Simon Said (8 page)

"There's precious little there," Julia said. "You couldn't consider this any kind of official report. It's just the patrolman's notes to himself."

"Remember that police departments didn't do much investigating then. For that, you hired a detective agency, which Charles Bloodworth did." He told her what he had learned from the Bloodworth papers.

"It sounds as though he didn't have much hope of finding his daughter from the beginning," Julia said.

 

"I noticed that, too. And there are a lot of relevant documents missing. The final report from the detective agency, for one."

 

"Gone forever, I guess."

"Not necessarily. The agency Bloodworth used was the Southern Detective Agency. I looked it up in the Raleigh city directory for 1926. It was affiliated with all the right organizations—the Association of American Detective Agencies and the International Association for Identification, among others. They had the resources to search effectively for Anne Bloodworth, and should have kept good records."

"You think their files could still be around?"
"Maybe. And there should be a record somewhere at Pinkerton. The Pinkertons were sticklers for paperwork. I know the agency's archivist in New York. But I can't call him until Monday."

"I'll see if I can get the medical examiner to delay the autopsy for a few days." "What happens if he does the autopsy and can't positively identify her?" "She's a Jane Doe forever."

Chapter Eight

SIMON WAS HAVING A GOOD TIME. HE STARTED TO ORDER MORE wine for the two of them, then noticed the lines of hungry people waiting at the entrance to the restaurant. It was Saturday night, after all, and in just an hour or so the nine o'clock movies would start.

"Maybe we'd better go," Julia said. "Other people are waiting."
Simon was surprised by the disappointment he felt. This was interesting.

Julia had insisted on separate checks when they first ordered, and as they groped for money, she dropped her purse on the floor. As she leaned over to retrieve it, her skirt rode up slightly and her T-shirt stretched over her breasts. When she sat up, she pushed her auburn hair out of her face and disentangled it from her earrings with long fingers. Her nails were short and lacquered with a clear polish.

Every pilot light in Simon's body flicked on, and kept flaring, despite his efforts to tamp them down. He managed to hide his arousal while they paid the check and argued over the disposition of the tip. Walking behind her as they left the restaurant didn't help matters any.

They had come in separate cars, and Simon couldn't think of an excuse to spend more time with her. After all, they were just supposed to be talking about the Bloodworth case. It wasn't a date or anything, although he recalled having been a little nervous when he left his message on her answering machine.

Waiting for the light to change before turning onto his street, Simon rested his hot face on the cool steering wheel. Whether the flush was from desire, embarrassment, or just plain shock that he had been attracted to a woman other than his ex-wife, he didn't know and wasn't even going to try to figure out.

It was not soothing that "Layla" was playing on the radio the rest of the way home. DAVID MORGAN WAS reluctantly scrubbing dried food off plates before loading his dishwasher when the phone rang. He washed dishes only on Saturday night, after his stock of plates and glasses was completely exhausted from the week's meals. Until then, they piled up on every available surface in his kitchen.

"This is Julia McGloughlan," said the voice on the phone.

 

Morgan remembered—the lady police lawyer who didn't mind getting dirty. What on earth did she want?

"I was just wondering if you had located anything else at the site," she said. "Like what?"

"Oh, evidence that could be related to the corpse. You wouldn't throw anything you found away before we could get a look at it, would you?"

 

And he had thought briefly that this woman might have some intelligence.

"Lady, I'm an archaeologist. We don't throw anything away. Every site I supervise is thoroughly mapped and sieved. Not a button or a tooth will get by us. I will let you or Simon know if we find anything."

"Simon and I had dinner tonight. To talk about the case."
"This is a case?"

"As far as I'm concerned." She filled in Morgan on their conversation. He was interested in spite of himself.

"Look," he said. "I'll be very alert when we sieve. Okay?"
"About Simon."
What was this all about? His suds were collapsing.
"Yes?"
"Is he married or what? He's not wearing a ring."
"Divorced. Recently."
"Oh. Thank you."

They hung up simultaneously. Morgan went back to his dishes. Women are all alike, he thought. Poor Simon.

SGT. OTIS GATES and his teenage son were locked in mortal computer-game combat when his wife called him to the telephone. He reluctantly paused just as he was about to break out of the novice level of Rebel Assault II and went to the phone. At least it wasn't police business. He could tell that from the tone of his wife's voice. "Yes?" Gates said.

It was Simon Shaw, the young professor who was consulting on the case of the corpse found buried on the grounds of the Bloodworth House. Gates conjured up Shaw's image and placed him: small, dark, brilliant.

"What can I do for you?" Gates asked.
"I've been talking to Julia McGloughlan," Simon said.
"Uh-oh." Gates laughed.
"What does that mean?" asked Simon.

"It means I have a feeling that the two of you intend to get intense about solving the mystery of our unidentified corpse," Gates said.

 

"She's not unidentified. It's just not proven yet. But that's not what I'm calling about. Can you tell me if Julia is dating anybody?"

 

"She's not right now, I don't think. She just broke off an engagement a few months ago. A banker, I think."

 

"Oh," Simon said.

"Don't worry, she's fully recovered and well out of it. He was a jerk. The whole department chipped in and bought her a bottle of champagne to celebrate after they broke up."

This was an interesting development, Gates thought as he hung up, but he felt sorry for Simon. He was just not Julia's type. She socialized with a coat-and-tie crowd, and he didn't see Simon fitting into their symphony and Sunday brunch existence.

Chapter Nine

WHAT SIMON REALLY WANTED TO DO ON SUNDAY WAS CALL THE Pinkerton Archivist in New York, contact the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce to find out if the Southern Detective Agency still existed, and talk to someone at the North Carolina Dental Society about the practice of dentistry in 1926. Of course, he couldn't do that, so he vented his frustrations by cleaning his house, which was filthy. He changed the kitty litter for his cat, Maybelline. Actually, she was Tessa's cat, but she had left Maybelline behind when she went to New York. Maybelline had always liked him best anyway.

After he cleaned both bathrooms and dusted and vacuumed, Simon tackled the laundry. He wasn't an expert, so he washed everything in cold water, just to make sure. He even washed the sheets that he had left in the hamper in the basement when he first changed the bed after Tessa left. He had slept on them until he couldn't detect her odor anymore, then left them in the hamper for months. Now he didn't even think about her as he dumped them into the washing machine.

Even after his chores were done, Simon was restless. So he went next door, detached Danny from his homework, and took him to the batting cage, where they practiced hitting high ones for almost two hours. Then they went to the Char Grill on Hillsborough Street and ate a surprising amount of cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate shakes, considering their respective sizes. Simon then delivered Danny home. The boy was completely incapable of finishing his homework, but his mother didn't complain.

The next morning found Simon at his kitchen table, drinking coffee and watching the clock as it crawled toward 8:30. It was far too early to call anyone in New York, but the day had begun hours ago in North Carolina. Half the state had probably done two hours' worth of chores before going to work. He dialed the number of the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.

The very kind young woman who answered the phone led Simon to a disappointing dead end. According to her records, the building that housed the Southern Detective Agency offices had burned in 1937, and the business had never been rebuilt. Good-bye files, thought Simon. Did Simon need a detective agency? she asked. If so, she had a list of reputable ones. He thanked her for her time and trouble and hung up.

Simon knew that dental records were the best means of identifying a corpse and had been for decades. He also knew that a young woman of Anne Bloodworth's class had undoubtedly had a dentist. He already had a list of the dentists practicing in in Raleigh, which he had gotten from the city directory. There were twenty in the city—seventeen white and three black. There was no way she would have gone to a black dentist, so he had seventeen names to research. Unfortunately, the public-affairs officer at the Dental Society told him not to waste his time. There were no records extant from that long ago. They would have been discarded whenever the patient, or the dentist, died. Period. End of discussion.

As soon as Simon hung up the phone, Julia called him. He told her about his negative results so far.

"It gets worse," she said. "Dr. High-and-Mighty Boyette won't delay the autopsy. He says it's not a priority case and that it doesn't matter to him or to the police department if she's identified or not. He says there's not enough of her left to do a real autopsy anyway, and they don't want a corpse in such an advanced stage of decay lying around the morgue any longer than it has to."

Simon could understand that.
"When is he going to do it?" Simon asked.

"After lunch. Probably about two o'clock. Do you think you can get in touch with your friend in New York?"

 

"My chances of getting any information in time are pretty slim," Simon said, "but I'll try."

Simon placed a call to his friend Mark Mitchell, the archivist of Pinkerton Investigations in New York City. Simon had a lot of respect for Mark. While the rest of their classmates derided Mark's decision to become a company historian instead of an academic, Simon thought that it showed infinite good sense. The job paid well and was never boring. Pinkerton's had been in the middle of just about everything interesting that had gone on in the country from 1850. Mark was besieged with requests for information from historians studying everything from the Wild West to Prohibition to railroad strikebreaking. And he didn't have to worry about getting tenure.

"You want this by when, Simon?" said Mark.
"By one o'clock," Simon said.
"You don't ask much," his friend answered.

"If we can't get this body identified properly, we'll never know who she was for sure or what happened to her."

"Who cares?"
"I care. I care a lot. I dream about it at night."

"I'm sorry, I just can't drop everything and go look for one letter right now. It's probably on microfiche, if it's still here at all. It's Monday morning. My assistant is sick, and I've got stuff on my desk up to the ceiling. I'm teaching a class at NYU and I'm going to have to grade papers during my lunch hour. I could maybe do it toward the end of the week."

"I'll buy you dinner the next time I'm in town."
"When will that be? When you win your second Pulitzer?"
Simon played his best and final card.
"Did you ever meet my uncle, Morris Simon?" asked Simon.
"I don't know. Maybe."

"He owns that deli on Pearl Street. You know, the one with the great potato salad. We've had lunch there."

"And?"
"How about lunch? My treat."
"I can't make it today."
"Anytime. Let's make it... a week's worth of lunches. I'll set it up with my uncle." "This is really important to you."
"Yes."
"Okay. I'll do my best. Do you have a fax number?"

Simon gave him the fax number at the history department. Then he called his uncle's restaurant. He was out, according to Simon's cousin Leah, so Simon left his Visa number with her. Leah wasn't very happy spending her summer slinging hash. She wanted to be a meteorologist, but her father forced her to work in the deli when she wasn't attending college in hopes that she would take over the business.

"What it is," she told Simon, "he thinks the smell of pickles and corned beef and Hebrew National mustard is going to grow on me until I pine to spend the rest of my days slapping it all over pumpernickel. I keep telling him there's no gene for Jewish food preparation."

Simon drove to the Kenan campus to wait for Mark's fax. He felt sure it would come. It was a beautiful clear day, with a limpid yellow sun shining brightly in a Carolina blue sky. It was not yet as hot and humid as it would get later, so Simon turned off his air conditioning and let the wind blow around him. He waited for two cycles at the light so he could listen to all of
Late in the Evening
, rolling into his parking space just as the song faded away.

Simon felt fine. He had slept well, he had eaten well, he liked a woman, he had driven in his car with the stereo blasting, and he was working on an interesting problem. When he walked into his office, his luck changed. Alex Andrus was sitting there. Simon went behind his desk and sat down.

"What are you doing here?" Simon asked.
"Dr. Jones tells me I am to apologize," Andrus said.
"Don't feel compelled to be sincere."

"I won't. I'm here only because I have to be. I've been ordered to apologize for the scene I made at the faculty meeting. But I don't have to tell you that I still don't think you're doing your job. Anyone who hasn't won a Pulitzer Prize wouldn't get the consideration you have."

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe that's okay, Alex?"
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe I have gotten some leeway just because I am productive. Maybe I deserve it."

"You'll be happy to know that Hinton's appeal will not go forward," Alex said. "The boy won't cooperate. So there's really nothing else I can do. You've won."

"This isn't a race. When are you going to understand that? We're teachers. We have different specialties, different interests, different abilities. There's room for both of us here."
"I understand that you're doing some consulting for the police department."