Chapter Three A: Research

Aaron chose his purchases carefully: popular brand of toothpaste, eye drops, and a pair of reading glasses. Nothing too intimate but a straight-forward acknowledgement of his age, and legitimate purchases to make in a drug store. He lingered in the pharmacy aisle and absent-mindedly added a bottle of Tylenol to his purchases while he watched the traffic at the check-out counter. He didn’t want to approach with too many people were around or wait in line if there was another clerk with no customers. After a few minutes, the mid-afternoon line died and the clerk looked up casually to see if there was something else she should do. Aaron approached the cash register and put his purchases on the counter.

“Did you find everything you need?” the woman asked. It was the same dead routine line that suffered from being asked too many times an hour for it to be meaningful. Aaron read her nametag: J. Linefelter.

“Rachel? Is that you?” he asked suddenly as if just looking at the woman for the first time. “No, of course not. Your nametag says J., and Rachel would be old enough to be your mother. Are you Rachel Linefelter’s daughter?”

“Uh, no. I’m afraid not,” she answered looking up at him for the first time.

“I went to school with Rachel Linefelter. Haven’t seen her in years and years. But you look just like her. You must be related to the Linefelters over in Etna Green,” Aaron continued. “The family resemblance is uncanny.”

“No,” she said, slightly overwhelmed by his gushing comraderie. “I’m not related to anybody.”

“Oh, everyone is related to somebody. I’ll bet if you tracked back there would be a link somewhere in the family tree.”

“No. I really am not related to anyone. Really,” she said.

“Let me think, now,” Aaron said mentally going through the stat sheet that had been supplied by the private investigator that Mike Monroe had originally hired. “I’ll bet you have a family name. Let me guess. Janice? No, Jacqueline. I’ll bet your first name is Jacqueline. Right?”

“No. You were right the first time. It’s Janice. Who are you?” Janice Linefelter had begun to respond to Aaron’s continued good nature and engagement.

“Wow, it’s three generations back in the Linefelter family tree. You must be a cousin. I’m Aaron Case.” He reached across the counter to shake her hand. She took it tentatively and Aaron handed her a twenty dollar bill to pay for his purchase. She turned to make change.

“How do you know so much about the Linefelter family tree?” she asked, curious in spite of herself. Now Aaron was on sure footing and didn’t have to make things up as he went. He prepared this meeting by researching as much of the Linefelter family tree as he could quickly do in the few days since he’d accepted the contract from Mike Monroe. He was fortunate that he’d found a Linefelter family so near to Fort Wayne, yet not so close that he might actually stumble on someone she knew locally. And to find a Janice in the family tree was almost like a bonanza.

“I’m a professional genealogist,” Aaron said. He reached in his pocket for a business card and presented it to her. One of the things that I do is compile area histories around the state and I happened on the Linefelter family while I was doing research for one of the histories.” That story gave him reason to have encountered the genealogy without having actually had contact with the family, just in case she actually knew one of them and could cross-check.

“Well, I really don’t think I’m related to them,” Janice said.

“Hey, I could find out if you’d like,” Aaron hesitated and there was silence. “No charge. Whenever there is a missing piece to a puzzle I just have to chase it down. I could give you a questionnaire that I use for research and chances are I could locate relatives for you. Of course, having located them, there is no guarantee that you’d actually want to know any of them. I once did a genealogy for a guy who thought he had no relatives and when he found out who his relatives were he changed his name and moved away.” This time both Aaron and Janice laughed. There were still no new customers in line behind Aaron so she had no real reason to move him out of the way.

“You know what I think?” Janice said handing him the bag of his purchases. “I think you are a middle aged man, probably recently divorced, probably driving a sports car, who read an article on picking up younger women in non-peak hours in retail stores and are hoping for a name and phone number.”

“Oh. Brutal,” Aaron said, somewhat taken aback. It could have been a devastating blow to his scenario if it weren’t for the fact that it was said with such obvious good humor that he had to laugh. “Actually,” he went on, “I was hoping for a dinner-date. But I am a legitimate certified genealogist. You can check my references by calling the Genealogy Department at the Allen County Public Library. I’m pretty well known there. And I really don’t have any sinister motives. If you’d like to find out more about your family history, let me know. I can answer the questions you have. Believe me.”

“That assumes that I have questions that are unanswered,” she replied back, seriously looking him in the eye this time. “Thank you very much for your interest, Mr. Case. If I find myself with a burning desire to know something I will call on your limitless genealogical knowledge. Have a good day now.” This time he was well and truly dismissed.

“Thank you. Just keep me in mind.” He turned to leave, almost missing what she said to his retreating back.

“You’d be hard to forget.” He smiled to himself. She was hooked.

Aaron paused in the parking lot before getting into his Spider and called Jack. He kicked a tire as he waited to connect. What was wrong with having a sports car? He’d had it for fifteen years—soon after his wife died. Jack answered the phone.

“I’ve made contact on the Monroe case,” Aaron said when Jack answered his phone.

“How’d it go?”

“It’s too early to tell if she’ll take the bait, but I’ve got a 60% confidence level at the moment. We could hear something in the next week. If not, I’ll have to take a different tact.” Aaron slipped behind the wheel and cranked over the old engine. It still fired up, even in the bitter cold. The roads were slippery and he was going to need both hands to drive. He wished, not for the first time, that these little cars had better heaters.

“I wish you wouldn’t go face-to-face with your subjects so early in the game. If she doesn’t bite it makes things harder to clean up later,” Jack spoke in his ear.

“True, but I believe in leading with my strength. I’ll pick up the pieces if I need to.”

“We should have charged more for this job,” Jack growled.

“Fair value for a fair price,” Aaron said. “Look, I need both hands and I don’t have my hands-free set-up with me. I’m headed for the library. If she calls my references right away I’d like to be there. Talk to you later.”

“Drive safely.” Jack disconnected and Aaron turned out of the shopping center parking lot and headed to the library. We’ll see, he thought. We’ll see.

He’d just turned onto Wayne Street headed downtown when his phone rang again. He popped his Bluetooth earpiece into his ear and pressed the receive button on the side.

“Aaron Case here. How can I help you?” he said automatically.

“Mr. Case, this is Janice Linefelter.” Wow! He thought. That was fast.

“Miss Linefelter, how can I help you?”

“You may buy me dinner at Don Hall’s across the street from here at 6:30 tonight.”

“Yes ma’am!” he snapped to attention at the order.

“Please bring your questionnaire.” She hung up abruptly.

Aaron disconnected from the dead line and then pressed his headset again. “Call Jack,” he spoke. The phone connected and Jack answered on the second ring.

“What’s up? You at the library already?”

“Don’t need to go,” Aaron answered. “Janice Linefelter just called and asked me to dinner tonight.”

“Whoa! How much charm did you turn on, boy?”

“Oh, I’ve found that going gray gives me a certain amount of credibility with younger women,” Aaron laughed. “I really don’t know. It’s obvious to me that she’s got a couple burning questions of her own and is using this as an opportunity to get answers. Surprised the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, well it worries me. She’s going to call your bluff and ask to see your research. Then what do you do?” Jack demanded.

“No problem. I did the research and everything I told her is legitimate,” Aaron said. “No, she’s taking a big risk inviting me to dinner. I should say commanding me to dinner. I don’t think she had time to call the references, but that’s not saying that she won’t before tonight. But I already covered the bases at the library and warned Liddy Cooper that someone might call asking for info on the Linefelters.”

“Well, make sure you’ve got your ducks in a row. I expected you’d have more time to prepare before you actually had to sit down with her. I’m not sure I like this.” Jack was always the conservative and Aaron appreciated the caution. Sometimes he tended to jump to unfounded conclusions.

“Later,” Aaron said, and disconnected.

The 6:30 timing barely gave Aaron enough time to get home, shower and shave, and get back to the north side of town. He entered the restaurant, bypassing the drive-in portion, at 6:25. He glanced around the room and spotted Janice at once.

“Good evening.”

“Ah, Mr. Case. Punctual.”

“And surprised.”

“That I called you?” she asked.

“No, that you didn’t choose a fancier place to eat, since I’m paying.”

“I’m naturally conservative, and I know that this restaurant has a good senior citizens menu.” She hid her smile as the barb stuck in Aaron’s ego.

“I assure you,” Aaron said meekly, “that my interest in you, though friendly, is not, shall we say, social. It is strictly business.”

“As is mine in you,” Janice said. “If you have your questionnaire, I’ll fill it out while you order. I’ll have the Chicken Grill dinner.”

“I’ll have crow,” said Aaron. “Hope they have it on the seniors’ menu.” They both shared a chuckle as Aaron handed Janice the two page questionnaire. When Aaron had finished ordering, he turned to discover that the questionnaire was back in front of him and Janice was looking at him intently.

“That was quick,” Aaron remarked as he pulled the form toward himself and turned it to the front, shrinking from the intensity of her stare. On the front of the form was a short paragraph scrawled boldly across the form:

“My name is Annabelle Monroe, daughter of Patsy and Michael Monroe. Can you help me find my father?”

Aaron stared at the note in disbelief and read it twice before he looked up. This was as unexpected as anything he could have imagined coming from this evening. He met her eyes with a calmness that he didn’t feel inside.

“You already knew, didn’t you?” she asked. “Isn’t that why you came to the store today?”

“I’ll put all my cards on the table,” Aaron said, “but I expect the same of you.”

“Agreed.”

“Your father asked me to find you. He saw you in L.S. Ayres a few weeks ago and wanted me to verify that you were his daughter and that you would entertain contact from him.”

“Is he really the Mike Monroe across the street?”

“Yes. He is a respected businessman in the community. He has wanted to meet you for many years,” Aaron said softly. How much would the woman remember about her father, and what might her mother have told her?

“He hasn’t looked for us.” It was a flat statement from a person who felt abandoned.

“Your mother’s note was very specific about that. He was a poor husband and father, but I believe he loved your mother. What inspired you to begin looking for him?” Aaron asked. It was her turn to talk.

“My mother is dead. It was slow. Breast cancer that metastasized. She was lucid up ’til the last few days. One of the last things she told me was that my father was alive and I should find him… to tell him she was gone.” Janice hesitated and drank deeply from her water glass. “She told me when we moved to Chicago that Daddy died and we were going to change our name back to her maiden name. I didn’t know that Linefelter wasn’t her maiden name. What did I know about things? I was nine years old. The last time I saw my father he was lying sprawled on the floor in our kitchen. Mom said he was dead. I lived for most of my life believing she had killed him.”

“My god! That must have been horrible,” Aaron interjected.

“Life was pretty horrible for most of my teen years,” Janice answered. “We moved often. We lived in the most disgusting conditions. But that wasn’t all that much different than before we left. Our home was no mansion. But it never bothered me that much that my father was gone because we didn’t connect that much while he was alive. He was at work most of the time or sleeping and I had to be quiet. I really didn’t know him and I have very little memory of him, except the image of him lying on the floor in the kitchen. I guess that I just pitied my Mom because she was so poor.

“I quit school and started working at 16, pretty much doing sales clerk jobs. By the time I was 18, I learned to doctor my resume, lie about my age and education, and land a secretarial job. I’ve never advanced far in a company, but I was able to earn enough to take care of my mom when she got sick the first time. I was just over 20. I never really had much of a social life because there wasn’t much spare time or money to have outside activities. For the last five years, I’ve spent all the time I wasn’t working taking care of Mom. I was fired from my last job for failing to show up for work the last week Mom was alive. But she’d just told me that Dad was alive and I should go back to Fort Wayne and I was trying to pump her for details. But she lost lucidity pretty quickly that week. The cancer went to her brain. I wasn’t really sure but what the whole thing was just a hallucination until I saw the car dealership when I drove into town. I got a job nearby, but I didn’t really know how I’d ever make contact, or what I’d say.”

Their food arrived and there was a pause as they focused their attention off the sensitive matter at hand and on the food. Aaron decided it was time to offer information from his side.

“Your father wasn’t much of a father. He was an alcoholic. He spent a couple years after your mother took you and left trying to drink himself to death. He probably would have succeeded if he’d had any money. As it happens he could barely afford to stay drunk. He was rescued by the Salvation Army and became one of the very few who managed to get his head out of the bottle and realize what had happened and what it had cost him. But your mother left a very specific note to him never to try to find her. He felt that the least he could do when he dried out was to honor her wish.”

“But you said he recognized me. He hasn’t seen me since I was nine years old,” Janice was pulling herself out of the depths of the story and focusing more on the possibilities. “I certainly didn’t recognize him. I hardly remember what he looked like when I was nine. We had no pictures. Mom left with one suitcase of clothes and nothing else.”

“Here.” Aaron opened a small portfolio he was carrying. He handed Janice the picture of her as a nine-year-old.

“It doesn’t look that much like me now. He couldn’t possibly recognize me from this.” Aaron pulled out copies of the sketches her father had commissioned of her. Janice gasped when she looked through them. “That’s amazing. The artist must have been psychic!”

“No, it’s a fairly new artform in the past ten years. They use various computer programs to age a person and project what they will look like at different ages. It’s quite commonly used in missing persons cases. When your father heard about it he had this series of sketches generated. You’ll notice that they include characteristics of both your mother and father’s pictures in creating your features and the way you will age.”

Janice was laughing through tears as she looked at the images. “Am I really going to look like that when I’m 50?”

“There’s no guarantee. But you’ll still be much too young for me,” Aaron laughed.

“Does he… does he want to meet me?” Janice asked tentatively.

“I think it would be good to ask him that question,” Aaron smiled. “Shall we make a phone call?”

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