Jack works the ten-to-six in the detective squad at the Sixty-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn. It gives us a chance to have breakfast together, for him to see Eddie for a while before he leaves. Monday through Thursday he goes to evening law school, and that Monday was the day the fall semester began. He had taken care of registration and books before we left for Fire Island, so he was all set when he kissed us good-bye.
I was feeling a little sad to see him go. We had had two wonderful weeks together, and three months of having him home at a normal hour. I would miss his company at dinner, not to mention his cooking, and all those little times during the day when we had enjoyed being in the same room at the same time. There was something very final about the first day of work after Labor Day, the first day of school, the first time you put your headlights on to come home at night.
But I had a place to go and I got moving fast, leaving a telephone message for Melanie that I might not be back in time to see her but I would if I could. Then I scooped up Eddie and the bag that always went with him, and drove to Elsie’s house.
It was a long drive just to get to the George Washington Bridge, which crosses the Hudson River into New Jersey. Then it was another long drive to Sally Holland’s town just outside of New Brunswick. I missed my intended eleven o’clock arrival and needed directions when I got off the New Jersey Turnpike, but I found her house at last. It was a small, one-story house on a street of similar houses. A cousin of hers opened the door and showed me into the family room where Sally Holland was sitting and watching television. When we’d introduced ourselves and I had expressed my sympathy, she turned off the set.
She was a thin woman in her forties with the same coloring as her daughter. She looked sad and drab. She was wearing a pair of gray slacks and a black cotton sweater and only some bright red lipstick gave her any color.
“Mrs. Holland,” I began, “do you know why Tina went to Fire Island this summer?”
“To have fun. Why does anyone go?”
“Most people go for that reason. Tina went to track down someone she’d known in her childhood.” I watched her eyes. First they looked distant; then they brightened.
“Who would that be?” she asked carefully.
“Someone she thought of as Uncle Bill.”
“Billy,” the woman whispered. “She was looking for Billy.”
“I believe his name was William Jamieson.”
“Yeah, that’s who he was, Bill Jamieson. She never forgot him.”
“She thought he might be her father.”
Sally Holland shook her head. “Bill wasn’t her father. He was a friend. I met him in a funny way and we got to be friends. I was good to him and he was good to us. Up to a point.”
“Did you know him long?”
“Oh, yeah. Years.”
“Was he a boyfriend?”
“At the beginning, maybe. Then it cooled off. He’d go away and come back. If he needed a place to stay for a while, I’d give him a bed to sleep in.”
“What kind of person was he?” I asked. “Was he ever violent?”
“He could slap you around a little. What man doesn’t?” She smiled as though we were sharing a secret. It made me feel very uneasy. “But he could be nice, too. And he liked Tina. He used to bring her things, toys, a hat from Texas once. I think he even got her a new bike.”
“You knew he was going to Fire Island that last time you saw him, didn’t you?”
“He told me he was going. Said he’d met a girl somewheres, she was going to be there. They couldn’t go together for some reason. I think she lived in one place and he lived somewhere else. So he got a ride or took the train. The Long Island Railroad, maybe?”
“I think that goes out there.”
“Then you take a boat, right?”
“Yes.”
“Sounded nice to me. It was all beaches and ocean. You could spend the day on the beach and maybe have a picnic.”
“Do you remember what day he went out?”
“How could I remember after such a long time? It was a holiday, I think. The Fourth of July, maybe.” She thought about it. “Maybe it was Labor Day.”
“And then what happened?”
“That was it. Nothing happened. I never saw him again.”
“Did you try calling him?”
“There was nowhere to call. Sometimes he stayed with me, sometimes he stayed with a friend. He probably stayed with girlfriends, too, when that worked out.”
“I guess Tina must’ve been upset.”
“Oh, yeah. She wanted her Uncle Billy something awful. But I told her, ‘He’s gone, honey. Let’s hope he’s happy wherever he is.’ ” She stopped and looked as if something had just clicked. “You know where he is?”
“Not exactly, but I may know why you never heard from him again.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” She squeezed her hands together and her face looked bleak. “I knew it. I knew it years ago. He would’ve called. He would’ve dropped in, ’specially if he needed something. Like I said, I was good to him.”
“I think he’s dead, Mrs. Holland. I don’t know for sure but I—”
“He’s dead. I know it.” She patted her chest to show me where she knew it best.
“You must have told Tina where he went on that last trip.”
“I could’ve. I don’t remember. Maybe I said it a while ago. I can’t even remember where he went, except that it was Fire Island.”
“She was trying to find out what happened to him. She wrote in a notebook that she thought Bill was her father.”
“He wasn’t.”
“I understand, but that’s what she thought. She wanted to know what happened to him. She asked around to see if there were any drownings that summer or if anyone got hurt in a fight.”
“Is that why she was killed? Because she was looking for Bill?”
“I think it’s connected. I’m not sure exactly how. I found something out, just last night. I learned that William Jamieson wasn’t his real name.”
“So that’s it,” she said, as though something had just made sense after a long time. “He said to me once—I met someone named Jamieson and I asked Bill if he could be related, and he said he wasn’t related to anyone named Jamieson, and I said, ‘How can that be? You’ve got a dad and you’ve got brothers and sisters. You gotta have relatives with that name.’ But he said he didn’t, and I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. So I let it alone.”
“Do you have any idea what his real name was?”
“He never said a word. He never even said Bill wasn’t his real name.”
“If we knew his real name,” I said carefully, “it might give us a clue to who killed Tina.”
“How’s that?” she said.
“Tina was asking questions and poking around all summer. It’s kind of complicated, but her death may be connected with another murder a few days earlier, and both of them may be connected to Bill’s death fifteen years ago.”
“Fifteen years ago. Is it that long already?”
“Yes. If we could just find out who Bill really was, where he came from, who his family is, maybe we could find some answers.”
She was silent for a minute. She folded and refolded her hands. “He left some things here. I gave away the clothes a long time ago because I figured if he came back, they wouldn’t fit him anymore anyway, but there’s a couple of other things if I can just find them. You want to take a look?”
“I’d like to.”
She got up and I followed her to a door in the kitchen that led to the basement. We went downstairs and she walked over to an assortment of cartons and suitcases that filled a corner. I couldn’t imagine how she could find anything, but it turned out that many of the boxes were labeled and after a few minutes, she pulled one out.
“Maybe in here,” she said, “but I can’t promise.”
We opened it and she fished around inside. The first thing she pulled out was a pair of small pink satin ballet slippers, tied together. She held them and looked at them, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “I wanted her to be a dancer,” she said. “She was so delicate and beautiful.”
“Maybe this isn’t the time,” I said softly.
“If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.” She set the slippers aside and went back to her rummaging. “Here’s something.” She pulled an old brown envelope out and handed it to me. “These are papers I found after he left. Take a look. Maybe something’s inside with his real name on it.”
The envelope was about nine by twelve, and inside was an assortment of papers, including minuscule want ad clippings from a newspaper. Whether he had applied for the jobs or just thought about it, I couldn’t tell. They weren’t marked in any way. There was a small snapshot of himself with Tina and Sally, possibly in this very backyard. He was a good-looking, dark-haired young man with strong arms and shoulders. I handed it to her and she said, “Oh, look at that,” and held it a little distance from her face, as though she were becoming farsighted and needed her glasses.
It was the only picture in the envelope, but there were a couple of letters, all addressed to William Jamieson at this address, that looked like form rejections for jobs. There was an empty key ring with a plastic bottle of beer hanging from it, and at the bottom I found a small penknife with a ring at one end so you could hang it from a chain or key ring. Engraved on it was the name “Buzzy.” I showed it to her.
“I never saw that before.” She took it in her hand, looked at it, opened it and closed it.
“Everything seems to be addressed to William Jamieson,” I said. Just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I spilled everything in the envelope out onto the top of a closed carton. A folded yellow sheet of lined paper was hidden between two of the typewritten letters. I unfolded it and spread it out. It was handwritten in pencil, a letter that began, “Dear Buzzy.”
“This is something,” I said. “Listen.
‘Dear Buzzy,
Hope things are working out for you. It’s a cold winter here and the snows pretty hi. Did you get that job at the warehouse? That kind of work pays pretty good and its a good place to get started. Maybe you’l get to be president of the compny some day. Ha, ha. Give us a call. Mother misses you a lot. Me too.
Your loving Dad’ ”
“So his real name was Buzzy?”
“Probably his nickname. It’s not going to help very much. May I take this with me? I promise I’ll get it back to you.”
“Sure, take it. What’m I gonna do with it? Put it back in the box?”
I refolded it and we went back upstairs. I didn’t see anything further that I could do here. I hadn’t learned much and had made her more upset than she’d been when I walked in the house. “Have you had the funeral yet?” I asked.
“It was Saturday. They didn’t keep her long, and I didn’t want to wait till today. So it’s over.”
“Thank you for helping out. If I learn anything, I’ll let you know.” I wrote down my name and address, as I always did, and gave it to her.
“You came a long way,” she said.
“I want to find out who killed Tina.”
“You know he took one of her earrings?” She sounded very angry.
“I heard. You may get that back.”
“I’d like to. She loved those earrings. They were real diamonds. My husband gave them to her when she turned twenty-one.”
“If it turns up, I’m sure they’ll return it to you.”
I picked up my bag and put the yellow letter in it. Then we walked to the front door.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” Sally Holland said. “It’s about Bill. He only told me because we were friends and he trusted me.”
I looked at her, wondering what she had to say.
“The day I met him—he told me this a long time later—I picked him up at a bus stop. I never did anything like that before but I was in a good mood about something, and he was standing there with this little bag and he didn’t look dangerous or anything, so I stopped the car and asked him if I could give him a lift.” She kind of smiled and for a moment her face lost its forlornness. “It was a lucky day for both of us. He told me afterwards he’d just gotten out of prison.”
“He was in prison? Here in New Jersey?”
“Yeah. Trenton State. That’s south of here. They let him out that morning and he hitchhiked from there. It was just our luck that I was driving by.”
“Did he tell you what he was in for?”
“It was nothing, pilfering or something. You know, shoplifting.” She made it sound very mild, very offhand, as though everybody did it but poor Billy had gotten caught.
“Mrs. Holland, do you remember the date?”
“Oh yeah. It was Tina’s birthday, September twenty-second.”
“And the year? If we know the day and the year, we may be able to find out who he was.”
“Let me think a minute.” She went into the kitchen and came back with a piece of paper with numbers written on it in pencil. She handed it to me. “I could be off by a year, but try this. I think Tina was five that day.”
“So you knew him for a few years.”
“A few years. That was it.”
“Thanks for telling me. I’ll keep you posted, and if you remember anything else or find anything with his name on it, please let me know.”
“And the earring,” she said.
“I’ll do my best.”