of my new home. I suppose I shouldn't let it affect my mood, but

 it does. I want to move and sell, now."

    "There must be a reasonable explanation for this," Simon

 said. "Let me look into it for you this afternoon. It'll just

 take a few hours."

    "Are you a policeman?" Kim asked. She regarded her small,

 dark neighbor. He wore blue jeans and athletic shoes, and was

 overdue for a haircut. He had a nice smile.

    She seemed to recall hearing he was famous for some reason,

 but she couldn't remember why.

    "No," Simon said, "a historian. I teach at Kenan College."

    "We'd appreciate anything you could do," Scott said.

   

    Simon spent an hour at the computer in his carrel at the

 Kenan College Library verifying what he suspected - there wasn't

 a genealogical data base or a vital records site anywhere where

 he could search for information without a surname.

    Just to amuse himself, he typed Earl AND Eula AND William

 into several search functions and watched the error messages

 pile up. Then he consulted the 1948 Raleigh city directory,

 carefully reading every fine print entry in Cameron Park until

 his eyes stung. Not an Earl or a Eula amongst them.

    In 1948, a family named Smith, consisting of Robert, Martha,

 Robert Jr. and Helen lived in Kim and Scott's house. So who were

 Earl and Eula, and why did the Smiths allow them to bury their

 baby in the back yard? And if the police did exhume a child's

 corpse, what would that prove? Who baby William was and how he

 got there would still be a mystery that would prey on the minds

 of Kim and Scott, and the rest of the neighborhood, too. Simon

 decided it was time to consult his most reliable source on old

 Raleigh.

   

    Blanche Holland opened her door to Simon and accepted his

 gift of a bunch of daisies from The Fresh Market.

    "What do you want?" she asked him, peering over the tops of

 her tortoiseshell reading glasses.

    "What makes you think I want anything?" Simon said. "Can't I

 just drop by for a visit?"

    The old woman laughed. Her voice, clear and strong, belied

 her age. She was in her late 80s but had never abandoned a

 youthful attitude toward life. She wore stylish clothes, had her

 white hair fashionably cut and watched VH1.

    "You always want information. I'm your, what's the word?

 Stool pigeon. Don't bother to look in the cookie jar," she said,

 as she arranged the daisies in a cut class vase in the kitchen.

 "My grandchildren finished off the last batch yesterday."

    Mrs. Holland put the vase of daisies on her coffee table and

 sat down on her sofa, patting the seat next to her. Simon

 obediently sat down.

    "So," she said, "what is it you want to know?"

    Simon told her about the grave.

    "How ghastly. I remember the Smiths," she said. "But I

 certainly don't remember any baby dying at their house."

    "Could it have been a relative's child? A boarder's? A

 servant's?"

    "Darling boy, nobody's baby could have died and been buried

 without the entire neighborhood's knowing. Isn't that illegal,

 anyway?"

    "Tell me about the Smiths."

    "What's to tell? They were nice people. He worked for the

 state. His wife kept house, like women did then. Not that we

 necessarily liked it, you understand. Oh, and their daughter and

 her husband lived with them for several years. Housing was hard

 to come by after the war."

    "They didn't have a baby?"

    "No. And if they had, and it died, they wouldn't have buried

 it in the back yard."

    "The given names aren't right, anyway. What was the

 daughter's husband's surname?"

    "I have a good memory, but not that good! That was 50 years

 ago. Wait a minute." The lines in her forehead deepened as she

 concentrated. "I think he did some work for me."

    Simon followed her into her small den, where she opened a

 cabinet and sorted through dozens of spiral-bound notebooks.

    "Young people are so careless with money these days," she

 said. "You just run a plastic card through some machine and,

 poof, your money's gone. I wrote down every nickel I spent after

 I was married. All the housewives I knew did the same thing.

 Let's see," she said, leafing through the yellowed pages of a

 notebook, "1948. Here it is. David Allen. He built a slate patio

 for me."

    "He was a stoneworker!" Simon said. "That's it!" He kissed

 her soundly on his way out the door.