Stolen Away

“Those field notes about Edgar Cayce. I think we should go to New Haven. I think we should look for ourselves. Follow his clues.”

“They’re not clues, they’re ramblings, delusional goddamn bullshit.”

“Cayce is not a charlatan. He’s the genuine article.”

“There’s no such thing, baby, and besides, the feds checked it out, and found nothing.”

“How much confidence do you have in the ‘feds’?”

“Well…”

She had a point. Irey had sent a man to infiltrate the Marinelli church, way back when, and that undercover ace had either not come up with the Fisch/Whately/Sharpe/Jafsie connection, or had suppressed it.

“Let’s go take a look,” she said.

I shook my head, no. “I have to go see Ellis Parker tomorrow. That’s a genuine lead. Hoffman says Parker has a real suspect.”

“It would only take a day.”

“Hauptmann doesn’t have very many of those. Besides, I looked at a New Haven map myself, back then. Those streets aren’t there. There’s no Adams Street, no Scharten Street. The section called, what?”

“Cordova.”

“There’s no Cordova section in New Haven.”

She shrugged, tossed her head. “Maybe some of these street names are inexact. Maybe they’re phonetic. Maybe they’re phonetic and a bit off, and some interpretation is required.”

“What did you say?”

She shrugged. “Maybe some interpretation is required.”

What had Marinelli said to me the other day? When I was asking his wife why she’d seen a dead baby on a hillside, in one vision, and then a child on a farm, in another? We can’t always know the meaning of what a medium says in a trance—interpretation is required.

“I tell you what, Evalyn,” I said, stroking her smooth back. “If you want to check out this ‘lead’—this stale, improbable lead—you can. You’ve got more than one car?”

“Certainly,” she said, as if everyone did.

“Got someone you can take with you? Some big lug who can share the driving and look out for you? That butler, Garboni, can he handle himself?”

“Why, yes.”

I touched her arm. “Then check it out yourself. Take my field notes. It shouldn’t take more than a day, as you’ve said. Give it a try. And we’ll meet back here either Friday night or Saturday, whenever we’re both done.”

She was smiling. I don’t remember seeing her happier.

“Thank you, Nathan. What can I ever do to repay you?”

I sipped my Bacardi. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

35

Mount Holly, New Jersey, was a sleepy little village at the base of the holly-covered hill from which it took its name. Despite some modern stores, the effect was of a place where time had frozen toward the middle of the previous century; along the broad, tree-lined streets were the simple square two-and three-story brick homes erected by the village’s early Quaker residents—solid-wood shutters and wrought-iron fences and rails. On this cheerless, chill March afternoon, the smell of smoke from old-fashioned wood-burning stoves singed the air.

I parked the Packard on Main Street right in front of the old courthouse where Ellis Parker had kept his office for over forty years. The courthouse was a two-story yellow-brick structure with green shutters, white trim and a stately bell tower—wearing the date it was built like a badge: 1796. Moving across a patterned brick sidewalk over a small flat lawn to the front door—a vast oak slab with a colonial lantern nearby and the coat of arms of New Jersey in granite just above it—I felt I’d taken a left turn into another era.

Parker was in the second-floor rear office, in back of a bustling reception area where his deputies and his secretary had desks. The secretary, a dark-haired, bespectacled matronly woman, ushered me into Parker’s presence.

The Old Fox, sitting in a swivel chair at a cluttered desk, was in shirtsleeves and suspenders, a food-flecked tie loose around his unbuttoned collar. He was as I remembered him: paunchy, bald, what little remained of his hair white, his mustache and eyebrows salt-and-pepper. His eyes were wide-set and drowsy. He was puffing a corncob pipe and looked like a farmer halfheartedly dressed for church.

The office was as quaint as a Currier and Ives print, only not near as cute: the desk littered with correspondence, reports, case histories and memos; a windowsill precariously balancing numerous telephones and directories; baskets and boxes in corners teeming with books, trial-exhibit photographs and maps; bulletin boards papered with police-department circulars, some boldly inscribed “Captured” and “Convicted” in black grease pencil; and sitting in one corner, on a chair, wearing a hat, a human skeleton.

“The Chicago man,” he said, smiling with the natural condescension of the rural for the urban. “Have a seat, young fella.”

I pulled up a hardwood chair. “I’m surprised you remembered me,” I said, as we shook hands.