He laughed and excused himself to get the sandwiches and iced tea with fresh mint he had prepared. The room where I sat must have been his study. Books filled the room, not only in the bookcase that covered an entire wall but also on the tables and stacked on the floor. On top of the table beside the chair was a book of crossword puzzles written in German. Under it, I spied a well-worn copy of Caesar’s Commentaries, written in Latin, of course.
I shut my eyes for a few minutes as I heard Mr. Solomon whistling in the kitchen. I felt the love in this place. I pictured Ruth and Jacob sitting here with classical music on the stereo, reading and sharing tales of their days. I liked this house. The books had actually been read. Glancing up at the collected works of Dickens and Balzac above me, I thought if I picked up one of them the book would fall open to his and Ruth’s favorite sections. Generations had read these books and discussed them at dinner.
I could hear a beautiful woman in a simple floral print dress saying, “Father, I am going to go grab that book, because I just know you remember it wrong!”
The thought warmed me. A real library was haunted by the ghosts of everyone who cared for a book in it.
“I’m a writer, too,” said Mr. Solomon as he returned, balancing a tray of tuna fish sandwiches and tea. Barrel-chested with shoulders even broader than mine, the past ninety years had stooped him over and shrunken him to less than five feet. But his walk still showed vitality, and his eyes sparkled. His voice, slow and richly deliberate, made every word seem important. It was not difficult imagining him as a teacher.
“Ruth and I traveled all over the South visiting the childhood homes of great Southern authors. We went to the homes of O’Connor, Williams, Welty, Faulkner, and even the Sayre house in Montgomery and wrote about them, and we were fortunate to have our book published.”
“I would love to read it,” I said, meaning it.
We took our time eating, as people of his generation used to do. He asked questions about some of my past articles: deaths in the county jail, relocation of the downtown sewage plant, and the maritime park. I asked about his children, who were close to my age. He brought me a photo album of his grandchildren. He sighed when he saw a picture of his Ruth holding one of his daughter’s babies.
After we rinsed the dishes, we talked about Celeste Daniels.
“A gifted student, Celeste Daniels was in my first-year Latin class,” he said. “Smart and unafraid to show it. She reminded me of Katherine Hepburn—very athletic, sort of a tomboy, but still the boys were attracted to her. She bedeviled them on a regular basis though quite unintentionally.”
Solomon had taught both at Catholic and Booker T. Washington. Later he became the dean of students at Washington, before becoming the principal of the school. But in the early 1970s he worked part-time at both schools. When Dare called him about Bo Hines, Mr. Solomon remembered a link between Hines and Wittman that predated Bo marrying Sue.
“Celeste liked both boys. I think she was drawn to athletes like herself,” he said. “I taught both Bo and Jace. Neither of them was as good a student as Celeste. Bo worked hard but didn’t have the brain power. Jace had the brains but was too spoiled and lazy.”
“Did she date both at the same time?”
“Yes, sort of.” He paused for a second, trying to remember something. With his eyes still shut, he said, “Ruth and I chaperoned the proms for both schools. Usually freshmen didn’t go to those dances, at least not back then. Ruth felt Celeste did it to show off to her older brother and classmates. It was like winning a trophy for Celeste, or so my wife believed.”
“How did Stan Daniels react to his baby sister dancing with his rival, Jace Wittman?”
“Stan Daniels had no rivals. He operated on a different level than everyone else, but he watched Hines and Wittman like a hawk, never letting Celeste out of his sight at either dance. Pretty and popular, she would have gone to both dances, even if Bo and Jace hadn’t asked her. And, yes, Stan was so popular he had invitations to both dances, too.”
I leaned over in the stiff chair, and it creaked. “Tell me about the day Celeste Daniels disappeared.”
Mr. Solomon got up and walked over to the big bay window that overlooked his rose garden. I didn’t want to rush him. Like the years and ghosts in his library, he would speak when he was ready. He touched a framed picture of Ruth in her wedding dress; she was smiling and radiant.
When he turned to face me, he said, “Ruth and I talked about that day often. Celeste had been distressed all week, asked to leave class several times. When she came back to the classroom, she had been crying. Something was wrong.”
He paused and shut his eyes. “When she first disappeared, I thought she might have run off to get away from her overly protective mother. Ruth and I believed she would show back up in a few days with tales of a road trip to Panama City, Mobile, or Biloxi. There was even a report that she had been seen hitchhiking, but that later proved to not be true.”
“How did Bo and Jace react?” I asked Mr. Solomon, who looked even smaller than when I first walked into his house.
He said, “Bo and his friends helped Stan and the Catholic High boys search for her. Jace walked around in a daze for a few days.”
“Did you ever find out what was bothering her the week before she disappeared?”
He shook his head. “No, we talked about it some in the teachers’ lounge, but we had no clue. The kids were
