2 - Secrets: Ike Schwartz Mystery 2

by Frederick Ramsay

  “I assume Krueger is no longer a problem for us?” he asked.

  “He made a mistake. They all do, sooner or later.”

  “Before he left he told me he had pictures. Can I assume they are destroyed? I don’t want that weasel coming back to haunt us from beyond the grave. You have them?”

  A pause.

  “We’re working on it. He hid them somewhere, but we think we’re close.”

  “You know what they say about ‘close,’ don’t you—horseshoes and hand grenades—get me that evidence or whatever he had or there’ll be no business for you, now or anytime soon. You got that?”

  “No problem. We’ll be in touch as soon as we’re done.”

  “You do that.” He hung up and sat in the half shadows and watched his granddaughter finish her mile.

  ***

  Blake stood at the back of the church and dismissed the eight o’clock congregation, the ten or twelve stalwart, old-fashioned Episcopalians who liked Jacobean English, short services, and no music. They were a dependable and largely anonymous group, a standard feature in nearly every church he’d ever served in or heard about—the Eight O’clocker.

  He’d felt odd celebrating in front of the partitioned-off sanctuary. The women had managed to string a taut rope across the apse just behind the communion rail and draped some green damask over it. It reminded him of skit night at camp when he and the other campers would perform in front of sheets hung very much like that in the dining hall. The greatest hilarity at those shows invariably occurred when the boy’s counselors did their skit at the end, always dressed as women—either ballet dancers or chorus girls or some variation on that theme. The sight of beefy, for most part, college athletes in tutus and lipstick always brought the house down.

  The fabric, left over from another time when the congregation thought to upholster the pews, had been dragged out of the attic for the occasion. The couple who volunteered for the job left town hurriedly, no one remembered why, and the damask had been put away. Blake noticed a few moth holes here and there. Well, at least it was green, the correct color for the liturgical season. He wondered how much, if any, of it could be salvaged. He didn’t have an idea what he’d do with it, but you never knew. The Sunday school’s altar had been dragged up from downstairs and placed in front. The altar candles looked huge on the tiny rectangle.

  He said goodbye to the last of the congregation and watched as a young woman climbed the steps, moving against the ebb tide of early worshipers. She certainly did not meet Blake’s stereotype for an Eight O’clocker, and the service had ended anyway. She introduced herself rather breathlessly as Mary Miller.

  Blake extended his hand to her. “I can’t tell you how grateful and relieved I am to meet you,” he said. “You are a life saver. I will have to thank Philip again.”

  Mary Miller was slim and slightly above average in height. Her face came to a gentle point at her chin, and her nose, he thought, a scant quarter of an inch too long to be genuinely attractive. It made, he thought, a sort of cute exclamation mark in the middle of her face. However, two wide and luminous eyes, the kind poets used to call limpid, offset this slight defect in her otherwise wonderful face. He could not identify her perfume, but he liked it. Blake thought her beautiful.

  “I’m sorry. I hope I’m not late. I forgot the service times. I meant to call—in fact, I did before I left this morning, but, of course, you were busy and no one answered…oh dear, I hope I didn’t miss a service,” she said looking anxiously at the departing men and women. “You must be Blake. I’m sorry…Blake is what Philip called you. What do I call you?”

  “Blake is fine. No, you are right on time. We don’t have any music at the eight o’clock, and the next service isn’t until ten-thirty. Here, let me show you the organ and get you settled.” They walked the length of the church to where the organ stood, positioned at the right side of the chancel.

  To say the organ stood in the church misrepresented the situation completely. Parked would be more appropriate. It sat there, as big as a Volkswagen and as heavy.

  “It’s huge.” She contemplated the expanse of mahogany in front of her.

  “A misadventure by the organist who preceded Waldo. Apparently he persuaded the Mission Board to dip into their savings and buy it as an investment, an exact copy of one of Virgil Fox’s organs, Black Beauty, if I remember correctly, and worth a fortune.”

  “Wow. I can’t wait to play it.”

  “Well don’t be too sure. Virgil or no, it doesn’t sound all that great. Anyway, he told them they could resell it at any time for twice what they paid for it. With no guidance from an expert, they took his advice and spent the money. The next year, organs like it began to show up in scrap heaps all over the country. Digital technology knocked out complex electronics and now, even if we wanted to sell it, no one will buy. It’s not worth the cost of hauling it away. Oh, and what do I call you?”

  “Mary is fine.” Blake thought he saw the beginnings of a blush, but he could have been wrong.

  “Three manuals and pedals, of course. Lucky for us Waldo did not lock up the organ. We never did find his key. Apparently, he had the only one, and it’s missing.”

  Mary smiled and changed her shoes, turned on the organ, and began to play some chords. She adjusted the stops and smiled at Blake. “This has a wonderful tone and range. Even if it’s not saleable, it’s still a fine instrument. Why would you want to get rid of it, anyway?”

  Blake hadn’t thought of it that way. She had a point, and given the church’s financial status, there would be no sale or purchase under any circumstances.

  “Oh, here are the hymns. I guess you will have to announce them,” she said.

  He took the note page with the hymn numbers written on it and slipped it in his prayer book with the bulletin.

  “No problem. I will leave you to your art.” As he walked away, he thought, what a dorky thing to say.

  Chapter Ten

  The ten-thirty—Blake glanced at Mary’s scrap of paper and announced the opening hymn from the back of the church. Mary looked uncertainly at him and then struck the opening chords. She played wonderfully, the choir processed, and even a few of the people in the pews joined in the singing. The liturgy unfolded predictably. Two men from the worship committee read the lessons, and Mary led them in the singing of the hymn before he read the Gospel.

  He paused and studied the people as they settled themselves in preparation for his sermon. The rustle of bulletins subsided, and in a moment all eyes focused on him. They were his congregation. For better or for worse, he was married to this group of people for the foreseeable future. He wondered what he could say to them that would make them care. He looked into their faces. The regulars, the Old Liners, were all in their pews. SOFITSOP—Same Old Faces in the Same Old Places. They sat, Sunday after Sunday, in exactly the same spot—same pew. It seemed the center of the church, the spaces nearest the aisles, were filled with regulars. Some of them had been coming for decades and had staked out a proprietary claim on their places, and God help the poor visitor who had the temerity to commandeer it. Newcomers and visitors filled in at the back, or if they were very brave, the front, and along the periphery.

  He remembered someone once telling him that people who failed in business tended to concentrate on the wrong things, on the negative. “Their eyes are not on the doughnut, but on the hole.” Blake looked again at the stony faces centered in the middle of the church and then at the new families, the young people, and the visitors spread around the edge and made a startling discovery. He had been looking at the wrong thing. He had been looking at the hole when he should have been concentrating on the doughnut. If the church was ever to reach its potential, it would do so with new people, not with the old. They’d had years enough to move forward and failed. Now it would be up to the newcomers.

 
Normally, Blake would have climbed into the pulpit to preach his sermon. Today he did not. He abandoned his notes, pulpit, and routine, stepped to the front of the church and began to speak. He had no real idea what he would say, but he decided to start over and aim his remarks at the eager faces in the “doughnut,” not at the frozen ones in the “hole.”

  “Good morning. I want to make a general comment before I say a few words about today’s lessons. First, I want to tell those of you that may not have heard it already that we experienced a dreadful tragedy here Thursday night. Our organist, Waldo Templeton, was brutally murdered in the church. The fabric you see behind me is to seal off the sanctuary, which the police still insist is a crime scene. I do not have any details to tell you beyond that. I suspect many of you may be better informed than I. No funeral services have been arranged. We are still trying to find his family. Our condolences go to them, and to his many friends here.” Blake glanced in the direction of the choir.

  “Second, I want to welcome Ms. Mary Miller, who has graciously agreed to fill in as our organist until we can get sorted out. Mary is a parishioner at Saint Anne’s, our sponsoring parish, but lives over in the Westerfield section not far from here.” A smattering of applause.

  “Tomorrow is, as you know, Labor Day. I want to wish you all a safe holiday. If you are traveling, be careful on the roads. It is also the traditional starting time for us to resume our regular routine. Sunday school begins next Sunday.

  “Finally I want to give you a heads-up on the investigation. I am afraid the police will be in and out of the church for quite a while. Sheriff Schwartz, whom you all know, is the lead investigator, and I hope you will give him your full cooperation. I have pinned his card on the bulletin board. If you have any information that might help solve the crime, please call him.

  “As you know by now, it is my practice to preach on the Gospel, but today I want to depart from that and call your attention to our second lesson. I know you just heard it, but let me reread just a few lines—‘Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good and love one another with brotherly affection.’

  “That is the essence of Christian living—we turn to one another in love. I know that it is not always easy to do so. Jesus directs us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and we reply, ‘You’ve never met my neighbor.’” A few smiles from the doughnut—nothing from the hole.

  “And he goes on to say, ‘and as I have loved you.’ Unwarranted, unconditional love is what he is talking about, and we all know how difficult that is. We can usually manage it for our family—overlook their most glaring faults—visit them in jail….” A few more smiles.

  “Paul continues, ‘Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly, never be conceited,’ and so on. Paul wrote this to the people in Rome when the newly emerging church was just taking form, evolving, you might say. And he wanted to be sure that everyone understood what being a church meant. I wonder how many of you know what it is,” he said and swung his arm around to encompass the four walls.

  “This is a building. It is stone and mortar and glass, but it is not a church. You look surprised. You were told it was a church. It is listed in the Yellow Pages as a church. The sign at the road says Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church. It must be a church.

  “It is not. It is a building, a building which from time to time houses a church. You are the church. Do you understand? When Paul wrote to the Church in Rome, or Corinth, or Ephesus, he did not write to an address, to a building, a place. He wrote to people. The Church in Rome consisted of many separate gatherings meeting in houses and later in the catacombs—here and there. His letter would be passed around, perhaps copied, and distributed to them. We can only guess at the number of letters he wrote that were not copied and are lost to us. But in any event those people were the Church. There were no cathedrals, no bell towers, no parish houses, just people—the Church.

  “Paul wanted them to know how they were to deal with one another. ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he is thirsty, give him drink….’ Not an easy task, I submit, yet that is what is expected of us. We are to love our enemies. What an outrageous notion. Whose idea was that, anyway? Oh, right, umm, it was Jesus. And if we are to treat our enemies this way, what about our friends?”

  He couldn’t be sure, but he sensed people were shifting about in their seats. Bulletins rustled. He imagined he heard someone exhale rather more noisily than normal. He pressed on.

  “I think there are two kinds of people here today. There are those of you who believe you go to church, and those of you who believe you are the Church. It is my intention, as long as I am your vicar, to persuade those in the first group to become like those in the second, to become the Church. Some of you may find that idea uncomfortable, and a few, not many, I hope, may decide this is not the place for you. But if this building were to vanish overnight, would that be the end? Would you pack up and find another building, another comfortable pew to occupy? Or would you come together and start over again?”

  Eyes bright in the doughnut, flinty in the hole. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  “We need to make a decision, a commitment—this year, this month, this week, today. We need to make up our minds whether we are a Church or an address, whether we are going to conform to Paul’s teaching or ignore it. To help in that, we will begin three new programs this fall.” Blake was extemporizing and amazed at what he’d said. He had not thought of programs until that very moment. His notes on the pulpit contained nothing about programs, new or otherwise. Indeed, nothing of what he had said up to that point would be found in them.

  “I will lead a Wednesday morning Bible study. I will ask Mary to review our music and from now on include some contemporary pieces each Sunday, and I am going to ask you to move about in the church, not walk around, no, but to sit in a different pew every Sunday. Introduce yourself to whomever you sit next to. Oh, and starting next week, I want you to wear a nametag.

  “This church has been a mission for over forty years. Forty years! In that time, it has not grown. Our average Sunday attendance had remained at eighty-nine for the last twenty years. As you know, the Bishop decided to close us down a while back. Only the good graces of Saint Anne’s and the friendship between Dr. Taliaferro and Philip Bournet kept it open. I have been told Saint Anne’s will close us if we fail to grow in the next two years. So it is no idle threat on my part to suggest the church might not be here someday. If you are among those ‘who go to church,’ you can always go somewhere else. But if you are among those ‘who are the Church,’ you may soon face a great tragedy.

  “I am calling on all of you, now, today, to decide. Shall we stay open, or shall we fold up and go away? ‘Never flag in zeal, be aglow in the Spirit, and serve the Lord.’ Amen.”

  Blake turned, but first took one last look at his congregation. As he hoped, the doughnut stayed with him and, he happily noted, a small part of the hole. But the center remained frozen and now, it appeared, angry.

  The remainder of the service went smoothly enough. Mary played expertly. The choir picked up on her cues quickly and sang, without rehearsal, better than they ever had for poor Waldo. Blake followed the choir into the narthex and turned to greet his people. Out of the corner of his eye he noted some moving forward, away from him, to the door with its flickering exit sign in the front of the church. They were either leaving or going to the basement without speaking to him. He couldn’t be sure, but their number seemed to be larger than usual.

  The good news: instead of the usual perfunctory “G’morning, nice to see ya,” or “Interesting, Reverend,” people actually stopped to talk. Coffee hour promised to be something more than the painful passage it had been in the past.

  “Look at the doughnut, not at the hole. Look at the doughnut, not at the hole,” he repeated to himself.

  Chapter
Eleven

  Ike stretched his full six feet two inches and yawned. Sunday morning and he’d slept in. He’d worked a double shift until two in the morning both Friday and Saturday. He did go off duty at Ruth’s house Friday night for a while, and that certainly broke the tedium. What started out as a quick snack and some conversation turned into something more involved than eating, His watch had read eight-thirty when, sated in mind and body, he left her, fast asleep. He felt a little guilty about that. Not a lot, but a little.

  Saturday had more than its share of problems. Callend College, now back in session, meant that the traffic from the University of Virginia and Washington and Lee, beer fueled and foolish, would keep him and his deputies hopping until the early hours of the morning. He got up slowly, showered, and shaved and headed to town.

  He ate his usual breakfast at the Crossroads Diner. He didn’t have to order. Flora just waved him to a stool and put coffee and the rest down without asking. Ike always ordered the same thing. He pushed his food around with his fork and recited his litany of whys—why me, why here, why did he stay, and, most important, why the Crossroads Diner every day? It served terrible food. He sighed and, as usual, left his eggs, bacon, and grits half eaten. Flora did make a decent cup of coffee, he’d give her that. The rest qualified as Southern fried dreck. He flipped open his cell phone and called his father.

  “Hello,” Abe Schwartz boomed into the phone, “Abe Schwartz here. That you, Ike? I got this here new caller ID gadget and it tells me who’s on the line so I don’t always have to answer.”