HIRING A PRIVATE investigator took more courage than
Suzanne Chauvin had known she possessed. The whole idea
was utterly foreign to her. P.I.s snapped photos of half-
naked husbands straying from their marriage vows in sleazy
hotels, the kind with mirrors on the ceiling. They did
stakeouts where they slumped low in their cars for hour
upon hour. They wore trenchcoats and carried firearms.
She knew the images were silly and outdated, if ever
accurate. Sam Spade. Still, consulting a P.I.
felt...sleazy.
But the truth was, she'd tried everything she could do on
her own. She would never find Lucien and Linette without
help. She'd asked around, and this Kincaid Investigations
was recommended over and over. They specialized in finding
people, Suzanne had been told.
Even so, she hesitated. Bringing a stranger into her
private life made her uncomfortable. And it was more than
that! She'd be handing the whole task over to the
investigator. Trusting him. She wasn't very good at
trusting people anymore.
She kept debating, putting off the decision. Maybe Lucien
or Linette would come looking for her. She'd made sure
that, if they did, she would be easy to find.
The only thing was, she'd been hunting for three years
now. And they hadn't come looking for her.
Another week went by, a month. Two months. Three. It was a
really lousy morning that provided the final push. Dumb
little things added up. She'd taken a personal day from
her job, with the intention of working around the house.
She'd mow, put some bedding plants in, reorganize her
kitchen cupboards. Positive stuff.
Instead she came out early to find garbage from the can
she'd set out by the street last night strewn across her
driveway by some wretched dog. Her bathroom trash,
including some really, really personal items, was
scattered over the next-door neighbor's impeccably kept
lawn. She pounced and managed to pick the embarrassing
stuff up just before his garage door rose and he backed
out in his gleaming, black pickup truck. There she stood
in her oldest jeans, surrounded by garbage.
His window glided down. Tom Stefanec was already the bane
of her existence. His lawn could have doubled for a
putting green at Pebble Beach. His perennial bed was the
envy of the neighborhood from spring through fall as wave
after orchestrated wave of perfectly tended plants came
into bloom. He jogged most mornings barely waiting for
sunup. He kept his hair military short. Worst of all, this
model of discipline and fitness had to have heard
Suzanne's awful, screaming fights with Josh, her now ex-
husband.
She hadn't been able to look her neighbor in the eye in
years.
And, of course, his garbage can sat untouched, a bungee
cord stretched over the lid to keep its contents safe. The
dog knew better than to try to get at Tom Stefanec's trash.
"You need a hand?"
Smiling weakly and probably unconvincingly, she said, "No,
no, I'm fine. It's my own fault for not making sure that
miserable dog couldn't get into my can."
"If you're sure..."
"I'm sure."
With a whir, the window rolled up and the truck continued
to back into the street. Once he was gone, she fetched
gloves and picked up the rest of the litter, then wheeled
her mower out. Pressed the button a couple of times to
prime it and then yanked the cord. Nada. Again, and again.
Prime. Pull. Prime. Pull.
Finally, exhausted, Suzanne had to concede that the piece
of junk wasn't going to start. Once again, she would have
to remember how to fold the handle and then heave the
monster into the trunk of her car. Being as this was the
beginning of April, she would be told that they'd get to
it when they got to it. In other words, several weeks
would pass before she'd get the damn thing back.
Suzanne took a look at her patchy, scruffy, hummocky,
dandelion-infested lawn and started to cry. She was
completely, one hundred percent incompetent. A failure at
everything that had ever mattered.
And getting the damn mower fixed and the lawn mowed
wouldn't help.
If she was ever going to turn her life around and regain a
semblance of self-esteem, she had to succeed at something
a heck of a lot more important than yardwork.
She had to keep the promise she'd made herself when she
was a child.
Abandoning the mower on the lawn, she marched into the
house, found the phone number she'd tucked away three
months ago and called.
"I'd like to make an appointment."
WHEN THE RECEPTIONIST informed him via intercom that his
new client had arrived, Mark Kincaid closed the database
of bankruptcies he'd been searching on his computer,
glanced at his calendar to recall her name and rose to
meet her.
Suzanne Chauvin. He had a quick picture of a petite, fiery
Frenchwoman in a chic suit and heels, her sleek dark hair
in a twist, her brown eyes magnificent, her lips painted
scarlet.
He shook his head at his brief foray into fantasy. Of
course, she'd be a dumpy dishwater blonde in snagged
polyester pants.
Ms. Chauvin hadn't been specific about why she needed an
investigator, only that she was seeking a missing person.
That could be anyone from a deadbeat ex-husband who was
five years behind on his child support payments to a birth
mother if she was adopted. He was doing a big business
these days in adult adoptees looking for their birth
parents as well as the reverse — parents, mostly mothers,
looking for the kids they'd given up.
He went down the short hall to the waiting room. The
nervous looking guy with a receding hairline and big
patches of sweat under his arms had to be waiting for
Mark's partner. As far away from him as she could get and
hidden behind a magazine was a woman.
"Ms. Chauvin?"
"Yes." The magazine dropped and she sprang to her feet as
if jerked upright by a puppeteer. "I...thank you."
"I'm Mark Kincaid." He held out his hand.
She shook, her hand dainty but callused in unusual
places. "You're the owner?"
"That's right." He gestured toward his office. "Come on
back, and we'll talk about why you're here."
She bit her lip, cast a longing glance at the door to the
street, took a big breath and nodded. "Thank you."
She walked ahead of him, giving him a chance to appraise
her. No chic suit or scarlet-painted mouth, but otherwise
she was intriguingly close to his fantasy. Suzanne Chauvin
was a very pretty woman who looked as French as her name
sounded. Her dark hair was indeed gathered at her nape, if
not in a more elegant twist. She might be as old as
thirty, if he was any judge, but still as delicate as fine
porcelain. She wore a simple dress and sensible pumps and
clutched a tote bag as if she thought a purse snatcher
lurked in the doorway to the records room.
"Can I get you some tea or coffee?" he asked when she went
to one of the two chairs facing his desk, hesitated, then
sat, perched noncommittally on the edge.
She gave a tight shake of her head.
He settled into his own comfortable leather chair behind
his desk. "What can I do for you, Ms. Chauvin?"
Her fingers worked the straps of the tote as if she were
trying to knit them. "You were recommended to me as
someone who specializes in finding missing persons."
"That's right." He leaned back.
"I need to find my brother and sister. I...seem to have
failed on my own."
His interest waned. This sounded like a twenty minute job.
Unless someone was trying real hard to stay hidden, they
weren't difficult to find in this day of internet
databases. Borrow money, marry, divorce, have a child,
vote, register a car or boat, pay taxes, join a hobby
organization, all were like waving a red flag and saying,
Here I am. Hell, stub your toe and you'd appear somewhere.
He nodded gravely and picked up a pen, poising it over a
ruled yellow pad of paper. "How long ago did you lose
touch?"
"Twenty-five years and four months ago." Surprised, he
leaned back again. "But you can't be more than..." He
cleared his throat. "Late twenties?"
"I'm thirty-one years old, Mr. Kincaid."
"So you were six." Had her parents divorced and divvied up
the kids? He knew it happened.
"Yes." She hesitated. "This is...difficult for me. Finding
them has been a personal quest. I don't know if I'm
comfortable handing it over to someone else."
"Someone you don't even know," he diagnosed. She nodded.
"That's a decision only you can make. If I can help by
answering questions, I will."
"No, I..." Ms. Chauvin gave a small, twisted smile.
"You do come highly recommended. And I've failed. Maybe
that's what I hate to admit."
"Tell me the story," he said. "And then what you've tried."
"Our parents died in a car accident when I was six. I'm
the oldest," she explained. "Lucien, my brother, was
three, Linette just a baby. Six months old. The only
family left was an aunt and uncle who already had two kids
of their own. They didn't feel they could add three more
children to their family. Or afford to feed them."
He nodded. "So they kept me, since I was the oldest and
more aware of what was happening to us. They believed that
Linette and Lucien would adjust more easily to new
parents."
God. He imagined the scene when a social worker arrived to
take away the two younger children. Six-year-old Suzanne's
bewilderment and dawning understanding. He saw the car
pulling away, the three-year-old's tearstained face framed
in the window. He could almost hear the girl's hysterical
cry, see her running after the car.
Suppressing a shudder, he said, "That must have been very
difficult. For you, and for your aunt and uncle."
"It was...heartbreaking." She looked at him, but without
seeing him. "I was the big sister. Mom always said, "Take
care of your brother and sister.'I was so proud that I was
big enough to be trusted to take care of them."
The things people did to their children with the best of
intentions. He'd bet that mother would have given anything
to take those words back, if she could have seen into the
future. She'd doubtless never imagined herself and her
husband both being snatched away, leaving a little girl
who would have been in first grade believing that she
should have been big and strong enough to hold on to her
little brother and sister and somehow take care of them.
"Linette was asleep when they took her away. But Lucien
kept asking why I wasn't coming." Her eyes swam with
tears. "I was so scared, and so grateful I didn't have to
go away with strangers, too. And I felt horribly guilty
because I was so relieved they'd chosen me."
He swore.
She started, as if remembering he was there. "It was
awful," she said simply, wiping her eyes with her
fingertips. "I swore that someday I'd find them. But then
the years went by, and somehow I never did."
"What made you decide the time had come?"
"I got a divorce three years ago. I'm not very close to my
aunt and uncle, and I felt so alone." She gave a small
laugh. "That sounds pathetic. I'm sorry! It's not as if I
don't have friends, but... I don't know. I was left with
this huge chasm inside. I felt empty."
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