Henry Franks(32)

“Why not? It’s either that or hack their site, and I can’t do that, can you?”

“No,” he said. His shoulders slumped and he looked up at her.

“Let’s call; they’re three hours behind us.”

“And say what?”

She smiled then shook her head. “Hi, my name is Henry Franks?”

“Not a chance,” he said with a laugh. “You can call, if you want to.”

“Okay,” she said.

Henry stood up, the desk chair rolling back. He looked at her bright eyes and big smile as she stared back at him.

“I was kidding,” he said.

“Phone?” she asked.

He fished his cell out of his backpack and they sat on the floor with it as Justine dialed.

“What are you going to say?” he asked.

She shrugged as the line connected and she clicked the speaker on.

“Stanford Alumni, may I help you?”

Justine closed the phone, cutting the connection, and turned bright red. “Oh, damn, I’m sorry,” she said, laughing.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Sorry,” she said, still red, still laughing. “I’ll be serious. Seriously, I will be.”

She sat up straighter, a frown forced onto her face.

“Serious?” he asked.

“Serious.”

Justine flipped the phone back open and clicked redial. She took a deep breath as the ringing came through the speaker.

“Stanford Alumni, may I help you?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her southern drawl just a bit more pronounced than usual. “We must have gotten disconnected.”

“No problem, happens all the time.”

“I’m hoping you can help me,” Justine said. “My future father-in-law went to Stanford, and he was telling me the other day how much he regrets losing his yearbooks in a fire a while ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Well, I was thinking what a wonderful gift it would be if I could replace them for him.”

“I’m sure he’d love that. Do you know when he attended Stanford?”

Justine looked up at Henry, his fingers pressed over his mouth to keep from laughing and his skin a couple different shades of pink. He shook his head and shrugged.

“No, I’m sorry,” Justine said. “I just came up with this idea, so I’m not really sure.”

“Let me look him up and see what I can find for you. What’s his name?”

Henry grabbed a notebook out of his backpack and scrawled a name across it.

“William Franks,” she read. “Dr. William Franks.”

“A doctor? Maybe he went to our med school.”

“I’m not sure, sorry.”

“I’ll check for you. Can you hold?”

“Absolutely,” Justine said as music floated softly out of the speaker.

“I can’t believe you!” Henry whispered.

“You have a better idea?” She smiled at him, resting her fingers on his arm. “I can’t hack a computer but I definitely know how to talk.”

“Are you there?” the woman asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Justine said.

“I have 27 ‘William Franks’ at Stanford, but that’s stretching back to well over one hundred years ago. I think we can narrow that down a little. How old do you think he is?”

Justine looked at Henry, who scribbled a number down, then added a question mark after it.

“45ish?” Justine said. “Maybe. Somewhere in that neighborhood.”

“Well, undergrad might have been mid-eighties, med school late eighties. Let me check.” The clacking of keys came through the speaker as Henry wrote down the dates.

“Three for the decade of the eighties. None of them in the med school. One of them was a late-eighties undergrad so that’s probably wrong. Leaves a William Franks graduating in 1983 and 1985. Does that help?”

Justine jumped up, the phone rocking in her hand. “Yes, yes, of course. How would I be able to replace the yearbook, though?”

“The Alumni department stores leftovers offsite so I’d have to check on the year, but do you really want to order both?”

“Oh,” Justine said as she collapsed into the desk chair. She rolled over next to Henry and rested her fingers on his shoulder. “Any suggestions?”

“Can you hold a moment?”

“Yes, of course,” she said as music piped into the room. “We found him!”

“Maybe,” Henry said from the floor.

“Spoilsport.” She stuck out her tongue at him.

“Then what?”

“‘Then what’ what?” Justine asked.

“We see what he looked like; what do we do with the information?”

“Oh,” she said as the music stopped.

“Are you there?” the phone asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We do have both years in storage. Do you have an email address? I can scan their photos in and you can tell me which year you’ll need. Will that work?”

Justine rattled off her email and slowly closed the phone, a bright smile on her face. She stood up, shaking her fingers. “I can’t believe I did that! And my mom says no good can come from being talkative. Ha!”