by Sarah Shaber
He hauled the boxes over to the nearest table and began to look for Bloodworth's appointment book and correspondence for 1926. Bloodworth left no other written records than these, Simon knew, because Simon and the local historical society's curator had thoroughly searched the Bloodworth House for documents when it had been deeded to Kenan College. Adam Bloodworth had left no written records behind at all.
He found the appointment book first. Among the usual business entries, Bloodworth occasionally jotted a few personal notes to himself: "Have Robt. grease the Ford," or "Lunch at club with Anne today." On April thirteenth, four days after his daughter's disappearance, he wrote, "The search is futile. She is gone." On the fifteenth, after an appointment with private detective Robert Lumsden, he recorded: "Lumsden will communicate with Pinkerton. Adam is all I have left." Bloodworth wrote nothing else about his daughter for the rest of the year.
Simon found three letters in the file about the disappearance. One was from the Southern Detective Agency ("Legitimate detective work of every description handled in every part of the United States. Connections all over the world"). It promised to forward Bloodworth's physical description of his daughter to the Pinkerton Detective Agency in New York and to send a complete written report on progress in a week. A very businesslike letter from Bloodworth to an advertising agency also in New York, arranged for the ad Simon had already seen in the News and Observer to be placed around the country and the world. The final letter was from Bloodworth to the detective agency, dated about three months after the disappearance, enclosing a check "in final settlement of my account."
The sparseness of the documents left Simon with more questions than he had had when he started. Where was the description of Anne sent to Pinkerton? What did it contain? Where was the detective agency's final report? How could a worldwide search for anybody in 1926 be concluded in just three months? Simon knew that nothing he had found so far would help the medical examiner positively identify the body.
Chapter Seven
"EVEN IF WE CAN IDENTIFY THE BODY, THE POLICE DEPARTMENT won't do anything officially," Julia McGloughlan said. "This case has a poor solvability factor."
The two were sitting at the local Chinese eatery decorated with tacky red chandeliers with tassels, paper place mats that told you whether you were a rabbit or a horse, and giant plastic Chinese letters stuck to the walls. It was the same stuff you saw in every other Chinese restaurant in town, and probably the world. Somewhere, Simon thought, there must be one huge warehouse that has a total monopoly on Chinese restaurant decorating supplies.
Julia was wearing a black denim skirt, a green sleeveless T-shirt, black canvas shoes, and gold hoop earrings. A vast improvement over the grey suit, Simon felt. He noted that she was eating her shrimp toast with gusto. Simon hated it when women didn't eat. Diets, if they were necessary at all, should be conducted in private, where they couldn't ruin dinner for anyone else.
"What, pray tell, is the solvability factor?" Simon asked. "That's the degree to which we might actually have a chance to solve a case," she answered. "In modern police work, we don't spend time investigating cases that look hopeless. It's a waste of time and taxpayers' money. It sounds obvious, but it used to be that a detective was assigned to follow every case forever. So if your bicycle was stolen off your back porch in the middle of the night and no one saw anything, you could count on a detective following up. Not today. You'd be lucky to get a phone call back from the investigative division. It irritates people sometimes, because they like to think something is being done about a crime. But it's not efficient. Investigating this murder just won't make sense to our administrative people."
"So even if the body is positively identified and we think it's murder, there won't be an official investigation?" "We'll be able to open a file. But we won't be able to use any of the department's resources to work on it. The chief's attitude is, the killer is dead. Everybody else involved is dead, too. What would be the point?"
"The point is, I want to know what happened."
“Me, too."
"What about Sergeant Gates?"
"He's probably the best investigator we've got. He'll follow the rules. But he's definitely interested, so we can probably count on his unofficial help."
Simon liked the sound of that "we."
After they finished their crispy duck and seafood delight, Julia pulled two single sheets of paper out of her handbag and gave them to Simon. "This is it," she said. "I found these in a box of old papers in the back of the filestorage room, in an envelope full of stuff, with just the month and date written on the outside. It's the patrol officer's report."
"Peebles," Simon said.
"That's right. He couldn't spell."
Simon read the pages over closely several times. It was written on what looked like plain-ruled school paper, the kind with blue lines—in pencil no less. It was an account of the incident exactly as Simon had read it in the paper, with the addition of several indignant remarks about the mess in Anne Bloodworth's room and around the outside of the house. Peebles noted that during the time Bloodworth must have disappeared, the servants were away, her fiance, Adam Bloodworth, was on a fishing trip, and her father was working in the study on the first floor. The next page was a paragraph, probably written later, which simply observed that no clues to Bloodworth's disappearance had been found and that an intensive search of the city had failed to find her or any evidence of what had happened to her.
"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.
"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."