May 15, 1986

Lee Stetson and Amanda King entered the Georgetown Foyer, accepted their IDs from the Agency's matronly guard dog, Mrs. Marston, but then paused when she gave them a slight wave of her hand in warning. They glanced at one another warily and then up the stairs to where they heard the distinct sounds of shouting.

"What's going on?" Amanda asked in a hushed tone.

In an equally hushed tone and not quite able to completely hide the mirthful grin on her face, the elder woman answered, "Dr. Smyth is having his head handed to him. Listen." She then pointed up the stairs behind her.

As they listened intently, a shrill female voice barked, "You KNOW who we are! We're Gilmores for God's sake! I went to Smith! My husband went to Yale! We are-" Her words were cut off, but they were unable to hear Smyth's reply, which wasn't surprising to either one, because while he was often sarcastic, he very rarely raised his voice.

Apparently whatever Smyth had said didn't deter the woman for long because she was soon right back at it, "Well, it must have also escaped your notice just how much work my husband has already done for you people! The hours he's logged in making sure that your assets are secured and if you ask anyone about his reputation, you will know that he is the best in the business! Why you can't give us the best in your business is unfathomable to me!"

Again the woman went silent at which time, Lee interjected, "As fascinating as this is, we do still have work to do. We have got to finish up our paperwork on the Krutiov/Martinet thing." He gave the matron at the desk a curt nod and with a hand on the small of Amanda's back, led her up the stairs, through the outer door and into the hallway that would lead them to their office. His motion was halted by Amanda coming to a dead stop in front of him and nudging him slightly with her elbow as she gestured to the immaculately-dressed woman standing a few feet from them with tears streaming down her face. They hung back near the outer door until they could evaluate the situation.

"Emily, I understand that this is upsetting to you-" Smyth began.

"No, you don't!" Emily Gilmore snapped. "My daughter has been missing for nearly five months now! Five! The local police won't lift a damn finger to try to find her anymore and the crack team you assigned to her case in Hartford did virtually nothing! Do you have any idea how heartbreaking it is for a mother not to know where her child is? To not know if she's dead or alive?"

"Lee?"Amanda whispered softly to her partner, her heart breaking for the distraught woman.

"I know," he replied back in the same quiet tone and gently squeezed her hand. "But this isn't really Agency business."

"But Lee..." Her voice became choked with emotion. "Imagine if it were Phillip or Jamie that were missing."

Lee nodded in understanding and let out a deep sigh. He knew he'd never win that kind of argument with her, so resigned himself to the idea of working on a case in which he had no desire to be involved.

Amanda smiled at her partner. "Dr. Smyth," she approached their superior confidently where he stood in front of the door to the Q Bureau.

"Ah, Mrs. King," Smyth replied as he stepped aside. "I'm keeping you and Scarecrow from your work." He then gave Emily a pointed look. "Just as I'm being kept from mine. Good day, Mrs. Gilmore," he said to her coolly reverting to the more formal salutation now that he knew he was being observed by his subordinates. "I'm sorry that you wasted a trip all the way from Connecticut. Do give your husband my regards and tell him I'll see him at the club this weekend." He turned toward the outer door to make his exit.

"No, Sir," Amanda contradicted him, stepping in front of him to keep him from leaving. Lee cringed slightly at her making such a bold maneuver.

"No?" He questioned, as he took a long puff from his ever-present cigarette. "Something to add, Mrs. King?"

"Well, yes," Amanda replied with a smile. "It's not as if we could help overhearing your...um...well...your...disagreement with Mrs. Gilmore here and I know that you don't know me very well yet, Sir, but you do know that I'm a mother and if...well, if something were to happen like this to one of my boys...I just don't know what I'd do. But what I do know is that I would want to make sure that I had the best possible people investigating. Do you have children yourself, Dr. Smyth?"

"NO," he growled.

"Well, let me tell you, they can be a handful, taking off on you from time to time. I will never forget when my older boy, Phillip, was about four, we were at the mall, shopping for Christmas and one minute I had a hold of his hand very tightly, but then his little brother, Jamie who was only a year old at the time started to fuss, so I let go of Phillip's hand for just one second...and then...then he was gone."

"Mrs. King, does this story have a point?" Smyth interrupted irritably.

At hearing those words, Emily felt a sharp stab of pain as she thought of the younger woman's rambling as it reminded her so of her runaway daughter. How many times had she spoken those very words to Lorelai? Even looking at her dark hair, her stature, and the way that she carried herself put her in mind of her missing child.

That's it, Amanda, Lee thought, beaming with pride in his partner. Talk him to death.

"Well, yes, of course it has a point: a perfectly good point. While my situation wasn't nearly as dire as Mrs. Gilmore's, you can't imagine the panic and worry that went through my mind when my little boy was missing. I mean, there we were in a crowded shopping mall, less than a month before Christmas during the busiest shopping time of the year and my poor baby was only four and-"

Smyth held up his hand to silence her. "Let's get down to brass tacks here, King. What do you want?"

Gotcha' Lee thought while Amanda just smiled broadly and said, "Well, Sir, Agent Stetson and I just wrapped up the Krutiov case except for finishing the paperwork. I don't see why we couldn't take a look at Mrs. Gilmore's case. I mean, she did come all the way from Connecticut. Besides, didn't she say she wanted the best in the business and everyone knows that's Lee, right?" She smiled at her partner.

Smyth let out a sigh. "Point, set and match, Mrs. King," he replied wearily as he handed her the file he'd had tucked under his arm then hurriedly made his way through the exit door. He couldn't help the grin that crossed his face once he was halfway down the stairs. While he didn't know the King woman well, he'd seen enough reports about her to know that she'd be just the right person to take over the Gilmore investigation and that was why he'd intentionally steered Emily toward that location, knowing Scarecrow and his partner were due in at any moment. He'd kept the argument with Emily going longer than he should have, but he had needed to make sure they were in position when his subordinates arrived.

Once Smyth had left, Amanda immediately went to comfort the distraught mother while Lee moved to unlock the door to their shared office. "Hello, Mrs. Gilmore. My name is Amanda King, but you can just call me Amanda. May I call you Emily?" When Emily nodded with a sniffle, Amanda continued with a nod to Lee who had just opened the door, "Well, that's my partner, Lee Stetson and as you heard, we are going to take a look at your case and see what we can do." She put a comforting arm across the other woman's shoulder and led her into the office. "Lee..." she nodded to the coffee maker behind his desk and he dutifully moved to start making a fresh pot.

Emily replied, "Thank you."

"Listen, why don't you just sit down right here on the sofa? It's much more comfortable than those hard chairs." She made a face at the chairs that resided in front of Lee's desk. While Emily numbly moved to sit on the sofa, Amanda dropped the case file onto her desk, reached for the box of tissues that sat there and then sat beside her. "I thought you might need these."

"You're very kind," Emily responded politely as she took the box from the younger woman.

"As I told Dr. Smyth, I'm a mother too and I can't imagine the pain you're going through right now. So, why don't you tell me about your daughter?"

"Y-you mean...you d-don't want to just read about it all in the case file like the other agents did?"

"Well, I certainly could do that, but I'd rather hear it from your point of view," Amanda explained. When Lee gave her a baffled look, she quickly added, "But only if you feel up to it, of course."

Emily nodded again. "What is it you'd like to know?"

Amanda gestured to Lee for pen and paper. "Well, for starters, how old is your daughter?"

"She just turned eighteen last month, but she's been gone for longer than that. She ran away from home just after Christmas." Emily reached into her purse and pulled out a well-worn letter. "She just took off with my granddaughter without a word and left me only this."

Lee looked startled as he as he looked up from the notepad he'd been scribbling in. "She has a child?" he queried with an arched eyebrow.

Amanda shot Lee a disapproving look before holding out her hand to Emily. "May I?"

"What are you thinking, Amanda?" her partner questioned with a curious glance.

"Well, you remember the Sallee case?"

"Yeah, sure. You were brilliant in how you figured out all those clues from the diar-Oh, I get it. You're hoping that-I'm sorry, Mrs. Gilmore, what's your daughter's name?"

"Lorelai," Emily answered.

Lee turned his attention to Amanda. "So, you're hoping Lorelai's letter may offer some clues like that diary did?" Amanda just nodded and began reading.

"I don't know if you need to know this too, but her daughter's name is Lorelai as well...although, I can't tell you how I objected to that. I asked her 'Who does that?' Do you know what she replied in her usual smart-alecky way? 'Men name their kids after themselves all the time, so why can't I?'" She snorted. "Ridiculous. Of course, to simplify things, we called her baby Rory for short. Such a sweet baby girl."

Lee looked at Emily curiously and couldn't help thinking that the woman before him missed her baby granddaughter more than she missed her own daughter. "So, how old is Rory?"

"Nineteen months old." Emily shook her head. "And I know what you must be thinking about Lorelai since she just turned eighteen, but my husband and I pleaded and pleaded with her to marry the boy who got her pregnant. I kept telling her 'when you get pregnant, you get married', but that stubborn daughter of mine simply refused to listen to reason."

Amanda looked up from her reading and in a gentle tone as she clasped Emily's hand to comfort her, she told her, "I assure you, we weren't thinking anything of the sort. These things do happen."

Emily pulled her hand abruptly from Amanda's, rose from her seat so that she was now looking down at Amanda and snapped, "I suppose that's something you'd be all too familiar with."

"I beg your pardon."

"You said you're a mother, but I can't help noticing that you're not wearing a wedding ring."

"I don't see that that has a thing to do with my ability to help find your daughter," Amanda shot back in a bit of an affronted tone.

"Don't you see? If you're a single mother too, you're going to be more likely to side with her rather than bring her home where she belongs."

Lee stepped in to defend Amanda. "First of all, her situation is a hell of a lot different. For one, she wasn't a teenage mother and she was married. She's just divorced now. As for bringing Lorelai home, I'm not sure that's something we can do. She's eighteen and therefore, legally an adult."

"You people are useless! You sound just like those dimwitted detectives who halted their investigation into her disappearance just because she's eighteen."

"Unfortunately, they're right," Amanda informed Emily. "And so is my partner. We can't force her to come home, but what we can do is find her and try to talk her about coming home, although ultimately that decision is up to her. At the very least, when we find her, we'll do our very best to make sure she contacts you. With her being a mother too, maybe she'll understand why it's so important for you two to keep in touch." She glanced over to the coffeepot to see that it was done brewing. "Now, we're still going to have some more questions for you. Would you like some coffee while you answer them?"

Emily swallowed hard, looking utterly defeated as tears filled her eyes once again. Blinking them back, she forced herself to remember that these people were trying to help her and to remember the manners that had been drilled into her head from a young age. "That would be lovely, thank you."

"How do you take it?"

"Cream and sugar please," Emily responded as she sank wearily back onto the sofa willing herself not to break down again. This was the third time she'd been given this information, but she just hadn't wanted to accept it. She finally had to concede defeat and admit that she just might not see her daughter or granddaughter ever again.

Lee impatiently tapped the notepad in his hands with the pen he held. "Now, Mrs. Gilmore, what can you tell us about what was happening in your household just before Lorelai took off? Was she upset about anything? Did you two have a fight?"

"Are you implying that it's my fault that my daughter's gone?" Emily sniped hotly. Even as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them because she knew it was partially her fault.

"Oh, no," Amanda interjected as she returned with the coffee. "It's just that the more we know about what happened right before and right after her disappearance, the more luck we might have in finding her."

"I understand." She let out a sigh. "We did have a fight," she confessed. "An awful one. It was just after our annual Christmas party and I'd just had to hire a new nanny for Rory, the sixth one in a year because Lorelai kept scaring them off...or telling them off. She screamed at me that she wanted me to stop...that she was Rory's mother, not me, not the nannies, but...but she was just a child and since she refused to marry Christopher, someone had to step in and help."

"I think I understand," Amanda replied softly. She knew all too well the burden of having a meddling mother since she felt as if she were always dodging questions and unsolicited advice from her own mother, especially regarding her love life. Of course, this situation was entirely different. Lorelai was a teenage mother and while it was quite apparent that Emily loved her very much, she could see why the young woman would have found her mother's interference detrimental in her attempts to learn how to be a mother to her child. She'd caught a few things in the letter Lorelai had written about Emily being controlling and she had to admit, the older woman did have that air about her...like her whole world fell apart if everything around her wasn't under her complete control. The story Emily just told them had confirmed what she'd already suspected. While she sympathized with Emily missing her daughter and granddaughter, she couldn't help wondering if Lorelai was justified in leaving. She just hoped she and her daughter were safe.

After several more questions with Emily providing as much detail as she could remember, they finally said their goodbyes. Amanda handed her Lee's business card as she walked her out to the foyer. "If you think of anything else that might be relevant, even something small, no matter how insignificant you think it might be, please call us, okay?"

"I will," Emily promised. "Thank you again...Amanda."

"You're very welcome. Have a safe trip back to Connecticut." When Emily paused at the door, Amanda asked her, "Was there something else?"

"Yes, I was just wondering...how did you find your little boy in a crowded shopping mall?" She was curious if the same method could be applied to finding the missing Lorelais.

"Oh, that." Amanda chuckled slightly at the memory. "Actually, I didn't. He found me...well, in a way. When he realized that we were no longer together, he remembered what I told him about trusting policemen if he ever got lost and he marched right up to one of the mall's security guards and told them that his mommy was lost and insisted they find her. Of course, at only four, he didn't know that a security guard wasn't the same as a policeman; he just saw the uniform and did what I'd always told him to do, so they sent an announcement over the PA system that they were looking for a lost mommy. What was funny is that when they tried to ask him my name, he insisted it was 'Mommy,' so then by the time I got to the security office, they asked me all kinds of questions to verify that I was his mother, but it just really makes you think how much your children listen to you when you don't think they really are."

"Ohhh," Emily sighed in disappointment, knowing that nothing like that would be able to aid in finding her daughter and granddaughter. The younger woman's story about her missing son and how he'd listened to her had her reflecting back on all the times she and Lorelai had fought over the years and she couldn't recall a time that her daughter had ever listened to her like that and now it seemed, she wanted nothing to do with her own mother. She knew without a doubt, Lorelai would never go to that much effort to find her. Her daughter knew exactly where she was and how to find her if she wanted to; she simply didn't want to. "Well, I've taken up enough of your time, so I'll be on my way."

"We'll contact you when we have some news," Amanda promised.