Mr. And Miss Anonymous

by Fern Michaels

  Lily realized she was feeling better and better as the time moved forward.

  It was four thirty when Lily descended the stairs to leave her oversize piece of luggage by the front door. The limo driver could carry it down the front steps when he arrived at five thirty to take her to the airport.

  With time to kill, Lily made coffee and toast. While she waited, she scribbled off a note to her housekeeper, saying she would call when she was certain of her return date. She looked around the pleasant kitchen, pleasant because her housekeeper had made and hung the checkered curtains. She had also sewed the place mats, and the padded cushions on the wooden chairs. Nelda had also brought in the green plants and looked after the little herb garden on the windowsill. The ceramic-tile floor was spick-and-span, all the appliances sparkled. She smiled when she remembered the day one winter when Nelda asked if Lily would mind if she bought a rocking chair for the kitchen. Nelda liked to sit and rock in front of the fire she always had blazing because of her arthritis. Lily had sat in the rocker on many occasions herself, watching the flames and daydreaming. It had been a good decision on her part to repair and rebuild the old kitchen fireplace, since it was now the focal point of the big room. She looked upward, startled to see a lush philodendron climbing the bricks. She wondered when that had happened. Obviously, she needed to spend more time in her kitchen.

  Her eye on the clock, Lily tidied up the breakfast things. With minutes to spare, she was on the front verandah waiting for the car service promptly at five thirty.

  Please, please, she pleaded silently as she settled herself in the back of the Lincoln Town Car, let this be the right thing that I’m doing.

  Chapter 3

  Garment bag over his left shoulder, battered duffel on the other, Pete Kelly sailed through the security checkpoint, the shoelaces of his battered Nikes flapping in his own breeze. He headed straight for a kiosk, where he bought a bottle of iced tea and a paper. He settled himself on a blue hard-plastic chair and settled down to read the paper. He liked to brag that he read the paper cover to cover, line by line. Those people foolish enough to question a particular article or phrase usually ended up with sheepish smiles on their faces when they walked away after he snapped out the correct answer.

  Settling his New York Mets cap more firmly on his head, Pete reached into his pocket for his reading glasses. He didn’t look up once for the next ninety minutes as he read the paper from beginning to end. If he had looked up just three short minutes before he closed and folded the paper, he would have seen the woman he was so desperate to find walk right by him.

  The paper and iced tea finished, Pete got up to throw them in the trash just as the first boarding call was announced for the flight to San Francisco. He sprinted to the men’s room and was back within minutes. He looked around to see why the airport had suddenly gone quiet. Then he looked up at the television screen that everyone seemed to be looking at. As he fumbled for his boarding pass, he blinked, then blinked again as he tried to hear what an excited Anderson Cooper from CNN was saying. The second boarding call for seats at the back of the plane was announced. He knew he could have boarded at any point because he was flying first class, but his feet were rooted to the floor.

  The crowd that had assembled at the base of the huge screen was beginning to thin out as passengers ran to board their flights. Pete didn’t move, and the woman standing in front of him didn’t move either.

  A man standing next to Pete let out a string of profanity. “Poor kids. Where in the hell did the guy get that gun? Where the hell are his parents? Well, shit, they just said it was a group home for teenagers! Where are the teachers and counselors? Nowhere, that’s where. Someone is to blame for this. Look! Look! They look like the kids next door. Twelve dead! Two escaped. Well, good for them. Book deal! Movie deal!”

  “Shut up!” Pete said through clenched teeth, as the man hurried off to board his flight.

  Lily, hearing the tirade, looked up just as a picture of two young men appeared on the screen. Stunned at seeing Pak, she swiveled around to see his exact likeness on the screen. “Oh, my God!” Suddenly she felt her hat being removed. She turned again.

  “Lily! Jesus, it really is you! I’ve been trying to find you. You weren’t in the yearbook.” All this was said with his eyes going to the screen above him. “Look!” he hissed.

  “I saw it,” Lily hissed back. “I was in the hospital with an appendectomy when they did the yearbook pictures.” She reached for her hat and jammed it back on her head. “I called your company to find you, but they wouldn’t put me through.”

  Pete reached for her arm and held it in a vise-like grip. “Are you going to the fund-raiser? Are you on the flight to San Francisco?”

  “Yes, and that was the last boarding call. Come on, we can talk on the plane.”

  Pete followed Lily blindly. His heart was beating too fast. “That kid looked just like me when I was his age,” he mumbled as he handed the woman gate agent his boarding pass.

  “I know. That’s how I remember you, even if you were five years older.”

  “What do you think are the chances of us meeting like this, then seeing…seeing what we just saw?”

  Lily felt light-headed as she grappled for an answer. “One in a trillion! Two trillion! This is my seat,” she said as she extricated her arm to slide into her place.

  Pete looked down at her. “How are we going to talk?” He sounded so anguished, Lily looked over at her seat companion, a corporate type with tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. “Sir, would you mind changing seats with…with my fiancé? We couldn’t get seats together. I would so appreciate it.”

  The corporate type looked up, saw and recognized Pete. “Aren’t you…?”

  “Yeah. Shhh. We’re running away. We’re trying to keep it a secret. No one knows,” Pete whispered.

  “You mean I’m the first to hear?”

  “Well, yeah,” Pete said as he stepped aside for the man to move to Pete’s seat. He settled down next to Lily and buckled up. He immediately turned the bill of his baseball cap backward so he could see Lily better.

  “I like your hat.”

  “I made it myself.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what you said that day we met. Do you know how many times I thought about you over the years? A lot. I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hell of a time. I am so damn glad to see you. By the way, my name is Pete. Some of the guys back at Berkeley used to call me ‘Pak.’ ” He was babbling, the way Millie babbled when she did something wrong and he caught her at it.

  “Pete, that boy looked like you. Exactly like you. Do you think…? Is it possible? They said it was a group home. Why would one of…? Why a group home? They said the one that looked like you got away. So did the other boy. That’s a good thing. At least I think it’s a good thing. God, I don’t know anything about anything these days. What does all this mean? This is so bizarre,” Lily said, running out of breath.

  “Why were you looking for me?” Lily asked when she finally caught her breath.

  Pete leaned in closer to Lily. “Because… I see kids that look like me everywhere I look. I can’t sleep. At first it wasn’t so bad. I was working, then I went off on my own. I was so tired I’d fall asleep standing up. But when things leveled off, it started all over again. Dreams, then nightmares. I wanted to talk to someone. I really did look for you. I thought…hoped you would understand, and maybe together we could get a handle on it. Assuming, of course, you were having similar problems. I know you said back then that it was no big deal, but…”

  “I lied,” Lily whispered. “It was a big deal from the git-go. I’d give anything if I could turn the clock backward and go to those counseling sessions. I mean it.”

  Pete leaned even closer. Lily could smell his aftershave. “I started seeing a shrink a while back. It really didn’t help because I didn’t open up until the session yesterday, when he threatened to dump me for wasting his time. He used to be my company’s softball coach, so he ca
n talk to me like that. He said I had to go back to the beginning. That’s why I’m on this flight. I was going to hire a private detective to try to find you. Your turn.”

  “My story is pretty much the same as yours. It was a big deal. I hated that I sold my eggs. I was so desperate I thought I didn’t have any other choice. I didn’t want to deal with what I’d done, and I sure as hell didn’t want to go to counseling sessions and talk about it. Unlike you, I didn’t go to a shrink, but I did think about it. I decided to go to the fund-raiser, hoping you’d be there. I didn’t think beyond getting there.”

  “Do you…do you want to see the kids we…? Is that what you want?”

  Lily bit down on her lower lip. “I have this business. I design and manufacture children’s clothing. It’s called Sandcastle Ltd. I went nuts when I would see all the child models in the beginning. I knew that each one of them was mine. How stupid was that? I finally had to stop going to the photo shoots because I was getting obnoxious and grilling the parents. I even changed the employment forms so I could check on the parents. How sick is that?”

  “I’m no better. I started sending computers to just about every school in the Berkeley area. Then I’d send my people there with video cameras to film the kids. Then I’d torture myself by looking at the videos, thinking, swearing to myself, they were all mine. I was teetering on the edge for a while back then. I tried talking myself out of it. I fought going to a shrink because I didn’t want anyone to know. For some reason I thought… I didn’t mind…if you knew. Ah, you know what I mean. And here we are. By the way, does your company have a catalog? I think I saw it on my secretary’s desk. Millie has five grandchildren, and she orders from catalogs a lot.”

  Lily smiled. “We do. It comes out twice a year. Christmas and early summer.”

  “What happened to teaching school?” Pete asked curiously.

  “I gave it a shot. It wasn’t for me. Every one of those kids was mine. End of story. What if that boy we saw on television was…yours? He’s out there all alone, with no one to turn to. I only say that because he was living in a group home, so that must mean he doesn’t have a family or else the family put him in a group home because of…what, I don’t know. I hope he’s with the other boy. Together, they might be okay. You know, strength in numbers. Two heads are better than one. They will be okay, don’t you think?”

  They were airborne by then and about to level off at thirty thousand feet. The flight attendant was serving coffee, pastries, and little bunches of grapes on square white plates. Pete and Lily ignored the food and kept on talking in whispers.

  “The shooter got away. He might be looking for the boys. I’m going to call my office and have them get everything they can on the case, and it will be ready for us when we land. How about we blow off the fund-raiser and try to find the kids?”

  “I’m okay with missing the fund-raiser, but what makes you think we can find the kids? The police are on it. It’s national news now. They won’t let us anywhere near that group home. I don’t care how much money you have or how famous you are. If anything, your presence nosing around might hurt you.”

  “You’re right, and I know that. My shrink said I had to go back to the beginning. That’s where we’ll go.”

  “And you think they’re just going to open up and tell us what we want to know! I don’t think so.”

  Pete slouched down in his seat. “I knew I should have bought that goddamn business and burned it to the ground. I said I was going to do it that day I met you, and I never followed through. When I made my first million, that was my number two priority. I had nightmares about that, too.”

  “Even if you had, it would have been too late, Pete. Our donations were distributed long before you became successful.”

  Pete bolted upright. “Are you always right?”

  “No. Just sometimes. You already knew it. I just said the words out loud.”

  Pete nodded. “Do you remember how… I don’t remember if it was you or me, but one of us said there was something sinister about that place.”

  “It was you. I agreed, as I recall. I asked you about the building in the back, the one with no doors or windows. I think we were both just spooked. It was an emotional time for both of us. It’s probably a giant freezer to…you know, store all those donations. I wonder how much they’d want to sell that place. I bet if we could find that out, we’d get a sense of how big an operation it is. There must be blueprints at town hall. I know that when I built my office building and the warehouse, my blueprints were there for anyone who wanted to look at them.”

  Pete started to crack his knuckles out of frustration. “That boy was the spitting image of me, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, Pete, he was. It took my breath away when they showed his picture. That group home—or was it a school?—what little they showed of it, looked pretty upscale to me. Not like a place for wayward youngsters. I didn’t hear any names, did you?”

  “No. I was so stunned I didn’t see half of what you saw. God, I hope my parents or my brothers didn’t see it. They’ll think for sure I have an illegitimate child out there somewhere. My mom is like a dog with a bone when she gets an idea in her head. She’s forever nagging me to get married and have kids. She said it’s not natural to be my age and not married. By the way,” Pete said, his eyes wide, “you aren’t married, are you?”

  Lily grimaced. “Only to my business.”

  “I can relate to that. We need to make a plan, Lily. The minute we get off this plane, we need to have a definite objective, and this time we’re both going to follow through to the end. No matter where it takes us. Agreed?”

  Lily nodded solemnly. “Agreed.”

  Chapter 4

  By the time Flight 2107 landed in San Francisco, Lily and Pete were fast friends.

  As Lily commented, “It’s like we’ve been transported back to the day we met.”

  Pete agreed as he juggled his garment bag and duffel. Lily had a firm grip on her own carry-on luggage as they made their way out to the concourse.

  Pete ushered Lily to the side. “Someone is going to meet us right here to hand over whatever information my guy Marty was able to get. And,” he said, turning around, “here comes my shadow. Lily, meet Zolof Kuchinsky. Zolly, meet Lily.”

  He was bigger than a bear, almost as tall as a giraffe.

  Lily looked up in awe at the bald-headed man who appeared larger than life. “Nice to meet you, Zolof.” Lily extended her hand, certain it would be crushed. It wasn’t.

  “Everyone calls me Zolly.”

  His voice was a surprise, it had a light timbre with a cadence Lily couldn’t identify. His bright blue eyes sparkled, and a slight smile tugged at his lips. Lily couldn’t help but smile. A “shadow” had to mean he was Pete’s bodyguard. It made sense that someone of Pete’s stature would have a bodyguard. It was probably mandatory. She knew in her gut that the Pete she’d just gotten to know on the flight had probably put up a fight but in the end saw the good sense of having someone watching his back.

  “I can meet you by baggage claim, Zolly. Get Winston, and make sure he gets some water.” Winston was Pete’s one true love—his German shepherd—and he never traveled without him.

  “No way, boss. You know the rules. We stick together. There’s your package.”

  He was so fast on his feet, Lily could only gasp when an arm bigger than a tree trunk reached out to intercept the manila envelope a flight attendant was holding out to Pete.

  “You get used to it after a while.” Pete grinned. “He’s my nanny.” Pete waited patiently until Zolly opened the envelope to scan the contents. Satisfied, Zolly handed it over.

  Pete slapped the thick envelope against his leg as he waited for Zolly to take a call on his cell phone.

  “Winston’s up and ready,” Zolly said as he clicked off. “An attendant is getting him some water because he’s panting. He probably has your scent already, boss.”

  “Then let’s go. Winston hates to be kept
waiting.”

  Five minutes later, all hell broke loose in the airport. Screams seemed to be coming from every direction. Zolly looked at Pete, and Pete looked at Zolly. Both men were grinning from ear to ear.

  Pete looked over at Lily and explained. “Winston doesn’t have much patience. If we stand still, he’ll find us.” Pete whistled shrilly, a high, piercing sound. He was rewarded with a bark from somewhere in the airport.

  “How the hell did he get loose?” Zolly grumbled.

  “Here he comes!” Pete laughed.

  Lily watched as people stepped to the side, their eyes on the black streak barreling down the center of the concourse and heading straight for them. One hundred and twenty pounds of pure dog bent on reaching his master, airport security and police hot on his trail. Pete whistled again. The black streak seemed to slow down in midair and finally came to a standstill in front of Pete. He held out one huge paw, and Pete shook it.

  “That wasn’t nice, Winston.”

  The shepherd hung his head but only for a moment before he stood on his hind legs to put his paws on Pete’s shoulders. He looked over at Zolly and barked a happy greeting.

  The authorities were not pleased, but when they saw the shepherd’s owner, they adjusted their attitudes. The dog had been crated, but it was airport personnel who let the animal get away from them. They knew it, and Pete knew it. Apologies were all over the place as Zolly reached into a cavernous bag on his shoulder for a leash and collar.