2 - Secrets: Ike Schwartz Mystery 2 (27 page)

Chapter Fifty-one

“Me? Why me?”

“I warned you. I said you should check your sermons—that all the shootings followed one, and here we are, Reverend. It seems your preaching the last three Sundays caught her—‘convicted me,’ she said. Every time you made a point about adultery or anger, or forgiveness, she thought you were looking straight at her. Thought you knew about the affair and therefore must have seen her file.”

“That’s it?” Sylvia asked.

“Pretty much. I have one or two loose ends to tie up, and then I’ll turn it over to your boy,” Schwartz said and stood.

“Thanks, Ike,” Blake said. “I would get up and walk you out, but I am in no condition to. My sermons, huh?”

“Just quoting the lady. You should be more circumspect in the future. I’m not all that keen on corpses popping up all over town every Monday.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll go see Grace in the morning.”

“You’ll do what?” Ike and Sylvia said in unison.

“Go and see her. Whatever she may have done, she still needs ministering.”

“Get someone else,” Schwartz said sharply. “You are our star witness. If you are caught talking to the defendant anytime before trial, you compromise the case. Tell him, Madam Lawyer.”

“He’s right, you can’t do it. Ask Bournet or someone else to go. Don’t even return her calls.” When Sylvia said it, it sounded like an order.

“That’s it for now,” Ike said. “We’ll just tie up a few loose ends and—”

“You don’t still have some doubts?” Sylvia asked, face serious.

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. I still have a few pieces missing. You know how that is. Seems pretty good, but…too bad one of your parishioners had to be the heavy in this, Reverend.”

He left. Sylvia watched him disappear down the steps, a frown on her face. Then she rolled her chair around the corner and back into her space. Blake stared at the paneling on the wall. His eye wandered over his diplomas and certificates. They were the proofs of his intellectual and career achievements, years spent in the pursuit of position and power. A very impressive array, he thought, but not worth a cold fried egg when it came to working with people. That skill came from the heart, not from the head. Cerebral machinations could not equal a tear, a pat on the arm, a respectful silence. A few minutes later, Sylvia called out that she was sorry but she had to leave. Blake said goodbye.

Something nagged at Blake. Something someone said, or the way they said it, something did not fit. Schwartz reminded him of jigsaw puzzles. He once attempted one and got one piece out of place. The pieces looked so much alike, it was possible to force two together that really did not belong, leaving pieces that did not fit anywhere. That one misplaced piece stymied him for days. He finally had to pull almost all of it apart and start over before he finally finished. He sensed a piece out of place somewhere but he could not see where.

He slept most of the afternoon. He would never recommend getting shot, but it did get him off the hook from a number of chores he might otherwise have had to do. Besides, he wanted to be ready and refreshed for the evening. He planned to attend choir rehearsal that night. Afterward, he was going to have some time with Mary and, if he had the courage, tell her something he had never told any woman since he was sixteen.

At seven, he polished off his microwave meal, dropped the plastic dish in the trash, and walked to the church. The choir, minus Bob Franks, filled their pews and greeted him as he entered. He sat where he was out of their line of sight but had a clear and unobstructed view of Mary.

The rehearsal went well. As far as he was concerned, he was listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He found himself humming along and then, in response to several disapproving looks from the back row, stopped. The session ended at eight-thirty. The choir filed out and he was left alone with Mary.

“The organ suitable?” he asked. He knew it was.

“Fine. Actually more than fine. How’s your shoulder?”

“Better every day,” he said. The silence after he said it began to stretch into awkwardness.

“Well,” she said, “I’d better be off.” But she made no move to leave.

“Mary?” he said and cleared his throat. The phone rang in the sacristy. “Excuse me,” he said, temporarily relieved, and went to answer it. He picked up the receiver.

“Blake? It’s me,” the voice said.

“Grace?” he stammered.

“No, it’s Sylvia.”

“I’m sorry, Sylvia, I didn’t recognize your voice. After our session with Ike, I have Grace on the brain. What can I do for you?”

“I have to leave town and I wanted to talk about the board position. Dan withdrew his resignation. He said you told him to. I’m a little hurt, Blake. I thought we had an understanding.” Her voice was harder than he remembered, harder and edgy.

“It’s no problem, really, Sylvia. Amy Brandt will be resigning soon. By the time you return, there will be a place—”

“I still need to see you. There is more to this than just a board membership, as you know. Tonight?”

Blake’s face knotted into a frown. “All right, meet me here in the church.”

“I’m on my way.”

He stood staring at the phone for nearly a full minute. He went back to the organ. Mary had gathered her things. She looked at him expectantly.

“Mary,” he said, “I have two things I need to tell you. One of them is extremely important and the other extremely rude. I want you to hear the first and forgive the second.”

She stood still, waiting.

“Mary, I love you. I love you very much. But I want you to leave right now. Go home, get out.”

“Blake?”

“Please, Mary. Hear the first. Do the second. I’ll explain later.”

“I love you, too, Blake Fisher,” she said, and left.

Chapter Fifty-two

He almost missed hearing the door close. Because of his bandages, he had to sit slightly sideways in his chair, and that made it creak when he swiveled. It did so as he quietly closed his desk drawer and faced the door. Then he was sure. He heard the footsteps on the stairs.

“Anybody here? Blake?”

“In the office, Sylvia. Just finishing some paperwork and calls. You know how it is, no rest for the wicked.”

Only his desk lamp illuminated the room, leaving the rest in deep shadows. The door to the sacristy stood slightly ajar. The pool of light cast by the desk lamp lighted Sylvia from the waist down as she crossed the space from door to chair and sat, purse in her lap. Once seated, he could just make out the contours of her face. The dim light exaggerated the streaks in her hair and cast deep shadows on her face. The effect was a little frightening. As always, she was beautifully turned out in a dark gray silk suit and eggshell blouse. He guessed her purse alone cost five hundred dollars. He recognized the accessories from another life, a life now far removed, probably never to be his again. This woman could change all that. He had no option but to wait and see.

“I was very upset when I heard you’d convinced Quarles to stay on the board. Can I ask why? I mean, we have a lot of work to do, and that man is not the person to get it done.”

He watched her carefully. This kind of woman could always fool him. He did not see it coming with Gloria Vandergrift. But this time, he would not be taken in. This time he would see it through, even if it killed him. He stayed seated, unmoving.

They both sat in the semi-darkness, faces caught in the yellow glow of the lamp light. Finally he said, “You didn’t come over here tonight to talk about the board, did you?”

She did not answer right away. Her eyes bored into him as if she were trying to read his mind.

“You know, don’t you?” she said finally. “You figured it out. I knew it as soon as I said it. It was stupid of me. You called me Grace. That’s when you knew, am I right?”

“Yes, not entirely sure then, just suspicious. Then I remembered the water bottle.”

“What water bottle?”

“The one you used as a silencer when you shot Waldo. I never told anyone about the bottle. Schwartz never told anyone either, but you knew. You said something like, ‘You left out the part about the bottle.’ Do you remember? I knew something was out of place this morning but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then you called and said, ‘It’s me,’ and I recognized the voice. The voice I heard when I was shot. When you’re excited, you lose your nice, cultured way of speaking, Sylvia, and revert to a nasal, what—New York, New Jersey? Not Philadelphia. I’d know that one.”

“Jersey.”

“So…yes, I know, but I don’t know why. I guess all that will come out at your trial.”

“There isn’t going to be any trial, except for Grace Franks. She’s the killer, remember? Our slow but predictable sheriff will see to that.” She removed a light automatic from her purse and pointed it at him. “Now the question is, what shall I do with you?”

“Do me a favor, Sylvia. Before you decide and shoot me again, tell me why. I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”

“You want to hear my confession, Father?”

“Something like that. Who knows, I might even give you absolution. Either way, I’d like to know why I have to die.”

“Of course you would. Hand me one of your water bottles, please, I’m a little dry, and I may need it in a minute or two.”

Blake handed her the bottle and opened one himself.

“How much do you really know about Krueger?”

“Only what we talked about. He held some kind of insider position with the San Francisco mob, and he was about to rat out most of the leadership. I gather the feds had slated him to sing to a grand jury, but he jumped their ship.”

“He was all those things and more. He managed the books. He knew where the money came from and where it went to be laundered. Money laundering is a very important part of organized crime. Did you know that?”

“I heard, but it didn’t mean much to me.”

“Believe me, it is. There are some men who specialize in it—make it a career. A man can make a lot of money in that business. The skim can be as high as ten percent. You figure out what that comes to in a two billion a year business.”

“A lot of money, but what has that to do with us?”

“Not with us, Blake, with me. How do you think my husband made all his money? He’s their east coast money manager. When the feds picked up Krueger, we all ran for cover. Luckily, Krueger didn’t have names. That was a security precaution my husband insisted on. We were just numbered accounts. He put money in and took it back later. The only time my husband might have come in contact with him was when he went to San Francisco for a meeting. Krueger was never allowed to be part of those meetings, so there was no reason to think we had a problem. But Krueger was a resourceful man, and if he didn’t get a name, he got a picture. He had a camera with a telephoto lens on it.”

“I know about his camera.”

“Do you now? Ah, so that’s what he had on your little goody-two-shoes girlfriend. What did he catch her doing, Blake? Shall I guess?”

“You were telling me about Krueger and your husband.”

“Nothing too naughty, I hope. Well, yes. Robert never met Krueger. How were we to know he would show up here as an organist? You want to figure the odds on that? My husband is not much of a churchgoer, but he came to your installation as a favor to me, and Krueger saw him. Two months later we got a newspaper clipping in the mail.”

“
crime kingpins still at large
,” Blake recited. “You left it in the vicarage. Is that when you took my gun?”

As she spoke, Sylvia’s carefully measured speech slowly flaked away and east Jersey emerged.

“I wondered what happened to it. Yeah, that’s when I lifted your gun. I didn’t have a reason to. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. You never know when you will need a cold piece. It turned out to be a stroke of genius. Then we get a call. Krueger had his picture on the TV—dumb bastard, and I get a commission to snuff him. I’m setting that up, you know, we are sort of settled in here and I don’t want to have to blow town, so I think, I’ll take my time on this one.

“So anyway, this note comes telling us where and when to leave the money—a lot of money, by the way. Do you believe that? Krueger thought he had his backside covered. The jerk didn’t have a clue he’d already been fingered, but you know how it is with guys like that. They always make a mistake somewhere along the line. I wait for the moment and…you know the rest.”

“You shot him, not your husband?”

“Robert’s a killer in the financial markets, not on the ground. He faints at the sight of blood. I’m the shooter. That’s how we met. I pick up a job in San Francisco and he’s in it and we hit it right off. Funny, isn’t it? I have my specialty, he has his. No, I capped Walter and now I am going to send you off to that heaven of yours.”

“Why did you wait so long to kill him? I mean if he’d been fingered—”

“I like it here and I needed time to set up a patsy to take the fall. He wasn’t going anywhere.”

“It’s none of my business, but how did you come to be a…whatever you’re called?”

“A killer. That’s the word you’re searching for, and since you are about to become a score, I guess it is your business. My old man ran a tire store in Camden. He sold new and used tires—retail and wholesale—stuff like that. One day the guy who sells us protection asks him to handle some merchandise that they will supply. It’s not like we had a choice, so my father says ‘Sure.’ And that’s how we got dug in.”

“Stolen tires and—”

“You could say. Well, one day this mook shows up and threatens us. He’s figuring to muscle in on the other guy’s territory. So, we call our guy and we think it’s all taken care of, you know? But then the creep comes back. He’s busted up pretty good by a guy we know named Angelo, who I hear bought it around here somewhere, but I don’t know about that for sure because he went solo. Anyway, this piece of crap starts in on my father. I come in and he’s got him on the floor and is kicking the shit out of him, so I go to the drawer, get the little .32, and blow him away. That’s how it started. Pretty soon, I had me a full-time job. End of story.”

“And law school? You are a lawyer, right?”

“Seton Hall, part-time. A reward for being good at what I did for the locals.”

“You’re still not finished, Sylvia. What about the list? You weren’t on the list I found in Krueger’s house.”

“Oh, my husband had a place on his list, the original list. The one you found was one I left in its place. Adding your name was, like, an afterthought. Good, huh?”

“That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why there were no fingerprints on the paper. How was that to be explained, do you suppose?”

“Who’d notice?”

“Schwartz did.”

“Woo-hoo!”

“And the search?”

“Easy. After I shot him, I took his keys, copied his house key so I could look later—after the sheriff and his boy scouts got all done. See, they wouldn’t know what they were after ’til later anyway, and that way, they’d be screwed big time trying to figure out how the place got tossed after they’d already searched. I looked for his stash. I didn’t care about Taliaferro’s files. I just wanted whatever he had on us. I didn’t find anything but I thought the list would point the police in the right direction. Then, see, if I’m part of ‘the team,’ I can get there first. After all, the sheriff’s office does not have any mental giants working for them, do they? You ever met the Sutherlin woman’s kid? The village idiot. That’s why I had my son-in-law free up our friend Sheriff Andy—Ike—to run the investigation. I figured in a shed full of dull tools, he’s most in need of sharpening. It worked pretty good I thought. Then later, I went with you to Krueger’s house—that would explain my fingerprints. I volunteered to help out here, same deal with the fingerprints, and when I visited Millie, she did all the searching, no problem there. You see how it works, Blake. The winners are always a step ahead of the losers.”

“What about Millie? Why’d you kill her?”

“Oh, that. I took that silly bitch, Grace Franks, to lunch one day. I’m listening to her moan and groan—what a turkey—I’m getting ready to plant the gun in her purse and then have the cops find it on her. I figured she was one of Krueger’s marks, but while we’re sitting there, we hear Millie yammering about people and Grace’s name pops up. That’s when we both decide Millie has the files. Grace almost passes out. I decide to keep the gun for a while. Later, I go to Millie’s house to pick up the files. She’s a pretty stupid woman, you know. We wasted a lot of nice words on her last Friday.

“She says she didn’t have them, you do, and finally, after I make her turn her house upside down, I believe her. I couldn’t just leave her after all that, could I? So I popped her, too.”

“And me, why shoot me? By then, you knew I didn’t have the files.”

“Me? I didn’t shoot you, Grace did, remember? See, I knew she was ticked at you because she thought you were blabbing her secrets. I had to stay close to her to make sure she had no alibis. She told me she’d called you, so I sort of let it be known to other people what she said. Too bad I didn’t get to finish you, though. Would’ve saved a trip over here tonight.”

“Must have made you angry, you being the pro and all.”

“Pissed me off. I never miss.”

“If you never miss, how come it took two shots for Waldo?”

“It’s my style. I always shoot twice, one to stop ’em, one to drop ’em.”

“But you missed me.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty quick. And I didn’t know about the damn deadbolt. Actually, it didn’t matter much. Remember, it’s Grace that missed you. Made her more human, I think.”

“But lucky for me. So it was a hit all along. Killing Krueger had nothing to do with Taliaferro’s files, local blackmail, or anything else.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“And now you plan to shoot me?”

“Got to. Sorry about that. Things were just starting to get good around here.” She smiled and leveled the pistol at his head.

“Before you do that, one last question—how do you plan to kill me? I mean there will be another investigation. Someone will put all those clippings and pictures sitting in Schwartz’s evidence locker together and come looking for your husband. Did you know about the photographs? I bet your husband is in one of them. Sooner or later, they will find you.”

“Not this time. They don’t have a clue, see, because Krueger is dead. Who’s going to say who’s who? Besides, I’m not going to shoot you. You’re going to shoot yourself.”

“Really? Where did I get the gun? Mine ended up in Grace’s burn barrel.”

“No, no, Blake. This is your gun, pretty nice, too. Needs some work, but you kept it good. No, the one in the barrel is its twin, one of mine. You’re going to commit suicide with your own gun which, naughty boy, you reported stolen. Shame on you, Padre, you should not tell fibs to the police.”

“And you think they will buy a suicide?”

“Schwartz? Are you kidding? I told you he’s dumber than a box of rocks. And he’ll believe it because my son-in-law, the Attorney General, will tell him to. And besides, what reason would he have not to?”

“So I am going to blow my brains out. Why?”

“Oh, the tragedies of the past weeks have preyed on your mind. Then, there is your drug habit, which explains the crack cocaine I hid in your luggage in one of those upstairs bedrooms. But mostly, you are feeling guilty for what you did to that bimbo in Philadelphia.”

“I didn’t do anything to that woman.”

“Who cares? In your note, which I will type on your computer, you will confess that you really did assault her. You took advantage of the fact she was known to be a person who misrepresented relationships with men all the time, so you ‘had your way with her’ as they used to say. Do you think she will deny it? You are, after all, a very moral guy and you would want to clear the record, wouldn’t you? Of course, you would. What’s her name, by the way? I want to get the spelling right. I don’t want to give the sheriff a mental hernia when he does his snooping.”