2 - Secrets: Ike Schwartz Mystery 2 (24 page)

Chapter Forty-five

Schwartz called at three in the afternoon. “You have any more passing thoughts?” he asked.

“No, not really, but I do have something for you. Do you remember those names neither of us could identify? Well, they are all members of Saint Anne’s Church. And here’s the good part—all of them were referred to Taliaferro for counseling or psychotherapy. Does that suggest anything to you?”

“Krueger had the files. Whoever killed him, wanted them.”

“But who?”

“That’s the sixty-four dollar question.”

Blake sat on the edge of his bed. “How about this instead. Millie Bass finds out he took the files and wants them back. I think—no, I’m sure she did her research in them when my predecessor was alive. So, she kills him and takes the files. Then someone else, who is afraid of what she’ll find, or has found, goes to her house to get them. Bass comes in, catches the guy and they struggle. The gun goes off and the intruder panics and runs.”

“But not before shooting her two more times, and with her own gun? It’s kind of thin, Rev. And that does not explain the other names, or the ones from Roanoke.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Either way, you watch your back. If that message you got is for real, he or she thinks you have the files now, and you’re next.” He hung up.

Blake stared at the faded wallpaper in his bedroom, the phone dangling in his hand. He replaced the handset in its cradle and stepped to the front door. He had to release his new deadbolt to open it. Fresh air. He could smell rain. Gray clouds scudded in from the southwest, and the first drops of what promised to be a soaker dotted the steps. He closed the door and made a pot of coffee. While he assembled cups and saucers, cream and sugar, he mulled over what Schwartz told him. Secrets. Secrets and blackmail made a fine motive for murder. But Millie Bass did not qualify as a killer, he knew that instinctively. No, there had to be some other connection, and the files were part of it. Maybe if he could figure out what the local people had to do with the list, he could get the rest. Blackmail?

Mary said Waldo prowled the alley. Maybe he saw or heard something during those nightly walks that convinced him he could extract some money from them, too. The only thing to do was to start asking questions. Were the people on the list being blackmailed?

The phone rang again. This time it was Dan Quarles, sounding upset, very upset, his voice pitched a half octave higher than normal.

“Are you all right, Dan?”

“I’m fine. I need to talk to you, though. Can I come by tonight? You’ll be alone, right?”

“Dan, tonight is not good. I am meeting someone at nine-thirty and don’t expect to be back until eleven or eleven-thirty. Can we talk tomorrow?”

Dan hesitated but said he would think about it.

***

Mary waved to him as he walked across the mall. He shook his raincoat out and put it next to her umbrella.

“So tell me more about the theory that the two murders are connected,” she said.

He told her about the files and the lists and the similarity of the killings, including the gun. “But what do you think?” she asked.

“I think we need to make another movie, only we can skip the airplane landing.”

“You didn’t like my airplane?”

“I loved your airplane, only you almost landed it in your mashed potatoes last time and, more importantly, it doesn’t fit any more. The killer is local, therefore, no airplane. Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that Waldo—”

“Walter/Waldo,” she corrected.

“Walter/Waldo was a blackmailer and someone wanted to stop him.”

“Well,” she said, a frown creasing her face. “If he was blackmailing someone, they would pay, or if they ran out of money—”

“Wait a minute. Let’s suppose that this someone—we’ll call him Mister X, or Miss X, better make it just X. X is at a point where he or she cannot pay anymore. The spouse is suspicious, or the money is gone. X refuses to pay. Walter/Waldo threatens to expose him or her. X is desperate. Now what?”

“X goes to the church, waits for his or her chance and blam, Walter/Waldo gets a bullet from the three fifty-seven magnet.”

“A thirty-two Colt automatic, actually. That would mean that whoever X is, he or she must be from Stonewall Jackson.”

“Why?”

“Because no one else would know when Walter/Waldo would be alone. That eliminates everyone else on the list.”

“I prefer that option. It gets me off the hook, but it doesn’t necessarily follow. Suppose he had his victims come to the church to pay. The church is usually empty that time of night, and it would be a good time to collect his money.”

“That’s possible, of course, but it seems unlikely. He was a professional—a mobster. Those people don’t usually foul their own nests. They keep their dark side separate from their normal life.”

Mary finished her cone, dabbed her lips with her napkin and, screwing up her face, said, “Maybe he doesn’t even meet his victims. He contacts them anonymously. He sends them some proof of what he has or calls on the phone. Then they send the money to a lock box or leave it in a particular place. Walter/Waldo makes sure the coast is clear and takes the money. Nobody knows who he is or anything.”

“It works, but how do they find him to kill him?”

“Walter/Waldo was smart, but not a genius. Somebody figured it out or, maybe, followed him back to the church. Then he or she confronted him…no, waited. That’s it. X waits in the stairwell, maybe. Walter/Waldo comes in, or he’s still there after choir practice. X sneaks up and, blam, shoots him with the whatever.”

“That’s better. But he was behind the altar. What’s he doing there?”

“Well, he may have tried to get away.”

“Okay then, X has to roll the body over to get at his keys. I suppose X used them to get into the house and then brought them back. That would take a pretty cool customer. No, that doesn’t work either. The sheriff said the house was not tossed until after his deputies searched it. And then where does Millicent’s death fit in?”

“Can’t help you any more, Sherlock. It’s late and Doctor Watson has to go home.”

She gave him a peck on the cheek, and a look that nearly melted his ice cream.

***

His watch read eleven-fifteen when he pulled up to the vicarage. The outdoor floodlights were out again. Usually if he kicked the pole they would flicker on. Not tonight. He jogged to the front door, his collar up against the rain, which had gotten heavier. Only the dim light from inside the house lighted his way. He wiped his feet at the front door and fumbled for his keys. Something, a movement seen out of the corner of his eye, startled him. He turned the key and shoved the door. As it swung open he heard a voice, a familiar voice, say, “Blake? It’s me.” And then it felt as if someone took a baseball bat and tried to hit a home run with his shoulder. The pain rocketed up and reached his brain at the same time it registered the pistol’s report. He crashed headfirst into the house. He did have the presence of mind to kick the door shut and throw the deadbolt. As he rolled away, more bullets thumped against the door. He thought he heard someone scrabbling with a key set. He managed to call nine-one-one before he passed out.

Chapter Forty-six

It would be months before he remembered with any clarity what happened next. He heard voices calling. One sounded like Schwartz’s. Somehow the room filled with people. Schwartz—was it Schwartz?—saying, “Is he going to be all right?” and someone else, “Looks pretty good to me, but we won’t know until the docs say so.” He recalled a jouncing ride on a gurney, and the slightly smoother trip in a boxy ambulance. He drifted in and out of consciousness. The comforting darkness of the ambulance was torn away by the eye-searing glare in the emergency room. He felt the hands on his back, the sharp jab of the needle in his arm. Somewhere in the confusion he heard the clang and rattle of metal in a bowl and Schwartz saying, “I’ll take that.” Then pain hit him and he passed out for good.

***

“It looks like he’s with us, Sheriff. You can talk to him for five minutes, that’s all.” A voice, a very officious voice, a voice that brooked no dissent, in fact—the only voice that prompted the same obedience as God’s—the voice of a head nurse.

“Can you talk, Reverend?” Schwartz sounded genuinely concerned.

“I guess I don’t need a lawyer any more. I’m as good as I can be. What happened?”

“That’s what I want to ask you. Somebody shot you. The bullet came in at an angle and glanced off your shoulder blade and lodged in the muscle in your neck. Another inch, they said, and you would be paralyzed from the neck down. You are a very lucky guy.”

“Not lucky, Sheriff—blessed.”

“Okay, blessed. We can roam that theological field someday when you’re stronger, or I’m weaker. Now, what can you tell me about last night?”

Blake told him what he could remember, which was not very much. The nurse came in, shooed Schwartz out, and showed Blake how to push the little button that released the morphine drip. He pushed it and slid back into unconsciousness.

By the next afternoon, he felt better. His shoulder and arm ached, but he could move his fingers and decided he did not need the “pain button” any more. His lunch still sat mostly uneaten on the tray in front of him—thin yellowish soup and green Jell-O. He wondered if a pizza place would deliver if he called. He guessed they would not. He sat quietly praying, first in thanksgiving for the near miss that spared him paralysis and his life. Then, quite suddenly, for the other near miss—the one in Philadelphia, that could also have cost him his life, only in a different way. He never thought of it that way before. Until that moment, in fact, all he’d felt was anger and bitterness at the treatment he’d received.

“Forgive me,” he murmured, “for being such a slow student and a poor servant.” He guessed s
tupid
would have said it better.

“I’m sure he will,” Mary said from the door. She smiled and the room seemed infinitely brighter. And he felt very much better.

“You are the medicine I need,” he said. “These nurses and doctors have no idea. All they need to do to empty these beds and restore the sick is to send you into the room and ask you to smile.”

Mary blushed. He knew she would. It pleased him enormously. She said she could not stay very long. She had to get back to work. At his disappointed look she promised to come back that evening. She sat beside the bed and held his hand. They talked quietly, not about his wound or the violence that seemed to have engulfed the church and its people, but about the future, about what might be. He asked if she would stay and be their full-time organist. She grinned and said she would, and that made him feel even better.

The doctor walked in and said Blake would be able to go home in a day or two but that he was not to exert himself. He looked sternly at Mary when he said it, and she turned scarlet. Blake laughed so hard it hurt.

At three in the afternoon, Lanny Markowitz ushered in the quarterbacks and receivers from the football team. They filled the room with their size and noisy, embarrassed chatter.

“No more fifty-yarders for a while, huh Coach?”

“Maybe never again, Duane. Tell you the truth, I never threw the ball that far that often in my playing days. God gave me a little help to impress you guys, I guess.”

He said he planned to be back by Thursday and he expected them to have practiced the drills he showed them. As they left, Lanny said, “You know, Dan Quarles resigned as Chairman of the Board Saturday night. He called and said he could not continue in good conscience. I asked what that meant and he said you would know. Do you?”

“First I heard of it, Lanny. I do know he seemed upset and wanted to meet with me, but we could never arrange a time that worked. He even tried to meet me last night, but I told him I would be late.”

Lanny left, and Blake had a few minutes to reflect. Something, some force or forces were moving in his life, and they were good and bad. A struggle was taking place, and he felt his soul sat at its very center. Good and evil, innocence and guilt combined in a struggle, the outcome of which would forever change lives, his and those around him. He thought of Mary and of Gloria Vandergrift and marveled in the difference between them. Not Gloria’s dark side, which, of course, was patently apparent to him now, but the other Gloria, the smart, fashionable and sophisticated woman, the archetype he used to seek out and desire.

“Where will all this end?” he said as if to append something to his earlier prayers.

“Where will what end?” Sylvia Parks came in laden with flowers. “You mean the shootings? Soon, I hope. I put my neck on the line with my son-in-law to get our boy Schwartz off the leash. He had better deliver soon or I will be in somebody’s doghouse. Here, I brought you flowers and some news.” Sylvia busied herself with a vase she found in the closet.

“What news?”

“You know Danny boy has quit the Board. I was with Philip Bournet yesterday when he quit. Philip was very solicitous—you know how he is—and then accepted the resignation. He turned to me and said something like, ‘Well, I guess that means I’ll have to find another board member,’ and I volunteered to be it, at least for the moment. That works out well, because that means I can make the proposal for the new parish house.”

“New parish house? What new parish house?”

“Well, that’s what I went to see Philip about in the first place. I figured with the two hundred and fifty thousand we might realize from Millie’s estate and the matching funds my husband will raise, we have enough to kick off a pretty good capital campaign.”

“But….”

“Don’t worry. I already talked to the Bishop. He dragged his feet a little and then said okay, provided no diocesan funds were committed. That’s good, isn’t it?”

Blake lay back on his bed. His wound started to throb again. Where was that pain button when you needed it?

“Sylvia, you are going too fast for me. Mind you, I appreciate the thought, and all the effort you’ve put into this, but decisions like these need to be the collective desire of the congregation as a whole. Otherwise they feel no ownership in the project and will not accept it. Please forgive me for saying it, because I know your heart is in the right place, but the last thing the church needs is a ‘Lady Bountiful’ coming in and building them a parish house they haven’t dared to think about for forty years.”

Sylvia looked annoyed and a crease formed between her eyebrows.

“Look,” he continued, “we will want that building, probably in a year. You have set the plan in motion. Bring your resolution to the board, but leave out the parts about the Bishop and the certain money for now. Let the Board take it to the people and let us begin to build the desire. It should not take long. Then tell them about the Bishop and the money. Make sense?”

“You must think of me as an overindulged woman who is used to having her own way. Democracy is a tough discipline for those of us who think we already know what’s best for everybody. Okay, we’ll do it your way.” And then she added, “…for now.”