“Okay. I know.”
“You all right?”
No. “Yes. Fine. Good night.”
I hung up.
The microwave was beeping. I ate the soup by rote, not tasting. Drank a glass of water and headed to my computer.
At Google I searched for Morton Leringer.
The Wikipedia site for Morton came up near the top. I clicked on it and found a long article, split into sections. Leaning forward, I read.
Morton was born and raised in upper state New York, the son of a factory worker. His mother died when he was a teenager. At twenty-one he started his first company, selling homemade bread to the neighborhood. That business grew into the present-day Leringer’s, a 500-million-dollar company.
Of course, Leringer’s. Various foods and spices found in gourmet and organic stores. I’d eaten their bread for years.
I read further.
Morton later diversified, starting and buying more and more businesses under his umbrella company, ML Corporation. That, I’d never heard of. But I was familiar with some of the companies it owned—and they were numerous. Companies in the tech field, security, finances, consulting, food and beverage, the housing market, and appliances, and widgets, and carpeting/flooring. Nurseries, and furniture, and steel. What business wasn’t Morton into?
But no electrical company.
And nothing in his personal life that seemed to connect with Raleigh, North Carolina.
Morton’s wife had died from a stroke two years ago. They had two children, Cheryl and Ben. Both now in their forties. I couldn’t tell where they lived, or what Cheryl’s current last name was. If she ended up living in Raleigh, North Carolina . . . I shook my head. Mom would just say, “I told you.”
Where to go next? Find out more about Cheryl and Ben?
First I searched Raleigh. All the hits on the first few pages were for businesses of that name or the North Carolina city. I tapped my desk, unsatisfied. Opened a new tab and went to weather.com. Typed in Raleigh. Up came additional choices for cities in Illinois, Mississippi, North Dakota, and West Virginia. And one in Canada.
I sat back and looked at the clock on my desk. Almost 10:00. Tiredness crept over me, but I knew I’d never sleep.
The gun.
I pushed away from my desk and took the small metal box down from my closet shelf. Inside sat a Chief’s Special Model 36. Easy to shoot, holding five bullets. Years back Jeff took me to a shooting range. He explained about the gun’s double action—how it didn’t need to be cocked to fire it. I’d never held a gun before and didn’t like them to this day. But I’d learned to shoot—sort of. “Well,” Jeff had said with his dry humor, “if a bad guy with two heads breaks into the house, you’re bound to hit one of them.”
Wincing at the task, I loaded the gun. The box went back on the shelf. The weapon I laid beside me on the desk.
I returned to my research.
For the next two hours I ran down the websites for each of Morton’s companies. I read about each one—where it was located, what its services or products were. I was looking for a connection between any of them and one of the Raleigh cities.
I found none.
Next I looked up each Raleigh. The Illinois town was tiny, with 700 people in the 2010 census. The Raleigh in Mississippi was the county seat of Smith County, with a population of 1,462. Raleigh, North Dakota, counted a mere 92 people in the last census. The Raleigh in West Virginia turned out to be a county, with a population of close to 80,000 living in cities with names such as Lester, Mabscott, and Rhodell. I’d never heard of any of them.
Raleigh, Canada, was a tiny place on the far eastern edge of the country. The population was somewhere in the 200s.
All small areas. Not places you’d think a large company would be headquartered.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Exhaustion spread through my limbs. The Raleigh that Morton mentioned most likely referred to the North Carolina city. Still, none of his companies seemed to have ties to that area.
My mind chugged, unable to think anymore. My body began to relax . . .
My head fell forward.
I jerked up. Threw an anxious look over my shoulder, but saw mere empty house. Mom was quiet. Sometimes, even with her door closed, I could hear her snore. Not tonight.
Was it my imagination, or did the night . . . vibrate? I ran both hands over my face, as if to scrub clear thinking back into my brain. My gaze landed on the gun. Scary thing. Why had I taken it out of its box? Men with weapons had come to my house, yes. But I’d given them the flash drive—and they left. If they wanted anything more, if they wanted to hurt me, they’d have done it right then.
But what if those two men had watched my house and seen me and Mom drive off in a deputy’s car? They’d wonder why we’d talked to law enforcement. If we’d told the sheriff’s department something we hadn’t told them.