Morris blinked. “Oh. Wow. Okay.” He paused, searching for the right words. There weren’t any. “So, you’ll stay awhile?”
Randall let out a breath and smiled. “That’s the plan. I’m going to see about an apartment today. Seattle has a great vibe and I thought it would be a nice place to settle down. And good for us. You and me, I mean. What do you think?”
“I think that’s the best news I’ve heard in weeks.”
Randall touched his arm. “Listen, Dad, I heard about your fiancée. I’m really sorry. I heard you got sober but…” Randall sighed. “I’m not here to bust your balls. Been there, done that.”
Two identical grins lit the room.
“Phillip told Mom you haven’t heard from Sheila in a while? What happened?”
Morris rubbed his head. His ex-wife had heard? Great. “I don’t know where she is. And frankly, I’m really worried.”
“Are the cops looking for her?”
“They were. But they don’t think anything’s happened to her and they closed the case. I hired a PI to look into it. Sheila told me things were over, but she had some, uh, personal problems I only recently found out about. I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“At the very least you need closure.” Randall sipped the last of his coffee. “Funny, I wouldn’t have predicted this in a million years. She seemed so committed to you.”
“I thought she was,” Morris said, then looked up. “But how would you know that?”
“Because we’ve been in touch. She tracked me down to invite me to your wedding. Was pretty relentless about it, actually. She got me thinking about things.” Randall frowned. “If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. I thought you knew.”
Morris was stunned. “I had no idea.”
“Maybe she wanted it to be a surprise. She was trying to find me for weeks. But I couldn’t get to a phone or a computer all that often, couldn’t even remember what my e-mail address was half the time.”
Morris nodded. “That’s what I’d heard. Though it was good of you to send me that e-mail about your friend Tom.”
“Who?”
“Your friend? Tom Young? From Stanford. I interviewed him for a position at the bank.”
A look of concern spread over Randall’s clean-cut features. “Dad, I have no idea what you’re talking about. First Donna, now Tom? Are you sure you don’t have another son out there named Randall who knows these people?”
Morris was bewildered.
Randall seemed equally confused. “Maybe I’d know him if I saw him-I’m better with faces than I am with names. Or maybe he just really wanted the job at the bank and dropped my name to score an ‘in’ with you. Did you hire him?”
“He never came back.” An uneasy feeling swept over Morris. “Never mind. I’ll sort it out.” He smiled, but something wasn’t right. His mind flew back to the night he’d had dinner with the guy. Tom Young had known too much about his family problems for a guy who’d just wanted an interview.
Someone was fucking with Morris and he didn’t like it one bit.
His son stood up. “I should get going. I have to see that apartment in half an hour. It’s downtown, near the fish market. You still make a mean grilled salmon? If I get the apartment, you should come over, show me your secret recipe.”
Morris resisted the urge to rumple Randall’s hair. He wasn’t a kid anymore. “You bet,” he said instead. “What about football? You still play?”
“Not since I left Stanford. You?”
“Does it look like it?” Morris rubbed his belly and grinned. “Nah. Knees are shot. Not even a weekend warrior anymore.”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw a game.”
“I have Seahawks season tickets. What are you doing next Sunday?”
“Going to the game with you.”
For only the second time in six years, Morris embraced his son. “I’m glad you stopped by.” Morris’s voice was choked with emotion. “And that you’re doing so well, despite all the things I put you through as a kid. You deserved a much better father than you got.”
“It’s okay, Dad.” Randall’s voice cracked, too. “It was my choice to disappear. But we can deal with it later. I just want to move forward.”
Morris waved as his son drove off in the dented Jeep, feeling the best he’d had in weeks. Then he headed back into the house to call Jerry Isaac.
Happy day or not, who the hell was Tom Young?
CHAPTER 28
J erry had some information of his own to share with Morris.
The two men met for lunch at the Golden Monkey, a dive in the heart of the International District that was cheap and funky smelling even going by dive Chinese-restaurant standards. The place was packed. Men and women in business suits filled the room, happy to take advantage of the lunch specials.
“I love this place,” Jerry crowed, digging into a small plate of Cantonese chow mein. “It closed down last summer due to health-code violations, but it just reopened. Thank God.” Using his chopsticks, he scooped up a mouthful of noodles and chewed contentedly.
“Was it necessary to tell me that?” Morris stirred his wonton soup and suddenly wondered if the wontons were really wontons. His mind flashed back to the scene in the second Indiana Jones movie where the queasy actress asked for soup and they brought her a big bowl of steaming eyeballs.
Jerry belly-laughed. “I’m kidding. Really. The food here’s excellent. I know the owners.”
“I’m glad they put their money into the food, since they obviously don’t spend it on the décor.” Morris looked around dubiously at the peeling wallpaper and dusty window ledges. Sheila was Chinese, and she would have hated it here. But he took a spoonful of soup, not wanting to be impolite. He was surprised by how good it was.
Jerry leaned forward. “So, I thought you’d like to know that my friend was able to hack into your fiancée’s computer.”
Morris stopped eating. “And?”
“We found some interesting things in there.”
“Like what?” Morris couldn’t meet Jerry’s gaze.
The private investigator took another mouthful of noodles, then put his chopsticks down. “Did you know that Sheila was a member of an online dating service called Montgomery’s Den?”
Morris let out a breath. “No, I didn’t.”
“It’s geared specifically to married or ‘attached’ adults. In fact, you can’t sign up for it unless you declare that you are married or have a full-time live-in partner.” Jerry sipped his tea, looking uncomfortable. “The point of it is to meet people for sex.”
Morris slumped back in the stained upholstered chair. “So it’s a site that helps married people cheat?”
“Exactly. And it’s popular because it preaches discretion. The people you meet on the site would never rat you out because they don’t want to be caught themselves.”
“Fantastic. Where was this fifteen years ago when I was thinking of cheating on my wife?”
Jerry snorted. “Gotta love technology. Anyway, we were able to get into Sheila’s account. My friend has a password-retrieval program. It seems she was quite active until about three years ago. Almost nothing since.”
Morris put his spoon down, his appetite gone.
Jerry looked sympathetic. He took another bite of his noodles and chewed slowly before swallowing. “She’s talked to a large number of men. A lot of the exchanges, as they’re called, were saved on her hard drive. It would appear that her main interest on this site was webcam-type stuff. It’s hard to tell if she’s met with anyone in person, but I’m guessing she hasn’t, at least not in the last three years. We found quite a few videos she’d saved-basically peep shows that other men have done for her. I would assume she’s done the same back for them.”
“We met two years ago.”
“So she quit before she met you.” Jerry smiled. “Good news, right?”
Morris felt like kicking him. “What about her e-mails?”