Drowning Barbie (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

Ike's e-mail appeared at the top of Ruth's inbox. It had had been there for days, begging to be read, accusing her of procrastination or worse. She'd ignored it. Doing so wasn't a matter of her putting off tackling a necessary task. She'd intentionally skipped over it because in the past an e-mail from Ike would likely contain a raunchy joke he'd picked from Lee Henry, or a lewd suggestion, or a bit of Percy Bysshe Shelley he'd remembered from Freshman English Lit. As this was one of her busy times and as she had not felt like being regaled, scandalized, or wooed, the message remained unread.

All of which explained why Ruth did not find out about the date she had for Monday at the church until the Thursday preceding it. She nearly fell off her chair.

“Agnes,” she yelled, “get in here.”

Agnes Ewalt had served Ruth as her personal secretary—administrative assistant, the HR director insisted she now be called—for more years than either would willingly admit.

Agnes flew through the office door ready for combat, to make a call to 9-1-1, or to apply emergency first aid. “What happened?”

“It's Monday.”

“No, it's Thursday. Yesterday was Wednesday, you remember because—”

“I know that.”

“You do? I thought you said it's…what's the matter?”

“Ike and I will be at Blake Fisher's church on Monday for the ceremony.”

“You're getting married? On a Monday? Who gets married on a weekday?”

“You'd be surprised, but in this case we are already married. We're putting on a show like a pair of trained seals to keep the county happy.”

“Sorry, I don't understand. You're married. How come I didn't know that? What about your health insurance and—”

“Never mind that now.”

Ruth explained the events in Las Vegas, their subsequent need to have some sort of public acknowledgement, and the fact that Ike had arranged a compromise service with the Reverend Fisher.

“And you didn't know he made the arrangements? Why did he wait so long to tell you?”

“He didn't. It's my fault. I have been ignoring his e-mails for, I guess, forever and that bad habit just jumped up and bit me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don't know. Stand by and I'll call you.”

Agnes left to retrieve the local phone book assuming she would soon be calling caterers and florists with urgent requests for some consideration in the light of a last-minute call for their services. There were vendors who valued, indeed depended on, the university's goodwill and who could be persuaded to perform the near impossible if called upon.

Ruth couldn't really get on Ike's case for not giving her enough time. She'd said ASAP when he'd asked her when she'd want Fisher to do the deed, assuming he'd do it at all. Like a good public servant, he'd trotted down to the church and done his part and notified her. Not counting what was left of today, she had something less than four days, three to be on the safe side, to arrange for food, drink, flowers, a place for a reception/party, invitations, and to clue in her mother. She tried to steady her nerves, failed, and launched into full panic mode. She called Ike.

“I'm in the middle of a man-hunt…make that a girl-hunt, woman-hunt. Can't talk now,” he said.

“Don't you dare hang up on me, Schwartz, or there'll be no honeymoon this side of the next Ice Age.”

“Not hanging up. So, what's the problem?”

“What's the…I just opened your e-mail about the church thing. It's only four days away. How in the bloody hell do you think I'm going to arrange all the stuff that needs doing?”

“I sent that to you the day I fixed it up with Fisher. Why are you in a stew about it now?”

“I just opened the damned thing.”

“You just now read the message? What were you—?”

“Don't ask.”

“Okay, I won't. So, what stuff still needs to be done?”

“You're kidding, right? Ike, we need to provide for food, a party, invitations, parents, the lot. You can't slap a thing like this together overnight.”

“It's not overnight, Ruth, it's at least three overnights. What is the biggest thing that needs doing and I'll take care of it.”

“You will. Hah! What did you tell me about Y and X chromosomes? Okay, the reception or whatever we're calling it. That's food, booze, venue, the whole works.”

“How about a string quartet noodling
Pachelbel's
Canon
in
D
as well?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, except for the string quartet and Pachelbel, consider it done.”

“Sure you will just like that? Listen, brats, beer, and a polka band in the sheriff's parking lot is not acceptable. This do has to have a little class, if not for the Neanderthals who work for you then for the—”

“The academic pussies who work for you. I got it. It will be nice enough for them, not as upscale as a MOMA reception, but nice, and townie friendly for the rest of the world. No fear.”

“I don't believe you.”

“You don't have an alternative. What else?'

“Invitations.”

“You're kidding. I don't know about the ivory tower and its protocols, but down here in the world of grits and gravy, I need only tell four people about what's on tap and everybody in town will know inside five minutes. Why don't you post something on the faculty bulletin board? Better, have the payroll people slip a note or something in their envelopes.”

“We have direct deposit.”

“Notify the bank. You'll think of something. Listen, the majority of your colleagues don't approve of me, and will not attend anyway.”

“And your townsfolk just love me to pieces. Is that what you're saying?”

“They do. They think of you as something exotic, like a local horse breeder who imports a
thoroughbred
brood mare to improve the stock.”

“I'm a horse?”

“Ah, but a very beautiful one, don't forget.”

“Thanks a heap. Flowers.”

“What?”

“We will need flowers in the church.”

“Taken care of.”

“What? I don't believe it. You are a man. Men do not do flowers and catering. I'll call my mother.”

“Do that and then put her in touch with Dorothy Sutherlin, besides being the mother of two of my frontline deputies, happens to be a primal force in the church. All is, or soon will be, arranged—food, flowers, gala, the works.”

“You did that?”

“I did.”

“I don't believe it.”

“But you must because you have no alternative.”

“You called me a horse.”

“Metaphorically.”

“What's that make you?”

“In this case, the jockey, I guess.”

“You're awful.”

“Yes, but at the same time, said to be irresistible.
Mazel Tov.
”

“I don't believe it,” Ruth said to a silent phone.

“Is everything okay? Do you want me to make some calls?” Agnes stood, phone book in hand awaiting her marching orders.

“He said he's got it.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I have to. Agnes, figure a way to invite the faculty and staff without them thinking it's a last-minute thing.”

“But it is.”

“I know that. You know that. They do not need to know that.”

***

Ike hung up and turned his attention back to the reports that had been coming in all morning. Ask for people to look out for teenagers on the run and you can expect a flood of sightings and editorials mostly from uptight spinsters about the dissolution of the moral fiber among young girls these days. Most of those missives contained several exclamation points. Whoever wrote the BOLO needed to be a tad more specific as to the girl's description and why Ike needed to find her.

***

Abstinence of any sort did not fit George LeBrun's nature. The girls who alternately tended bar and pole-danced downstairs kept one part of his needs in check, but he missed the crank. When your body adapts to the chemical, even a drying out period in jail will not erase the craving. Addicts, if they conquer their problem, do so by owning it and then suppressing it. It becomes easier to do the longer they work at it. George, like many of the addicted, once made clean, figured he could manage it—take it or leave it. George had started dipping. He inhaled and let the drug assault his bloodstream through his respiratory system which had only lately started to return to normal. He nodded and smiled and mixed cola and vodka in a glass. No ice. He felt great. He stamped on the floor for one of the girls. Betsy didn't work nights Whoever showed up had better be ready to party. He sucked on the pipe and stamped his foot again.

She said her name was Cherise. Her accent said she had probably started out life as Sherrie or Cherry. She did not look as happy to see him as he did her. She had no idea what she had let herself in for when she'd run away from an abusive stepfather and an in-denial alcoholic mother who refused to entertain any thoughts about what her husband might be doing to her daughter after she'd passed out at night. Now Cherise struggled with adapting to this new and very scary lifestyle that she'd drifted into. She would soon find out that as bad as her old situation had been, there were worse things that could happen to a girl, especially if no one cared if she lived or died.

Her body would not be found for nearly a year, and then only because a task force created by the FBI, acting on the events of the previous year which determined that there were sufficient reasons to search the woods in and around Picketsville, had finally begun to sift through the sector where she'd been dumped.

In any case, it would be long after the man who killed her had had his own appointment with destiny. Because of that, the irony of her passing would go unappreciated and her murder, like so many others involving lost children, would go unheralded and unsolved. Hers would be just another life served up on the altar of societal ennui.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Darla waited until the last car drove away from the church and the lights in the office area winked out. A moment later she saw the minister, or whatever he was called, walk to the little house next door. An hour later the same man and this time with a woman left the house all dressed up, climbed into their car, and drove away. She hoped they were on their way to a party or something because she would need some time to find her place and then fix things up. That is if she was right about the way old buildings were put together in this part of the world.

She let another ten minutes elapse, then ventured out from the woods, dashed across the parking lot to the church, and flattened herself against a wall. She froze, waiting, then moved cautiously to the church doors. As she had expected, they were locked. She moved along the wall, searching. The doors might have been locked but that was not the case for the basement windows. She slipped through one near the back end of the church and felt her way to what she took to be a kitchen. If it were any normal kitchen, there should be a first aid kit and it should contain a flashlight.

As it turned out she would need the time the absence of the minister and his wife provided and then some. To her consternation, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church had not been built to the eccentric standards of the rest of antebellum Picketsville. She searched every inch of the building in vain for those crawl spaces, attics with hidden cul-de-sacs and the squirrel nests she'd expected. Someone at sometime must have employed the services of an architect. Nothing even approaching a hiding place bigger than a closet existed on any level. She supposed she could crawl up under the altar. In the old days didn't they give you a pass from the cops if you hung on the altar?

The kitchen was in the church basement and it would be there, if she had the choice, she would have liked to have found a hiding place. None seemed to exist. She reconsidered setting up in the woods and using the church as a supply point. She worked her way back through the kitchen. She noticed, for the first time a second door leading outside. This one opened onto a below-grade areaway fitted with a French drain. The space was filled with leaves and yellowed newspapers. She guessed the church people didn't use that door much. She peered to her immediate right and saw another door cut into the wall which formed a right angle to the main building. This part of the church wasn't as wide as the rest and had its own roof a little lower than the main one. It also held the church offices upstairs. So what was under them?

She stepped out and studied this new entrance. It opened inward and was secured with a Yale snap lock—the kind she could open with a credit card inserted between the jamb and bolt. Unfortunately, the builder had forestalled this maneuver by putting a beading around the entire circumference of the door. She might have given up except she remembered the rack of knives on one of the counters. She retrieved the knife with the broadest blade and stepped outside again. She lined the point with the lockset and, pounding gently with her fist, drove the blade behind the beading and into the space between the jamb and lock. The latch was forced back and the door sprang open. She removed the knife, wiped it, and returned it to its holder. Then, flashlight in hand, she discovered what must have been a boiler room added to the main structure in the century following the church's original construction. She explored the room, squeezed behind the boiler, but as much as she wished it were otherwise, there would be no hiding place for her in this room either. She returned to the main building.

Darla stood irresolute in the center of the basement gazing at but not seeing the ominous shadows cast by stuffed animals and books stacked in readiness for the weekend's onslaught of children whose parents insisted they be amused by Bible stories rather than taught what they considered to be a politically incorrect faith. Darla had all but decided to abandon her idea of hiding in the church and started toward the door, this time to let herself out. Then she stopped in mid-stride. Had she detected an asymmetry in the boiler room area? She knew the space should correspond in its general dimensions with that of the offices above. She would have to go outside and pace off the distances between the end walls and then do the same inside the boiler room to find out. With care and as quietly as she could, she slipped through the door, climbed the stairs from the entry well and in minutes paced off the long side of the addition. Once done, she returned to the boiler room and repeated her pacing. The boiler room came up short. She could not account for something like six feet. A quick inspection of the wall behind the boiler revealed that the bricks that formed it did not reach the joists above. There must be a space behind this wall. She couldn't imagine why they put up a wall there. Maybe to keep the heat away from something. Unfortunately, the gap at its top was too narrow for her to slither through.

Back in the kitchen she again paced off the greater distance and found herself standing next to what she assumed was a recently installed stove. She aimed her flashlight behind it and discovered another door, this one apparently leading to the space that lay beyond that wall. A room existed behind that stove and because the appliance had been installed in front of its entrance, the chances were good that the room no longer served any useful purpose. If the stove could be moved, she had her hideaway. In fact, the oven moved quite easily and with another application of the kitchen knife to the second door lock, she gained access. It was small but luckily it had been emptied.

The next twenty minutes she spent scrounging through closets and cabinets. She managed to find several worn pew pads. The cross stitching seemed in good shape but stuffing leaked from seams. Probably some lady set them aside to be reclaimed someday. She carried them to her lair and arranged them into a serviceable futon. She brought in two large buckets and, just before the batteries in her flashlight failed, she discovered a ceiling light installed in the room complete with a chain pull. She stole a light bulb from the ladies room. Next she stockpiled some canned food from the pantry, being careful to only take one of each kind. She lifted a can opener and stuffed it into her pocket. She cut a large block from a bar of cheddar and took a loaf of bread. She helped herself to three quart-sized bottles of cherry soda. She would have to drink them warm, at least until the next night. Finally, she rummaged through a closet upstairs and took one of the black dress-like robes that buttoned up the front along with its hanger.

She had just finished giving herself a sponge bath in the restroom when she saw the flash of headlights cross the restroom windows. She dashed to the kitchen, replaced the flashlight in the first aid kit, slipped into her hiding place, and pulled the stove back into line. The door she left ajar. She would close it only if and when she needed to, but for the moment, left it open. It provided a small relief from the room's lingering mustiness.

***

Mary Fisher craned her neck as Blake wheeled into their parking space not four feet from Darla, except for the dividing exterior wall and six feet of Virginia topsoil.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

“See what?”

“I could have sworn I saw a light in the basement.”

“Someone may have left a light on.”

“You were the last to leave. Were there any lights on when you locked up? It didn't exactly look like a light left on. More like a flashlight or something. Maybe someone has broken into the church, Blake. You should call the sheriff. Remember the last time someone broke in and stole the Communion silver.”

“We recovered it all.”

“Not all. There is still one cruet missing and besides they might be vandals or something. In the summer the kids around here get bored and into trouble. The community swimming pool was paintballed last week and we had vandals.”

“Not for a long time. Okay, I'll call the sheriff if that will make you happy. I doubt it will make him happy, but I'll do it for you.”