“I can be at your office in ten minutes,” Aria said, ignoring the channelopathy and fentanyl issue.
“Fine! See you there!” he said sprightly.
After pocketing her phone, Aria set out at a good pace, walking north. Once again, her mood had changed and was now on the upswing. Even so, she couldn’t help question why she hadn’t considered Dr. Henderson’s help before she had. It now seemed so intuitive.
With her newly regained motivation, she was on the floor where Carl had his office in just over five minutes. The scene was an exact repeat of when she’d visited last, including the same janitorsvacuuming the carpet in the otherwise deserted office area. Even Dr. Henderson’s corner office door was ajar, and, also like that visit, Aria walked directly in without any hesitation. On this occasion Dr. Henderson saw her the moment she appeared and stood up and began to come around from behind his desk.
“Why don’t you stay at your desk, Dr. Henderson,” Aria half suggested, half commanded. She didn’t want a repeat of the couch scene. Besides, she wanted to be able to put the family tree diagrams she’d brought on the desk surface so Dr. Henderson could check them out to his satisfaction. She was certain he would find them captivating.
“Okay, fine by me,” Carl said with a shrug. “But I thought we had established that we’re on a first-name basis.”
“Whatever,” she said, even though she wasn’t happy about the familiarity it implied. Without asking permission, she grabbed one of the two straight-backed chairs from the office’s sitting area and brought it over in front of his desk. As she did so, she avoided looking at any of the various displayed memorabilia that reminded her of her father’s study back when she was a preteen. The moment she sat down, Carl did the same.
“This is a nice surprise,” Carl said. He leaned back in his ergonomic tiltable desk chair and briefly put his hands behind his head to stretch. Then he tipped forward again. “You’ve certainly stoked my curiosity. What have you brought to show me?”
Aria pulled out of her jacket pocket the two family trees, unfolded them, and smoothed them out. As she did so, the sound of the vacuum cleaners in the outer office reached a crescendo, meaning the janitors had reached the area just outside of his office. With an irritated shake of his head, Carl got up and closed his office door.
“Sorry about that,” he said as he retook his seat.
“Not a problem,” Aria said. She reached across the desk and placed the two diagrams side by side, directly in front of Carl. She thenrepeated almost word for word what she had told Laurie about what they represented.
After she finished her explanation, she fell silent and let him study the sheets. He was obviously totally absorbed. Finally, he looked up. “This is unbelievable,” he said in awe. “I’m shocked that you were able to find all this out so quickly. When you said you were going to use genetic genealogy in your search for the father of the fetus, I thought it might take months.”
“The credit goes to the computer geeks at a company called GenealogyDNA,” Aria said, “particularly with the help of one of the company’s founders, Vijay Srinivasan. I wouldn’t have been able to do it even if I had months.”
“To make sure I’m understanding,” Carl said, “these two family trees are really the family trees of the missing father, isn’t that correct?”
“Obviously,” she said. She restrained herself from adding something derogatory.
“Why is the embryo called Hansel?”
“Just disregard that,” Aria said. “It’s immaterial. It was just a label some computer techies came up with since there was no name attached to the fetus. The important thing to note is that Diane Hanna née Carlson is the missing father’s mother, and Eric Thompson is the father. That’s the long and short of it. Case closed!”
“That means the father’s name must be Thompson,” he said. “Why isn’t that written on these trees?” He raised his eyes to hers.
“I’m glad you asked,” Aria said. “On the phone I said I need your help. The last piece of this puzzle is the name of the fetus’s father. It has been determined that it is not Thompson because there was an adoption that has broken the genetic family tree away from the genealogical family tree. It seems that the father was an out-of-wedlock love child of Diane Carlson and Eric Thompson, neither of whom are willing even to acknowledge the blessed event.”
“You spoke to these people?” Carl asked, his awe of Aria’sinvestigative work magnifying dramatically. He went back and studied the family trees, which had him totally engrossed.
“I didn’t speak with Eric Thompson,” Aria admitted. “That was done by Vijay Srinivasan. But I did speak with Diane, whose surname is now Hanna. In fact, I was speaking with her just a little more than an hour ago.”
“Does she live here in the city?” Carl asked.
“On Fifth Avenue, overlooking the park,” she said. “I was just there.”
“Is she married to the well-known attorney Michael Hanna?” he questioned in wonderment.
“I have no idea,” Aria said. “Diane lives in decent splendor and acts and looks the part of a socialite, so I imagine her husband has some reasonably responsible position.”
Carl tipped back again in his chair and raised his eyes once again to look directly at her.
“Did you confront Diane Hanna with these family trees?” Carl asked.
“I never got to show them to her,” Aria said. “As soon as I told her that GenealogyDNA had determined she had a son that had been put up for adoption, it was the end of the conversation. She all but threw me out of her apartment.”
“Sounds like she has been trying to forget her wanton ways when she was young,” he said with an off-color chuckle.
“Something like that,” Aria said. “When I first walked in and got a look at her I didn’t have high hopes.”
