6 - The Eye of the Virgin: Ike Schwartz Mystery 6 Read Free Page A

pictures that they hang up in them churches. Not like normal ones like you see in somebody’s front room,
Jesus Knocks at the Door,
and like that, but stiff and a little, you know, hard-looking. Like they know what you’re thinking. Can’t think why anybody would want a picture like that.”
    “Icons?”
    “What? Yeah, now that you mention it, that’s what he called them. But they didn’t look nothing like them little things on the computer screen so I didn’t pay much attention. But yeah, that’s what he said they were.”
    “Any follow-up?”
    “Crime scene techs came and dusted. Dakis took a quick inventory and said nothing was missing. Looked like somebody had knocked over a big bottle of nail polish remover. I asked him what he used it for because I didn’t see no sign of a woman in the place. He said he cleaned his brushes with it sometimes. Me, I’d a thought he’d be better off with turp or gasoline but he said no, the kind of paint he used to paint up them pictures, them icons, only dissolved in acetone, which, he said, is found in nail polish remover. He used water first and the remover only if the paint had dried before he could wash them. New to me.”
    “You said he taught at the university?”
    “That’s what he said. I didn’t recognize him, so I guess he wasn’t one of the regulars up there at the college.”
    “I’ll call the school and find out. He might be adjunct. Since the economy’s gone south, they, like many places, are making do with part-time people where they don’t have to fund the fringe package, pay tenured professor salaries, and so on. He’s one of them, I’m guessing. Any luck on the prints?”
    “Tech said the guy who broke in must have been wearing gloves. All he could find were Dakis’ prints and smudges on the door knob and some of the pictures. Dakis had a duck fit when he saw the tech dusting them. He said they were, like, valuable and they should be careful not to disturb the surface. I tell you what, Ike, some of them pictures was so old and chipped, and dirty, you would never have known if they messed with the surface or not. Who’d want to buy an old beat-up picture like that, anyway? I mean, they weren’t even painted on cloth like a real picture. I swear it looked like somebody went out to the barn and got him couple of old boards and slap-dashed a picture of a saint or something on it, then decided it weren’t much to look at after all and tossed it on the compost pile.”
    Ike resisted the temptation to lecture Billy on iconography in general and the collectability of ancient icons in particular. “No accounting for taste, Billy.”
    “You can say that again. Ma was telling me about one of them college professors that had a collection of dinner plates. Some all chipped and cracked. She said she, that’s the professor, a lady, kept them in a locked china cabinet. And Mrs. Pettigrew, that’s Amos’ granny, has a passel of cat statues that Amos says is insured for a bunch of money. Me, I’d take the money.”
    “Right. Okay, you two take it easy today and try to stay awake. I don’t expect much will happen around here until later tonight and the Saturday night partying begins up at Callend and/or down at Eddie Knox’s Roadhouse, but still…Put a watch on Dakis’ house. Whoever was in there didn’t take anything, so maybe he was spooked before he found what he was looking for and left. If so, he might try again.”
    “Say, Ike, maybe we could get us some adjunct deputies. You know, cheap help. Ain’t you got a slot open?”
    “No, but I’d be happy to turn yours into one if you think it’s that good an idea.”
    “Reckon I’ll get on my rounds. Oh, wait, there is one thing I forgot to mention.”
    Ike waited as Billy scratched his head and pursed his lips. “It’s probably nothing but, you know the place smelled like nail polish remover and like I said, that has acetone in it, right?”
    “If I remember my practical chemistry