Simon Said

by Sarah Shaber

  "You couldn't be told anything until after Gates talked to you." "Why? Because I was suspected of attempted suicide and you didn't want to tip me off ? Gates wanted to surprise me with what he knew, in hopes I would slip up and admit it?"

  "Well, yes, exactly." "He surprised me all right. Shocked the hell out of me is more like it." Simon remembered the rush of adrenaline that had almost knocked him down when he saw the apparatus under his car, and the way the room had tilted when Gates told him his psychological stability had been questioned.

  "Do you agree with his conclusions?"

  "Vandalism is the only thing that makes sense to me. Alex Andrus has a serious grudge against me, but he would be too scared of the consequences if he got caught." "The way it was done convinces me," Julia said. "What a stupid method. First of all, it wasn't likely to work. And the hose under the car was so obvious. So I don't see how it could be a serious attempt on your life, by you or anyone else."

  "I can't think why anyone would want to hurt or threaten me." "You'd be surprised what some people would murder for," Julia said. "There are probably a dozen people within five miles of here who would kill you for five bucks if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  "Still..." "Say you ran into a panhandler near your house. He asks you for money, and you turn him down. Maybe he's mentally ill anyway. He hangs around the neighborhood so he knows where you live. He's furious with you and the world, so he plays a terrible trick on you."

  "He's a sociopath." "That's right. Or let's say you're a very unpopular guy. Everyone who knows you thinks you deserve to die. Or you're a good person, but you are innocently thwarting someone. Like that assistant professor who tried to convince Sergeant Gates that you were mentally ill—he wants something you have."

  "But he has an alibi." "That's right. Which gets to my main point—you can't start with consideration of motive when you're investigating a crime. You have to figure out how the crime was done, who had the opportunity to do it, and voila, the motive will become apparent."

  "This is interesting. My colleagues accuse me of being too emotionally involved in my research all the time. So I have been trying to figure out why anyone would want to kill a nineteen-year-old woman in 1926, when I should have been coldly and unemotionally gathering facts."

  "Absolutely. Of course why is more fun than how and when. On TV, the detective always walks into the crime scene and hollers out, 'Who had a motive?' In real life, the police are wary of motive as a starting point. What they want to do is to eliminate everything that couldn't have happened, then analyze the rest."

  "Did you pick all this up in law school?"

  "No. From a famous London consulting detective."

  "Who?"

  "Sherlock Holmes, idiot. It's from The Sign of Four. 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' He also said that it is a 'mistake to theorize before one has data.' And we have damn little data to theorize from."

  "That may change," Simon said. He told her about the classified ad he'd placed in the newspaper, his conversation with the unfriendly florist, and his plan to find some lucid contemporaries of Anne Bloodworth.

  "If the florist doesn't cooperate," Julia said, "maybe I can do something official to shake their phone numbers loose." "Like what?"

  "I have no idea, but I'll think of something."

  The Bulls won the game in a most satisfying manner. They scored six runs against the Kinston Indians, which meant the famous mechanical bull in the outfield got to spew smoke and fire, to the delight of the fans. There was also a fifth-inning triple play and a seventh-inning grand-slam. The ballpark lights came on precisely at dusk, and the cool night fell just as the ninth inning began. Simon could not have ordered a more perfect minor-league evening.

  Once they had picked their way carefully through the ballpark traffic and navigated the maze of one-way streets in downtown Durham, Simon and Julia drove home uneventfully. The modern freeway lined with streetlights and exits could have been anywhere in the United States, but Simon knew that rural North Carolina lay just past the glass buildings and fancy hotels of Research Triangle Park.

  Out in the county, almost every house had a tobacco allotment or a livestock barn next to it, and the whole town went to church on Sunday mornings. Double-wides sat on lots next to huge brick houses built by guys who made a fortune feeding chickens for Perdue or Holly Farms. No one cared, because if God had wanted the county zoned, he'd have done it himself during that first week.

  Out in the country, men came home from their day jobs and picked tobacco or fed the pigs. The women drove school buses in between doing their regular chores and going to the church to set up and cook for the Wednesday-evening service and supper. They spent their vacations selling barbecue and fried dough at the state fair every year in a booth marked with the name of their town and the words FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH so they could raise the money for a new church roof or an organ. This was where you couldn't get elected dogcatcher unless you were a Democrat, your daddy was a Democrat, his daddy was a Democrat, and everyone bragged that they voted a straight Democratic ticket. Mysteriously, though, the Republicans had carried the state during national elections since 1960. No one seemed to be able to figure that out.

  The rural North Carolinians, with their immense capacity for work and their absolute confidence about right and wrong, were different from their town cousins, who, together with carpetbaggers of various stripes, lived in the cities and university towns. Simon needed to remember that. The Raleigh of Anne Bloodworth's time would have been much more like this than the city it was today.

  "Do you like working for the police?" Simon asked.

  "Yes, very much," Julia answered. "More than I should. I really ought to concentrate on finding a place in private practice."

  "Why?" "Oh, more money, more prestige. I had an excellent academic record. Contracts was my specialty. I took the job with the police department because nothing else was available when my clerkship ran out."

  "Why didn't you go somewhere else?"

  "A guy."

  "Oh."

  "I've been engaged twice."

  "We're pretty even. I've been married once."

  "The thing is, I really like the work. I feel that I'm helping real people, that I'm on the side of the guys wearing white hats instead of whoever walks in the door with that month's overhead in his pocket. And I like the atmosphere. It's much more exciting and interesting than the work my friends in law firms are doing."

  "If you like it so much, don't leave. I can't think of anything worse than not enjoying your work."

  "According to my mother, my stepfather, various law professors, and two past boyfriends, I'm not living up to my potential. I ought to aim higher."

  "I'm an underachiever myself," Simon said. "I do what I like. I highly recommend it." "That's right," Julia said. "You should be at Harvard or Yale or someplace, shouldn't you?" Simon groaned. "I would never fit in. I'm hopelessly politically incorrect. I drive an American car. I love rock and roll. I like to eat a steak occasionally. Every now and then, I think a Republican says something sensible—not often, mind you, but sometimes. Also I think faculty, not graduate students, should teach."

  "You've lost me." "There is no greater bastion of conformity than the fashionable American university today. Everything from the type of shoes you wear to the music you like to the foods you eat and the way you teach has to meet a standard tougher than the handbook of the Junior League of Chattanooga."

  "Every profession has its uniform and its code."

  "Not to the point of absurdity," Simon said. "When I was in graduate school, I opposed a plan to open a separate student lounge for minority students. I actually think Americans ought to work together, eat together, and room together, not break off into little groups defined by whose great-grandfather abused whom."

  "Wow. I detect strong opinions here." "And I was told by some nitwit first-year grad student w
ho was trying to make a name for himself that I was 'no liberal.' Can you believe it? And everyone else in the department went along with it because they were afraid—they had real fear—of being out of political fashion."

  "So, you accept underemployment to escape academic politics?"

  "And you're thinking of leaving a job you love because it's not prestigious enough to suit your friends." "Touche." Julia laughed. "Does that mean we're both hopelessly screwed up?" "Not any more than anyone else, and less than most, probably," Simon said.

  Simon had meant to ask her to have coffee at home with him, but he realized, first, that he didn't have any decent coffee in the house and, second, that he was exhausted. The adrenaline or caffeine or whatever had fueled him for the last thirty-six hours was completely depleted. He'd had a good time, but now he wanted to go to sleep.

  Julia pulled over in front of Simon's house but didn't turn off the engine. Apparently not being asked for coffee wasn't going to bother her any. "I had a really good time," she said.

  "I did, too," Simon said. "Can I call you?"

  "Sure," she said.

  Simon leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek before he got out of the car. She drove off, thinking that she liked him very much. He was bright, he could talk about something other than his job and money, and he wasn't demanding. He would be fun to pal around with. Of course, he was entirely inappropriate for her otherwise. She kind of wished he hadn't kissed her.

  Simon liked Julia, too, but relationships were far from his mind just then. He actually stumbled as he walked up the steps to his house. He leaned against the doorjamb of his bathroom while he urinated, and he didn't bother to brush his teeth. He got partially undressed, falling into bed in his Jockey shorts and socks. He didn't stir all night, even when Maybelline walked on his back on her way to curl up between his legs.

  Simon would have slept later the next morning if the city recycling van hadn't stopped outside his house to grind up the entire block's accumulation of bottles and cans. As it was, by his standards it was very late when he woke up, almost ten o'clock. It took about twenty minutes from the time he became conscious to force his eyes open. The process was like a submarine slowly surfacing from a great depth, with the longest stretch right before breaking the surface. Simon sat on the edge of the bed and tried to focus. His eyes were gummy and his mouth tasted like cheap paper towels. A dull ache in the back of his head stretched down his neck and across both shoulders. Well, why not, he thought. After all, he'd been in a car accident two days ago, and yesterday hadn't exactly been restful, either. He told himself firmly that he'd had plenty of sleep and it was time to get up and do something constructive. To do that, he needed a hot shower, a cold shower, a shave, and lots of coffee.

  A half an hour later, he was sitting at the International House of Pancakes with David Morgan, whom he had encountered when he walked in the door. The IHOP was a favorite gathering place for students, truckers, taxi drivers, and other denizens of Hillsborough Street. Most of them wore their hair in ponytails and wouldn't be caught dead eating bran muffins. Except for the waitresses, they were all men.

  A nearly toothless waitress brought them an insulated pitcher of coffee. "What'll you have, hon?" she asked. "We're out of sausage, by the way. The Neese's man hasn't come yet." She cocked a skinny hip and looked at David.

  "I'll stick with coffee," David said.

  "I'll have a large orange juice, with three scrambled eggs, bacon, and a short stack," Simon said. "No syrup—lots of strawberry jelly."

  "You know, you dig your grave with your fork," David said, slurping his mug of nonimported, non-freshly ground black coffee.

  "Strong words from someone who lives on Swanson TV dinners," Simon answered. "What was it last night, fried chicken or turkey and stuffing?"

  "I'll have you know, I didn't touch the apple cobbler. The tray is still on my kitchen counter if you want to check," David said.

  "I'm sure it is," Simon said. "What are you doing here in the middle of the morning, anyway?"

  "Waiting for the damned front-loader I hired an hour ago to turn up. It should have been here by now."

  "What do you need a front-loader for? I thought excavating machines were against your religion."

  "To move the pile of dirt and debris we stacked up on the north edge of the excavation," David said. "Why, pray tell, do you want to move it?"

  "We located an old brick pipe leading from the cistern straight to the pile, which is about ten feet tall at this point. We've got to move it if we want to find out where the pipe led."

  "What could it be?"

  "Anything. An icehouse, a laundry room, some kind of workshop. You need water for blacksmithing, for example."

  "Someone would pump it up from the cistern and dump it into the pipe," Simon said. "Saves a long walk carrying a couple of buckets. The pipe must slope some." "Exactly. Only a few degrees, but enough to move water along."

  "Nineteenth-century pipe? Or eighteenth?"

  "Nineteenth. The cistern was probably built around the time of the Civil War. The creek and all the storm drains in your neighborhood feed into it, so it never goes dry." The skinny waitress put a steaming platter in front of Simon. She dumped a dozen tiny boxes of strawberry jelly next to the plate. Simon painstakingly opened half of them and scraped the contents onto his pancakes. Then he dug in. David watched him eat for a while before he spoke again.

  "There is something else," he said.

  "What?" Simon said, his mouth full.

  "I found a new artifact associated with the Bloodworth burial."

  Simon's next forkful stopped before it got to his mouth.

  "What was it?"

  "A suitcase of some kind."

  Simon put his fork down on his plate.

  "A suitcase?" he asked. "What kind of suitcase? What was in it? How do you know—"

  "Just give me a chance," David said. "When Julia McGloughlan said something to me about watching out for other items that might be related to the body, I got curious. So I began to excavate the area around her body at the depth at which she was found. I located the bag several feet from her."

  Simon went back to his breakfast. He knew that David was saving up the best for the end of the conversation, and he didn't want to spoil his fun by rushing him along. "It was an old carpetbag," David continued. "Most of the fabric is gone, but you can see the pattern on a few scraps. The handles and the clasp are still there, though. Brass." "It could have nothing to do with Anne Bloodworth," Simon said.

  "But it does," David said.

  "Out with it. I promise to be properly excited."

  "The bag had the initials AHB inscribed on the clasp."

  "Damnation," Simon said through a mouthful of breakfast. "She was leaving town!"

  "I knew that you would come to some wild conclusion. There's no evidence of that at all. The bag could have been buried much later, or earlier, for some other reason." "Why would anybody want to bury an old carpetbag? You said yourself it was associated with the body. Anne Bloodworth was going somewhere far enough away and for long enough that she needed luggage, and after she was killed, the murderer had to conceal the bag, too. Nothing else makes sense."

  "You know this kind of speculation makes me nervous. I like facts."

  "Come on, you wouldn't have told me this if you didn't think it was important. Can I see it?"

  "The bag? Of course. It's at the Bloodworth house office—in the safe." THE PRESERVATION SOCIETY'S office was in a late addition that housed the Bloodworth kitchen. It had been added at the back of the house and didn't look right even when painted the same colors and trim as the rest of the house, and it really should have been torn down. But the society needed a place in the house to use as an office for its docents. Rather than convert an historical part of the house, they had stripped the kitchen and put in a couple of desks, a coat rack, two telephones, a metal cabinet that locked, and a Coke machine.

  David unlocked the cabinet and remove
d what looked like a dirt clod with tree roots clinging to it. The mess was sealed in a big plastic Ziploc bag. Simon sat down at one of the desks and examined the sodden bag. Decayed brown leather handles were attached by brass rings to a spine with a hinge at each end. The brass clasp still firmly held the two halves of the spine together and to what was left of the fabric of the bag. David had rubbed the part of the clasp with Anne Bloodworth's monogram until it was bright, and the initials were simple and clear. The fabric body of the carpetbag had decayed, but Simon could still make out its pattern of red cabbage roses with green leaves. The carpetbag was the duffel bag of its time—made of leftover carpet remnants, it was cheap and strong. Its mouth opened wide to accommodate almost any kind of baggage its owner wanted to carry. Simon carefully held up the spine to calculate how big the bag was. It was about two feet long and would have held a lot.

  For most people, the decayed carpetbag was just another artifact. For Simon, it was much more. It had belonged to a human being, and it represented the act of someone leaving somewhere to go someplace else. It had meaning; it had figured in a murder. Simon knew that Anne Bloodworth had had this bag with her when she was shot, knew it as well as he knew his own name. He wasn't worried about the details missing from his scenario. He knew the truth of it. And he was more determined than ever to decipher the mystery of Anne Bloodworth's death.

  "Some of us have real jobs," David said, disturbing Simon's reverie.

  "Sorry," Simon said. "Listen, can I have this? I'd like to give it to Sergeant Gates."

  "Can't do it," David said. "There are restrictions on disposing of artifacts from an archaeological site. The bag is the property of the Preservation Society."

  "But it could be important to a murder investigation," Simon said.

  "You're incorrigible. Let me lock it back up. You can tell the police about it, and if they think it's evidence, of course they can have it."