Simon Said (24 page)

Andrus went back into his office and Simon proceeded to the coffeepot, where he found Marcus Clegg and David Morgan filling up.

 

"How's my Mustang?" Marcus asked.

"It's fine, thank you," Simon said. "I feel a little self-conscious in it—as if I should be cruising around the high school in shades and a white T-shirt with cigarettes rolled up in my sleeve."

Morgan was ladling sugar into his cup. He delivered several guest lectures in the department of history every year, so he visited the library and the lounge whenever he wanted to.

"Is the IHOP closed today, or what?" Simon asked him.

 

"It's the end of the month and I'm broke, and I was hoping you'd have doughnuts," Morgan said.

"No doughnuts or muffins or anything else since Professor Thayer complained to Walker Jones that it didn't look professional for us to be eating in here. Also the crumbs attract mice," Marcus said.

"You're joking," Simon said.

 

"I am not. God, I hope she doesn't get the chair when Walker leaves. She'll probably install a time clock. I don't think I can stand it."

"It's inevitable, isn't it?" Simon asked.
"No, it's not. Not if the faculty is completely opposed."
"The college needs a woman chair," Simon said.

"By the time Walker retires—say in three years—Janna Ornstein will be chair of English for sure, and Pat Brock will have biology if Nigel goes back to England. Which he probably will. His parents aren't well."

"Maybe you can talk Walker out of leaving," Morgan said. "He's only fifty-nine." "He's got two volumes left of his Hamilton biography," Simon said, "and he thinks he can't finish it unless he retires, or at least goes emeritus. He's probably right."

Simon thought that if the university wanted another chair than Vera Thayer, it would have to look outside the department. Traditionally, the senior tenured faculty member of any department could have the chair if he or she wished. Otherwise, the infighting in the department would be horrific. In the past, Kenan didn't have the prestige to attract an already-successful scholar—it had to grow its own. But Simon thought this had changed, and that bringing in someone from outside would relieve the insularity and inbreeding that was characteristic of a small college.

"Speaking of the anal-retentive personality, I saw you talking with Alex," Marcus said. "He seems very subdued to me."

 

"Yeah," David said. "I thought he was the guy who was supposed to be so aggressive." "I think he's taking tranquilizers," Simon said. "He must be really scared of losing his job."

 

Judy Smith walked in the room and dropped the department's newspapers on the coffee table.

 

"Judy," Marcus said, "Simon thinks Alex is on tranks. Is he?"

 

"He's taking something," she said. "I saw a prescription bottle in his office. Diazepam, whatever that is."

 

"Valium," Marcus said. "Hallelujah. I hope he takes it for the rest of his life."

Simon didn't see any point in kicking Alex when he was down. So he changed the subject. While they drank their coffees, he brought the other two men up-to-date on his findings on the Bloodworth case.

"So now," Marcus said, "now you're going to go to the library and try to find out who Mr. X is. You'll probably get only a circumstantial identification, if that. Then what?" "I don't know," Simon said. "I guess I'm hoping that I'll find out something that will lead me somewhere else."

 

"You can't fool me," Marcus said. "I think you're just prolonging your association with that redheaded policewoman."

"Her hair is auburn, and she's not a policewoman. She's an attorney," Simon said. "Even better. She makes her own money. What are you waiting for?" "The light to change," Simon said. "It's stuck on yellow."

"What do you think?" asked Marcus after he was sure that Simon was most of the way down the hall on his way out of the building.

 

"About what?" Morgan answered.

"About Simon and this murder. I mean, it seems to be therapeutic. It's gotten his mind off his troubles and into normal mode again. But I'm concerned he might get depressed again if all this comes to a dead end."

"I don't think we have to worry about that," Morgan said.
"Why not?"
"I think he's going to find out who killed the girl."

Chapter Twenty-Seven

ONCE AT THE LIBRARY, SIMON HAD REQUESTED AND RECEIVED A copy of the Kenan Institute annual for 1926. He leafed through it. To the unschooled, his search would seem like a complete waste of time. But Kenan had been a women's school then . The few men associated with it were probably administrators or teachers. Anne Bloodworth had told her maid that she had met Mr. X at the college. If he was one of these administrators or teachers, his picture should be in the annual. It was as simple as that.

Most of the men in the pages were middle-aged, with gray hair and handlebar mustaches. A lot of them were ministers.

Then, on page 37, among the part-time instructors, Simon found him. The darkhaired young man looked directly at Simon out of his photograph. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five. His name was Joseph Weinstein. The few clues that Simon had already collected about his identity coalesced somewhere on the right side of his brain. Weinstein dressed like an old man, he wore a funny hat, he went to church on Saturday, and the features that looked out at Simon resembled his own. The guy was Jewish. Simon leaned back in his chair and whistled. Wow. Double wow. That would really have caused society to sit up and take notice in . No wonder Anne hadn't even told her maid her lover's identity. Simon imagined that Weinstein's family wouldn't have been thrilled with Anne Bloodworth, either. Simon had been reminded many times by his maternal relatives that official Jewishness was handed down in the female line. If this Weinstein guy was Mr. X and he married a Gentile, his family might lose their children to the faith. A love affair between these two would have been a scandal.

Simon once again consulted the 1926 city directory. He found what he was looking for right away. Temple Beth Or was at 612 Hillsborough Street—about three blocks from Anne Bloodworth's house and four from the Manhattan lunch counter. They would have met there after services on Saturdays. Weinstein probably didn't drive on the Sabbath, so wherever they met would have needed to be within walking distance. During the week, they would have seen each other on campus.

And in the lower left-hand corner of the right page, among the other business ads, was a rectangle that read "The Weinstein Brothers: Everything in Junk."

IT WAS NOISY outside on the sidewalk where Simon stood next to the public telephone and dialed Blanche Holland's number because he couldn't wait to get home and call.

"About Mr. X," he began.
"I've been thinking and thinking," she said, "and I just have no idea." "Could it have been Joseph Weinstein?" Simon asked.

"Who? Oh, Joe Weinstein, the economics and history instructor. I remember him. He was so attractive, in an exotic sort of way, and younger than the other men on campus."

"Could he have been Mr. X?"
"Goodness. Goodness gracious."
"Exactly."
"My word. That would have created an uproar."
"But could he have been Anne's beau?"

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, and for a minute, Simon was afraid they had been cut off.

 

"Yes," she said. "Yes. I don't know why I didn't think of it. It answers so many questions."

 

"Do you know anything about him? His family? What happened to him after Anne disappeared?"

 

"No. Not really. We would not have encountered each other away from college. He was Jewish, you see. And his father and uncle were junk dealers."

"I know," Simon said.
"I do remember . .." she said.
"What?"

"I do remember that he wasn't at the college after Anne dis . . . died. I understood that he was teaching somewhere up north. New York City, I think. Do you think that he killed Anne?"

"I have no idea," Simon said. "I just know now that Adam Bloodworth didn't." He explained what he had learned about the younger Bloodworth's alibi.

 

"One can be so stupid," Mrs. Holland said, "about the weaknesses of human beings."
Chapter Twenty-Eight

SIMON GOT HOME AT TWO O'CLOCK, THIRSTY AND STARVING. HE had just enough time to eat something and get to the campus, where he needed to spend an hour figuring out what to say during his four o'clock lecture. Work was definitely interfering with his detecting. Or was it the other way around?

Simon opened his refrigerator door and took out some leftover chicken and rolls and a half-liter bottle of Coke with a screw-off cap that he had been working on for a day or so. There were only a couple of inches left. He swigged about half of it straight from the bottle, then began to tear the chicken apart with his fingers. Maybelline stirred herself from a puddle of sunlight and jumped onto the table. He gave her some scraps of his chicken. If she was preggers, she probably needed the protein. He wondered if his friend Mark Mitchell would trade more potato salad for some leg-work on Joseph Weinstein at the New York Public Library. Probably not. Simon thought he could probably fly up between summer sessions and do the research himself. Maybe Julia could go, too. They could see some shows and he could spend some time with his family.

Simon stood up and felt a dizziness come over him. He shook his head, but the dizziness remained. Nausea crept up his throat, and he had to swallow to contain it. Damn it, he thought, I don't have time to be sick right now. He sat down and put his head in his hands, while a chill started in his groin and worked its way up his back and into his shoulders. He looked at the chicken. He had cooked and eaten it last night with no problem. It couldn't have gone bad overnight. He put his head down onto the kitchen table and began to fall asleep, but Maybelline woke him when she rubbed up against his face.

Simon took the cold Coke bottle and pressed it up against his face, which felt hot and flushed. I'm losing consciousness, he thought. I've got to do something. Call an ambulance. He carefully used his hands to push himself up from the table and then reached for his cordless phone. When he did, he saw his three prescription bottles lined up on the kitchen counter where he had left them. All three were empty.

Thanks to the new enhanced system, the emergency dispatcher on the other end of the telephone knew Simon's address, even though he couldn't speak by the time she answered. Within just a few minutes, two paramedics and a policeman walked into his house and found Simon curled into a fetal position on his kitchen floor, deeply unconscious.

"This guy looks familiar. Didn't we pull him out of a car a few days ago, just around the corner?" the first paramedic asked.

"Yeah," the second said. "And this time, he left a note." He pulled the scrap of paper out of Simon's hand. But the note didn't say anything like "good-bye, cruel world," as the paramedic had expected. Instead, it read, "Pump my stomach."

"He must like attention," the paramedic said, handing the note to the policeman, who had picked up Simon's three empty prescription bottles carefully with his handkerchief. "Establish an airway and start an IV and transport," he said. "We can alert the poisoncontrol team on the way to the hospital."

Within just a few minutes, the contents of Simon's stomach, including an undetermined amount of Dalmane, Tylenol No. 3, and Prozac, was being pumped into a glass beaker that looked as if it came from the lab scene in Frankenstein.

"Make sure and save that; it'll need to be tested," the emergency room intern said. He looked down at Simon. "He'll be okay. Take him upstairs to sleep it off." He stripped off his gloves and initialed his orders. "Make sure to send him to the psych ward," he said. "We don't want him finishing the job after he wakes up, like the last guy."

When Simon woke up a few hours later, he was thrilled to find himself alive. Mentally, he inspected himself, starting with his feet and moving up to his head, which was splitting. He was very nauseated. When he moved his head or tried to focus, flashes of light moved across his brain. Very slowly, he turned his head to look around. He was definitely in a hospital bed in a hospital room. This was good. And David Morgan was sitting on a chair very close to Simon's bed, reading American Archaeological Review. This was very good.

"Hi," Simon said.

 

Morgan turned to him, putting his journal on top of the copy of Scientific American already sitting on the bedside table.

"Hi," he said. "How do you feel?"
"Lousy," Simon said. "Somebody tried to kill me."

"You have no idea," Morgan said, "how glad I am to hear you say that." Morgan scooted his chair closer to Simon's bed and selfconsciously patted his arm.

Simon slowly processed what Morgan had said. He tasted bile in his mouth, and he waited until the nausea passed to speak again. He didn't think Morgan had understood him.

"Somebody tried to kill me," he said again. "I need to talk to the police." "I know," Morgan said. "I understand. I believe you. But the authority figures here think you tried to commit suicide."

 

Simon turned his head farther, and then he saw the bars on the lower half of his window.

"Oh, hell," Simon said.
"Exactly."

"He used my own pills. Put them in a Coke bottle. Whoever it was knew I'd drink it eventually."

"I know."
"Get me out of here."

"You're in no condition to go anywhere right now. Just rest until we get it straightened out. Besides, it's going to be damn all getting you out. The hospital is really digging its heels in. Apparently, they had some guy in here last week who swore he accidentally OD'ed and wasn't suicidal. They put him in a regular room and he jumped out the window. His family is suing for zillions. It's all very exciting, really. Judy and Marcus are at the office, digging into your personnel file so that they can get your Uncle Morris's phone number before the hospital does, so he won't agree to commit you."

"Oh God."

"Your doctor had a knock-down-drag-out with the psych guy up here. You could hear them all the way down the hall. Your doc told the other doc that he wasn't normal himself, so how could he tell normal? Then the other guy said your guy was an old country doctor who shouldn't prescribe anything other than penicillin. The nurses had to separate them. It was great."