Daytime television sucks.

Oh, a little bit of it isn’t too bad, Steve thought but it wasn’t something that he wanted to depend on day after day after day. Usually he could manage to shut the damn thing off after the Today show, which struck him as something for bored housewives, mixed with “news lite,” but sometimes he just didn’t feel like shutting it off. Leaving it on was usually a mistake; most of the time it didn’t take him long to get disgusted with the inane babble. When that happened, most days he’d go and read a book or spend time on the ’net, haunting the help wanted pages. However, this particular morning the well-packed cute little brunette on the cooking show was wearing a top cut a little lower than normal. She also was spending a lot of time leaning over a mixing bowl, her cleavage exposed to the maximum that the network censors would allow, so that held his attention more than usual. Even so, he was disgusted with himself, but realized that when he was out of work after having been a hard worker for years, sometimes it didn’t take much to distract him.

The last thing he was expecting was to hear the doorbell ringing.

It was probably some salesman, he thought. Normally that would be a pain in the neck, but after the last few days the irritation would be welcome. The last time he’d talked to anyone it had been the checkout girl at the grocery store a week or so back, so he was ready for some human contact – any kind of human contact at all. He left his coffee cup on the kitchen table, clicked off the TV, and headed for the door.

As Steve wondered what they’d be selling – and not caring too much as it would be something he didn’t need – he opened the door to a bright, sunny day, and was just a little surprised to see a good-looking blonde wearing wraparound mirror sunglasses and a very severe brown tweed business suit. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Sir, are you Mr. Steven Taylor, Junior?” she asked in a very neutral tone. In spite of himself, he took a little better look at her; she was not merely blonde but very blonde, her tightly done hair all but white, except for a tinge of yellow; her skin was almost pure white, too. Late twenties, early thirties, he thought, about his age or a little less, give or take. She seemed slender, but with the suit she had on it was hard to tell much more about her shape than that.

“That would be me,” he replied. Just at first glance she had “lawyer” written all over her – and at that point in his life “lawyer” seemed to be spelled “t-r-o-u-b-l-e.” He didn’t think he was in trouble himself, but after the way the company he had worked for collapsed so suddenly, he could imagine that there was a hell of a lot of it out there somewhere. It seemed likely that he could somehow end up caught up in it even more than he already was.

“Mr. Taylor, sir,” she said in a no-nonsense tone, “Just to make sure I have the right person, did you graduate from high school in Bradford, Michigan in 2002?”

“Yes,” he told her. “It sure seems like a long time ago. What can I help you with?”

“Mr. Taylor, my name is Ann Rutledge.” She handed him a driver’s license; it showed her name, and an address in Wychbold, Michigan, a town about an hour east of Bradford. He glanced at the photo on the license; there was no doubt it was the same woman, even though it was a lousy photograph, typical of driver’s license IDs. The lighting must have been bad; the red eye effect made them almost glow.

He shook his head and handed it back to her. “That may not be the best photo anyone’s ever taken of you. How can I help you?”

“I need to ask you a few questions. May I come in, sir?”

“I guess,” he sighed as he opened the door wide. “I take it this has to do with the mess at RELI Manufacturing?”

“Only peripherally,” she replied as she stepped inside. “This is another matter entirely, sir.”

“That’s a relief,” he said as conversationally as he could manage. “I guess there’s going to be lawsuits flying every which way over that.”

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” she said. “It doesn’t have much to do with why I need to talk to you. All I know about that is that the company is no longer in business and has left you unemployed.”

“Yeah, I mostly got caught in the avalanche,” Steve replied, not quite believing that the mess with the company wasn’t somehow involved in her being there. “Damn shame, too. Phil Crocker is a good man. He didn’t deserve the screw job that he got, and he got screwed over pretty bad. Find a seat. Would you like a cup of coffee, Ms. Rutledge? I just made a fresh pot.”

“Thank you, Mr. Taylor. That would be very nice. Black, please; and please, call me Ann.”

“Sure, no problem.” She followed him into the apartment and settled down in one of the living room chairs. He poured her a mug of coffee and warmed up his own, wondering what this could be about if it didn’t involve RELI. It still felt like trouble, although it was nice to have a visitor, and at that point even his stepfather would have been welcome. Well, on second thought, maybe he wasn’t quite that lonely.

In a moment he was back in the living room and set her mug down on the glass-covered top of the end table then turned to his own comfortable chair, still warm from where he’d been sitting while watching television. “So,” he said as he sat down. “What’s this all about?”

“That’s a long story, sir,” she smiled. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask a few more questions before we can get into it. Mostly they’re to confirm things that I already believe I know, and perhaps expand on them a little. How long has it been since you’ve seen your mother?”

“I don’t know,” he frowned, with his hackles rising a little. In a way, that was a personal and sensitive area. “Three or four years, at least, although we talk on the phone every now and then. If you’ve been investigating me, you’re aware that my stepfather and I don’t get along very well.”

“So I’ve been told,” she nodded. “I’m afraid I’m not very clear on why that is.”

“Does this involve him?” he asked, his suspicions getting deeper.

“Again, only peripherally,” Ann said, looking right at him. He would have said that she was staring at him, except for the fact that she still had her sunglasses on and had made no move to take them off. “It’s just for background, sir,” she explained.

“Well, all right,” he replied, just a little bit peeved. It seemed likely to him that his stepfather had come up with some new way to rub his nose in the fact that he wasn’t his father, just to piss him off. “We haven’t liked each other from the day we met, and over the years I’ve gone out of my way to avoid having anything to do with him. To be honest, I think I mostly resented the fact that he was trying to fill my father’s shoes after my father died, and he picked up on the resentment. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw a fit.”

“Was there any abuse, or anything of that nature?”

“No, not really,” Steve explained. “Except that any time I meet him we’re always on the verge of a fist fight just from having to be around each other.” He thought for a moment about telling more of the story, and figured he might as well. After all, if this woman being here and asking these questions did come from his stepfather, he might as well know how he really felt. “My mother started going with him a couple of years after my father got killed in a shop accident. I mean, in one sense I guess I realized she deserved to have a replacement, but no one could ever replace my father, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean, sir,” she replied, again very neutrally and emotionlessly. “I have a somewhat similar history, but that doesn’t matter right now.”

Well, she was at least a little bit human, Steve thought. She’d been so cool and professional that up to this point it wouldn’t have surprised him if she had been a robot. “What really pissed me off, if you’ll pardon my French,” he continued, “was when the time came for me to go to college. His kids are older than me, and he’d pretty much paid their way through college. But when it came time for me to go, there wasn’t one red cent for me. I was just unwanted baggage that he wanted out of his and my mother’s life.”

“Is that why you joined the army, sir?”

“You bet. Even if he did finally burp up some cash, I didn’t want to feel grateful to him for it. As it was, I got lucky. I joined the army right out of high school and spent four years in mechanized infantry, with two tours in Iraq, including the Second Gulf War. That paid my way through the University of Michigan, and I’m proud to say the only thing he had to do with it was pushing me out the door in the first place.”

“So,” she said with a little smile that somehow seemed like approval, “do you feel vindictive about him?”

“Not really. I just don’t want anything to do with him. Mom knows it, and I think she tries not to be caught in the middle. I’m not out to get him, but I wouldn’t get out of this chair to save his life, either. I suspect he feels pretty much the same way about me.” He really wasn’t sure why he was telling her all this, since he didn’t know her from Adam, or why she was asking him these questions, but for some reason he didn’t mind, possibly because he hadn’t really had anyone to talk to but the TV for days.

“All right,” she nodded again. “You went to work for RELI right after you graduated from college, is that correct, sir?”

“Yeah, within days, as soon as I could move down here after I got my diploma five years ago,” he replied. “I was there until the hammer got dropped on us last month. Five good years, pretty much down the tube.” Without prompting, he went on to explain that RELI was a standard secondary automobile components supplier, mostly machining small parts under contracts from Chrysler and GM. He’d gone to work as a production engineer, then worked in quality control.

“I’m not exactly sure of all the details,” he went on, “but from what I understood, the guy who started RELI with Phil had gotten out of the business but still held a lot of the stock. Then he’d gotten into some financial difficulties and sold the stock to Shawtex Industries, another auto parts supplier, at a very good price for the quick money. Unknown to anyone, Shawtex already owned stock in RELI, and that gave them enough to take control. So all of a sudden all nine of the jobs we had were transferred to plants in China and Mexico. When we showed up for work on Monday even the machinery had been moved out. Everybody from Phil on down was out of a job, and what stock he had left was worthless. The bastards have even been trying to block our unemployment checks. Fortunately, I was smart enough to put my spare cash in mutual funds, so I can hold out for a while.”

“Sir, that’s more than I knew about it,” she shook her head. “It sounds to me like these Shawtex people were just out to get the job contracts and didn’t care what they had to do to get them.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” he agreed. “From what I hear, that’s not the first time they’ve pulled stuff like that, either.”

She didn’t comment about that but shifted her position slightly, drawing his attention to her legs, which were clad in dark-tinted nylon – nice legs too, he thought. His thinking about that was diverted when she asked, “How has the job hunting been going, sir?”

“Could be better,” he sighed. “I’ve had a couple nibbles, but nothing solid. I wouldn’t mind getting out of this town. There’s nothing to keep me here and I’m willing to go anywhere.”

“Well, that’s good, sir,” she said, but she said it in such a way that once again Steve had to wonder just what she was getting at. From the direction the discussion had taken, it didn’t feel quite like he was being recruited for a new job, though he still didn’t have any idea of what she had in mind. Although it was nice to have someone to talk to, his curiosity over what this was all about just kept growing and growing. Ann asked seamlessly, “I take it you don’t have any significant relationships that would keep you from moving, either?”

“Not really,” Steve replied, suspecting even more that this was involving some kind of prospect for him. “My ex-girlfriend and I are still on pretty good terms, but we decided long ago that getting married wasn’t a good idea for us. I see her every now and then, not often, and the last I saw her it looked to me like she was getting serious about some other guy.”

He didn’t want to get into it much more than that. He and Teri had been occasional fuck buddies since they’d broken up, when the mood happened to strike them – well, to be honest, he thought, when the mood happened to strike her. She was fun to be around and good in bed, but she didn’t have much loyalty; they’d been in bed when she told him about her engagement. He got the impression that she didn’t plan on letting a wedding ring get in the way of her having more fun in the future. That may have been all well and good if that was what she wanted, but Steve didn’t want any part of it – which made for another good reason to get out of town if the opportunity arose.

“Very well, sir,” Ann said. “That was something I had no idea about. Now, how close are you to getting your MBA?”

“One more course and a thesis,” he replied, explaining that he’d started working on it strictly as an evening thing, taking a course at a time shortly after he went to work for RELI. While he enjoyed production engineering and working at RELI, at the time he started the courses he didn’t feel like he wanted to stay there forever, and an MBA seemed like a good thing to have on his résumé. “I haven’t really been busting my tail on it, but it made for something useful to do other than watching TV,” he told her. “Well, the timing hadn’t exactly worked out perfectly thanks to Shawtex, but close. If I haven’t found another job by the time the next semester started, I figure I might well finish it up.”

“Very well, sir,” she said. “That also came close to my impression.”

“Look,” Steve said, his curiosity getting hold of him. He took a sip of coffee to cover up a chance to think for an instant, then let his mouth get away from him. “Can I ask what this is all about? It’s clear you’ve been investigating me, but not in detail. I can’t figure it out.”

“Yes, you may, sir,” she said. “Although I fear I will have to ask one more question. Do you remember Homer Taylor?”

“Uncle Homer?” he frowned. “He was my father’s, well, uncle or great-uncle, I’m not sure which. I’m sure I met him, oh, before I was a teenager, I’m not sure when, but not more than a few times. He’s got to be pretty old if he’s still alive.”

“He is quite old, sir,” Ann smiled. “Ninety-one, in fact. But he was still quite alive and well, at least for him, when I talked to him on the phone an hour ago. And yes, he is your great-grand uncle, your late great-grandfather’s younger brother. To make a long story short, if you were who he thought you were and the impressions he had about you seemed correct, he would like you to come visit him so he can talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, a little less aloof than she had seemed a minute or two before. “I have some knowledge of it but not the details. In any case, he wants to present his ideas to you in his own way and I wouldn’t deny him the right. I’ve worked for him for many years, and if I’ve learned anything about him in all that time, he has his own ways of doing things and doesn’t like to change them.”

“Well, I guess there’s no problem with it. I mean, it’s not like I’m doing anything worthwhile anyway. Where do I have to go to meet him?”

“He’s at his home outside Wychbold, sir,” she said. “He rarely goes out, and then only with elaborate preparations, at least partly because he’s more or less confined to his wheelchair. If you would like, you could accompany me back, and arrangements will be made to return you here at the conclusion of your discussions.”

“You mean, right now?”

“If you would like to, sir,” she nodded. “I have to be starting back to Wychbold shortly. If you have appointments or something that would preclude you from accompanying me today, I can make travel arrangements at some other date, at no cost to you, of course.”

Steve took another sip of his coffee to buy some time to think. The more he thought about it the stranger the whole deal seemed to him. It seemed like there was a good chance that he was getting sucked into something, possibly something dangerous, and it might not be a good idea to just go someplace with this woman without notice. If this was some kind of a deal to kidnap him or something, he couldn’t imagine why anyone would bother. His stepfather may have been a first-class jerk, but he couldn’t imagine anything that his stepfather would gain by something like this. Although Steve been one of those screwed by Shawtex, he hadn’t had anything to do with the deal until it was over with, when all he could do was clear his stuff out of his desk and leave.

What little he knew about his Uncle Homer included the fact that his few relatives considered Homer to be a little on the strange side, but on the other hand the guy also had some money – quite a bit of money, at that. Was there a chance he could be in line for some of it? It wasn’t impossible. Maybe this was worth some investigation.

Besides, he thought, it was like he’d just said: at the moment, he didn’t have anything better to do. “Might as well,” he said finally, throwing caution to the wind.

“Very good, sir,” she replied. “I would suggest that you pack enough that you can be gone for a few days.”

“You think this could take that long?”

“I have no way of telling, sir,” she said. “Mr. Taylor, your Uncle Homer, could find out what he needs to know and tell you what he has to say in half an hour. On the other hand, it could take days. I don’t know, and it could well be that he doesn’t know either. I’d just suggest that you be prepared for it taking a while.”

“Well, all right,” he sighed. “Let me warm up your coffee, and I’ll go throw something into a suitcase.”

“My coffee is fine, sir,” she smiled. “Go and pack, please.”

“All right, it should only take me a few minutes.” He headed into his bedroom, still a little unsure about all this. Something smelled fishy – there was no doubt of that. He glanced over at his laptop, sitting on his dresser. Technically, it was RELI’s, or actually Shawtex’s now; he’d sometimes done work on it at home, and happened to have left it at home when the hammer fell at work a month before. He just hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about it – if they were going to be such assholes, why bother? He hadn’t used it much since then, but figured it might be useful. He pulled a small suitcase out of the closet, but as he started to think about what he wanted to take with him, it struck him that it might not be a bad idea for someone to know where he was, just in case.

He pushed the laptop’s on button, and while it booted up he went back to packing. Underwear, socks, a couple changes of clothes. On thinking about it a little, he thought it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to dress up a little. He stuck his head out the door and called, “Ann?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you think I ought to wear a suit?”

“Mr. Taylor would probably appreciate it, sir,” she said. “At least to meet him the first time. He’s a bit old-fashioned in some ways. We’ll be flying for a while, but there would be a chance for you to change.”

That sounded like business casual for traveling to him, but definitely a suit after that. It would be no great trick. “All right, I’m going to buff up a little and change clothes.”

“We have some time, but not a great deal of it, sir.”

“I’ll hurry,” he promised. He had to head into the bathroom, and while there took the time to shave carefully; he’d only given his face a once-over out of habit, ran a comb through his thick but short black hair, and packed his shaving kit.

By the time he made it back to the bedroom, the laptop had booted up. He’d been thinking about who he wanted to inform that he was taking off, and finally decided on Craig Markham, who he’d worked with at RELI from the beginning. He wasn’t a real close friend – he didn’t really have any – but they’d gone fishing together a few times and were fairly friendly. “Craig,” he typed quickly in the e-mail program. “I’m going to visit my uncle, Homer Taylor, in Wychbold, Michigan. I’m going with an Ann Rutledge, also of Wychbold. Something seems a little fishy, so if you don’t hear from me in a week or so, please call the cops.” He looked the message over, and decided there wasn’t anything to add, mostly because he didn’t know much more himself. It would do, he thought as he hit “send,” then shut down the machine. Might as well take it with me, he thought as he closed it. It might be useful.

It only took him a few more minutes to finish packing the suitcase, which included his suit coat and a couple of ties; a sports jacket would do for the plane and wouldn’t be as uncomfortable as the suit. This time of year it was about right, it would probably be warm enough in Michigan, unless it was really cold.

He took one more look around the bedroom to see if he’d missed anything; there was nothing that he could see, so he closed the suitcase and headed back out to the living room with it. “All right,” he said to the still-mysterious blonde stranger, who might not have been quite as mysterious if she’d ever taken off her sunglasses. “I’m ready to go once I shut down the coffee pot and the lights.”

“I already shut down and rinsed out the pot, sir,” she replied. “I’m ready to go, too.”

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