The Alto Wore Tweed (The Liturgical Mysteries) Read online

  The Alto Wore Tweed

  A Liturgical Mystery

  by Mark Schweizer

  The Alto Wore Tweed

  A Liturgical Mystery

  Copyright ©2002 by Mark Schweizer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by SJMPbooks

  P.O. Box 249

  Tryon, NC 28782

  ISBN 0-9721211-2-9

  Acknowledgements

  Thomas G. Easterling, Rebecca Watts, Sandy Cavanah, Richard Shephard, Milton Marshall

  Elroy Willis — Religion In The News (used by permission)

  Prelude

  The UPS delivery man arrived at 4:37 p.m. I had taken the afternoon off so I wouldn’t miss him since missing him would mean a trip into Boone, standing in an interminable line—something I particularly detested—and presenting my little yellow ‘sorry-we-missed-you’ tag to the indifferent clerk who would then spend half an hour looking for the package that was probably, by that time, back on the truck. It was my fault really, since I failed to have the shipper check the ‘no-signature-required’ box. Added to that, I really didn’t mind taking the afternoon. It was too nice a day to be solving crime, what little there was in St. Germaine, and I was, after all, the boss. So when the UPS man showed up, I was there and happy to meet him at the door.

  “Nice day, Hayden,” he said, handing me the flat brown box for my electronic John Hancock.

  “It is indeed,” I said, noticing and appreciating again the warm fall day—the rapidly dropping humidity being the only hint of the cool weather forecast that would arrive after the sun dipped behind the blue haze of the mountains. The ever-present scent of the native fir trees seemed to be especially pungent when carried on the back of the first autumn chill and I took a deep breath, savoring the day like I might savor a good liverwurst sandwich and a bottle of imported beer — my snack waiting in the kitchen. I had all the windows and doors of the house open, trusting that with this cold front, bug season was now at its end.

  I handed the box back, trading him for the package from Christie’s Auction House via Philadelphia. “Thanks, Shawn,” I said turning back into the house. “Have a good day.”

  “You too,” he said perfunctorily, now busy pushing buttons on his box as he walked back to his truck.

  I went into the kitchen and opened the package on the table to the sounds of the brown diesel delivery truck pulling out of the drive and heading down the road.

  Inside was a typewriter. Not just any typewriter, but Raymond Chandler’s 1939 Underwood No. 5. I had seen it come up in an on-line auction and had determined to get it. Underwoods weren’t rare—but this one was special.

  My reason for getting the typewriter, other than its obvious collector appeal, was to finally put to paper my own detective serial novella—an episodic mystery featuring a church choir director-turned-detective, written in the classic 1940’s whodunit genre. In my opinion, there hadn’t been a good Philip Marlowe-style mystery since 1958—the year of Chandler’s last novel, Playback, which I had read at least four times. When he died in 1959, he left four chapters of Poodle Springs, but we purists don’t consider the finished book a true measure of the Chandler craft. It was Ray Chandler who penned such immortal lines as:

  “She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term, I’ll eat my spare tire, rim and all.”

  And: “The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.”

  And perhaps his most famous: “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”

  Sure, I could write my book on a computer. I had a couple of Macs at the house and a new iBook I was planning on taking to work, but really, what fun would that be? This was the real thing and I was feeling more than just a tingle of anticipation.

  I set the old typewriter and the case of replacement ribbons that accompanied it on my desk. After I had purchased the Underwood, I had Christie’s send it to a gentleman in Philadelphia who specialized in refurbishing old office equipment for collectors. It had been overhauled, oiled, fitted with a new ribbon and was now, I hoped, ready for action. I took a second to peruse the “certificate of authenticity,” and then, holding my breath, I put a piece of 24 lb. white bond into the carriage and clicked the return until the edge of the paper appeared behind the hammers, slowly creeping around the roller, and finally emerging into the yellow light of the old green shaded banker’s lamp I had set on the desk to complete my nostalgic foray into the Golden Age of Detective Literature. I stood and admired the typewriter for a long while. Still standing, my fingers reached for the well-worn keys and I typed

  The Alto Wore Tweed

  Chapter 1

  I walked over to the kitchen and collected my beer and sandwich. Then, sitting at the desk, I picked up my well-worn first edition of “Farewell My Lovely” and turned to aamiliar, dog-eared page.

  “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”

  Hoping some of the Chandler magic would rub off, I started typing.

  Chapter 1

  “Marilyn,” I snarled over the phone, “did I pick the hymns this week?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you mixed up the numbers. I don’t think I would have picked ‘Just As I Am’ for the processional.”

  “You picked it,” she purred. “You picked it and now you’ve got to live with it.”

  I could just see her, smugly peering over her large secretarial glasses, her nimble, well-manicured fingers tapping a tarantella on her word processor. She hadn’t been much help since the case of “The Soprano Wore Red,” but I couldn’t let her go. She knew too much. She held all the cards and they were coming up aces.

  I figured she switched the hymn just to make me look bad. She didn’t do it often. Just enough to keep me in my place. At least she could make a good cup of java.

  “Light me a cigar and come up here a minute,” I said.

  “Light your own cigar.” I could hear her snickering. “I’m busy.”

  • • •

  “What’cha doing?” Meg asked, as she came into the room.

  “Working on my mystery.”

  “Well, don’t quit your day job,” she admonished, offering the time-honored advice given to all aspiring writers as she ran her fingers down my spine and continued to read over my shoulder.

  My “day job” happened to be police detective. Megan Farthing was my significant other, and the town beauty as far as I was concerned. I met her about three years ago, right after she had moved to town. I was off-duty at the time and on my way home in my 62 Chevy pickup for a night of Bach and grilled knockwurst when she went by me like a bullet. I flashed my blue lights, hit the siren and pulled her over a few blocks later.

  “What kind of police car is that?” she asked, pointing to my old truck and turning on the requisite tears. “It’s not really fair, is it?”

  “Nope. Not fair at all. But it’s a slow night. Although you seem to be in a hurry.” I noticed the new license with the St. Germaine address. “You’re new in town?”

  She nodded.

  “Slow down,” I said, handi
ng her license back to her. “It’s just advice this time. No ticket.”

  The sniffling stopped almost immediately and I, once again, had to admire the female gender’s ability to regulate the flow of tears in direct proportion to their chances of receiving a traffic summons.

  “Are you Hayden?” she sniffed, wiping the remaining tear from her cheek and catching me totally by surprise. “My mother said I should meet you.”

  “Um...yes I am.”

  “I’m Megan. But, you know that, don’t you? It was on my license.” She offered me a coy smile.

  I didn’t know what else to say so I ventured an invitation. “Would you like to join me over at the cafe for a cup of coffee?”

  “As long as it isn’t viewed as some sort of police bribe for not getting a ticket.”

  I laughed. “I don’t even have a ticket book. But don’t tell anyone.”

  Two espressos and a couple of The Slab Cafe’s beignets later, I was interested enough in extending the evening to invite her over to my place for my weekly Knock ’n Bach. The Knock ’n Bach is my standard operating procedure for staying off the dating schedule. A few ladies have attempted it, but they usually didn’t last past the Credo of the B minor Mass and by now I had garnered a local reputation as a very boring date. As a result, I had not been actively pursued by the available women in St. Germaine. Still, I had a feeling this gal was different.

  “Hmmm. I like knockwurst and the sauerkraut is a real plus. How’s your sound system?”

  “Top notch. Marantz components. Surround sound. Two hundred watts per channel. Four Panasonic SB-MOa1 speakers.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I’d like to hear those speakers. What’s on the music program?”

  “Cantata 140 and the G-minor Organ Fugue followed by some Leon Redbone.”

  “Helmuth Rilling conducting?”

  “Yep.” My interest went up three notches.

  “God, I just love 140. The whole introduction with the three oboes and everything just sends chills up my spine.”

  “Yeah?” My eyes narrowed and I studied her expression. She could be bluffing, but I didn’t care. “C’mon then.”

  It turns out she was bluffing, but she had sung in the Concert Choir in college and was paying enough attention in Music Appreciation 101 to fake it pretty well. I was pretty sure it was all she faked. The evening was a complete success. I was charmed by big blue-gray eyes framed by shoulder length black hair, and a figure, as they say in the South, “that would make you slap yo’ mama.” She’s also a sharp investment counselor and a pretty darn good soprano. Lord knows, those are few and far between and worth their weight in good cigars. Sopranos, that is—not investment counselors. Megan doesn’t have a solo voice exactly, but it’s right on the money for choral singing and she reads like a fiend. I’ve always said I know a good soprano when I see one.

  • • •

  I pulled my fedora low over my eyes and a sneer played across my lips as I opened the hymnal looking for an old favorite containing sound theological doctrine. They were there, all right. A few of them, but they were hard to spot. Lurking in dark Bach chorales, hiding inside dimly lit Renaissance carols, stashed neatly away in the Old Scottish Psalter. It was my job to ferret them out. Sometimes, I thought to myself, it pays to be a professional.

  • • •

  Meg and I’ve been keeping company since then and have become something of an item. She keeps track of my investment portfolio—such as it is—something she can do on-line from her home office. She lives with and cares for her mother, which is her reason for being in St. Germaine in the first place. That, and having no real place to go after her divorce. Meg is smart, beautiful—and apparently an amateur literary critic.

  I sat back in my desk chair, perused the page hanging from the typewriter, and rolled up the blue and white flannel from my wrists to my elbows. Being a man of means but no particular fashion sense, I have three pairs of chinos and six shirts in my basic fall and winter wardrobe. One Land’s End long-sleeve white dress shirt for Sunday and five flannel shirts of various and sundry hues. When the weather changes, I switch to Land’s End polo shirts. I have five of those in five lovely colors: Deep Orange, Burgundy, Chambray Heather, Sapphire and Black Forest. XXLT. $24.50. I also have enough evening wear to cover my occasional forays into polite society, but I don’t really count that as usable wardrobe.

  “I’m going to call it The Alto Wore Tweed,” I said, sipping my coffee and chomping on a non-lit cigar. Non-lit being the operative directive for a cigar as long as Meg was in the house.

  “I’ll try it out on the choir first, but I think it’s pretty good. It has all the makings of a fine detective story.”

  I had gotten in the habit, over the years, of channeling my meager writing skills into missives that I placed in the back of the choir members’ music folders for their entertainment and enlightenment. Mostly entertainment. This was to be my magnum opus.

  “You mean ‘For the choir to try out during the sermon.’” She shook her finger at me in mock derisiveness, and I attempted in vain to look somewhat contrite.

  “Hayden Konig, you’re going to get in real trouble. Herself is bound to see it and she’ll know it’s about her.” She pronounced the umlauted “o” in Konig just for fun. The name is German all right, but we of the München Königs dropped the umlaut years ago in favor of everyone in our newly adopted country of the United States of America being able to pronounce it. Still, from Megan’s lips it sounded wonderfully elegant and old world so I never bothered to correct her.

  “It’s about an alto—it has nothing to do with her,” I replied.

  She laughed out loud—a beautiful laugh that always reminded me of the tinkling of a zimblestern.

  “Oh, I think it does. You’re very transparent.”

  “Not a bit! I’m complex and devious. Layer upon layer of intricate, nontransparent deep stuff.”

  She walked out of the room, tossing her dark hair and one more comment back across her shoulder, “Says you!”

  “You always offer such brilliant repartee. It’s a pleasure to engage you in verbal sparring,” I called after her.

  Her head popped back around the corner, her eyes sparkling. “It’s the wrestling you should be worried about. Not the sparring.”

  Touché. I threw a log on the fire, turned up the music, and settled back into my leather desk chair.

  • • •

  I put the hymnal away, my eyes narrowing as I considered the latest report from the diocese to cross my desk. There was big trouble and I knew I’d be called in to sort it out. It’s what I do. I’m an L.D.--Liturgy Detective--duly licensed by the Diocese of North Carolina and appointed by the bishop.

  Suddenly I looked up and there she was--lounging in the doorway, if one could be said to be lounging in a standing position, her hair dark, dark as the elevator with the broken light bulb from which she had emerged, her eyes as brown as the three-piece suit and wingtips she was wearing. How long she had been standing there was anyone’s guess. She slank slowly across the carpet.

  “You know that ‘slank’ isn’t a word,” said Meg, reading over my shoulder again.

  “I’m using it for effect. ‘She slank slowly’ is so much more descriptive than ‘She slunked slowly.’”

  “Ah, yes. Now I see.”

  “I’ll light your cigar,” she said as she leaned across my desk, a match already in her hand, her voice as husky as last year’s Iditarod.

  She sat on the edge of my desk, her coat falling open, revealing a tantalizing set of L.L. Bean braided suspenders. I’b>d seen those suspenders on sale last month, but couldn’t figure a way to fit them into my continuing education budget.

  “I need professional help. I’ll pay you anything you want.”

  I hadn’t had a job in a while. Not since the bishop had called me in because he suspected that someone was tampering with the lectionary. For a couple of months all the scripture lessons were either John 3:16 or Roman
s 3:23. It turned out that a Southern Baptist had wandered into the wrong building. I had it all wrapped up within the hour. I should have stretched the case out for a couple of weeks. It would have paid the rent.

  I eyed her suspenders. I could see she was desperate. I didn’t need the money, but I never could resist an alto in trouble. Especially an alto wearing tweed.

  • • •

  The alto that Meg was alluding to and the one I was definitely not writing about was Loraine Ryan—or Herself, as she was known in our choir circle—the new rector of the church. She was sent to us by the bishop to take the place, temporarily we were told, of our beloved retiring priest. Now I don’t have anything against female ecclesiastics. Well, maybe a small bias—but I certainly had intended to give this one every chance. Unfortunately, this unmarried militant feminist priestess had been at St. Barnabas for three months and was making no signs of looking for another position.

  Directing the church choir and playing the organ for services is my part-time job, and one I enjoy. Like most church choirs, the choir of St. Barnabas isn’t made up of great singers. They’re better on some days than others, absent on more than a few and strictly volunteer. But I like them and the church and I can’t be gotten rid of easily for several reasons: I’ve been there for fifteen years, I’m the only organist in town, I have a master’s degree in music composition from UNC Chapel Hill, an undergraduate minor in theology and too many friends in rich places to worry about job security. Being the staff member in charge of the worship service, I thought I had acted in the best interest of everyone concerned when, during Herself’s inaugural Sunday, she decided that she’d like the congregation to sing Kum-Baya as the post-communion hymn.

  When she first mentioned her plan during our worship meeting, I suggested to her that the congregation was used to a somewhat more traditional and formal style of music, and I personally didn’t much care for the campfire music of the 60’s.