1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (10 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Ike ignored the stares when he walked into the office. In his three-year tenure as sheriff, he’d never been late. But today he wandered in, waved vaguely to his staff, and closed the door of his office behind him without a word. He had some serious thinking to do and did not wish to deal with the idle chitchat that usually marked the beginning of his day. He’d managed to cool the relationship between himself and the formidable Ruth Harris to something approaching normal—at least he hoped he had. Something good happened the night before, he knew that, but he didn’t feel brave enough this early in the morning to explore what it might be. He put his feet up on the desk and closed his eyes. He needed to think.

When he caught himself dozing off, he dropped his feet to the floor with a crash loud enough to earn a worried look from Essie.

She peered around the doorjamb.

“Ike, are you all right?”

“Fine, Essie. Long night.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but it looks like its going to be a long day, too.” She handed him a fistful of pink phone slips. He shuffled through them and called after her, “None of these press guys gets a return call. If they insist, say we can’t talk while the investigation is still in progress. There will be a press conference soon.”

“How soon?”

“Never. Then call my father and have him deal with this stack.” He scowled at the messages from the governor’s office, local congressmen, the chief of the county police and an assortment of current and wannabe politicians. “This is right up his street. He’ll have a ball. Put the rest in a pile for later.”

Essie smiled and nodded.

Calls, he had to make some calls, but not to that bunch. He heaved a sigh and decided to call Charlie Garland. He punched in the number at the Agency. Funny, Charlie’s number was the only one he could remember. All those years dialing Operations and myriad departments and offices and the only number he could remember was Charlie’s.

The phone rang twice before Charlie’s nasal baritone came on the line. “Garland.”

“Charlie, a voice from the past. It’s Ike. I need some help. Have you heard about the robbery down here?”

“Oh, a little something, Ike, little of this, a little of that, you know, office scuttlebutt.”

“Charlie, whoever did it were pros, real pros, our kind of operators—well not mine anymore, but your kind. Someone who knew his business deactivated the alarm and surveillance system. There can’t be more than a half dozen or dozen people in the world that could have done it. Can you get me a line on who might have been available?”

“Oh gee, Ike, I don’t know. You know we don’t fool around with local stuff, not since 9/11. Holy Hannah, if we even so much as ask about stuff like that, the FBI and every local police agency in the country’s likely to climb all over the boss. I’d like to help, but I don’t have a thing for you, pal.”

“Charlie, just poke around, will you?”

“Ike, I can’t, but say, I do have something for you. Do you remember a guy named Elwood Farnham?”

“Elwood who?”

“Farnham, Elwood Farnham.”

“No, never heard of him.”

“That’s funny, he remembers you. I saw him six or seven days ago at O’Rourke’s in Georgetown. He says he went to school or something with you. He’d like you to call him.”

“Charlie, I don’t know any Elwood.…He wants me to call him?”

“Right. You should call him, fill in the gaps for you, maybe.”

“Thanks, Charlie, I’ll do that, and if you hear anything, you’ll let me know?”

“Sure thing, Ike, but don’t expect much from here.”

Ike hung up and stared at the phone. Now what the hell was Charlie playing at? It had been how long? Five, six years since he had pulled that one. It was a wonder either of them remembered. There was nothing to do now but wait.

Ike dialed the college and asked for Ruth.

“President’s office.” Ike recognized the inflated tones of Agnes Ewalt.

“Is President Harris in, Ms. Ewalt?”

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

“Isaac Schwartz, Sheriff Schwartz.”

“President Harris is in a meeting right now, Mr. Schwartz, and she can’t be disturbed.”

“Thank you, Ms. Ewalt. Would you tell her I called?”

Ike hung up and wondered at the mentality of this executive assistant, that’s what they called themselves now, not secretaries. Who would ask for a name when she knew she was not going to put the call through anyway?

Ike left the office telling Essie he was going home and then out to Lee Henry’s to get his hair cut. Essie sat, mouth agape, a new fistful of pink call slips in her hand, and watched as he left the office whistling.

***

Shaved and freshly dressed, Ike drove down on one of those rural roads that zoning boards and planners like to ignore. All sorts of businesses get located in and around their owner’s residences. Body shops, truck, and auto repair garages operate from large buildings at the rear of the properties. He pulled into the parking area in front of Lee Henry’s house. A sign on the front steps read:
Lee Henry, Hairstylist
. Lee set up shop in a room just off her kitchen in what would have been a mudroom or family room, between the living room-dining area and the garage. The house was a fairly new split-level south of Picketsville. Lee “did hair” and told stories. For her male customers, the stories ran to raunchy. For that matter, so did the ones she told her female customers, but holding to an old tradition, she never told an off-color story in mixed company, at least not very often. Ike hoped she was not busy. He had no appointment, but he also knew from experience that Lee would fit him in somehow. Lee greeted him with a smile like summer at the beach.

“Ike Schwartz, you old Jewish Paul Newman, where have you been for the last God knows how long?”

“Busy, Lee. Busy stamping out crime and corruption, apprehending villains and bringing malefactors to the bar of justice.”

“That means you’ve been handing out a lot of parking tickets, right?”

“Something like that. And we had a robbery—I guess you heard about that.”

“Heard? Honey, there ain’t nobody in the county that ain’t. Robbery and, bless the Lord, that son-of-a-bitch Parker missing. You think he did it?”

“I doubt it. He is not smart enough, and the people who did it are very good. He might have been party to it somehow, you know, looked the other way, but that wouldn’t jibe with his disappearance. I don’t know what happened. He’s probably sleeping it off somewhere.”

“Shoot. I was hoping to see that bastard behind bars.”

“Parker’s not one of your favorite people?”

“Not mine, not anybody around here who knows him. You were away when he was sheriff, but you saw enough when you got back to know, Ike, no disrespect intended, but we would have voted for an old yellow dog for sheriff if we had got the chance. Best thing that ever happened to the town, when you ran. You were the only one around who could and get away with it.”

“He hurt you, Lee?”

“Not me—my baby sister, Ike. Locked her up one night when he caught her and her boyfriend smoking a little grass. He and them goons he had for deputies. They had her searched, you know what I mean? Strip search, they call it. There she was, a sixteen-year-old girl scared out of her mind and four grubby grown men watching her undress, feeling her panties, saying things, you know. Then they said they had to make sure she didn’t have anything hidden inside her.”

“I get the picture.”

“Four grown men groping her, and her just a kid, a terrible, rotten thing to do to anybody, and all the time them remarking. That little thing like to went crazy. Almost twenty-five before she’d even look at a man again, much less go out with one.”

“Did anybody do anything?”

“Do? What could we do? Parker owned the town. You cross him and your life was miserable, you know?”

“Yes, I guess I do.”

“Well, anyway,” she brightened, “them days’re all gone. You’re the sheriff now and I’ll tell you, Ike, if you’ve a mind to, you can strip search me anytime you want. I’m best in the morning, though, when I ain’t been on my feet all day. Gravity’s not kind to you when you cruise past forty. Sit down, honey, and let me see if I can make something out of that mess on your head.”

Ike sat and allowed Lee to tuck the sheet under his chin and around his neck. Lee clucked and tut-tutted as she combed, measured, and began to clip.

“Ike, I got one for you. What’s the difference between true love and herpes?”

“I can’t imagine. Tell me, what is the difference between true love and herpes?”

“Herpes is forever! Ain’t that a hoot? Georgie Tice told me that one—herpes is forever,” Lee chortled. “Had a big night last night, did you?”

“Big night? No, not really, not if you mean what I think you mean, then definitely not.”

“I say you were out with a lady last night and it got pretty up close and personal.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Oh, a woman can tell. There’s the look—and other stuff.”

“The look? What look?”

“Oh, you have a little glint in your eye.”

“Lee, I didn’t sleep last night at all.”

“There, you see, I was right. Lover, you need to learn to pace yourself. Love a little, nap a little, that is, if you’re going to pull an all-nighter.”

“Enough already. Nothing like that happened. It was just dinner. What other stuff?”

“Well, the big tip-off is this twelve-inch-long brunette hair on your collar. It’s not yours and it sure ain’t mine. Got to be someone else—another woman. I hope she was nice to you.” She dissolved into another paroxysm of laughter.

“Lee, when you’re done wetting your pants at my expense, I have a favor to ask, as one detective to another.”

“Shoot, Ike, I’m all ears.”

“Your ex-husband and your friend Roy are both truckers, spend a lot of time on the interstate, right?”

“Pretty much. They’d rather pull north-south and be close to home than go east-west so, yeah, they try to pick up loads running up and down I-81.”

“Lee, whoever pulled the robbery loaded the stuff into trailers. My guess is that they are not too far away. Ask your friends if they have seen anything, anybody that is…I don’t know…different, suspicious. That could give us a line on where the pictures are… anything at all. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I could be fooled by a bogus trucker, but a trucker couldn’t.”

“I’ll ask around. There, you’re done, lover. If you’re going to see that lady again, this ought to get her panting in a hurry.”

Ike paid and left the shop. Lee called out after him.

“And if the lady don’t take good care of you, you tell her me and the rest of the horny old bats in the county are going to scratch her eyes out.”

Ike was halfway back to town when the radio’s low static coalesced into Essie’s voice.

“Ike, you got your radio on? I called out at Lee’s and she said you just left. Ike?”

“Essie, for God’s sake, just call. I’ll answer if I’m on. You do not have to work your way through your day for me. What is it?”

“Sorry, I just can’t quite get used to all this formal stuff on the radio and all. I was telling Momma last night—”

“Essie, stop right this minute. Just give me the message.”

“Oh, right. Ike?”

“Yes, Essie, it’s me. I’m here and you’re going to tell me something, aren’t you?”

“They found Parker.”

***

Ike pulled into the parking lot beyond the bunker near the point where the overgrown lane ended in the trees. Whaite Billingsly waited for him with the coroner. The three walked down the lane, stepped over the log that blocked it, and went into the trees for about ten yards. Whaite motioned to Ike’s left, toward a small depression six or seven yards away. It was the early stage of one of the sinkholes that characterize the area’s topography.

Ike walked to the edge and looked down at the broken body of Loyal Parker. In death, he looked only pathetic. The eyes that once froze people with their malevolence and terrified the helpless were blank, covered with the curdled milk scum of death. The coroner explained to Ike it appeared Parker had been dead at least thirty-six hours. The cause of death, he guessed, a professional guess, was a tremendous blow on the back of the head that shattered the base of the occipital bone and a fair portion of the right mastoid.

“I think he was hit once, very hard, with a crowbar or tire iron, something like that, Ike. I’ll know for sure after I’ve posted him.”

“You’ll get a report to me soon, Doc?”

“Soon’s I’m done. Okay to take him out?”

“Whaite, you got everything you need here?”

“Been over it with a fine tooth. There’s nothing new here. Footprints same as over at the building, only better. No sign of the weapon, and we’ve gone over the whole area. Funny thing, though, they didn’t take his gun. You’d think that’d be too tempting to pass up.”

“These guys are professionals, Whaite, they don’t want, or need, a very traceable piece like that. Okay, Doc, you can take him out. You got anything else, Whaite?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, Ike, but I got a bad feeling about something. You know that loop on the surveillance tape showed a car down here two nights ago. ’Course it wasn’t here yesterday, and we guessed Parker shooed it away after the TV was tampered with, but before the robbery. Now with Parker dead, I reckon it means he was killed about the same time.” Whaite scratched his head and frowned.

Ike respected Whaite’s intuitive, if not particularly articulate, method of sorting out possibilities, probabilities, and arriving at inevitabilities. He waited.

“Well, look here, Ike. I found these over there, about forty feet from where the car was parked.” Whaite held out a pair of woman’s underpants, the elastic band broken.

“And old Parker, he’s over there away from the car, and over here, here by this tree trunk, you can see where he was standing for a while. Ike, you know his reputation—he got his jollies, you know, watching. He couldn’t do anything himself. Well, he used to come here a lot, see. He shifted that surveillance camera so he could see anybody who came back here. He’d sneak down, watch a while, maybe, you know, get it off with himself, and then jump the kids, scare the hell out of them and send them away.