KIRKWOOD, Mo., Jan. 15  Behind the counter at Imo’s, a pizzeria on one of the main strips in this affluent suburb southwest of St. Louis, the cooks and cleaners have a penchant for joking around. So when they realized that a kidnapping suspect in the area had a vehicle that matched the description of the manager’s white pickup truck, they had a few rounds of fun with it.

“The guys noticed the similarities immediately,” Mike Prosperi, Imo’s owner, said Monday. “People were joking about it because no one thought it could possibly be him. He was just too nice a guy.”

Everybody had a good laugh except the manager himself, Michael Devlin, 41, who was later apprehended near the kitchen where he had worked, by all accounts, as a model employee since age 15. Mr. Devlin was arrested Friday and charged with one count of kidnapping; he is being held on $1 million bail. The authorities said that he had confessed, and that more charges were likely.

The police had spotted the white truck outside Mr. Devlin’s apartment, and inside the apartment on Friday, officers found a 13-year-old boy, William Ownby, known as Ben, who had disappeared just days earlier, and, even more to their surprise, a 15-year-old boy, Shawn Hornbeck, who had been missing for more than four years from his home in a rural town about 60 miles from Kirkwood. Both boys had no visible injuries and have been reunited with their parents in what some are calling the Missouri Miracle.