“We’re tracking down a few leads. And as it happens, he’s my significant other.”
“By all means, then. If you trust him, I do, as well.”
“Thank you.” She hit the speaker. The cafe was crowded enough that the background noise would cover their conversation, but they were off in a quiet corner, so they were still able to hear.
“I’ve been going through the photographs, and I have a couple of questions. I found a group photo of Dr. Ledbetter’s time with the Mountain Blue and Gray. I wasn’t aware that her daughter had been on the excursion with her.”
“Ah. Yes, she decided to keep that part of the story out of the book. It’s the reason they’re estranged, actually.”
“Really? Can you tell me more?”
She heard him closing a door. Discretion. George was a commendable employee. Sam really needed to find a way to steal him for herself.
“This was before my time, so I’ve only got pieces of the story. You read the memoir?”
“Yes. I know she was forced to leave and they sued to have some of the details changed to protect their identities.”
“That’s close enough to the truth. But of course, there’s always more. The gist of it is, once she’d been found out and was asked to leave, her daughter refused to return to civilization with her. She’d made a connection with one of the men, and wanted to stay with him.”
“One of the men or one of the boys?”
“From what I know, he was older than her by a good ten years.”
“She looks very young in this photo.”
“Thirteen at the time, yes. Dr. Ledbetter was adamantly against it, both the relationship and her staying behind. They had several terrible arguments. Dr. Ledbetter wasn’t about to leave her young daughter out in the woods with a bunch of strangers and at the mercy of a man nearly twice her age. But Loa had other plans. She and the man left in the night, ran away, and though they did an extensive search, Dr. Ledbetter was forced to come home without her. The group leader assured her he would find them and be in touch the moment he knew anything.”
“I can’t imagine leaving my child behind.” There was ice in her voice.
“Neither could she, believe me. She canceled several months of work to stay and try to find Loa. She was holed up in a hotel with basically no help, though. It was terrible for her. In the end, they simply didn’t want to be found, and she had no choice but to return to her life.”
“But Loa came back.”
“That she did. When I saw her, probably six months after she returned, she was thin and tired and silent as the grave as to what had happened. She was fifteen when she came back. She’d been gone for two years.”
“No chance you know the name of the man she’d been with, is there?”
“Not off the top of my head. I can go through some of Dr. Ledbetter’s things and see. Or you could just contact Loa yourself. Maybe she’d be willing to talk now, especially since her mother is gone.”
“I left her a note on Facebook asking her to get in touch, but she never returned the message. But it’s only been a day.”
“Here’s her direct number. You can try that instead of waiting.” He rattled off ten digits, and Sam scribbled them down on a napkin.
“Thank you. There’s one more thing. Remember I asked if Dr. Ledbetter knew Congressman Leighton?”
“Yes. As far as I know, she didn’t.”
“What was she doing in Africa in 1990?”
“Peace Corps. She dropped out, though. It wasn’t for her. She wanted to scale all the mountains, not be stuck in one place. That’s what she said about it.”
“Are you near her computer?”
“Yes, I am.”
“If you look in the Africa folder from 1990, at photo number 7679, you’ll see a group of people. Do you have it?”
She heard him clicking away, then he said, “Yes. That was taken about a month before she left Kenya. She’d only been there for about three weeks at the time.”
“The man facing away from the camera. We believe that’s Peter Leighton.”
George was silent.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes, sorry. I was just looking. It does seem to be him. That’s weird, though. She never said anything about knowing him to me.”
“Well, maybe it didn’t come up.”
“Actually, it did. She was invited to a fundraiser last month that he was speaking at. Normally she accepts all those invitations—they’re good for drumming up new business. But when she saw it on her calendar, she flipped out. Told me to cancel, which I did. I asked her why and she said she thought Leighton was a pompous ass and didn’t want to be associated with him or his policies. That was enough for me. I canceled it, and we never spoke of him again.”
“That’s interesting. Just one last question. Who was Dr. Ledbetter married to?”
“She’s never been married. She didn’t want a man tying her down, but she always wanted children. For lack of a better term, she used a turkey baster to get pregnant with Loa. The father was a friend of hers from college.”