Simon Said (23 page)

"I don't understand."

She looked at him intently, then looked at her granddaughter, then back at Simon. "Oh Lord!" she said. "Thank you for letting me see this day!" She broke out into peals of laughter, rocking back and forth in her chair, until she began to cough, and her granddaughter had to slap her on her back.

"I don't understand this, either," Dr. Cofield said to Simon.
Mrs. Cofield took a long swig of her drink and gasped. "Oh Lord," she said again. "What is it, Granma?" Dr. Cofield said.

"Gone fishing! Oh Lord, save me! I guess you children wouldn't know, life has changed so much! Fishing, was... well, what do you call a word that you use when you really mean something else?"

"A euphemism?" Simon asked.
"Then," Mrs. Cofield said, "gone fishing was a euphemism."
"For what?" Simon asked desperately.

"Adam Bloodworth spent every Friday night at Ruby Hart's bawdy house. It was down on Hillsborough Street, in the bottom, between State College and Meredith College. He would drink smooth liquor, play poker, and stay the whole night. This was when sex wasn't free and Prohibition was on."

Simon was stunned. "You're sure about this?"

"Yessir. One of my cousins was Miss Ruby's houseman. He was the one who routed out Mr. Adam, and the police chief, when the patrolman came to tell them about Anne's disappearance. He was there all night, him and a lot of other leading citizens."

Simon's carefully constructed but largely hypothetical case against Adam Bloodworth collapsed all around him.

"Well," he said. "I guess that eliminates Adam Bloodworth."
"It wasn't him. He drove her away, but he didn't kill her."

Simon was so taken aback that he couldn't think. He had hoped that Mrs. Cofield would help him poke holes in Bloodworth's weak alibi, not substantiate a better one.

"I confess I don't know where to go from here," Simon said.
"How about Mr. X?" Dr. Cofield said.

"Do you know who he was?" Simon asked the old woman, who was still chuckling quietly over this misunderstanding.

"No," she said. "Anne never told me. That worried me. She knew that I could be trusted not to tell anyone. I figured that meant she knew I would disapprove of him. I once asked her point-blank if he was married. She said absolutely not. Then she laughed and said to trust her. Used to worry me sick."
"Did you want her to give him up and marry Adam Bloodworth?"

"Lord no, honey. What kind of husband would a man like that make? Go to a whorehouse one night and to his wife the next, and not even try to hide it? She did accidentally let slip that the man taught her at college. She also used to go down to the Manhattan Lunch Counter for lunch every single Saturday, rain or shine. She said she was meeting friends. But one day, I told her I knew it was him. She said yes, he was in the neighborhood 'cause he went to church on Saturdays and met her there afterward. She said to figure that out. I said that was easy—he had to be a Seventh-Day Adventist or a Pentecostal or something like that. She didn't say yes or no. Just went off. It was the next week that she went away."

"Can you think of anyone at all who might have wanted to do her harm?"

"No. Like you said, Adam Bloodworth might have been worried about what would happen to him if he and Anne didn't get married. But Mr. Bloodworth would probably have kept him on. He knew the business, and Anne sure wasn't going to run it. You know what I think? I think she was running away late at night and ran into a bad type. There weren't any shelters or welfare back then to keep people off the streets."

The wandering-tramp theory again, Simon thought. These wandering tramps sure are convenient. He didn't tell her about the careful way Anne's body had been buried, or that her jewelry hadn't been disturbed. He didn't want to upset Mrs. Cofield any more than she already was.

"How did you find me, anyway?" Mrs. Cofield asked.
"Through Joe Bagwell."
"Oh, him. At the cab company."

"That's right. He was picking up Mrs. Holland the day I interviewed her about Anne. He said he might be able to track you down for me, and he did."

 

"Blanche Holland is a lovely lady," Mrs. Cofield said. "She was that way as a child." "She has fond memories of you, too. And of your mother's banana cake with caramel icing. She would love to have the recipe."

"Wouldn't everybody," Dr. Cofield said. "I've got the recipe, and can't make it taste the same. Well, I shouldn't say I've got the actual recipe. It's not written down anywhere. I used to watch Granma make it and I'd try to measure all her handfuls and pinches and such. It just doesn't turn out right."

"I keep telling you, baby," Mrs. Cofield said. "The sugar don't caramelize right on an electric. You've got to have a woodstove to get it to do right."

"The source of the heat should have absolutely nothing to do with it," Dr. Cofield said. "I think you're hiding some secret ingredient from me just to frustrate me. I hope that before you die you take pity on me and remember that I took you in when you got old and let me know what it is."

"Honey, I ain't hiding anything from you. When you get as old as me," Mrs. Cofield said, "you learn that some things, when they're gone, they're gone forever. They don't never come back."

She turned her attention to Simon again.
"Who else have you talked to?" she asked.
"Lillie Blythe," Simon said.

"She's been three bricks short of a load for years," Mrs. Cofield said. "I'd have thought her boys would have locked her up by now."

 

"She seems to be taking care of herself okay," Simon said. "Except she's got a houseful of crochet."

 

"She was never a nice person. Not a lady, if you know what I mean."

 

"A lady," Dr. Cofield said, "says please on a hot day when she sends you for a glass of lemonade and a fan."

 

"What's wrong with that?" Mrs. Cofield said. She turned back to Simon.

"She went crazy in around 1957, when she found out her husband had another family. He was the president of the bank, the one that used to be downtown—where there's a parking lot now. He had a mulatto woman named Helen on the side. Gave her a house and everything. Had three kids. Anyway, when Mrs. Blythe found out, she told him to choose. He chose Helen and went to live with her. After a year or so, the boys went there, too. Had to, to get a square meal and clean clothes. Lillie Blythe hardly left the house after that. Told everyone her husband was away on business and her boys were at college."

"She still does," Simon said.

 

By Simon's watch, it was almost ten o'clock. He knew he should be going. He started to take his leave, but the old woman stopped him.

 

"I got something else to tell you," she said. "I don't know if it means anything. But it always struck me."

 

"What?"

"After old Mr. Bloodworth died—it would be about four years after Anne ran away ... Well, we all thought she had run away. A lot of the colored help from the neighborhood went to the funeral, and afterward they came over to the house to help Mama and me with the food and the company. We got to talking in the kitchen. We were wondering if Anne would come home soon. After all, she stood to get everything. Well, we were recollecting the day, and Myra Washington told me a story I hadn't heard before. Her son, George, was a doctor—one of three colored doctors in town. She said the morning Anne disappeared, real early—it was still dark— a white man rousted George out of bed. He had a gunshot wound in the shoulder. He was lucky. The bullet had missed the bone and passed right through. There wasn't much blood. George patched him up and gave him some laudanum. George told his mama that the man looked funny. He was young and middling, but he dressed old. His hair was real dark and longish. And he had a funny hat. The man had a suitcase with him, and he said he was going up north and wasn't ever coming back. When I read about Anne being shot, I thought of that story Myra told me."

"Dr. Washington didn't tell the police about this?"

"Of course not. Colored doctors made most of their cash money off white people in trouble. You know, fights, abortions, and such. The whole idea was that the colored doctors kept their mouths shut about such things. This man who came to George was hiding something, and he was getting out of town fast."

"You think he was Mr. X?"

 

"I don't know," Mrs. Cofield said. "It struck me, that's all."
Chapter Twenty-Five

EARLY MONDAY MORNING, SIMON APPEARED HUMBLY AT Sergeant Gates's cubicle with doughnuts, muffins, and coffee. The sergeant was buried in his PC, and Simon had to clear his throat to get his attention.

Gates looked at Simon's offering suspiciously.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
"This is not a bribe," Simon said. "It's penance."
"What for?"

"You were right. Adam Bloodworth had a real alibi. He was covering up with the fishing story."

"Wait just a minute," Gates said, reaching for the phone. "I want Julia to hear this." After Julia joined them, Simon told the story of his meeting with Mrs. Bessie Cofield.

"Gone fishing," Simon said, "was apparently an instantly recognized euphemism for visiting a brothel. That's where Bloodworth was the night Anne had her 'misadventure.' Apparently, half the male population of the town was there to corroborate it, too."

"I'm sure their women were having a good time, putting up green beans or whatever," Julia said.

 

"Beating rugs," Gates said. "And making the butter."

 

"Don't forget darning socks," Simon said. "It was the least a good wife could do, since her husband made the living and everything."

 

"Suckering tobacco," Gates said. "Trying to get two old mules to plow a straight line. Curing tobacco. Lifting bales. Toting barges."

 

"You two are not getting to me," Julia said, taking another muffin. "I'm just glad I wasn't around in 1926."

 

"Me, too," Gates said. "If I had been, I would have been looking forward to a summer of picking tobacco."

"I would have been peering out of dirty lace curtains in Irish town somewhere with a bunch of red-haired rug rats hanging on to me and another one on the way. What about you?" she said to Simon.

"I'd have been either walking up the holler with a shotgun looking for squirrels for breakfast or running a pawnshop in Romania," Simon said. "But wherever we were, none of us could get antibiotics."

"This is great fun," Gates said. "But I have work to do."
"Don't you want to hear about Mr. X?"
"Who—Anne's lover? You don't know who he was, do you?" Julia asked. Simon told them the rest of what he had learned from Bessie Cofield.

"You're still up a creek without a paddle, son," Gates said. "Even if you do identify this guy, there's nothing to say he was the man who visited the doctor or killed Anne Bloodworth."

"I know," Simon said. "But I just can't let go of it. Now that I have some clues, I've got to try to find out who Mr. X was."

 

Julia walked Simon to the front door of the Public Safety Center on her way back to her office.

 

"I guess I've thoroughly put off the sergeant," he said. "He looked like he thought I was crazier than ever."

"Don't you believe it," Julia said. "He's interested."
"He didn't look interested. He looked bored."

"Nuts," Julia said. "He took notes, didn't he? He always does that when he's serious about something. He just doesn't want to let on."

She watched Simon walked down the street until he turned the corner. If only he'd apply his energy and brains toward something worthwhile, she thought, he might accomplish something with his life.

Chapter Twenty-Six

SIMON WALKED ACROSS THE CAMPUS TO THE HISTORY department, where he wanted to put in an appearance and let Judy know he would be at the library if needed. That wasn't likely, but he hoped everyone would think he was working on something having to do with his job.

It was a beautiful day. A half a dozen seagulls, having flown inland from the coast during a storm, were wheeling above the Dumpsters outside the cafeteria. Simon was watching them and wondering how they would get home when he tripped over Bobby Hinton's legs. He was leaning up against a tree, wearing nothing but cutoffs, eating an egg biscuit and drinking a cup of coffee out of a Styrofoam cup.

Hinton pulled off the earphones to his Walkman before he spoke to Simon. "Hey there," Hinton said. "I was trying to catch some early rays. I'm sorry my legs got in your way." He looked up at Simon lazily.

Simon was irritated. Why didn't the kid go on home, or to the beach, or wherever rich kids went in the summer? Simon disliked it when ex-students hung around the campus, unable to let go of college life and move on. In Simon's experience, that often led to trouble. It was usually such people who sold drugs, brought hard booze to parties, and generally fomented problems out of boredom.

"You're not enrolled in summer school, are you?" Simon asked.
"No."
"Working here?"
"You trying to throw me off campus?"

"No. But I could," Simon said. "You're trespassing. And this isn't your backyard. It's the front lawn of a college. We'd appreciate it if you sunbathed somewhere else."

"Oh, right," Hinton said. He got to his feet and collected his stuff. "I wasn't thinking. Making a bad impression on visitors and like that. I'm just so fond of the old place that I think of it as home."

Please don't, Simon thought.
"By the way," Hinton said, "how's the investigation going?"
Simon didn't want to share his work on the Bloodworth case with this twerp. "Fine," Simon said.

Hinton put on his T-shirt and walked off toward the side parking lot. Simon watched him climb into a Mercedes convertible. Of course. What else would he drive? And naturally, Simon had to pick up his discarded biscuit wrapper and throw it in the nearest trash bin.

After Simon gave his information to Judy, he walked down the hall toward the faculty lounge to see who was in and find out what was going on. But Alex Andrus walked out of his office and stopped him. The muscles in Simon's neck and shoulders tensed as his body instinctively prepared for conflict.

But Alex was decent. In fact, he was positively warm. He very quietly asked Simon if he would lead a module on primary research in his section of World History in the fall. Simon said of course he would. They chatted for a minute about the reenactment of a Civil War battle Andrus had attended in Virginia over the weekend. Simon was astounded at the change in him. Compared with Alex's usual confrontational attitude, this was almost lethargic. Then he noticed Andrus's eyes. In a hallway that was flooded with midmorning light from huge windows, Andrus's pupils were fully dilated. Pharmaceuticals. Poor bastard, Simon thought.