The Case of a Misplaced Brother

Chapter 1Zeke Masterson groaned when his alarm went off, reaching blindly to slap the button and stop the noise. He was tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but didn’t. Cautiously opening his eyes, he saw early morning sunlight coming through the blinds of his bedroom window. “At least it’s my bedroom,” he murmured. “And I’m alone.” That was generally the case, but the previous evening he’d decided to celebrate the successful wrapping up of a job that proved his client’s husband had been stepping out on her with more than one woman. He played back the hours he’d spent at the bar and decided he could be proud of himself for fending off a couple of offers to buy him a drink, with the implied we should get to know each other better that went with them. Sure, he’d gone over his usual limit but on his own, and he’d stopped before he’d had the one too many that meant he shouldn’t have driven himself home. He eased out of bed, shivering when his feet hit the cold floor, and then made his way to the bathroom. Once he’d emptied his bladder, he turned the shower on, let it get steamy hot, and stepped in. When the water began to cool he washed from head to toe, turned it off, and got out. After drying off, he brushed his teeth and trimmed his beard. He didn’t need to comb his hair. His head was shaved in deference to the fact that, even though he was only thirty-four, he was balding, as his father and grandfather had before him at that age. Finally, he dressed for the day in slacks, a button-down shirt, and a sports jacket—his usual work attire—put on his glasses, and headed downstairs. Breakfast consisted of strong coffee, a fried egg, and toast. He would have made bacon, too, but he was out, which reminded him he had to go shopping sometime soon. After checking to make certain the front and back doors were locked, he set the security and exited through the door to his attached garage. Ten minutes later he parked in the lot next to the building on Twelfth in Congress Park which housed his private detective business. When he was inside, he made a stop at the small coffee shop off the lobby to get his usual black coffee and then took the elevator to the third floor. His agency was at the end of the hallway, with a sign on the door that said Masterson Private Investigations. The door was unlocked, letting him know Jan—his receptionist/secretary/girl Friday—had already arrived. She looked up from what she was doing when he entered the small waiting room. “You look like you could use another four hours of sleep.” “Feel like it too, but I’m a dedicated employer. My employees show up on time, so do I.” Jan gave an unladylike snort before handing him his phone messages and telling him he had several emails that needed answering. “Speaking of on-time employees, Frank called to say he was heading straight to Mr. Allan’s to set up his security.” “Good. One less thing to worry about.” He thumbed through the messages as he walked into his office, tossed them on his desk for the moment, set his coffee cup down on top of them, and sat, turning on the computer. When the welcome screen appeared, he typed the password into the box, and seconds later was on the desktop screen. More passwords got him into his ISP and then his mail. He mentally thanked Jan for having already deleted the spam as he began reading the rest. Two were inquiries about the agency’s availability to take on new cases. One was from his supplier, letting him know about a price drop on a couple of items he routinely ordered to keep his stock of security items up to date. After checking the storage room between his and Frank’s offices, he placed an order. He replied to the inquiries, setting up times for the potential clients to come in for a consultation. Five minutes later, one of them responded, saying two that afternoon would work for him. With that finished, he opened the last email and sighed. One of the agency’s regular clients had sent him a list of people they were interested in hiring, asking for background checks on them. He replied that he’d received the list and that someone would start on it as soon as possible. The phone messages were the usual mix of inquiries, salespeople, and one confirmation that a potential new client would come in as scheduled at ten that morning. He dealt with them, and then pushed away from his desk, going to the window to watch the passing scene while finishing his coffee. An hour later, as he was making inroads into the background checks, Jan let him know his first appointment had arrived. * * * * Zeke went into the waiting room to greet the man, whose name was Gregory Sanford. He appeared to be in his late twenties, was slender but muscular, and, Zeke noted with a trace of amusement, definitely had all his hair. “If you’ll come with me.” When they were in his office, Zeke gestured to the client’s chair in front of his desk, waited until the man was seated, and then sat as well. “Now, how can we help you, Mr. Sanford?” “First off, please call me Greg.” When Zeke nodded, he continued. “I seem to have misplaced my brother.” “Misplaced? Strange way to put it. I presume you mean he’s missing.” “Yes, but that sounds so…final. Like missing, presumed dead.” He sighed before continuing. “I dropped him off at school two days ago. College. He’s a junior at Metro majoring in photography and lives with me in Englewood.” He waved a hand, palm down. “That’s neither here nor there right now. Like I said, I dropped him off. I do it every day on my way to work. He takes the Light Rail home because he gets out much earlier than I do. He wasn’t at the house when I got home that evening.” “Which would be Tuesday,” Zeke said. “Yes. It happens sometimes when he decides to hang out with friends from school, but usually he’ll call to let me know.” “Not always, though.” “No.” Greg shook his head. “He’s pretty good about it but he’s only twenty-one and sometimes gets carried away in the moment and forgets, so I wasn’t too worried. He still wasn’t home when I went to bed, and didn’t answer my calls or texts, which pissed me off. Still…” He shrugged. “Kid brother. Got it. They don’t like feeling like they owe you when they’re having fun.” “Pretty much. When I got up yesterday morning and he still wasn’t home I did start worrying.” “Could he have gone home with someone? A girlfriend or just a friend?” “That was my first thought so I called Val, that’s his girl. She said he wasn’t with her, though he had called after he got out of class Tuesday afternoon to ask if she wanted to go out. She had to study for a test so she said she couldn’t. I also called a couple of guys he knows. They hadn’t seen him, either.” “Have you gone to the police?” “Yes.” Greg’s mouth tightened. “Lot of good that did. They said he’s of age, and since he’s not disabled or mentally challenged there wasn’t anything they could do, though they would keep the information I gave them on file.” “Unfortunately, that’s true about not being able to list him as a missing person. I presume you hadn’t heard from him by the time you called us yesterday afternoon, or even last night.” “Not a damned word, damn it.” Greg stared at his hands for a long moment then looked up. “Do you think you can find him?” “I can try,” Zeke replied. “I’ll need information about him, and a photo, to start with. Also, can you afford this?” “Unless you charge an arm and a leg I should be able to. I work for an architectural firm as a junior architect which pays pretty well.” Zeke chuckled. “I only charge an arm, not a leg, so you should be safe. All right, we’ll start with you filling out a bunch of forms.” He took a file from one of the drawers, and removed a sheaf of papers held together with a paperclip, handing them to Greg. “The usual who you are, our fees, a contract, and then one for as many details as you can give me about your brother. Oh, by the way, what’s his name? You never did say.” “Rory. Rory James Sanford.” Greg shuffled through the papers, pausing to run a finger down the list of fees without blanching. Then he began filling out the forms. When he finished the one with his personal information, he gave it to Zeke. After scanning it, Zeke said, “Your parents are deceased?” Greg’s mouth tightened angrily. “Murdered, when I was nineteen and Rory was eleven.” “Did they find the killers?” “No!” Greg scowled. “It was a home invasion thing, or so the cops figured. They think Dad surprised the burglars after they broke in and they shot him. Of course Mom, because she thought of herself as our guardian, being the only woman in the family, came downstairs with the gun they kept in the nightstand. Why the hell he didn’t grab it…Well, we’ll never know but he didn’t. Anyway, from what the cops pieced together she shot one of the invaders before the other one shot her. They, the cops, found blood that didn’t belong to my parents, leading to the side door and out to the driveway where they must have left their car.” “Damn,” Zeke said softly. “I’m sorry.” “Yeah, me too.” “Where were you and Rory when this happened?” “I was away at college. DU, here in Denver. He…Poor kid, he was upstairs in bed. The noise woke him. He said Mom screamed, once, before she was shot. He was scared, of course, but even at his age he had the presence of mind to stay where he was, but he did look out his window, which faced the driveway. He saw them getting into the car. He said one of them looked up and he saw his face. I mean Rory saw the killer’s face, but the guy probably saw Rory, too.” Greg paused, his eyes unfocused for a moment. Then he shook his head. “The police called me the same night to let me know. I caught the next flight home. Rory was in bad shape, of course, but he handled it as best he could.” “Was he able to give the police a description of the man he saw?” “A vague one, yeah. And a couple of days later they had him go down to the station to look at mug shot books. I went with him. So many pictures. Unbelievable. He found a few that he thought could be the man but he couldn’t say for sure.” “Those books can be overwhelming, I know. I take it you got custody of him.” “Yes. I was renting a place off campus so we packed up his stuff and he moved out here to stay with me. We went back a month later, before I put the house on the market, to get what we wanted of Mom and Dad’s. Pictures, some things that had been important to them, stuff like that. Between what it sold for, and what we inherited, because there were no other relatives still alive except for a couple of distant cousins of Mom’s, we didn’t have to worry about money.” Greg picked up the pen at that point and began to fill out the form relating to Rory. He stopped midway through to say, “He graduated high school with honors. I’d used some of the money, because I banked what we didn’t need for expenses, to buy our house in Englewood. When Rory got accepted at Metro, I suggested he might like a place of his own but he didn’t agree.” Greg smiled to himself. “He said I was his only family so I should deal.” He continued to work on the form, again, taking out his phone at one point, obviously to transfer the names and phone numbers from his list of Rory’s friends to the form, from what Zeke could tell. While he was doing that, Zeke copied some of the personal information Greg had given him to the contract. He finished the same time the younger man did, and then they discussed the fees and how much time Greg wanted him to spend looking for Rory, which was, Greg replied, “Until you find him. He has to be out there somewhere.” Zeke agreed, added the costs to the contract, they signed it, and Greg gave him his credit card to pay the retainer. Zeke took it out to Jan to run, got the receipt, and gave it to Greg. Then he photocopied the contract, giving the copy to Greg as well. With all that completed, Greg leaned back, asking, “Now what?” “I need a photo of him.” “Oh, right.” Greg took two pictures out of his wallet, giving them to Zeke. They both showed a good looking, smiling young man who bore a distinct likeness to Greg except for the fact Greg’s hair was blond and he had blue eyes, whereas Rory’s hair was dark brown verging on black and he had hazel eyes. One thing Zeke noticed, which might make it easier to identify his body if it came down to that, was a chipped top, right incisor. Greg told him had happened when Rory was nine and fell out of a tree. “He broke his arm, too, and my folks decided he didn’t need to deal with dental work on top of that. After a while it just became a part of him, so to speak.” “Not too surprising.” Zeke set the photos aside and then answered Greg’s earlier question. “Now I start calling and visiting his friends, his girlfriend, and also go by the campus to talk with anyone in his last class who might have seen or know where he was headed when he left.” Greg almost smiled. “All things I could have done; should have I suppose. But I probably would have screwed it up and everyone would think I was his crazy, overprotective brother who doesn’t want him to live his life on his terms. I’m not, you know.” “From what little you’ve told me, I’d have to agree.” Zeke pressed his fingertips together as he studied Greg. “All right, a couple of questions. Is Rory into drugs that you know about?” “Good lord no! He hated them, and wasn’t too happy with a couple of…acquaintances I guess because they weren’t his friends, who used them recreationally. He called them idiots, and I agreed.” Zeke nodded. “I do too. Next question. Did he ever mention that someone might be a bit more interested in him than he liked?” “Like some girl at school?” “That or someone he might have met when he was out and about. I presume he and his friends did the club scene sometimes the way guys their age will.” “They did. Not often and usually only on the weekends. Are you talking about someone stalking him? If so, he never said anything to me that sounded like that was happening. He’d joke about some girl or another he’d met at bar or even around campus who came on too strong, but that’s typical at that age. He brushed it off because he had Val and they’re definitely a couple.” “Other than that he gave no indication there was anyone who gave him a creepy feeling, for lack of a better work?” “Nope.” Greg smiled. “But then he tended to be oblivious to what was going on around him if it didn’t have to do with friends or his photography. I think if he was getting love notes or anonymous gifts he’d have said something.” “No hang-up phone calls?” “Not that he told me about, so it’s doubtful. We’re close and I’m sure he would have.” From his past experience with missing people, Zeke knew closeness didn’t always translate into telling all. He wasn’t going to say so to Greg, however, and upset him more than he was already. If he learned anything from Rory’s friends or girlfriend that let him know Rory felt he was being stalked, then he’d bring it up with Greg and not before. “Is there anything else you need to know?” Greg asked. “If not, I should be going. I took the morning off work but they’re expecting me back by noon.” “Did you tell them why?” “No. I didn’t figure it was any of their business, so I said I had a doctor’s appointment.” “Okay. I can’t think of any more questions at the moment. If I do, I’ll call, and I’ll email you a weekly report like it says in the contract.” Greg stood and Zeke did as well, escorting him from the office. They shook hands, with Zeke thanking him for his business, and Greg left.