Goldengirl

Miss Hofmann’s body was washed ashore on adjacent Newport Beach late Friday evening. The child, Dean, who will be 3 on June 6, is at present in the care of the Los Angeles County Welfare Service. No relatives have yet been traced.

Neighbours of Miss Hofmann in her Inglewood apartment on Lincoln Boulevard described her as a gentle person devoted to her child. German-born, she had come with her mother to California in 1953. She engaged a babysitter to be with Dean while she was on duty with TWA, but she frequently took the little girl to one of the local beaches. It is understood that Miss Hofmann was a nonswimmer.

Dryden leafed through the next half-dozen issues, but there was no more on the accident. Now that he had confirmed so many details of the story, he would not go looking for the back number of Time that Serafin claimed had first caught his attention. He was prepared to believe it existed. Instead, he turned to the more delicate assignment of digging out more information on Serafin himself.

He used a public phone booth to call the San Diego Union, and asked for the sports desk. ‘I’d like to speak to the guy who wrote the piece on the Metro Track Club Meet in Sunday’s edition. My name is Frank Rademacher, Southern Pacific AAU.’

In a moment a voice said, ‘Grantland Davis here.’

He repeated the bogus name, disguising his accent. ‘I’d like to invite this mystery blonde of yours to our meet at the Coliseum, Saturday. The Metro Club people could only come up with a Bakersfield P.O. box number. I saw your piece on Sunday and figured you must have checked her out by now. It’s getting late to start mailing box numbers. If I could phone Miss Serafin today, I might be able to get her name on the meet program. You don’t mind me asking if you located her?’

‘No luck, I’m afraid, Mr. Rademacher,’ said Davis. ‘After calling at the Salk Institute for the dope test, she vanished. I can’t help you.’

‘That’s tough,’ said Dryden. ‘It might have added a hundred or so to our gate. Too bad. That Dr. Serafin you mentioned in the piece. Is he the father?’

‘Could be. We haven’t traced him either. He was a professor of something I can’t get my tongue around, at the CIHS in Bakersfield. Seems to have retired two years back.’

‘He must have left a forwarding address,’ said Dryden.

‘Sorry to disappoint you. Seems Prof Serafin wasn’t giving much away about his retirement plans. He called in a couple of times to collect mail, and that’s all they know.’

‘He didn’t have friends there?’

‘Seems not,’ said Davis. ‘In the words of the Registrar — this is off the record — he thought he was God, but he had trouble convincing his colleagues. They were that glad when he offered to retire that nobody’s kept up with him since. Of course, we can’t even be sure he’s the father of our blonde.’

‘You got nothing else on him?’

‘We spoke to his neighbours in Bakersfield. He alienated them, too. Cut them stone dead in the street. His wife was a local doctor, nice woman, our man in Bakersfield was told, and there was this pathetic daughter who didn’t resemble our whiz kid one bit. Frankly, the story’s spiked till we turn up something new. If you get a lead, let me know, won’t you?’

Dryden went back to the Times Information Bureau and looked for Tamarisk Lodge in the Register of Social Agencies. It didn’t appear, yet he was sure he had the name right. He asked the girl if they kept old editions of the register. She said no, she thought they would have one at the County Welfare building on Wilshire.

There, he was shown a shelf of registers going back to the forties. In the volume for 1960 he found:

TAMARISK LODGE, Casitas Springs, Ventura. Acc. 25cm/f under 11.

Matron: Mrs. G. Van Horn.

He asked for a telephone directory and confirmed that someone of that name was listed and still lived in Ventura. He dialed the number. An elderly voice answered.

‘Yes?’

‘Mrs. Van Horn?’

‘That’s so.’

‘I wonder if I’ve got this right. Are you by any chance the lady who was formerly Matron at Tamarisk Lodge?’

‘I am. Who is this speaking?’

‘That’s great. My name is Hofmann. I don’t suppose by any chance you recollect a child named Dean Hofmann, a girl of about three years of age?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ the voice answered cautiously.