Drowning Barbie

by Frederick Ramsay

  “We have direct deposit.”

  “Notify the bank. You’ll think of something. Listen, the majority of your colleagues don’t approve of me, and will not attend anyway.”

  “And your townsfolk just love me to pieces. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “They do. They think of you as something exotic, like a local horse breeder who imports a thoroughbred brood mare to improve the stock.”

  “I’m a horse?”

  “Ah, but a very beautiful one, don’t forget.”

  “Thanks a heap. Flowers.”

  “What?”

  “We will need flowers in the church.”

  “Taken care of.”

  “What? I don’t believe it. You are a man. Men do not do flowers and catering. I’ll call my mother.”

  “Do that and then put her in touch with Dorothy Sutherlin, besides being the mother of two of my frontline deputies, happens to be a primal force in the church. All is, or soon will be, arranged—food, flowers, gala, the works.”

  “You did that?”

  “I did.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “But you must because you have no alternative.”

  “You called me a horse.”

  “Metaphorically.”

  “What’s that make you?”

  “In this case, the jockey, I guess.”

  “You’re awful.”

  “Yes, but at the same time, said to be irresistible. Mazel Tov.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Ruth said to a silent phone.

  “Is everything okay? Do you want me to make some calls?” Agnes stood, phone book in hand awaiting her marching orders.

  “He said he’s got it.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I have to. Agnes, figure a way to invite the faculty and staff without them thinking it’s a last-minute thing.”

  “But it is.”

  “I know that. You know that. They do not need to know that.”

  ***

  Ike hung up and turned his attention back to the reports that had been coming in all morning. Ask for people to look out for teenagers on the run and you can expect a flood of sightings and editorials mostly from uptight spinsters about the dissolution of the moral fiber among young girls these days. Most of those missives contained several exclamation points. Whoever wrote the BOLO needed to be a tad more specific as to the girl’s description and why Ike needed to find her.

  ***

  Abstinence of any sort did not fit George LeBrun’s nature. The girls who alternately tended bar and pole-danced downstairs kept one part of his needs in check, but he missed the crank. When your body adapts to the chemical, even a drying out period in jail will not erase the craving. Addicts, if they conquer their problem, do so by owning it and then suppressing it. It becomes easier to do the longer they work at it. George, like many of the addicted, once made clean, figured he could manage it—take it or leave it. George had started dipping. He inhaled and let the drug assault his bloodstream through his respiratory system which had only lately started to return to normal. He nodded and smiled and mixed cola and vodka in a glass. No ice. He felt great. He stamped on the floor for one of the girls. Betsy didn’t work nights Whoever showed up had better be ready to party. He sucked on the pipe and stamped his foot again.

  She said her name was Cherise. Her accent said she had probably started out life as Sherrie or Cherry. She did not look as happy to see him as he did her. She had no idea what she had let herself in for when she’d run away from an abusive stepfather and an in-denial alcoholic mother who refused to entertain any thoughts about what her husband might be doing to her daughter after she’d passed out at night. Now Cherise struggled with adapting to this new and very scary lifestyle that she’d drifted into. She would soon find out that as bad as her old situation had been, there were worse things that could happen to a girl, especially if no one cared if she lived or died.

  Her body would not be found for nearly a year, and then only because a task force created by the FBI, acting on the events of the previous year which determined that there were sufficient reasons to search the woods in and around Picketsville, had finally begun to sift through the sector where she’d been dumped.

  In any case, it would be long after the man who killed her had had his own appointment with destiny. Because of that, the irony of her passing would go unappreciated and her murder, like so many others involving lost children, would go unheralded and unsolved. Hers would be just another life served up on the altar of societal ennui.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Darla waited until the last car drove away from the church and the lights in the office area winked out. A moment later she saw the minister, or whatever he was called, walk to the little house next door. An hour later the same man and this time with a woman left the house all dressed up, climbed into their car, and drove away. She hoped they were on their way to a party or something because she would need some time to find her place and then fix things up. That is if she was right about the way old buildings were put together in this part of the world.

  She let another ten minutes elapse, then ventured out from the woods, dashed across the parking lot to the church, and flattened herself against a wall. She froze, waiting, then moved cautiously to the church doors. As she had expected, they were locked. She moved along the wall, searching. The doors might have been locked but that was not the case for the basement windows. She slipped through one near the back end of the church and felt her way to what she took to be a kitchen. If it were any normal kitchen, there should be a first aid kit and it should contain a flashlight.

  As it turned out she would need the time the absence of the minister and his wife provided and then some. To her consternation, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church had not been built to the eccentric standards of the rest of antebellum Picketsville. She searched every inch of the building in vain for those crawl spaces, attics with hidden cul-de-sacs and the squirrel nests she’d expected. Someone at sometime must have employed the services of an architect. Nothing even approaching a hiding place bigger than a closet existed on any level. She supposed she could crawl up under the altar. In the old days didn’t they give you a pass from the cops if you hung on the altar?

  The kitchen was in the church basement and it would be there, if she had the choice, she would have liked to have found a hiding place. None seemed to exist. She reconsidered setting up in the woods and using the church as a supply point. She worked her way back through the kitchen. She noticed, for the first time a second door leading outside. This one opened onto a below-grade areaway fitted with a French drain. The space was filled with leaves and yellowed newspapers. She guessed the church people didn’t use that door much. She peered to her immediate right and saw another door cut into the wall which formed a right angle to the main building. This part of the church wasn’t as wide as the rest and had its own roof a little lower than the main one. It also held the church offices upstairs. So what was under them?

  She stepped out and studied this new entrance. It opened inward and was secured with a Yale snap lock—the kind she could open with a credit card inserted between the jamb and bolt. Unfortunately, the builder had forestalled this maneuver by putting a beading around the entire circumference of the door. She might have given up except she remembered the rack of knives on one of the counters. She retrieved the knife with the broadest blade and stepped outside again. She lined the point with the lockset and, pounding gently with her fist, drove the blade behind the beading and into the space between the jamb and lock. The latch was forced back and the door sprang open. She removed the knife, wiped it, and returned it to its holder. Then, flashlight in hand, she discovered what must have been a boiler room added to the main structure in the century following the church’s original construction. She explored the room, squeezed behind the boiler,
but as much as she wished it were otherwise, there would be no hiding place for her in this room either. She returned to the main building.

  Darla stood irresolute in the center of the basement gazing at but not seeing the ominous shadows cast by stuffed animals and books stacked in readiness for the weekend’s onslaught of children whose parents insisted they be amused by Bible stories rather than taught what they considered to be a politically incorrect faith. Darla had all but decided to abandon her idea of hiding in the church and started toward the door, this time to let herself out. Then she stopped in mid-stride. Had she detected an asymmetry in the boiler room area? She knew the space should correspond in its general dimensions with that of the offices above. She would have to go outside and pace off the distances between the end walls and then do the same inside the boiler room to find out. With care and as quietly as she could, she slipped through the door, climbed the stairs from the entry well and in minutes paced off the long side of the addition. Once done, she returned to the boiler room and repeated her pacing. The boiler room came up short. She could not account for something like six feet. A quick inspection of the wall behind the boiler revealed that the bricks that formed it did not reach the joists above. There must be a space behind this wall. She couldn’t imagine why they put up a wall there. Maybe to keep the heat away from something. Unfortunately, the gap at its top was too narrow for her to slither through.

  Back in the kitchen she again paced off the greater distance and found herself standing next to what she assumed was a recently installed stove. She aimed her flashlight behind it and discovered another door, this one apparently leading to the space that lay beyond that wall. A room existed behind that stove and because the appliance had been installed in front of its entrance, the chances were good that the room no longer served any useful purpose. If the stove could be moved, she had her hideaway. In fact, the oven moved quite easily and with another application of the kitchen knife to the second door lock, she gained access. It was small but luckily it had been emptied.

  The next twenty minutes she spent scrounging through closets and cabinets. She managed to find several worn pew pads. The cross stitching seemed in good shape but stuffing leaked from seams. Probably some lady set them aside to be reclaimed someday. She carried them to her lair and arranged them into a serviceable futon. She brought in two large buckets and, just before the batteries in her flashlight failed, she discovered a ceiling light installed in the room complete with a chain pull. She stole a light bulb from the ladies room. Next she stockpiled some canned food from the pantry, being careful to only take one of each kind. She lifted a can opener and stuffed it into her pocket. She cut a large block from a bar of cheddar and took a loaf of bread. She helped herself to three quart-sized bottles of cherry soda. She would have to drink them warm, at least until the next night. Finally, she rummaged through a closet upstairs and took one of the black dress-like robes that buttoned up the front along with its hanger.

  She had just finished giving herself a sponge bath in the restroom when she saw the flash of headlights cross the restroom windows. She dashed to the kitchen, replaced the flashlight in the first aid kit, slipped into her hiding place, and pulled the stove back into line. The door she left ajar. She would close it only if and when she needed to, but for the moment, left it open. It provided a small relief from the room’s lingering mustiness.

  ***

  Mary Fisher craned her neck as Blake wheeled into their parking space not four feet from Darla, except for the dividing exterior wall and six feet of Virginia topsoil.

  “Did you see that?” she asked.

  “See what?”

  “I could have sworn I saw a light in the basement.”

  “Someone may have left a light on.”

  “You were the last to leave. Were there any lights on when you locked up? It didn’t exactly look like a light left on. More like a flashlight or something. Maybe someone has broken into the church, Blake. You should call the sheriff. Remember the last time someone broke in and stole the Communion silver.”

  “We recovered it all.”

  “Not all. There is still one cruet missing and besides they might be vandals or something. In the summer the kids around here get bored and into trouble. The community swimming pool was paintballed last week and we had vandals.”

  “Not for a long time. Okay, I’ll call the sheriff if that will make you happy. I doubt it will make him happy, but I’ll do it for you.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Jack Feldman had signed up for a double shift. It was not something he ordinarily did. He liked the overtime pay, naturally, but the long hours cut into his other interests. Interests he kept to himself and as far away as possible from his boss. If Ike were to get even a whiff of the things his deputy did in his spare time, there would be hell to pay. But Jack was careful and while the sheriff may have wondered what he was up to, Jack made sure he never found out. Tonight Jack figured he needed a clear forty-eight hours and took the double to get it. He knew something big was in the wind and that it would require his services. LeBrun, whether he knew it or not, needed someone on the inside and who else could he trust? Harry Doncaster, the pussy, never joined the insiders back in the day. Him and the Sutherlin kid, the hot dispatcher, Falco, only now she was the Sutherlin kid’s wife. None of them were tight with George and Parker. If Parker hadn’t lost the election they would have been dumped for sure. Bunch of Girl Scouts.

  No, George had come back and he needed his boy, Jackie. He grinned at the thought, something big. Oh yeah. To do what he had in mind meant he needed the extra time to set things up and then make them happen. He drove north on Main Street which was a continuation into town of old US 11, his mind on how he would arrange it all and what he brought to the table. He glanced at his watch—ten forty-five. At this rate, he should clear the sheriff’s office a little after eleven and that should put him at Alex’s Road House, out of uniform, and ready to deal a few minutes before midnight. His radio crackled. Darcie Billingsley called him out on a 10-25 at the Episcopal Church.

  “Do you copy, Jack?” Mental bitch. What did she think he was doing?

  “Copy that, on it, 10-4.”

  The call coming in this close to the end of the shift made him angry. Why couldn’t the jerk who called it in wait fifteen minutes and then Picket or some other loser would have to take it? A breaking and entering call, with the paperwork that he would have to do when he was done, would slow him way down and probably make him late. He gritted his teeth and turned into the church parking lot. If there really was some dope in the church, he’d better roll over easy because Jack was in no mood to play nice.

  The preacher stood on the porch of his house waiting for him when he drove up. Those preachers had a cushy life. They only worked one day a week, except maybe for going to the hospital once in a while, and they got to keep all that cash in the plate, probably. Also, like this guy, they got a free house. Jack decided he didn’t like this dude—lazy college kid with nothing much to offer and hiding behind a dog collar. This search would be quick and, unless the idiot who broke in was dumb enough to still be on the premises, would definitely not require a write-up.

  ***

  The two men walked to the church and Blake unlocked the door that led to the offices.

  “The safe is this way,” he said. “If there is anyone in here, that’s the first place he’d go.”

  They climbed the stairs and went through two adjoining offices and on to the sacristy. The safe seemed undisturbed, but the door to one of the cabinets on the opposite wall stood ajar.

  “Anything?” Feldman asked.

  “Except for this door being open, no. It was closed when I left earlier, I’m certain of that.”

  “Step back.”

  Feldman drew his weapon and used the barrel to push the door the rest of the way back. He paused and then stepped forward to inspect the insi
de. Robes of some sort, black, white, and one or two red ones, all different sizes.

  “Nothing. You’re sure this was closed?”

  “Absolutely. You weren’t really going to shoot if there had been someone hiding in there, were you?”

  “Nah, too much paperwork. Usually a kid looks down the barrel of this bad boy and he wets his pants. Can’t give up fast enough. Well, okay, then we’d better look around the rest of the building. You tell me if you see anything suspicious, you know, like, if something is missing or not.”

  “Right.”

  It took twenty minutes for the men to cover the interior of the church. Blake felt, but could not explain why, the deputy seemed so angry at him. He kept looking at his watch and snapping short, marginally rude remarks whenever Blake asked him a question. He made a mental note to mention the deputy’s attitude to Ike when he saw him next. Blake’s preoccupation with the animosity surrounding the two of them and the deputy’s clear impatience to finish and leave meant that neither would have seen anything amiss even if they had stumbled over it in the dark.

  At eleven-twenty, the deputy left grumbling about putting in twenty minutes of overtime. Blake extinguished all the lights and locked up. Neither he nor the departed cop had noticed that two of the basement windows were unlocked and that some alterations had been made to the pantry’s stores, not to mention the missing pew pads, a light bulb, one black cassock, and four or five hand towels.

  Back in the rectory, Blake mounted the stairs to the second floor. Mary, his wife had already climbed into bed but she sat up, wide awake, waiting for a report, for reassurance that all was well, that the child she was pretty sure had taken up residence in her womb would be safe this night.