4 - Stranger Room: Ike Schwartz Mystery 4

by Frederick Ramsay

  Jonathan Lydell contemplated his family’s noble past, its heroes, statesmen, soldiers, and patriots, the vast panorama of Lydells in Virginia’s history, and wondered how it had come down to this pathetic woman and her equally disreputable son. He did not know much about genetics. He’d studied the classics. Science, he deemed a suitable study for lesser lights. But still, all that breeding for so many generations and then to devolve to sad, sad, Martha Marie and Benjamin, the shyster. Lydell had a heavy burden to bear. Thank goodness his wife had not lived to see it.

  Chapter 8

  Betsy Blessing’s Antique store reeked of dust, old paper, and furniture polish. Ike intended to correct the anachronism perched on Ruth’s mantle, a surprise he would spring that night.

  “Well, good afternoon, Sheriff. Is this a social call or did my husband, the lawyer, rat me out for running a numbers racket in my back room?”

  “I need a clock.”

  “What sort of clock?”

  “Something suitable for display in a neo-Georgian office.”

  “I have some very nice shelf clocks, two cabinet clocks—one grandfather and one grandmother, a—”

  “Show me a shelf clock. It has to sit on a mantelpiece.”

  Betsy led him through a circuitous path around tables, wardrobes, and cabinets filled with chinaware and miscellaneous bric-a-brac, to a small space where several clocks of various sizes and shapes competed for space on a drop-leaf walnut dining table. She pointed to a clock in the middle.

  “That one is a Chauncey Jerome, I think. At least that’s what it says on the inside of the case, but I can’t be sure. The works might have been swapped out. These are brass and the early Jeromes had wooden movements.”

  Ike inspected the clock. It stood not quite two feet tall and had what he guessed were rosewood veneered columns. There were two round holes in the face designed to take a clock key, one to wind the striker, the other to wind the works. He whistled when she told him the price.

  “I could buy a pretty good used car for that.”

  “Not quite, but even if you could, how would you get it on the mantelpiece?”

  Betsy offered him a ten percent discount. “For friendship,” she said, and Ike had her secure it in bubble wrap.

  “The key?”

  “Inside the clock,” she replied.

  He carried the parcel to the car, locked it in the trunk with his police paraphernalia, duty belt, gun, and hat, and headed to the cemetery. He needed to think.

  ***

  Jonathan Lydell fiddled with the top button of his waistcoat. This afternoon he wore a forest green one, a pair of khaki jodhpurs, hunt boots, and a plain white shirt, open at the neck. He’d discarded his tweed jacket earlier. Lydell did not ride, although he knew how. He’d discovered early in life that horses know instinctively when a rider is intimidated and usually react in unpredictable and often embarrassing ways. And horses knew Jonathan. He did think, however, that the riding habit he affected made him look dashing. His ordinary dress, that is, when not posturing as a country squire, would be the tweed jacket or one of its several brothers, dark gray flannel slacks, an oxford shirt, and rep tie. In the summer, he donned a white suit, a foulard tie, and a Panama hat. He realized his acquaintances thought his mode of dress an affectation and, in fact, he supposed they were right. He had worn waistcoats—he refused to refer to them as vests—since his college days—and remained steadfast in their continued use. He owned an even dozen of them.

  He lifted his watch from the pocket, allowing its gold chain to slip through his fingers. A practiced flick of his thumb snapped its case open and he glanced at the time. It was well past noon, and he reckoned that Martha Marie would be well into her third or fourth bourbon by now, and useless. He’d required her to be his pro forma secretary as recompense for her room and board. She rarely, if ever, earned out. So, as it stood, he’d have to make the calls himself. He closed the watch case, replaced it in his pocket, and sat at his desk, a recently acquired walnut reproduction, which had set him back nearly two thousand dollars. He’d need to address his cash flow problems, and soon. Banks did not have the same respect for his kind as they once did. Years ago, the Picketsville bank would extend his credit for months, years even. But now it was just another branch of a large international bank with headquarters in New York and London. A young woman, with what he took to be a Boston accent, dunned him monthly, as if he were one of the local farmers. He snorted at the thought. His boots creaked a bit and the cracks at the folds opened as he gathered his feet under his chair. No matter, soon all would be set to rights again. He just needed some time and a little luck. The murder could have been a disaster, but a locked room…well, that just might turn the trick. He lifted the paper on which he’d scrawled his proposed signage earlier. He picked up a pencil stub and traced over the letters, adding an occasional seraph to his block printing

  VISIT HISTORIC BELLMORE!

  COME AND SEE THE ROOM WHERE TWO

  UNSOLVED MURDERS TOOK PLACE!

  There was his luck.

  The phone had an unreliable keypad and he had to punch the two repeatedly before he managed to elicit a dial tone from it.

  ***

  “Dr. Harris?” Agnes’ voice sounded tinny. Ruth pressed the intercom button on her phone.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you take a call from Jonathan Lydell? He says it’s important.”

  “For him, I’m sure it is. I don’t know. Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Sorry, no, but I told him you were in a meeting and I didn’t know if it had ended yet.”

  “Thank you, Agnes. That was very inventive. Hold on a second.”

  Ruth hesitated. She did not want a confrontation. She had just spent the previous half hour with Dr. Antoine Baxter who ranted on for twenty of those minutes about being accosted by an old honkey named Lydell, in the street, who wanted to know if he’d play a slave at his mansion on weekends. “He wanted me to say ‘yassuh’ and ‘nosuh’ I expect. I almost hit him. Then, while I was counting to ten for the umpteenth time, he wanted to know if I could direct him to some other boys…boys he said…who might be interested in earning a little drinking money. Who is this cretin?”

  “What did you say?”

  “You don’t want to know, but after I told him, among other more trenchant things, who I was, he said he’d call the college and stormed off.”

  Ruth drummed her fingers and stared at the phone. “Okay, Agnes. Let’s get this over with. Put him through.”

  “Dr. Harris…or should I call you Madam President? I am calling…you know I was very close to your predecessor, Dr. Daniel Clough, you know. Fine gentleman…a scholar, who, I might add, had a genuine sense of history.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he was.”

  “I won’t keep you…right to the point…As you know I am the owner of, and resident in Bellmore. It is an authentic antebellum mansion out here in Bolton.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it.” Here it comes, Ruth thought.

  “Yes, and I’ve authored several books on local history, as you no doubt know.”

  “We have them in our library, yes. And thank you for donating them.”

  “As I wrote in my letter to you…you did receive my letter?”

  “Yes, I did. I have not had a chance to study it carefully but—”

  “Yes, I quite understand. You are a busy woman these days. Well, as I wrote to you, I am distressed by the revisionist tendencies of today’s historians. I believe there is a need to recast much of modern curricula.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you, Mr. Lydell. What, exactly, are you suggesting?”

  Ruth swiveled back and forth in her chair, looking alternatively out her window and at the fireplace mantle and the clock that Ike couldn’t stand.

  “I think I can rectify that situation at Callend. Dr. Clough often suggested I do so, but my time was precious, you understand. Well, my proposal is that you employ me as an adjunct member of your faculty. I wo
uld be more than agreeable to teaching several seminars in history.”

  “By history, am I to assume you mean Civil War history?”

  “The War of Southern Independence, yes, I am an expert on that subject, as my books clearly demonstrate, and I am distressed at the current treatment the southern cause receives nowadays.”

  “I see. As you know, Mr. Lydell, Callend is a woman’s college and, quite frankly, we do not spend much time on war in general and that one in particular.”

  “I find that quite remarkable.”

  “Now, if you were to structure a seminar on the role women played in that tragedy, I might be able to work something out next semester.”

  “Women? Tragedy? Dr. Harris, I am dismayed. The war was—”

  “A terrible time, filled with wholly unnecessary death and suffering, because the politicians in the south and the politicians in the north could not bring themselves to sit down and work out a sensible compromise. All of them were men, naturally. Even your venerated Robert E. Lee knew that slavery must end. Only his loyalty to the Commonwealth, rather than to his country, prevented him from commanding the union forces. But, of course, you already knew that.” Ruth thought she heard Lydell sputtering on the other end. “Mr. Lydell, are you there?”

  “I will have a word with Dr. Clough and some of my friends on the Board of Trustees.”

  “Yes, do that. And if you change your mind about the women in the war seminar, do call. Oh, and Mr. Lydell?”

  “Yes?”

  “My faculty, whether black or white or in between, are not available to play at servants, yeomen, or whatever you have in mind, on your plantation, and certainly not for profit or the amusement of tourists.”

  The line clicked dead.

  There, she thought, that ought to be the end of that.

  Chapter 9

  Ike looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed since he’d last checked. If Ruth didn’t appear in another twenty, he’d call it a night. Her faculty meeting may have run over—as if she didn’t have enough on her plate. Real or not, the concept that Callend College might admit men, after a century or more as an all-woman’s college, would agitate even the coolest faculty member. He stood, paced, and looked at his watch again. It would take her an hour to drive from town. He glanced once more through the glass slider that faced the driveway. She hadn’t been out to the A-frame that often. She had her cell phone. She would call. Though he did not really want any, he made a pot of coffee. While the coffee maker hissed and clunked, he turned to consider Ruth’s clock.

  He removed the bubble wrap, checked that the key was inside the case, and placed it on the breakfast table. He stepped back. He had second thoughts about winding it. What if it bonged away all night? He didn’t know how he would manage that. If you are not used to a noise in the night, it could keep you from sleep for hours. He’d had that problem with a dripping faucet once, and a ticking, chiming clock, he reckoned would be at least as distracting. As he busied himself gathering up the wrappings, he heard a car approach and saw the sweep of headlights against the kitchen wall. Ruth. He strolled to the door and slid it open to greet her.

  “Hi,” she said as she pushed past him. “You have booze, I assume.”

  “Yes ma’am, I do. I take it that means you would like a drink, wine, beer, or the hard stuff?”

  “Stiff one, that’s all I care about.”

  “I have some moonshine, a little local white lightning, if you want a real jolt. I don’t recommend it, though. Knock you on your rear if you’re not careful.”

  “Sounds good to me, but it might get in the way of the evening’s agenda. Better make it a light scotch.”

  Ike dropped ice cubes in two glasses and poured two fingers of scotch in one, added a splash of water, and fixed himself a gin and tonic in the other. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I stabbed it with a pencil.”

  “Suicide attempt gone wrong?”

  “Don’t be smart, Schwartz. It hurt like hell.”

  “You’ll have a little tattoo when that heals.”

  “What do you mean, I’ll have a tattoo?”

  “Well, usually when you push a pencil into your skin like that, some of the graphite is left behind and it shows up as a blue dot, a tattoo.”

  “Great. I’ll have something in common with my students at last.”

  “Your students have tattoos?”

  ‘”You wouldn’t believe.”

  “Where?”

  “As I said, you wouldn’t believe. The school’s nurse tells me there isn’t a single spot on a woman’s anatomy where she hasn’t seen one or more.”

  “You don’t have one?”

  “Is there any part of me you haven’t seen?”

  “Well…”

  “You see any tattoos?”

  “No, but it’s been nearly a week.”

  “That can be corrected. But first, I need this drink and we need to talk.”

  Ruth hoisted her glass, drank, and absently started popping the bubble wrap next to the clock. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the room.

  “You made coffee?”

  “Trying to stay busy. How’d your meeting go? Any substance to the rumors?”

  Ruth took a long sip of her drink, swirled the ice cubes around, and shook her head.

  “Who knows? I mean where there is smoke there’s fire, right? I don’t believe I said that. Any cliché in a storm, I guess. Actually, the head of the chemistry department said that at least forty times. It must have stuck in my head like a tune will, if you hear it often enough.”

  “I got stuck on A Pretty Girl is like a Melody one year and it took three months to get it out.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  “Cher.”

  “You replaced it with one of her songs?”

  “No, she appeared in a fantasy which stuck in my mind just as long, but I didn’t mind that so much. Speaking of tattoos…see, she would come into the room wearing this diaphanous…”

  “I don’t think I want to share that one, thanks. Anyway, since the rumors are coming from several sources, the guessing is this time they’re for real.”

  “If they are, what happens to you, Madam President?”

  “Good question.” She handed him her now empty glass. “Refill?”

  Ike fixed them each a second drink, being careful to go light on the liquor. They had some ground to cover first, and Callend going coed, might or might not be a part of it. He put the new drink in front of her. She snapped another row of blisters on the wrap.

  “I won’t know for another month, I don’t think. Board meeting is in May and I should have some sort of action before then. Lord, was it only last year that bunch shut down the art storage facility and we lost the Dillon Art Collection?”

  “Yes. The end of an era for the college, and the beginning of one for us. Am I sounding like Sixty Minutes?”

  “Not that good.”

  “Sorry. But it’s a fact. If we hadn’t had to work together on that who knows…”

  “I know. Okay. So, is that new?” She waved her hand in the direction of the clock.

  “It’s for you, for your office.”

  “It’s very nice, but I already have a clock in my office.”

  “I know, that plastic thing, it needs to be moved to a different venue. This one will look much better on the mantle of that fireplace you have.”

  She stood and bent forward to contemplate the clock. “It’s a present?”

  “Yes. For your office.”

  She studied the clock for a moment more, straightened up, and a half smile lit her face. “But a present for me?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You realize this is the first present you’ve ever given me?”

  “No, that’s not right. I bought you a Christmas present.”

  “That doesn’t count. Christmas and birthday presents are obligatory. This is the first time you bought me something as just a present. I’m t
ouched.”

  “Down here, we would say ‘teched’ as in—she’s a little teched in the head.”

  “Can the rustic comedy. I mean it. I am. Thank you.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Ike saw what might have been tears in her eyes. She’d turned her head away too quickly to be sure.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and waited. “Are you crying?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. Ever since your mother died, I get these mopey moments. I start thinking about her, and us, and the gates just open. What’s wrong with me, Ike?”

  Ike’s mother had been only a short interlude in Ruth’s life. Close to death when they met, the force of her personality, and her fierce love for her son, had moved Ruth far more than she’d expected. She took the death hard—perhaps harder than Ike. He pushed a box of paper napkins toward her, the nearest thing he had to tissues. She took one, gave him a weak smile, and blew her nose. Ike started at the noise. She honked like a man.

  “It’s the pressure, I guess,” he said. He didn’t know what he meant by that but it seemed to be the thing to say. It wasn’t.

  “Pressure,” she snapped. “I live with that twenty-four seven. Not pressure.” She helped herself to another napkin and wiped her eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It occurred to me that the merger, or coed, or whatever, business has put an extra strain on your system which is, as everyone knows, already at capacity. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”

  “You know about those things? You aren’t going to do a recitation on PMS next, are you?”

  Ike raised his hands in surrender. He knew he was right but he also knew enough not to press it. “I went to the cemetery this afternoon.”

  “To visit your mom?”

  “To visit them all. Eloise, for a moment.”

  “She’s not still…?”

  “No, I just like to stop by, you know. Eloise and I weren’t married that long before she was killed and ever since you…well, memories fade. No, I went to put some flowers on my mother’s grave. It will be another ten months before we can place a headstone. I just figured I needed to get connected to what happened in Toronto, and since she started all that, in a way, I figured I’d…I don’t know, check in or something.”