The Case of the Vanished Lover
a Stealthboxxer Mystery



Chapter 4


By the time I left the museum and library it was almost 5:00pm and it was already mostly dark. The sun seems to not want to hang around this time of year and makes for some drearily short days. The drizzle was turning to a half hearted rain. The old seaman had left, the scattered crumbs of bread left among the white splotched paving stones in front of the museum the only evidence of his prior presence. The gulls having got all there was had moved off to bother other people for handouts, the only evidence of their presence- the splotches.

I drove back to the center of town and up by the Capitol to see if I could catch my FBI contact by the federal building. It was a Saturday but that never stopped the Bureau from doing business. My friend had recently been promoted to head up a small group of agents and he sometimes handled the payroll processing for his group on Saturdays mid month.

Actually we were not friends at all, we just tolerated one another and sometimes shared information when it was mutually beneficial. We had met while investigating the same case about 5 years ago. I had been hired by an insurance company to investigate a possible fraud on a fire claim by a local restaurant. The Bureau was investigating a money laundering operation that had reportedly been going on in the same restaurant. I discovered that the owner of the restaurant had fled the state to Illinois just after he cashed the insurance check and had hooked up with the Chicago mob. George Masser, my counterpart in the Bureau had tracked down a twice convicted pyro who had been hired by the restaurant owner to torch the building. I gave Masser the location in Illinois where the restaurant owner had fled and he gave me the information on the torcher. The Bureau was able to pick up the restaurant owner in Chicago and convict him of organized crime activities and I was able to prove arson to the insurance company. Masser got a commendation; I got a 5% recovery fee from the insurance claim. Masser didn't like private investigators at all he feels they are all disingenuous interlopers on his domain.
Freelance detectives unworthy of a badge that mostly got in the way of official investigations in his eyes. Truth is, no single investigator, whether private, municipal, or federal can cover every angle. Sometimes we need each other as this case with the restaurant owner proved. It proved it to me anyway. I take help wherever I can find it. Masser had a different way of looking at it.

I drove by the parking lot of the federal building. There were five cars in the lot. All of them nondescript black Oldsmobuick sedans. Masser had been moved to the third floor with his promotion to supervisor. I saw that one office was still lit on the third floor. I made a u-turn and parked along the street opposite the parking lot and waited. I figured that he would not work past 5:30, what federal employee ever does, even a Bureau employee and especially on a Saturday? I watched the lit office and soon I saw the figure of a man retrieving a coat and hat from a rack next to the window and then the light went out. A few minutes later at precisely 5:33pm George Masser appeared on the side walk next to the federal building and walked toward the parking lot. I pulled my car into the parking lot and intercepted him before he crossed to his vehicle.

I rolled down the window and leaned out. "Agent Masser, can I have a word with you?"

"It's after 5:30 Stealthboxxer. I have an appointment with a steak and a cold beer. I don't have time for your amateur detective nonsense. You better make this quick."

"What do you know about a strange little lonely lady who recently lost her man and can't seem to find him? Has the local Bureau been contacted by such a woman about a missing person in the last couple of months? This lady would be wearing a very old dress and a black cloak and sound like a real Victorian lady."

"Oh, so you've taken the case of Miss Lonely Heart, have you? Seems about right for you, Stealthboxxer, a hopeless case for a hapless sap. Yeah that broad showed up here about 3 days ago demanding the Bureau investigate the possible kidnapping of her boyfriend. She claimed that the captain of some ship had taken him away from her and she `simply shalln't live without him.' She actually said that."

"Your guys get anywhere in the investigation?"

"Are you kidding? That dame was a nut case. She wouldn't even tell us the name of the man she was looking for. She never stopped crying the whole time she was here so I figured she was some crazy bird that had escaped from Western State Insane Asylum. I had one of my guys escort her to an interrogation room while I called up there to Steilacoom to see if she fit the description of anyone who had broken out. She didn't fit any descriptions of escapees so I advised her to see a doctor and sent her away."

"So you didn't find her story credible at all?"

"Look, Stealthboxxer, you may have time to play hide and seek with some crazy dame but the Bureau has real business to investigate. You are some sucker, Stealthboxxer. I hope you you're not expecting to be paid by that looney. Hah, hah! Looney! Like I said, I have a dinner date and I'm already late so if you will excuse me…"

"Alright, Masser, enjoy your steak." He walked off and got in his car. I wasn't about to tell him that she had already paid me $900 in gold coins. I wasn't about to tell him about what I had uncovered about the Geraldson Corporation and the Escalate either. There didn't seem to be anything illegal going on so far as I could tell and since the Bureau wasn't looking for this lost man there was nothing they had that could help me right now and there was also no need for me to give them any information on what I had found out. I could always get Masser involved later if I needed to. He was always looking for a way to impress his superiors. If I discovered anything illegal and tipped Masser off on it he would end up looking like a hero in his bosses' eyes. That's how our relationship worked, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

I drove over to the local market and picked up some groceries to take to my apartment. I had been living off of canned sardines and stale saltine crackers for the last week and having some decent food in the place sounded good for a change. The market was about halfway up the hill on the east side of town. Fresh oranges were in from California and there were a few without mold. I picked out a half dozen good ones. I picked up a slab of bacon and a dozen eggs, a few cans of beans, a pound of stew meat, some carrots, potatoes, celery and a couple of onions. I got a half pound bag of ground coffee, a half gallon of milk, and a loaf of bread. All for about $6.50. Enough for a few days for one man.

On the way back to my place I stopped by Lu Tan's cleaners. Mr. Tan only kept his shop open till 3pm on Saturdays but I saw that the lights were on upstairs where he and his family lived in the apartment above his shop so I decided to pay him a personal visit. He was angry at first for disturbing his dinner but the $20 gold piece changed his tone and he smiled as he led me downstairs to his shop and retrieved my laundry. My bill was only $8 but I let him keep the change as a sort of interest payment and advance payment on my next cleaning. Mr. Tan and I had an interesting relationship: he would do my cleaning and I would pay him about once a month and get my clothes back when I could afford to. He didn't seem to mind too much as long as I paid him a little extra for his troubles.

I arrived back at my apartment and checked to see if the landlord was still on the hunt. The light was out in his apartment by the front entrance and his car was not there. Likely he got some money from my neighbor and was out to dinner with his wife. I went up to my place on the third floor and put my groceries away in the icebox. I tuned the radio to some jazz and made a pot of stew. After eating my dinner I made a pot of coffee and got out my notes on the investigation so far.

This Geraldson Corporation was something of a mystery. How could a large corporation that obviously had so many holdings stay so low profile. If what I found was true it looked as though R.J.Geraldson had managed to find gold in California and Alaska a year or more before others did and well before the official gold rushes occured and masses of people flooded the gold fields. With a head start like that they must have excavated more gold than any other mining group in both locations. With that much gold coming in they would have been one of the largest and richest mining companies in the world. Yet, still, they were relatively obscure. No history books I had ever read mentioned them at all. Indeed, a mystery. And one I would surely investigate further.

And what of Sam McGaw? Who was this captain of the 19th century Escalate and how did he figure into the Geraldson picture. He obviously left the Escalate at some time and started that logging operation out of Bordeaux with Geraldson's money. What prompted him to go into the logging business? And how did he, or more likely, his descendant of the same name, come to be captain of the modern Escalate? What did McGaw have to do with Dravus Limited beyond being the captain of their ship?

Boiling down all of these mysteries still left me with one question: what did all of these involvements with Geraldson, Dravus, McCaw and gold mining and logging have to do with this nameless lost man? I was beginning to feel like Masser was right, this case was hopeless. How could I possibly find this man without even a name. Maybe he was connected to all of this Geraldson stuff, who knows. But without a name I was just digging up mole holes. Sure, I was uncovering loads of dirt, but I wasn't really finding anything important to the case as far as I could tell.

I decided that I would continue the investigation in the direction I was headed until either the money ran out or I found something solid. Miss Lonely Heart had said that she would be back in one week. Maybe she could give me some real information to realty to what I had discovered myself. At least a name. And, maybe, if she wanted me to continue the investigation after she heard what I had found so far she would pay me more money.

Regardless, tomorrow was Sunday and even private investigators need a day of rest. I decided to take a day off from the case and spend some time on personal matters. I decided to make a drive down to Chehalis and visit my grandfather. I would start fresh on the case again on Monday morning with a visit to the regional offices of Geraldson Corporation.


To be continued . . .







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