Searching for Cate

Her last name, it turned out, was Blue. Bonnie Blue. Like the old sea chantey about the ocean. In any event, the name didn’t really fit, and there was a reason for that. As it turned out, the name wasn’t really her birth father’s, either. He’d been a would-be musician who’d billed himself as Blue in his short-lived career of going from one half-baked band to another. His real name was Jim Rollins, and his so-called career had lasted long enough to attract the attention of one Joan Haywood.

Instead of becoming a successful musician, Rollins had wound up going into life insurance and was a salesman for Gotham Life when he’d died in a three-car pileup on I-15 on his way to Las Vegas for a three-day weekend. Twice divorced, he had no children, no family that she could unearth.

Cate turned from that dead end to searching for her birth mother, Joan Haywood. The trail had brought her to Bedford, California.

Since the bureau had field offices in Santa Ana and Los Angeles, she’d decided to put in for a transfer. She’d needed a change of scenery, anyway. The Santa Ana office was closer to Bedford and to her birth mother’s last-known address, so she’d chosen the one city over the other.

Cate realized that she was gripping the arms of the chair she was sitting in when the trio walked into the office. She dropped her hands into her lap. She was going to have to work at learning to relax. Otherwise, by the time she did find her birth mother, who had moved several times in the past twenty-six years, gotten married and was now Joan Cunningham, she was going to be far too stressed out to have something good come out of the meeting.

Chapter 7

After a very poor night’s sleep during which she had woken up every hour on the hour, Cate finally gave up and stumbled into the living room of her garden apartment. She narrowly avoided tripping over a small box she’d opened some time earlier. It took her a minute to remember where the light switch was. Boxes impeded her progress to the opposite wall.

There were boxes everywhere within the two-bed-room ground-floor apartment. She’d been here almost a week now and it still looked as if she’d just arrived from San Francisco.

Cate tried to remember if she’d unpacked any paper yet besides the sheets that were with her printer. Frustrated, she went into the second, smaller bedroom, which would eventually become her office, and took a sheet right off the top.

It had taken her two trips to get everything together in one place. She’d brought her car down first, then flew back to rent the U-Haul. Whatever she couldn’t cram into it, she’d left behind. She wasn’t much on possessions, anyway. Her mother used to tell her that if you owned too much, it wound up owning you.

Fiercely independent, Cate liked being in control of everything, had been that way since her father, since Big Ted—she amended with an ironic smile—had died. She’d controlled the timing of her move down here, the method used to do everything.

Control, however, didn’t extend to unpacking within a given amount of time. That she did on a need-to-have basis. So far, beyond her computer and printer, she’d unearthed a week’s worth of clothing and her coffee-maker. Everything else she’d brought with her, besides the small amount of furniture that was now disbursed within the rooms, was still sealed away within the boxes.

Her furniture might have still been on the truck if it hadn’t been for Lydia. To her surprise, when she’d mentioned in passing that she planned to spend the weekend unloading her U-Haul, Lydia had volunteered to come over with her husband and help. She’d also volunteered Santiago and Hawkins, much to the agents’ surprise.

Cate had tried to turn down the offer, saying that it wasn’t necessary, but Lydia wouldn’t take no for an answer. From anyone.

Sometimes pushy had its place, Cate thought with a smile. She had no idea how long it would have taken her to unload the U-Haul by herself.

Making her way to the kitchen, paper still in hand, she went to the refrigerator to take out the can of coffee she kept there. If she wasn’t going back to bed, she needed a cup of coffee. Maybe several cups.

She got along well with her new partner, which was a nice bonus. And the woman’s husband was a sweetheart. The two looked perfect together, like the figures on top of a wedding cake, except far more lively and animated. Anyone looking at them knew they were in love.

She envied Lydia, envied her because she would never know what that was like, being married to someone she adored who adored her back. Her one chance had come and gone with Gabe.

“So you’re the new special agent. Read your file.” There’d been no expression on Lydia’s face when the woman had initially greeted her.

Lydia seemed to have materialized out of nowhere and looked her carefully up and down. Cate knew she was being sized up. But she didn’t have long to wait to discover what the verdict was. A smile entered Lydia’s eyes at the same time it curved her mouth.

“Pretty impressive” had been her verdict about what she’d read. “Reminds me of me.” One of the other agents in the room had punctuated her statement with “Ha!” and she’d nodded behind her. “That would be the bull pen. Don’t mind them. All thumbs and male testosterone.” She winked and her smile widened. “Nice to have another female on the team. They can get pretty rowdy sometimes.”

She wasn’t sure if Lydia was serious or joking, but she liked the woman’s friendly manner. Liked her almost instantly because Lydia didn’t seem worried about guarding her territory, she’d made it instantly clear the job was about teamwork. Lots of it.

“This thing gets uglier by the day,” Lydia had warned her, dropping off a thick-looking file on her desk. She discovered that all the notes taken on the case that hadn’t made it onto the computer were stuffed in there. “It’s about all the awful things in society the rest of the world doesn’t want to hear about. Kidnapping, child prostitution. The worst of it is, we still don’t have much, despite all the hours we’ve all put in.” Lydia placed her hand on the file before Cate had been able to open it and asked, “Are you up to it? Because if you’re not, I can recommend having you transferred to something that isn’t quite as gut-wrenching to deal with.”

It was a first. No one had ever given her a choice, considered her reaction before. It made her feel instantly accepted. She’d looked at Lydia and said, “I’m up to it.”

Lydia had nodded and smiled. “Good.” She removed her hand from the file.

In a way, Cate thought now, Lydia reminded her of a slightly older version of herself. Very together, very efficient, and driven. All qualities she could relate to. Except perhaps the “together” part, she mused. She still tried to project that image, but inside she felt like a little girl lost, waiting for someone to find her.

Knowing that no one would.

It was up to her to find them. Or in this case, her birth mother. Until that was resolved, she felt as if she was just hovering around, unable to find a place to really settle.

Which, she supposed, was one of the reasons most of the boxes still remained packed. It wasn’t that she intended to pick up and go somewhere at a moment’s notice, but she couldn’t quite get herself to unpack and make herself at home here, because she wasn’t certain that “here” would be home.

Besides, she was far too busy to unpack more than a few things at a time. Whatever time she had away from the job and the man-hours it demanded, she spent on the computer, trying to track down the whereabouts of one Joan Haywood, now Cunningham.

It was far from easy. She was good, but she wasn’t in Jeremy’s league. From what she had managed to piece together, both while in San Francisco and now here, her birth mother had gone on to have a regular life after she’d given away her firstborn. Joan Haywood had attended a local four-year college, gotten married in her senior year and then moved down to Southern California.

Her husband, Ron, a former air force pilot, now aerospace engineer, had gone where the jobs were. There’d been five addresses in the past twenty years. And a sixth she couldn’t find. The last known address had been in Bedford, even though he was working for an aerospace company in El Segundo. Having gotten familiar with the area, she could appreciate that it was quite a drive. One he didn’t have to make for long. Raytheon had laid him off. And then he and Joan, along with their children, had disappeared, going down somewhere beneath the radar. They’d moved, leaving no forwarding address.

Facing a dead end, she’d turned to Jeremy, her computer fairy godfather. In part, he was responsible for her broken night’s sleep. Jeremy had called yesterday, saying that he’d managed to hack into records that were far off the beaten path. The records testified that a Ronald Cunningham had undergone a top-secret clearance check a little more than two years ago. The check had been requested by one of the leading companies in defense. When Jeremy had mentioned the name, she’d recognized it instantly. A major branch of the company was domiciled in Orange County, just north of Bedford.

It took Jeremy a little while to ascertain that the social security number for Ron Cunningham and Ronald Cunningham were one and the same. To elude detection, his “break-ins” could last only ninety seconds. Gleaning information had been slow-going. He’d waited until he had more before calling Cate.

When he did, it was well past midnight. Closer to two in the morning. “Got an address for you, Cate. You ready to take it down?”

She’d been in a deep sleep when the phone rang. It had taken her a couple of breaths to get her mind reasonably in gear. It took a little longer to find a writing utensil and paper.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked.

Jeremy was a self-described insomniac who prowled chat rooms in the dead of night when nothing else presented itself as a diversion. This was a diversion.

“Not when something’s on my mind. I’ve been looking for this woman for you since you left our field office. By the way, how is it down there?”

Her first response would have been “chaotic,” but that would have been describing her life, not conditions. She gave the standard reply. “Weather’s perfect.”

Jeremy made a little disparaging noise with his teeth and lips. “Huh. It has no character.”

She thought of the cold, clammy winters, the sticky, humid summers she’d left behind. Watching leaves turn color did not balance out the minuses. “That’s okay. I’ve got character enough to spare.”

There was no paper to be had, but the local newspaper caught her attention. Scooting off the bed, Cate bent down to capture a corner of the paper and pull it back to her.

In a pinch…

She spread the paper on her lap, her pen poised over one of the margins. “Okay, shoot.”

Jeremy recited the address and phone number he’d found in the top-secret files. He turned down her offer to pay him for the information. This was what he did, he told her, he challenged himself. Not for any personal or monetary gain, but just to see if he could do it.

Grateful for his help, Cate jotted the address and phone number down along the margins of the newspaper. She did her best to print carefully. Someone once told her that her handwriting looked as if a spider had been dipped in ink and then allowed to run pellmell over a page. Cate fervently hoped she’d be able to make it out in the morning,

“That’s it for now,” Jeremy had concluded.

She put the pen back down on the nightstand. “Thanks, Jeremy. I owe you one.”

She heard him laugh shortly. “After all the work I’ve put in, you don’t owe me just one. You owe me your firstborn.”