Mark Schweizer - Liturgical 12 - The Cantor Wore Crinolines Read online

  Baxter spent most of his days outside roaming the two hundred acres we called home and was waiting for me when I drove up. He gave a few barks at the old pickup truck, welcoming barks since he’d known this truck since he was a pup-in-arms, and since this old 1962 Chevy truck makes a very specific sound coming down the hill to the cabin. I greeted him fondly, opened the back door of the house, and he bounced in ahead of me. He slid to a stop on the kitchen tile, then looked at me in expectation. I gave him some dog chow and his shaggy head disappeared into the bowl.

  I looked into the living room for the other member of our household and spotted him right away, sitting quietly on the mantle just beneath the giant elk head mount. Archimedes. Baxter was a pet, but Archimedes wasn’t. It’s hard to keep an owl as a pet unless you lock it in a cage. Archimedes came and went as he pleased through an electric window in the kitchen, but spent most of the winter in the house, perched on the mantle or on the head of the stuffed buffalo. He might have been part of the decor until he leapt into the air and glided silently through the house. He was a wild creature, but was happy to visit, and we, in turn, were happy to have him. To thank him for his friendship, Meg and I supplemented his diet with mice, baby squirrels, and chipmunks — frozen, and vacuum packed, and all sent to me by Kent Murphee. I didn’t ask where he got them. Archimedes didn’t need the supplements. At least, I didn’t think so. He was a fine hunter and we often saw him outside in his favorite tree happily tearing apart some poor animal he’d caught.

  I opened the refrigerator, found the coffee can in the back with “Archimedes” scrawled across it, and pulled out a freshly thawed chipmunk. I thought the owl was asleep, but when I turned back around, there he was, standing on the counter right beside me. I never heard a thing. He took the cold chipmunk from my hand with one talon, then gave two hops to the window, waited for it to slide open and when it did, took one more hop and disappeared silently into the night.

  Nancy, Dave and I had gone through all three houses again, looking for any kind of clues as to how the bodies got there. Nothing. We checked for fingerprints on the closet doors. Nothing usable. Nancy took a few DNA swabs, but that was a long shot. Long shot, nothing. It was a moon shot, and we all knew it. We looked for blood, searched the houses top to bottom looking for a murder scene, looked for signs of a break in, and scoured the grounds as long as there was light. Nothing. The three bodies just seemed to have been dropped off — placed carefully in the closets and left there.

  I was happy to stop thinking about it for a little while. Meg had decided to stay at her mother’s house in town, and whenever she did that, I lit up a cigar. She’d know, of course, but she said she enjoyed the smell as long as smoke wasn’t wafting through the house while she was there. She didn’t like to breathe it. Fair enough.

  I got myself a BottleTree Imperial Red Ale, then walked over and turned on the stereo. Then I sat down at the typewriter, lit up a cigar, and prepared to give my burgeoning story my best shot. I was positive that I did my best writing listening to choral music. Meg wasn’t so sure. She certainly didn’t appreciate the madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo. But Meg wasn’t here.

  Gesualdo, Italian Prince of Venosa in the later half of the sixteenth century, is known — as I remembered from my classes in music history — for both his intensely expressive music that uses a chromatic language not heard again till the twentieth century, and for his murderous temper. Coming home early from a hunting trip, he surprised his wife in flagrante delicto with the Duke of Andria, and murdered them both in the bed, stabbing them multiple times all the while shouting “They’re not dead yet!” Then he shot the duke in the head for good measure and dressed him in his wife’s clothes. This was enough to get him started writing madrigals. It would be enough to get anyone started.

  Listening to Gesualdo madrigals was an acquired taste, like Skeeter’s homemade Possum-shine, or Stinking Bishop cheese. Or maybe like enjoying the wordplay of a multilayered detective story with no discernible plot.

  The woman swept in like a mezzo aria: her middle-aged melody anticipated by the accompanying strains of a lush, overripe, dewberry scented décolletage. She surveyed the office, gave Pedro the once over, then dropped her gaze on me like a feed sack full of alto-meal. Her lips were fleshy and wanting in that kind of way that lips get after eating Hunan spicy beef with Szechuan peppers, extra hot with enough monosodium glutamate to exacerbate water retention and cause lips to be plump as a couple of round worms. I thought about lunch.

  * * *

  That’s a keeper, I thought. Meg will appreciate the subtlety of my description. I finished my beer, puffed on my stogy, and listened to the wailing coming from the stereo. I might have to rethink the Gesualdo thing. I was fairly sure I used to like it, but maybe that was the pretentiousness of youth. I probably enjoyed Gesualdo the way the Blue Hill Bookworms enjoyed reading Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

  * * *

  “My name is Anne Dante. I need a detective,” she blarbled, in a voice halfway between warbling and blubbering. She could have been blubbleing though. I wasn’t sure. I was never sure with these mezzos. Most of them were as easy as opening a jar of pickles, not one closed so tight that a woman would get a hernia trying to open it, although I’ve never heard about a woman this happened to, I guess it could, but doctors don’t ask them to cough so how would they know, but one already opened and the lid left slightly askew so that the pickle flavor gets all into the left over lasagna even though you put it in one of those plastic containers, which is also easy, but not as easy as most mezzos.

  “I need a detective,” she belugled again, in case anyone had forgotten where we were in the narrative since the previous sentence was relatively long, but contained a certain literary device called “adumbrating,” which is a vague foreshadowing of events to come and is, if not actually relevant, at least apropos to the plot in an upcoming chapter that the reader hasn’t gotten to yet. “I need someone I can trust.”

  Pedro took a swig of his drink, swished it around in his mouth, made a face like an Episcopal priest who’d been slipped a three-dollar wine during communion, then gulped it down, and went straight for an aphorism.

  “Life is short.”

  Suddenly a shot rang out.

  * * *

  The doorbell rang, then I heard the kitchen door open and Pete call out, “You home?”

  “In the living room,” I called back. “Grab a couple of beers out of the fridge, will you?”

  I tossed the empty bottle into the wastebasket on top of quite a few sheets of unbegun detective stories. Then I pulled my current opus out of the typewriter, placed it in a manilla folder, and slipped it into the top drawer of the desk. I clicked off the lamp and stood up just as Pete came in.

  “What in God’s name is that caterwauling coming from the stereo?” Pete said.

  “Just … nothing,” I said, deciding to turn it off and put on some Leon Redbone, my favorite jazz and blues singer. It took me about a minute to switch the music over and by the time I was finished, Pete had settled himself onto the sofa, drunk half of his beer, and looked to be almost asleep.

  “Did you ever read Magic Mountain when you were in college?” I asked.

  “I sure visited it a few times,” Pete answered with a grin. “It was the ’70s.”

  “Thomas Mann,” I said.

  “I know who wrote it,” said Pete. “I read it in some English class. Part of it anyway. I was supposed to read the whole thing and write a paper. German existentialism. I’m pretty sure it was the worst book I never finished.”

  “Full of symbolism and deep meaning?”

  “Full of something,” said Pete, taking another draw on his bottle. “Are you struggling with the meaning of art and of life again?”

  “Always,” I said. “Perhaps I shall find it by drinking another beer.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” said Pete. “You know, if you ever reach total artistic enlightenment while drinking beer, I’ll bet it comes shooting out y
our nose.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “You want one of these cigars?”

  “Nah. I’m trying to cut down. No cigars after nine. That’s my new rule.”

  “Why the late visit? What’s up?”

  “Well, Cynthia told me that Meg was staying with her mom tonight, and then we heard over at the Slab that you’d found three dead bodies inside the three houses that were auctioned yesterday. All murdered.”

  CNN had nothing on the St. Germaine grapevine. “You came to check on my well being?” I asked.

  “Nah,” said Pete. “Cynthia told me to come out and see what was going on. She’s the mayor, you know.”

  “Yep. And you are her paramour.”

  “The power behind the throne,” said Pete. “The puppet-master.”

  “I’ll mention that to Cynthia when I see her.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Pete finished his beer and headed to the kitchen for another. “Now spill it. What’s the dope?”

  “The grapevine is right, as usual” I called after him. “Three dead bodies. Nancy, Dave and I spent all afternoon going through the houses. We didn’t find anything.”

  Pete came back into the living room. “You know who they all are?”

  “Yes, we do,” I said. “You’d better write this down for Cynthia. You’re never going to remember it.”

  “Well, gimme a sheet of paper. I’ll take some notes.”

  “There’s one on the desk and a pen in the drawer.”

  I waited for Pete settle onto the sofa again, this time with pen and paper in hand. He picked a book up off the coffee table to write on.

  “Darla Kildair, Amy Ventura, and Crystal Latimore,” I said.

  “Amy? You’re kidding!” said Pete, his shoulders slumping. “Oh, man. Really? Amy Ventura?”

  “All middle-aged women, all single and living alone we think. Darla was well known in St. Germaine since she worked at Noylene’s Beautifery for a number of years, then opened her own shop. Amy Ventura didn’t live here, but worked for the town council. She also had clients in Boone and other places. Crystal Latimore lived in Linville and Helen Pigeon knew her from church. She did have a St. Germaine Library card. I don’t know what she did for a living. Not yet.”

  “So, they had no connection that you know of,” Pete said scribbling away.

  I smiled. “Pete, you sound like a detective. Or maybe a reporter.”

  “Just getting the facts right. Cynthia is going to grill me like a pork chop when I get home.”

  “We know there’s a connection. There’s obviously a connection. We just don’t know what it is yet. We also don’t know how they died and won’t until Kent gets hold of them tomorrow morning. I suspect they were all put in the houses around the same time, but maybe not. We’ve had freezing weather for weeks and they could have been there since before Christmas or anytime after.”

  Pete quit taking notes and brightened. “You know, this probably puts us back on top.”

  “How so?”

  “We haven’t had any murders for almost two years. Now three right in a row. I’ll bet we get our title as “Murder Capital of North Carolina” back again.

  “We certainly will not,” I said. “North Carolina had about five hundred homicides last year, most of those in the cities.”

  “Per capita, I mean,” said Pete. “I’ll bet we’re up there per capita.”

  “I doubt it. Besides, I’m not sure that’s an advertising slogan we want to use. St. Germaine — Come for the shopping, Stay for your funeral.”

  “Well, maybe not,” conceded Pete. “It wouldn’t fit on the sign anyway.”

  Chapter 9

  I got to the station at eight o’clock on Monday morning determined to spend the day doing my best detecting. Three dead bodies was not something we wanted on our plates for very long. St. Germaine had had a spate of murders during the past ten years, but to our credit, and unlike the big cities with higher crime rates, none of our murders went unsolved.

  I was the first one to arrive. Nancy usually checked in around eight-thirty. Dave, on donut patrol, was probably down at Bun in the Oven bakery right now talking Diana Evarts out of a dozen day-old crullers. As far as Nancy and I could tell, Dave lived on donuts during the week. I put on the coffee pot, and had just settled into the chair in my office when I heard the front door open and the accompanying buzzer go off.

  “Hayden?” called a familiar voice. Georgia Wester’s voice.

  “In here,” I called back, getting to my feet. “Coming.”

  Georgia Wester owned Eden Books on the Square. She was also in the choir at St. Barnabas and, more importantly, the newly elected Senior Warden.

  “Father Dressler would like to see you when you have a few minutes,” she said.

  “The new priest?”

  “Yep. I had a meeting with him at seven-thirty this morning so he could tell me what’s what.”

  “I’m on sabbatical,” I said. “You want some coffee? It’s fresh.”

  “No, thanks. He says he knows you’re on sabbatical, but since you’re still a member of the staff and in town, he’d like to see you sometime today. Just call Marilyn and she’ll schedule you in.”

  “Well, tell him I’m busy.”

  “I did. He says, and I quote, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead. We go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ What does that mean?”

  I growled. “It means that he heard about the three murders and decided to quote scripture at me.”

  “Three murders?” gasped Georgia.

  “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard. Everyone else has.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “We don’t know. Sometime in the last month we’re guessing. We’ll know more this afternoon.” I didn’t see any harm in releasing sketchy information. Maybe someone had seen someone else coming or going from one of the empty houses.

  “Who was killed? Anyone we know?”

  “Probably. You knew Darla Kildair, of course, since Noylene’s Beautifery was right next door to the books store.”

  “Darla!” Georgia said. “Oh, no! I had an appointment at her new shop right after Christmas — Darla’s Hair Down Under — but when I showed up, there was a note on the door saying that she was sorry, but she’d be gone for a few weeks. Then I heard at the Beautifery that she had to go take care of her mother.”

  “We went by her shop, but there wasn’t a note. It was just locked up. You don’t know what happened to the note by any chance?”

  “No idea,” said Georgia, now thinking hard. “Maybe hand written. Not something from a computer printer.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Who else?” asked Georgia, dread now evident in her voice.

  “Two other women. Amy Ventura, and Crystal Latimore, neither one from St. Germaine.”

  “Amy? I knew Amy,” Georgia said sadly. “She was a good person. I don’t know the other name.”

  “Crystal was from Linville,” I said. “We’ll find out more about her this morning.”

  “This is just depressing,” said Georgia.

  “Are you going back over to the church?”

  “I have to open up the shop.”

  “Well, I’ll see if I can get over there some time today. Only to get you off the hook.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  Georgia turned to leave just as Dave came in the door carrying his usual box of at least a dozen donuts.

  “Morning, Georgia,” he chirped. “Care for a cream-filled delight?”

  “No, thanks,” said Georgia, and left without another word.

  Dave watched her go, and said, “Wow. She seems really depressed.”

  “She knew Darla and Amy,” I said. “I guess a lot more people knew Amy than I’d thought since she didn’t live here.”

  “I guess,” Dave agreed. “Has Nancy called in?”

  “I figured she’d be here at nine.”

  “Nope. She went over to Linville early this morning to see ab
out Crystal Latimore. She was meeting someone at the courthouse.”

  I nodded. “I might as well go over to the church and meet the new priest.”

  “I thought you were on sabbatical.”

  “Yes, I am, but I have been duly summoned and I am nothing if not amenable to the whims of the clergy. Then I’m meeting Meg for breakfast. If Nancy comes back, you guys come on over to the Slab.”

  “Will do,” said Dave.

  “Also, would you get a key from Dr. Ken to Darla’s shop? He’s the landlord. We’ll check it, but I’m not hopeful.”

  “All due diligence,” said Dave through a mouth half-filled with a jelly donut.

  * * *

  I walked in to Marilyn’s office and she looked frazzled. Marilyn was unflappable and didn’t usually look frazzled until Thursday afternoon.

  “You look frazzled,” I said, stating the obvious. “It’s only Monday morning.”

  She glared at me. “You can’t go in,” she whispered. “You don’t have an appointment!”

  “That’s okay,” I said with a shrug. “No problem. I can come back. Who’s in there with him now?”

  “No one!” Marilyn hissed under her breath. “No one. But you … don’t … have … an … appointment! He was very clear about scheduling appointments!”

  “Oh. An appointment. Why didn’t you say so? Shall I schedule one then?”

  “If you like.” Marilyn’s left eye twitched. “He has a free half-hour at one o’clock.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said very loudly, loud enough to be heard through the closed door of the priest’s office. “As you know, I’m on sabbatical. I can’t make it today at one. I’ll try to schedule an appointment next week sometime.”

  The door to the priest’s office opened suddenly and the newest clergy member of St. Barnabas stood there in a full-length, black cassock. He had a dark-red band-cincture around his waist and the white clerical collar was prominent at his throat. He offered me a warm, moist hand and I took it. He didn’t let it go, but squeezed it meaningfully, like he was milking a cow.