Secret of the Scroll (Greg McKenzie Mysteries) (8 page)

“It’s a long story. I’d like to find out exactly what I’ve got.”

“You don’t know?”

“I can’t read it. It looks like something you’d find on a Dead Sea Scroll.” I was trying to give enough information to pique his curiosity without leaving myself too far out on a limb, just in case he wasn’t the guy capable of coming to my rescue.

“Is it written on parchment?”

“That or something like it.”

“Sounds weird,” he said. I wasn’t sure whether he referred to the document or to my story. “I know just the man you need to show it to.”

“Who’s that?”

“A friend of mine named Dr. Julian Quancey Welch.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“Yeah. When he was growing up in
Birmingham
, he tried to get the kids to call him J. Q. But with a name like Welch, they decided to call him Juice.”

“Is that still his nickname?”

Wolfson laughed. “Just a few close friends, not his students. He teaches Old Testament at
Vanderbilt
Divinity
School
. He isn’t a professional archaeologist, but he goes over to
Israel
every summer and works on a dig. I think he’s done some translating on old documents.”

Now I was getting somewhere. “Where can I find him?”

“Well, if he’s not in class, which he probably isn’t this time of day, you might find him working on translations at the little house he bought out on
Sixteenth Avenue
.” He gave me the phone number.

“How’d you meet him?” I asked. “Is he another codes enthusiast?”

“No. He pooh-poohs the codes. He says, and it’s true, there’s been a lot of charlatanism at work, people making outlandish claims about what they reveal. I met Welch at a seminar on biblical prophesy that Vanderbilt sponsored. I usually see him about once a week. He’s a jazz jiving preacher-man.”

I checked my watch as I punched in Dr. J. Q. Welch’s number. It was a little more than two hours until the anonymous man who held Jill was to call. If nothing went wrong, I would turn over the scroll and bring her home. But as encouraging as that sounded, years of involvement with people who lied to achieve their goals tempered my excitement. I needed to press on. Experience had taught me the more you knew about every aspect of a case, the better your chances to win out.

“Hel-lo.” The voice was deep, sonorous. The syllables were dragged out in an
Alabama
drawl.

“Dr. Welch?”

“You have him.”

“My name is Greg McKenzie,” I said. “I just talked with your friend David Wolfson. He suggested you could help me with an old document that’s probably written in Hebrew.”

“I’ll be happy to try, but he could have done that. He speaks, reads and writes Hebrew fluently.”

“He said you were something of an archaeologist. This document may not be just old. It could be ancient.”

“Really?”

“It’s a small scroll. Appears to be written on parchment.”

“Where did you get it?”

I looked at my watch, anxious to get moving. “It came from
Israel
, but I’d rather tell you the story in person. Would it be possible to bring it over now?”

“By all means,” he said, a note of excitement in his voice.

I jotted down the address and hung up the phone. But before I could get up from my desk, it rang again. The caller ID box showed a number that looked vaguely familiar. Then it hit me. It was one of a block of numbers used by the Metro Police Department. I had become familiar with them while at the district attorney’s office. Surely they hadn’t discovered anything about the vandalism of our house. I picked up.

“This is Detective Adamson with the Metro Police Department,” said a businesslike male voice. “Could I speak to Mrs. Jill McKenzie?”

“Sorry, she isn’t here,” I said.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Not really,” I said. “It shouldn’t be too long, though.” That was certainly my hope.

“Do you know where she is?”

Minds have a way of playing dirty tricks, and for an instant a horrible picture flashed through my head, the crumpled body of my wife tossed out on the roadside. “This is her husband, Greg,” I said. “Something wrong?”

“Sorry,” Adamson said. “I didn’t mean to shake you up, but we had an anonymous call that said your wife was missing. We hadn’t received any official report, so I was just checking into it. You’re sure she’s okay?”

He had a rough voice that made me think of dragging dead limbs through the woods. It was not pleasant to listen to.

“Why would anyone have made a report like that?” I asked. That was disturbing enough, but I didn’t like the idea of cops or anyone else screwing up the exchange of Jill for the scroll. “She was fine when she left here.”

“When was that?”

“I’m not sure of the time.” I had to be careful. If you lie to the police, you’ll soon have to lie again to cover the first one. Then another, and before long a clever interrogator will trip you up and tear your story to shreds. I knew. I’d done it enough times myself. “We just got back from a two-week trip and she was going shopping. She can shop for hours. It’s one of her favorite pastimes.” That part was certainly true.

“Do you drive a brown sport utility vehicle, Mr. McKenzie?”

“I drive a brown Jeep Grand Cherokee. Why do you ask?”

“The tip said a man in a brown SUV was seen around your wife’s car, which was parked on
Andrew Jackson Parkway
. He used the term ‘abandoned.’”

“Abandoned?” The shock in my voice was genuine, not from what he had said but from the idea of someone making such a report.

“Right. We found it empty, locked up tight.”

“She’s a careful lady. That’s exactly how she would have left it. Sounds like somebody’s trying to make trouble for me, Detective Adamson. Maybe someone with a police badge.”

Adamson’s voice hardened. “I’m well aware of your problems with the department. I can assure you this has nothing to do with it. Detective Tremaine knows nothing about this report. I was given the call and I’m following up the same as I would with any case.”

I listened to his meticulous denial. Maybe I was being a bit too hard on him. I didn’t know Adamson. “Have you checked the hospitals?”

“All of them. No report of her.”

“Then let me get busy calling some friends before I punch the panic button. You have no idea about the identity of the anonymous caller? Did he have an accent, any peculiarities of speech?”

“No accent, nothing unusual. The call was made from an unlisted number.”

It didn’t sound like the man who claimed to be holding Jill, but he wouldn’t be working alone. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything,” I said. “And I’d appreciate your doing the same.”

Adamson’s voice sounded more a threat than a promise. “Don’t worry. I will.”

I hung up and headed for the kitchen. Getting Jill’s broom from the pantry, I pulled off a bristle and broke it into shorter pieces. I closed the entry doors on them at eye level, leaving the ends barely visible from the outside. They would be my telltales. If any were missing when I returned, it would mean someone had opened the door.

I hurried out to the car with my scroll-in-the-canister. Somebody was setting me up. I didn’t want to believe anybody at the police department would stoop to getting involved in something like this, but with all the trouble I’d had over Detective Mark Tremaine, I couldn’t discount it. And as I headed out the driveway, I found it equally difficult to fathom why the people after the scroll–presumably the only ones aware that Jill was missing–would make such a report to the police.

I recalled the Middle Easterner’s words of warning: “I would advise you to be most cautious in what you do . . .” The implication was that I should not bring in the police. Yet
they
had apparently made an anonymous tip to the cops that Jill was missing.

It made no sense.

Chapter
11

Nashville
was in the middle of rush hour. I maneuvered through the glut of traffic while keeping an eye out for anyone who might have me under surveillance. I had spotted no one by the time I pulled off the Inner Loop at
Demonbreun Street
and headed up the hill toward
Sixteenth Avenue
. I fought the urge to stop somewhere and buy a pack of Marlboros. This busy thoroughfare forms the heart and soul of
Nashville
’s Music Row. In fact, it’s called Music Square East for the first few blocks south of Demonbreun, where you pass the likes of
BMI
, Sony, SESAC, Polygram, Warner Brothers and a string of record labels, music publishers, booking agents, promoters and such. After that Sixteenth becomes a residential discard, a hodgepodge of castaway houses, a few occupied by owners who go for quaintness and convenience. Dr. Julian Quancey Welch was one of these.

I found Welch’s number on a brick bungalow. The lots along here were narrow, with the houses bunched together. Everyone was in close communion with his neighbors.

This time of year night came on early. And cold. I was happy I had worn my heavy blue jacket.

It was dark here, midway between streetlights. As I started up the gravel drive, I spotted the rear of a Ford Escort parked toward the back of the house. The professor wasn’t into big cars or big houses.

The walkway turned out to be a row of stepping stones that had gone askew from too many “gully-washers,” as they say around here. I hopscotched across them to the porch. He had left a light on for me. I pressed the button and waited.

After a few moments, the door opened and a tall, well-groomed black man looked out at me.

“Dr. Welch?” I asked.

“J. Q. will do.” He smiled. “You must be Greg McKenzie. Come on in.”

“I understand you prefer J. Q. to Juice,” I said.

He gave me a pained expression. “David Wolfson has been talking out of school. How do you know him?”

The living room was comfortably furnished with a sofa and recliner facing the TV. A coffee table and an end table were piled high with magazines and books, along with a stereo that reminded me of Wolfson’s comment about a jazz jiving preacher-man. An arched opening offered a small dining area

“I just returned from a tour of the
Holy Land
,” I said. “Our guide was a Messianic Jewish friend of Wolfson’s. He had asked me to call David and give him his regards.”

“Come on in the study,” Welch said. He led the way down a narrow hall. He stepped into a room that had been a bedroom in earlier times, but was now a library. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, all packed end to end with volumes of various sizes and colors.

“I guess college professors do a lot of reading,” I said.

He nodded. “
Reading
, writing, researching. It wasn’t really what my father had in mind for me. He was a Methodist preacher in
Birmingham
, and he sort of thought I’d follow him into the pulpit.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “I admire my dad, but I’m not him. Here, have a seat.”

He motioned to a chair beside a rolltop filled with envelopes, slips of paper, thin pamphlets, and such oddities as a wooden elephant and a small figurine of Buddha. He sat in swivel chair. “I presume that container in your hand holds the scroll you mentioned? It came from
Israel
?”

I looked at the container. “I’m afraid so. It’s a complicated story, but I’d better tell you so you know where I’m coming from.”

On the way over, I had decided to level with him, since I knew he would be concerned about the document’s origin. I told him almost everything. I said the people who trashed my house made a threatening call and demanded I hand over the scroll. I omitted what was most important–Jill being held hostage. He sat there and listened in obvious amazement, his hands resting on his ample midriff like the Buddha on his desk. When I finished I handed him the container.

Welch cleared off his desk, opened the can and gingerly removed the parchment from it. He laid it on the wooden surface and began to weave his head back and forth above it, performing a thorough examination without ever touching it. Some of the edges were ragged where small pieces had broken off.

“I hope we can unroll it without doing too much damage,” he said, musing out loud. “I suspect it’s been flattened out and re-rolled several times already.” He looked up at me. “And you have no idea where it was found?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He placed a heavy metal strip across the open edge, then slowly began to unroll it. “Hebrew reads from right to left,” he said as he studied the faded writing. “This is fascinating.” A smile tugged at his broad mouth.

I stood up to look but all I could see was row after row of strange characters without a break. “It looks like all one word,” I said.