Read 1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 for Free Online

said you weren’t here, that he’s across the street in the barbershop and he saw you come in and—”
    Ike’s fist hit the counter, the pencils jumped. If he had been a character in an animated cartoon, smoke would have come out of his ears. When the color in his face ebbed from maroon to just red, he said, “I’ll take it in my office.”
    “He’ll be with you right away, Mr. Schwartz,” Essie murmured into the phone. “What? Oh, thank you. And God bless you-all real good, too.”
    Ike went into the eight by ten, glassed-in cubicle that served as his office. He kicked the door shut and took perverse delight when the vibration knocked the cup of pencils over again. He picked up the phone and stood staring at the blinking button. He thought about leaving his father on hold for five or ten minutes. He thought about hanging up. Instead, he punched the blinking button.
    “Hello.”
    “Isaac, this is your Poppa speaking.”
    “I know who you are, Pop.”
    “Well, I couldn’t be sure. It’s been such a long time since your Momma and I have seen you. I was thinking maybe you forgot,” Abe Schwartz said sweetly.
    “Will you cut out the yiddisher momma routine, Pop? You can’t even do the accent right. It’s, ‘I vas t’inking you maybe forgot.’”
    Abe Schwartz chuckled, “You’re not so hot at it yourself, Ike, and you’ve had the benefit of hearing it on television, living in the big city, and going to Ivy League schools. Us poor ole country boys are educationally disadvantaged when it comes to trotting out a nice, clean, lower Eastside accent. Maybe I should go to Berlitz and take a course.”
    “Two weeks in the Catskills, Pop, be just as effective and lots more fun. What do you want? I’m kind of busy and I’ve had a bad day.”
    “A bad day? Ike, it is only eleven-thirty, you ain’t even had a morning yet, good, bad or indifferent, much less a whole day. What I want is for you to come out to the farm this weekend. Your mother and I haven’t seen you since March and Ike, she isn’t any better.”
    “Okay, Pop, I know, I know. I would have come out before, but—I don’t know. Every time you and I get together, we start arguing politics and my future and I think that upsets Mom more than my staying away.”
    “Ike, you and I have been arguing that way for twenty years. If we stopped now, your mother would want to know what was wrong. She’d worry.”
    “Maybe in the past, Pop, but not now. I don’t think she can manage the noise level anymore. And even if she can, I can’t.”
    “Okay, Ike, we won’t talk politics or anything else. We’ll talk about the Baltimore Orioles, old times, anything you want, but come, please.”
    “You promise—no politics or careers?”
    “I promise. Come out Friday for dinner. Stay the weekend.”
    “I’ll be out Saturday.”
    “For breakfast?”
    “Too early. Saturday is the only time I have free. I need sleep. I’ll be out for lunch.”
    “Good. Your mother will be pleased. Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you, your mother asked Barbara Rubenstein out for the weekend, too. Good-bye.”
    “What? Wait a minute. I am not.…” Ike slammed the phone back into its cradle. “I’ve been set up.”

Chapter Five
    Even in death, Harry thought, Ellen managed to make things unpleasant. He chided himself for the thought. She was dead, after all, and that was the end to it. He needed a drink. He stood in the rain staring at the fresh earth piled beside the grave. Brown rivulets of muddy water formed on its surface and ran into the fake grass covering the raw earth left by the backhoe. No one else in sight. There hadn’t been that many there in the first place, when you got right down to it—a couple of people from the hospital, some friends from the old neighborhood, maybe eight or ten people in all, and Ellen’s parents, of course. They glanced at him with a look as cold as Duluth in December. It was their funeral, bought and paid for. Harry hadn’t even