Dear Irene

“Mercury’s?”

“Yes. The government funded centers usually closed early in the evenings. We were working three shifts, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We needed child care centers to match. We couldn’t wait for the federal government to decide it could sponsor such centers, so we sponsored our own.”

“In Los Angeles?” Frank asked.

“The Olympus Child Care Center was in Los Angeles. The one in Las Piernas was simply called the Mercury Child Care Center. They were both closed before the end of the war.”

“Why?”

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Old J.D. would spin in his grave if he knew I was dredging all of this up again. But I’m an old coot now, and past scaring.

“Life in Southern California was very different in those days. It was different everywhere. But you cannot imagine how much this area has changed. Los Angeles! Oh, my.” He closed his eyes, as if picturing L.A. and Las Piernas as they were then. “Aircraft companies and the people who ran them were very powerful. Everyone saw their importance to winning the war. No one wanted to stand in the way.” He sighed and opened his eyes. “It was wartime. People your age have never seen anything like it. The World War II homefront was something beyond what your generation can imagine. Everyone had a brother or a husband, a father or a son, in the military. People weren’t just patriotic. The war effort was a personal matter. And this plant and the one in Los Angeles were vital to that effort. Whatever we asked for, we got. It’s impossible for you to understand…” He paused. “Oh, forgive me. I’m rambling. You want to know about Olympus.”

He hesitated again, then began speaking in a low, confiding voice, as if he were dishing the dirt on the bride at a wedding reception. “There was a very strange and sad incident at that day care center. A little boy died. I don’t remember all of the details, but as I recall, one of the workers at the center was blamed for the boy’s death. The center was closed.”

“You don’t remember anything about the person who was blamed?” Frank asked. “Was it a man? A woman?”

“A woman, I believe. Yes. There was a big trial.” His brows drew together again. “I’m sorry, it’s so long ago. I was so busy after they closed that center, I didn’t follow all of that very closely, I’m afraid.”

“What happened to all the children who were being cared for at the Olympus Center?”

“Now, that part I remember. I handled most of that. The company offered to transfer a few of the mothers and their children down here, and to help them get settled in Las Piernas. As I recall, J.D. offered that only to the war widows, not every woman who had a child there. Most of the other women were forced to make other arrangements. But he had a soft spot for the widows. The first women he hired were Pearl Harbor widows. He got great press out of that — but I wouldn’t want to disparage his motives.”

“So these twenty-five came down here, to Las Piernas?”

“Yes. I was in charge of helping them to find housing down here, which wasn’t easy, I can tell you.”

“How did you manage that?” I asked. “I’ve always heard that housing was scarce around here then.”

“Oh, it was. Very much so. But as I said, Mercury Aircraft had a tremendous amount of power in Southern California in those days, and we got it all worked out. J.D. wasn’t above pressuring officials for favors when he needed them. And as I said, he also knew how to milk the publicity value of a good deed, and he made the most of what we were doing for these women.”

We started comparing his list to ours. We had six exact matches to the names of mothers on our list, including the mothers of the three victims:

Josephine Blaylock

Bertha Thayer

Gertrude Havens

Peggy Davis

Amanda Edgerton

Louisa Parker

Most of the others didn’t match in one of two ways. If a woman was on Devoe’s list, and not ours, her child’s (or children’s) current age would not be fifty-four. If she was on ours, but not Devoe’s, a check of the Mercury records revealed that she was not transferred with the Olympus group.

There was one exception. A woman named Maggie Robinson had transferred with the Olympus group. Her only child, Robert Robinson, would be fifty-four, but hadn’t called the police or the newspaper.

“Maybe he didn’t scare as easily as the others,” I said.

“Maybe.” Frank was concentrating on writing down social security numbers; although it would take a little time, with that information, he could probably find any of the women who were still alive. “This information is almost fifty years old. Robinson could have moved out of the area. He could have died when he was forty. There are lots of possibilities.”

I looked over his shoulder and noticed that even if they didn’t match the list, Frank noted the women’s social security numbers. “We don’t want to be too cocky about this connection through the Olympus Child Care Center,” he said. “Things could change. Maybe his next victim will be someone younger or older than fifty- four.”

WE THANKED HOBSON Devoe and let him guide us out of the building.

“You’ll have to come back and visit the museum sometime,” he said as we were leaving.

“I’d like that,” I told him. “And someday I’d like to sit down with you and Austin Woods and eavesdrop while you reminisce about Las Piernas.”

He laughed. “You’d fall asleep faster than Austin does at that old desk of his.”

“One other thing,” Frank said, “if you don’t mind my asking, is there a story behind your name?”

“Devoe?” The old man smiled mischievously. “Oh, you must mean Hobson. Well, yes. I am my parents’