What happens
Bud Owen, a young man working in a diner, is approached by Mike Burrow, the former police chief of Edgerton, who claims to be looking for a boy named Bud Badone who vanished three years ago. Burrow persuades the young man to return home to a wealthy family who have long mourned him. Bud is welcomed back by his mother and stepfather, David Cunningham, and reunited with friends Ellen and Joe, but Joe is bitter about the past. Tension builds as Bud learns of the town's suspicions and his mother's new will. This is the Suspense radio drama, broadcast on May 11, 1944, starring Eddie Bracken, and the story continues beyond this point.
Edgerton, a small town, in the 1940s.
Characters: Bud Owen, Mike Burrow, Judith Cunningham, David Cunningham, Ellen Woods, Joe, Mary Louise, Mrs. Callahan
Listen for: The tense exchanges between Bud and Mike Burrow in the diner and at the Cunningham home, where the family's reactions to Bud's return reveal growing suspicion.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.