Chapter Two

Just before noon, Lee came down to the bullpen again. When he passed Francine's desk, he said, "Wish me luck, Francine; my realtor thinks he may have found the house. I came down to tell Billy I need to take a long lunch."

"You could have done that on the phone," she pointed out.

"Yeah, but then I couldn't have shared the good news with everyone down here."

"True. Well, I hope this is the one."

"So do I, because it checks all the blocks and it's affordable."

Lee still wasn't back nearly two hours later when Mrs. Marsden buzzed Francine's phone and said, "Miss Desmond, I have a Colonel Robert Clayton on the line for Mr. Stetson. He says he tried the apartment, but the line was busy, so he called Mr. Stetson's line in the Q Bureau and got no answer."

"I'll take care of it, Mrs. Marsden, thank you." Francine said as she engaged the appropriate line. "Good afternoon, Colonel Clayton. My name is Francine Desmond; I'm one of Lee's coworkers. How can I help you?"

"Good afternoon, Miss Desmond – or is it Mrs.?"

"No, it's 'Miss', Colonel. We're expecting Lee back fairly soon; if you called his apartment and got a busy signal, that means he's probably on the phone to Texas to tell Amanda about the house he went to see at lunchtime. We're crossing our fingers that this might be the right one."

"I hope so too. When he comes in, will you tell him I'm in town and ask him to call me back? I'm at the Visiting Officers' Quarters on Bolling. Let me give you the number."

Francine copied it down and said, " I have that, and as soon as I know he's back, I'll give him this message."

"Thank you."

Lee came through the bullpen just fifteen minutes later. Francine caught his eye and waved the message slip; he came over. "Colonel Clayton called, Lee; he's in town, staying at the VOQ at Bolling, and he wants to see you."

"Thanks, Francine; I'll call him right back. Oh, and about the house? I think we may have found it; it's a good enough possibility that Amanda thinks it's worth it to come up and look at it. She's working on getting a flight up here tonight or tomorrow. Say, would you do me a favor and tell Billy I'm back? I want to return this call right away."

"Sure."

An hour later, the bullpen doors opened and Lee walked in with a very distinguished looking man in his mid-fifties, a guest pass clipped to the pocket of his well-tailored summer-weight gray wool suit. Even if she hadn't known he was in town, Francine would have guessed that this was retired Colonel Robert Clayton, and that was confirmed when Lee directed him over to her desk. "Francine, this is my uncle, Robert Clayton. I thought you might like to put a face to the voice on the phone."

Francine stood up and took the hand Clayton extended. It was strong and warm, the skin a bit rough, clearly the hands of a man who liked to work with his hands and didn't mind getting dirt under his nails, though those nails were clean and well-kept now. He held her much smaller, much softer hand for just a few beats longer than courtesy required, and she felt herself beginning to turn just a bit pink, something that hadn't happened to her in a very long time. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Lee had noticed the blush and knew that he would be telling Amanda about it at the first opportunity. Somehow, though, that didn't really bother her.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Colonel," she managed to say after what seemed like a very long pause.

"The pleasure is mine, Miss Desmond, and please, call me Clay; I'm not wearing those eagles on my shoulders anymore, after all."

"I'm Francine, but of course you knew that."

"Knowing your name and getting permission to use it are two different things, though," he said gently. "Lee wants to introduce me to Melrose, but once I've done that, may I come by and chat with you again?"

"Oh, of course."

He was back about fifteen minutes later. "I'm due for a break, C- Clay," she said. "There's a little deli down the street that does very good iced coffee."

"I think I passed it on my way here. I'll see you and Amanda later, Lee. Francine?"

He offered an arm and she took it and they walked out together, leaving the whole bullpen gaping. Once they'd cleared the double doors, Billy said, " All right, people, we do have work to do, so let's get to it."

Clay found the 'coat closet' elevator, indeed the whole IFF cover story, very amusing. "Whoever set this up obviously read too many Ian Fleming novels," he said as they surrendered their badges to Mrs. Marsden and walked out the door. She took a pair of sunglasses out of her handbag and put them on; he said, "I'm still getting used to walking around without a cover, but nobody wears hats these days unless they're in uniform. I remember that my stepfather, Lee's grandfather, never went anywhere without a hat, though."

"How old were you when you became part of the Stetson family?

"I was four years old, but Lee's father, Matt, was already seventeen, so as you can imagine Daddy Stetson was quite a bit older than Mother. That was in 1937."

"You were very young when your father died, then."

"I was two years old, so I really don't remember him. He worked for the railroad as the station agent in our little town in Western Maryland. He was murdered in a robbery late one night."

"Oh, no! Did they catch the man who did it?"

"Yes. He was just a kid, they said, desperate for money. The tragedy was that my father had already emptied the till and given him the money when the kid panicked and the cheap pistol he was carrying went off. My father was killed instantly, and the kid got life in prison. My mother's testimony was all that saved him from the death chamber; she asked for mercy for him. He was only eighteen, but that was old enough to be tried as an adult. When the war started six years later, they let him out because he wanted to join the Marines. He was killed in the first assault wave on Guadalcanal in 1942, and after they sent his personal effects home, his mother wrote to my mother and thanked her for making it possible for him to redeem himself by dying for his country."

"Clay, that's…. wow. Here's the deli."

They shared a table for the time it took to drink an iced coffee, and then he walked her back to the Agency. "There's live music at the O-Club tonight," he said. "Would you come out to dinner with me, Francine?"

"I'd love to. Shall I meet you there?"

"Absolutely not. I always call for a lady at her door, bring her back to her door, and I don't expect to be invited in. I know how to treat a lady, Francine." He took a small leatherbound datebook out of his breast pocket and handed it and a small gold pen to her. "If you'd be so kind as to give me your address and phone number, I'll be at your door at six-thirty sharp, unless that's too early?"

"No, it's not too early." She wrote the information down and handed back the datebook and the pen. "I'll see you then, Clay."

"Put your glad rags on, Francine; we're going to really cut the rug tonight."