“You know she’s been at that for years. Apparently the thing almost exploded and the smoke and noise finally got to the people across the street and they called the cops. Big brouhaha down at the Franks’. Also of note—our own Amy Brandt, whom we all assumed was several cards short of a whole deck, has been accepted to graduate school. She’s going to study particle physics, whatever that is, and so won’t be able to come to Bible study any more. Our loss, physics’ gain. Speaking of Bible study, we all voted to meet here or at your house if they let you out by Wednesday, so you don’t have to worry about that. And—we are all very sorry about what happened. Do you think God has forgotten us?”
He smiled at the rush of words and the question.
“No, Rose, God never forgets. We frequently forget him, but it’s never the other way round. I know that now. Someone in our midst has forgotten, however, and decided to solve her problems without him, and look where it led her. No, God is near and waiting for us to come to him in this.”
“Her? You think the person responsible for all of this is a woman?”
“It seems so. Nothing is positive. Just a voice in the dark, but it sounded like a woman to me.”
Rose looked distressed and left after a few minutes.
Blake lay back and relaxed. He reached for his thermos when Mary entered. She apparently had no trouble with the guard.
“You are just in time for some hot chocolate,” he said. “Rose brought me this.” And he hoisted the thermos.
“Not now,” she said. “Too much caffeine in chocolate. I just came by to say good night.”
“What’s that?” a new voice interrupted. Blake took his eyes off Mary to notice the nurse in the doorway.
“Nothing,” he said, feeling like a schoolboy caught with a comic book in his desk.
“Looks like something to me,” she said and took the thermos, opened it and sniffed the contents. “Ah, a sleeping potion. Don’t tell anybody you have this—there isn’t enough to go around. Here, take this,” she said and handed him a small paper cup with pills in it. He swallowed the pills obediently.
“Visiting hours are almost over, dear,” she said to Mary. “Better drink up before you have to leave.”
The nurse left and Mary sat down.
“You look better than you did this afternoon. Have you been behaving yourself?”
“I’m fine, Mary. Before I forget, I didn’t call the repairman for your organ. I’m sorry.”
“Of course you didn’t. I’ll call tomorrow. It’s not that important, you know, not with everything else.”
They talked for a while and then his medication kicked in. She was still holding his hand when he drifted off to sleep. His last thoughts were not, however, of her, but of his sermons. Ike wanted to know what he’d said that could have caused all this. Ike Schwartz had been joking. Blake wondered if it was a joke after all. Maybe the joke was on him.
Chapter Forty-eight
Wednesday morning Blake managed to ease down the stairs to the basement. He heard the sounds of the Bible Study members on the other side of the door. He let go of the banister and opened the door left-handed. They were all there. In fact, it looked like a lot more than the usual dozen. Twenty or twenty-five people were gathered around a sheet cake. They cheered as he came through the door.
“Please, don’t sing,” he said with a grin. “It will make me cry.”
The cake had been decorated with what looked vaguely like a woman in black pointing a pistol at Quick Draw McGraw. Ha Ha, you missed! was scrawled in blue icing across the top.
“I guess this means we will not be spending any time with Matthew this morning,” he said.
“Man does not live by bread alone, Matthew 4:4,” Rose recited, “but he certainly can use a piece of cake now and then. Is that enough Matthew for one day?”
“I guess it will have to be.”
After they had eaten and regaled one another by misquoting Bible verses that absolved them of any guilt for eating a scandalously rich cake, Sylvia asked, “Why would anyone want to shoot at you? I understand the reasons for Millie and Waldo but—”
“What do you mean, you understand?” Rose interjected. “What about Millie and Waldo? Why shoot them?”
Blake brought them up to date on the facts as he and the police understood them. They were shocked about the missing files.
“It’s like a movie,” Minnie said, clearly pleased.
“Hush, Minnie,” Rose said sternly. “This is not a Murder She Wrote. This is serious and real.” Minnie tried to look abashed, but failed.
“I miss that show,” she said.
“Is there anything new?” Sylvia persisted. “Do you have any idea why you were shot?”
“Can’t say, for sure. She must think I have the files or know where they are, or, and this is a guess, thinks I will soon find them and figures if I were dead, the case would turn in another direction, away from the files and what they might tell them about the killer, and toward something about me. Maybe they thought they’d get them after I was shot, but the door was locked.”
“So you really don’t have any idea where they might be?” Sylvia asked.
“Not a clue. But I will tell you this—if I did, I would destroy them immediately and make sure everyone knew it. Then the killing would stop.”
“But you have to find them first. What if the police find them?”
“Then I guess they will be a step closer to the killer. I am positive whoever is behind this is a person with incriminating or compromising material in those files. And I think I have said enough—probably too much. Sheriff Schwartz will skin me alive.”
“Well, this has been the most exciting Bible study I’ve ever attended,” said Minnie. “It’s too bad there aren’t more exciting things in the Good Book to talk about. No offense intended, Vicar, but Jesus isn’t exactly Clint Eastwood, is he?”
“Minnie,” Rose protested, “what a thing to say.”
“I’ll tell you what, Minnie, when we finish Matthew we will take up the Book of Judges. Stirring stuff in there—intrigue, murder, war, and betrayal—Sampson and Delilah, Jael and Sisera. I call it ‘The Book of Rambo.’ You’ll love it.”
Cake eaten and coffee cups emptied, the group filed out with goodbyes and wishes for Blake’s speedy recovery. Dorothy Sutherlin lingered.
“Vicar, when we cleaned up after the…you know…after Waldo, we missed some spots of….Well anyway, yesterday I came back with some cleaner Billy said you all used to clean up blood, and I got to crawling around on the floor and under the altar. Some spots we missed were under down there. Well, now, I bumped my head and sort of looked up and there it was.”
“There what was?”
“This here key. It was velcroed up under the edge.” She handed him a key. He took it.
“It looks like a spare organ key. Waldo probably forgot his keys once and put a spare up under the altar in case he did it again. Thanks.” Dorothy left to catch up with the others.
He made his way slowly up the stairs to his office and collapsed into his chair. The wound started to throb and he felt exhausted. He started to put his head down on the desk when he saw the note. Mary had arranged for the organ repairman to come the next day, and would he please try to find the key to the back panel?
He rocked back in his chair and tried to remember—the key? The one on Waldo’s ring locked the organ. What about this new one? Was it possible it did something else? But why would Waldo have hidden that one? He fished the key Dorothy just gave him from his pants pocket. It had gone in easier than it would come out. He had to struggle left-handed to retrieve it. He heaved himself out of the chair and made his way painfully through the sacristy, out into the sanctuary and across the aisle to the organ. He bent over slowly, trying to minimize the pounding in his shoulder. T
he key fit. He turned it and tugged on the panel. It dropped open quickly, as though it had been opened lately and often. His curiosity led him to pull it aside, and that is when he saw the files. They were stacked in the narrow space between two of the circuit boards. Somehow two or three of them had become dislodged and fallen against the circuitry and, presumably, caused the short that made the organ malfunction.
He forgot the throb in his shoulder and knelt down and retrieved the stack. He carefully replaced and locked the panel. He took the files to his office, shut and locked both doors. His heart pounded in his chest. The locks would not stop anyone who wanted to get in, but they would give him a warning if he had to make a dash out the other door.
He sat and arranged the files into stacks. That was when he discovered that there were other items in the packet besides files: newspaper clippings with dingy pictures that looked vaguely familiar, letters, a large manila envelope, some tape cassettes, computer discs, and folders. He reached into his desk drawer and retrieved the clipping he found in the vicarage. It was of the same vintage and topic and seemed to belong with the others. The thick manila envelope he set to one side. A quick inspection of the folders confirmed them to be Taliaferro’s notes, each with the name of the patient on the tab. There were many more files than names on the list he found in Waldo’s house. He supposed some of them contained no secrets.
He picked up the phone and called Schwartz. The sheriff was out. He told Essie Falco it was urgent and sat back to wait. Next, he turned his attention to the manila envelope. He pried open the clasp and dumped the contents onto the desk. Pictures, dozens of pictures, some of couples in less than innocent situations, taken through windows, some of people, mostly middle-aged men, getting in or out of cars or standing in front of hotels or houses, all taken with, he guessed, a telephoto lens.
He recognized only one person. Mary stood tall and beautiful, fresh from her bath, looking like Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”—only with darker hair. He fumbled through the stack until he found all her pictures. He took them to the shredder and destroyed them. The police, he decided, did not need to see them. He supposed the other pictures were Mary’s neighbors caught in compromising situations. He also found the master draft of a note mixed in with the pictures. Waldo threatened to post the pictures on the Internet, or mail them to spouses or employers.
Schwartz called, and Blake told him what he found and asked him to hurry over. He was feeling a little faint. He checked one more time for any trace of Mary, and, satisfied there was none, replaced the pictures in the envelope and was fumbling with the clasp when he heard the footsteps on the stairs.
Chapter Forty-nine
A tap on his door. Blake froze.
“You in there, Vicar?”
He was alone in the church, could not move his arm, and a potential murder suspect stood outside his door.
“Vicar? I need to speak to you,” Dan Quarles said.
Blake glided silently across the room to the other door. He could slip out and hide in the sanctuary. Dan knocked again. As Blake reached for the knob, he heard the sound of car doors slamming and children’s voices. He glanced out of his window and saw them—Cub Scouts—a whole den of small boys in blue uniforms. Soon the basement would be alive with them. He was safe.
“Just a minute, Dan,” he said and gathered the files and envelopes together and put them in a pile under his desk. He unlocked the door and gestured Dan in.
“Sorry for the delay. I got caught up in some paperwork.”
“I’m glad I found you, Vicar. I have to tell you something. I meant to tell you sooner, but we couldn’t meet Sunday, and then…well, then you were in no condition to see me. How are you, by the way?”
“I am fine most of the time. To tell you the truth, I could use some rest about now. Could we make this quick?”
“Sorry, yes. Well, it’s this way…do you mind if I sit? I resigned as Mission Board chairman. You probably heard that by now. I wanted to explain why.”
“Dan, I don’t see—”
“Vicar, bear with me. Do you remember me asking about confession?” Blake nodded. “I asked you that question because I have a confession to make. But when you told me of the exceptions to the Seal of the Confessional, I hesitated.”
Here it comes, Blake thought. He is going to tell me about Waldo.
“It’s not about Waldo,” he said. “Although in a way it is. I am not doing this very well. Look, I did you a great disservice. Because of that, I cannot continue as chairman.”
“Disservice?”
“Yes. See, years ago I was accused of child abuse. It was when I was in seminary. Nothing happened, I swear to you, but at the time, many people, including my own family, turned against me. It was the worst time of my life. I will not go into the details, but it is enough to say that the child who accused me of terrible things made a convincing case. I had to drop out of seminary….I do not know why she did it, and if it had not been for her brother’s testimony, I might be in jail today. But he realized that the joke they played on me had gone too far, and when he understood what the consequences to me might be, he finally told the truth. Even so, many of my friends and neighbors would never look me in the eye again. I moved out of state and started my life over.
“You understand the situation, of course. You were accused and, though cleared, had to leave your home and career. And that’s the problem. You see?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Dan. I understand how you feel but don’t see what this has to do with today.”
“I was your severest critic, Vicar. When we got those letters, we did not want anything to do with you. Bournet insisted and made it clear we would accept you or he would close the church. You see, I should have known, or at least suspected, the accusations might have been trumped up. I, of all the board members, should have shown some mercy, but I did not. When we finally got the letters in the mail, it hit me. I am like the reformed smoker who is the hardest on the person with a cigarette in his hand. I came to say I am sorry and to ask your forgiveness.”
Blake slumped in his chair. Fatigue washed over him.
“Of course, I forgive you, Dan. But let me ask you one small question. You know about the missing files. Your name appeared on a list we found in Waldo’s house, and I gather you were seeing Taliaferro for counseling or advice. Can you explain why Waldo listed you?”
Dan stared at the floor for a moment and then, quite unexpectedly, pounded his fist on the desk.
“Someone sent me a blackmail note. I assume now it must have been Waldo. I did not know it at the time. The note came anonymously and demanded money in return for silence about the incident.”
“But nothing happened; what could you be blackmailed for?”
“You know how it is when an accusation is made. It never goes away. Besides, there were the notes in the file.”
“Notes?”
“I haven’t told you all of it. Even though I never touched that child, never even went near her, I thought about it. Do you understand? Children have a way of knowing about adults, and that child instinctively knew that I was the perfect victim for her lies, because in my heart, it was not a lie. So I was guilty, in a way. I never could deal with that part. Dr. Taliaferro was helping me with those feelings.”
“Dan, thank you for being so open with me. I want you to reconsider your decision to quit. I think I am going to need someone like you in my corner in the future.”
“But I understand Sylvia Parks has already been appointed in my place.”
“Sylvia can wait. Amy Brandt is going to graduate school soon, and Sylvia can have her place. Please stay.”
Dan stood and shook his hand. He said he would pray on it and let Blake know soon. He passed Schwartz on the stairs.
“You look terrible,” the sheriff said good-naturedly, “and I gather you
have some news for me.” He sat and placed a thick folder that he had brought on the floor beside him.
“The files. I found the files.”
Blake told him about the organ and finding the files. He pulled them from under the desk and placed them in a stack on the desk. Schwartz sifted through them. He opened the envelope and raised his eyebrows at its contents. He rifled through folders, clippings, and letters. Finally he sat back and stared at Blake.
“This the lot?”
“That’s all I found, except one clipping, the one about missing kingpins. I found it in my house before, if you remember. But otherwise that is it.” Blake was aware of the shredder in the corner and felt his collar get hot.
Schwartz picked up his own folder and opened it. He placed copies of most of the pictures in a pile on the desk next to the originals. He scooped up the pictures of Mary and handed them across the desk.
“You’ll want these, too,” he said. “Don’t say anything. I would have done the same thing. Now, let’s see where we are. We have the list, so we can eliminate all the folders of people not on it. We can assume these pictures,” he sorted some into one group, “are from Krueger’s neighborhood, and the clippings and these other pictures are related to his other life in San Francisco. You don’t recognize any of these guys, do you?”
“One or two look familiar, but that could be coincidence. All those guys look like they should be called ‘The Silver Fox,’ don’t you think?”
“Well, the ones with hair, anyway. The rest look like the cast of The Sopranos. No names,” he said, “too bad about that. There are some numbers, though. They must correspond to a list somewhere. Did you happen to see a list?”
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