Free 4 - Stranger Room: Ike Schwartz Mystery 4 by Frederick Ramsay

far away. She pinched her nose to stop the sneeze and spooned her flan.

Chapter 11
    Essie Falco blew on her cup of morning coffee. While she faced her computer screen and radio paraphernalia, she kept Karl Hedrick in the corner of her eye. She didn’t trust him. She couldn’t say why, exactly. It wasn’t because he was a black man, she was pretty sure of that. After all, Charlie Picket had been in the sheriff’s office since before Ike even, and she didn’t have trouble with him. Of course, when Ike took over, he gave Charlie a full duty assignment. Before then, Charlie had been assigned to the south end of town which was where most of the African-American families lived, at least until lately. Some of the older folks didn’t cotton to Charlie’s being in their part of town now-a-days, especially out in Bolton, where that murder took place. Now that was something interesting, considering…The radio on her desk crackled, which distracted her momentarily, and when she finished talking to the deputy who’d called in, he was gone.
    She heard his laughter in the hallway. He must have found an excuse to wander over to Sam’s space. Now, that was another thing. She liked Samantha Ryder…Sam, even though she stood, like, over six feet tall and had them green eyes and red hair. She could’ve played basketball for Ireland or something. And that Karl was even taller. He could probably have played for the Harlem Globe Trotters. Theirs was not a match Essie cared for, or folks in the town approved of, though most of them wouldn’t come right out and say so. But there you are. It’s a whole new world, and Ike said she’d better get used to it, so she guessed she should. Anybody but Ike saying that, and she’d probably take a walk. But Ike…well, you couldn’t say no to him, even if he was, like, Jewish and all. And Ike liked Karl, so that was that. She shook her head. No, she thought, it’s not Karl’s being colored that mattered—well not much—it’s that he’s FBI, and the office got nothing but grief from that quarter. She wondered what Karl did that got him a suspension from the Bureau, and then a phony assignment to Picketsville.
    “Hey, Mr. FBI guy,” she yelled, “you working that shooting up in Bolton?”
    “What?”
    “Get your rear end out here, and leave Sam alone, or I’ll tell Ike you’ve been smoochin’ on company time. What I asked was, are you working on the mess out at the old Lydell place.”
    Karl reappeared. “I am. You got something for me?”
    “Maybe. There’s a story that I heard, when I was growing up, about Lydell’s place.”
    “A story?”
    “I think there was a murder out there in that house, back in the Civil War day, same as this one.”
    “What do you mean, same as this one ?”
    “The dead guy was, like, locked up, wasn’t he? That’s what Billy’s brother told Billy.”
    “Yeah. A locked room murder. So?”
    “Well, that’s the way it got done before, I think. You could look that up and you’d have a solution right then and there.”
    “Sam,” Karl shouted, “Google locked room mystery, Picketsville, Virginia.”
    ***
    Betsy Blessing’s husband described her shop as her hobby job. She resented the notion that she wasn’t serious about her store, but had to admit that business needed to pick up, and soon. She barely made enough to cover her expenses, never took any money home. The IRS would have something to say about another Schedule C, declaring another loss, if she didn’t get something going. She needed to show a profit. The bell over the door clanked a welcome and she looked up to see Ike pushing through the door, his new clock under his arm.
    “I hope you’re here to buy a whole suite of furniture to go with that clock. You are, aren’t you?”
    “Why would you think that?” He moved a stack of gilt edged books aside and set the clock down on a fragile Hepplewhite chair.
    “Well, talk around town is you and the brainy Dr. Harris will be