G Is for Gumshoe

flaps of the cardboard box, peeling the first layer of paper away from the corrugation. I tried to imagine Agnes Grey's last day. Had she been abducted? If so, to what end? There'd been no demand for money. As far as I knew, there hadn't been contact of any kind. Who had reason to kill her? The only people she knew in this town were Irene and Clyde. Not beyond the possible, I thought to myself. Most homicides are personal crimes-victims killed by close relatives, friends, and acquaintances… which is why I limit mine.
    Blindly, I looked down. The paper was coming loose from around the cup I'd rewrapped. The broken halves lay in a torn half-sheet of newsprint that was yellow with age. I blinked, focusing on the banner partially visible across the top. I tilted my head so I could read the newsprint. It was the business section of the Santa Teresa Morning Press, a precursor of the current Santa Teresa Dispatch. Puzzled, I removed the paper from the box and smoothed it across my lap. January 8, 1940.I checked the exterior of the box, but there were no postmarks and no shipping labels. Curious. Had Agnes been in Santa Teresa? I could have sworn Irene told me her mother had never been here.
    I looked up. Dietz was standing right in front of me, hands on his knees, face level with mine. "Are you all right?"
    "Look at this." I handed him the paper.
    He turned it over in his hands, checking both sides. He noted the date as I had and his mouth pulled down in speculation. He wagged his head back and forth.
    "What do you make of it?" I asked.
    "Probably the same thing you do. It looks like the box was packed in Santa Teresa in January of nineteen forty."
    "January eighth," I said, correcting him.
    "Not necessarily. A lot of people save newspapers for a time at any rate. This might have been sitting in a stack somewhere. You know how it is. You need to wrap up some dishes and you grab a section from the pile."
    "Well, that's true," I said. "Do you think Agnes did it? Was she actually in this town at that point?" It was a question we couldn't answer of course, but I needed to ask it anyway.
    "You're sure the box was hers? She might have been holding it for someone else."
    "Irene recognized the teacup. I could see it in her face for the half second before she started screaming."
    "Let's see what else we've got here," Dietz said. "Maybe there's more."
    We spent a few minutes carefully unpacking the box. Every piece of china-cups, saucers, creamer, sugar bowl, teapot with its rose-sprigged lid, some fifteen pieces in all-was wrapped in the same edition of the paper. There was nothing else of significance in the carton and the news itself didn't reveal anything of note.
    I said, "I think we ought to get Irene out of bed and find out what's going on."
    Dietz picked up his car keys and we were out the door.
    We rang the Gershes' bell, waiting impatiently while Jermaine came to the door and admitted us. I had pictured her tidying things in our absence, but the living room looked exactly as it had when we'd left it, a little more than an hour ago. The couch cushions were still askew where Irene's thrashing had displaced them, the birth certificate, death certificate, and the "Vital Documents" file still strewn haphazardly across the coffee table. I caught a whiff of drying urine. The characteristic silence had descended again, as if life itself here were muffled and indistinct.
    When I asked to see Clyde or Irene, Jermaine's dark face became stony. She crossed her arms, body language echoing her manner, which was clearly uncooperative. She said Mrs. Gersh was sleeping and she refused to wake her. Mr. Gersh was having "a little lay-down" and she refused to disturb him, too.
    "This is really important," I said. "All I need is five minutes."
    I could see her face set with stubbornness. "No, ma'am. I'm not about to bother them poor peoples. You leave them lay."
    I glanced at Dietz. The shrug was written in his face. I looked back at Jermaine and indicated the coffee table with a nod. "Can I pick up the papers I left here earlier?"
    "What papers? I don't know nothin' about that."
    "For now all I need are the forms Irene and I were working on," I said. "I can come back later for a chat with her."
    Her gaze was pinned on me with suspicion. I kept my expression bland. "Go on, then," she said. "If that's all you want."
    "Thanks." Casually, I crossed to the coffee table and picked up the birth certificate and the entire document file. Thirty