Free Simon Said by Sarah Shaber

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.