Chapter Fifty-five
“This Sheila Jones has been like a ghost since she left New York,” Bogle told Morris over the phone. “Not a trace of her.”
“What about tax returns?”
“She never filed any. IRS has nothing about her in their system.”
“That’s odd,” Morris said after chewing and swallowing a mouthful of his chicken salad sandwich. At that moment, he was sitting in a booth at a downtown diner that allowed him to bring Parker along, and the bull terrier was trying to guilt him into giving up some of his sandwich, acting as if he hadn’t just gobbled down an order of meatloaf.
“Tell me about it. Whatever credit cards she had expired with her New York address as her last known address. FBI’s helping us with the banks, but so far no luck, and they haven’t been able to get as much as a whiff of her. No forwarding address when she left New York, and she didn’t tell any of her neighbors where she was moving. From what I can tell, nobody in the building knew her. I tried getting a look at her apartment application, but they tossed it years ago. I did get a Key West address for the apartment manager who took her application, but haven’t been able to get a phone number for him. We might have to have a face to face with him. Okay if Polk flies down there?”
“Sure. If nothing else, it gets Polk out of your hair.”
“That it does. One of the nurses at the hospital where she was sent after her attack thinks she was married, but she wasn’t able to tell me more than that. New York hasn’t computerized their marriage licenses, and it’s a shot in the dark, but Lemmon’s been at City Hall since they opened this morning going through them one by one. If she’s married and we can get the husband’s name, maybe he’ll be easier to track down. But other than that, I’m out of ideas.”
“What about her hospital records? Were they sent anywhere?”
“No such luck. She carried them out with her when she was discharged.”
“It sounds like she went out of her way to make sure no one could find her after she left New York,” Morris said. “Maybe she knew her attacker and didn’t want him coming after her again.”
“Maybe it’s something like that,” Bogle said, sounding unconvinced.
“Keep digging,” Morris encouraged.
“Yeah, that’s what I love doing. Digging a hole that goes nowhere. How about on your end? What have you been up to?”
Morris broke down and tossed Parker the rest of his sandwich. The dog was a champion moocher. He had to just accept that. With about the same enthusiasm that he’d heard from Bogle, he said, “First thing this morning I saw SCK’s latest handiwork up close. Since then I’ve been chasing after leads that are going to the same place as that hole you’ve been digging.”