A Part of the Pattern

by L. L. Bartlett

  I took my usual seat at the tippy little card table in the corner, setting the envelope on it. “It’s been a while.”

  She merely shrugged.

  “I’ve missed you,” I tried again.

  Still silence, and that terrible angry glare

  “I know you’re mad at me, but … can’t we still be friends?” We were more than just friends, and I hoped she remembered that.

  Finally Sophie sighed, pulled the folding chair from the table, and sat down. “What do you want?”

  “To talk. That’s why I come here. You’re the only one who understands me—I mean completely understands me.”

  “Flattery, Jeffrey?”

  “Truth.”

  She shrugged. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Coincidences.”

  “There are none.”

  “Okay, let me give you a for instance. The police asked us—” and since she was pissed at Richard for wanting to start our little enterprise, I didn’t mention him by name, “—to look into the case of a missing child.”

  Her gaze softened. Once a grandma—always a grandma. Still…. “What are you charging them?” she practically spat.

  “Nothing. We’re not in this for the money. If it happens, fine. If it doesn’t … I won’t be out on the street without a pot to piss in.”

  “So you say.”

  “I do.”

  Sophie folded her hands and stared at them. “What about this missing child—little girl.”

  She already knew … at least something about what I wanted to talk about.

  “She was hit by a car. The woman driving got out, picked the injured girl off the street, placed her in her car, and took off. The girl was never seen or heard from again.”

  “You thought she was a ghost.”

  “Not in the traditional sense. I think she survived the accident and that the woman who caused it decided to treat the girl as her own, in fact—giving the girl the name of her dead child. It’s a form of identity theft. Not so easy to do today, but before state and federal agencies started sharing information, it would have been easy to pull off.”

  Sophie’s gaze traveled to the envelope. “What’s inside.”

  I reached for it and withdrew the photos of Hannah and Amy. Sophie scrutinized them. “Not the same person.”

  “But very close.”

  “And you know these girls?”

  “The one on the left is Hannah. The one on the right is Amy—or as I know her now, Emily. I think Emily—or Amy—is Hannah’s mother.”

  “There is a strong resemblance,” Sophie agreed. “What drew you to this conclusion?”

  “I took the photo of Hannah two years ago. Four months ago the cops gave us the picture of Amy, who was five at the time the photo was taken.”

  “She looks younger than five.”

  “Her neighbor said she was small for her age.”

  “So your mystery is solved. Why do you need to talk to me?”

  “There’s only one way to prove Amy is Emily, and that’s with a DNA comparison to a member of the Stoddard family. After their daughter disappeared, her parents were divorced and left the area. I don’t know if they kept in contact with the police after that.”

  “If something happened to little Betsy, would you ever give up looking for answers?”

  “Never.”

  “Then I think it possible someone could find that missing girl’s family—if they cared to look.”

  Was that a directive?

  “You still haven’t answered my question. Why talk to me? Your brother seems to have all the answers.”

  I ignored the jab at Richard. “Because it’s ridiculous how I came up with this answer.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s my question; why—or at least how?”

  “Because you are involved. You are a part of the pattern.”

  “What pattern?”

  “Predestiny—fate—whatever you want to call it.”

  “I don’t believe in that crap.”

  “Oh no? Why did you feel compelled to find Matt Sumner’s killer?”

  I let out a breath. “Because he was kind to me when I was a child.”

  She nodded. “And you got your job at the bar because?”

  “The owner asked me to look into his cousin’s death.”

  “And how did he know to ask you?”

  “I told him I used to be an investigator.”

  She shook her head. “He knew about your gifts. You certainly didn’t tell him about that.”

  That was true. I’d always gotten the feeling Tom Link suspected I could perceive what others couldn’t.

  “And in Vermont—you knew Richard needed to be with you to save Maggie.”

  “I didn’t know at the time why he needed to be there.”

  “But if you hadn’t asked him to come, Maggie would have died—maybe both of you would have been killed.”

  That was certainly true.

  “You reached out to your father before his death. If you hadn’t, Brenda would be dead—and so would Patti.” My half-sister. But I hadn’t saved her—she’d saved me, and Richard. “Shall I go on?”

  I shook my head. She’d made her point. “But how do I explain this to people? To Emily? She doesn’t know about my gifts.” God, I hated that word—and its implication. “I have no proof that I know what I know.”

  “So get some. After all, you are an investigator.”

  Easier said than done.

  We didn’t say anything for a long minute or so, and then Sophie broke the quiet. “Would you like a cup of cocoa and a macaroon?”

  I offered her a smile. “I would love it.”

  Sophie got up to heat some water in the saucepan and get out cups and spoons.

  It was a chocolate peace offering, and I’d just gotten my friend and mentor back.

  I couldn’t help but grin.

  Chapter Seven

  I didn’t wait to get to the office the next morning to call Bonnie Wilder at the Amherst Police Department, and picked up my phone just after eight.

  “Long time no hear from,” she said rather sarcastically.

  “Sorry about that. My recovery took a lot longer than I thought it would.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry. I just thought since you were so speedy last time….” She let the sentence trail off. “I assume you’re calling because you’ve found something we missed in the Stoddard case.”

  “Yes, an eyewitness account of little Amy being hit by a car and taken away by the perpetrator.”

  “Oh my god. Where did you find a witness?”

  “Right across the street from Amy’s house. A three-year-old boy.”

  “Oh, come on.” The sarcasm was back.

  “I’m serious. I spoke with him yesterday.”

  “He’s a grown man by now.”

  “And works for a congressman. One of the good guys. He has a good recollection of the accident said he’d be willing to speak to you, too.”

  “Even if I could believe whatever he had to say, how does that help find Amy Stoddard?”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve already done that. Whether she will want to hear my version of how things went down is another story.”

  “What is your version?”

  “We can get into that. But first I need to know if Amy has any living relatives. It’s going to take a DNA analysis to prove my hypothesis. For now, I’ve only got circumstantial evidence.”

  “Such as?”

  “A photo I took two years ago of a little girl named Hannah. She could be Amy Stoddard’s twin.”

  “You’ve known this woman for two years?”

  “I met her two years ago. I spoke to her twice last week.” I filled the detective in on some of my conversation with Emily, but didn’t give her Emily’s name. I was going to have to tread carefully with this. After all, to an outsider it was a rather ridiculous story.

  Again the detective sighed. “As it happens, Mrs. Humphrie
s—formerly Mrs. Stoddard—keeps me informed about her whereabouts just in case we ever come up with anything.”

  “Is she in the area?”

  “A suburb in Rochester. I’m sure either she or her ex-husband would be eager to help supply a DNA sample if it could help prove her daughter is alive and well.”

  “Great. Now all I have to do is convince Amy.”

  * * *

  Richard sat back in his new office chair just staring at me while I conveyed my tale, letting his coffee grow cold. When I finished, he merely shook his head. “Sounds like a load of bullshit to me.”

  “Me, too, actually. But I’m also pretty sure I’ve come to the right conclusion.”

  “How are you going to convince Emily of that?”

  “I’d like to do it without admitting the things I can do—the things I know. In fact, I’d like to do that with all our investigations.”

  “These intuitive leaps do defy—”

  “Believability?”

  “I was going to say gravity,” he said and laughed. He sobered. “Just how are you going to convince Emily to take a DNA test?”

  “Though my charm and wit?”

  Richard looked skeptical.

  Yeah, just how I felt.

  I wondered what my approach should be. Invite Emily to see our offices—see that we were sincere in opening a consulting firm. File cabinets and our name on the door—if the sign maker could get us the plaque PDQ—would go a long way toward credibility. This is where a conference room would have been helpful. We could have invited her for a quiet talk and maybe lunch. Good food usually works to soften people up. Not me, but then I’m an aberration. I could ask her to lunch—or maybe dinner—at a quiet restaurant, but then telling such a fantastic story in a public place, where we could be overhead, wasn’t ideal, either.

  The office was it. Now to figure out how to couch the conversation.

  Chapter Eight

  Richard and I visited a number of websites and worked out what we thought was a viable explanation of what had happened to Amy Stoddard. Now all we had to do was tell Emily. Unfortunately, as a working single mom, Emily didn’t have time to talk to us until almost a week later on Saturday morning—when Hannah had her gymnastics class. Richard got a special dispensation from Brenda to work on the weekend, and we waited with growing anxiety for Emily to arrive at our office. She was late—by fifteen minutes, when we finally heard the door to the office open.

  “Hello,” she called.

  Richard and I had been sitting at our desks, twiddling our thumbs, but shot out of our seats like rockets when we heard Emily’s voice.

  I met her in the reception area. “Hey, Emily, I’m glad you could make it.”

  “Me, too. Especially after you told me about the office.” She looked around. “It’s nice. Intimate.”

  “Yeah, it’s small,” I admitted. “But so far we’ve only one case. Maybe in the future—once we’re successful—we’ll go for something a little bigger.”

  “Hi, Emily,” Richard said from behind me.

  “I’m sorry. This is my partner—my brother—Richard Alpert.”

  She frowned.

  “We’re half-brothers,” I said to explain the surname difference.

  She nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Would you like a cup of coffee? And we’ve got some sweet rolls and doughnuts, too,” I said.

  She giggled. “Just for me?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a little something, too,” Richard said, smiling.

  “Pick out what you’d like, and I’ll pour you a cup of coffee. You drink it black, right?”

  Emily nodded.

  While she and Richard grabbed a snack, I poured coffee for the three of us from our new coffeemaker. Richard directed Emily into our office and the chair that sat in front of my desk.

  “You’ve got a nice place here,” Emily said, looking around, and took a sip of her coffee. She left her sweet roll on a napkin on the edge of my desk.

  “So far we’re happy with it,” Richard said.

  “Jeff tells me you’re a doctor. I work for a pediatrician.”

  “It’s a small world,” Richard said, still smiling. I wish I felt like smiling. My guts were twisting. Although I hadn’t actually touched her, I still got strong vibes from Emily. She thought this was a job interview.

  Oh, boy. Well, maybe that was the way to get things going.

  “Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself,” Richard suggested, just the in we needed.

  “I’m a single mom. My daughter, Hannah, is six, and we live here in Williamsville. I’ve worked retail and as a waitress, but for the past year I’ve been a receptionist.” She launched into a litany of all the things she did at the doctor’s office, and Richard nodded sagely—patiently—through the recitation. Meanwhile, I clenched my fists on my lap, wondering where this was all going to go.

  “Are you from the Buffalo area?” Richard asked.

  “My parents were originally from here, but I grew up in a little town in Ohio called Oskegum. I went to Chatham University in Pennsylvania for a couple of years, but earned my degree in business management at Buff State after … after Hannah was born.”

  “Do your parents still live in Ohio?” Richard asked.

  “Yes. For some reason, they never wanted to return to Buffalo—not even for a visit.”

  Not surprising.

  “I understand you’re estranged from them,” Richard said.

  Emily’s gaze dipped to her lap. “I talk to my mother, but my Dad and I….” She let the sentence hang.

  Richard took up the conversational slack. “What has Jeff told you about our business?” Richard asked.

  “That you’re consultants who work on cold police cases.”

  Richard nodded. “We’re working on one now that we think is pretty intriguing.”

  “Sounds fascinating,” Emily said, smiling.

  “It’s an unusual story. About a missing child who went missing more than twenty years ago,” I said.

  “Wow. Do you think you can solve it?” Emily asked.

  “It might be possible,” Richard said.

  “What happened?” Emily asked, and her interest sounded sincere.

  “A little girl was hit by a car. The person responsible stopped, but instead of asking for help, or taking responsibility, grabbed the girl, put her in her car, and drove away.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes. The girl’s parents were devastated. The never got over the loss. And even though they divorced, they always hoped they’d find their daughter.”

  “And you’ve been able to find her?” she asked, sounding even more interested.

  “I think so,” I admitted. “The Amherst Police have been in contact with the mother, who supplied a DNA sample. The only thing we need to do now is convince the now-adult victim to agree to be tested.”

  “Why wouldn’t she want that?”

  “We’re convinced she has no idea she was a victim. She doesn’t seem to have any memories prior to being hit by the car.”

  “How old was she at the time of the accident?” Emily asked.

  “Five.”

  Emily nodded. “I don’t have any memories before I was five or six, either.”

  I could tell by her reaction that she wasn’t identifying with the story I told.

  “We think we’ve found Amy Stoddard,” I said, watching to see if the name meant anything to Emily, but her gaze remained alert, but not piqued. “But we don’t think she has a clue that she was injured, and then essentially kidnapped.”

  “That’s terrible,” Emily agreed. “What would it take to convince her she’s been the victim of a terrible crime.”

  “A DNA test,” Richard replied. “All she’d need is to wipe the inside of her cheek with a cotton swab and submit it for testing. There are companies that can turn the results around in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, depending on the day of the week it’s submitted.”

&
nbsp; “That’s amazing,” Emily agreed.

  And now came the hard part. I felt the need to stall just a little while longer.

  “Can I warm up your coffee?” I asked.

  Emily shook her head. “It’s fine.”

  “Rich?”

  “I’m good, too.”

  Crap. It was time for me to take center stage.

  “We had another reason for asking you here today,” I told Emily.

  She sat up straighter. She was expecting a job offer. She was excited to be offered a new job, and I was going to have to disappoint her.

  “I was wondering what you remembered about your accident.”

  “My accident?”

  “Yeah. You told me you’d been hit by a car and had a fractured skull.”

  “I don’t remember anything about it. I don’t remember much of anything from when I was a little kid.” She seemed to think about it. “I guess my first real memory is singing in the children’s choir at church. ‘Jesus Loves The Little Children.’”

  “Nothing earlier?”

  “I asked my pediatrician when I was about ten, and he said that lots of times people who’d had accidents didn’t remember things from before.”

  “As someone who’s had a fractured skull, I can agree with him on that. But what if you could talk to someone who saw the accident. What would you think?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know that I’d want to know. My parents encouraged me not to think about such things. They said the Lord had spared me and I should be grateful.”

  Yeah, they would.

  “What if I told you that I’ve talked with someone who saw your accident?”

  “How could you do that?”

  I forced a smile. “I’m—we’re,” I corrected, “investigators. That’s what we do.”

  “But…how?”

  “That’s the thing. There’s only one way we could prove that you were the victim of a crime. DNA evidence.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a chance—a very strong chance—that your name isn’t Emily Farrell.”

  Emily’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a chance your real name is Amy Stoddard. That you were the victim of a hit and not-quite run.”