G Is for Gumshoe

strange how different he looked to me. Yesterday, his elongated forehead had lent him a babylike air of innocence. Today, the furrowed brow suggested a man who had much to worry him. I had to make a conscious effort not to stare at the mole on his cheek. "Yes?"
    "I'm Kinsey Millhone. Do you remember me from yesterday?"
    His mouth pulled together sourly. "With all the gun battles going on, it'd be hard to forget." His gaze shifted. "I don't remember this gent."
    I tilted a nod at Dietz. "This is my partner, Robert Dietz."
    Dietz reached past me and shook hands with Bronfen. "Nice to meet you, sir. Sorry about all the uproar." He put his left hand behind his ear. "I don't believe I caught your name."
    "Pat Bronfen. If you're still looking for that old woman, I'm afraid I can't help. I said I'd keep an eye out, but that's the best I can do." He moved as though to close the door.
    I held a finger up. "Actually, this is about something else." I took the birth certificate from my handbag and held it out to him. He declined to take it, but he scanned the face of it. His expression shifted warily when he realized what it was. "How'd you get this?"
    The inspiration came to me in a flash. "From Irene Bronfen. She was adopted by a couple in Seattle, but she's instituted a search for her birth parents."
    He squinted at me, but said nothing.
    "I take it you're the Patrick Bronfen mentioned on her birth certificate?"
    He hesitated. "What of it? "
    "Can you tell me where I might find Mrs. Bronfen?"
    "No, ma'am. That woman left me more than forty years ago, and took Irene with her," he said, with irritation. "I never knew what happened to the child, let alone what became of Sheila. I didn't even know she put the child up for adoption. Nobody told me the first thing about it. That's against the law, isn't it? If I wasn't even notified? You can't sign someone's child away without so much as a by-your-leave."
    "I'm not really sure about the legalities," I said. "Irene hired me to see what I could find out about you and your ex-wife."
    "She's not my ex-wife. I'm still married to the woman in the eyes of the law. I couldn't divorce her if I didn't know where she was." He gestured impatiently, but he was running out of steam and I could see his mood shift. "That wasn't Irene, sitting on my front porch steps yesterday, was it?"
    "Actually, it was."
    He shook his head. "I can't believe it. I remember her when she was this high. Now she'd have to be forty-seven years old." He stared down at the porch, brow knitting parallel stitches between his eyes. "My own baby girl and I didn't recognize her. I always thought I'd be able to pick her out of a crowd."
    "She wasn't well. You really never got a good look at her," I said. He looked up at me wistfully. "Did she know who I was?"
    "I'm sure she didn't. I didn't realize it myself until a little while ago. The certificate says Sumner. It took us a while to realize the address was still good."
    "I'm surprised she didn't recognize the house. She was almost four when Sheila took her. Used to sit right there on the steps, playing with her dollies." He shoved his hands in his pockets.
    It was occurring to me that Irene's asthma attack might well have been generated by an unconscious recognition of the place. "Maybe some of the memories will come back to her once she knows about you," I said.
    His eyes had come back to mine with curiosity. "How'd you track me down?"
    "Through the adoption agency," I said. "They had her birth certificate on file."
    He shook his head. "Well, I hope you'll tell her how much I'd like to see her. I'd given up any expectation of it after all these years. I don't suppose you'd give me her address and telephone number."
    "Not without her permission," I said. "In the meantime, I'm still interested in finding Mrs. Bronfen. Do you have any suggestions about where I might start to look?"
    "No, ma'am. After she left, I tried everything I could think of-police, private investigators. I put notices in the newspapers all up and down the coast. I never heard a word."
    "Do you remember when she left?"
    "Not to the day. It would have been the fall of nineteen thirty-nine. September, I believe."
    "Do you have any reason to think she might be dead?"
    He thought about that briefly. "Well, no. But then I don't have any reason to think she's still alive either."
    I took a small spiral-bound notebook from my handbag and leafed through a page or two. I was actually consulting an old grocery list,