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I read off the first few entries, “Gym, Phillies game with Petersen Concrete, Dr. Himmel—dentist, Dr. Rubin—mole check. That’s not a lot of entries. Does it jibe with his online calendar?”
“Yes. Andre will fill you in on that.”
“Here,” Andre said, coming to her side. “Those entries are in his online calendar, too. The only significant conclusion we could draw is that if you look at Sabrina’s past calendars—that is, years previous to this last one or two—he used to be better about telling her where he was going and used his online calendar less. Now he uses his online calendar exclusively.”
“So he’s keeping more to himself.”
Andre nodded. “Yes, but many of my clients are slow to adapt to the digital calendar. People still have loyalty to Filofaxes and Covey. Artists like the Hobonichi planners from Japan. Apple’s calendar isn’t the best of its apps.”
“And there was nothing unusual with respect to his Runstan meetings?”
“No, not at all. There were regular meetings with Neil Lemaire and the previous accountant.” Andre flipped through some pages and slid one across to me. “Here’s a list of all of his meetings from the digital calendar.”
“Thanks.” I skimmed it, and the entries didn’t seem odd to me, either. “The only thing new is the name of Runstan’s previous accountant, Warren Clemons.”
My father interjected, “I knew Warren.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died suddenly of a heart attack. That was when Stan hired Lemaire.”
Everyone went back to work.
I started praying.
•••
An hour later, Gabby looked up. “Okay, I think we have an answer, but you’re not going to like it, TJ.”
“Give it to me straight,” I said, my heart sinking, and everybody stopped working to listen.
“It took some doing, but we found a list of the union stewards. Ryan Martell was a union steward in the eighties. Here’s his picture from his sixty-fourth birthday party, which we got from his wife’s social media. It took us a long time to find because he has no socialmedia and he’s had two wives since then.” Gabby set down an enlarged photo.
I recognized Martell as the man in Mike Dedham’s photo, but he looked older.
Martin pointed. “This is the man in the driver’s license photo, but this one was blurry and had only half a face. I constructed the full face by taking the half face and flipping it over.” He set down another picture of a man’s face, enlarged. “Then I used software from my office, which helps our patients visualize what they’ll look like after their procedures. It even corrects details and extends fine lines, if necessary.”
I compared the photos. “They’re not the same man.”
“No, they’re not. They look very much alike, but they’re not the same. Their eyes are similar, which is what threw you off. We tend to look first at the eyes. We notice shape, color, and symmetry. It’s where we see familial similarities first. That’s a product of our DNA, but also a reflection of how we relate to one another. After we have an answer in the eyes, we tend not to look for other facial similarities or differences.” Martin gestured at the forehead of the second photograph. “The man in the driver’s license photo has a more prominent forehead than Ryan Martell’s.”
“So Fake Elliott Thompson is not Ryan Martell. That means we still don’t know the name of the man in the driver’s license.”
Martin nodded, puckering his lower lip. “Someone with facial recognition software could probably run a search based on the image in the driver’s license, but I don’t have such software.”
“I understand, thanks.”
“So how else can I help?”
“You’re not too tired?”
“For family? Never.” Martin smiled.
Gabby kissed him on the cheek.
•••
“Okay, TJ.” My father pushed his laptop away, rubbing his eyes. Stacks of manila folders and Runstan documents surrounded him, Gabby, Martin, Sabrina, and Andre.
