“Media Search, Inc.,” a woman answered, “how can we help you?”
“Was your firm once known as-”
“-Headlines Search, Inc.?” she completed the question. “Yes, sir. We are in the process of making the changeover, but unfortunately some of our ads continue to display our former name.”
“What is it you do, exactly?”
“Why, are you from Dun and Bradstreet or something?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I’m actually a private investigator and I’m looking into a missing-wife thing,” I lied casually. “I’m going through her financial records and I see she wrote a check to you guys about twenty months ago. I guess I’m just curious.”
“Oh, you’re an investigator. We do a lot of work with you guys.”
“That’s great, but it doesn’t tell me what kinda work that is,” I said, letting her hear a hint of impatience.
“Sorry. My name’s Judith Resnick, by the way.”
“Moe Prager.”
“Well, Moe, as our name implies, we do searches. You give us a locale, a date, a subject, any sort of reference, and we’ll look through the search area’s media and collect related materials. Let’s say a freelance reporter is relocating from out of state and he has to do catch-up on local politics. He names some names and we search available archives for his info. It saves him a lot of time and legwork. For years after my dad founded the company, we only did newspaper searches. These days we’ve expanded to include radio and television as well. We even have computer hookups to libraries and a few police departments. Only public-record stuff, of course.”
“Hence the name change.”
“You got it, Moe.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it could bore you to tears. Depends on the search.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed. “How comprehensive are your searches?”
“Again, that depends.”
“On?”
“The parameters the client sets and the depth of his or her pockets.”
“How’d I know you were going to say that?”
“Because you’re a perceptive man,” she said with a bit of flirt in her voice.
“Which only an obviously perceptive woman would spot. How big a search would a hundred and fifteen bucks have bought me two years ago?”
“Sounds like a limited-area-old-newspaper search. Something like a search for stories about how the influenza epidemic in the teens affected Des Moines, Iowa. See what I mean?”
“I get it. Listen, Judith, if I give you a reference number, could you-”
“Sorry, Moe, no can do. Confidentiality is as important to us as to you. And even if I were inclined to break the rules, I couldn’t help you. The warehouse we store our old records in was gutted by fire about a year ago.”
“Fair enough, but can you at least tell me if the reference number is one of yours or not?”
“Sure.”
“HNJ1956.”
“It’s not one of ours. We don’t use letters in our system, and our file numbers all have at least six digits. Sounds more like a license plate number. I wish I could be more helpful.”
“Thanks anyway. One more question before I let you go, okay? And it’s kind of goofy.”
“Sure.”
“What would a package from your firm look like?”
“That’s not so goofy,” Judith assured me. “You’d get a tasteful brown envelope stuffed with dated newspaper clippings and/or photocopies thereof. It’s that simple. We don’t do any analysis. We just provide source material.”
I thanked her and asked that she mail me some material about her company. I thought I might have use for her services someday, and if not, I knew a journalist or two who might be interested. Okay, I had some answers, but they were the kinds of answers which led only to more questions. Moira Heaton had spent a chunk of money to have a company search old newspapers. What about and where those newspapers were located were still unknown to me. And what on earth did that reference number on the notation line in Moira’s checkbook mean? Was Judith Resnick right? Was it a tag number? If so, from where? The biggest question of all remained: Did the search, whatever it was for, have the slightest significance in the scheme of things? Moira was dead, and nothing was going to change that.
I called Rob Gloria over at One Police Plaza and asked him to run HNJ1956 in all fifty states. I was careful not to mention the connection to Moira Heaton. Cops like their beer cold and their cases closed. They want nothing to do with poking around in the past, especially when their promotions are based on old, closed cases. I needed to be very careful with Larry Mac and Rob, so I lied to Gloria about this being a liability case. He said he was glad to run the tag number for me, but that it would take a while. I knew it would.
My next call went to Sandra Sotomayor at Senator Brightman’s community affairs office. She was in a very upbeat mood these days, and why not? She’d hitched her cart to a man whose potential could now finally be realized. When Brightman moved into the governor’s mansion in Albany or the Senate Office Building in D.C., there was bound to be a high-level position and a fat paycheck waiting with Sandra’s name on it.
“Mr. Prager, how good to hear from you.”
“Thank you. Things pretty busy these days in the Brightman camp?”
“Busy, yes, but good busy. If you know what I mean?”
“I do. Listen, Sandra, Moira’s family has asked me to do a little research on her. You know, they’re curious about how she spent her last few months, what kind of stuff she was working on. I guess they want to feel she wasn’t wasting her time. I’m sure you understand.”
“Absolutely, Mr. Prager. I’ll be happy to help you any way I can.”
“Does the reference number HNJ1956 mean anything to you? Could it be a file number related to Moira’s work?”
“Sorry. That number don’t match anything in our office. Sounds like a license plate, no?”
Well, we were building a consensus on the license plate theory, but not much else.
“Sandra, what kind of work was Moira doing before-Was it anything that required her to do private research?”
“I’m not sure I understand. All research we do is for the people who live in our district and is funded through our budget. Now if Moira was doing some related research on her own, I would have no way of knowing that.”
“Okay, Sandra, thanks a lot. Do you think if I needed to, I could come down one day and look over the stuff Moira was working on when she disappeared?”
“It’s pretty boring stuff, but sure. Anything for you, Mr. Prager. You’re a big hero around here.”
Sandra was nice enough, but she needed a major priority readjustment. I was no hero. Heroes rescued people, not political careers.
Two pitches, two strikes. I was way behind in the count. I tried Moira’s mom down in Florida. She, too, was glad to hear from me and asked if the package she’d sent had done me any good. I told her it was too soon to tell. I asked about Moira’s apartment in the months after she disappeared. I wondered who cleaned it, who picked up her mail. She explained that she could never bring herself to clean the place. She thought it bad luck.
“We paid Moira’s rent for the first year,” she said, her voice quivering. “John and I took turns with the other stuff like collecting her mail. Why, is there something in particular you’re interested in?”
“A large brown envelope from a company called Headlines Search, Inc. I know it’s a long shot, but-”
“Would it have been filled with newspaper clippings?”
I couldn’t believe my luck. “That’s the one.”
“What about it?”
“Do you remember what the clippings were about or where they were from?” I asked, gripping the phone hard enough to crack it.