Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)(35)
“And people say there’s no privacy on the Internet.” When he didn’t immediately answer, she looked over. “What’s wrong?”
Ford frowned. “It says that this guy—Peter Sutter Number One—has a criminal record.” He went ahead and ran the search, which pulled up the man’s criminal history. “He served a three-year sentence for felony battery . . . Oh, and he also has two class B misdemeanor convictions for possession of a controlled substance.” His tone turned dry. “Ah, what every man hopes for in his sister’s baby-daddy.”
Leaning back in the barstool, he sighed. Great. Now he had to worry about whether he might be tracking down a criminal and bringing him into his sister’s and niece’s lives.
“It’s probably not him, Ford,” Victoria said reassuringly. She pointed to the computer. “For all you know, Zoe’s father is . . . Peter Sutter Number Six. And Peter Sutter Number Six is going to turn out to be a really good guy. He’ll be one of those dads who drives his daughter to ballet practice every Saturday morning while singing Disney songs in the car.”
“God, anything but that.”
She laughed, and their eyes held for a moment. Then she looked away and turned back to the computer. “This is great stuff, by the way. But how do you plan to figure out which one of these eleven guys is the right Peter Sutter?”
“Nicole thinks she could ID the guy from a photo, so I guess I’ll have to go to their home addresses and somehow get a picture of each of them. I’m not a professional photographer, but I know my way around a camera well enough.”
It took her a moment. “Meaning, you’re going to stake out these guys?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have much choice. Although first, I want to check out the bar where Nicole met the guy, to see if anyone knows a Peter Sutter. Maybe he’s a regular there and we’ll get lucky.”
“Huh.”
She was giving him a look he couldn’t read. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I mean . . . it’s not un-interesting, this idea of going on stakeouts and doing all this snooping around.”
His tone turned coy. “Having another hot-reporter fantasy? There’s always room in the car for two during a stakeout, Ms. Slade.”
Yep, that got him another withering look.
* * *
AFTER VICTORIA LEFT, Ford did a sweep of his loft and began packing up the Restoration Hardware boxes. The hole in his bedroom wall was patched and the shelves were installed. Now that Victoria was helping his sister and niece, he figured the least he could do in exchange was temporarily dial back the rest of his noisy home improvement projects. He’d probably gone a little overboard with that, anyway.
Besides, he wasn’t going to have time to start a new project right now—this search for Peter Sutter would likely soak up most of his spare time for the next few weeks. Not that he was daunted by the task. In fact, it felt good to be helping his sister and actually doing something. Still, he planned to reach out to an acquaintance this weekend, an FBI agent who was a friend of a friend, to see if he had any suggestions about ways to make the search for Sutter easier.
He stacked the boxes in the closet in his master bedroom, thinking that a trip to the storage room might be in order. While shifting things around to make more room, he pulled out the box his mom had given him, the one with his dad’s things. He held it for a moment, debating, then set it down on his bed and opened it.
It was a mixture of stuff—photographs, some school yearbooks, an old stamp collection he remembered his dad showing him when he was a kid. Wrapped in tissue paper was a picture frame, one that held a photograph of him and his father at the Illinois football game on Dad’s Weekend his junior year of college.
He remembered that day well. His fraternity had been tailgating in the stadium parking lot, and his dad had commandeered the grill, joking around with all Ford’s fraternity brothers and the other fathers as he cooked up burgers and brats. He’d been in a good mood then, the life of the party, hamming it up for the crowd and proudly sharing his grilling secrets.
One flip. You gotta let the meat do its thing.
Two hours and six beers later, he was “asked” by security to leave the stadium after starting a fight with an equally drunk fan of the visiting team.
Ford set the picture frame aside. He dug a little deeper into the box and smiled when he found something else—a model rocket he and his dad had built together when he was nine.
Ah, now that had been a great day.
He pulled the rocket out of the box, turning it in his hands and recalling the weekend he and his dad had spent building and painting it with painstaking care. Afterward, they’d launched it in the field next to their townhome, and all the neighborhood kids had gathered around to watch as it flew over five hundred feet into the air. His dad had high-fived him when the parachute released, and then the two of them had stood in the grass, his dad’s arm over his shoulders, watching as the rocket floated gracefully to the ground and landed without a scratch.
Clearing his throat, Ford set the rocket aside and repacked the rest of his dad’s things into the box. While stacking it in the closet, he realized he’d left one small box in his bathroom, the new towel rack he’d planned to install. He went into the bathroom to grab it and heard the sound of running water coming from the other side of the wall.