"What would you give for a reason for asking?" she asked.
"I could make up some story; maybe I'm writing a magazine piece."
"It can't hurt to try," she said as Molly stepped into my office. We tried not to look suspicious, a difficult task as we were used to working undisturbed.
"I'll get you that phone number," my wife said as she left my office.
I set about showing Molly some of our Econ Scrutiny simple chores and she was immediately interested. I described how to transfer certain data and she asked if she could help. We moved to Howie's office where she spread out the charts and papers.
"I can't have you working for free," I said with a smile. We agreed on an allowance figure and she began working in earnest.
When I returned to my office, Betsy met me, a frown on her face.
"What's the problem?" I asked. "Did you find the number?"
"Yes," she said, handing me a slip of paper. "The area code is Vermont."
"Please don't tell me it's the same area where the attempted abduction took place," I said as I rolled back in my desk chair.
"No, but Vermont is a small state so everything is relatively close. Let's hope it a coincidence." Neither of us believed that to be the case.
I glanced around. Molly was need deep in her make-work chore and Martha was feeding Claire. I picked up the phone as Betsy closed my office door and sat next to me.
A woman with a gruff voice answered for Blast Publishing. I explained I was interested in information on the now closed million dollar contest. After telling me the contest was over, something I'd just told her, she reluctantly transferred me to Irv Goldman who was in charge of the contest while it was running. I invented a tale on the fly about writing a magazine article about some of the more humorous entries. I told him I was willing to pay, for his inconvenience, to peruse all the entries he'd received. After a pause, Irv asked how much?
"A thousand dollars sounds fair, don't you think?"
"Shit," he said.
"That's not enough?"
"Naw. I just wanted to know how much I left on the table. I already sold 'em for five hundred. You're the third person who wanted them. Was I stupid or what?"
My heart sank. It was the worse news I could hear. "What did the person look like?" I asked, not hiding my disappointment.
"Just a guy. Maybe forties; I don't know. It was raining and I had to help load the boxes of that shit. I was just glad to get rid of the stuff. My boss was going make me send a form letter back to each of them until she saw how many nuts there were out there. She had a shit-fit and was desperate to dump the contest but didn't know how. Then this newspaper lady in Boston gave her an out and she jumped on it like Roy Rogers on Trigger."