“Anything?” he asked.
“I can’t be sure. The voice is very familiar, but it could be any one of several dozen people I have met in my few months here. I’m sure I have talked to this person on the phone, but I talk to a lot of women—I am right in assuming it is a woman? It’s not some mechanical or voice alteration? In my line of work I deal with women a lot, but this time not often enough to sort out the voice. If it were accented or distinctive in some way, I might be able to recognize it, maybe, but not now. You know how it is when someone calls and says ‘It’s me’ and then they rattle on about this or that and you can’t figure out who me is? You know it’s someone you should recognize, but until they say something that identifies them, you are at a complete loss. This is an it’s me kind of voice. Sorry.”
Schwartz stood, inspected the diplomas on the wall for a moment, shook his head, and walked out.
Blake scrutinized the list again. He swiveled around in his chair and tried to think. The sheriff’s car pulled away from the church. Everyone had left the kitchen or the church, as nearly as he could tell. Should he be afraid? Schwartz thought he would be the next victim. He wanted him to stay locked in the house or always around other people. Blake decided he would not live in fear. God did not bring him all this way to let him go now. There was a tap at the door and then Dorothy Sutherlin poked her head around the jamb. She sneezed and excused herself.
“We’re all finished, Vicar,” she announced. “I’ll be leaving now.” Blake thanked her. Now he was alone.
The leaves on the trees were already turning, partly as the result of an unusually dry summer, and partly because it was September and time. He never ceased to wonder at the difference a couple hundred miles made—in the weather and in his life. Thoughts about Philadelphia and what he had left behind did not upset him as much as they would have a month ago. He watched as the boys from the neighborhood appeared, almost on cue, to set up their skateboard run. Apparently they’d found a new box, and he watched as they rolled across the asphalt and up the ramp to sail through the air a few feet, sometimes successfully, and land with a crash on the other side. The rumble of their boards blended with the few cicadas singing in the sycamore beside the church. One of the boys tried to bend a piece of plywood into a half circle. Half pipe, Blake thought. Then: why not, the money is available.
He picked up the phone and called Lanny Markowitz to run his idea by him. Lanny taught school. He would understand, and if he did, he would be the one to spearhead the project. Lanny said he wanted to think about it.
The phone rang just as he hung up. Philip Bournet sounded concerned, but then Philip almost always sounded concerned, probably because he genuinely cared about people. He even cared for people he did not like, although they might not believe it after he finished telling them what he thought of them, but he did care.
“Blake, are you busy tomorrow night? I know this is very late in the day to call, but Betsy has presented me with a major calamity.” Blake heard the irony in his voice. “Could you fill in for a sick friend? We need a fourth for bridge. We’ll feed you, of course.”
“Tomorrow, Philip? Tomorrow is Saturday night. That is the eve of Sunday, in case you’ve forgotten. Do you always play on the night before the Sabbath?”
“We won’t keep you late, and if you are telling me that you haven’t got your sermon ready yet, shame on you. That is supposed to be done by Thursday. Didn’t they teach you anything in seminary? If you really get stuck, I’ll give you one of mine. Might be an improvement over what you’ve been dishing out.”
“Philip, I’ll have you know I was once nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Preaching.”
Philip laughed and said, “I’ll take that as a yes and expect to see you tomorrow evening at six.”
***
Solly Fairmont complained to the mayor, and the mayor called Ike. A meeting took place in Ike’s office. Fairmont insisted his zoned air movers were state of the art. Ike said his people were being treated like prisoners, which, by the way, opened another issue: the fact that the planners in Fairmont’s office thought the cells should be kept hot and uncomfortable because the occupants needed to be made to realize the dim view society held of them. Ike, as the town’s chief law enforcement officer, believed he should make that sort of decision, and, furthermore, it represented antediluvian thinking. Fairmont appeared lost at antediluvian. Ike reminded them that the mayor’s son recently spent a night in one of them on a drunk and disorderly charge, and did they want to hear from him? Fairmont offered a compromise, and Sam’s air conditioner was returned to her, along with Billy’s missing chair, which he had removed because it was not properly marked with an inventory number.
***
Ike found Sam hunched over her keyboard.
“Sam,” he said, “your air conditioner will be brought back this afternoon.”
“Great. Thanks, Ike.”
“No problem. Sam? We need to talk.”
“Yes, Sir?”
“About your personal life and about business—the Krueger case.”
“What about my personal life?”
“Krueger first. Those pictures you found on his computer. Where are they?”
She pulled a file from her drawer and handed it to him. Ike turned each photograph over. Without labels he couldn’t be sure, but he had a good idea now what he was looking at—neighbors and some FBI history. Krueger was their boy and a blackmailer on the side. It had to be. The real estate business was a small side line—a cover. He figured to make a fast buck and embarrass his keepers in the process.
He glanced at what appeared to be a financial statement.
“If this is what I think it is, it looks like he was a substantial investor in some property in anticipation of the Ibex and Crane development.”
“Then he lost his shirt,” Sam said. “I checked. The Ibex and Crane site was, in fact, a mouse trap. The industrial park is going in south of here, nearer Roanoke. All the land options they need have been acquired by their people. What about my personal life?”
Ike held up his hand and shook his head. If Bullock and his crowd had in fact turned Krueger and then lost him, he was standing in deep kimchee.
“Ike…?”
“Okay, here’s the story. I’m sorry, Sam, but Karl Hedrick is not using up leave time to hang around Picketsville because he and you…that is you and he…well, he’s not. He’s been appointed Agent in Place and he’s here to find Krueger’s killer. He’ll use you and anyone else he can to do that. Krueger started out in their witness protection program and they lost him. They need to cover their—”
“I know. He told me. It’s okay. See, just because someone is in one place professionally doesn’t mean they can’t be in another personally, does it?”
Ike frowned and shook his head. “This is like—what—a version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle for relationships or something, is that it?”
“Whose uncertainty…whatever?”
“Important physicist. Sorry, I read about it….”
“Well, I don’t think so. I wasn’t too good at physics. It’s more like there’s work and there’s everything else and the two don’t always have to mesh, right?”
“No, I guess not. I’m not sure I’m the person to ask about that. So you’re telling me you may not be putting in all those extra hours anymore?”
Sam beamed. “I sure hope not.”
Chapter Forty
Mary was waiting for Blake when he drove up, and once again she opened the passenger side door before he could help her. She slid easily into the cramped front seat and said, “Where to?”
“I found a theater with a film we can watch. It’s a bit of a drive but worth it.”
He drove east to the expressway and south toward Roanoke. They found an uncrowded place to eat, no mean feat
on a Friday night, and then went to the only G-rated film in the area. It was a charming film with complicated animation and a reasonably funny story line. As he watched a chorus line of cows cross-stepping and bellowing something that sounded suspiciously like Wagner’s Liebestod, Blake realized two shocking things about himself. In his previous life, BP—before Picketsville—he wouldn’t be caught dead in a film like this one, except, perhaps, to take his nieces and nephew to the movies. On top of that, he was actually enjoying it. None of the women he used to date would have endured it for five minutes. Mary sat smiling and laughing and occasionally turned toward him to measure his reaction.
After they left the theater, he offered to buy her dessert, but she declined.
“Just take me home, I have something else planned,” she said. “And besides, you already spent too much money.”
They walked to the car. The night air was cooler but still very pleasant. He left the top down.
Forty-five minutes later they were sitting on the patio in her back yard. She lived in a charming little town house, narrow front to back, with a living room, kitchen, and dining area in the front, a stairway up to the second floor to the right. The furniture and pictures were scaled to the rooms and the whole effect quite pleasing. Her back yard showed the results of what he guessed represented hours of work. She had him sit and disappeared into the kitchen. He heard the clink of cup and saucers, silverware, and the refrigerator door slamming. Then silence. He waited.
She backed out of the door, both hands laden with a tray. He jumped to his feet and held the door open for her. He offered to help, but she shook her head, maneuvered around, and put the tray down with a thump.
“There,” she said, satisfied. “I made you a pie and I have ice cream and decaf coffee. Now isn’t that better than a crowded Starbucks?” She stood back and smiled. Blake gaped. She had on the beaded dress from Classique. Sometime during the last week she must have bought it. He swallowed a sound that might otherwise have attracted a gam of whales, and stood transfixed. Mary had always been beautiful in his eyes. In the dress she was drop dead gorgeous. Still smiling, she folded herself into a chair.
“I was right about the dress, when…wow!”
She shifted in her chair self-consciously.
“I hope you like it. I’ve never done anything quite so impulsive before. I feel positively wicked.”
She didn’t look wicked—she looked elegant. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. After a few minutes, she excused herself, went into the house and returned with a sweater over her shoulders. He was at the same time disappointed and relieved.
“I felt a little chilly,” she said. That wasn’t his problem.
They talked. He discovered she had a brother who taught eleventh and twelfth grade English in a private school in Maryland somewhere and an Uncle Oscar who retired from a drug company and lived nearby. They were all that remained of her family. His gaze kept sliding to the dress. He told her about his mother and father in Bucks County. They shared stories and a bit of their histories. Finally, he worked up enough courage to ask her about Waldo.
“Mary, last week I asked you if you knew Waldo.”
“Walter/Waldo, you mean?”
“Yes, and you acted, I don’t know, nervous or something. I’m curious. What was that all about?”
A few citronella candles scented the air and cast dim, flickering light on the patio, but even in the uncertain darkness, he could see her blush and squirm.
“It’s nothing, Blake, it’s just that he was a little weird.”
“Creepy?”
“Worse than creepy. He would pop up in the alley back there,” she gestured into the darkness at the rear of her property, “sometimes, especially at night. It’s not unusual, you know, for people to move up and down that alley. They walk their dogs, take out the trash, but he seemed to be out there all the time.”
“That’s it?”
She stared into the night for a minute and he could have sworn her face got redder.
“He’s dead now, so it isn’t important anymore.”
“What’s not important anymore? Mary, there is an open murder investigation going on. I did not tell you this before, but the police think that whoever killed him killed Millie Bass as well. Almost anything could be important. What is it?”
“If I tell you, you will think badly of me,” she said and lowered her head.
“That is not possible, Mary. I…um…it’s not possible.”
She sighed. “My bedroom window is that one right up there,” she said and pointed to the window above them. “I always keep the shades drawn, Blake. You have to believe me. I never have them open unless I am cleaning or something.”
“I am sure you do, but I don’t see what this has to do with Waldo.”
“A couple of months ago I washed my windows—spring cleaning. Vinegar and water, the whole bit. I had to go out that afternoon and left the blinds up. That night I came home, ate my dinner, and decided to finish my cleaning, so I tackled the basement. Well, I got so hot and dirty I decided to take a shower before I went to bed. Anyway, I forgot the blinds were up and when I went into my bedroom without any—you know—and I thought I saw him in the alley looking in my window at me. All I could think to do was turn off the lights and close the blinds.”
“He was a Peeping Tom?”
“I guess so. Anyway, I could never face him after that. Whenever he looked at me he would smile this evil little smile, like he knew me, knew me in the biblical sense, I mean. It was awful.”
Blake risked putting his hand on hers. She did not pull it away but entwined their fingers instead.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It must have been humiliating.”
“It was awful,” she repeated softly. “I even thought about moving. I might have if he hadn’t been killed. And then I thought, ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’ That’s a terrible thing to think, isn’t it? What kind of person did that make me? I was no better than he.”
“It’s a natural reaction, Mary. You don’t feel that way now, do you?”
“No, not any longer, but what I felt about him is not the worst part. What he did made me angry and suspicious and so when the letters about you came, I thought—well, I thought you were like him. I didn’t mean to judge you so hard, but because of what he did, I put the two of you together. I’m sorry.” He saw a small tear roll down from the corner of her eye.
“It’s all right, Mary. It’s over now. No more Waldo, no more secrets—all done with.”
She squeezed his hand and looked at him, searching, he supposed, for reassurance.
The conversation lagged after that, and ten minutes later he stood to leave.
“Blake,” she said, “tell me about Philadelphia.”
Chapter Forty-one
Philadelphia.
It should have been obvious to him from the outset. Even now, six months later, Blake still punished himself for not recognizing the signs. The topic had been drummed into him in Clinical Pastoral Education lectures, in workshops put on by the diocese, and countless articles distributed to clergy. Blake’s only defense: his incurable romanticism. At least that is what he told himself. His former boss, the Reverend William Smart, had a simpler one: his incurable stupidity. Blake admitted now that Smart’s analysis might have been closer to the truth. He had been stupid to miss the signs. But then, if Bill Smart was so sharp, why hadn’t he said something at the time?
Gloria Vandergrift played an active role at Saint Katherine’s. She seemed a perfectly normal, but slightly high-strung divorcee. She chaired the Worship Committee. She worked tirelessly on Annual Giving, the Christmas Bazaar, and various and sundry committees, not to mention a Rolodex full of worthwhile charities and causes elsewhere—the preoccupations of people with money and time on their hands, but little or no direction in
their lives. She haunted the church offices on one pretext or another. In addition, she contributed generously, very generously, to the church, a fact that made staff and clergy far more tolerant of her constant and hovering presence than they might otherwise have been.
At first, Blake took no notice of her, beyond the usual physical assessment every man, clergy or lay, makes of a woman. She wore her blonde hair pulled back severely from her face, a practice which made her forehead seem high and accentuated her cheekbones, The result, instead of diminishing her beauty, actually enhanced it. The overall effect—the hair, slim waist, and rather obviously well-endowed body—was stunning.
Blake had not married, and he knew that he should and probably soon. He believed God had destined him for great things. To achieve them required sacrifice and a few calculated decisions on his part. One of those decisions involved a wife and family. He had hoped to fall in love, marry, and be in the process of raising two or three photogenic children by then, but it had not happened. Women seemed to like him, but none were willing to get too close to him.
“What is it about me,” he’d asked his sister Irene, after another rejection from a very nice and, Blake thought, promising candidate for marriage, “that makes women run, after two dates?”
“You are too obvious,” she had answered.
“Too obvious? What exactly does that mean?”
“Blake, I love you as only a sister can, so I will tell you what you probably don’t want to hear. You do not want a wife ‘to love, honor and cherish till death do you part.’ You want an attractive and charming addition to your left arm.”
Blake frowned and stared at her.
“You want someone who will make you look good, give you status and a measure of gravitas, that’s all. Your ambition, Blake, has buried your heart.”
Her words stung at the time, but now, he supposed, she’d told the truth. He’d looked on the women he dated with an eye to how they might look in various scenarios—at garden parties, church functions, Bishop’s receptions and, of course, church search committees.
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