that actually votes. Greg didn’t need my help to lose; his endearing political cluelessness would do the job.

  Unfortunately, the neglect of my oppo duties did not go unnoticed by a real pro. Accustomed to instant results, Will summoned me three times in a week to the duck pond — a place I didn’t dare go with Greg and Melissa.

  “So where’s the stuff on McKenna?” he growled.

  Hoping to buy time for my relationship with Greg McKenzie, I didn’t correct Will’s mistake.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “What’s taking so long?”

  “My computer genius ran into a firewall.”

  He frowned. “So get another one, someone smart enough not to run into a wall.”

  I flashed him a superior smile. “Firewall is a computer term for protection devices. She’ll get past it.”

  The second time, I told him that Eve was nanoseconds away from chiseling through the firewall. The third time, I told him that Eve was inside the vault, but the data bank had changed its coding system. From the look he gave me, I knew there would be no fourth time, at least at the duck pond.

  In high color and high dudgeon, he arrived at my office in no mood to play computer games.

  “I’ll have that report on McKenna by five today or you can start clearing out your office.”

  As soon as he slammed the door, I started the purification process, not on my resume but on Greg’s background. I made him good, but not too good, hoping I might in my fictionalized account hit on some truths. In our child-centered encounters, aside from political views and his parenting philosophy, I had actually learned little about him — except references to hiking in Colorado. I realize now that I was unwilling to probe so that if pressed by the party, I could function like a spy who knows only a small piece of the puzzle.

  The Greg McKenzie for Will’s Eyes Only had won a basketball scholarship to the University of Colorado, but had a mediocre first year along with problems with grades. He dropped out of school for a year and worked as a guide for fishermen and hunters, but returned to the academic life at Sayres Junior College in Wyoming, where he excelled, and returned to the university to graduate with a degree in political science. He went to law school, didn’t make the Law Review, but passed the bar on his first try. After school, he worked at a firm specializing in corporate law. When his wife died, he was so preoccupied that he forgot to pay several hundred dollars’ worth of parking fines and had to go to traffic court or lose his license.

  At four-thirty, I hand-delivered the goods on the nonexistent Greg McKenna.

  Without a word, Will motioned me to sit on the chair next to him, a strategically placed seat for those destined for up-close-and-personal bawling-outs. The almost spotless report I turned in merited a stentorian outburst: “Pure unadulterated pap… paying you six figures for this junk… this guy can give our party trouble… you find out he had some parking tickets… where did you get this stuff from, the Little Scouts Monitor?… I want dirt and you give me the cleanest little boy in the class… you’re losing it.”

  When he paused for breath, I amazed myself by standing up and shouting, “No, you’re losing it. You’ve wallowed in mud so long you can’t believe that there’s anybody out there who’s decent. This is a good man, Will Stafford, a real novelty in our line of work. And by the way, I’m sick of digging up dirt. I quit!”

  Backing away, but not out of fear, I headed toward the door, where I paused for a second to give Will rebuttal time, to launch a string of his pithy epithets that would have furthered my resolve to quit. Nothing. Only a full second of ponderous silence. Ominous, but I didn’t care. For the first time since becoming his employee, I felt noble.

  At home, I composed my short and noble resignation letter: “I can no longer participate in a process that believes in the inherent evil in all human beings.” Two days later I received a letter from Will: “Resignation not accepted. You’ve been working too hard and I regret going off about Greg McKenna. Enclosed is vacation pay.”

  Wow! I had bullied a bully and won. I practically skipped into the natural-history museum to meet Greg and Melissa for a tour designed for preschoolers. After exchanging a hug with the child, I suggested to Greg that we three lunch afterwards at Delilah’s Deli, a favorite spot of Will and his staffers. Now that Will had accepted the fact that I couldn’t find anything on Greg, I had no reason to hide from my boss. In fact, my going public would show Will how hard I tried to get inside Greg’s head. But instead of responding happily to the idea of going to lunch at an adult place, Greg frowned.

  “Listen, I have a favor to ask of you. I have to meet a client nearby for a deposition that won’t take long. I was going to ask you if you could stay with Melissa for the hour and then I’ll pick her up. She’ll have lunch at day care.”

  Although acutely disappointed, I managed a smile as he slipped into the crowd. Unaware that her father had left, Melissa pulled me toward the long line of excited children and advised me not to be afraid of the dinosaurs that we’d see. In the middle of an explanation of the pterodactyl’s eating habits, my mind drifted and slammed into the Big Doubt. Could Greg be hiding us out in children’s places because he was seeing another woman?

  There was a way to find out, but I hesitated to use it since pumping a child had never been in my repertoire. However, my need to know quickly muffled the small voice of my newly awakened conscience. As Melissa squeezed closer to me to allow another child to see, I put my arm around her small shoulders. She would know about her father’s friends. I stroked her long blond hair and said, “Melissa, does your daddy have any other friends that he sees a lot?”

  “Only Jeff,” she whispered as the docent continued to speak.

  Delighted with her answer, I avidly followed the dinosaur’s menus. As the tour was returning to the rotunda, Melissa spun around. Lip quivering, she asked, “Where’s Daddy?” At that moment, Greg waved to her from the end of the line.

  “I stayed too long looking at the reptiles,” he told her, “and lost my place.”

  At the gift shop, as Melissa debated over buying Terry Pterodactyl or Iggy Iguanodon, Greg said, “I’m sorry about not going to Delilah’s. I just realized that we have had no time alone together and these juvenile outings might not be too interesting for you.”

  “Oh no,” I protested, but not too strongly.

  “I’m thinking of taking some time off now to gear up for the real work in the primaries. If you can take some time off too, would you like to go away with Melissa and me? Someplace quiet, away from phones and TV? Maybe the mountains?”

  “That would be great,” I answered.

  “The three of us could have a wonderful time outdoors.”

  He paused before adding meaningfully, “And Melissa goes to bed early.”

  “That would be great,” I repeated and I actually think I batted my eyelashes. “As a matter of fact, Will just suggested that I take some time off before the heavy hitting starts.”

  He smiled, then frowned. “I hope it’s not too late to rent a cabin for next week. I know fall is a popular time in the Poconos.”

  “That’s not a problem,” I answered. “As luck would have it, I own a family cabin in the Poconos that I hardly use. I loved it as a child and I know Melissa will too. Absolutely no twenty-first-century intrusions. It’s completely stocked with nonperishable food. Hospitality of the mountains, you know.”

  “Fantastic.” He smiled.

  We sealed the arrangement with a surreptitious kiss behind a display of children’s books.

  To eliminate worries about anyone finding incriminating material in my office, I shredded fi
les for three days. Officially on vacation, I was interrupted only once. Eve stopped in one morning looking for more work.

  “Looks like you’re clearing out,” she said. “New job?”

  “No, just a vacation.”

  “No business for me, then, while you’re away?”

  “No.” I smiled.

  “Not even some more sleuthing on McKenna, the ID thief?”

  “Not even on him.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” she said on her way out.

  The first chill of foreboding hit me.

  “I don’t think so,” I said softly.

  “Suit yourself. Ta ta.”

  The morning of the fourth day, I packed for the mountains — plenty of jeans and tees, but also a teddy or two, just in case. Since Greg wasn’t to pick me up until twelve-thirty, I had time to go into the office to finish purging the files, not realizing that henceforth I would look upon this day of mindless chores as the best day of my life, the day I’d return to in a nanosecond if only God let us shift our life gears into reverse.

  At ten-thirty, I had nothing left to do but prop my feet on my desk and stare at my suitcase and backpack and visualize using their contents during my time with Greg. Just as I was picturing Greg lifting me onto the swing hanging from the oak tree next to the cabin, the phone rang.

  For a moment, some kind of background whirring sound kept me from making out the caller.

  “Sorry about the traffic noise,” Greg shouted. “I left my cell phone in my car, so I’m calling from a pay phone. I’m having a bad car day. My car died right after I dropped Melissa for the morning at day care. I rode with the tow-truck driver to the dealer’s and the news isn’t good.”