2 - Secrets: Ike Schwartz Mystery 2

by Frederick Ramsay

  “What show?” Ike said.

  “CSI Miami, New York—you know.”

  “You think CSI Picketsville would be a big draw in the TV ratings?”

  “Shoot, yes. All them other shows are set up in big cities. They’re all alike. Dudes in big old SUVs driving around shining their little flashlights in corners and good-looking babes taking pictures. But out here, it’s different. They could show how folks in the country without all them fancy laboratories get the job done. Maybe Ryder here has got a friend that knows about all that stuff—like she knows about computers. Do you, Ryder?”

  “You heard the man, back to work. Go away, Billy.”

  She reentered her parameters and turned her attention to Templeton’s boxes.

  She connected Templeton’s computer as part of her network. It would have been easier to remove his hard drive and open it directly. The software she needed to hack into his was installed on her own drive, and she figured she needed the challenge. He had a firewall that took her less than five minutes to breach. She’d done this before. She spent the first ten minutes just opening and closing files and inventorying his software.

  “Ike?” she said into the intercom. She waited while a series of snaps and crackles came back, mixed with at least one Anglo-Saxonism, and then he answered.

  “You there?”

  “Yes. Ike, this guy’s a hacker. He’s got some pretty sophisticated software on this machine. You want me to find out what he was after?”

  “Sure. See if he was into blackmail.”

  “My thought, too.”

  She spent most of the next two hours following his Internet history retrieved from his hard drive. Every few minutes she jotted a note and moved on. She concluded he’d been pretty good at it. Not an expert, but pretty good. When she broke into Ibex and Crane, she frowned. Something did not feel right. She downloaded the files he’d accessed and saved them to a disc. Then, unlike Templeton, she erased her tracks into the program. It would not do for a major commercial real estate developer to discover its security had been breached by the Picketsville Sheriff’s Department.

  The air seemed very close and hot. The thermometer on the wall read 85o. She hadn’t noticed it before, but someone had turned off her air conditioner. She walked to the window and saw a note taped to it, an official-looking reprimand. Solly Fairmont, Jolly Solly, had issues with her unauthorized air mover, it seemed. He insisted she refrain from turning the unit on as it disturbed the zone reading for her area. He said it should be removed at once. He said she should call for a technician to help with adjusting the air flow. He’d written several other things she did not bother to read. She tore the note up and switched on her window unit. It clunked and then hummed to life. For a minute or two, she stood in front of the vents letting the chilled air blow on her.

  The computer running the fingerprint program beeped and MATCHED appeared on her screen underneath the print it had wedded to hers. She clicked on “details” and “print.” The laser printer whined into life and a single sheet of paper swished out. She inspected it, frowned and started for the intercom, thought better of it, and walked around the corner to Ike’s office. She’d finish Templeton’s computer work later.

  “Ike,” she said, “I think we have a problem.”

  “What kind of a problem?”

  She handed him the sheet of paper. He glanced at it and then read it through slowly.

  “This is a joke, right?”

  “Don’t think so. That phone number looks like Quantico to me.”

  “They want us to hold this guy until a Special Agent Hedrick arrives to take him into custody. If he is not already in custody, we are to arrest him and hold him until this Hedrick guy arrives as he is a likely flight risk. Are these guys complete idiots? He’s dead, for crying out loud. Unless they think he’s an angel with wings, he isn’t flying anywhere. What are they thinking about?”

  Sam shrugged. “They probably missed that part. Actually they never asked for particulars, and we didn’t offer any. We should call that number and tell them, but look at the sheet. It’s blank except for his name which, by the way, is not Waldo Templeton.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “They didn’t give us anything else except that they say there’s an outstanding warrant out for his arrest,” she continued.

  “Okay. Get back on your computer and search for…what’s his real name?”

  “Walter Krueger.”

  “If he’s wanted by the FBI, there’s bound to be something on him elsewhere. I’ll call this number and explain about the late Walter Krueger’s unlikely prospects for flight.”

  She listened as Ike dialed the phone number on the sheet. He put on the speaker phone and was greeted by a robotic voice informing him that Section Chief Bullock was not available and that he should leave a message.

  “This is Sheriff Ike Schwartz in Picketsville, Virginia. Please call me ASAP about Walter Krueger.”

  Sam retreated to her lair, leaving Ike to sort that one out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Monday started out with Blake feeling like the Eighty-second Airborne had spent the night doing maneuvers on his head. Sunday boomeranged back at him—his sermon, Mary Miller, and Gloria. He looked at his watch. Eight o’clock on Labor Day morning.

  He’d planned to fly to Philadelphia Sunday evening to visit his sister Irene, her husband, Bob, and his nieces and nephew. In fact he’d left Irene’s phone number with Millie Bass, just in case an emergency came up. He’d called Irene at the last minute and begged off.

  “Are you all right, Blake?” she’d asked.

  “Fine, great, just a little under the weather. It has been a very bad couple of days.”

  He filled her in on the murder.

  “Murder? Blake, that’s awful. What will you do, I mean, did you have blood all over the place? Wow, a murder.”

  “Please, Irene, enough. No blood—well, a little—but the whole business seemed so matter of fact, once you got over the shock. It felt like the scene of an automobile accident, not a murder, and the local top cop heard about what happened in Philadelphia, or what he thinks happened in Philadelphia. He’s a sheriff. Can you believe it? His deputies all wear Smokey the Bear hats and sound like they just stepped out of The Dukes of Hazzard—wee-hah! Anyway the sheriff implied Templeton, that’s the dead guy’s name, might have known about it, too, and might have been blackmailing me.”

  “Blake, nothing happened, did it? There are no grounds for blackmail.”

  “You know that. I know that. The police do not know that. But that is not the worst of it.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Gloria Vandergrift called me right after the sheriff left and hinted she’d talked to him. She said I should to come to Philadelphia if I wanted to know what she told him.”

  “You’re not going to meet that…woman, are you? After what she did to you, you can’t.”

  “No, of course not. That is another reason I think I should stay home tomorrow.”

  “What did you say to her, Blake?”

  “I said I would strangle her.”

  “Good idea, bad thing to say.”

  “Right. I’ll call you later in the week and keep you posted. Love to the kids—say hello to Bob.”

  Excuses made, he decided to secure his privacy. Since everyone thought he’d left town, he would let it stay that way. He parked his car in the garage and closed the doors. He returned to the house and locked up. He could get around the “everyone has a key” problem only when he stayed inside. All the doors had manual screw latches which allowed him to deadbolt from inside. All but one was painted shut, but with a knife blade, a pair of pliers, and some patience, he freed them so that they slid smoothly into their receivers. Now he was locked in and everyone else out. Blake
decided he would replace at least one of them with a keyed deadbolt. The front door would do nicely. No one ever used the front door, so his Board would never notice he’d altered access to the vicarage without their permission—unless, of course, one of them tried to come in without his knowing it, and then, would they admit it?

  He scrambled four eggs, fried some bacon, very crisp, and made toast and a pot of coffee. The house filled with their combined aromas. He thought about calling Mary Miller, reached for the phone, changed his mind, and went into the living room to settle in with the newspaper and breakfast.

  At ten o’clock, he heard someone at the side door, no knock, just the sound of a key in the lock and the knob turning. The door groaned but did not open. A muffled thump followed, as if someone put a shoulder to it.

  Blake went to a side window and peered through the blind. Millicent Bass stood on the steps, a puzzled look on her face. She stepped down to the walkway and disappeared into the basement stairwell. He heard the same sounds again. He watched her reappear at the side of the house. Would she try the front door, too? She started around the walkway toward the front of the house as a car pulled into the lot. She hastily shifted direction. Three ladies from the Altar Guild climbed out of the car chattering like schoolgirls. Millie joined them. He noticed the brown bag in her hand.

  Well, he thought, what on earth did Millicent Bass want from his house badly enough to take time out on a holiday and try a break-in? Or, conversely, what did she wish to leave in his so house badly? The three ladies and Millicent drove off. He poured himself more coffee and returned to his paper.

  The phone rang. Blake flinched. The caller ID indicated it came from Callend College. He felt relieved. He did not need another call from Gloria Vandergrift. The woman on the other end of the line identified herself as Ms. Ewalt and wanted to know if Mr. Fisher would be a guest at dinner that evening. She understood that it was short notice, but President Harris—

  “I’d be delighted,” he said, saving her the need to rationalize. Well, well, he thought. Maybe Philip had been right. Things were looking up.

  An hour later, he heard noises at the door again. He decided he would slip up to the door, jerk it open, and confront Millicent. Perhaps the shock of seeing him would lead her to blurt out what she was up to. He glanced out of the blinds again. This time Sheriff Schwartz stood on the steps, a key in his hand. Everyone has a key, including, it seemed, the police. Schwartz tried the door again and then apparently realized what it meant to be latched from the inside. He stepped away from the house. Blake watched as he circled the church and wandered off through the grassy lot toward the woods and the rear of the property. He returned five minutes later carrying a large parcel loosely wrapped in newspaper. Blake could not make it out, only that it did not seem particularly heavy. Schwartz carried the parcel to his car, opened the trunk, and put it in. As he did so, the newspapers slipped away and Blake thought he could make out the outlines of a steel box, a file box, perhaps. He thought to go out and say something to Schwartz but decided against it. He’d had enough rural police.

  ***

  Lee Henry folded her arms and smiled as Ike pushed through the door that served as the entrance to her salon. In any other house it would have been the family room, but she’d rigged it up with a chair, sink, and cabinets and made a living styling or cutting hair—which, depended on your gender.

  “Well, look at what the cat dragged in, and on a holiday, too. How are you, Ike? You here for your semiannual haircut or is this a social call? If it’s that, give me a minute and I’ll just get me upstairs and slide into my black lace underwear.”

  Lee Henry cut hair, told stories and served as Picketsville’s bawdy lady—all show, however. In fact she would have fainted dead away if Ike or any of her male customers were to respond to her approaches.

  “And how are you, Lee? Any news I need to hear as the county’s chief law enforcement officer?”

  “Well, you heard what the blonde down at the new 99 Cent Store did when she cashed out her first customer?”

  “No. What did she do?”

  “Called for a price check!”

  Ike smiled and took his place in the chair. “It’s a haircut today, Lee. Unless you can tell me something about a guy named Waldo Templeton.”

  “Weird Waldo, the peeper. What do you want to know?”

  “You do know him. Why am I not surprised? Is there anything or anybody you don’t have a line on?”

  “Gossip Center, that’s me.”

  “Why ‘the peeper’?”

  “Well, see me and my friend, we go up to Buck Woody’s on the weekends to dance and do a little drinking. And some of the kids from the colleges around here go there and we watch them and remember being young. Anyway, one night there’s this ruckus on the parking lot. We got there in time to see an old Toyota peel out and the kids are all red in the face and yelling. Seems like they thought the guy in the car was this Waldo creep that they recognized as being from the uptown church, the Stonewall J., and they said they caught him peeking in the windows of a car where the couple were—you know—getting it on. He had a camera.”

  “He took pictures?”

  “I guess so, tried to, anyway. Hey, here’s one for you, Ike. This old guy had a farm with a big pond out back, fixed up nice—picnic tables, horseshoe pitch, and some peach trees. This is down in Florida, see. The pond was good for swimming, but he didn’t do that no more on account of his arthritis. So, anyway, one evening he decides to go down to the pond, as he ain’t been there for a while, and look her over. He grabs a five gallon bucket figuring to pick him some fruit. When he comes up to the pond, he hears voices—shouting and laughing and such. He gets closer and he sees a bunch of young women skinny dipping. When they see him, they all scootch down so only their shoulders is showing, and one of them shouts, ‘We ain’t coming out until you leave, old man!’ The old guy looks at them for a minute and says, ‘Well now, I didn’t come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of my pond naked.’ He holds up the bucket and says, ‘I’m here to feed the alligator.’”

  Lee dissolved into a fit of laughter and Ike joined her. She had a gift. After a bad day, Lee could take you out of yourself.

  “That’s it on Waldo?”

  “Pretty much. What’s up with him?”

  “He’s dead. Shot twice in the sanctuary of the…what did you call it? The Stonewall J.”

  “Now that is peculiar, Ike. We don’t do much murder business here. But then there’s the toupee.”

  “He wore a toupee?”

  “Yep. Expensive too—made in San Francisco. I peeked.”

  ***

  Blake felt a little guilty for enjoying all this quiet and privacy, a luxury for a clergyman. He spent an hour watching the early rounds of U. S. Open on television, got bored with power serving and wondered what professional tennis would be like if, like professional baseball, it froze its technology and only allowed wooden racquets and nylon strings. He guessed the players would just bulk up like their baseball counterparts to compensate for the reduced power. He turned it off when Andy Roddick served up an ace at over one hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  He decided to search the house. He lived on the first floor. It had a bedroom, bath, and living-dining areas, the corridor to the side door, and a small utility room. Upstairs were two large bedrooms and another bath. Blake had only glanced at them when he moved in three months previously. He filled one of them with spare furniture, winter clothes, and his luggage. The other he left empty with the idea that he might eventually turn it into a library or study.

  Stairs rose from the center of the house from the front door to the second floor. The house had two small dormer windows in the front but one long dormer, side to side, at the rear, which created enough space for the bedrooms and bath. He climbed the stairs and remembered Ph
ilip’s request to look for Taliaferro’s files. An hour and a half later, he gave up. He found no sign of the files. Worse, his gun no longer occupied its box in the closet. That could mean trouble. He wondered if he should call Schwartz. Probably not; he had enough trouble with him for one day. In the end, he called and left a message describing the pistol, a .32 caliber Colt automatic, and when he first noticed it missing. CYA.

  He spent the rest of the day outlining his plan for the Wednesday Bible study. He would ask Millie to type it up and make a dozen or so copies for him in the morning. That should keep her busy while he went to the hardware store and purchased a deadbolt.

  He finished by five in the evening. He tapped the papers even and laid them on the bookcase by the side door where he would see them on his way out in the morning. That is when he saw the newspaper clipping. It had fallen down behind the bookcase. Only a small corner protruded. He had missed it before. Did someone it leave it when they cleaned the house before he arrived, or had it fallen out of someone’s pocket later?

  The clipping bore the headline: CRIME KINGPINS STILL AT LARGE. It had been folded in four and by the look of it had been carried around in someone’s wallet or purse for some time—but whose? He scanned the text only long enough to determine it had been clipped from a San Francisco paper and did not pertain to anything local. He found an envelope, put the clipping in it, and added it to the papers on the shelf.

  He dressed for dinner and left the house.

  He circled the church and tried to see it as his congregation must. What would he have to change about himself, he wondered, to capture their vision? Conversely, what would he have to do to persuade them to see his? He stopped his pacing. He realized he had no vision to share. He recalled his previous tenures in a half dozen churches, and recalled he had never had a vision for any church. Always, in the past, he had seen his job as merely playing out a role, filling in expectations—his, not those of his parishioners. He suspected he might have stumbled on the beginning of wisdom.