did. Jack Lineberry found his body. I have no idea if my mother even went down there to take care of arrangements and scatter his ashes. She just left and then came back and told me basically nothing about it.”
“You’d think if Lineberry found the body and she came down there, that they would have gotten together.”
“He said they didn’t. But there’s no way to corroborate that.”
Blum looked at the objects on the bed. “So that’s all you have left?” she said.
“Not much, is it?”
“Well, it makes each one that much more important,” said Blum judiciously.
“I’d prefer them to lead me somehow to the truth.”
“Your sister’s doll?” said Blum, rising from her chair and picking up Pine’s doll.
“What about it?”
“Britta Pringle mentioned that your mother was looking for it the morning after Mercy disappeared.”
“She also said that people do odd things in times of stress, and she’s right. Maybe my mom thought if she could find the doll, she could find Mercy, too.”
“Maybe.”
Blum put the doll down, while Pine picked up one of the bar drink coasters.
“We used these as checker pieces,” she said, in answer to Blum’s curious look.
“Very creative.”
Pine smiled at the memory, and then that fell away as she focused more closely on the drink coaster.
“What is it?”
“These came from my dad. A bar in New York. The Cloak and Dagger.”
“Cool name for a bar.”
Pine looked at the collection of bar coasters. “But why would my dad have had so many coasters from the same bar?”
“Could he have bartended there? Or been a regular?”
“I’m not sure if he was even old enough to drink back then.”
“Depending on the state you can bartend before you can actually drink. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m not sure of New York’s laws back then.”
“Well, he was trying to break into acting, I was told. I guess actors have side jobs to support themselves.”
“That’s true.”
“The Cloak and Dagger Bar. I wonder why they picked that name.”
“You mean was it simply catchy or did it have some other meaning?”
Pine went on her phone and performed a search. “There’s a Cloak and Dagger Boutique in New York City and a Cloak and Dagger Bar in DC. But neither was around in the eighties. No Cloak and Dagger Bar in New York, at least currently.”
“And in the eighties no websites and probably no digital record today of its existence back then.”
“The coaster doesn’t have an address or phone number on it. Just the name and it being in New York.”
“Well, I’ve seen coasters like that. They don’t all have that information on them.”
“Maybe I’m grasping at straws.”
“Remember your axiom: Everything is important until it’s proven not to be.”
Pine started to put her phone away and then thought better of it. “There might be a way of checking on it.” She consulted her contacts list, selected a number, and punched it in.
“Hello, Stan, it’s Atlee Pine. Yeah, I know it’s been a long time. How are you? Right, that’s good. Yeah, the Bureau works in mysterious ways. No, I’m not in Utah anymore. I’m in Arizona. Near the Grand Canyon. Yeah, it is beautiful. Look, I have a favor. I want you to check up on a bar for me. It was back in the early eighties. The name was the Cloak and Dagger.” Pine paused as the man on the other end said something. “Just anything you can tell me about it. Yeah, as soon as you can. Okay, thanks.”
She clicked off and looked at Blum. “Stan Cashings works at the New York Field Office. Has for over two decades. If anything can be found out about that place, he’ll find it.”
“At the very least it might lead you to something about your father’s past that you didn’t know before.”
“It also might explain why a fashion model chucks her career, gets pregnant, marries my dad, and soon thereafter they give up New York City for Andersonville, Georgia, with two toddlers in tow.”
“Nothing about it really makes sense.”
Pine put her phone away. “No, it does makes sense. We just don’t know how yet. But now, I’ve got to get ready.”
“For what?”
“I’m having dinner with Lauren Graham at a place in Americus. I need to dress up a little, or so she not so subtly told me.”
“Well, you clean up well. I know that.”
“We’ll see.” She looked at herself in the swivel mirror on top of the chest of drawers, focusing on her bruise. “The swelling’s all gone, but it’s still a little discolored.”
“Nothing a