5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 Read online

  The telephone rang. He’d been told the land line service had been discontinued. That bit of information had pleased him very much. He had his cell phone for emergencies and had instructed his staff not to call. He intended to leave it off but would check his voice mail a few times a day. A real emergency would require catching him when he had it on, or a call to the Delaware State Police. The phone rang again. Nobody he knew could possibly have the number, even if it was in service. He’d picked it up to listen for a dial tone when he first arrived. There had been none. But now…it rang again. Finally, to stop the noise and satisfy his curiosity, he looped a finger through the handle of his coffee cup and shuffled indoors.

  “Yeah,” he said into a phone so permanently lubricated with a season’s worth of sun screen it nearly slipped from his hand. He half expected someone asking for the previous tenant or the owner.

  “You had breakfast yet?” Charlie Garland asked.

  “I won’t even guess how you did this, Charlie, but I have to tell you, it’s scary what you spooks can do.”

  “I tried your cell phone but all I got was voice mail. You should stay in touch.”

  “I had the reverse in mind, actually. What do you want?”

  “There’s a nice breakfast place in Rehoboth Beach. I could meet you there.”

  “Meet me? Where are you, Charlie?”

  “I am sitting in an official-looking black SUV on Ocean Highway about ten miles out. Can you join me?”

  “Sure, why not. Are you going to tell me why you’re in Delaware at this hour, or will that be the price of breakfast?”

  “The Avenue Restaurant, on Rehoboth Avenue, a block or so from the beach, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  ***

  “Trasker, fetch!” Barney threw the stick—farther this time. It sailed over the edge of an embankment and out of sight. The big German shepherd galloped away and disappeared over the rim of a streambed. He waited. The seconds ticked by. By now the dog should have come crashing back to him, stick in mouth. That worried him. He knew the dog was probably okay, but ever since the Dumonts’ two shepherds, Fritz and Otto, disappeared the previous month, he’d become slightly paranoid about Trasker. He knew he could take care of himself and, unlike Fritz and Otto, rarely strayed far from home.

  “Trasker!” he called. The dog’s head appeared briefly. It stared pleadingly at him and dropped out of sight again. He heard low whimpering.

  “Trasker, here boy.” The dog barked loudly. He walked toward the sound.

  “What is it?”

  Whimper.

  The embankment dropped away sharply to the streambed. The dog seemed to be worrying something—the stick? Wet leaves piled up at the brook’s edge. It had risen with a late September thunderstorm the previous afternoon, and now splashed over and around a series of flat rocks which seemed to have been placed in it like stepping stones. They appeared oddly out of place.

  He sidestepped down into the swale and walked toward the dog. It looked up at him, uncertainty in its eyes. He stepped forward to see what it had in its mouth. It didn’t look like the stick he’d thrown. The dog growled as he drew closer—a low rumble. Trasker never growled at him. Something was amiss. The dog turned sideways, dodged away a few feet, and wheeled to face him again, its jaws still clenched around the object. The man looked at the ground just vacated by the dog.

  Bones. He couldn’t be sure. Human, animal? He couldn’t tell. He leaned forward and looked more closely. A skull of some sort, sloping head, certainly not human. A dog? No sharp canine teeth, not a dog. His limited knowledge of biology in general and skulls in particular, led him to believe that a predator, a dog or meat eater, would have sharp teeth. A dentist would know. An arrangement of long and short bones. It wasn’t so much the bones that worried him, but their seeming placement on the ground—as if they had been set out with some sort of plan in mind. Something was not right. The dog seemed to study him.

  “Trasker, drop it.” He said. The dog hesitated. He repeated his command. The dog retreated a few steps, snorted and dropped the bone—a large bone—too large to be a rabbit or any local wildlife. He slipped the leash back on the dog and climbed back to the meadow floor. He hurried to his car, put the dog in the back seat, and called the Sheriff’s office. He was no expert, but some those bones could be human, or not. Either way, the whole scene had a spookiness about it. He did not consider himself to be either superstitious or intuitive, but he sensed something bad, perhaps even evil, had happened there.

  Chapter 3

  Ike found the restaurant and slipped into a booth across from Charlie Garland. He and Charlie had a history. After Ike left the CIA, Charlie had soldiered on in his job as a public relations man—a position Ike knew provided a cover for what Charlie really did. Ike never asked what that was, but he knew.

  “So, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Ike said, and studied the menu. He didn’t know why he did so. He always asked for the same thing.

  “You don’t need that. I’ve already ordered for you,” Charlie said, and sipped his coffee. The place was filled with breakfast aromas and sounds, bacon frying, coffee gurgling in large stainless steel urns, and toast. Ike inhaled. Surely it beat any scent manufactured by a Paris parfumerie. If women were serious about snagging a man with scent, he thought, they might try something called Diner #1.

  “Of course you have,” Ike said. He knew from experience that in many ways he was distressingly predictable. That Charlie knew his breakfast preferences and probable bar order did not dismay him anymore, but he sometimes worried that if he were so predictable he ran the risk of being compromised? The waitress brought him his coffee. “I ask again, Charlie, what—”

  “In a minute, Ike. I am studying the people with the mirror over the counter.”

  “Studying? As in looking for someone or somebody?”

  Charlie turned to face Ike and grinned. “Just practicing. Are you enjoying your vacation?”

  “I was, until you called. I watched the sun come up this morning. Lovely. But you didn’t drive down here from Langley to ask me that.”

  Charlie studied Ike like he would a steak at a butcher’s shop. Finally, apparently satisfied with his choice, he nodded and pulled a folder from a soft leather case lying on the bench beside him.

  “No, you’re right. I need a favor,” Charlie said, voice lowered and serious.

  “And that would be?”

  “My niece’s fiancé disappeared three months ago. I want you to find out what happened to him.”

  “He disappeared? Disappeared, as in missing person, disappeared, as in snatched, or just disappeared, as in mysterious?”

  “The latter. He had his pilot’s license and filed a flight plan from Martin State Airport—that’s north-east of Baltimore—to Salisbury and took off. He never made it. That was the Fourth of July.”

  “An accident, surely. No, you wouldn’t be here asking me to track him down if that’s what you believed. It’s something else, isn’t it?”

  “I think so, but the FAA, the Coast Guard, the National Transportation Safety Board, Maryland officialdom, have all washed their hands. As far as they are concerned, it was an accident. He flew on a moonless night into a fog bank. He was an inexperienced pilot and they think he probably drove himself into the bay. Death spiral. No wreckage has been found, and no body. I need you to find out what happened.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “No idea, but there’s this.” Charlie pulled out a small tape recorder and punched play. Ike listened as a tinny voice pleaded on the phone, “Lizzy, call your uncle Charlie. Tell him that there is something really bad going on—”

  “You notice anything in that message?”

  “You mean besides the static and thump at the end?”

  “The message, Ike, the message.”

  “Did he know what you do for a living?”

  “Sort of, yes. Enough obviously.”

  “He said call you. Not the pol
ice, not the Coast Guard, just you. He thought he saw something that belonged in your bailiwick, and judging by his tone of voice, something that frightened him.”

  “So it would seem. Will you help me?”

  “Charlie, helping you begs the question. What do you want me to do.”

  “I don’t want to screw up your vacation but—”

  “Not to worry. The truth is, I have been on my vacation for exactly three days. Never mind what I said before, I am bored to the proverbial tears. I can give you three and a half weeks, that’s all. But I have to tell you, I don’t know what I can do that others haven’t already done.”

  “You used to fly, didn’t you?”

  “Not exactly. The ops planners, in the wisdom born of chronic isolation, got it into their collective pointy heads one year that it would be a good thing if their field agents could fly—watched too many movies, I think. We all qualified, twin engine, IFR rated. But I never really did much with it after that.”

  “But you can or could if you had to?”

  “Yes, probably.”

  “Back track, Ike. Start with Martin State Airport. Talk to the flying instructor up there. His name is Trent Fonts. Maybe he knows something. Fly the same course and see where it takes you. You know how to do this stuff better than I.”

  “I’m a little rusty.”

  “I’ll buy you some oil.”

  “You can’t do this yourself?”

  “You know I can’t. If Homeland Security, the FBI, or any other involved agencies found out a CIA employee was working a case on their turf—”

  “Right.” Ike sat back and contemplated his coffee cup. “I don’t know. A guy flies out one night and disappears. No wreckage—”

  “There may be wreckage, just not visible.”

  “What do you mean, just not visible?”

  “He owned an old war bird, a Korean War spotter plane, a big heavy-duty Cessna high-wing. It was painted camo. If it splashed and sank in the mud in the Chesapeake Bay, there’d be no way—”

  “I thought all those planes had orange Day-Glo nosebowls.”

  “He and his co-owners painted it over with more camo.”

  “That legal?”

  “No idea. They did it, though. I think they had a notice from the FAA to correct that, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Great, so the top side would be lost in the mud, The underside of the wings would have been light blue and—”

  “Ike, there was no wreckage sighted, period.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Charlie. Three and a half weeks, max.”

  Charlie pushed his eggs and hash browns aside, slipped Ike a thick envelope and the folder he’d removed from his case earlier, and stood.

  “It’s all in here. Money, credit cards, IDs, names, reports, some photos, everything I have. I’ll check in with you in two days,” he said, and vanished through steamed up glass doors.

  ***

  Frank Sutherlin’s new sister-in-law, Essie, waved at him on her way to the ladies’ room. It was the third time in the last two hours. Frank was a bachelor. He’d asked his mother if there was something about women’s plumbing he missed in biology class. He described Essie’s frequent trips by his door. Dorothy Sutherlin had raised seven boys and counted her blessings that six of them were still alive and that Frank had moved back home when her son, Billy, married and moved in with his new bride. She beamed.

  “I’m fixing to get me a grandbaby,” she said.

  So that was it. The phone rang and he picked up. Essie, who normally sat at the dispatch desk, had not returned and no one else was available.

  “Sheriff’s Office, Acting Sheriff Sutherlin speaking. No, it’s…Frank…Billy’s off today. Out buying booties if I hear right.” He listened to the caller, said he’d be right out, and hung up. Essie rounded the corner.

  “Do you have something to tell me, Essie? A little secret, perhaps?”

  Essie stared at him wide-eyed. “I don’t think so. You know maybe I should see a doctor. I am spending way too much time in the can lately.”

  “That’d be a good idea, Sis. Or you can save yourself a copay and call your mother-in-law.”

  Essie frowned. “Mother-in-law…Ma?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I just took a call from a Barney Dunhill. He’s a professor up at the college, I think. He found a stash of suspicious looking bones out in the park. I don’t think it’s anything, but I’m going to drive out there and see, just in case. Tell Charlie Picket to watch the store while I’m gone.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Acting Sheriff, sir. How’re you making out with Ike being away?”

  “Well, to tell the truth, I would have been happier if he’d given me a couple more weeks to get used to this place before he took off for vacation. What’s that place he’s at?”

  “Delaware someplace, is all I know. Billy said to call him if you need anything.”

  “He’s okay with Ike making me the acting and not him?”

  “Billy? Shoot, yes.”

  “Okay, I’m off.”

  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.”
<
br />   “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.