7 - Rogue: Ike Schwartz Mystery 7 (25 page)

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Authors: Frederick Ramsay

BOOK: 7 - Rogue: Ike Schwartz Mystery 7

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“You guess? Girlfriend, you better be more than guessing. There ain’t but one God and he the same all over.”

“Well, maybe. But the God I was taught isn’t in the habit of spending time on human foolishness.” There, she’d said it. The woman, Dolores, stared at her in disbelief.

“No wonder he ain’t taken that devilment from you. You don’t believe.”

“Yes, I do.” Did she? “I just thought if we were to pray to the God of the Mount Olive Apostolic um…maybe he would hear me and—”

“Listen to me, Honey, there ain’t but one God. If yours seem different it’s ‘cause you treat him different. Like—you don’t expect nothin’, you don’t get nothin’. That’s it.”

Darcie mulled over Dolores’ words. She thought they made some kind of sense, but then why had the Reverend Franklin Falstoop, D. Min., down at Saint Stephen’s, never said so. He, of all the people she knew, seemed absolutely committed to the Doctrine of the Distant Presence. She rocked back on her heels to think. Things had become very confusing since this gift business had started. She wondered how much Dolores, who smelled suspiciously of strong drink, really knew.

“Why are you in here?” she asked.

Dolores rolled over on her side and hiccupped. “D.U.I and ve-hic-u-lar homicide. What about you, Woman? You a axe murderer or something? You look like that Lizzy Borden I seen on the TV.”

“They think I had something to do with a shooting and robbery on the other side of town.”

“I knew it. What other side? Oh, you mean like my side, where you rich white folk don’t never come.”

In fact, for Darcie and the gentle folk she associated with, the other side meant across the Norfolk and Southern railroad tracks, but she didn’t say so.

“I’m not rich,” she said, instead. “What’s vehicular homicide?”

“I done run over somebody. The only reason I’m in here is because I had me a wine or two at Jasper’s ‘fore I drove home. Then this guy busts out of a alley and step right in front of me. Wham! He’s flying like Superman.”

“He was drunk?”

“Liquidated. So after a hearing tomorrow, when I’m for sure sober, they’ll turn me loose and that’s that. Dolores Carthcart be free to go home and figure out how she going to pay the back-rent and keep the Gas and Electric from shutting off her heat. Yes, Lord, big day tomorrow. If my old momma see me now, she drop a calf.”

Cathcart? Why did Darcie think she knew that name?

Dolores turned her bloodshot eyes on Darcie. “So why don’t you just tell me my fortune while you still got the gift. Then we’ll pray it away.”

Darcie shook her head. “It’s not that way. I mean I don’t ask for the visions, they just come.”

“You can’t see nothing except what come to you?”

“Yeeesss…” Darcie felt one coming. “Oh my,” she said, “If we pray right now, I think it will go away. Here, get down on your knees and pray with me. I need the God of the Mount Olive Apostolic Whatever church right now.”

“I ain’t getting off this bed to pray for nobody.”

“Will you if I ask for a vision about you?”

“You said it don’t work that way.”

“I said it never has, but then I never tried.”

Dolores Cathcart rolled off the cot and stood next to Darcie, who had rocked forward on her knees again. She placed her hand on Darcie’s shoulder and after a brief pause bellowed, “Almighty Father God…have mercy on this here miserable sinner.” Darcie winced. She did not like to think of herself as a sinner, miserable or otherwise.

“She’s burdened, Lord. Yes, burdened, burdened, burdened with the Devil’s own works. Alleluia and Amen.” Darcie did not accept the notion the gift did not come from God and she wondered if he’d be annoyed by Dolores saying otherwise. She certainly did not want to get on his bad side again.

“Yes, Lord, and she needs that burden taken away! Amen and thank you, Jesus.”

In the silence that followed, Darcie felt a warm glow that started at the point where Dolores’ hand pressed on her shoulder. It spread across her shoulders and down her back. At that moment she received the vision. She did not know why, but she knew it would be her last. She knew, too, that she must pay very close attention to it.

“Oh!” she said.

“S’up?”

“Dolores Cathcart,” Darcie intoned.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I see—”

“What? What you see?”

“A package wrapped in brown paper is delivered to your house at 1347 South Main Street. Oh, you’re opening the door.”

“How you know my address?”

“The mailman leaves and you are in your living room. Nobody else is home.”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s in the package? Wait, don’t tell me. This here is the Devil’s work.”

“No, no, this is from the God of the Mount Olive Apostolic Holiness Church.”

“I thought I tol’ you—”

It was at that precise moment that Darcie Starling had her epiphany. The heavens did not open, trumpets did not sound. No angel chorus sang sweet hosannas. She would not have been surprised if they had, but none did. But she finally understood and she
knew
.

“You’re right. Yes, yes, I see now…there is just one God but he needs multiple venues and alternative messengers to do His work.” She smiled. She’d found God. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

“Get on with it, Woman. What about my package?”

“You are opening it. Oh my—”

“What? It’s a bomb. I’m gonna die!”

“It’s money. Dolores, you’re going to be rich.”

“Rich? Hold it right there.” Dolores scowled. “Mmm, Mmm, Mmm. You see how it go—boney-assed white woman come in here and bullshit me. You worse than that snotty little brat my Momma took care of back all them years ago. ‘You’re one of the family,’ they’d say, and then give her two dollars a day for ten hours work. And soon’s that girl got big enough to find her behind without a map, then it was, ‘Goodbye, Amy, we don’t need you no more.’”

Amy Cathcart? Was that her name? Then this would be her daughter. Darcie didn’t know Amy had a family.

“I am not…deceiving you. I’m never wrong about these things. Like yesterday afternoon. I saw the robbery and shooting that happened this very morning, at dawn, saw it all, clear as day. An armored truck parked across from the Citgo Station and a robber came up behind the guard at the truck’s back door while the other one was in the Savings and Loan. The first one was knocked out with a golf club and when he fell, his gun went off and shot the other one coming out of the door. Robber grabbed four big bags of money and ran around the corner and disappeared. I don’t remember a witness though. Now that’s odd…Well, anyway, tomorrow you will receive some money, a lot of money.”

Dolores looked doubtful. Then she smiled. “Can’t make no difference either way, but I think I best send Lynel out for cigarettes around the time the mail come. He don’t have to know about no money.” She helped Darcie to her feet. “You all done with your seeing?”

“All done. That was the last one. Your praying worked. No more visions.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

The two women settled into a comfortable silence. Darcie started to mention Amy and then suspected Dolores would either be angry or embarrassed if she did, so she let it drop. Five minutes later, Judge Graybill reappeared.

“I knew it all along, all hoo-haw, Dorothy. I was just in the middle of engaging an attorney for you when the DA came downstairs and said the case is dropped. Seems like their witness, the only one who could have identified you, got drunk in one of those bars down there in Darktown and got himself run over by an equally drunk black woman.”

“That would be me,” Dolores said, and fixed Judge Horace Graybill with a look that dared him to wander into the area of black lifestyles, which is where he was obviously headed. He harrumphed.

“They will be here in a minute to turn you loose. I told that DA, one of those sob-sister liberal Democrats if I ever saw one, that the whole idea of you, an over-sixty spinster lady with no prospects, robbing an armored truck was ridiculous. And I was right. The witness was a drunk and…well they will be here any minute. They said they were sorry about your house.”

The judge took one more look at a baleful Dolores and scurried away down the corridor.

***

Darcie surveyed the shambles the police had made of her home and belongings. On any other occasion, she would have been devastated. Perhaps it was the Christmas spirit or just the relief of being out of jail, but she remained calm. Nothing had been broken that could not be replaced.

It had been a near thing. Thank God for Dolores Cathcart. She stepped over a shattered glass bulb, its hook still dangling from the stem. It had been her mother’s favorite. She sighed and picked her way into the kitchen. The search team had been a bit more circumspect here. Her silverware had been dumped into the sink but it appeared that what they were looking for would not be found in the kitchen.

She realized she’d eaten nothing since early morning except a bowl of Cheerios. She made a cheese sandwich and poured out the last of the milk. The wall clock whirled and clunked. She’d bought the clock at a yard sale. It was designed to look like a cat, the clock face fitted in its stomach. Its tail tick-tocked back and forth while its oversized eyeballs oscillated in the opposite direction. It reminded her of Cleopatra. The post office would close in less than an hour. She put her half-eaten sandwich aside and went down into the basement.

The police had been very thorough there. The washer and dryer contents were scattered all over the floor. Her father’s golf clubs, the kind with wooden shafts, lay like pick-up sticks in the corner. Cabinet doors hung open, their contents spilled out onto counters and piled high on an old, chipped, porcelain-topped table. She swept these items onto the floor and spread out a large square of brown wrapping paper. She walked back into the unlighted gloom toward the front of her house. Most of the shelves there had also been cleared except the topmost. She supposed the searcher had been short of stature, or had assumed nothing of interest would be found in a collection of dusty, lidless mason jars.

She pulled over a stepstool and carefully removed the jars, revealing a shallow crawl space. Her father had kept apples and potatoes in that cool dry area. After Ernie Ducotte harvested his potatoes, he would sell Darcie a bag of culls cheap. Darcie bought them when she could and stored them up there, too. She peered in. All four bags were just as she’d left them. She dragged one out and dumped its contents on the wrapping paper.

Eighty-one neat packets each held together by a brown paper tape around its middle. She stacked them like bricks, four lengthwise, five across. She stepped back to admire the etched faces of Jackson, Grant, and Franklin. She stuffed the odd packet in her pocket. She’d need it to buy postage and then she just might stop at the Piggly Wiggly and pick up a steak. It had been a long time since she’d eaten a steak. A steak and a baked potato…and sour cream…and real butter.

She had just enough clear tape to seal the package. She added cording just to be safe. She closed her eyes and called up the vision—the last she would ever have. It was only fair. After all, Dolores’ accident had made it possible. God had given her this bounty and he’d insisted she share it.

She addressed the package:

To: Dolores Cathcart

1347 South Main Street.

Digby.

She paused, then added,

From: the Holding Tank