Receptionist Under Cover

He shook her hand when he reached her. His blue eyes fixed on her steadily. “It’s nice to see you again. I wasn’t expecting results so quickly.”

He was a little nervous, she realized. Good. Maybe he wouldn’t notice that she was, too. “We’re only a few blocks from June Stone’s old apartment. I wondered if you’d like to take a look before we have our coffee.”

“Yes. I didn’t think it was coincidence that you’d suggested we meet here.”

They set out heading west and Patrick was the first to speak. “I looked for you the other night. Later, after the speeches.”

“I’m sorry. I would have enjoyed hearing your talk, I’m sure. But I had to leave before dinner was served.”

He glanced at her, clearly intrigued. “I don’t suppose you can give me any details about the case?”

“I’m afraid not. We’re very strict about confidentiality at Fox & Fisher.”

“Which is a good thing.” He touched her elbow as they crossed the street. She found the gentlemanly gesture rather sweet, and unexpected, from a man she suspected cared little for most social graces.

But then, he’d seemed very comfortable in his tux the other night.

“Do you attend a lot of charity balls?” she asked.

“I try not to. In fact, after the other night, I called my publicist and said that was the last one. The people who go to these things mean well, I’m sure. But they’re so caught up in the cycle of consume, consume, consume. They listen to my talk and don’t even recognize that their lifestyle is part of the problem.”

Having struggled with the same issues for most of her life, Nadine had to agree with him. Her mother put pressure on her to attend these functions, but each one seemed to require more effort than the last.

“Well, this is it.” She stopped in front of a three-story apartment building. Counting out the units, she pointed to the window near the corner. “I think that was where June and Stephen lived.”

Patrick stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared at the window for a long time. The curtains were drawn, but the interior lights were on and every now and then a shadow flickered as someone walked by.

“My son grew up here,” he said, his voice hoarse. He glanced around the block, taking in the convenience store across the street and a coffee shop on the corner. Both were probably places June Stone—and Stephen—had spent a lot of time in.

“Want to try that place?” he asked, pointing at the coffee shop. It was on the corner of Ninth Street. Rafaella’s was printed in white letters on a black awning over the window.

“Sure.” She started in that direction, then stopped. Patrick was still gazing at the third-floor window.

“I suppose June thought she was doing me a favor by raising our son alone. But she should have told me.”

JUNE’S DEATH WAS HAVING a profound effect on Patrick. She wasn’t the first of his contemporaries to pass away. That would have been Jed, who’d died in an avalanche, a day after Patrick had skied the same terrain. Jed’s passing had been hard, but finding out about June was even harder.

She had been his first love. And now, he was just discovering, the mother of his child.

June had been a straightforward person, intelligent and practical. At eighteen, she’d been cute, but it wasn’t really her looks that had drawn him so much as her outgoing personality and her love of sports. She’d played volleyball and basketball and he’d liked the fact that she could shoot a basket just as well as he could.

He’d preferred the solitary sports. Back in school it had been track and field. As an adult he’d taken up cycling, kayaking, mountain climbing…The list went on and on.

When they’d broken up, the summer after graduation, he’d been sad, but not for long. He’d worked at a bike shop until he had enough cash for a trip to Europe. He’d always had a yearning to travel.

Meanwhile June had gone on to college, as she’d always planned, only now he knew that her first year would not have gone as planned, because she’d been pregnant. He’d had time to do some calculating and he figured the baby would have been born in March, at the latest.

Three months after she sent him a Christmas card saying everything was fine.

Another shadow passed by the window in the apartment. It seemed sad, somehow, that a new family had moved in, playing out their passions and dramas and dreams in the very rooms where June and Stephen had once lived.

Patrick glanced away. Nadine had removed her sunglasses—it was growing dark now—and was waiting for him patiently, though she was probably cold. Now that the sun was gone, the air was cooling rapidly.

“Thanks for waiting,” he said, moving toward her.

“No problem. It must be quite a shock. Not only finding out you had a son. But he’s eighteen years old.”

“Yes. I cared about June, she was a good person and I don’t want to blame her. But if she’d given me a chance, I would have liked to be a part of his life.”

“Maybe the two of you would have gotten married.”

Somehow he couldn’t picture that. “Maybe.”

They were at the café now, and he held the door open for Nadine. Inside, the room was welcoming, furnished with sofas and upholstered chairs, the windows draped in soft fabrics and the lighting warm and intimate. It felt a bit like walking into someone’s home.

They were directed to a table for two next to a redbrick wall. Patrick helped Nadine off with her trench coat, then removed his leather jacket and hung both on a nearby coatrack.

He didn’t normally pay much attention to the clothing people wore, but he did notice that Nadine’s dress clung nicely to her petite figure. When she removed her hat, he saw that her thick, dark hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail. In his line of work, he saw women in practical ponytails all the time—but this one looked more elegant than sporty. The style showed off her delicate ears and earrings long enough to swing with each movement of her head.

He was reminded of how perfectly lovely she’d looked at the gala ball the other night. To the manner born, and all that stuff. He supposed being able to fit in with your surroundings was a useful talent when you were in her line of work.

He forced himself to wait until they’d both ordered coffee to ask, “So tell me what you’ve found out.”

She cleared her throat. “I’ve contacted June’s sister in Boston.”

The obituary had mentioned Diane—whom he remembered vaguely.

“I tried to call Diane, too,” he said. “But her number wasn’t listed.”

Nadine nodded, setting her earrings in motion again. “She still goes by Stone, though she is married. I hoped they might own a home and I was lucky. By checking the Boston property tax listings online I was able to find their address. From that, I figured out the most likely school for their children to attend.”

That was clever. “But how did identifying the school help?”

“The school has a Web site. In one of the monthly newsletters, Diane was listed as pizza mom.”

“Pizza mom. What in the world is that?”

“It sounds like a school fundraiser. The kids send in orders for a special pizza lunch once a month. At any rate, Diane was the volunteer organizer and her phone number was printed right next to her name.”

Pretty ingenious legwork, Patrick thought, relieved to have this solid evidence that she knew what she was doing. “So you called her. Did you tell her I’d hired you to find Stephen?”

“Not exactly. I told her my name and that I lived in Manhattan. I said I had just heard that her sister had passed away and I was trying to find Stephen.”

“You didn’t mention me?”

“At this point I thought it would be good to say as little as possible. Diane made it very easy for me, actually. She didn’t ask many questions at all. She’s probably fielded a lot of calls since her sister passed away, so she just assumed I must be a friend.”

He edged forward on his seat. “Did she tell you about Stephen? Is he living with her now? He’s only eighteen.”