1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (11 page)

“So anyway, you can see where he was lying, and you can see where he fell here by the tree.”

“And?” Ike felt the knot begin to form in his stomach. He knew what Whaite would say next and wished it were not so.

“Well, Ike, I don’t know. But it seems to me like old Parker caught it here and was toted over there and chucked down the sink hole before he went to the car. His zipper’s still down, but the car is gone and we got these britches past where the car was at. They got to be the ones from the car on account of it rained here Wednesday night and these are dry. I reckon the thieves got the car and whoever was in it.”

“So we’re looking at hostages,” mused Ike.

“Or more bodies.”

“Whaite, let’s stick with more bodies. We’ll keep this local as long as we can.” At least, Ike thought, until after he talked to Charlie.

“I want you to go back to the security office up on the campus. Fill those clowns in on what’s happened and tell them they work for me now. If they give you any trouble, tell them I have deputized them. Then see if you can get a license plate number off the videotape, registration, description, anything, and track it down. Have Essie call the college and find out if anybody is missing, and send those pants to the lab in Roanoke. I don’t expect we’ll find anything interesting, but you never know, some DNA maybe.”

“You going to stick around here, Ike?”

“No, I’ve got another stop or two to make. You can get me on the radio or the cell phone.”

Chapter Seventeen

Ike glanced at his watch. It was still early, too soon to call Georgetown. He thought about calling Ruth, stared at his cell phone for a full minute, and decided to wait. He would drop in on her later. Things were getting complicated, and he needed some information and an outside opinion. He hesitated and then, his mind made up, drove back to town, turned north at the stoplight, and made his way past the golf course to the Meadows, the town’s only upscale residential section. He searched mailboxes until he found the one he was looking for:
Tice
. He turned in the driveway, parked, and went to the front door and pressed the doorbell.

“Well, if it ain’t Mr. Ike. Land sakes. Seems like a hundred years since we seen your face ’round here.”

Amy Cartland filled the doorway, large, black, and beaming. She had been an institution when Ike was growing up. No one knew how old she was, only that no one in town could remember a time when she was not around.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Cartland,” Ike said, smiling. “Is Mrs. Tice in?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Ike, she is. She expecting you?”

“No, she’s not. I just thought I’d drop by, to chat.”

“Well, she sure going to be surprised when she see you, that’s a fact. She’s out back, by the pool. You know where that’s at, Mr. Ike?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ike turned and walked around the house.

Marge Tice was lying face down, her still youthful body gleaming with suntan oil and barely covered by the pale blue bikini, its top untied at the back. Ike cleared his throat as he approached so as not to startle her. She cocked one eye open, squinted, and smiled when she recognized him.

“Hold it right there, Ike,” she said, “while I try to get myself more or less decent.” She gathered the two skimpy strings that served as straps for her bra, and in the classic maneuver that only women seem to have mastered, reached behind her back with both hands, and tied the straps together. Satisfied that they would hold, she rolled onto her back and sat up.

Marge Tice was one of those women who never seem to age. It is not that they stay perpetually young, propped up with surgery or silicone, but they just hold their looks. They are beautiful at every age, with a beauty appropriate for that age. Ike remembered when she was just Margie Davis, the most popular girl at Rockbridge High, the all-American girl with her short blonde hair, pleated skirts, always-white tennis shoes, and what must have been the largest collection of cashmere sweaters in the county. Margie, vice president of the senior class, head cheerleader, and, for one brief moment, the most important person in Ike’s existence. That was over twenty years ago.

“Well, to what do I owe this honor? I’ve paid all my parking tickets, bought all the chances I can afford on the sheriff’s office annual raffle, and I don’t think anyone saw me coming out of the Carousel Motel last month, so what is it, Ike?”

“The Carousel Motel,” exclaimed Ike. “I didn’t figure you for the Carousel, Marge. Anyone I know?”

Marge grinned. “Don’t I wish? I guess you’re here about the robbery, although I can’t imagine why you want to talk to me.”

“Well, I could say it was just routine. That’s what they used to say on the TV, isn’t it, ‘just routine, Ma’am.’ But the fact is, there are some things that don’t make sense to me, and I thought you might be able to help.”

“Sure, such as what?”

“The timing, Marge. There is something screwy about the timing of the thing. If you were going to rip off the art, why do it now? Why not later, say, next month, after the college closed, or on the Fourth of July?”

“I don’t know, Ike. Stealing isn’t in my line of work. But if they had tried later, even a week later, they would have come up empty-handed.”

“What do you mean, empty-handed?”

“You didn’t know, Ike? The whole collection was being moved to New York next week. I thought that you would have been notified right away. With so much valuable stuff going through town, you should have known. Didn’t Ruth Harris’ office call you?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, Ms. Harris and I weren’t exactly communicating all that well then, and Parker would not have done it unless ordered to,” Ike said with chagrin. “But even so, we should have known. He’s dead, you know?”

“Who’s dead? Parker?”

“Conked on the head with the proverbial blunt instrument.”

“No loss there. Sorry, that was a terrible thing to say. But I have to tell you, Ike—”

“No need. You have to take a number and get in line to dance on that man’s grave. But back to the art collection, when was the move decided?”

“Gee, a week ago last Monday. You were there—I saw you when we all came out of the meeting.”

“I remember.” Ike thought a moment. Something someone said, then something he saw, but what?

“So that happened a little over a week ago. I know the names of most of the people at the meeting, but I don’t know anything about them. What can you tell me?”

“Not all that much. We meet once a year to rubber-stamp the decisions made regarding the collection, usually about things like air-conditioning, burglar alarms—things like that.”

Marge squeezed a generous dab of lotion into her hand from the tube at her side and began to massage it into her skin—shoulders, chest, stomach, and legs. The effect, Ike thought, was very erotic. He wondered if women were aware of the effect it had on men when they did that. He guessed they were.

“Marge, tell me more about the alarms. You approved them?”

“Oh, sure. Dillon senior is a gadget nut. He was always adding something new to the system. Then about two years ago, he had the whole thing redone, with a fancy central panel, laser beams, Star-Wars stuff. He had enough security put into that building to protect Fort Knox.”

“Well, not quite enough, it appears.”

“No, I guess not. They got through, didn’t they?”

“They did, indeed. Of course, if they had the plans and specifications, it would have been easier. When you all approved this new system, did you get a copy of the details? How it worked?”

“No, not really. We got a written description of the plan. You know, a list of all the elements, but we were spared the details.”

“Still, even that would help. The people on the committee, who are they? What should I know about them?”

“I can’t tell you much, Ike. They put me on the committee because they needed someone local, and I think they were looking for a woman. I was a ‘twofer.’ The other members are from all over. There’s Callend’s ex-president, Dan Clough. You remember him. Mr. Dillon, Charlie Two, grandson of
the
Mr. Dillon and son of the current Dillon patriarch, M. Armand, Sergei Bialzac, Ruth Harris, of course. Ben Stewart, the gallery owner from New York, Senator Rutledge, who never comes to the meetings, and me. You know most of them, I guess, except for Stewart and Dillon. Dillon is the shadow of his father from what I gather, and Stewart is a little swish if you know what I mean. I can’t see how any of them would gain from being involved. In fact, they all stood to lose.”

“How about insurance? Is Dillon in trouble, do you know?”

“I couldn’t say, Ike. From what I’ve seen of their annual statements, they may be healthier financially than General Motors.”

“Who else knew about the planned move?”

“Oh, Lord, I don’t know, Ike. Anyone might have known. It is not the sort of thing that stays a secret very long. Small towns and small colleges are famous for their grapevines. I expect that just about everybody in town knew by the end of the week.”

“Everybody but me, it seems.” Ike let his mind wander over what Marge had told him. Something nagged at him, something she said that reminded him of something someone else had said, but who? When? He wrestled with the thought but it slipped away. He shook his head like an annoyed bear.

“What is it, Ike?”

“I’m trying to remember something, but I lost it. Something important.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Ike became conscious of Marge and her near nakedness. Her body, tanned and slim, could be the body of a twenty-year-old. He shuffled his feet.

“Well, I’d better be off, Marge. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

Another period of silence followed while Ike tried to figure why he had not, in fact, gotten up to go. Then, with a sigh, he stood.

“Ike?” Marge’s voice was softer, almost girlish, “Can I say something to you that I’ve been meaning to say for, God help me, twenty years?”

“It couldn’t have been twenty years,” Ike answered in a half-hearted attempt at gallantry.

“It was, Ike, longer actually. I’m sorry for what happened that night.”

“Marge, it’s not necessary. It was a long time ago. We were very young.”

“I’ve got to. I have been sitting on this for a long time and it bothers me, even now. No.” She waved away his protest. “I told you I’d come to you that night, and I didn’t.”

Twenty-five years ago, the senior prom and Margie Davis, the most beautiful girl in the room, the only one who could wear a strapless gown and make you notice, with George Tice as her escort, as usual. Margie and Ike in the parking lot in his candy-
apple red Mustang convertible, its top up, hers down, two adolescents fumbling their way to adulthood. Margie saying, “Not now, not here, I’ve got to get back. Georgie is looking for me.” And then, “Tonight, in the pool house, here,” and she pressed a key into his hand, “Meet me after.…” And she tugged the top of her dress into place, straightened the rest of her clothes, her hair, and darted away.

Ike waited for her in the little house by her father’s swimming pool for four hours, surrounded by damp towels and the smell of chlorine. When the sun rose, he went home, humiliated. He had barely talked to her since.

***

“It’s not important, Marge, not anymore.”

“Oh, but it is. I almost came, Ike. I got home, went upstairs, and waited in the dark until everyone was asleep. I even went so far as to change into the right clothes, or what I thought would be the right clothes. I wore a sundress that was held up with elastic so all I had to do was let you pull it over my head and, bingo. Oh Lordy, I wanted you—the way kids want…whew. You never recapture that first one. It seems like you’ll die if you don’t get it.”

“What happened?” he said, remembering his own ache.

“I got cold feet. It took a long time for my parents to go to bed. They were arguing about something, me, I think. The longer it took, the more I thought about what I was about to do, and the more hopeless it seemed. I couldn’t marry you. My life was all planned for me, college, and then George. I just couldn’t say, ‘No, I won’t do that. I’m going to marry Ike Schwartz someday.’ Don’t you see, Ike? That’s the way we were brought up. Kids in the city discovered the sexual revolution early, but out here…you only went ‘all the way’ with the guy you were going to marry, and I couldn’t marry a…Daddy would never permit me to marry a—”

“Jew?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I was seventeen, for God’s sake. I didn’t know anything. For what it is worth, that’s the only time in my life I ever committed an anti-Semitic act.”

Ike gave her a crooked grin. Here were two near middle-aged people reliving an aborted love affair over two decades old and so much a product of full moons and new hormones as to be laughable, but neither laughed.

“I cried all that night, and most of the next month. Then we went away for the summer and I forgot, almost. When I got back, you were off to Harvard, and I never saw you again until three years ago. But I still remember. I hurt you, and now I want to say it. Ike, I’m sorry.”

“So am I, Marge, so am I. You did the right thing, you know. Maybe not for the right reasons, but you were right, it would have never worked.”

“That’s the awful part, Ike. You know what my father told me on my wedding night? He said that Georgie was a nice boy and he hoped I’d be happy, but he’d always hoped I would hook up with you. Sweet Jesus, all those years, I thought I was acting out what he wanted, following his plan, because Daddy always knew what was best, and I blew it. He liked you and I never knew. I wasn’t living out his plan at all. He didn’t have one. I was living out my own. I didn’t even know my father well enough to know what he wanted or didn’t want, what he liked or didn’t like. And I found that out on my wedding night.”

“Even so, Marge, it wouldn’t have worked. I was not going to live out my father’s plans for me, and I was not going to come home or have anything to do with it. I would have hurt you sooner or later. But I will tell you one thing, I have thought about that night often, and what might have been.”

“Me too. Still do, as a matter of fact. You won’t tell George, will you?”

Ike grinned. “How is George, anyway?”

“Oh, he’s just fine. He does what all his bank buddies do, play golf and go to important meetings.”

“And the Carousel Motel?”

“Just rumors, Ike, just rumors.”