Lovers, Losers, and Liars

Finally, he felt himself getting close and picked up the pace hoping to get her to come one more time.

Sandy was in a world of her own. She was almost incoherent as to what was happening to her. When Scott felt her pussy clamp down on his cock he erupted into the second Trojan and again, both bodies tightened as euphoria flashed through their bodies like bolts of lightning.

Unconsciously, Sandy wrapped her arms around Scott's neck and pulled him down on top of her sweaty flesh. She could feel his heart pounding next to her own. They almost fell asleep in each other's arms but luckily Scott glanced at the clock on the desk. "Oh, Sandy, it's almost midnight; I have to get you home."

"Oh, shit," she replied. "You think we should shower first?"

"Ah, I'd love to take a shower with you but I really think we should just go. Chances are our folks will be in bed anyway."

"Yeah, you're probably right, let me brush my hair and I'll be right with you."

They were both glad as Scott pulled into the drive. The lights were out in Sandy's house. They kissed and made out for a little while in the car before he walked her to the door and said good night.

*****

That night, Derek couldn't get the young man out of his mind. The thought that it might have been his son brought back terrible memories of the night his wife disappeared. His marriage hadn't been all peaches and cream; in fact, he remembered having suspicions of her infidelity just days before she left. Even though her desertion seemed to verify his fears, he never knew for sure.

He thought about his secretary's suggestion regarding the yearbooks. God, he thought, what would be the chances? He had no idea if his ex still lived in town or was just visiting someone.

Her parents moved out of town shortly before she disappeared. For a long time, he thought they were harboring her. At one point, his suspicions were so strong he took some vacation time and actually drove all the way down to their home in Orlando and staked it out for several days. When his wife never appeared, he gave up and went back home.

The following day was Saturday. The library would be open all day and the main branch would be open for four hours on Sunday. For lack of a better idea, he decided to take Amy's advice.

The next day he was standing outside when they opened the doors at nine that morning. He found two full shelves of local high school yearbooks, some of which went back to the nineteen thirties; of course, he was only interested in the last two years which narrowed his search significantly.

He sat at a table and started pouring through the last two years of the five surrounding high schools. It was almost noon by the time he closed the back cover of the last book with no results. He went up to the clerk's counter. "Excuse me," he addressed a young man, "I'm doing some research on high schools in the Chicago land area. Do you know how many schools have yearbooks at the main branch?"

"Oh, wow, not off hand, no; were you looking for any particular schools?"

"Not really."

"Sir, I know there're more than a hundred and fifty high schools just in Chicago. Add in the suburbs and you're talking probably a thousand schools, maybe more."

"Oh, shit," he responded, disheartened, "You're right, that would take forever."

"What you could do is go on the Internet. All the schools post their yearbooks online these days."

Even that sounded like it would be insurmountable. "Okay, I appreciate the help, thank you."

"You bet."

There must be a better way, Derek mumbled to himself as he walked to his car. On the way home, he started thinking about the restaurant. If she was there for lunch maybe she works around there... maybe she's a regular. He knew it was another longshot, but sometimes in life, as in business, you just have to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.

By the time he reached his apartment, Derek had come up with a plan. He hated driving downtown on a Sunday, but the main branch of the library was the only place that still kept newspaper archives on Microfiche and he was going to need all the help he could get if he was going to pull off his bluff.

That Monday, he told Amy he might be a little late coming back from lunch. As he walked into the restaurant, his previous waiter approached him. "Sir, I'm sorry but..."

Derek didn't let him finish. "I want to see the manager, now," he emphatically stated.

"I'm sorry, Sir, he's busy at the moment and you'll have to..."

"If I walk out of here, I'm going straight to the police and having you and your manager charged with aiding and abetting a kidnapper."

That stopped the pimple-faced waiter in his tracks. He stumbled for something to say, but Derek didn't give him a chance. "The woman that you ran interference for the other day kidnapped my child and she got away because of you and your boss. Now I don't give two flying fucks how busy he is, if I don't talk to him this minute, I'll be back with the police and you can both talk to them."

Derek could see he definitely had the waiter rattled; that was at least a small bit of gratification. "Please wait here, sir, I'll see if the manager has time to talk to you," he responded in a shaky voice. Within a minute, the young man was back and asked Derek to follow him. Derek boldly walked into the manager's office and sat down like he owned the place. There was a nameplate on the desk in front of him announcing Stanley Murphy. He didn't know how much the waiter told him, but Mr. Murphy showed no fear, only anger.

"Okay, what's this about?" he asked.

"This," Derek stated as he took copies of two newspaper articles out of his pocket and laid them on the manager's desk.

There was complete silence in the room for a few minutes while the manager read the articles. "It says here you were a person of interest in their disappearance."

"Yes, because the husband is always the first suspect in a situation like that, but as you can see by me sitting here in front of you, there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on my part and I was completely cleared. Unfortunately, by the time the cops got off their duffs and actually started investigating, Anne had made a clean getaway.

"I haven't seen or heard of her in almost eighteen years until the other day in this restaurant. Notice the part about a warrant being issued for kidnapping? As you may or may not know, there is no statute of limitations for kidnapping. I could have caught her myself that day if you and your waiter hadn't interfered."

"How were we supposed to know the situation?"

"I don't know, maybe she's your girlfriend and you knew all along. Maybe you helped her get away on purpose."

"That's ridiculous; I'm married with two kids. I don't..."

"It wouldn't be the first time a married man was getting some nookie on the side," Derek challenged. "Just like me, whether you did anything wrong or not, the suspicion is there. I think, at the very least, the cops should be informed of you stopping me from pursuing the kidnapper of my child. I'm sure they'll have some questions. The story might even find its way into the papers; some of those investigative reporters are pretty damned good."

"All right, you and I both know the only reason we stopped you was to prevent you from leaving before paying your bill. What..."

"Not only MY bill, but the bill of my son's kidnapper as well, nothing like rubbing the victim's face in the mud, is there. Did you and she enjoy a good laugh together after that?"

Derek could see from the expression on his face that the manager recognized the potential for some very bad press over the situation. "Okay, what do you want, money I suppose?"

"Jesus, you're as dumb as a rock. How'd you ever get to be a manager? We're talking about my son here. No, I don't want money, I want your cooperation. I want to know if she's been in here before, either her or the boy. I want to know if you have credit card receipts for her."

Derek pulled out an old picture that he used to print posters asking for information on her whereabouts at the time of the crime. "Here," he said handing it to the manager, "I realize it's an old picture, but she hasn't changed that much. I want you to ask your staff if they know her or have seen her in here before, and if she comes in again, I want a call immediately. Here's my business card, my cell number is on the back. Now, do I have your cooperation or not?"

"Yes, of course, and you have my apologies. We had no idea what was going on the other day."

Without accepting the apology, Derek stood to leave then stopped. "You know what, I changed my mind. I do want money; I want to be reimbursed for her bill."

The manager gave Derek a small nod and reached into his desk drawer for a piece of paper and wrote on it. He then hit his intercom button. "Julie, ask Billy to come into my office, please." A minute later the pimple-faced waiter was there. "Billy, take eighty dollars from the register, give it to this gentleman, and replace it with this money voucher." He looked back to Derek, "Go with Billy and he'll give you your money back. I'll show the picture to our staff and ask if anyone has seen her in here before or has any information on her. I'll get back to you with whatever I find out." Derek thanked him and followed the waiter.

Amy saw the smile on his face as he walked in, "Good news?"

"Not really but I got my money back from the restaurant."

"Oh, I thought you might have found a lead on your son."

"No, I took your suggestion and went to the library, but found out there're probably a thousand high schools in the area. The clerk over there suggested I go online. Later today, I'm going to talk with Paul, the computer programmer down the hall, and see if there's some way he could make an algorithm, or whatever they call it, to scan all the graduates named Scott. If I have to do it myself in my spare time, it'll take months."

When Derek walked into Paul's office later that day, he found him sitting behind his desk. "Hey, Derek, sit down; what can I do you for?"

"Paul, I need your help with a personal matter, I'd pay you, of course.

"What do you need, Derek?"

"I'm looking for an eighteen-year-old boy named Scott. I figure he probably graduated from one of the surrounding high schools within the last two years. I need a program that will scan the high school graduates and select all the Scotts."

"How many schools are we talking about?"

"I don't know. I was talking to a clerk at the library and he thought there might be as many as a thousand."

That got Paul's attention. "A thousand schools?" he almost yelled while sitting up in his chair. "When you said surrounding schools, I thought you meant ten or fifteen. Obviously, I haven't looked into this yet, but I'm guessing something like this would take weeks maybe months to write. It's not something I could do out of friendship, Derek. Even if I cut my regular freelance fee in half, this could run into thousands of dollars. Do you even have a list of the schools?"

"No, I thought you could just give the computer a circumference in miles or something."

"Derek, ever hear the term, garbage in, garbage out? The more information you feed the computer, the more accurate the analysis will be."

There was no way Derek could hide the disappointment on his face. His friend recognized it right away. "Look, I'll do some research and see what all this would entail; maybe there's a shortcut I can find, I'll check and let you know."

Once again, Derek felt as if he'd hit another brick wall. "I'd really appreciate anything you can do, Paul. This could be my kid." Derek went on to tell his friend the rest of the story and left with Paul promising to do his best.

As Derek returned to his office, his secretary could see he was losing hope. As he sat down behind his desk he leaned back, closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down.

"What'd he say?"

He opened his eyes and saw his secretary standing in the doorway. "He wasn't real encouraging. He said it could take months and cost me thousands. I have to face it, Amy; I blew it. Seeing me like that probably spooked her. She's most likely three states away by now and I'm not even positive the kid is mine."

"Derek, if the kid wasn't yours why would he call you all those names? I think it's obvious his mother lied to him and poisoned him against you, probably to make sure he'd never get curious and start looking for you."

"That's a good point, but even so, I'm dead in the water here, Amy. Even if I hired a private investigator, I don't have anything in the way of information to even get him started. If that kid is my son, she's changed his name. She probably changed her own as well. She could be known as Gertrude Schwarzenegger for all I know."

Amy tried to think of something positive to say but couldn't. "I'm sorry, Derek. I know this has to be really hard on you."

"Oh well," he replied, "I actually gave up trying to find her a long time ago. I'll admit, seeing her again got my hopes up, but I'm right back to square one. Paul said he'd look into it, who knows, maybe he'll pull a rabbit out of his hat."

*****

It had been three weeks since the incident in the restaurant, but although his mother refused to talk about it, Scott couldn't let it go. It was just such a coincidence. They'd have never been that far from home if it hadn't been his birthday.

He needed a car, but his mother could barely afford her own, let alone buy him one; however, a friend had a ten-year-old Chevy for sale. Not only would the owner give him a good deal on it, but she was also willing to let him pay it off in monthly installments.

Even though neither his mother nor Scott had all the money for the down payment yet, it was his birthday and she wanted him to at least see it and be able to test drive it. On the way back home, the restaurant was a spur-of-the-moment decision. They were hungry and his mom thought it looked like a nice place to eat.

The fact that she pulled him from the restaurant before he was finished telling his old man what he thought of him still gnawed at him. Scott wondered if the SOB ate at that restaurant often. Now that he had his own car he had the means to go back, but it was almost an hour and a half drive... was it worth taking a chance?

Monday of the following week, Derek was sitting at his desk when he heard his cell phone ringing from the pocket of his sport jacket hanging over the back of his chair. "Hello."

"Mr. Haynes, this is Stanley Murphy, the manager at DeMar's."

"Yes, I know who you are, what's up?" The manager had already told him a couple of weeks prior that his staff had no information on the woman or the boy so Derek was a little surprised to hear from him again.

"The boy who you were inquiring about is in the restaurant."

"Right now?"

"Yes, he came in earlier, looked around, and asked a few questions but left. He came back a few minutes ago and ordered lunch. Billy spotted him. He's positive it's the same kid. Billy heard him ask for a table that faces the door and says he looks up every time he hears it open."

"Don't let him leave," Derek said while jumping up and rushing for the door of his office.

"Mr. Haynes, I don't want a spectacle in my restaurant. Please do not confront him here."

Derek stopped for a second. It was a reasonable request. "Okay, you know Topel Park; it's right around the corner from you."

"Yes, of course."

"Tell him I'll be sitting on the bench near the tennis courts in ten minutes."

"Okay, I tell him myself."

"Oh, and do one more thing for me... "

"Amy," he said on the way out, "I'm going to be out of the office for a while. I'm not sure how long. I'm very possibly going to meet my son. I don't have time now but I'll let you know what's going on when I get back."

"Okay, Derek... good luck," she yelled to his back.

As Derek sat on the wooden bench to wait, he couldn't believe how nervous he was. He looked down at his shaky hands. Calm down, he told himself. Just as he took a couple deep breaths to quiet his nerves, he saw the figure of a young man walking his way. He stood and took one more deep breath.

"You're really here," was the young man's opening salvo, "I didn't think you had the guts."

"I could say the same about you after calling me all kinds of names and then running off before I could answer you."

"I didn't run off, my mom pulled me away before I hurt you," he replied with bluster.

"Yes, your mother, my ex-wife, who kidnapped my child almost eighteen years ago and who I haven't seen since."

"She didn't kidnap me; she ran for her life. She's terrified of you, but I'm not."

Derek realized they were getting nowhere. "Okay, let's both take it down a notch, all right? Let's have a seat; I know you must have a ton of questions and so do I."

They both kept a wary eye on each other as they sat. "First of all, James..."

"My name ain't James, it's Scott, you should know that."

"Yeah, I heard your mother call you Scott in the restaurant. That was a little confusing. I assume she changed your name to make it harder to find her. When we first knew she was pregnant, she wanted to name you James after her grandfather if you were a boy. I agreed, your name would have been James Haynes."

"Haynes, Mom said your last name was Phillips." Now it was Scott who was confused. He reached for his wallet and pulled out the old photo he stole back from his mom when she wasn't looking. "Is this you?" he asked.

Derek took the photo and looked at it. "Oh, wow, yeah, that's me. Your grandfather took this at a party they had for us after I asked your mother to marry me." He looked up at Scott, "It was kind of a—welcome to the family—party. I'm surprised your mother let you keep this."

"She didn't know I had it.

Derek reached around and pulled out his wallet. He removed his ID and handed it to Scott. "What's this?"

"My driver's license. I want you to see I'm not lying to you about my name."

Scott took a look and handed it back. "Okay, your name is Haynes, what's that prove?"

"Your mother has evidently been telling you a lot of things, things that aren't true. In the restaurant, you accused me of beating up women. I have never ever laid a hand on any woman including your mother."

"Ah, huh, and I'm supposed to just take your word for it? I saw how scared she was of you in the restaurant that day. She wasn't acting."

"She was probably scared because there's still a warrant out for her arrest."

"Arrest... for what?"

"For kidnapping, I came home from work one day and she was gone. After a while, I became frantic. I had no idea what happened to her. I went to the police to file a missing person report but one of the cops said if I really wanted to find her, I should charge her with kidnapping. I didn't know what else to do."

Derek suddenly had a thought. "Scott, can you wait here for just a minute? I have something in the car I want to show you. It's right over there," he said, indicating the parking lot about fifty yards away, "it'll only take me a minute."

"Yeah, go ahead."

Derek half walked and half trotted to his car. He reached into the glove compartment and retrieved what he was looking for. "After I saw you in the restaurant that day, I went back there to elicit help with finding you from the manager. I copied these articles from the newspaper as proof of what I was going to tell him. The first one is almost eighteen years old," he said, handing them to Scott, "the second one was a follow up piece they wrote a year later."

Scott started to read but didn't get very far when he looked up at him. Derek knew he had reached the part that said he was a person of interest in his wife's disappearance. "In a situation like that, the cops always suspect the husband of foul play, but you're living proof of my innocence."