by Sarah Shaber
Simon felt sorry for himself. He was sitting on the sofa in his living room, wrapped in a blanket, for comfort, not for warmth. This had been quite a year. His wife had left him. He had been accused of incompetency. Someone was trying either to get him committed or to kill him. Right now, a detective sergeant from the Homicide Division of the Raleigh Police Department was interrogating his friends and colleagues. If Alex Andrus and Vera Thayer disliked him before, getting hauled off to the police station certainly wouldn't help matters. He was especially embarrassed that his other friends, including Marcus Clegg, were being questioned, too.
The only bright spot in his barren existence was that Julia was coming to fix him dinner and protect him until around midnight. Then David was going to come and spend the night. Simon hadn't argued with either of them about this.
Simon answered Julia's knock on the door about :.
"I'm a mite anxious," Simon said, taking one of the shopping bags from her. She reached out and squeezed his arm.
"Don't worry," she said. "Otis will get to the bottom of this. When he turns his whole attention to a case, results happen. Besides, no one would dare try again, not after all this commotion has been raised."
"I hope not." They carried the bags to the kitchen.
"What are we having?" Simon asked.
"Lamb chops, baked potatoes, salad, and—"
"Please say something chocolate."
"Chocolate decadence pie."
"Thank you, God."
"I hope you don't mind the meat and potatoes. The Irish in me just can't quite give it up."
"It sounds wonderful." He pulled a bottle of red wine out of one bag. "I guess I shouldn't drink any of this. I had my stomach pumped yesterday, after all." "Good. That means I get more."
Simon uncorked the bottle and poured the wine into one of his mother's old Waterford crystal wineglasses and gave it to her.
"This is wonderful," Julia said. "I don't know which is better, the wine or the glass. I wish," she said, "that I had thought to bring a change of clothes." Julia was wearing a full suit of regulation office wear: suit, blouse, stockings, and pumps. Her hair was pulled back from her face. She looked hot, wrinkled, and uncomfortable.
"You can borrow some of my clothes," Simon said.
"I couldn't fit into a pair of your jeans if my life depended on it."
"Don't be insulted, but I have a pair of old overalls I think would fit you," Simon said. "They're pretty baggy." "I am not at all insulted. Where are they?"
"In the bottom drawer of my dresser, right side," Simon said.
While Julia was upstairs, Simon washed the potatoes and put them in the oven. He tried not to think about her undressing in his bedroom. The happy domesticity of the evening so far gave him a familiar contented feeling, and he had to remember that they were just friends, so far at least.
Julia came into the kitchen in the blue denim overalls Simon had worn threadbare working on his aunt and uncle's Christmas tree farm near Boone. She had borrowed one of Simon's white T-shirts and was barefoot. Her hair was loose and pushed behind her ears.
"You look great," Simon said. She knew it, too. She walked up close to him and her body requested a friendly kiss, which she got. But that was all she wanted. She backed away from Simon's move toward a longer embrace, politely detaching his arm from around her waist and leaning back on the counter.
"You put the potatoes on?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Want to go sit outside?"
They went outside and sat on Simon's porch, he cross-legged on an old wicker rocker and she on a chaise lounge. They talked easily for an hour, until the potatoes were done. Julia went inside to fix the salad and Simon turned on the grill.
When everything was ready, they sat at the old table on the porch and ate. Simon hadn't realized how hungry he was. He hadn't had a square meal in days. He finished the half a lamb chop left on Julia's plate and had two pieces of pie.
There wasn't much to clean up, and with both of them working, the kitchen was straight in just a few minutes.
Then there was a lot of time left to pass until midnight. So they did what all members of their generation do when faced with an uncertain social situation. They put on some music and fixed complicated coffee. If it had been winter, they would have lit the fire, too.
At this point, Maybelline wandered through the room and gave them a topic of conversation. Her big belly swung under her, and she went into the kitchen for the lamb bones Simon had left in her dish.
"Looks like you're definitely going to hear the pitter-patter of little paws pretty soon," Julia said. "I know,' Simon said. "I hope so."
"No one wants kittens."
"I think it would be fun."
"They'll wet all over the house and cost a fortune in vet bills."
"It'll give me something to do."
"When they get big, what are you going to do with them? You'll wind up taking them to the pound."
"All my friends will have to take one," Simon said, "if they want to stay on my Christmas card list." Julia didn't think she'd ever figure Simon out.
"I'll take one."
"A kitten? Good, but you'll have to provide two references."
"I can do that."
Simon put his coffee glass on the table in front of the sofa and took Julia's away from her and put it on the table, too. His intentions were clear. Right now would be the best time to stop this, Julia thought. Simon put his arms around her and kissed her. It felt so good to both of them that they didn't stop until they ran out of oxygen. Julia knew she needed to do something, but that something was to ease into Simon's lap when he urged her to, and they kissed again. Simon unhooked her overalls and put his hands under her — or rather, his—T-shirt. He rubbed her backbone under the waistline of her panties while they kissed again.
"Skin," he said. "I want some, too," she said. She pulled his shirt out from his belt and put her arms around him and caressed his back and nuzzled his neck with her lips. Both of them began to breathe hard and fast. Simon unhooked her bra and held her breast.
"You are so soft," he said. "You feel wonderful." They lay down on the sofa. Simon stretched himself over the length of her, nestling the lower half of his body into the hollow formed by her slightly spread legs. Neither of them said anything while they touched and kissed for a long time.
They were both wondering if there was a graceful way to get up, go upstairs, and undress without breaking the spell they were under when a tiny but insistent beep began to sound somewhere in the room.
"What is that?" Simon asked.
"My beeper," Julia said. She gently pushed him off of her.
"Don't," Simon said.
"I have to," Julia said. "I'm on call."
"Can't it wait?"
"Until you and I are through making love? I don't think so. Sergeant Gates knows I'm here. If I don't call him, he'll send a police cruiser over to see if we're okay." She disentangled herself from Simon, got off the sofa, and went over to where her purse lay on a table. She took her pager out of her purse and looked at it. "It's Gates's number all right. It's probably about your case."
That thought drove the libido right out of Simon, and he sat up straight on the sofa. "My case?" he said.
"You knew he was working on your case tonight. He's probably still interviewing people and has a legal question."
Julia went into Simon's kitchen to use the phone, hooking her overall straps as she went. Simon stretched and tucked his shirt back into his pants. Temporarily, he hoped. Julia was gone for a rather long time. Simon could hear her murmuring in the kitchen. He, and she, had studiously avoided bringing up the attempts on his life during the evening, and for a time he had exited the emotional twilight zone where he had dwelt since waking up in the hospital. Now, though, he felt the cosmic weirdness of the situation overtake him again.
Julia hung up the phone and came back into the living room.
"Guess what?" she said. "Alex Andrus has confessed!"
Simon didn't know what he had expected, but this wasn't it. "I don't believe it," he said. "So far, he's just admitted to booby-trapping the car," she said. "He seems to think that the second attempt was more serious, and he denies that one. But not for long, I'll bet. Otis says he's so scared, he's hyperventilating."
"But Alex was supposed to be at Bobby Hinton's apartment."
"The kid lied to help him out."
He would, Simon thought. Why hadn't he figured on that?
"The little bastard," Simon said.
"Andrus said he had no intention of killing you. Just wanted to force you to leave Kenan. I wonder what he thought carbon monoxide poisoning and a drug overdose would do to you."
For a moment Simon could picture his small, cold, dead body curled up on the floor of his kitchen. It might have happened if he hadn't made it to the telephone. And his friends and family would have believed that he had killed himself. He became so angry that it seemed every drop of blood in his body would burst out of the top of his head. He clenched his fists.
"Goddamn him," he said.
Julia went over and put her arms around him.
"It's okay," she said. "It's all over."
"What will happen to him?" Simon asked.
"He'll be charged with attempted murder, of course," Julia said.
Attempted murder and perjury will not look good in Alex's personnel file, Simon thought. He'd never see the man again. He had his life back. "Look," Julia said, "I have to go. Gates wants me there five minutes ago." Simon did not want her to leave, for more reasons than one.
"Why do you have to?" he asked.
"Andrus has waived his right to call a lawyer," she said. "The idiot. Otis wants to continue to question him, and he wants me there to be sure it's legal." "Can't someone else do it?"
"I'm on call. Don't worry, I'll be back in a couple of hours."
She went up Simon's stairs two at a time to change her clothes.
Simon sat down wearily on his sofa. Alex Andrus, damn him. Simon's hands hurt, and he turned them over, to see the deep indentations his fingernails had made in his palms when he clenched his fists. He was deeply angry, angrier than he had been before he knew who his persecutor was. He took deep diaphragmatic breaths, trying to relax.
Julia came downstairs, back in her working clothes.
"I forgot to tell you," she said. "Otis got the report on the bullet
back from the lab."
Simon had forgotten all about Anne Bloodworth and the bullet
that had killed her.
"And?"
"It's a forty-one caliber."
"Do they know what kind of gun it came from?"
"No," she said. "But it's a big bullet. It must have come from a
big gun."
Chapter Thirty-One
AFTER JULIA HAD GONE, SIMON STOOD IN THE DOORWAY between the kitchen and the living room and pushed on the frame as hard as he could. He used his feet to brace himself and pushed with both hands until his body trembled with the tension. When he heard the wood cracking under his hands, he stopped. Dissipating all that anger was a good thing, but he didn't want to have to replace the door frame.
He called Marcus to find out what had happened at the police station. "It was great," Marcus told him. "I've never had so much fun in my life. I warmed a bench in the waiting room outside Otis Gates's office and observed humanity. I always thought the state fair or the flea market was the best location in town for that, but let me tell you, the police station has them both beat. I wonder if I could get a grant to study something there. How about 'Comparing and Contrasting the Body Language of the Criminal Element and Law-Enforcement Personnel in a Local Police Station' sound as a title?"
"You never got questioned?" "Not really. I was just there for appearance's sake, I think. That Sergeant Gates is huge. He must have been some effective beat officer. Anyway, when I finally got called into his office, we talked about our kids and soccer and how hard it is to be a Southern Baptist these days and stuff like that. Then he asked if I would be willing to help him. I said of course. So he assigned me to sit in the waiting room with Alex and make him nervous while he questioned Vera. I was great. I should win an Academy Award. I told Alex that if he was concerned about being a suspect, he should offer to take a lie-detector test because they're very accurate in untrained subjects. He was a wreck by the time I was done. No tranquilizer in the world could have calmed him down."
"How did Vera take it?" "She was livid. What an affront to her dignity. She must have met her match, though. She marched into Gates's office planning to put him in his place, but she came out looking like she'd been ridden hard and put up wet. That made Alex even more nervous."
"I'm sorry you got dragged into this."
"I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I'm glad it's over, though. I was beginning to feel like Crito watching Socrates drink hemlock. Stay out of trouble for a while, all right?" Now that he no longer felt strapped to a post waiting for the firing squad to assemble, Simon's big problem became passing the time until Julia came back. He decided to do what he always did when he felt bored, restless, or beat-up: go to the library. Simon left Julia a note in case she came back sooner than she had predicted. Then he called David Morgan and told him not to come to his house to stand guard over him. He was safe now.
Chapter Thirty-Two
THE KENAN COLLEGE LIBRARY WAS OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT every night. As he passed through the double entrance doors, bound for the reference section, Simon saw Bobby Hinton reading the Sports Illustrated swimwear issue in the seating area next to the door. The boy saw him and raised his hand in greeting, with one eye still on Rachel Hunter. Simon lifted his hand and waved back with a friendly smile.
You little jerk, he thought to himself. Enjoy yourself while you can. The police will be looking for you very soon. After they find you, they'll take you downtown, fingerprint you, slap you in a holding cell, and charge you with obstructing justice. That's a felony, son. You'll have to stay right there in that cell with all the other lowlifes until the family lawyer comes to bail you out of jail. How will that look in the Charlotte papers? Think anyone will want to buy a posh house in Myers Park from a felon?
As he looked up the call numbers for gun catalogs, Simon hoped he would get to testify against someone, anyone. He allowed himself to contemplate the sweetness of revenge, then put it aside and set himself the task of finding out what guns were available in 1926 that took .41-caliber ammunition.
Contrary to popular opinion, not every southerner drives around in a pickup truck with a selection of firearms mounted on a gun rack behind the cab and a revolver in the glove compartment. There were a lot of guns in the vicinity of Boone, North Carolina, when Simon was growing up, but his parents didn't have one.
A couple of his aunts' husbands were hunters, and he had enjoyed the fruits of the sport many times, but hunting guns were tools, and when they weren't being used for their intended purpose, they were kept locked up in a gun cabinet. So Simon was completely unfamiliar with the gun as toy or macho accessory. On this night, he found out quickly just how fascinating firearms can be.
The gun catalog Simon had in hand was the fourteenth edition of the Gun Trader's Guide. It was five hundred pages long and profiled an average of eight guns on each page. There were a lot of guns in the world, a whole lot of guns. However, Simon was able to eliminate most of them immediately. The murder weapon was obviously not a shotgun, which used cartridges filled with shot rather than bullets, so he skipped that section. As he slogged fruitlessly through the rifle section, Simon suddenly realized that a rifle with a barrel 41/100 inches in diameter would be damn heavy. There were just not many of them. Almost all rifles were 22.s. Feeling stupid, he turned to the handgun section.
Despite himself, he soon became caught up in the history and, yes, the romance of some of the famous handguns of the world. As he browsed among the Lugers, Police Specials, Walther PPKs, and Colt .45s, he had to interrupt his
fantasies of Wyatt Earp and James Bond and remind himself what he was looking for.
There were not a lot of 41.-caliber weapons here, either. The most obvious one was the famous Colt six-shooter, which came in many calibers and was ubiquitous throughout the country. The military had packed them, and the civilian models were known by the famous name of Peacemaker. They were made from 1873 to 1942, and there must have been thousands in circulation in 1926. Most were .45s, though, since that was the caliber used by the military. The Peacemaker was the most famous model, mostly because Wild Bill Hickok killed fourteen men with his. After he died, shot in the back in a saloon, his sister gave the gun to Pat Garrett, who killed Billy the Kid with it in 1881. Too bad Hickok couldn't get to his 32. Sharp's double derringer inside his breast pocket. It was buried with him in Deadwood, South Dakota.
Now the derringer was a fascinating weapon. It took a heavy load, making the stubby weapon absolutely deadly at close range and worthless at any distance wider than a card table. Its ease of concealment, power, and secondary advantage as a knuckle-duster made it the favorite weapon of gamblers, dance-hall girls, and gunmen who needed backup. John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln with one. The most popular derringer was the Remington-model double derringer with the famous bird's-head grip and over/under double barrel. There were thousands of these in the country. They had been manufactured continuously from 1965 to 1935. They were only worth around five hundred dollars today, but the engraved version with the mother-of-pearl grip was worth about a thousand bucks. That's why Charles Bloodworth's was kept securely locked up in the display case at Bloodworth House.
It took a second for Simon to realize the import of what he had seen. For a second, the air around him went cloudy and red spots swam across his eyes. He put his head down until the faint went away. When he sat up, he saw a librarian walking toward him with a concerned look on her face. Simon waved her away. "Just resting my eyes," he said. She didn't look completely convinced, but she went back to her desk.
