“All true, all part of the whole,” she said, but still she shook her head.

“I give up.” He held up both hands, palms up.

“Think back to all those meetings we used to go to together. You always said that what you most valued-what you found most useful-was the fact that I have a-”

“Photographic memory,” Robert recalled. “It never failed to amaze me, how you could look at something one time and be able to remember everything, pull it all up a week later, if you had to. Just like a computer. Never saw anything like it.” He shook his head. “We haven’t had much cause to use that skill lately, have we?”

“Not until last night,” she told him, her eyes sparkling.

“What happened last night?” He was almost afraid to ask.

“I got Agent Parrish to show me the list.”

“The list?”

“The list of all the people who’d rented the cabin over the past ten years. Including the names and addresses of all the Sisters of St. Anthony who stayed there.”

“You have it?” His eyes widened. “Where is it?”

Susanna tapped herself on the side of the head.

“For God’s sake, Suse, write it down.” Robert all but tripped himself getting to the desk to look for a piece of paper and a pen.

“Don’t need to. It’s all right here.”

“What if you got hit by a car? Or struck by lightning?”

From the opposite side of the room, Trula cleared her throat.

“Just kidding,” he said.

“Me, too.” Susanna opened her bag and took out a sheet of paper, telling him as she unfolded it, “I couldn’t wait to get home last night to write it all down.”

She spread the paper out on the tabletop. Robert leaned closer for a better look.

“Suse, you’re a wonder. You’re irreplaceable. Amazing. You realize that if I ever see Ian again, it will be because of you.”

“Yes, I do realize it. It’s true.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I’ll think of something.” She smiled, then a second later was all business. “Okay, let’s get started. Boot up that demon computer of yours. We’re going to give those mad skills of yours a workout…”

She started out of the room ahead of him, then turned and asked, “Do you really think I have great legs?”

“World class,” he assured her. “Absolutely world class…”

Despite interruptions from Emme and Mallory, by the time Trula took a tray of lunch up to Robert’s office, the list had been narrowed down to five people who could possibly look good for the kidnapping of Ian Magellan.

“How did you figure that out so quickly?” Trula set the tray of sandwiches and fruit on the edge of Robert’s desk. “You’ve only been working on it for”-she checked her watch-“four hours and thirty-five minutes.”

“It’s actually easier than it may sound,” Susanna replied, since Robert was still focused on his findings. “We went through the list, first doing the obvious, a general search on-what else-Magellan Express. We were able to weed out several who were deceased, several others who were nowhere near Pennsylvania when the accident occurred.”

“How could you know where any of these people were on that date?” Trula frowned. Other than her email, the occasional use of Magellan Express, and a little online shopping now and then, Trula had little use for the Internet.

“Well, here, let me show you.” Robert typed in the name of one of the people from the list. He clicked a few links, then turned the monitor around to face Trula. “Here’s a picture of one of the women on board a cruise ship that was docked in Cabo, Mexico, on Valentine’s Day, 2007. As we know, the accident was on February eleventh of that year. The cruise set sail on February ninth, so we could eliminate her right away.”

Robert held up the list. “We were able to cross off a lot of names because they were in places which could easily be confirmed. Many of the nuns are teachers who were, in fact, in their classrooms on that day.”

“How could you know that?” Trula’s eyes narrowed.

“I figured out ways to… figure it out,” Robert said, averting his eyes.

“Robert, is any of this illegal?” she asked sternly.

“Well…” He cleared his throat, scrambling for the right answer. “There could be a gray area.”

“Which means that some of it’s black and white.”

“Depends on how you look at it.”

Trula sighed. “So show me one who could be the kidnapper.”

“Sure. Here’s one. Margaret Alice Davies. We haven’t been able to pin down where she was back then, but we’re still working on it.” A few keystrokes and Robert pulled up a page of entries. “She’s on the list because we weren’t able to eliminate her in any other way-former nun, no trail after December of 2006. Could be something will turn up as we proceed. But right now, could she be our girl? Sure.

“She stayed at the house the previous summer, then left the convent, so she knows the area. Might have had a key copied and kept it.” Robert looked up at Trula and explained, “The thing about that cabin is that no one went there on a regular basis. The owner didn’t bother with it-she said most of the time she pretty much forgot about it until someone asked about renting it, which she said no one ever did in the winter. So any one of these people could be the right one.”

“Like this one.” Susanna waved a sheet of paper. “The former Sister Teresa Joan LeMaster. Goes by Terry, now that she’s left the convent. Apparently she’s been in and out of St. Anthony’s for the past eight years, which tells me she’s a woman with a lot of conflict. Lives in West Virginia-not too far from the convent and the cabin. Doesn’t work, so she could have been at the cabin on that Sunday in February.”

“I’m assuming the sisters hadn’t arranged for anyone to use the cabin that weekend. I suppose that would be too easy,” Trula noted.

“Way too easy. Like I said, it was winter, remember, and the owner doesn’t rent it out during the cold months. No heat. So far, we haven’t been able to determine where Terry LeMaster was that day.”

“Well, suppose you find out all of them were close enough that day to have taken him. How are you going to narrow that down?”

“Well, for example, we can figure out which one of them has a baby that they didn’t have before,” Robert explained.

“How could you do that?”

“We can ask around their neighborhoods,” Susanna replied.

“Or we can check to see if any of them started purchasing baby supplies back in the winter of 2007,” Robert said thoughtfully.

Trula looked from Robert to Susanna and back again, then made a disapproving face. “Whatever you’re doing is illegal. I knew it.”

“Trula, kidnapping is illegal,” he said quietly. “The more we can narrow the search and hasten the time when the FBI finds the person who has Ian, the sooner we’ll have him back.”

“True. So at the very least, you should have Colin doing this sort of thing,” she admonished, tossing out the name of Robert’s former business partner, the one who even Robert acknowledged had mad scary computer skills. “At least nothing could be traced back to you.”

“Colin.” Susanna nodded. “We didn’t think of Colin.”

“Colin,” Robert repeated. “I can have him check for purchases in February 2007 as well as this current month. Just to make certain, you know…” He thought aloud.

“And he can get in and out of places, look around, and never leave a trace.” Susanna grinned. “No one will ever know that he was looking.”

“Even assuming he finds someone who’s been buying diapers for the past two years, what can you do? You’re not going to ring that woman’s doorbell and say, hey, we’ve checked your”-Trula gave him a dark look-“whatever it is you’re going to check, and by the way, I think that baby belongs to me.”

“No, of course not. Once Colin tells us who looks good, we go there, we make up an excuse, and we ring the doorbell. We see if the child is a male the right age, then we leave and we call Agent Parrish.”