So now we're on to Henry and Lori, right?” Nick put his notes aside once they'd hung up with Ali. “I see they have separate numbers. Which one do you want to call first?”

“Let's start with Henry.” Emme dialed the number, then handed Nick the phone. “He might respond better to you, being a guy.”

When no one answered, he left a message that he thought was vague enough to spark some interest, but not so specific as to scare Henry away. The call to Lori resulted in Emme leaving a message as well.

“I hope they call back,” she said as she hung up.

“You think there's a chance they won't? They were with Belinda that last day. I'd think they'd be interested.”

“You never know with kids.” Emme added, “Especially this group. I think they're a bit more suspicious than others might be because of their situation. Like Ali said, some of the families aren't happy about the kids connecting, so maybe it's tough to know who to trust when you don't know who you're dealing with.”

“Ali was okay with you.”

“I guess I hit the right note with her. You never know how it's going to go when you interview witnesses.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe we should do another email to the group. And I'm thinking that this time, the email should be from me, since I am an investigator-so the others understand that Belle really is missing.”

“Good idea.”

Emme pulled up the website and located the Donor 1735 message board.

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

“I think I'm just going to shoot from the hip. Lay it all out there.”

Deep in thought, she began to type. A few minutes later, she turned to Nick and said, “How does this sound?” and began to read:

My name is Emme Caldwell. I'm a private investigator with the Mercy Street Foundation, which is an organization that specializes in finding missing persons. Our services were requested by Nick Perone, the uncle of your donor sibling, Belinda Hudson-you know her as Belle-who was last seen on January twenty-fourth, 2009. It's been determined that she spent most of that day with several members of this board. Over the next several days, I will be contacting each of you to talk about Belle. I hope I can count on all of you for total cooperation and honesty. If you'd like to contact me, please call me at the number below. If you'd prefer to contact Belle's uncle directly, you can reach him at…”

She finished and looked up at Nick. “Does that sound okay?”

“It sounds great. Thanks for including me. At least now they'll know my earlier attempts to contact them wasn't a joke. Or the attempt of some perverted guy trying to-”

“Stop it. I realize that upset you-justifiably so-but I think we need to just chalk that up to some wiseass kid being, well, being a wiseass.”

“Agreed.”

Emme hit post and leaned back.

“I guess that will take a while to generate any activity. Let's move on to the next item on the agenda.” She picked up her list. “Aaron. First thing this morning, I reread the article about him in a magazine. I printed it out-it's here somewhere…” She thumbed through a folder that had been sitting to her left. “Here it is. Take a look at this. The kid's a genius. How he figured this out step-by-step and made it all work out is just beyond me.”

Nick took the file and began to read to himself.

“I'm running downstairs for coffee.” Emme stood and stretched. “Can I bring you a refill?”

“That would be great, thanks.” Engrossed in his reading, Nick handed her his mug without looking up. “You're right, this kid is really sharp.”

She returned some minutes later, a mug in each hand.

“Trula is feeling philosophical today,” she said as she placed both mugs on the table.

“What do you mean?” Nick asked.

Emme pointed to his mug. “‘Define the moment or the moment will define you,’” she read. “Walt Whitman.”

She turned hers around. “‘Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.’ John Lennon. Trula has a penchant for coffee mugs that have messages printed on them. She has dozens of them.”

“They all have famous quotes on them?”

“Some do. Those run from Nietzsche to quotes like,‘Talk is cheap because the supply exceeds the demand.’ Others are just plain silly. Like, ‘I see dumb people.’ Or, ‘You say bitch like it's a bad thing.’ That sort of thing.” Emme smiled. “You just never know what you're going to get.”

He took a sip and sighed. “Who cares what the coffee's in when it's this good?”

“That's pretty much my feeling, too.” She sat down. “Did you finish the article?”

“I did. You're right. This kid is beyond clever. Swabs his own DNA, sends it off to have it tested at one of those online genealogy DNA-testing services, has it matched up to anyone in the same paternal line whose DNA is on file. Apparently, there are a hell of a lot of people who have supplied their DNA to these genealogy websites. There's a place called ShakeYour-FamilyTree.com that has been running a project to collect DNA samples for the past three years, and now has a huge database available, and they're not the only place on the Internet you can go to find DNA registries. For less than three hundred dollars, you can find out if anyone matching your DNA is on record there. Anyway, this kid gets a couple of names back-their Y chromosomes were close enough to suggest they had the same very close male relative.”

“Well, father, grandfather, great-grandfather. A brother or a cousin wouldn't have done it.”

“Right. So he gets four names back, all with the same last name. So he takes that name, and the information his mother got from the clinic where she purchased the sperm, and he puts two and two and two together and gets his donor.”

“Just by knowing his donor's place and date of birth and what degree he earned in college, he found the guy. Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack. He goes to one of those online search sites, buys the names of every man who was born on that day in that place, and bingo-there's one with the name he's looking for.”

“It sounds as if his donor wasn't too upset about being found. More like he was as impressed as we are by this kid's smarts. Enough that he and Aaron have actually been able to develop a real relationship.” Nick handed the article back to Emme. “Nice to see there was a happy ending there.”

“It makes me wonder how far Belle really got with this. I'd love to know if she was successful in getting a name,” Emme said. “And if she did, did she tell any of the other kids?”

“You think they'd admit it to you, if she did?”

“I like to think someone would.”

“Maybe they're afraid you'll hassle the guy if you know who he is. Or maybe they want to contact this guy themselves and are afraid you'll scare him off. Or there could be reasons only a kid would think up.”

“So if no one admits to knowing, it could be that she didn't tell anyone. Or it could be that she didn't find him.” Emme took another sip of coffee, and found it had cooled. She drank it absently. “Supposing she did find him, but he was one of the donors who really didn't want to be found.”

“I've thought about that.” Nick leaned an elbow on the table and rubbed his chin. “Of course, that would mean that this kid at the museum was just a coincidence, right? Just some kid who thought she was cute and wanted to get a little closer. That sort of thing happens all the time.”

“I don't know how he fits in,” she admitted, “or, as you suggest, if he fits in to the rest of this at all. Generally speaking, I don't like coincidences-most cops don't-but that doesn't mean they don't occur.”

They heard a clicking sound coming from her computer.

She turned the screen slightly to eliminate the glare. “A message from Will and Wayne.”