Another Chance Book I of III

Book III-Chapter 108, Gretchen

A/N I am writing this on Prince's birthday as both a tribute and a present to him. If only there was a way to tell him how much I love him and miss him. If I could only sit with him for 10 minutes to share how much he is missed and how much he touched my heart and my life...but I can't so...I will let the story do it for me...for all of us. Happy born day P. Te adoro.

Frank's POV

Frank had been up quite late on Christmas Eve. He and Larry had finished putting two bicycles together for their youngest sons. Afterwards Frank had told him of the odd goings on with the newly hired assistant to Prince and Andy. He also shared how it appeared she had not existed but for about 6 months. She had been in Manhattan for about 4 then after the blowout at the law firm for which she was working, had shown up in Detroit about a month ago and applied for the position with Andy. She said she was a Native New Yorker but no trace of her as Gretchen Johansen could be found before that. When Larry left to go home, Frank had visited with his wife, had made some serious sexy love to her and then had gone into the study to continue his research. Through the use of some highly restricted programs he had discovered Gretchen's social security number and from there had discovered that she definitely was not a New York native despite the accent and claims. He had found a Visa Application through the Social Security number and even that was irregular. The Visa number showed that Gretchen had immigrated from Norway in 2214 which meant that she had only been in the states for 1 year. Where had she been for the other 6 months? He determined that tomorrow morning he would dig into her life in Norway and discover what she did when first arriving in the US. Frank looked at the clock. It was 2:30 AM and he had Christmas tomorrow with his wife and kids and his brothers and their women and kids. He needed to turn in...but he would work on this in the morning and by the time he saw Prince, he would have some answers.

Christmas morning found Frank up and in the kitchen making coffee at 6:30 AM. He then headed into the study and booted up his computer. He figured he had 2 hours before the kids would be up and his wife would be calling him to open presents. The children were older now. The youngest had just turned 12 and the other two were 13 and 15. The Santa craze was over. He immediately entered another covert web site. This one allowed him to identify the holder of the immigrant application number that Gretchen had done in order to be considered to come to the United States. When he found the application, it was Gretchen alright whose picture appeared in the file. He looked at it closely and noticed that her eyes appeared softer than they did in person. Why did that catch his attention and bother him he wondered? He began to read through all of the papers associated with her application. She had completed upper secondary school which was basically the equivalent of 12th grade having been for ages 16-19. Students were only required to complete lower secondary school which was completed by the age of 16. Gretchen had done two years of University too. She had been employed by a law firm straight out of college as a clerk but had become a full fledged administrative assistant by the time she applied to immigrate to the states. Her stated reason was marriage. As Frank continued to read, he came across something that stopped him cold and gave him a very eerie feeling. There was a note that said that shortly after her official documents were issued, her parents reported her missing. It seems that her fiance had come to pick her up to go to dinner and the two of them had disappeared never to be seen again. The fiance, Edward Nigel Beasley was Canadian, from Toronto, but was a legal American resident working in the highly technical field of energy engineering. When the parents were interviewed, Gretchen's father had said that he had never liked or trusted the fiance saying that he had come to Norway on holiday and stayed and had asked his daughter to marry him within 6 months. He never spoke of his family and when asked would say they were estranged but would say nothing beyond that. Nothing of either of them had ever been found. She had appeared in New York within a week of her disappearance, but no fiance had been with her and then she had disappeared showing up again just in time to be hired by the Lyon law firm she had worked for in Manhattan. 'What the hell', Frank thought. He switched gears then and began to focus his search on Edward Nigel Beasley. There was no such person who had ever applied for immigration from Canada to the United States. He checked three different data basis to be sure. He then moved his search to Canada. The last Edward Nigel Beasley he could find throughout Canada had lived in the 1800's and died in 1890. He was from England. There were several Nigels and several Edwards too, but none under either name had applied to come to the United States in the last 25 years. Something was very wrong here. He could feel it. Frank got up and joined his wife in the kitchen when he heard her voice. He would help her with breakfast and after showering would dress and get into the day with family.