His soft shells arrived. They were small but cooked perfectly, requiring only a touch of tartar sauce. He poured a puddle of catsup on his plate for dipping his fries and, good as it probably was, ignored the coleslaw.
The waitress checked his progress, refilled his iced tea. Before she left, Ike pointed out the window at the ships in the channel.
“Waiting for a bay pilot?”
“Yeah, mostly. Sometimes they’re just waiting for word from their owners, like, maybe they have to backtrack to Norfolk or Port of Richmond, but mostly, yeah, waiting for a pilot.”
“Were you here on the Fourth of July?”
“You mean here in the restaurant, or here, like, in the area?”
“Either.”
“No, not here at the Kentmoor, but over near Grasonville. That’s where I live.”
“How were the fireworks?”
“Not much to see this year.”
“No?”
“No. See, most times we all go out on the water, like all the people who live around it; well not all, but lots. We get in our boats, raft up, party, and watch in all directions. Usually there’s some beer or wine and stuff to eat. We share around. It’s real friendly.”
“But not this year?”
“No, we all got out there and then the fog just rolled in and you couldn’t see nothing, so we went home and watched it on the TV.”
“Fog. Was that unusual?”
“The fog? Well, for the Fourth it was, I think…don’t ever remember it that bad on the Fourth of July, but we get fog all the time down here. Like, where some schools have snow days, we have fog days.”
“So everybody went home.”
“Yeah, pretty much except those people who got murdered.”
“Murdered? On the Fourth of July? This past Fourth?”
“Yeah. They sailed over from Annapolis, or some place like that, in a thirty-two-footer. Nice boat. And when the fog rolled in they, like, couldn’t go home. So, anyway they were found two days after that, drifting off Hampton Roads, I think. Somebody shot them and cut their anchor, I guess. It was in all the papers. Like how they were naked as jaybirds with bullet holes everywhere.”
“Who were they?” This opened a completely new chapter.
“Some guy from D.C. they said. He had a boat with a funny name. Opium, I think.”
“Opium. Like that?”
“Yeah, well sort of. I think it was spelled without all the letters or something, but people called it that.”
“He came here often?”
“There’s lots of day sailors and overnighters that anchors in the Bay. He’s been here before, sure. He was hard to miss.”
“How so?”
“Well,” the girl blushed slightly, “he mostly brought young women and some of them were into sun-bathing in the buff. Seems like the sporting goods store sold out of binoculars this year.”
“So, what happened?”
“One story was he was in some shady financial thing and mixed up with, you know, like, the Mafia or something. They think it must have been a hit.” She spoke as if Mafia hit-men on the Eastern Shore were as common as flies. “The woman with him wasn’t his wife, either, so they were looking at his missus for the murder, too.”
“And…?”
“Don’t know. Like, it was news for a day and then something else, I forget what, pushed it off.”
“You said one story…what was the other?”
“Some locals said they were undercover bay police out to check on them. It don’t seem likely, but the old-timers, well, they see police behind every tree. I guess one of them could have done it.
“You think so?”
“No. One of the dead people was this woman and…well it don’t seem likely.”
Ike paid his bill, added a more than generous tip, and left. As he drove north he wondered why nude people were described as “naked as a jay bird.” The only jays he knew had blue plumage and a crest. He tried to imagine one plucked and devoid of feathers. He’d seen enough naked bodies in his time to know that the simile didn’t work.
As he turned east on the highway it hit him…Opium but no what? Letters? Vowels? O P something M…O P M…Other People’s Money. He’d need to check that out. Three deaths on the Fourth in the Eastern Bay. Anchor line cut. The odds said they were connected.
Chapter 16
It had turned dark by the time Blake and Mary finally came down out of the mountains. They’d stayed longer than either had planned. The fall colors were gorgeous and the weather fine, but unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, a matter of point of view, the scenic pull-offs were also numerous and, in the middle of the week, private. Like a pair of fifties-generation teenagers, they took advantage of the time and place and would have still been there except they both realized to do so would take them somewhere they had earlier agreed not to go. The descent from the heights, both actual and metaphorical came as a relief and a disappointment.
Mary passed on his dinner invitation when he dropped her off. “We need to talk,” she said and straightened her blouse.
“We could talk over dinner.”
“If I invite you in, in the shape I’m in right now, there won’t be any dinner.”
“We could go to a restaurant.”
“I need a little space and, I’m guessing, you could use a cold shower.”
Blake grinned, “Football captains—we’re all the same.”
“Not all.” She turned to go and added, “Call me.”
He drove to the office. He lived next door to the church in the Rectory, and since he’d neglected his duties past the time he’d planned, he thought he had better check his desk for messages before shutting down for the evening. Mary was dead right; they needed to talk—seriously.
A pink while-you-were out slip lay front and center on Blake’s desk. Gloria, his secretary, had printed the message in large bold letters, underlined them, and added three exclamation points, just in case he might have missed their importance.
THE BISHOP WANTS YOU TO CALL HIM—URGENT—ASAP!!!
The bishop never called. The only conversation they’d ever had occurred when he’d first arrived in the diocese the previous year and he’d made the customary, expected, and wholly perfunctory, call at the diocesan house. Like most Episcopal bishops, this one seemed preoccupied with the ongoing turmoil in the church at large, and a few of his parishes in particular. At the time Blake had been cautiously noncommittal when queried about his stand on the several issues that seemed to obsess the church. He had to. At the time he stood on the brink of unemployment in the church and the only job offer he had was in Picketsville, a place he’d neither sought, nor desired, but loomed as his only, however unattractive, choice.
Blake called Gloria at home.
“What did the bishop want?”
“It was his secretary that called. I asked her the same question. All she could, or maybe, would say is that the bishop had a call from someone in the parish complaining about you and you needed to call him. Actually, she said you should make an appointment. I reminded her of how far you’d have to drive to see the bishop and then she said you should call him and see…”
“Someone from the parish called and complained?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Any idea who?’
“She didn’t say, and when I asked, she clammed up. Is she, you know, normal?”
“No idea. Bishop’s secretaries tend to take on themselves responsibilities not in their job description. Once I announced I was planning to do a full immersion baptism at a local swimming pool during our annual parish picnic and a few matriarchs called the bishop’s office to see if that were allowable. The bishop’s secretary said I need to ask permission. I pointed out to the ladies, when they announced their findings, that the Book of Common Prayer clearly states that immersion is the preferred method, sprinkling a second best, and I did not need anyone’s permission.”
“What happened?”
; “They boycotted the picnic.” Blake scanned the note a second time. “I guess I’ll call the bishop tomorrow. His office will be closed by now.”
He hung up. The last time someone complained to a bishop about him was in Philadelphia. It was a bogus complaint but still, it nearly ended his career. He didn’t want to go through that again. He called Phillip Bournet, the Rector of the sponsoring parish of his little mission church.
“If he said it was urgent, Blake, you could call him at home.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Actually, yes I am. When the Episcopate says it’s urgent, they assume you will take him at his word and appear hat in hand and heart in throat. Ignore it.”
Blake could almost see the twinkle in his friend’s eye. “You want me fired, is that it?”
“He can’t fire you. That’s the point. As the vicar of Stonewall Jackson Memorial, the only parochial mission in the diocese, as you know, you work for me, remember?”
That much was true. The church’s arcane polity made him answerable first to Philip, the rector of the parish in Roanoke that sponsored, indeed subsidized, his little church. Blake hoped to end that dependency but the numbers weren’t there yet.
“He’ll have to ask me to fire you, and I won’t—unless you’ve committed a felony, abused a child or, worse, have become a disciple of Jack Spong.”
“Not guilty on all counts. I just got a message he wanted to talk to me. He indicated it was urgent—underlined.”
“As I said, you should ignore it. He knows, or should have known, that if he wanted to talk to my vicar, he should have called me first, told me what was wrong, and had me deal with it. So, don’t call. Let me call him in the morning, remind him of protocol—politely, of course, and then I’ll let you know what’s up.”
“He won’t be angry?”
“Who cares? He’s on thin ice as it is. He has bigger fish to fry than to worry about some obscure vicar in the boondocks.”
“Thanks a lot, I think.”
“How’s that beautiful organist I sent you getting along?”
“Wonderfully.”
“Anything I can report to my wife, the matchmaker?”
“Give me a week or two and then ask again.”
“Really? She’ll be delighted.”
“No, no, nothing yet, Philip. Don’t jump the gun…but…”
“I’ll keep Christmas Eve open for a wedding.”
“No, wait…Philip…” But Bournet had already rung off.
He decided to take his advice and ignore the bishop’s call. If it were truly important, he’d call again, but it seemed equally likely that the urgency stemmed from an inflated sense of importance on the part of his secretary. There was, after all, protocol. Ordinarily, Blake had no use for the ins and outs of ecclesiastical maneuvering, but his instincts told him this would be a good time to buy in. He locked up and went across the parking lot to the rectory and let himself in. He was hungry and some sort of supper was in order. The phone was ringing.
“You were supposed to call me.”
“I was in the office. While I was admiring God’s splendid fall colors—among other things—the bishop called and said I should report in ASAP.”
“Did you?”
“No, I called Philip, and he said I should wait until he had a chance to speak to the Right Reverend.”
“Are you in trouble?” He could hear the worry in her voice.
“I don’t know. I could be unemployed by week’s end.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re too good to toss out. Did he say anything else?”
“Who, the bishop or Philip?”
“Philip.”
Blake considered how best to answer.
“What are you doing on Christmas Eve?”
***
Ike stopped at the Avenue Restaurant for dinner. He’d made the circuit around Eastern Bay, and, as he’d expected, it had taken him all day. The light had been fading when he found the duck blind. The camera Charlie provided had, however, enough light-gathering capacity in its lens to produce a sharp picture in spite of it. As he sat drinking his second cup of coffee and contemplating whether he had earned a slice of apple pie, he clicked through the digital images on the camera’s back. They were small, but he knew if he blew them up he’d be able to make out whatever details he needed. The duck blind seemed odd to him. Not just its location out from the shore and facing deep water—there was something else. Tomorrow, he decided, he’d charter a boat, have a look at the area from the water, and check out that shooting platform.
Chapter 17
The next morning, Ike pulled into what must have been a filling station at one time. The pumps were covered with cardboard boxes like those used to ship refrigerators. Scrawled across the face of each, in black marker pen, he read:
NO MORE GAS!
He stepped from the car and walked into the garage bay. He could have found it blindfolded. In fact, in his days with the Company, he’d done just that. The mixture of cleaning solution, used oil, gasoline, and grease smelled the same whether in Bulgaria or on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. A large man in amazingly dirty coveralls bent over the front fender of an elderly Ford 150 pickup that had a mismatched cab and bed. His head and shoulders disappeared in the depths of its motor compartment.
“Good morning,” Ike said.
The man extracted his upper body from the truck’s inner workings and faced Ike. “We ain’t got no gas.”
“So I see.” Ike nodded at the defunct pumps. “Problems?”
“Big oil companies. Bunch of greedy bastards.”
“So I hear.”
“Trying to put us indies out of business. Not just trying—doing it, by God. Big oil, big food, big books—all the same, put you out of business. Bunch of greedy bastards.”
Ike opened his mouth to respond but the man waved his hand and went on.
“Yep, just plain want us out of business is it. Won’t sell me gas except at near retail. Retail! I’d have to charge thirty, forty cents a gallon more than their company store up the road. Who’s going to pay that?”
Ike tried again. “Look, I don’t—”
“I run a good business here. Honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Never gouged nobody for the gas. Hell, people thought I was getting rich off the stuff, but they didn’t know what I had to pay for it. No profit in the gas, not unless you come in here and bought maybe thirty or forty gallons. Then, maybe I’d make a buck or two. No sir, I earned my groceries right in here, in the shop, getting dirt under my nails and burning my hands on hot exhaust pipes, radiator caps; you name it, mister, and I done it.”
He must have run out of air, because he paused in his rant. Ike took the opportunity and jumped in.
“Look, I don’t need gas right now. I’m lost. I need to get to a house right about here…” He held up the road map and pointed to the approximate spot where he’d seen the work boat. “There’s a boat tied up there, the J. Millard Tawes, I think is its name, and for the life of me I can’t find the right road. I’ve been driving up and down all morning.”
The man wiped his hands on a rag so dark with grease it seemed likely his hands would end up dirtier. He bent his head forward and studied the map. He lifted his gaze to Ike. His mouth formed a tight line.
“You’re government, ain’t you.” A statement not a question.
“Not exactly.”
“Why do you want to see Bunky Crispins?”
“I want to ask him a few questions”
“You’re government, and he won’t talk.”
“Look, I understand the watermen are ticked at the restrictions on the harvesting of crabs. I guess it’s pretty bad.”
“Ticked ain’t the word I’d use.”
“Whatever. I’m just a cop on vacation. I’m doing a favor for a friend. That’s all.”
“What kinda cop?”
“A Virginia cop, for crying out loud. Not even local.”
“That’s worse.
Look, Old Bunky, he maybe went south of Tangier Sound a time or two but you can’t hardly blame him. He’s got a wife and kids and watermen, like, they don’t have no fringe packages and stuff. Doctors cost a bundle—bunch of greedy bastards.”
“South of Tangier…I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. I just want to talk to him about a missing airplane and its pilot.”
“You’re not from the Virginia Bay Police or whatever they call themselves?”
“I’m the sheriff of Picketsville…over in the Shenandoah Valley. I wouldn’t know a crab from a trilobite if it bit me.” It was an exaggeration, but Ike sensed the direction the conversation had taken.
“Don’t matter. He won’t talk to you.”
“How about I try? Can you tell me how to find him?”
“You’re sure it’s Bunky you want?”
“If he’s the owner of the J. Millard Tawes, he’s the one I want.”
“Okay, it’s your funeral…what in Hell’s a trilobite?”
“Prehistoric ancestor of the crab.”
***
The directions were barely adequate, but a half-hour and a few wrong turns later, he found himself in a graveled cul-de-sac staring at the front side of the house he’d photographed from the back the day before. A Ferguson tractor—it had to be sixty years old—graced a front yard badly in need of mowing. If there were antique tractor collectors out there, if the right buyer happened along, Bunky Crispins had a modest gold mine rusting away in his front yard. Ike pulled in the driveway and opened the driver’s side door. He had one foot on the ground and in the process of heaving himself out when someone or something smacked the passenger side door. His instincts made him duck. A man he took to be Bunky Crispins stood a pace back from the door and held a shotgun loosely in his arms.
“You just hop back in that government-issue car and get off my land.”
Instead of following his orders, Ike stood and held his hands, palms out, toward the man and the gun.
“It’s a personal vehicle and I’m not from the government.”
5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 Page 8
