Fenton Hardy took a deep breath and knocked on the door of the small house. His practiced eye took in the peeling paint, cracked front walk and brown, dying grass.  It felt as if the house were cloaked in a cloud of depression.   The door was opened by a woman with dark blonde hair and blue eyes that, while not as vibrant as Laura’s or startling and intense as Joe’s, were still hauntingly familiar. 

“Fenton!” Carole exclaimed, obviously surprised to see him.  Quickly overcoming the shock, she smiled at him tentatively and Fenton was reminded that Joe had definitely gotten his smile from Laura’s side of the family.

“Hello, Carole,” he said.

“Please come in,” she opened the door a little wider. “Jeff, Fenton is here!” she called over her shoulder and then immediately turned back to him.  “Please have a seat.”

Fenton sat down in the worn, threadbare chair Carole indicated as she sat on a mismatched sofa.  He gazed about the room, noting the sparse furnishings, most of which looked as if they’d been picked up at yard sales or second hand stores.  He recalled the large, beautifully furnished house in the well-to-do section of Bayport that the Cutters had owned.  He’d been a little jealous the first time he saw it, and hoped Laura would be happy with the home they were barely able to afford on the corner of High and Elm streets.  Glancing at Carole again, Fenton was surprised to feel a rush of sorrow drowning out the anger he’d expected upon seeing his sister-in-law again.  She was only a few years older than Laura but it appeared that while time had been kind to his wife, it had taken a toll on Carole.

A few seconds later Jeff appeared, and took a seat next to her, grasping her hand tightly.  As he met Jeff’s eyes, the bitterness Fenton always felt at the mere thought of him appeared for the briefest of seconds and was quickly replaced by… sadness?  He frowned inwardly.  He was used to anger and righteousness whenever he thought about the Cutters. Where were these new and disconcerting feelings coming from?  Pushing them aside, he forced his attention back to the reason he was there. 

“I found something in Kevin’s house,” Fenton began. “A CD.”

“A CD?” Carole repeated, puzzled.  “He has hundreds of CD’s.”

“This one was… different.”  Fenton explained. 

Taking a deep breath, he explained how he’d found the CD, what led him to take a closer look at it and what he discovered when he did.  He told them of the drastic difference in the amounts on the CD said and those on the Myelin website said.  When he finished, Carole was staring at him blankly. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Carole said, her brow furrowed in confusion.  “What does any of that have to do with Kevin’s disappearance?”

Jeff replied before Fenton had a chance to, and he sounded utterly defeated.  “He’s saying Kevin stole the money from the employees pension fund - and then disappeared.”

Carole’s eyes grew huge as she stared at Fenton and he almost flinched.  He’d seen the exact same look in his wife’s eyes a little over a year earlier, on the night he told her Joe had killed a man in cold blood.  Just as he had then, he rushed forward with what little evidence he had, certain it proved his theory right.

“Carole, I’m sorry but the evidence suggests Kevin embezzled over half a million dollars from the employee pension fund,” he tried to explain. 

“I don’t care what your evidence suggests,” she said evenly, cutting him off.  “Kevin would never steal.  Ever.  Even when we were at our lowest point, when Kevin was going to school and working full time to put food on the table, he did NOT steal.  He’s the only one of us who is doing well, financially.  If he didn’t steal then, why would he start now?”

“I don’t know. But there’s been no sign of foul play, no ransom demands… nothing.  It’s the only logical conclusion,” Fenton replied.

Carole held his gaze and this time he did shrink back ever so slightly.  ‘Déjà vu,’  he thought watching the emotions play across her face – disbelief and then anger, quickly followed by absolute conviction.  He could almost swear he was looking at his wife.  Despite all the evidence against Joe, Laura hadn’t believed for one second that he was guilty.  And she had been right. 

“My son is not a thief,” Carole stated.  “I don’t care how logical your conclusion is, or what kind of evidence you think you have.  Kevin did not steal money from anyone.”

Suddenly Laura’s voice was ringing in his ears, as if she were right next to him.

“I don’t care what you saw.  I know my son.  He is not capable of murder under any circumstances.  Joe is innocent.”

Laura had been steadfast in her conviction, in her belief in Joe.  It didn’t matter to her how many eyewitnesses there were; nor did it matter that her husband and elder son were among them.  As Fenton stared back at his sister-in-law a thought blossomed and immediately it nagged at him – the evidence had been wrong before.  Was it wrong again?

“We hired you to find our son,” Carole’s voice brought him back to the present.  “Are you going to do that or not?” she asked point blank.

“Yes, of course.  I just wanted you to be prepared for what could happen when I do find him,” Fenton replied.  “I’ll have to inform the Phoenix police department and Myelin Manufacturing about what I’ve found.  When Kevin returns, he may very well be facing criminal charges.”

Carole stood and looked down on him.  “My son is innocent.  Just find him.  Once he’s home, we’ll deal with the rest of it.” 

*****

“I don’t know, Sam,” Fenton sighed into the phone.  He was once again seated at the small desk in his hotel room, eating a bland room service meal and wishing he were home sharing a leisurely dinner with his wife.  Between bites, he was bringing Sam Radley up to date on what he’d discovered that day.  “Why would he have that CD at his house if he wasn’t involved in the theft?”

“If he did steal the money, why would he leave it there for anyone to find?”  Sam countered.  “Other than that disc, he’s made a perfect getaway.  Seems awfully sloppy.”

“Maybe he had an accomplice.  Someone who planted the disc there so when the theft was discovered, suspicion would automatically fall on Kevin.”

“That’s possible,” Sam agreed.  “But there’s one more scenario you need to consider.”

“I know…” Fenton sighed.  “Kevin accidentally stumbled onto the theft and was disposed of.”  He knew he had to consider the possibility, but so far he’d been avoiding it.  He’d prefer Kevin were the thief; at least then he’d still be alive. 

“I take it you didn’t mention that to Jeff and Carole.” 

“No.”  He sat back, running a hand through his hair, frustrated.  “The only thing I have to go on is that CD and it really doesn’t prove anything.  And no matter how I feel about them – about what happened with Joe – to tell them Kevin might have been murdered when it’s nothing more than a theory if nothing else pans out…”  Fenton stopped, confused again at the conflicting emotions he’d been feeling since talking with Jeff and Carole that afternoon.

“So what’s your next move?”  Sam asked.

“I’m going back to Myelin tomorrow and talk to Marcus Andresson again.  Tell him what I’ve found.  If I lay out all the possible scenarios to him, maybe he’ll put off calling in the police until I can find out for sure whether or not Kevin was involved in the theft.”  He stopped for a moment, hesitating. 

“What are you thinking?”  Sam prodded him. 

“I’m not really sure.  I’ve just got a gut feeling… something’s not right. There’s only a little over five hundred thousand dollars missing. If Kevin was planning to run away and start a new life, I’d think he’d take a lot more than that. 

“And that CD… It was obviously disguised to fit in with all the others, but it was so sloppy.  Every other CD was meticulously labeled.  If he didn’t want anyone to find it, wouldn’t he have made every effort to have it blend in completely with the others?  To make it as inconspicuous as possible?”

“If he didn’t want anyone to find it, he wouldn’t have left it there to begin with,” Sam said bluntly.

Fenton rubbed the back of his neck tiredly.  He didn’t like the snail’s pace at which this case was proceeding, and he really didn’t like the feelings and emotions it was dredging up.  What he really didn’t like was the way he was starting to feel sorry for the Cutter family.  He’d convinced himself that they’d been blissfully happy and content with life for the past eighteen years, and he did not appreciate reality stepping in to tell him otherwise.  Fenton was starting to regret taking the case and wished he’d referred Jeff to someone else, or at least let Sam handle it.

“Do you want me to fly out there and take over?” Sam asked, as if he knew what his friend was thinking.

Fenton very briefly considered the offer, but knew he had to turn it down.  “Thanks, but no,” he smiled.  “I agreed to find Kevin - and I will.”

“Well, if you change your mind…”

“I’ll let you know.  So what’s going on there?” he asked, wanting to be distracted.  For the next several minutes, Fenton happily listened as Sam related the boring details of the now closed workers comp case. 

*****

Joe dropped another stack of files on the large desk in the conference room and flopped into a chair.  “Ya know, I don’t remember Dad telling us about this part of the job,” he said disgustedly.

He and Frank were spending the day doing the necessary but mundane task of weeding through old files, deciding which could be boxed up for storage and which ones needed to be kept close at hand.

“You mean the mind-numbingly boring aspect of being a private investigator?” Frank grinned.

“If I wanted boring, I would’ve become an accountant,” Joe grumbled, tossing another file into the box at his feet.

“An accountant?!” Frank exclaimed, laughing.  “You can’t even balance your checkbook!”

“I’ll have you know my checkbook is balanced every month,” Joe retorted haughtily.

“Yeah, by Vanessa,” Frank snorted.

Joe grinned. “You’re just jealous that you can’t charm Callie into balancing your checkbook.”

“I am perfectly capable of balancing my own checkbook without my wife’s help,” Frank replied.  “In fact I balance hers and mine.”

“Geek,” Joe muttered under his breath.

“Jock,” Frank countered quickly.

“Nerd.”

“Pretty boy.”

“Dweeb.”

“Blonde!”

“Einstein.”

“Einstein?!”  Frank looked up laughing.  “How is Einstein an insult?”

Joe remained silent, excited blue eyes glued to his watch.  Suddenly he jumped up, papers spilling on the floor as he pumped a fist in the air, dancing around the room triumphantly.  “I win!”  Joe cried out, gloating “I win, I win, I win!”  he continued his celebration, poking a finger a Frank.  “You didn’t return the insult in the allotted amount of time – I WIN!!!”

Frank shook his head, grinning.  He had started the little game in junior high school when he saw the labels a few unkind, or simply unthinking, people had placed upon him and Joe were really getting to his younger brother.  After being told repeatedly that he was the jock while Frank was the smart one, Joe had started to believe it and began to doubt his own intelligence.

In an effort to impress upon Joe that the labels were just words and only had meaning if Joe let them, Frank had started the game of trading insults with Joe.  One of them would start and the other had to come back with a matching insult in less than ten seconds or lose the game.  Over the years, Joe was the one who usually started the game, but it was a rare occasion when he won, usually dissolving in laughter when Frank called him some obscure name he’d never even heard before.

Settling down, Joe gathered up the papers scattered about the floor and sat at the table, reaching for the half empty cup of coffee.

“Sleep okay last night?”  Frank asked quietly, now staring at the file in his lap.

The simple question caught Joe off guard and caused him to stop with the coffee cup poised midway to his mouth.  He knew the question wasn’t as innocent as Frank made it sound.  Frank was probing, in his own understated way, trying to make sure the conversation they’d had the day before had the desired result – ending the dreams that had plagued Joe the past few nights and burying the last of his fears for good.

Joe glanced at his brother and smiled.  “Yeah, slept like a baby,” he responded, taking a sip of coffee.

“Good,” Frank nodded, never taking his eyes off the file. 

Joe looked at his brother a moment longer, feeling very grateful.  He had slept well for the first time in days, and this morning felt like his old self again.  Returning his attention to the task at hand, he hoped Fenton would be able to solve the Cutter case in the next few days and return home.  Then, Joe knew, he would feel that everything was comfortably back to normal.