The Dame on the Dock by Louise Gorday

Author:Louise Gorday [Gorday, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Old Faces and Lost Places

The Nevis courthouse was right around the corner from the train depot. Made sense to Shoe. It was railroad money that really built the town. When the Chesapeake Railway Express laid tracks into the sleepy bay town in 1901, they also laid the foundation for a strong banking system and a legal arena to handle all their business, not to mention all the collateral accountants, attorneys, and crooks that big money normally attracts. Some of Shoe’s best noncontroversial stories came out of here.

The courthouse and First National Bank of Nevis stood side by side. With their flights of broad stairs, ornate Corinthian columns, and chiseled pediments, they appeared as shrines to great American business acumen. Shoe supposed burnt offerings could be made around the rear of the building.

His black cap-toe oxfords echoed across the marble floor as he entered the courthouse and approached the records clerk’s desk just inside the archway on the right. He crossed his fingers and silently recited for a final time his sob story about an elderly aunt getting cheated out of her homestead by a couple of con men. If that didn’t get him a few sympathetic tears and access to the property records, he’d have to trot out his Pulitzer nomination and the Do you know who I am? card. He preferred to avoid that one. A low profile was always the best profile.

The girl behind the desk was young and cute—curly red hair, a mass of freckles that dotted her fair skin, and eyes of a startling deep blue. She looked familiar, but if their paths had crossed, he couldn’t recall where.

“How may I help—” she began, and then stopped. “Newspaper, right?” She gave him a smile and a friendly tap on the back of the hand.

He relaxed a bit. “Uh, yeah. Would it be possible to check property records? I’m working on something. Can’t say what right now, but it’s absolutely essential to the story I’m on.” Okay, a half-truth, but close enough.

“All right,” she said, still smiling, “but it’s Katherine with a K McGinty if you need to credit someone. M-c-G-i-n-t-y.” She pointed behind her. “Gray file cabinets at the bottom of the stairs.”

It was all too easy.

The two metal cabinets contained meticulously-kept Nevis land records dating back to the late 1700s, although the further back you went, the spottier the documents. Still, there were enough historical documents to send an historian straight to Nirvana. The older records all seemed to be copies, the originals, no doubt, now housed in the official Maryland archives in Annapolis. This would be a quick search and Shoe’s mind was already jumping ahead to his next steps.

The documents were arranged by street name, then house number. He opened the third drawer—Sixteenth to Twenty-Second—and located the group for Twenty-First Street. He thumbed through the ascending house numbers. Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-six. Thirty-five? Nada. He checked the last of Twentieth Street. Zero. After Twenty-First? Goose egg. He started with Sixteenth Street and ran straight through all the documents in the drawer.

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