2 - Secrets: Ike Schwartz Mystery 2

by Frederick Ramsay

  One had the presence of mind to call the sheriff’s office.

  Chapter Three

  “Ike,” Essie Falco yelled through the open door, “it’s Billy’s momma down at the Stonewall Jackson Church for you. She says it’s urgent.”

  “Essie, we have a new office intercom, you know. You push that little button and speak in a normal voice—”

  “I know, Ike, but I been yelling at you for more than three years and can’t get used to all this modern stuff.”

  Ike Schwartz, Picketsville’s sheriff for the last three and a half years, sighed and let his feet drop from the windowsill where he’d propped them only minutes before. He usually took his feet-up nap in the afternoon. But Thursday night had been a long one and he knew from experience Fridays could be difficult as well, so he decided to grab a quick doze between morning coffee break and lunch. He swiveled his chair around and gritted his teeth at the shriek it made in the circuit. He’d have to put some oil in there someday.

  “Which line?” he yelled back. Two of the four green LEDs on his phone were lit.

  “Line three.”

  He punched the third button. “Sheriff,” he said and listened to an excited voice race through a litany about a Ms. Bass and a man, who seemed to be dead, named Waldo somebody. He waited for an opening.

  “That you, Dorothy?” he asked, and wagged to Essie to pick up. She already had and was making notes.

  “Dorothy Sutherlin here, Ike, yes sir, and you’d better get on out here toot sweet.”

  “Did anybody call 9-1-1, Dorothy?” He knew the answer but figured he would ask anyway, you never knew. “No? Well, no need to now, we’ll see to it and be right out.” Small towns—the last to acquire technology, the last to use it when it finally arrived. In the past, Picketsville folks always called straight in to the sheriff’s office when something happened, so why change now? Only newcomers, city people, and tourists called 9-1-1.

  “Essie, get a hold of the County. It looks like we might have a homicide. Then call whoever’s on and tell them to meet me at the Episcopal Church and, oh, get an ambulance down there, too, just in case.”

  Ike heaved himself out of his chair, patted his pockets for keys and wallet, considered whether he wanted to strap on his duty belt, decided against it and stepped into the main office, belt and gear in hand. Sam Ryder, his newest deputy, walked in as he closed his door. Sam—Samantha—Ryder had her own space in a renovated jail cell down the hall. They had never needed more than two holding cells anyway, and Sam needed space to set up her computers and their peripherals. The Picketsville sheriff’s office had joined the information age. He had no idea what she had assembled in there. It seemed like every day another box, envelope, or package arrived and disappeared into the cell.

  “How’re we doing, Sam?” Ike didn’t know if he’d understand the answer if she told him, but as her boss he thought he ought to be kept informed.

  “Almost there.” She picked up a thin package labeled Software and retreated to her sanctum sanctorum.

  “Right, good,” he said and left shaking his head.

  ***

  Ike noticed the New Jersey tags on the car as he pulled around it. Another out of state driver. The area had been attracting people from all over the country lately. The regulars at the Crossroads Diner were full of it, some worried, most simply annoyed. Chester Starks muttered darkly about “foreigners.” In another age he might have said “Yankees,” but Californians and Arizonans didn’t fit.

  Flora Blevins, who had run the diner since the Carter Administration, said she’d told Marvin down at the print shop to run her up two different menus—one for townsfolk and one for newcomers and outsiders. The difference between the two would be found in the prices, not the cuisine. She said she’d been fixing to do it ever since the diner became the “in” place for the girls from Callend College to bring their dates. That started last spring, just before the big robbery. The regulars said they felt like they were in a zoo when those bright young people in their fancy clothes descended on their sanctuary, like they came to study the animals. They reckoned the double menu idea a fair tradeoff for their discomfort.

  Ike had a notion what sudden interest Picketsville held for the neo-carpetbaggers filling the motels and renting houses up and down the highway, but he also knew he couldn’t do anything to stop it. If what he supposed turned out to be true, historic old Picketsville would soon become the Freeport, Maine, of the Shenandoah Valley, and probably end his tenure as sheriff.

  The thought gave him pause. He’d run for sheriff because he needed something to do in the time of his life he referred to as his Job Years—years he’d spent, like the biblical sufferer, sitting on a metaphorical dung heap wondering why God hated him so much. He had gotten past that, but now he wondered why he stayed on. He didn’t need the money and he certainly didn’t need the aggravation. Yet something held him in place and, several times a week, he wrestled with it. He tried to remember who wrestled with God. Not Job— he just sat and waited. Isaac? Ike’s full name was Isaac. Isaac didn’t wrestle, did he? Jacob. Jacob wrestled with God, threw his hip out or something—too many years had passed since he’d been to shul and no way to make it up now. Biblical metaphors weren’t going to get him his answer. Not today, anyway.

  He pulled onto the gravel parking lot in front of Stonewall Jackson Memorial Church. Only in this part of the country could a house of God be named after a Confederate general. Billy Sutherlin and Charley Picket were waiting for him in the parking lot.

  ***

  There were at least four police cars in the parking lot when Blake Fisher, the Reverend Randolph Blake Fisher, Jr., Vicar of Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church, drove up. His father, Randolph Blake Fisher, Sr., owned a seat on the New York Stock exchange, a seat he’d inherited from his father who, in turn, got it from his. A big man in many ways, Randolph Senior so completely occupied the name Randolph that Blake had had to settle for using his middle name. He noted with some annoyance that someone had parked in his reserved space. As he climbed out of his beat-up sports car, Dan Quarles rushed across the parking lot.

  “Father Fisher,” he yelled, “where have you been?”

  Dan sounded accusatory, as if he’d been personally inconvenienced.

  “Someone steal the safe again?” Blake asked, ignoring Dan’s disapproving stare.

  “Waldo,” Dan sputtered.

  “Waldo stole the safe?”

  “Waldo’s dead. Shot twice.”

  “Shot? You’re kidding.”

  “Not a kidding matter, Vicar, very serious. And Millie Bass is hysterical. She found the, ah, you know, the body.”

  Blake walked quickly to the back stairs and climbed them to the offices. He crossed through Millie’s, his own, and on into the sanctuary. A bored-looking young man in a light blue jumpsuit with RCPD stenciled on the back waited for a signal to wrestle Waldo Templeton, or what remained of him, into a body bag. Millicent Bass sat hunched up and tiny in a front pew, attended to by several ladies from the Altar Guild whose names, except for Dorothy Sutherlin, Blake could not remember. He had not been vicar very long, so this memory lapse could be excused, but the real reason he could not remember their names had nothing to do with his tenure. They all seemed to behave like they were doing him a favor, that they, not he, were the ones to decide how and when various things got done, not an attitude unique to this particular church. He found it so off-putting he kept his distance, and thus their names had not made it into his memory bank.

  “You the Reverend here?” This, from a tall, lean man in a rumpled uniform—hard face, soft eyes. Southern cop, Blake thought. Great, just what I need, Buford T. Justice parking his size twelves in my church.

  “I’m the Vicar, yes,” Blake said.

  The man studied Blake for a moment and led him to the pair of fro
nt doors. He held out his hand, inviting Blake to step outside.

  “No sense burdening the ladies,” he said. “What can you tell me about Waldo Templeton?”

  The two men walked slowly away from the door toward a stand of pines. “Not much, nothing, really. I’ve been here less than three months. My predecessor hired him. He is, excuse me, he was a very private person. I saw him only in his capacity as our organist and intended to replace him.”

  “Why?”

  “He was a mediocre organist and a little creepy to boot.”

  “What do you mean by creepy?”

  “It’s hard to say, but he sort of drifted in and out, you know? One minute you thought you were alone, the next minute, there he was. I’d swear he walked through closed doors. He would just appear in the office. That kind of creepy.”

  “That’s not normal for single men who play the organ in churches?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Skip it. Just a thought. Oh, another thing, before I forget. Do you know anything about a church called Saint Katherine’s?”

  Blake stopped in mid stride. “Maybe. I used to be a part of the ministry team at Saint Katherine’s in Philadelphia. Why do you ask?”

  “He had a note in his pocket that said, ‘Find out what the Vicar did at Saint Katherine’s.’ The Vicar, that’s you, right?”

  “Right.” Blake felt his stomach turn over. Anger, misplaced perhaps, but very real, dislodged his usual easygoing nature. He resented this country cop even while he knew it had nothing to do with him, really. He turned and faced the church.

  “Well, Reverend, you be sure to stick around, will you?”

  “Reverend is an adjective, Sheriff, not a noun,” he said.

  The cop spun on his heel and raised his eyebrows. “Say again?”

  “The correct form of address to a clergyman is Mister, or Doctor, or Bishop, etcetera. The use of Reverend as a title is incorrect. As I said, it is an adjective modifying Mister, Doctor, and so on. The Reverend Mister, or the Reverend Doctor—”

  “Thanks for the English lesson. I think I knew that, though I haven’t had much call to use it. The important thing here is, if you plan on preaching in this part of the world for any length of time, Son, you’d best get used to being called Reverend because, usage or not, that’s what everyone is going to call you.”

  “So in this corner of the State of Virginia—”

  “Commonwealth.”

  “What?”

  “Usage. Virginia is a Commonwealth, not a State, as are Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Down here, people are picky about what they’re called. You can understand that, I assume, what with Reverend and all. Commonwealth—not State.”

  “Right.”

  Chapter Four

  Ike suppressed a smile. It seemed the big city boy had issues about country cops. Nothing changed. He turned to admire the church’s entrance and its solid double oak doors.

  “Tell me something, Reverend, why do churches, especially older ones like this one, paint their doors red?”

  “I’m not sure,” Fisher said. “There is an old tradition that congregations paint their doors red when the mortgage is paid. I don’t know what you do if you have to borrow money again, as this church has. I suppose we should get some paint remover.”

  “I don’t think anyone will notice.”

  The benefit of the church’s stone construction became immediately apparent when Ike stepped back in. Sixteen inches thick, the stone walls maintained the interior at a comfortable ten degrees below the outside ambient temperature in the summer and retained the heat in the cooler months. So far, the church’s leadership had not felt the need to air-condition. Ike let his eyes adjust to the relative gloom and then moved toward the front of the church. Dorothy Sutherlin waved to him from the first row of pews. Dorothy had raised seven boys, one of whom, Billy, worked for Ike as a deputy.

  “Well, thank goodness you got here, Ike,” she said in a decidedly unchurch-like voice. Dorothy did not bellow, as some of her critics alleged, but over the years, as the result of raising seven boys, she had developed impressive volume. “It’s all I can do to keep these ladies away from the…scene. I had to tell Mavis here not to touch anything after she started to put the Fair Linen back on the altar. The candlestick has been set to rights, too.”

  The woman Dorothy indicated as Mavis began to protest. Ike cut her short as kindly as he could.

  “I’m sorry, ladies,” he said while he stepped carefully around the altar to inspect the dead man. “You’ll have to leave everything as it is until we are finished here. That may not be until early next week.”

  “We’re supposed to have services here in two days. I’ll need this area cleared and the altar set by then.” Fisher looked worried.

  “Not this Sunday, I’m afraid. I’ll ask the FET, that’s the Field Evidence Technicians, to work as fast as they can, but with the blood—” Ike stopped in mid sentence. He leaned forward and looked closely at the blood smear on the reredos.

  “Who…? Which one of you left a fingerprint in the middle of this stain?” Ike felt his calm beginning to slip away. One of these four biddies had put her nose or, to be precise, her finger, in as well. He glared at the ladies. He realized there were five of them and he still needed to find out who they were and why they were in the church in the first place. “Well?”

  The ladies hung their heads and then their eyes ping ponged back and forth at one another. Finally a woman he thought he remembered as Millicent Somebody raised her hand.

  “I’m afraid I did, Sheriff. I didn’t think. When I saw Waldo, I unconsciously touched the…blood. I guess I couldn’t believe.…”

  The county FET team arrived in the middle of this exchange. Ike waved them into the area and asked their leader, Bart Franklin, to take the fingerprints of all five women. Franklin peered at Ike over the top of his glasses but nodded and gave the order to one of his men.

  “You, too, Mr. Fisher,” Ike said. “Anyone inside the crime scene—we will need your fingerprints and a sample of your DNA. He saw Franklin flinch. Ike figured once the word got out that there were consequences for tampering with a crime scene, however small, he would have fewer problems in the future.

  “With all due respect, Sheriff,” Blake said, “I don’t think I’ll go along with all this.”

  “I can make you,” Ike said.

  “Probably, but I believe you are over-reaching. We do not have to submit to DNA sampling without cause.”

  Ike studied the clergyman, trying to look behind his eyes. “Very well, Reverend,” he said. Franklin looked relieved. Ike set his team in motion, interviewing the women, taping off the area, and searching the church and grounds.

  “About the services Sunday,” Dorothy Sutherlin said, “Billy here could string a piece of clothesline across the front of the sanctuary and put up some fabric. There’s the little altar in the basement we could set up in front….” She paused and looked inquiringly at Blake.

  “Yes, yes, that will have to do, Dorothy, thank you,” he said.

  ***

  The police left after, what seemed to Blake, an interminable amount of time, but probably amounted no more than three hours. Millicent gave her statement. He sat in on that, as much to find out what had happened as to provide pastoral support for Millicent. The look she gave him indicated she did not wish his support and probably wished he were somewhere else. Dan Quarles told the police he’d answered a call from the church when Blake could not be located. This he said with a scowl and a sidelong look in Blake’s direction. The ladies of the Altar Guild clucked a joint statement. They came to set the altar. They always did that on Friday, they declared, with the seriousness only dedicated volunteers possess. They found Millicent in hysterics on the floor. They called the sheriff’s office, then Blake—unsuc
cessfully—and finally, and successfully, Dan (bless him) Quarles. Blake had nothing to add. Schwartz asked to see the rest of the building.

  Blake thought of the church as a large, empty, stone box. But what it lacked in spirituality it more than made up for in aesthetics. It boasted stained glass that might be Tiffany, some artwork he had not yet gotten around to checking, and a well-proportioned carved marble altar. The latter, now free standing but once positioned on the east wall against the reredos, stood in an apse created by the sacristy on the left and an enclosed stairway on the right, clearly marked with a green EXIT sign whose bulb invariably flickered like a votive candle. The symbolism always amused him when he processed behind the choir on Sunday. Behind were the two offices, with their own set of stairs that lead to a shared landing with those from the church. The location of the offices precluded a rose window over the altar—the only architectural flaw in the whole. At the entrance, the narthex opened out to a walkway leading to the parking lot.

  In its heyday, toward the end of the nineteenth century, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church served as a thriving chapel of ease for local gentry. It flourished through the first half of the twentieth and then began to decline. Times changed and more fundamentalist denominations began to capture Picketsville’s souls. The lure of better economic times to the east drew its major supporters away, never to return, and the faculty of the college, once the backbone of its congregation, had become increasingly humanist, Marxist, and agnostic in its approach to the hereafter. Now the church languished as a parochial mission of Saint Anne’s, a large suburban parish in Roanoke.

  Saint Anne’s, or more accurately, its rector, Philip Bournet, took on the mission after the diocese decided to shut it down. Its previous vicar had been a seminary professor of Philip’s and nearing retirement. Philip turned Stonewall Jackson Memorial into a small sinecure for him. He intended to close it as soon as his friend and former instructor retired. The vicar’s fatal heart attack cut short those plans. Blake took over as vicar only because of his close friendship with Philip. Blake desperately needed a job and when he asked for a favor, Philip persuaded his congregation to extend the mission’s life for a brief period.