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

something.”
    “And the folks serving the punch?”
    “Oh, yeah, can’t go there anymore, I guess. Well, it was a thought. Maybe we should do the roaring twenties. Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby , all that jazz. Better?”
    “Better. Well, tempus fugit .”
    “And also with you.”
    “What?”
    “Sorry, inside church joke. Ask the Reverend Blake Fisher.”
    She watched, as Ike laid the clock carefully in the trunk of his car next to the riot gear, a collection of crumpled paper coffee cups, and a change of clothes she guessed he must keep handy for those days when things really went south.

Chapter 12
    Jonathan Lydell riffled through the file case again. There was no doubt about it, pages were missing. A great many pages. Who could have taken them? The only person with access to his study was his daughter. Well, that was not, strictly speaking, true. Henry, that boy with the ridiculous hair and tattoos, came in and out from time to time. His brother worked in the sheriff’s office, of all things. One of that tiresome Sutherlin woman’s brood. Why that new Vicar let her kind run wild in his church never ceased to amaze him. It seemed impossible to him that so much had changed in the past forty years. The sheriff’s tone of voice still rankled. In the past, people like that Schwartz person would show some respect for a Lydell. The fact that Schwartz was Jewish only confirmed his despair over the sad pass the country had come to.
    “Martha Marie,” he shouted, “have you been rummaging through my papers again?”
    No response from the second floor. He tried again, with the same results. “Drunk at…” He checked his watch and returned it to its nesting place in his pocket. “…Three in the afternoon.” He sighed, and wondered again about Henry Sutherlin, and whether a boy like that would steal papers. There were more valuable things in the room and in plain sight. Not likely he’d steal documents. He’d have to read them first, and he was barely literate. Still, you never knew with these sharecroppers’ descendants. An untrustworthy and sly group, never loyal, the last to enlist, the first to surrender. He wondered if the sheriff would be interested enough in his files to send that red-haired idiot in to steal them. He doubted it, but decided to make some discreet inquires.
    “If those papers were to fall into the wrong hands, my books, my life’s work, everything, could be destroyed. I could be…”
    “Daddy, did you call me just now?” Martha Marie stood in the doorway, swaying a little. She put out her hand on the door jamb to steady herself.
    “Yes, I did. I wanted to know if you’d been in my papers again.”
    “Papers? What papers would that be? You mean your research papers. The stories you tell yourself about how we won the war.”
    “You are drunk. It’s barely three in the afternoon and you are three sheets to the wind.”
    “Momma used to get there by noon.”
    “Your mother drank no spirits stronger than a little sherry, on special occasions. How dare you speak of her that way?”
    “She was in her cups after breakfast, Daddy. You were always too busy being a Lydell, being the lord of the manor, to even notice. It was how she escaped.”
    “Escaped? Escaped from what, may I ask? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Martha Marie reeled to the sideboard and poured herself another three fingers of amber liquid, which she tossed off in one quick gulp. “From you,” she said, and sprawled on the couch. “She couldn’t stand listening to you go on and on about good genes and bad. She said if she heard one more lecture on breeding, or about the gentry and the common folk, she’d fetch the bird gun and shoot herself. She never did, just drank. She’d fix breakfast, send us off to school and hit the vodka.”
    “She did nothing of the sort. You are drunk and mistaken.”
    “You got the drunk part right. We’ll see about who’s mistaken.” Martha Marie