"When was that?"
"Right after Miles died, of course."
"When did Miles die, Belle?"
She switched again. "You want to know too much. You're as bad as the sheriffs... questions, questions, questions!" Then she looked up and said pleadingly, "Let's forget everything and just be ourselves. There's just you and me now, dear... and we still have our lives ahead of us. A woman isn't old at thirty-nine: Schultzie said I was the youngest thing he ever saw-and that old goat had seen plenty, let me tell you! We could be so happy, dear. We--"
I had had all I could stand, even to play detective. "I've got to go, Belle."
"What, dear? Why, it's early... and we've got all night ahead of us. I thought-"
"I don't care what you thought. I've got to leave fight now."
"Oh dear! Such a pity. When will I see you again? Tomorrow? I'm terribly busy but I'll break my engagements and-"
"I won't be seeing you again, Belle." I left.
I never did see her again.
As soon as I was home I took a hot bath, scrubbing hard. Then I sat down and tried to add up what I had found out, if anything. Belle seemed to think that Ricky's grandmother's name began with an "H"-if Belle's maunderings meant anything at all, a matter highly doubtful-and that they had lived in one of the desert towns in Arizona, or possibly California. Well, perhaps professional skip-tracers could make something of that.
Or maybe not. In any case it would be tedious and expensive; I'd have to wait until I could afford it.
Did I know anything else that signified?
Miles had died (so Belle said) around 1972. If he had died in this county I ought to be able to find the date in a couple of hours of searching, and after that I ought to be able to track down the hearing on his will... if there had been one, as Belle had implied. Through that I might be able to find out where Ricky had lived then. If courts kept such records. (I didn't know.) If I had gained anything by cutting the lapse down to twenty-eight years and locating the town she had lived in that long ago.
If there was any point in looking for a woman now forty-one and almost certainly married and with a family. The jumbled ruin that had once been Belle Darkin had shaken me; I was beginning to realize what thirty years could mean. Not that I feared that Ricky grown up would be anything but gracious and good
but would the even remember me? Oh, I did not think she would have forgotten me entirely, but wasn't it likely that I would be just a faceless person, the man she had sometimes called "Uncle Danny" and who had that nice cat?
Wasn't I, in my own way, living in a fantasy of the past quite as much as Belle was?
Oh well, it couldn't hurt to try again to find her. At the least, we could exchange Christmas cards each year. Her husband could not very well object to that.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning was Friday, the fourth of May. Instead of going into the office I went down to the county Hall of Records. They were moving everything and told me to come back next month, so I went to the office of the Times and got a crick in my neck from a microscanner. But I did find out that if Miles had died any date between twelve and thirty-six months after I had been tucked in the freezer, he had not done so in Los Angeles County-if the death notices were correct.
Of course there was no law requiring him to die in L.A. County. You can die anyplace. They've never managed to regulate that.
Perhaps Sacramento had consolidated state records. I decided I would have to check someday, thanked the Times librarian, went out to lunch, and eventually got back to Hired Girl, Inc.
There were two phone calls and a note waiting, all from Belle. I got as far in the note as "Dearest Dan," tore it up and told the desk not to accept any calls for me from Mrs. Schultz. Then I went over to the accounting office and asked the chief accountant if there was any way to check up on past ownership of a retired stock issue. He said he would try and I gave him the numbers, from memory, of the original Hired Girl stock I had once held. It took no feat of memory; we had issued exactly one thousand shares to start with and I had held the first five hundred and ten, and Belle's "engagement present" had come off the front end.
I went back to my cubbyhole and found McBee waiting for me.
"Where have you been?" he wanted to know.
"Out and around. Why?"
"That's hardly a sufficient answer. Mr. Galloway was in twice today looking for you. I was forced to tell him I did not know where you were."
"Oh, for Pete's sake! If Galloway wants me he'll find me eventually. If he spent half the time peddling the merchandise on its merits that he does trying to think up cute new angles, the firm would be better off." Galloway was beginning to annoy me. He was supposed to be in charge of selling, hut it seemed to me that he concentrated on kibitzing the advertising agency that handled our account. But I'm prejudiced; engineering is the only part that interests me. All the rest strikes me as paper shuffling, mere overhead.
I knew what Galloway wanted me for and, to tell the truth, I had been dragging my feet, he wanted to dress me up in 1900 costumes and take pictures. I had told him that he could take all the pix he wanted of me in 1970 costumes, but that 1900 was twelve years before my father was born. He said nobody would know the difference, so I told him what the fortuneteller told the cop. He said I didn't have the right attitude.
These people who deal in fancification to fool the public think nobody can read and write but themselves.
McBee said, "You don't have the right attitude, Mr. Davis."
"So? I'm sorry."
"You're in an odd position. You are charged to my department, but I'm supposed to make you available to advertising and sales when they need you. From here on I think you had better use the time clock like everyone else... and you had better check with me whenever you leave the office during working hours. Please see to it."
I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation, "Mac, do you use the time clock?"
"Eh? Of course not. I'm the chief engineer."
"So you are. It says so right over on that door. But see here, Mac, I was chief engineer of this bolt bin before you started to shave. Do you really think that I am going to knuckle under to a time clock?"
He turned red. "Possibly not. But I can tell you this: if you don't, you won't draw your check."
"So? You didn't hire me; you can't fire me."
"Mmm... we'll see. I can at least transfer you out of my department and over to advertising where you belong. If you belong anywhere." He glanced at my drafting machine. "You certainly aren't producing anything here. I don't fancy having that expensive machine fled up any longer." He nodded briskly. "Good day."
I followed him out. An Office Boy rolled in and placed a large envelope in my basket, but I did not wait to see what it was; I went down to the staff coffee bar and fumed. Like a lot of other triple-ought-gauge minds, Mac thought creative work could be done by the numbers. No wonder the old firm hadn't produced anything new for years.
Well, to hell with him. I hadn't planned to stick around much longer anyway.
An hour or so later I wandered back up and found an interoffice mail envelope in my basket, I opened it, thinking that Mac had decided to throw the switch on me at once.
But it was from accounting; it read:
Dear Mr. Davis:
Re: the stock you inquired about.
Dividends on the larger block were paid from first quarter 1971 to second quarter 1980 on the original shares, to a trust held in favor of a party named Heinicke. Our reorganization took place in 1980 and the abstract at hand is somewhat obscure, but it appears that the equivalent shares (after reorganization) were sold to Cosmopolitan Insurance Group, which still holds them. Regarding the smaller block of stock, it was held (as you suggested) by Belle D. Gentry until 1972, when it was assigned to Sierra Acceptances Corporation, who broke it up and sold it piecemeal "over the counter." The exact subsequent history of each share and its equivalent after reorganization could be traced if needed, but more time would be required.