The Bass Wore Scales (The Liturgical Mysteries) Read online

  “Wait just a second,” I said. “I didn’t agree to that.”

  “You mean I get a promotion, but Dave doesn’t?” asked Nancy, a look of false innocence on her face.

  “Okay,” I said. “Everybody gets promotions and new badges.”

  “And raises,” added Nancy.

  “Now just wait a minute...”

  “That’s okay,” said Dave. “I don’t need a raise.”

  As far as I knew, Dave not only didn’t need a raise; he didn’t even need to work. When I hired Dave some five years ago, he told me that his trust fund provided a very comfortable income for him. He was just looking for something to do. Dave is the guy who answers the phones, fills out the reports and tends to be “on-call” more often than the rest of us. He’s still listed as part-time, but I may have to upgrade his status in our new report.

  “How big’s my promotion?” asked Dave. “Sergeant? Lieutenant?”

  “I’m the Lieutenant,” said Nancy. “You can be the officer-in-charge-of-donuts. Now about my raise…”

  “But he’s gettin’ married,” chimed in Collette, reappearing with the coffee pot. “He needs to have some respect.”

  “She’s right, Dave,” I said. “You need to become respectable. You can be an officer with the respectable rank of corporal.”

  “Oooo,” sighed Collette. “Mrs. Corporal Vance. I do like the sound of that.”

  I watched Nancy’s nostrils flare slightly, but she saw me looking at her and composed herself quickly. “Yes, Mrs. Corporal Vance. You should put it on the wedding announcements,” she said sweetly.

  “Thanks, hon. I think I will,” said Collette, pinching Dave’s cheek and heading back to the kitchen. “I’m so proud of my Snookie-Pie.”

  “Snookie-Pie?” guffawed Nancy as I stifled a chortle of my own. “My GOD! Snookie-Pie?!”

  “No pinching the customers, Collette.” Pete was coming out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. “Not even Snookie-Pie, here. You want to pinch someone, pinch me.”

  “Hey, Officer Snookie-Pie,” said Nancy as Pete sat down. “Pass me the sugar, will you?” Nancy didn’t take sugar in her coffee. She was just looking for an excuse to say “Officer Snookie-Pie,” and who could blame her?

  “That’s Corporal Snookie-Pie,” corrected Dave.

  “Breakfast will be right up,” Pete said.

  Pete had taken over the Slab Café, aka the family business, after his college career and a stint in the Army Band. His major had been philosophy, but he could blow a mean tenor sax and although Army life wasn’t suited to him, he still enjoyed playing and gigged from time to time in some regional pick-up groups. He hadn’t changed much since college, still sporting a ponytail, now gray, and the occasional earring. He favored brightly colored Hawaiian shirts, jeans, and sandals, and, according to his own admission, hadn’t worn any underwear since 1975. I knew this was true in college, but thought he might have grown out of the predilection for unfettered hedonism during his years in the service. Pete explained to me, though, that once you have experienced such freedom in your youth, it’s tough to go back into confinement. He was a raving Democrat on environmental issues, a screaming Republican on social reform and a crazed Libertarian when he had to pay his taxes. Pete had, over the years, become a capitalist hippie, and we loved him for it.

  “Hey Pete,” I said. “What’s it mean when you say you want to pin a rose on bossy?”

  “Hmm,” said Pete thoughtfully. “I guess it means that your prom date isn’t going to win any beauty contests.”

  Dave and I laughed.

  “That’s just freakin’ hilarious,” snarled Nancy.

  “Order up,” called Collette as she came out of the kitchen carrying an oversized tray of food. “Here y’all are.” She put a basket of country ham biscuits in the middle of the table, furnishing me with an empty plate and a steaming bowl of grits. Dave had his usual breakfast of a western omelet and toast, an order he didn’t have to verbalize as long as Collette was the waitress on duty. Pete was having waffles.

  “Here you go, hon,” Collette said, placing Nancy’s order in front of her. “Adam and Eve with the eyes open, burned British with grease, bossy on the hoof with a rose pinned to her, and a short stack in the alley.” We all looked over at two eggs sunny-side up, a buttered English muffin, a rare steak with onions on top and two pancakes on the side.

  “Oh,” said Collette, setting down a glass of milk. “Almost forgot. Here’s your Sweet Alice. Can I get y’all anything else?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I think we’re good.”

  “I’ll be back with some coffee in a bit, then,” said Collette with a smile. “Y’all give a yell if you need anything.”

  “Can you eat all that?” I asked, looking over at Nancy’s place. “Or were you just trying to stump her?”

  “Oh, I’m gonna eat it all right,” muttered Nancy. “Every bit of it.”

  * * *

  “Another sumptuous repast,” I said, dabbing a napkin at the corners of my mouth in the most genteel fashion I could muster. “Excellent work, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Oh, I’ll take all the credit,” said Pete. “But Bud’s doing the cooking. He’s been working mornings since school let out.”

  “Well, send him out here so we can give him a round of applause,” I said.

  “Hey, Bud,” Collette yelled from the register. “Come out here for a second.”

  Bud appeared a moment later, first poking his head through the swinging door of the kitchen and then walking out into the dining room, all the while wiping his hands on his stained apron. True to his nature as a shy, self-conscious sixteen-year-old, he turned red at the applause that greeted his entrance, but smiled nevertheless.

  Bud was the eldest of the three McCollough children. Their mother Ardine, a hard-working woman, had lived a tough life. Their father, PeeDee, was an abusive good-for-nothing who thought that welfare was the best thing the government had come up with since the free cheese program. He disappeared about seven years ago and hadn’t been heard from since, the rumor being that Ardine might have had something to do with his vanishing act. Up in the hollers of the Appalachians, beating your wife and kids was an offense that was frequently taken care of in-house, and when PeeDee McCollough disappeared, no one looked very hard.

  Although PeeDee didn’t do much in his life, one thing he did do was name all three kids after the thing dearest to his heart—beer. Bud was the oldest. Bud’s sister, Pauli Girl, was now fourteen and as beautiful as her mother might have been in her youth, before life had taken the color from Ardine’s cheeks and the spring from her step. The youngest was a gregarious eight-year-old boy named Moose-Head—Moosey for short.

  Bud, in addition to his newly discovered culinary talents, had an encyclopedic knowledge of wines. No one was sure how he came by such proficiency. He explained that it came from extensive reading at the library, but none of us bought that story. He knew too much. It was Bud who put me on to a pinot noir that he described as “bland, yet dishonest; virginal, yet tarty; grudging at first, but evolving into gingerbread. It has a bit of dirty-sock overtone and sharp aftertaste.” I tried it and, to my surprise, he was right. Yep. Bud had the whole package—knowledge, taste buds and most importantly, the lingo. Anyone in St. Germaine who wanted just the right wine for a dinner party came to Bud first. He never duplicated a suggestion and never disappointed.

  “Did Moosey get hold of you?” Bud asked me, as he came over to the table.

  “I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.”

  “Well, he’s hot to go fishing. He said you promised him back in February.”

  “I did indeed,” I said. “If you see him, tell him I haven’t forgotten.”

  * * *

  “Are you still coming on Tuesday?” asked Billy Hixon, the Senior Warden of St. Barnabas. I recognized his voice as soon as I answered my phone.

  “Tuesday?” I said, trying to remember what Billy was talking about.

&nbs
p; “Tuesday afternoon—three o’clock. At St. Barnabas! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “The Blessing of the Racecar!”

  “Oh, of course!” I said.

  “Junior Jameson is bringing the racecar up on Tuesday morning. Maybe you heard that he hasn’t been doing so well. He had it re-painted before the season started, but, so far, having St. Barnabas as the main sponsor of his racing team isn’t garnering him any holy mojo. Those’re his words, not mine.”

  Last year, St. Barnabas came into a lot of money—sixteen million dollars, to be exact. It was an unexpected windfall and after several fairly hostile congregational meetings, it was decided that the church could not decide. That is to say, some wanted to invest the money and live off the interest, never having to take up a collection or worry about a pledge drive ever again. Then, there were those people who felt that financial security of such a degree would be a detriment to the spiritual life of the church. As Father George so eloquently put it in his speech to the congregation, “It is important for the people that are St. Barnabas to know that they are needed, that their gifts and their tithes are what sustain the church and that their talents are appreciated and invaluable.”

  In the end, it was decided that one person, and one person alone should make the decision, and this trustee would be the one who had given the most money to St. Barnabas over the years. We all assumed that the person named would be Malcolm Walker, the richest man in the congregation. Much to everyone’s surprise, the person named as the trustee was none other than Lucille Murdock, an eighty-seven-year-old widow who’d been giving half her pension to the church since 1938.

  To make a long story short, Lucille Murdock finally decided, after much prayerful consideration, that St. Barnabas Episcopal Church would use the money to fund a NASCAR racing team. This decision was helped along, in no small part, by several coversations with her nephew, Junior Jameson, a NASCAR driver who just happened to be looking for a sponsor. In the end, they concluded that putting the church emblem on the top of the racecar would be the perfect “vehicle” (if you will) to spread the Word of the Lord. “After all,” Junior said, “isn’t NASCAR racing the number one spectator sport in the country? And don’t those people need to be exposed to the Gospel?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said to Billy. “Who’s doing the service?”

  “Well, Father George doesn’t want to do it and Tony said he’s going to be out of town, so I’m going to try to get the Bishop.”

  “That sounds like a tall order. Do you have a back-up plan?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “You.”

  Chapter 2

  “How’s the writing going?” asked Meg. “I don’t hear any clacking going on.”

  “I’m thinking,” I said. “The twin poniards of my craft—percipience and perspicacity—are delicately balanced on the spire of my intellect.”

  “There you go!” laughed Meg. “That’s the ticket! Write some more stuff like that. Sentences with three-dollar words that don’t mean anything. You’re like Tom Wolfe, only without the talent!”

  “Harumph.”

  * * *

  I pulled my flivver up to Betsy’s place at eight on the nose. I hadn’t had a steady job since the Bishop pulled me off the Tuna Hotdish Caper. It was a Lutheran scam to get the Episcopalians involved in running bootleg potluck suppers. I exposed it easy enough, but now the Lutherans and the Episcopalians were in bed together, and it wasn’t the result the Bishop was after. He was my meal ticket, and it didn’t do to make him mad. The sign on my door read “Liturgical Detective,” but I was at the Bishop’s beck and call.

  Betsy came down the steps of her apartment, looking like a million bucks and change. I was there to open the car door for her, a practice I usually neglected, but, eyeballing her graceful form squirming down the landing like an anaconda on stilettos, it seemed that the evening might be worth a few manners. Yeah, I’d been to charm school--one of the best. Lady Diedre’s Ettiquetorium and Beanery. I even had the certificate in my wallet. I just didn’t like to flaunt it.

  “Wow, what a gentleman,” said Betsy in a squeaky yet sultry tone—a modulation that incorporated the twin timbres in equal measure, like Lauren Bacall chewing chalk; not the soft, colored chalk of childhood that one might eat in kindergarten where consuming chalk (and paste!) was a delightful pastime and a necessary source of fiber, but the white, bitter chalk of adolescence that was gnawed nervously in front of the class while entreating the Almighty (even though prayer in public schools has been forbidden since 1962) for divine help in discovering the value of f if f has a vertical asymptote at x=5, a single x-intercept of x=2 and f(x) contains quadratic functions in both its numerator and denominator--that kind of chalk. “I ain’t never had no car door opened for me before.”

  “You ain’t been around me, Doll-Face,” I said. “I got manners I ain’t even used yet.”

  * * *

  “Did you hear the news?” asked Georgia, barging into my office at the station without even a never-you-mind. “Father George is outta here!”

  “What do you mean, outta here?” I asked. “He’s leaving?”

  “He’s got another gig.” Georgia Wester was a stalwart member of St. Barnabas, a lay Eucharistic minister, and to say that she had never warmed to Father George Eastman in his year with us would be an understatement.

  “You mean another appointment,” I corrected.

  “Yep,” said Georgia, a smile splitting her face. “He’s going to teach at a seminary in Virginia. He just got the word.”

  “What’s he going to teach?”

  “Homiletics,” Georgia answered with a snicker. “He’s teaching homiletics. Anyway, he starts in a couple weeks. They want him to teach the summer courses, so he’s outta here.”

  “Bad news for us, I suppose. Now we have to start looking for a priest all over again.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Georgia. “We still have that résumé from the woman we were going to interview.”

  “I thought she’d withdrawn her name.”

  “She did, but Beverly’s kept in touch with her, and says that she might still be interested.”

  “Didn’t she take a teaching position at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory? To be close to her parents, as I recall.”

  “I think so,” said Georgia.

  “Anyone here?” called Bev Greene, banging open the front door and coming around the receptionist’s desk into my office. “Oh. There you are. Did you hear the news?”

  “Isn’t anyone working out there?” I asked. “Where’s my crowd control? I can’t just have people charging in here whenever they choose.”

  “Maybe they’re at lunch,” said Bev, with a shrug. “I don’t know. But guess what?”

  “I couldn’t even venture a suspicion.”

  “Father George Eastman is leaving!”

  “I never would have guessed,” I said.

  “I already told him,” said Georgia. Bev glared at me.

  “I didn’t want to ruin your fun,” I explained. “You both seemed positively mirthful.”

  “Tell him about Gaylen,” said Georgia.

  “She’s really good,” said Bev. “We were going to interview her last year, but she withdrew her name from consideration, and Father George was the only other person we had scheduled to come in.”

  I nodded and heard the front door open again.

  “Hayden? Are you here?” called another female voice—one that I knew very well.

  “In here, Meg,” I called back. Meg came into the office a moment later.

  “Hi, you guys,” said Meg, acknowledging my visitors before getting quickly to the point of her pop-in. “I couldn’t wait to tell you. Guess what?”

  “Father George is leaving. That’s what!” said Bev and Georgia in unison and followed the outburst with a laugh.

  “Hmm,” I said. “I give up. What?”

  “Harumph,” sniffed Meg. “I see you have sp
ies all over town.”

  “We just couldn’t wait,” said Georgia. “Tell Hayden about Gaylen.”

  “Gaylen Weatherall,” said Meg.

  “I remember looking over her vitae last year,” I said. “It was very impressive.”

  “Hey, guess what?” called Elaine Hixon, coming through the front door.

  “Father George is leaving!” everyone yelled back.

  “Oh, brother,” sniffed Elaine.

  “She’s got a doctorate from the University of Georgia, and she’s published extensively,” said Meg.

  “Who?” asked Elaine.

  “Gaylen Weatherall,” I said. “The next ex-priest of St. Barnabas.”

  Bev took over the narrative. “Her mother was sick, and she took the job at Lenoir-Rhyne to be close to her, but she passed away in January. Her father is doing fine, and she’s decided that she doesn’t like teaching as much as she likes being a priest. So she’s looking for a parish again.”

  “Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves,” I said. “You know that all this has to go through the proper channels.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Meg. “But we’ve already done all the legwork. She was our first choice last year, and unless the interview reveals something that we’re not expecting, the whole process may go quite smoothly.”

  “Have you ever known the process to go smoothly?” I asked with a grin.

  All four women fell silent.

  “I guess not,” said Georgia dejectedly.

  “Nope,” said Bev, shaking her head.

  “There was this one time…” started Meg, then looked over at Elaine who was shaking her head. “Oh,” she said, remembering. “Never mind.”

  “Well, never fear,” I chirped. “I’m sure that she’ll get no other offers since she’s been waiting for this position to open back up. She’ll be happy to come straight-away for an interview. I’m confident that she’ll really love St. Barnabas and our fair city, and the vestry will take to her like a ferret to a French-fry. They’ll offer her the job, and she’ll be here by July.”