3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 (13 page)

Chapter 26

Dawn. Steve Bolt, fully dressed, huddled on the bed, his knees drawn up to his chin. He stared out the window at an unfamiliar landscape. He had not slept the night before. He’d picked this particular motel strictly on impulse, reasoning that if he didn’t know where he would be next, anyone tracking him wouldn’t either. He shifted his gaze and stared at the phone. He didn’t know who to call. His house had gone up like tinder. Those men must have poured on kerosene by the gallon before they set it off. He rocked back and forth. Now someone was after him and he didn’t know who—or why.

Everything had been working just fine until that idiot Donnie Oldham screwed it up. It wasn’t a complicated deal. Harris had hired Bolt to run errands, do chores, and keep an eye on his place when he went out of town. He seemed to have plenty of money and Bolt could always use more of that. After a few beers at The Pub, he’d hatched what he believed would be a sure-fire plan. Harris was leaving on one of his once-a-month trips to Richmond. He set Donnie up to snatch some credit cards when Harris was gone. Even though Bolt had a key, he had to make it look like a break-in, so he smashed a window, went to town to establish an alibi, and waited while Donnie slipped into the apartment to lift the cards. But instead of delivering the goods, he’d come scurrying into the Burger King all flustered and red in the face.

“There weren’t no cards in that desk where you said they was, Steve. The place done been tossed and I couldn’t find nothing worth nothing.”

Bolt couldn’t understand it. Harris had left town the day before. Twenty minutes previously he’d set up the broken window, and now the place had been turned upside down?

He got up as calmly as he could and led Donnie outside.

“What do you mean there’s nothing there? I was over to that apartment an hour ago and it was just fine.”

“You must not have looked in because it ain’t now. Go see for yourself.”

Never should have told that moron Donnie Oldham about Harris, he thought. Not that he had the brains or the guts to do anything. But still, ever since he told him and the easy job he had, and the cards that he’d sometimes be sent to get money from the bank machines with, things had gone really bad. Donnie Oldham was ten miles of bad luck.

Bolt straightened his legs and stretched full length. He really needed to sleep. The bed springs squeaked. He tried counting the water stains on the ceiling but to get them all he’d have to sit up again and he didn’t want to. He tried to remember.

Harris always feared something or somebody. He’d given Bolt instructions—what he should do if anything happened to him. He’d put them in a bulky envelope with some papers. Bolt kept it in the glove box of his VW. When he reckoned Harris would not be coming back, Bolt retrieved the package. It contained a credit card, two thousand dollars in cash, and a second envelope with instructions he should follow: Hand off the inside envelope to some guy in Washington.

His instincts told him to take the money, pull out as much cash as an ATM would advance him, and stash the rest. Then he thought what if…? There could be all kinds of people involved in this. If he didn’t follow the instructions, they might come after him, so he did as he was told. He’d driven to Washington in a snowstorm and finished the job—simple. And now they were after him.

He wondered if he’d made a mistake using the credit card to check into the motel. He’d heard they could be traced. They did that on TV shows all the time. A knock on the door so startled him, he nearly fell off the bed.

“Housekeeping.” A woman’s voice.

He peered through the viewer in the door. What kind of housekeeping knocked on your door at six a.m.? A young woman stood in front of the door, her head turned as if she were looking down the walkway.

“Come back later,” he said, still watching her. She paused, nodded, and turned back to face the door.

“I am sorry, but I must clean now. The manager needs this room.”

“No way. I booked for three nights and I ain’t checking out. You have the manager call me.”

A second later the door flew open so violently it seemed to explode. The knob hit him in the solar plexus and he went down gasping for breath. Before he could recover, hands gripped both arms and dragged him out the door, across the parking lot, and tossed him like a sack of potatoes into the trunk of a car. In seconds his wrists and ankles were bound with zip ties. Before the lid slammed shut he recognized the make and model. He was being kidnapped in a Lincoln Town Car. The good news: all newer cars come equipped with a release mechanism that would allow him to escape. The bad news: unless he could reach the knife in his boot, whoever shoved him in had made it impossible for him to use it.

***

The early morning took some of the edge off the cold as Blake unlocked the front doors of the church. Whereas his ten o’clock service generally did not have parishioners arriving more than five minutes before its start, eight o’clock attendees could arrive anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes early. This morning was no exception. Darla Throck puffed up the ramp at half past seven.

“Sorry to be late,” she gasped and pushed into the church.

“We won’t start for another half hour,” Blake said. Whether she heard or not, he could not tell. She bustled down the aisle, made an awkward genuflection, and collapsed into a pew. It happened to be the one normally occupied by Mildred Tompkins, and Blake imagined there would be some looks and words exchanged when Mildred arrived. She was a matriarch and held a proprietary claim on that particular pew and place. By quarter to eight, Darla began to fidget.

“Service is at eight,” Blake said. Darla sat up and looked confused.

“You might be more comfortable over here,” he added and pointed to a neutral pew on the other side of the church.

“Oh, I thought it was at seven-thirty. Over there?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Why did I think the service was at seven-thirty?”

Blake shrugged and resisted the temptation to say something unkind. Darla settled safely in her new location just as Mildred arrived. Blake thanked the Lord for small favors and retreated to his office.

At five minutes to eight, Blake watched as Colonel Bob’s car wheeled around the corner and pulled smartly into a parking place. It did not even come close to hitting anything and drove at a normal, even a little above normal, speed. He wondered if Colonel Bob had new glasses or had just been lucky. When he saw the object of his speculation exit from the passenger side, he frowned. When T.J. Harkins emerged from the driver’s side and the two of them walked up the steps to the church together, he understood.

“You puzzled, Padre?” Colonel Bob said, face innocent. “No surprises, I can’t see so good anymore—no news there—and T.J. here—”

“Sergeant,” T.J. corrected.

“Quite right there, Sergeant. Sergeant T.J. here has been assigned as my driver.”

“Rose and Minnie know about this?”

“Oh, well, certainly. We have that all worked out. T.J. brings me to church at eight and then drops me at the Crossroads Diner after. I always go there on Sunday morning. Eat one of those heart attack breakfasts they’re so good at, drink coffee, and chat up Flora. Tell me something, Padre, it’s been a while since I could really see her. Is she still, ah…handsome?”

Blake could not say. He knew Ms. Blevins by reputation only and couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen her or, if he had, knew what she looked like. He did know that except for the one time when he took Mary Miller there for coffee, the diner stayed pretty devoid of good-looking women, much less handsome ones. The Crossroads was a guy thing.

“I don’t know, Colonel—sorry.”

“Well, no matter. If I can’t see her, it doesn’t make much difference, does it? Ben Franklin said all cats are gray in the dark. I say, all women are beautiful if you’re blind.”

“How bad is—”

“You mean, am I blind as a bat? Not yet, Padre. Macular degeneration in both eyes. On a good day I can see mostly shapes and could drive if I had to. Doc’s given me pills that are supposed to slow it down, but putting on the brakes isn’t the same as throwing her into reverse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well, where was I? Oh, so, after he drops me, T.J. will fetch the ladies to church and then circle back to take me home. We have a schedule all worked out, see?”

He unfolded a piece of paper and handed it to Blake. Days, times, and events, in large print, filled the page. Blake felt an enormous sense of relief. T.J. provided a solution to a problem—no, an answer to prayer. Colonel Bob’s increasing disability worried him. T.J. had removed one more problem from his plate, at least for a while.

T.J. peered into the church and scanned the parking lot. “Mr. Blake,” he said, “is Miss Deputy Ryder here today?”

“Not yet. She comes at ten if she comes at all.” He thought a moment. “That’s usually every other Sunday, so I don’t expect to see her today. Is there something you wanted?”

“Yes, sir. If you see her, would you ask her about the ride in the police car she said she would give me?”

“Well, what I will do is have her call you. Shall she call you at your home, at your aunt’s, or at Colonel Bob’s?”

T.J. frowned. Multiple choices created a problem for him. He could sort them out most times, but he needed a minute or two.

“You have her call me on my cell phone,” Colonel Bob said. “I’ll see she gets hooked up with my sergeant here. Okay, T.J., now my pew is over on the gospel side near the back…you don’t know which side that is? Well, I can see we have some educating to do here. See, all churches are…”

***

Ike slipped into Callend College’s library as unobtrusively as possible. He hoped Sunday morning would mean fewer students and the absence of the librarian. He was right on both counts. He found the back issues of the
Washington Post
and read the stories Charlie had mentioned. Neither was particularly helpful. A writer was found dead—apparent suicide. The man had shot himself in the head and the woman, naked and mad as a wet cat, was found as Charlie had described her. Her apartment had been methodically trashed. She couldn’t describe her attackers except to say they wore ski masks and were not gentlemen—an understatement of monumental proportions. She later reported the event in greater detail on the five, six, and eleven o’clock news appearing, he read, smart, attractive, and very professional. Ike guessed her boyfriend’s murder had been a good career move for her.

He returned the papers to their hanging rods and chanced a trip to Ruth’s office. He did not think she’d be working on a Sunday, but you never knew. He walked the length of the long corridor toward the administrative wing. His shoe soles squeaked on the newly waxed floor. “Cop shoes,” Ruth would call them. On either side, classrooms, their doors closed, measured his progress. He peeked through the glass when he reached Ruth’s outer office. No Agnes Ewalt in sight. That did not mean Ruth wasn’t in, but it did increase the probability. He tried the knob. It turned and he walked in. Ruth’s door was ajar. He softfooted to the sill and tapped on the door.

“Who?” Ruth clearly did not expect anyone.

“
C’est moi.
”

“Come in here. I have a bone to pick with you, Schwartz, and what’s with the phony French?”

“I just want to be sure that you, unlike your faculty friends, do not mistake me for an uncultured rube. A little French, perhaps a quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning—
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways—
”

“Can it. What are you doing here?”

“As I said, brushing up on my couth. I was using your library.”

“Bully for you. Do I want to know the real reason?”

Ike lowered himself into one of the two matched crewel upholstered chairs and stretched out his legs. Afternoon sun filtered through partially closed blinds. Very peaceful. A large room with oriental rugs, rosewood paneling, and a carefully contrived Georgian ambiance. Its only discordant note was a modern clock on the mantle. He wondered if the town would spring for an office this nice for him. He knew they wouldn’t.

“The reason? No, and the bone you have to pick?”

“My building…it’s being…altered, no, transformed, hell…it’s not the same.”

“How about transmogrified? It’s being transmogrified. You didn’t expect that?”

“Trans…is that what you were doing in the library—humping up arcane vocabulary?”

“Humping up arcane…you’re not doing too badly there yourself. No, I was reading your Washington papers, if you must know. What’s different about your building?”

“The back wall…you remember how that used to be? There were restrooms at either end, a utility closet, a stairwell, and an elevator shaft to the floors below in the center.”

“I remember.”

“They’re gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“The elevators, the stairwell, they’ve disappeared. Everything else is exactly the same. I thought they’d built a new wall in front of the old one but if they had, the restrooms would be bigger or something. They’re just gone.”

“Maybe they moved the three floors under the building to a new site. Jacked up the top floor and skidded the—”

“Stop. Are they really that good? I mean to make that wall look exactly like—”

“They are that good.”

“So down in the bowels of the earth under my new—my new what?”

“Art museum.”

“Ah. Down in the depths, under my new art museum, spooks in trench coats and fedoras are going about their business. What are they doing down there, anyway?”

“I have no idea and before you ask, I can’t find out for you.”

She stretched arms over her head, swiveled once around, and fixed him with her
this is important
look.

“I’ve been thinking about your mother.”

“New insights into the mystery of the Book of Ruth?”

“She loves you very much, Ike.”

“I don’t see the connection. Holy Writ is not my long suit, but even I know it’s a reach from the Book to that statement.”

“Men are so dense. You really don’t get it?”

“Clueless.”

“Understatement. Take me to lunch and I’ll find out why it took you so long to get in touch with me since that night.”