Travellin' Shoes Read online

“Great.” Chief Mike paced. “So how do you do that?”

  We talked through some ideas, then I got a call from the hospital that Mrs. Warren was doing better. So Harley and I headed off. I had a feeling Mrs. Warren was the key to unlocking this entire case. Now my job was to convince her to talk.

  I disliked hospitals more than I disliked the morgue. Memorial Hospital was a huge, meandering complex with miles and miles of halls, painted with different-color stripes. The stripes served as a legend designed to lead each visitor through a maze, which, if followed correctly, would culminate at the room of a loved one. But it was the sterile atmosphere and smell of disinfectant and death I objected to most. This was where my mother battled cancer. Month after month I watched as she slowly deteriorated. Eventually, they sent her home with the telephone number for Hospice.

  After what seemed like miles of walking, Harley and I arrived at the private room where Mrs. Warren stayed. She looked even frailer in the hospital than she had the first time I saw her after she’d had her appendix removed. The death of her lover on top of that of her husband had obviously taken a terrible toll.

  I approached the bed. “Mrs. Warren, are you feeling up to answering a few questions?” I asked in the hushed voice people used in hospitals.

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure she’d answer. She looked at Harley and me as though she couldn’t quite place who we were. After a few seconds, her eyes widened in recognition. She clamped her lips shut and shook her head.

  “Mrs. Warren, it’s very important,” Harley said quietly with soft eyes as he placed his hand gently on her arm.

  The blood drained from her face and a pale, ashen woman stared back. After another pause, she turned away and clutched the sheets more tightly to her throat. She was terrified, and we would have to tread carefully. The room was small, with only one chair. I motioned for Harley to take the chair, but he said, “I’ll just go grab another chair. Be right back.”

  He was back in less than thirty seconds with another chair, which he placed next to the bed. He sat down and took out his notebook. I sat in the other chair and tried to shake off the gloom that flooded the small room.

  “Mrs. Warren, can you tell us who Mr. Chandler was going to meet?” I waited for her response.

  Her eyes darted around like those of a frightened rabbit. After a long pause, she shook her head.

  The hands that clutched the sheet were shaking. Normally, I would have come down hard on her to force her to cooperate—a firm hand can do wonders at opening locked lips—but she was terrified. Given her current medical state, I was reluctant to push too hard. I glanced at Harley. With one nod, he put down his notebook and took Mrs. Warren’s hand. Keeping his movements slow and gentle, he stroked her hand, and in a soft, kind voice, he soothed her troubled mind.

  “I need to tell you that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand?” I asked.

  Mrs. Warren looked ashen and terrified.

  I tried again. “Mrs. Warren, do you understand?”

  “I understand,” she whispered. Her eyes and words seemed to search for reassurance. “You can protect me?”

  “Yes. We can protect you if you tell us the truth,” I responded.

  Mrs. Warren closed her eyes. For a moment, I was afraid she’d fallen asleep, but she sighed and opened her eyes.

  “I’ll tell you what I know, but I need your word.” Mrs. Warren looked from Harley to me. “I need a deal. I want protection and,” she struggled to find the right words, “I want immunity.”

  I didn’t have the authority to grant immunity. The district attorney was the only one who could do that, and I wasn’t sure if even he could do it without talking to the DA from Cleveland. I explained that to her while Harley went into the hall and called Chief Mike to fill him in and get further direction.

  “Mrs. Warren, if you tell us what you know, I promise to do everything in my power to help you.”

  Mrs. Warren looked more tired and frightened. With a heavy sigh, she nodded.

  Just as Harley returned and gave me a slight nod, Mrs. Warren laid her head back on the pillow.

  “Mrs. Warren, can you tell us who Mr. Chandler was going to meet?”

  “I have no idea. I got a call in the middle of the night.”

  “Can you tell us anything about the caller?” Harley asked. “Was it a man or woman?”

  “It was a man. I didn’t recognize his voice,” she said softly.

  That ruled out Reverend Hamilton, since she had talked to him previously. I’d never seriously considered Reverend Hamilton a suspect, but it felt good to rule him out.

  I hoped we could zero in on the caller based on the conversation itself. “What exactly did he say?”

  She paused before responding. “He said he knew why I was there and that he could get what I wanted, but it would cost fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Do you carry that kind of money around with you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I told him I didn’t have that kind of money on me. He said, ‘Then we have nothing to talk about.’ He said goodbye and I think was about to hang up, but I yelled for him to stop. I told him I would get the money.”

  I doubted if the killer would have actually hung up, but then Mrs. Chandler probably didn’t deal with as many criminals as I did. “What did he say then?”

  “Well, he sort of laughed and said, ‘That’s better.’ He told me to bring the money to the church at three. He said to come to the side door and to come alone.”

  “What happened next?” I watched her face, but couldn’t detect any sign she was speaking anything other than the truth as she knew it.

  “Nothing. He hung up.”

  “So how did Mr. Chandler come to be there that night?” Harley asked.

  Looking as though she might cry, Mrs. Warren said, “Bryce was there. He was with me at the hotel. I told him what the man said and he said he would go and meet him. I wanted to go with him, but he told me to wait at the hotel. He said it would be better if I let him handle it.”

  Mrs. Warren started to cry. “I should have gone with him.”

  “If you had, you would both be dead now.” I hoped my bluntness would snap her out of her melancholy. “What, specifically, was it you were paying for, Mrs. Warren?”

  She pondered the question and I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. For about two seconds, I thought she would lie. Then she lowered her shoulders and sighed. “It was a book, a code book.”

  The hymn book. It had to be. At last, we knew what we were looking for. “What was in the code book?”

  “I’m not sure exactly—”

  “Mrs. Warren, your husband and your lover have both been killed. I think it’s time you leveled with us and told us the truth.”

  The blood rose into Mrs. Warren’s previously pale face and her nostrils flared. “Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was about to say I’m not exactly sure what’s in the book. I haven’t seen it, but I believe it’s a coded list of accounts.”

  Harley looked up from his notes. “Accounts? What kind of accounts?”

  “Accounts that contain the money Tye stole from his clients,” Mrs. Warren said with only the slightest look of shame. “Tye transferred the money into banks all over the world. He was brilliant when it came to finances. Bryce said Tye had stashed away close to thirty million dollars.”

  Another half-hour of questions didn’t yield any new information to help us learn who had killed Warrendale or Bryce Chandler. Mrs. Warren’s strength and energy petered out, and we left after securing her promise to call if she remembered anything that would help us solve the murders. I arranged for a guard to watch her.

  Lack of sleep had really started to catch up with me, and I decided to head back to Mama B’s and get some rest. At the house, I tossed and turned for several hours before finally dropping off.
r />   Unfortunately, my morning started much the same as the past two mornings—with a phone call in the wee hours.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Someone had tried to break into the rectory. With that shock, I was wide awake. The scene in front of the rectory was similar to what I had witnessed just a few days earlier outside Paris’ house. There were six police cars, with lights flashing.

  The officers outside recognized me so I didn’t have to show my shield before rushing into the rectory to find Reverend Hamilton. He sat at the kitchen table in a flannel bathrobe and slippers. As I entered, he nodded at me and then stood up to get another mug from the cabinet. Without a word, he filled the mug with coffee and pushed the sugar and cream in my direction before sitting back down at the table.

  I thanked him and took several sips before getting down to business.

  “What happened?”

  “I was sound asleep when I heard a noise downstairs. Then I heard the floorboards creaking and a bang. I knew someone was in here. I got up and turned on the lights and started down the stairs.”

  “What? You could have been killed. You should have picked up the phone and called the police. The last thing we need is a dead hero.” Concern made me speak more sharply than I’d intended. I took a deep breath. “You should never confront a burglar. Most burglars just want to get in, grab small stuff, and get out. Many of them don’t even carry weapons.”

  “I have no desire to be a hero, dead or otherwise. I turned the light on and came downstairs for two reasons. First, I thought it was some kid trying to grab loose change or a television. I thought if he saw the light he would get scared and run.”

  He was probably right about that, but I was still angry. “And the other reason?”

  “I have one of those confounded cordless phones my nephew bought me for Christmas and I’d left it downstairs. I had to go down there to get the phone in order to call the police.”

  I left him sitting in the kitchen with his coffee while I went to talk to the officer first on the scene. Apparently, nothing of value was stolen. The lock at the front door was pried open. The intruder must have tripped over the boxes Reverend Hamilton had stacked up outside his office.

  Back in the kitchen, I sat down and tried again.

  “Do you have anything of value someone would want to steal?”

  “The most valuable things here are my books, and very few thieves would recognize the value of a sixteenth-century copy of the Bible in Latin or a book of sermons that once belonged to Martin Luther King Jr. He signed it when I had the pleasure of meeting him at his church in Atlanta years before he was killed.”

  “Anything missing?”

  He shook his head and then looked at me in that piercing way he had. “RJ, we both know this is connected to that poor man’s murder.”

  “We have no evidence ….” I barely got the words out before he snorted.

  “I’m not a policeman. I don’t need evidence. I know.” Reverend Hamilton tapped his chest as he talked, indicating that this knowledge came from inside.

  “Did Warrendale give you anything to keep for him? Papers, books, anything?”

  He thought for a few minutes, shook his head, but then stopped. “Well, he didn’t exactly give me anything but—”

  “What? What is it? Anything. Whatever he gave you. It might be helpful.”

  “I’m thinking. Hang on.”

  Reverend Hamilton thought and then shook his head again.

  “I can’t think of him giving me anything. I mean, we talked about the church books and he gave me the books and the records, but those weren’t his—he was merely returning them to me.”

  “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “Saturday night.”

  I wasn’t expecting that one. “What? You didn’t mention that?”

  “RJ, there was nothing to tell. We have choir rehearsal on Saturday night. I was—”

  “Wait. I thought choir rehearsal was Friday night,” I said, thinking back on Moe Chapman’s statement and what I’d learned from Paris.

  “Yes, well, the children, the young adult choirs, and the eight o’clock choirs rehearse on Friday night, but the other choirs rehearse on Saturdays,” Reverend Hamilton elaborated. “I was there, like always. Afterwards, he came down to my office and asked what I thought. I told him it sounded wonderful. We talked for a few minutes. He gave me the books for the church.” He paused and thought back, looking as though he was reliving the scene. “He looked tired. But I chalked it up to the rehearsals. I offered him some coffee and we walked back to the house. There was nothing unusual in that. We often sat in my office and had coffee.”

  There was something nagging at the back of my mind. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Harley walked in during this discussion and stood there quietly. He looked worse than I felt and I wanted to laugh. He must have gotten dressed in the dark. He wore mismatched shoes, his T-shirt was inside out, and a patch of hair at the back of his head was sticking straight up.

  Reverend Hamilton noticed him and stood up to get another mug. As he poured the coffee, I realized what was bothering me.

  “When Warrendale came here that evening, why did he return the church’s books? Did you ask for them?”

  “He said he was going to be on vacation and wanted to leave the books with me for safekeeping while he was gone.”

  Harley drank a full cup of coffee before asking, “Did he say where he was going or when he was planning to return?”

  “He said he was feeling tired and wanted to go someplace … he mentioned something about the sea or blue oceans. I assumed he was going to the beach. He didn’t volunteer the information and I didn’t want to pry.”

  “Had he mentioned anything about a vacation before? Wouldn’t he have told some of the choir members? I mean, is that normal?” If Warrendale saw his wife at church on Sunday, then he must have decided to leave before the week was out.

  “It wouldn’t be unusual if he were going to be back for the next week’s service.”

  The pot of coffee we were drinking had run out, and Reverend Hamilton made more. The kitchen of the rectory was very small, as it was in many old houses. Unlike the modern kitchens of today, which are open to the living areas, the kitchen was closed off from the rest of the house. And the refrigerator was around a corner in the back of the kitchen. Reverend Hamilton kept his coffee in the freezer and had to leave the kitchen to get it, which got me thinking.

  “Where did you have this coffee? In the kitchen?”

  “No. We talked in my office.”

  “So, when you left to make coffee, did he follow you into the kitchen?”

  Reverend Hamilton stopped at that. “No. He sat in the office and waited.” Light dawned on all of us at the same time.

  I headed for the office with Harley and Reverend Hamilton close behind. But at the sight of the office, we stopped. There were hundreds if not thousands of books lining the walls and piled on the floor.

  Harley said, “You think he left something in here?”

  “If he was going to make another run for it, he might have,” I said. “Maybe seeing his wife in the congregation made him see that he’d have to move on. If his wife had found him, it was only a matter of time before whoever he was running from did too.”

  Harley continued, “So you think he took whatever it was they wanted and hid it in here somewhere.”

  All three of us looked daunted by the task ahead.

  “It would help if we knew what we were looking for,” Harley said.

  “Paris mentioned the notebook he carried around. He called it his ‘hymn book.’ Paris actually looked at it. Perhaps she can describe it to us? That might not be the book we’re looking for, but it’s worth a try.”

  I tried calling Paris, and left a message for her to call back.

  “Well, we know he had some kind of book, probably a small notebook ….” I waved at the books that filled the shelves, the floor, and
every flat surface of the office. “Reverend Hamilton, after Warrendale left, did you notice anything unusual? Any books or papers out of place, moved, missing?”

  He shook his head but scanned the room anyway. “I know what you’re thinking, but he didn’t have anything else with him but those books. He didn’t bring anything I saw and I didn’t notice anything was disturbed.”

  Paris called back to say the book was probably black and about half the size of an actual hymnal.

  We spent the next three hours looking through the books and papers in the office. By the time the sun came up, we’d gone through three pots of coffee and more than half the books in the office with no luck. When Mrs. Mattie Young arrived, she was so shocked by the mess, she was almost speechless. I say almost speechless.

  “What in the name of God Almighty do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Young stood with one hand on her hip and was so furious I think even Reverend Hamilton was surprised.

  Reverend Hamilton climbed over a pile. “Mattie, I know it looks bad, but—”

  “Bad? You think it looks bad? I spent days straightening that office and cleaning and rearranging. Those books were in alphabetical order. Do you know how long it took to get that mess as organized as it was? And you bringing home new books every time you step out the door.”

  “Mrs. Young, I can explain,” I began, but the look in her eyes froze my lips and I stopped. We had made a mess of the room and that was a fact.

  “Don’t you even start with me, RJ Franklin. I don’t think I can speak to you right now without profaning God.”

  Harley smiled, but the smile vanished as soon as she turned her stone-faced stare to him. “And you can drop those books right now and get out of this room, or as God is my witness, I’ll take you over my knee and tan your hide.”

  Harley dropped the books and got out of the room without another word. Reverend Hamilton and I put down the books we had in our hands and left the room as well.

  The patrol cars had long since left, and only one black and white sat outside on duty, watching the front door.

  Reverend Hamilton shepherded us to the front porch. We heard books and doors slam as Mrs. Young attempted to pick up the pieces of her once neat and orderly rectory.