I gave him some money. “Get whatever looks good,” I said.
“What do you want?”
“Use your own judgment,” I said.
“Okay.”
He went out and I kept at the files. Paul came back with turkey sandwiches on oatmeal and roast beef sandwiches on rye and two lemon turnovers and a carton of milk. I had coffee from the coffee pot. By three Paul had finished with his file. He said, “I’m going to walk around.”
I said, “You need any money?”
He said, “No. I still got change from what you gave me before.”
At five Paul came back. He’d bought a book on ballet at the Booksmith up Boylston.
He read his book while I worked on the files. It got dark. I turned on the lights in the office. At eight fifteen I said, “Enough. Come on, I’ll buy you dinner.”
We went up to Cafe L’Ananas and ate. I got a bottle of wine and Paul had some. Then we walked back to my apartment. “What about your car?” Paul said.
“We’ll leave it there. It’s only a four-block walk to my office.”
“We going back tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m not through.”
“I only found three people on the list.”
“More than I’ve found so far.”
We went upstairs and went to bed.
CHAPTER 27
It was nearly noon the next day before I found anything. It wasn’t a bloody dagger or even an Egyptian dung beetle sculptured from gold. It was a list of addresses. It wasn’t much, but it was all there was. It was on a single sheet of paper by itself in an unlabeled file folder in the back of the bottom file drawer.
“What’s important about that?” Paul said.
“I don’t know, but it’s the only thing that doesn’t have a simple explanation.”
I got a city directory out of the bottom drawer of my desk and thumbed through it, looking up the names of the people at the addresses. The fourth one I looked up was Elaine Brooks.
“Isn’t Elaine Brooks your father’s girl friend?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t where she lives.”
Paul said, “I don’t know where she lives.”
“I do. I followed her to you, remember?”
“Maybe she used to live there.”
“Maybe.”
“She’s on my list,” he said,
“From the card file?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see this list.”
He gave it to me. There were two other names besides Elaine Brooks. I consulted the city directory. Both the names were listed in the city directory as owning property at one or another address on the list. Elaine Brooks owned two addresses. “The card file alphabetical?”
Paul said, “Yes.”
“Okay. I’m going to read you some names. You look them up and see if they are in your file. If they are, pull the card and give me the address.”
I went through the whole list of addresses, looking each up in the city directory and giving Paul the name I found. All of them were in the file. None of them were listed on the cards at the address in the city directory. “What kind of insurance is listed?” I said when we were through and all the cards were pulled.
“This one says casualty.”
“Yeah?”
“This one says homeowner’s.”
“Any of them say life?”
Paul ruffled through the cards. “No,” he said.
I took the cards and made a master list of names and both addresses and the kinds of insurance each had. All had casualty. Everyone was insured with a different company. When I was through, I said to Paul, “Let’s go take a
