Drowning Barbie (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Flora Blevins' middle initial was said to be
S
. No one knew what the
S
stood for but all agreed it was not Subtle or Saintly—Stubborn, maybe. As Ike entered the diner, she fixed him with a fierce eye.

“I hear you got Ethyl Smut on a slab at the morgue,” she announced. Ike couldn't tell if the news had come to her as a surprise, an expectation, or simply as bad.

“I do, Miz Blevins.” No one called Flora by her first name before ten o'clock. As with her middle name, the reasons for that rule remained buried in Picketsville folklore. “Did you know the woman?”

“Another lifetime, maybe I did.”

“Right. Okay, would you know where her daughter is?”

“Why would I know that?”

“You said you knew the woman, I thought it possible you might know the daughter's whereabouts.We are looking for her in connection with her mother's death. So, you don't have a suggestion where we might start?”

“That ain't in my job description, Sheriff. What I can tell you is she ran away from home at sixteen or so. She could be anywhere or nowhere.”

“And you know her because…?”

“I was her godmother and so I still care about her, that's how, not that it's any business of yours. She was a darling little girl when she were little, Darla was. Ethyl ruined her and I don't blame that girl for booking out of that trailer as soon as she had a chance. Been, what, two, three years now.”

“Her godmother?”

“Don't you go and give me that look. You heard me. Now eat 'fore the hash browns get all cold. And try Facebook.”

“Facebook? Flora…Miz Blevins, you look at Facebook?”

“Me? Not a chance. I don't own one of those computer things and don't ever aim to. I heard about it from old Colonel Bob Twelvetrees before he up and died on me. He used to do all that whatever they do on them things.”

“Facebook. I'll keep that in mind. You said she was a nice girl back in the day?”

“I said she was a darlin' little girl. That didn't last long. Not past her seventh or eighth birthday, it didn't. No, sir. That Ethyl, she ruined the little girl.”

“How?”

“Ain't proper talking about it here, or anywhere else either as a matter of fact. I'll just say this, if I'da had the opportunity and felt pretty sure you wouldn't find me out, I'da snuffed the Smut bitch my own self. And that's the truth.”

“Listen to you, Miz Blevins. I declare. I am making progress. I have my first suspect.”

“I didn't say I did it and I ain't the murdering kind. I only said
if
.”

“I heard you. Would you be willing to drop in the office and fill me in on why,
if
you were the murdering kind, you would have done in Ethyl Smut?”

“Why? How is knowing what I woulda done
if
, gonna help you catch the person who did?”

“Because, if you feel that strongly about a woman whose daughter you agreed to sponsor at baptism—have I got that right?—it's reasonable to assume that some others, many others in fact, might share those feelings. And I need to know why, to find out the who.”

“That's too many words in one mouthful there, Ike, but sure, I'll drop by. I only know what I saw. No, make that only what I was allowed to see, if you follow my meaning. There's more to it than that.”

“I am sure the girl could tell us a great deal, but as you can't help me find her, I am stuck with you. Is there anyone else in town who might know where she is?”

“That's all I can say. You read Ethyl's arrest file. You'll see. Lordy, I don't know how many times me and the neighbors called to complain about what was going on in that trailer. Then, of course, she moved away with that bum, Angelo somebody.”

“Angelo was the girl's father or Ethyl's boyfriend?”

“Not the father and just one of God-only-knows how many men. She jumped from one to the other depending who would feed her habit. It was the flavor of the month, you could say. Franco.”

“What?”

“Angelo Franco was one of them that she lived with for a spell. He was probably in on it too.”

“In on what?'

“Misusing that little girl is what. I ain't saying anything more.”

“Okay for now, but later you will need to talk to me. And now, don't
you
go giving me the look. So, she lived in your neighborhood for a while and then left. Is that right?”

“Yep. Now eat.”

“Yessum.”

***

Ike returned to the office, his mind on Flora. He believed she had information that could open the investigation so, why did she only offer gossip? Usually she would be forthcoming. Today he would swear she had something she did not want to share. What was she not telling him? He stepped through the sheriff's office door. Something was missing. He couldn't put his finger on it, but the office had somehow changed. He felt as if he'd somehow walked into a parallel universe configured exactly like his own but different. He stepped into the squad room and looked around. Essie stared back at him.

“What?” she said.

“Something's wrong.”

“You think?”

“Yes, definitely. I can't figure out what it is.”

“Probably 'cause you don't smell coffee. That's what's missing. Good or bad, fresh or burned, this place always smelled like coffee brewing. Now we don't brew except one cup at a time in that thing you brought. The office has lost its coffee personality.”

“Ah. Gone, but not forgotten.”

Ike retreated to his desk and picked up Ethyl Smut's file. He caught the Police Academy intern out of the corner of his eye as he exited the office. Ike called out to him.

“You managed to find a recent address for the Smuts. Good work.”

He grinned, pulled himself up, and tried to look police professional. Ike said that when he returned he should search through Facebook and find the girl, if he could. The kid said he would. If she had a wall, he'd find it. Ike didn't ask him what the hell a wall was. TMI.

Charley Picket arrived with a large evidence bag filled with things he'd found in the hay barn. Actually the evidence bag was a garbage bag with an official-looking tag, but nobody needed to know that. Ike retrieved his key and padlock and dumped the contents of the bag on the floor. He began to pick through it, then thought better of it. His father's mystery intruders could wait. He had two murders on his desk, one old, one recent, and he needed to concentrate on the job at hand. He could sort through all this stuff later. He gathered the pile on the floor together and shoved it back in the bag. He paused over a faded photograph. It could have been an early Polaroid. It wasn't, obviously, but the degree of yellowing and the serrated edge made it seem so. He put it aside rather than returning it to the bag.

Essie was right, there was no coffee personality. Funny how you get to expect something like that. It wasn't as if it held any great attraction, the opposite actually, but change, even change that improves, isn't always easily accommodated. He swiveled back to his desk and directed his attention to the meager gleanings from the crime scene in the woods.

In addition to Charley Picket's apparent murder weapon find, the deputies had uncovered a few odds and ends. One plastic bag held an old shell casing—nine millimeter—corroded. It wasn't clear if it had come out of or lay on the ground, but in either case it had done so for some time. Ike wondered if it might be connected to the older case. Certainly a possibility.

A second bag held a faded ragged one dollar bill with a phone number scrawled in pencil on it. Who used a pencil nowadays? The United States Treasury printed bills on expensive and special paper. The formula changed from time to time as counterfeiters grew increasingly more sophisticated, and there was a very readable serial number on it. There was a better-than-even chance he could date the bill by the paper's composition and serial number. Then, if it connected to the dead guy, he'd at least have a rough time frame and a phone number from the time to look up. He'd have it tested. No area code with the phone number, so it could be for anybody and from anywhere. Still, it was worth a try. The dead man's clothes, the ME said, had been purchased in New York. That narrowed the search area somewhat. He'd have someone look for the phone number in the Connecticut, New York, Long Island, and New Jersey directories for the years the bill had been in circulation. Maybe something would jump out.

Then there were the dental records the ME was cooking up. He should have an ID soon enough. There was no way all or any of this could be linked to either killing with certainty, but the fact they were found at the scene might lead to something. One hoped so.

The techs had made a plaster cast of a footprint, boot print actually. It could be either that of a child or a woman and the tread indicated the boot had been recently purchased. He'd need to identify the maker and survey the local stores for a recent sale of that particular boot. So, progress. As soon as Billy and the intern returned, he'd get them cracking on this stuff.

He stared at the yellowed photo, leaning back in his ancient oak desk chair which, mercifully, had responded to oil and lost its squeal.

Chapter Eight

In mid-June the scent of hundreds of flowers and shrubs compete with each other for attention, particularly in the morning when the air is cooler and the dew still adorns the petals. In a few weeks or perhaps days and, if you haven't planned your plantings carefully, only honeysuckle will be in bloom and by July, that will be the only relaxing scent anywhere. Aromatherapy is not a New Age invention. Gardeners have known about it for millennia.

Ike and Ruth sat in his car on the parking lot of Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church with the windows rolled down. They'd had their hour with The Reverend Blake Fisher and now stared through the windscreen seeing, but otherwise not appreciating, the flowers that bordered the graveled lot.

“He said ‘No.' Do you believe that?” Ruth asked.

“He did, and I do.”

“I can't believe it. I mean, we have known him since he arrived as a wet-behind-the ears vicar with enough baggage to keep a shrink busy for a year. You solved a murder that practically shut his church down and could have sent him packing. And, as you pointed out, I very nearly made him a faculty member. Well, thank God that didn't happen.'

“Slight exaggeration on the baggage quotient there, Harris, and it's his church. I guess he can do anything he wants. Maybe if you had given him an appointment of some sort, he'd have to have accommodated. Hell, you're the president.”

“Nuts. How could he not marry us?”

“Listen, he does have a point.”

“Which was? Remind me.”

“He said a church wedding is a sacrament and not to be taken lightly. In his line of work I guess that's important. He said he loved us both but he also knew that the wedding would be just for show and to cover our asses—actually he didn't say asses—embarrassment at the circumstances of our foray into matrimony in Vegas. But doing it for us certainly did not represent a commitment by either of us to a religious point of view, lifestyle, or the sacrament involved.”

“I don't care. He could have done us a favor and ignored his scruples.”

“He could have, but let's face it, he knew neither of us would ever darken his door again except for an occasional drop-in for someone else's wedding or funeral. We are not members of his congregation, never will be, and I guess he didn't want to turn his church into an East Coast version of the Budding Rose Wedding Chapel.”

“He didn't say that.”

“Not in so many words, no, but that was the gist.”

“I don't care, he could have.”

“If he'd asked you to put on a mock graduation ceremony and award him an honorary degree to help him be elected bishop, would you have done it?”

“Don't be ridiculous. Honorary doctorates are earned by a lifetime of scholarship or…Oh, crap. I get it. Okay, now what do we do?”

“We have two choices. We can try other churches—Rabbi Shusterman will give us the same lecture, by the way—or we can cowboy up, tell the truth, and throw the town a party.”

“Cowboy up?”

“Okay, cowgirl up, bite the bullet, face the music, be the man—”

“I get it. Right. This weekend, we will go up to the A-frame and start writing guest lists. Call your dad and ask if he can delay lunch an hour or so. Sunday, we'll drive back here at noon, pick up my mother, cow-person up, and bite the music.”

“Nicely put. How about some lunch?”

“As long as you really mean lunch and are not angling for something more physical. I have work to do. The board meets this afternoon and my spies tell me one or two of them have issues.”

“Issues? What kind of issues? And I did mean lunch as in eating food and drinking liquids.”

“Good, find us a place where we can sit, bitch about the sanctimoniousness of The Reverend Fisher, repent of it, eat a sandwich or a salad, and discuss the board's issues.”

“I know just the place.”

***

Blake Fisher, the object of Ike and Ruth's annoyance, did not think of himself as particularly sanctimonious nor did he believe he could be fairly described as either rigid or unsympathetic. But he had lately begun to resent and then react to the increasing secularization of society in general and the church in particular. It was one thing to minimize the forms of worship as “seeker churches” did in order to help younger people find a comfortable, if shallow, spirituality. You had to start them off somewhere. But, it was another thing entirely to jettison the substance with the forms in order to be politically correct or make people comfortable in their disbelief. Add to that, this business that Ike and Ruth wanted. Why do people who have no religious grounding or interest think they need a church wedding? Every May he turned away at least four couples who asked to “rent his church.” He really did like Ike and Ruth, respected their position, and he wished them well, but if he bent the rules for them, he'd have to do it for everyone and he did not want to be known as the “Marrying Sam” of the Shenandoah Valley.

His thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock on his door. His secretary poked her head in and said there was a young woman waiting in the church who wanted to speak to him.

“In the church? Why there and not in the office?”

“She didn't say. Shall I call someone…ask the sheriff to come back?”

“Ask the— Why would I need the sheriff?”

“She looks sort of scruffy. I think she's a homeless person here to hit you up for money. You know how those people are.”

“No, Dolores, I don't know anything of the sort.”

Dolores Manfred was a temp. Happily so. A church needed a secretary who shared at least some basic Christian qualities, and bigotry wasn't one of them.

“I'll talk to her. If she tries to attack me, you'll be the first to hear me scream.”

Dolores huffed back to her office.

Blake's office gave way to a small room that served as the sacristy and then to the church nave. He stepped through the oak door and glanced around. A figure in a faded hoodie sat slumped over in the front pew. She was only twenty feet away and the hood nearly covered her face, but Blake could see she'd been crying.

“Mrs. Manfred said you wanted to see me?”

The girl started. Blake would have sworn she'd cringed at the sound of his voice.

“I don't know. See, I don't, you know, go to church much. Is this a Catholic church? I saw the little statues on the walls with the numbers and figured it had to be.”

“You saw the Stations of the Cross. They are not necessarily Catholic with a capital C. Other denominations use the stations on occasion as well.”

“Oh. So you're not, like, Catholic.”

“I am catholic with a lower case C, not Roman, if I take your meaning.”

“What?”

Blake realized a lecture on catholicity and its many inter-pretations would not be useful at the moment. “I assume you are not a Roman Catholic, Miss. Why did you ask? Do you want to go to a Catholic church, or is there something else?”

“A guy I used to know…see, one time he tried to fix me, but couldn't or something. He said I should confess to a priest and then I would be okay with God.”

“You want to make a confession?”

“I guess. Will I be okay with God if I do? I've been in some pretty bad shit…sorry, I forgot. There, you see what I mean? I can't even talk to a preacher without pissing off God. Sorry.”

“God has heard it all before. If you wish, I can hear your confession. Or, if you'd rather, I can tell you how to find a Catholic church, or you can sit here as long as you like and talk to God yourself.”

“I tried that. It don't work, somehow I can't, like, get connected. That's why I came here. You're allowed to do that stuff? I mean you're a priest and all?”

“If by ‘stuff' you mean hear your confession, I can, and if you want me to, I will. Does anybody know you're here?”

The girl started again and gave him a look he would have described as frightened—except why would that question scare her? Unless she was on the run.

“Yeah. I told my…I told the people I am staying with about it, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“They're not, like, church people. I don't think they'd get it, so I said I wanted to take a little walk.”

“Okay. I don't want to be accused of misleading anybody. So, yes, I can hear your confession.”

The girl frowned and scrunched up her face. “I don't know. Aren't there rules or something about that?”

“Probably, but that would be someone else's problem. Here's the deal. I will listen to you. Anything you say will be confidential. You know what the ‘Seal of the Confessional' is?”

“You can't tell the cops?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“You know I'm crazy?”

“Pardon?”

“Like if I let go for even a minute, I lose it. Like, I am hanging on to being normal by my fingernails.”

Blake glanced at the girl's hands and saw little evidence of nails. She had chewed them to the quick.

“Why is that?”

“It's like the shit…the life I was into back in the day. One doc who saw me said I'm ‘chemically imbalanced' from back then, like when I was born or something. Hey, if it's not something you can do, you know—”

“It's okay. Do you have a name?”

“Yeah, but not today. Maybe I can say it later, but I better not yet. Is that part of the confessing? I gotta tell you my name?'

“No, not a part. God knows you. That's enough for now.”

The girl scratched her arm and studied the carpet. Blake noted that there did not seem to be any needle marks on it. A good sign.

“Okay. What do I do now?”

Blake handed her a prayer book. “Read the pages I've marked with a ribbon. When you're ready, just tell me what's going on.”

Blake watched as the girl read the pages he'd indicated. Her lips moved as she tracked the words. She looked up, her expression a question mark. Blake motioned her to kneel at the altar rail. He sat in a chair on the other side at a right angle, facing away from her and staring at the wall to her left. Twenty minutes later, when she'd finished, he gave her absolution. He assured her he would not talk to the police. He understood why she might not want to, but that she should. She mumbled something about it being part of her problem, shook her head and left. He didn't know if she felt better. He knew he didn't. He returned to his office furious at a society that allowed people to do terrible things to their children. He still did not know her name.

He wanted to weep.