“Pop, you’d talk to the devil himself if he called. You need a caller ID like Swiss cheese needs holes.”
“Well, now Ike,” he said, “you might be right, but it is handy sometimes, like when that two-faced Lieutenant Governor calls.”
Abe, even in retirement, still wheeled and dealed in the political arena, and the Lieutenant Governor had backed out of an endorsement he’d promised one of Abe’s people. Abe said he wasn’t done with the son of a bitch. Unless he’d lost a step, Ike guessed the Lieutenant Governor was in for a rough patch.
“Good thing you didn’t run like I wanted you to, Ike. The business is getting dirty, I tell you.”
Three months ago, Abe had been furious with Ike for not taking on Bob Croft in the primary for Attorney General. Now, it seemed, all had been forgiven.
“I’m coming out to the farm, if that’s all right with you.”
“Fine, fine, you do that, Ike. Come for lunch. I’ll have Miz Kark fix us a stuffed ham.” Kosher was defined in a unique way in the Schwartz household. “Your Momma’ll be tickled to see you.”
Ike drove the six miles into the countryside to the farm that had been his home until he went away to college. His father never really worked the farm. He leased it out, but for his political career, “farmer” worked with the voters. Very few believed he actually farmed. For most folks in this part of the world, a Jewish farmer was as likely as a Baptist bartender, an oxymoron of enormous proportions.
Abe met him on the driveway, his expression serious.
“Now, Ike, I don’t want you to worry none, but when you visit your Momma, don’t be too surprised with what you see. She’s been sliding lately.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“Well, Ike, it’s like this. Three months, six at the outside. There’s nothing they can do. I asked about more chemotherapy, whether there wasn’t some new treatments. He said if I wanted to, I could take her up to Boston or the Mayo out in Rochester, Minnesota, but he didn’t recommend it. The cancer’s everywhere, Ike. We need to start practicing our goodbyes.”
Ike put his hand on his father’s shoulder. He held his gaze and saw the strain in his eyes. He patted him on the shoulder and turned toward the house.
“I’ll go see her now.”
He crossed the porch and entered the shadowy hallway that divided the old, turn-of-the-century farmhouse in half. His mother had been moved downstairs and ensconced in what would have been the Back Parlor in another age. The blinds were drawn and the room carried the scent of disinfectant and impending death.
“Hey there, Momma. How are you doing?”
“Is that you, Isaac?” Her voice sounded reedy thin, not the strong musical voice he knew. “Crank me up a little.”
“How are you?” He twisted the lever that raised the head of her hospital bed until she signaled to stop.
“Do you know what I dislike most about being a Jew?” she said. She wasn’t one. She grew up a Protestant, one of a long line of politically connected, wealthy members of a fading institution, the Baltimore aristocracy. But forty-five years earlier, when she fell in love with Abe Schwartz, a hayseed politician from the Shenandoah Valley, her society family cut her off, so she had declared herself Jewish. Aside from raising her only son in the faith, that declaration was as far as she ever got in her conversion, but she insisted it was all she needed. Her ancestor, the Right Reverend William R. Whittingham, the third Episcopal Bishop of Maryland, probably still rotated in his grave.
“Strictly speaking you’re not a Jew, Momma. You never converted.”
“Then strictly speaking, neither are you, Isaac.”
“Try telling that to all my redneck friends.”
She gave him a weak smile. “What I don’t like about being a Jew,” she continued, “is no afterlife. When I went to school with the nuns—you didn’t know we had nuns then, too, did you? They made heaven sound so good we all wanted to go right then and there. But now, I’ll have to wait, and I tell you, Isaac, I am tired of waiting.”
He took her hand and realized how much she had wasted away since he saw her last. He could feel the bones beneath her nearly translucent skin. “How about I talk to the new vicar at Stonewall Jackson and see if he can’t find a nice comfortable spot for you on the other side of the theological aisle.”
“Would you do that for me, Isaac?”
He had been joking. He looked in her eyes and saw she meant it. He did not want to think about death, but he knew she had and wanted to make some preparations.
“You don’t have to tell your Poppa,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“I won’t say a word,” he lied.
Chapter Twelve
Blake finished greeting people at the narthex doors and walked the length of the church to the organ. Mary looked up and smiled. She had been packing up her belongings and changing back into her street shoes. She started to put her pedal shoes and music in a plastic bag.
“You can leave them here, you know,” he said. “You will be coming back, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes. That is if you will have me. Was I all right?”
“You were terrific. You will spoil us with your playing. I should not speak ill of the dead, but the truth is Waldo played terribly, and as a choir director….Come downstairs when you can. We have coffee, lemonade, cookies, too, I think. I know everyone will want to meet you.”
“Should I? Well then, I’ll see you there in a minute.”
Blake passed through the sacristy to his office, removed his vestments—surplice, cassock, and stole—and headed through the secretary’s office down the back stairs to the basement. A modest crowd lingered, drinking coffee and chatting. Heads swiveled toward him and away as he entered. He saw the regulars bundled together in one corner. They sent dark looks his way from time to time. He guessed he was getting a going over.
Mary appeared at his side, her eyes following the direction of his gaze. “Who are they?”
“The Wine and Cheese Society.”
“The what?”
“The people who spend time whining and saying jeeze.”
Mary laughed and gave him a sidelong look. “You’d better be careful. They might hear you and really have something to say.”
“After my remarks this morning, I think they may have already started.”
“Well, you were pretty strong, but I liked it. Keep it up and I might have to stay permanently.”
“That is an irresistible incentive. I’m convinced, but it might cost me half my congregation.”
“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that. I suppose you could afford to lose the Wine and Cheese Society.”
Rose Garroway marched over. He waited anxiously, half expecting an attack. Rose qualified as an old timer. She and her sister Minnie, both in their late seventies, had attended the church for at least three decades. Blake waited expectantly. Hole or doughnut, he wondered?
“When?” Rose said, her eyes fixing him with a look that could mean anything.
“Excuse me. When what?”
“When will the Bible study start? I have been waiting for something like this for years.”
“Well, why not this week? Bring your Bible and we will get right at it. I suppose I should see how many others might be interested, though.”
“No problem there,” she said. “My sister Minnie, Mrs. Ruby, and Harold and Maxine Digeppi say they will come. You leave it to me. I’ll get it organized. You just be there. What time?”
“How about eleven. That way if we want to, we can go to lunch together afterward.”
“The mall. We’ll go to the mall. The food court has something like fifteen different outlets. We could try them all.”
Blake resumed his contemplation of the Wine and Cheese Society.
“That bunch?” Rose looked in the same direction. “Well, since Millie Bass is smack in the middle, it’s a fair bet they are gossiping, or about to gossip, or arranging for a session when they can.”
“Oh, I hope not. It is very wrong, for a church secretary especially, to do that. She has access to files and—”
“You’re too late, Vicar. Millie has been the fountainhead of tittle-tattle and dirt for twenty years. She’s not likely to change now. If there is a confidence to be broken or a secret to be revealed, Millie’s your man—woman.”
“I’ll have to speak to her.”
“Don’t waste your breath. Nothing short of a heart attack will stop that tongue from flapping. But since my vicar told me this morning to make nice with my enemies, I guess I’ll have to stop wishing for that.” She marched away to assume her duties as the Wednesday Morning Bible Study Organizer.
Dan Quarles, a worried look on his, face approached him.
“Father Fisher—”
“Just plain Blake will do, Dan.” Quarles stood an inch less than six feet but looked taller—like most thin men whose body proportions include shorter than normal arms. He had a broad forehead with tufts of hair sticking out at the temples. His face came to a point at his chin. His mustache made the whole look like an upside down A. Blake had been told Dan attended seminary briefly and still affected black suits and an air of piety that made Blake uncomfortable. He wondered if the clothes and attitude were a seminary leftover, or the habits of a lifetime. He smiled at his own pun.
“I just wanted to give you a heads up. Everyone is upset about your sermon. I don’t know how I’m going to straighten this out.”
“Who’s everyone, Dan?”
“Well, everyone.”
“Names, Dan. Who are upset and, more importantly, why did they tell you and not me?”
“Well, I am the chairman of the Mission Board, so naturally they would. I don’t think I should name names.”
“Then we are not having this conversation. I have one simple rule. If you have something to say to me, you say it to me. You do not go to a third party and file an anonymous complaint. Either you believe strongly enough in what you have to say to be up front about it, or you keep it to yourself.”
Blake heard his words and thought they must have come from someone else. What had gotten into him? First the sermon, now he just told off Dan Quarles, the chairman of the Mission Board. Dan stood absolutely still, his jaw slowly descending toward the floor. Finally he recovered.
“Now look here, Mr. Fisher—”
“Blake.”
“You need to be clear about one thing. Some of us have been here for a long time. We have put a lot of sweat and tears into this church and by golly we think we’ve done a pretty fair job. We will not let you, or anyone else your pal Bournet sends down here, destroy what we worked so hard to create.” Quarles spun on his heel and stalked away.
Blake watched him rejoin a group of men in a corner, and then felt the white heat of scorn from their eyes as Quarles repeated their conversation. He sighed, caught sight of Mary Miller leaving, and waved a goodbye. Mary gifted him another beautiful smile.
***
The phone rang. Blake walked to his bedroom and picked up the extension. He’d forgotten how much psychic energy Sunday mornings required. He needed a nap.
“Hello, Blake.” He knew the voice but could not identify the speaker.
“Hello, who is this?”
“Oh Blake, how soon you forget. You broke my heart and now you pretend you don’t know me.” Blake’s heart sank.
“Gloria? How did you get my number?”
“The Reverend William Smart had it in his Rolodex. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“Smart gave you my number?” Blake worked for Smart in Philadelphia, at Saint Katherine’s, a lifetime ago.
“Well, not exactly. I found it on his desk when he stepped out of the office and so I just, you know, took it.”
“Gloria, you have done enough. I have nothing to say to you, and you can take it as Gospel this number will be changed.”
“Don’t hang up, Blake. I have something important to tell you that I know you are dying to hear.”
“I doubt it.”
“I talked to the Picketsville sheriff’s office, to your nice Mr. Schwartz. I told him everything.”
“Told? You had nothing to tell, Gloria.”
“Don’t I? There is a difference of opinion on that. My side is borne out by the fact that I am still in Philadelphia and you are not. Who will they believe? By the way, he asked if I thought you were capable of killing. Do you want to know what I said?”
Blake felt faint. This could not be happening to him. His stomach churned. The woman had ruined him once, would she do it again? Against his better instincts, he said, “What did you tell him?”
“Oh no, Blake, it’s not that easy. If you want to know, you will have to be nice to me. Not like the last time. If you want to know, you’ll have to come to Philadelphia and ask me in person.”
“Gloria, pray that I don’t, because if come up there it will be to strangle you.”
“Very good, Blake. That’s what I told that nice sheriff. Goodbye.”
Blake, hands shaking, put the receiver back in its cradle, and sat heavily on the bed. The early afternoon sun filtered through the blinds, casting vertical shadows on the carpet. They looked like bars on a jail cell.
“God, what are you doing to me?” he shouted.
Chapter Thirteen
Sam Ryder’s space—she never thought of it as an office. Offices have desks and chairs and maybe pictures of a spouse and kids or a boyfriend or something. Sam had none of these in her life. Not yet. She believed her six feet five inches drove away most men. On a few blind dates, when she’d answered the door, the men looked up at her with an expression usually associated with someone witnessing an autopsy. One just turned and walked away, a bouquet of flowers still wrapped in plastic, clutched in his hand. She found it the next morning in the Dumpster. Sam resigned herself to being fixed up with basketball players and geeks. The former assumed that their status as pampered athletes entitled them to her sexual favors without question or preliminaries. She’d earned, among other things, a black belt in karate. The necessary application of a move involving her instep and the groin of an Associated Press All American point guard permanently ended her association with the basketball team. The geeks, on the other hand, were so intimidated by her, she grew hoarse from having to do all the talking. Her friends called her “Stork.” But in her space, she reigned as queen.
The coroner had sent over a complete set of prints. They were clear and sharp, the advantage with lifting prints from a corpse. They didn’t move around and blur the prints. She positioned the first fingerprint on the scanner’s glass plate and started the program. If she was lucky she’d get her hit on the first try. Billy Sutherlin leaned over her shoulder.
“Lordy,” he said, his breath rank from a half a loaf of garlic bread, “it’s just like that CSI show.”
“No, Billy,” she said, clicking on the next button, “this is real.”
“Sweet!”
Two boxes appeared on her screen. The one to the left displayed the scanned image of her print. The one on the right remained blank. Below the boxes a query menu popped up. She needed to enter the parameters she wanted to apply and the databases she wished to search.
“Ike,” she said into the intercom, “how deep a scan do you want me to make?” She waited for an answer. Ike stepped through the door.
“Hey,” he said, “that looks like that TV show, what’s-it-called.”
“CSI,” Billy said.
Sam rolled her eyes. Ike leaned over he
r other shoulder, too. Tic-Tacs.
“Well, let’s just try a simple program first. Do an eight-point match, local, county and state and see what we get.”
Sam lifted one eyebrow. She had a sneaking suspicion Ike was flying in the dark. Eight would not be considered a simple run. She entered the parameters and clicked “next.”
The right hand box opened and flashed WAIT.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a bunch of fingerprints whizzing by in that other box?” Billy said.
“Like I said, Billy, this is real. To match whole prints and post them in sequence on the screen requires an enormous amount of computing power and a month to run. There’s no reason to rescale and project all the no matches. Who cares about them? Now, if Ike would come up with money for a big Cray, I could do all that for you.”
In a minute, the program stopped and announced, NO MATCH.
“We could go with fewer points,” Ike said.
“That would be going in the wrong direction. These prints are clean and sharp. We’d only use fewer points if they weren’t very good.” Sam did not want to lecture her boss. She was still new to the department, having been recruited from Callend College only a few months previously. At the same time, Ike had declared her the resident expert on technical things.
“Right. Well, log on to AFIS and see if the feds have anything for us.”
“This could take a while,” she said.
“Okay. Well, call me if you get anything. Back to work, Billy. And Sam, what are you planning to do with all this stuff in the hall?”
“That’s Templeton’s computer and some discs. We picked it up when we searched his house. The place looked like he’d had it professionally cleaned. The guy was a neatnick. His cups and saucers were sorted so all the little flowers on the rim faced the same way. Amazing. It’s all we found. I’ll poke around in his hard drive and see what he was up to. Maybe that will tell us why he was killed.”
“They should do one of them shows here,” Billy said, his eyes still fixed on the flickering screen.
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