5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 (3 page)

Chapter 4

The Reverend Blake Fisher made a point of never interfering with the ladies who prepared the altar for Sunday. They reciprocated by never telling him what they were doing. It wouldn’t have made a difference in any case. The great divide that separates altar guilds and clergy is traditional, historic, and inviolable. A few guild members across the world are convinced it is even Biblical. So, it came as a modest surprise when one of their number rapped on his door and asked if he had a minute to talk.

“Come in, Mavis,” he said. He assumed she had a personal problem to discuss. He was wrong.

“Father Blake,” she said, worry creasing her forehead, “it’s the silver cruets.”

“What about the cruets?”

“They’re missing.”

“Missing. When did they go missing?”

“Well, that’s the thing, you see.” He didn’t. “The first one disappeared two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks ago?”

“Yes, but it didn’t seem important at the time. We, that is, I…just substituted the crystal ones instead. But you probably noticed that already. Actually, they are much easier to work with and…You don’t have to worry about which gets the wine and which gets the water when you use them.”

Blake shook his head. Which cruet received the communion wine and which the water introduced a wholly new concept to him. He didn’t know that it mattered. He reckoned if he thought about it for a while he would uncover yet one more example of a tradition whose origin is lost in time and has now become canon in the minds of altar guilds. “No one said anything about a cruet gone missing.”

“No. I figured one of the other girls, women, had taken it home to polish.”

“Just one?”

“Yes. Now that you mention it, that is odd, isn’t it…to polish just one, I mean.”

“So, one cruet went missing two weeks ago. You said ‘they’re missing.’ The other one is gone, too?”

“Yes, just now. Well, I noticed it just now, and since no one seems to know about the first one, I guess it’s safe to assume they may have been taken.”

Blake stood and accompanied Mavis Bowers into the sacristy. Sure enough, the safe stood open, and only protective cloths lay in the place usually occupied by the cruets.

“You’ve called around, I assume. No one remembers missing the silver?”

“No.”

“Is anything else missing?”

“I don’t think so. Let me see.” Mavis peered myopically into the safe.

“Check in the back.”

Mavis rooted around in the back. “Oh dear! The little cup is missing, too.”

“Little cup? What little cup?”

“We were given a silver cup—goblet, I guess you’d call it. Someone thought it could be used as a chalice. We’ve never used it, but…”

“It’s missing, too? We should call the sheriff’s office.”

“Oh dear. I don’t know.”

“Problem?”

“Well, suppose a guild member has them and…I don’t know. It would be so embarrassing.”

“But you said you called around and no one knew anything about the disappearance. You did, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but…Oh dear.”

“Mavis, something is bothering you. What is it?”

“It’s just that…well Esther Peepers has been on the guild for, mercy, sixty years and she’s a little pixilated. It would be such a shame if the sheriff came and then…you understand.”

Blake understood. Esther Peepers qualified as a matriarch. Senior pastors, rectors, and clergy in general, even bishops, learned, usually in the first months of their first call, that matriarchs are never to be crossed. Absent-minded or not, he’d be treading on thin ice if he were to ruffle the petticoats of Esther Peepers. He frowned at the mixed metaphor. He guessed the first symptoms of trivia-stress had arrived. Not that Esther would do anything herself; she sailed through life as a delightful octogenarian ditherer. But her guild colleagues would be upset for her; and he’d have several months of fence-mending ahead of him.

“Suppose you and I drop in on Esther and ask,” he said.

Mavis looked doubtful. “What would we say?”

“Indeed, I don’t know, Mavis, but we have to do something. If the silver has been stolen, we need to notify the police. If, God forbid, it’s lost, we need to call the insurance company. The longer we wait, the worse it gets. Two weeks, you said.”

“Dorothy Sutherlin would be a better choice to make the call,” she said with something akin to fear in her voice. “Two of her sons work for the sheriff. She’d know how to…you know…ask.”

Blake realized there would be no convincing Mavis to do otherwise, and on reflection, thought she might be right. Whether Dorothy Sutherlin’s sons, and daughter-in-law for that matter, worked in the sheriff’s office weighed less on his decision than Dorothy’s well known common sense. She, he believed, could penetrate the murky recesses of Esther Peepers’ mind better than anyone in town.

“Fine. Good idea. I’ll call her and see if she will do it.”

Mavis Bowers looked as if she’d received a last-minute pardon from the governor. He retreated to his office and made the call.

Dorothy Sutherlin answered the phone on the third ring. Blake held the receiver away from his ear. Dorothy had raised seven boisterous boys and in the years of their upbringing had been forced to communicate with them in a voice which could only be described as stentorian.

“Hello. That you, Father Blake?”

“Yes, Dorothy. Listen, we have a problem here at the church. Mavis has discovered the silver cruets and a small chalice we evidently never use are missing. Before we call one of your boys in, she thought we might call on Esther Peepers first…on the outside chance she might have taken them home to polish and forgot to return them.”

“And Mavis said maybe I’d be a better choice to brace Esther than her?”

“Yes.”

“Figures. Mavis has the backbone of a slug.” Blake spun around to see if Mavis was within earshot. He doubted Dorothy would care if she’d been overheard, but Blake tended to assume the embarrassment of others. Mavis was nowhere in sight.

“Oh, my, the old gal isn’t there, is she?”

“No, she’s not.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess. When do you want to call on Esther? I’m tied up ’til three. We could go after that.”

“We’ll plan on meeting here at three, then. I’ll call Esther and set it up. If you don’t hear from me in the next twenty minutes, it’s a go.”

A call to Mrs. Peepers resulted in her agreement to see Blake.

“Oh, gracious, do come by. Can you take tea? I’ll make tea. I hope regular tea is acceptable. So many of you young people want decaf these days, or green, or something new, you know…herbal. But it isn’t the same is it? You’re not one of those people are you? It’s not a church thing, I hope. No, of course it isn’t, we have a coffee hour, don’t we? Would you rather have coffee?”

Blake assured her that he did, indeed, drink regular tea and coffee and had no feelings for or against the use of caffeine, nor did the church. Mrs. Peepers seemed relieved by that.

“You haven’t seen Ogden, have you?” she asked.

“Sorry. Who?”

“I’m missing my cat, Ogden. I named him after my first husband. He was so sweet. My husband, I mean. And the cat, too. That’s why I—”

“Yes, I see. No, I haven’t seen your cat, I don’t think. What does he look like?” Cats for Blake were an amorphous category. Seen one, seen them all.

“Black. Black as the ace of spades, Father Blake, and sweet.”

“I’ll try to remember to look around. See you after three.”

He hung up and stared out of his office window. The leaves were beginning to turn. He made a mental note to invite Mary Miller, for an afternoon drive along the Skyline Drive to look at the fall colors. Officially, Mary was the church’s organist. Unofficially, to Blake, she was considerably more.

Except for drug money, why would anyone break into a church and steal silver that is only used in a church ritual. What other possible use could it have?

Chapter 5

It had been a while since Ike had run down a preflight check list. He circled the Cessna 170S pausing to inspect, adjust, and study the plane and its exterior. The agent from Delmarva Aviation stood off to one side with his hands in his pockets, watching. In addition to serving as a local fixed-base operation, the company rented planes and gave flying lessons. The latter transactions produced a certain level of anxiety for them. The planes represented an important asset, and even though they viewed renting one to a stranger as a business transaction, they fretted over them, like parents who worry about the family sedan when the resident teenager takes it out for the first time.

They’d taken Ike’s credit card, and a few eyebrows shot up when he’d slid it across the counter. They hadn’t dealt with that many government credit cards in the first place and certainly none like the one Charlie had supplied. He’d wondered if Charlie would catch any Agency flak for using government assets in his, so far, personal investigation, and then decided he wouldn’t make it his problem. He’d waited patiently while a few long-distance phone calls were placed and a smiling acceptance granted. He’d signed an open-ended contract. He didn’t know how long he’d need the aircraft; no more than three weeks, though.

Satisfied, he gave the agent a thumbs-up and climbed into the cockpit to continue his pre-flight
.
The plane had been fueled
.
He snapped on the radio, adjusted the squelch, and signaled to the ramp attendant to pull the chocks. The big engine turned over easily, and he taxied to the end of the runway.

Cleared for take-off, he turned onto the runway and sent the Cessna rolling down its length. The plane lifted gracefully from the ground and Ike was airborne.
Up in the air, junior bird men. Up in the air…upside down.
Upside down—not good.

Ike made three wide turns over the airport with a touch and go on each loop. His hours in the air had been scant, but he still had the skills.
Like riding a bike.
He needed practice, and that was his excuse to fly to Martin State and take some instruction. Nick Reynolds had received his at Brett Aviation. That would be where Ike would register for lessons. He set a course to Martin State and settled back in the left seat. BWI traffic control called him twice to request he change altitude. The corridor over the bay carried a lot of commercial traffic, it seemed.

***

There wasn’t much to see out by the streambed. The bones were gathered in a tight grouping. He studied a skull in the center of the pile. Barney’s description of an “arrangement” eluded him. It was just a pile of bones. A goat, he decided. He stepped back to take in the area and noticed the stones in the stream bed. They had been placed there, of that he was certain. He looked at the bones and then at the stones again. Barney’s “arrangement” popped out at him. He couldn’t be sure, but he sensed the bones, or at least the skull, had been placed to point toward the stones and by implication the field beyond. He crossed the stream, careful to keep his balance as he stepped gingerly on the stones in the stream. They were neither set firmly nor designed to bear his bulk. A path led away from the stream uphill and at an angle toward a wood farther away. He followed it, his eyes scanning the ground as he moved toward the trees. The grass had been trampled. He could not tell how recently or how often.

The area’s karst topography had created a sinkhole many years ago. Frank recognized it as a gathering place for teenagers in his past. The Passion Pit, they’d called it. He supposed it must still serve that purpose. He worked his way down into its depth. At the bottom he realized he would be invisible to anyone walking in the fields above. The sinkhole had to be twenty feet deep, at least, and sixty across at the top.

In its center, someone had erected a low table or perhaps a high bench from three rock slabs. Two unmatched shorter blocks formed the base or legs, and a larger flagstone its top. Because the two upright stones were uneven in length, the table-bench sloped left to right as he faced it. He glanced down at a trampled fire pit at his feet. To his right and left he could make out two more. He circled the area and discovered another two. All five seemed roughly equidistant from the table and each other. If he connected them in his mind’s eye, they formed a five sided figure with the table/bench in its center. He kicked at the ashes in the first fire site and saw what appeared to be the burnt end of a stake in its center. The other four seemed to have the same. Someone had measured the positioning of the fires with more than casual accuracy.

He didn’t need any help identifying rusty stains on the table’s surface. Blood.

“Essie,” he said into the microphone on his shoulder, “I need you to call the lab and have them send out a crew to the State Park.”

“Where you at?”

“Tell them to come out the Covington Road. After the second little hill look for me on their right. There’s a sinkhole out here I want them to look at. If they can’t come pretty quick, call me back.”

“Roger that, Frank. I know that place. Everybody does…or did. Didn’t you used to go out there when you was in high school?”

“Not much, I mostly missed out on the sinkhole action back then. Why’d anybody go there anyway?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess you might not know, since you never was much of a lady’s man. Say, what did you mean I should talk to Ma?”

“Not now, Essie. Just get the lab boys out here.”

He strolled back to the stream, to the bones, and with some care, moved them to the side. After he’d moved a half dozen he realized someone had already tried to do that and the plastic trash bag which apparently held them had split. He carefully lifted a corner. Beneath laid the remains of what he took to be a cat. A black cat, as nearly as he could tell. He stood and scratched his head.

His radio crackled. “Frank, the lab is on the way. They said they knew the place.”

“Good, Essie, you know of any body missing a cat? A black cat?”

“Nope, but Ma might. She knows near everybody. Speaking of which—”

“Later, Essie. Oh, and tell the ETs to be sure and bring a camera and a tape measure, if they weren’t already planning to anyway.”

He paced the distance between the fire sights, placing his heel on the stake. Six steps exactly to have his toe on the next stake. A pentagon, a table with blood on it, and a black cat. He scratched his head, unsure what any of that meant but whatever it was, he guessed, it was not good.