Read Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) for Free Online Page B

“I’ve got to run down to Englewood.”
    I hung up the phone.
    “You like movies?” I asked him.
    “Yes,” he said cautiously.
    “Old movies?”
    “Sure, sometimes.”
    “Really old movies,” I pushed. “From the Thirties and Forties?”
    “Not particularly.”
    He was beginning to look at me as if he had come to the wrong place, which was fine with me. He didn’t move so I pushed ahead.
    “How old are your children?” I asked, looking at Severtson, taking off my hat, and putting it on the desk. “You have recent pictures of them and your wife?”
    “Yes,” he said, reaching into his inside jacket pocket. “Sally said I should bring them.”
    He handed me a brown envelope with a clasp. I opened it and looked at the three pictures. There were individual color photos of a boy and a girl. Both were smiling. Neither looked at all like their father. The third photograph told me who they looked like. The kids stood on each side of their mother, who wore jeans and a white shirt tied about her belly to reveal a very nice navel. Her hair was blond, just like both kids, and all three had the same smile.
    “My daughter’s name is Sydney, after my father. She’s four. My son is Kenneth Jr. He’s six. He says he has a loose tooth.”
    “Nice family,” I said, returning the photographs to the envelope and placing it in front of me.
    “Used to be,” he said. “Then…. wherever Janice has the kids, Andrew Stark is probably with them.”
    “Friend of your wife?” I asked.
    “More than a friend,” Severtson said.
    He looked as if he were about to cry.
    “I see,” I said.
    “Stark is my partner,” he said. “We own S & S Marine on Stickney Point Road. Upscale boats.”
    “I’ve seen it,” I said.
    “I caught them on the phone. Janice didn’t deny it. She says it’s my fault, that I’ve changed, that she needs attention not grunts.”
    “Have you?”
    “What?”
    “Changed,” I said.
    “Yeah,” he said. “We’ve been married eleven years. I gained about four pounds a year. It’s in my genes. So now Andy Stark is in my wife’s jeans.”
    “You talk to him about it?”
    “They were gone before I could,” he said. “Janice left me a note saying she wants a divorce and that she’ll get back to me as soon as she’s settled somewhere. That’s what she says she wants.”
    “What do you want?”
    “My kids back,” he said. “I’d probably even take Janice back if she’d come. She’s going through some midlife thing or some woman’s thing. I don’t know. But she has no right to run away with Andy and take the kids. I want you to find them and bring them back.”
    “I can find them, maybe,” I said. “It’s hard to hide in the age of computers. But I can’t force her to come back. If she doesn’t want to come back, I can tell you where she is. It might be a good idea for you to let a lawyer know what’s going on while I’m looking.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said.
    “Did you bring the note she left?”
    He went into an inside jacket pocket and came out with an envelope. He handed it to me. It had “Ken” written neatly on the front in blue ink.
    I opened the envelope and unfolded the piece of unlined paper inside. The note was handwritten, neat, blue ink. It read: “Ken, the children and I are going. Please don’t try to find us. I’ll write to you when we are settled. I think a divorce would be for the best.” It was signed “Janice.”
    “Show this to your lawyer and start thinking about whether you want custody of your kids,” I said, returning the note and envelope to him. “That note is the start of a good case. And if she’s in a hotel room with Stark and your son and daughter, and I see them spend the night together, I can testify if it comes to that.”
    I waited to see if this was sinking in.
    “Ask my lawyer,” he said.
    “That’s what I would do.”
    “I want my kids,” he insisted. “I may want my wife, but if I can’t have her, I want Kenny