7 - Rogue: Ike Schwartz Mystery 7 (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

Ike finally yielded to his father’s pestering and attended a small luncheon of businessmen and potential supporters. He spoke briefly about how he viewed his position and what he hoped to see in the sheriff’s office in the future. Picketsville was, he said, a growing community. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked that, but it was a fact and the town and its citizens needed to keep that in mind when they discussed budgetary issues. He hoped he sounded thoughtful and sincere. The truth was his mind went wandering halfway through his speech and he had no real idea what he’d said or if it made any sense. The rapt expressions on the faces of his listeners suggested he had.

He then answered questions about why he should be re-elected over his opponent and what he would do differently if he were. The questions were predictable, his responses, perfunctory. He did manage to hang on to his temper when the questions devolved from the obvious to the inane. Traffic patterns on Main Street did not interest him and he was not aware the town experienced a “rush hour,” and if so, certainly not one that needed his attention. But he scowled thoughtfully and said he’d look into it.

When asked what other changes he would make, he brightened a bit, thought a moment, and suggested one or two of the town’s other municipal offices might be areas needing scrutiny. He’d had some complaints, not substantiated of course, but where there’s smoke, and so on. When pressed he shrugged and muttered something about possible instances of undue influence from the administrative branch being brought to bear on the employees of some other departments. He was careful not to use the word “mayor.” He imagined the person thus not mentioned would hear about what had been said within five minutes of the meeting’s conclusion. His father’s expression did not alter during this last musing, but Ike did notice the blood vessel on his temple begin the throb. He received polite, but not enthusiastic applause when he finished. So much for campaigning.

***

He spent the next half an hour working his way through the phone system at Let States Decide
to make an appointment to meet with Byron Yeats. Then he returned to Charlie’s Comcast van to find out what Kevin had gleaned about LSD’s Chief Executive Officer. Kevin handed him seven pages, eight-point type, single-spaced. His name really was Byron Yeats, born Byron Shelley Yeats, in fact. His mother once taught English literature and poetry at a community college in western Kansas, which doubtless explained the name. His father was a painter—of houses, not canvases.

Ike retreated to the Crossroads for a BLT, coffee, and a place to read. He had settled into his booth with his sandwich, fresh-brewed coffee, and only a small dose of nagging from Flora Blevins when Agnes called for an update on Acting President Fiske.

“You were right, Agnes. Your temporary boss has padded his résumé over the years, and in more than one area.”

“Oh dear, what should I do now?”

“You should do nothing, Agnes. I have turned the documents over to a member of the Board of Trustees and they will deal with it. You do not want an angry Doctor Fiske or any of his friends, if he has any that are involved, after you for blowing the whistle. Take some advice and forget about it.”

“Oh, do you really think they would be upset enough to do something vengeful?”

“It’s not likely, but you should be cautious anyway. Academe can be a jungle and nobody likes a whistleblower.”

“Well, thank you. If the Board needs to interview me or Sheila, I’m sure it would be appropriate. She’s not in today, though. Doctor Fiske asked me where she was, as if I would know. Imagine!”

“Thank you, Agnes, I’ll pass that along.”

Ike closed his phone and promptly forgot Agnes and her problem. Enough already with the peregrinations of the academic set. He needed to focus. He spread the sheets of paper on the table in a disorderly array. Periodically, he underlined or jotted a note in the margin of a passage he thought might be useful. Byron Yeats had been busy in his fifty-four years.

***

“I’ve got to run up to DC, Kiddo, so I may not find a way to visit you tonight. Your mom had to go out of town and Charlie is AWOL as well. Sorry about that. I think we are digging up some useful information on who pushed you into the pole but it is still scattered and not too clear just yet.”

Ike gazed at an inert Ruth, unsure what if anything he should tell her. Fiske could wait. That problem was in Marge Tice’s hands. So what to talk about then?

“I wish you could talk to me.”

He tried his best to sound cheerful. He doubted he succeeded. God, she could slide into a vegetative state and then…not again! Where are you, God?

“You were always able to figure out where I needed to cast my net. Well, not all the time, but just talking to you seemed to help. So…” Ike’s voice trailed off. It wasn’t the same, somehow, just talking. He needed a sentient, wise-cracking Ruth to make it work.

***

In spite of Ike’s warnings and Frank’s direct orders, Essie and Billy left the house, put Junior in the care of Billy’s mother, and set out for Buena Vista. Burns had to be up to something. A person didn’t just walk away from one police job and shoot for another without a reason. It seemed obvious to them that Burns must have been up to something and they aimed to find out what it was.

Their first stop was at a coffee shop close to where he lived. The counterman had all kinds of things to say about Burns and none of them were complimentary, but by the same token, none were suggestive of criminality either.

“So,” Essie said, sipping a very bad cup of coffee, “What’s he really like? I mean, didn’t he used to be your top guy in the police department?”

“You heard that?”

“That’s what he says.”

“He’s county. He was assigned to us, is all. He ain’t no big-deal cop. Only thing I ever found him good for was to fix a speeding ticket once, and that cost me twenty-five dollars. Shit, it’d been cheaper to pay the fine.”

“Write that down, Billy. We can use that. What’s your name, Sir?”

“You writing stuff down? Who are you?”

“Umm, we’re newspaper reporters. We’re doing a story about corrupt policemen.”

“Fixing a traffic ticket ain’t my idea of corruption and if’n you want that, go to Detroit or Washington by-damn, DC. That’s where you’ll get a story. Say, what paper you with?”

“Thanks for your help, I reckon we better go, great coffee. Come on, Billy.”

“You didn’t get my name. It’s Ballard. Edd, that’s with two D’s, but people call me Tank on account of my size. What’s yours?

“Umm, Wickwire, Amos and…Darlene Wickwire. Thanks again.”

They tumbled out the door and dashed to the truck.

“Wickwire? Essie, what are you thinking?”

“It was the first thing that popped into my head. You weren’t no help.”

“You don’t look like no Darlene, that’s a fact.”

“Well thank you for that, anyway. Where do we go now?”

“I saw a bar up the road a piece. Best place to get information is bars and barbershops. We’ll do the bar and then I’ll get me a haircut.”

“Okay, but only one beer, you hear?”

“I know what I’m doing, Essie. Who’s the cop here, you or me?”

“One beer, that’s final.”

Chapter Twenty-three

The next morning Ike stopped in the hospital cafeteria for a quick cup of coffee and a moment to jot some notes before taking off for Arlington and tackling Byron Yeats. Frank, Billy, and Essie Sutherlin found him there.

“We need your okay to visit Ruth,” Frank said. “Visitors are limited in the ICU. The lady at the desk asked Essie if she was Agnes Ewalt. I guess she has a pass, that right?”

“Ike, I don’t look a thing like that dumpy old woman. That nurse had a nerve.”

“Indeed you don’t, Essie. I think she’s a volunteer and wouldn’t know either of you, so give her a break. Ruth’s mother set up the permission for Agnes, I gather. Do I need to sign something?”

Frank dropped a slip of paper on the table. Ike turned it around and signed. “Not too long and for God’s sake, Essie, no talk about Jack Burns and the accident.”

“Ike! I wouldn’t do that. Shoot we’re just going to say ‘Hi’ and all.”

“Billy, Essie, you two go on ahead. I will join you later. I need a minute with Ike.”

Frank plunked down opposite Ike. “Couple of things you need to know. I thought you might like an update. We have a connection for the dead guy.”

“You pulled in the drug users and dealers?”

“Well, no. We started to and then got a call from the State Police on the missing-but-not-missing truck. Do you know about the latest theft target? Hay. Honest to God, people are stealing hay out of the fields and people’s barns. A farmer up the valley heard about what was going on and went to Radio Shack and bought a surveillance camera with night vision capability. When the thieves hit, he called the cops and they ran the tape.”

“People are stealing hay?”

“Hay, yes. With the drought and the increase of small feeder lots and so on, the price of hay and straw has gone up enough to make stealing the stuff worth the risk. It’s a big problem in Britain and in Maricopa County, Arizona, too. I saw that on the Internet. Who’d believe it?”

“I guess I heard about it, but it never occurred to me that it would be a problem here. What took the State so long to call us?”

“The farmer’s setup wasn’t very expensive or very good. The pictures were grainy, if that is what digitalized pictures are—probably not—but anyway, they had to tinker with the picture and then only got a partial on the truck’s plate. After that they had to run it through the motor vehicle system computer. They skipped over the college’s vehicle because they couldn’t imagine it would be a likely candidate. Anyway, after they crossed off every other suspect truck, they called us.”

“Did they see who was driving the thing?”

“They didn’t say. Some figures in the field but no ID. Like I said the images were kind of raw.”

“So this leads us where, exactly? I mean, besides knowing that someone at the college was moonlighting as a hay thief.”

“To Bolton and the next item in the story. It’s fascinating. You remember me telling you about the couple in the area that had the fight about their dog and the husband took a steak knife in his backside?”

“I do. So, that goes where?”

“To their barn. These part-time residents of Bolton leased it a month ago. The owner called to complain that his tenant hadn’t paid the rent, had skipped, and had damaged his tractor to boot.”

“But that wasn’t what the fight was about that produced the coup de derrière?”

“The what? Oh, no, it was the dog, but it might have been connected. I went out there and took a look. We found the dog dead a few yards from the barn—been shot. I don’t know how badly the tractor was damaged or even how the owner knew. He doesn’t farm the land but leases it to a factory farmer out of Madisonville. There was evidence that a lot of hay had once been stored there, and a sign had been set up on the road nearby advertising hay for sale. Long story short, he identified a picture of Marty Duffy as the guy who rented the barn. Marty was dealing a different sort of weed, apparently.”

“So the big score he bragged about wasn’t dope after all. You think it was hay?”

“Don’t know, Ike. I’d have to say probably not. I’m thinking it had to do with something else, something bigger. Tell me, what substance which has a high street value and can easily be stored in a hay mow comes to mind?”

“You think?”

“Maybe. A bale of marijuana looks and smells enough like hay to be invisible in a place like that. It’s speculation, but think of the possibilities.”

“Take the county’s drug-sniffing dog out there and see if it confirms the presence of weed. It has a nose that can detect an ounce in a carload.”

“Will do.” Frank stirred as if to leave. Ike held up his hand.

“Try this while you are poking around looking for trace evidence. Duffy used the truck on the weekends and at night, presumably to haul hay. Leave the dope out of the equation for a minute and consider the possibility that he goes to the university to ‘borrow’ the truck and while he’s at it, he sees or hears someone near it or fooling around. Whatever he or she or they are up to looks like an opportunity for him to blackmail someone and so he approaches him/her/them. But instead of shaking them down, he’s snuffed.”

“As an alternative, I like it. But until the dog with the magic nose says otherwise, I’m putting my money on the drug deal gone sour. Remember, he plied that trade before he came here. Old habits die hard.”

“You’re probably right. Did you have something else you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh yeah. Again, you’re not going to like this. Essie and Billy were over in Buena Vista snooping around. Apparently they stirred up a ruckus in a bar over there when they started asking questions about Burns.”

“Where’s the uproar in that?”

“Well, it turns out Billy was over his limit in Rolling Rock and proceeded to get very loud. Then Essie jumped on his case, and the upshot is the county cops were called and escorted them out with a warning.”

“Put a leash on those two, Frank. God knows, I appreciate what they are trying to do but tell them it isn’t helping.”

“I have, and I will again.” Frank left to join the others and Ike headed to his car and the trip to Arlington.

Ike closed his eyes and tried to see the humor at the image of midnight hay thieves. It was there but it eluded him. The darkness that followed him through most of his waking hours dropped over his mind like the curtain in a theater. What comes next in this two-penny drama?

***

“Well, hey there, Miz Harris. You’re looking pretty spiffy today. Billy’s here and Frank is coming. He wanted to talk to Ike first ‘fore he got away. We can’t stay long, just came by to say—”

“Essie, what are you doing? She can’t talk. If she can hear you, you’re just frustrating the bejeezus out of her.”

“What do you know, Billy? I don’t recall as how you been to medical school anytime lately.”

“It don’t take a doc to know that, Sweet Cheeks.”

“Well, I still think she ought to know who’s here and who’s not. If I was laid up like that, you know, and couldn’t move or see or nothing, and I knew they was people in the room I surer’n heck would want to know who they was. Scare me half to death if I couldn’t yell out for help and all if there was a stranger hanging around.”

“Nnngh.”

“Did you hear that? She’s trying to say something, Billy.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Probably agreeing with what I just said…ain’t you, Ms. H?”

“Nnngh.”

“See, what I tell you. Say, here’s Frank come to say hi, too. Lordy, we hope you pop out of this soon, because Ike, he’s a mess.”

“Essie!”

“Sorry. You rest easy there. We’ll keep Ike straight, don’t you worry.”