She was on a commercial flight an hour after that. She didn’t like to fly private all the time. And she sometimes found marks in first class. That was where she had first met Crandall, on a red-eye to London, where she let him “innocently” caress her leg and arm on the night flight over the Atlantic. That was followed by a peck on the cheek, a hug that lingered a bit too long, all with the implicit understanding of much more to come if business could be done.
On the plane she had just been thinking about leaving IBM, she had told him. He had never checked, of course. Men like him never did. She had taken her time reeling him in on Laser Focus, a scam she had been working on for some time. She had put the website up and gotten the slide deck together and spent some of her money on dinners with just the two of them.
She had also introduced him to her two partners, Bill and Joe. She had used them in the past for things like this. They weren’t cheap, but they adhered to the script like the pros they were, more than earning their compensation. During several meetings they had talked of financial projections and marketing plans and corporate org flowsheets and cost itemizations and hiring initiatives, and all sorts of business items ad nauseum. This had overwhelmed Crandall and caused him to finally stop asking questions and simply nod at their fancy-sounding gibberish lest he reveal that he actually knew very little about business.
It really was all in the psychology. If you knew what made your mark tick, you knew everything you needed to know. And playing to the mark’s ego was usually golden.
When she had learned while sitting next to Crandall in first class that his wealth had been inherited, her interest had been piqued. Those who inherited wealth either let the professionals handle the business matters while they simply enjoyed the benefits of being born into the right family, or else they went the route that Crandall did, convincing themselves that they had somehow earned every dollar and had the business acumen to earn even more.
Well, Phillip Crandall would have to content himself with the many millions he still had left. And knowing his ego, he might not even report being ripped off, because that would make public the fact that he was an idiot. But this also might be a nice wake-up call for him. He hopefully would take the rest of his huge fortune and put it into a proper stocks-and-bonds portfolio and let people who actually knew what they were doing manage it for him. That way he could spend his days driving around in his ego machine and chasing younger women until his pecker gave out.
She was much richer today than yesterday, but really only focused on one thing.
Where in the hell is my mother? And who took her? And what am I going to do about it?
Chapter 28
And parents.
The clue had finally come to Gibson as she made pancakes for her kids while they impatiently watched her.
Clarisse had said, One can buy excellent day care if one has enough money. That goes for children and parents.
And days later she had taken a call, presumably unaware that Gibson could still hear. It seemed like a woman had gone missing.
That was what the person on the other end of the line had said.
And the woman had called Clarisse “Ms. Frazier.” Another alias. Gibson wondered how many she had.
Probably more than the number of shoes I own. She looked down at her ratty pair of Adidas sneakers. Yeah, definitely more.
No one would really say that about their parents, not when talking about day care. But they might if they had parents in assisted living or a nursing home. So did Clarisse have that in her life? Until her mother went missing?
She had an intriguing thought. Could Clarisse be Francine Langhorne? She sounded around Gibson’s age, which would be in the ballpark with what she knew about Francine.
She buttered the pancakes, ladled syrup on them, and put them on plates with the scrambled eggs, and the turkey bacon already cut up into easily swallowed pieces. She then poured the milk into plastic cups with snap tops and built-in straws, making them spill proof.
Whoever invented these cups must have had kids.
Tommy asked for more syrup and said, “Me do it,” when she brought it over. He made a mess of it, but she said nothing. She had long ago learned to pick her battles, and making a lake on your plate with syrup was not a hill she was willing to die on.
As Tommy and Darby ate, Gibson munched on a piece of bacon. She pulled out her laptop and looked at the material she had downloaded on the Langhorne family, studying the image of Francine Langhorne in particular. It looked like the kids were being rushed into a car by their mother, Geraldine. The hulking Doug Langhorne, his face dour and pinched, had turned to stare into the camera. She didn’t like that look at all.
Gibson next turned to Francine. Her look was far more nuanced than her brother’s. The girl’s large eyes were sad, but there was an underlying determination that spoke of strength, of resiliency. Such a person could survive much, Gibson surmised, including a crooked dad, the murderous mob, and a stint in WITSEC. And, finally, abandonment by her parents.
Earl Beckett had said Doug had stayed with his sister until she was old enough to voluntarily leave WITSEC. Under the circumstances, they probably had only each other, and a circling-of-the-wagons mentality would be perfectly understandable.
My problem is, I don’t know enough about the Langhornes, particularly the kids. But then it occurred to her. Idiot, you have a source that can help you on that.
When Silva arrived and took over, Gibson rushed to her office and made the call.
Earl Beckett was actually in Williamsburg for a meeting today and could meet her for coffee nearby in about an hour, he told her.
She ran upstairs, showered, and changed, and was at the coffee shop in the historic district of Williamsburg five minutes early. When Beckett came walking up, she greeted him, and they went inside and ordered their coffees.
Once they were settled at a table, Beckett said, “I thought I might hear from you.”
“Why is that?”
“I looked you up after you and Sullivan came to see me. Even talked to some folks who knew you. ‘Dog with a bone that won’t let go’ is how you were described.”
“I guess I don’t like unanswered questions.”
“So what questions can I answer for you?”
“I’d like you to tell me about the Langhornes. The kids. The family dynamic. The relationship between husband and wife, but particularly about the kids.”
“You think one of them tracked down their daddy and doled out their own justice?”
“It’s certainly a possibility.”
He nodded and sipped his coffee. “Family dynamics are a strange thing. You see similarities in some families, but every one of them is unique, too. Now, WITSEC families are not the norm. They are as far from the norm as it is possible to be, in fact, except if you’re in a family of serial killers.”
“You mean the stress and the upheaval?”
“Yes, and having to build a new life from scratch, but it can’t be any kind of, well, special life, I guess is what I’m trying to say. You’re not going to grow up to be a rock star or CEO or a pro athlete after being in WITSEC. At least I’ve never seen that happen. Your opportunities are definitely limited, and that’s a damn shame, really.”
Gibson fingered her coffee cup, thinking of her own children at the moment. “And for the kids it had nothing to do with them and everything to do with decisions their parents made. Well, in this case, Harry Langhorne mostly.”