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

  “Good to see you guys again,” said Boog, getting out and zipping his leather jacket. “Sorry about the reason though. I knew Crystal. She was a nice lady.”

  “I didn’t know her,” I said, “but I’m sorry, too. Can you tell us anything about her?”

  “Well, I knew her, but not well,” admitted Boog. “Divorced, I think. She was active around town. Showed up at events, on a couple of committees, that sort of thing. I knew her from the Library Council. My wife’s on that as well, and Crystal has been to the house a few times for meetings.”

  “She had a St. Germaine library card,” said Nancy. “Any reason you might know of?”

  “Sure,” said Hiram. “Our library has been closed since August. We got a big bequest and the town is redoing the whole thing. It should be quite a showplace when it’s finished. That’s mainly what the Library Council has been meeting about. Anyway, I suppose she wanted to check out some books or something.”

  “Makes sense,” said Nancy. “I checked at our library and she used her card quite a bit.”

  “I wonder,” said Hiram, “if this shouldn’t be our case. If she was murdered here, it’s certainly our jurisdiction even if the body was dumped over in St. Germaine.”

  “Absolutely right,” I said. “You are welcome to it. With my compliments.”

  “Yeah, I thought you’d say that. Tell you what, if we do find out that Crystal was killed in Linville, I’ll take it off your hands. Otherwise, you just let me know what we can do to help.”

  Just then a panel van arrived and parked on the street in front of the house. The lettering on the side of the van identified it as belonging to Cooter’s Locks ‘N Such. A grizzled old man in blue overalls, a stocking cap and an over-insulated ski jacket got out, opened the sliding door, picket up a toolbox and trudged down the stone walkway to the front door.

  “Hey, Boog,” he grumbled, then set his toolbox on the front stoop, got out a set of picks and started to work.

  “Hey, Cooter,” answered Boog.

  “You using lever picks?” asked Nancy.

  “Yeah,” said Cooter, squinting hard at the dead bolt he was working. “I’m gonna need that tension wrench, too.”

  “Here you go,” said Nancy, handing him what he needed. Nancy was good at locks, but left her own set of picks at home. Her slim jim didn’t work on house locks.

  “Thanks,” grunted Cooter, taking the wrench without looking away from his task and in another minute or so, the front door of the house swung open.

  Cooter stood up, held out his hand to Boog and said, “That’ll be thirty-five dolla’.”

  “Write up an invoice and take it to the station,” said Boog. “Sheesh, Cooter, you know how this works by now.”

  “Yeah,” grumbled Cooter, packing his tools up. “I gotta wait for another danged month before I get my money.”

  “Here you go,” I said, pulling out my money clip. I peeled off fifty dollars and handed it to him. “I want a receipt before you leave, though. St. Germaine P.D. The extra fifteen bucks is to re-key the lock and give me two copies.”

  Cooter looked me in the eye and gave me a nod. “Sure. Thanks.” He trudged back down the walk to get more tools and his receipt book.

  “Did you find any next of kin?” I asked Boog as we walked into the hallway behind the front door and found the light switches.

  “No. We couldn’t find an address on the ex-husband. His name is Kevin Latimore, but he hasn’t lived in Linville for at least eight years. The last address we had was in Landrum, South Carolina, but the phone number was not his. The directory in Landrum doesn’t have him either. Maybe Crystal had his number in the house. Maybe her parents are still alive. She was only, what, in her forties?”

  “Forty-five,” said Nancy. “So her parents could possibly be in their late sixties or early seventies.”

  “We need an address book, or computer, or something,” I said. “Hopefully, there’s one here somewhere.”

  Nancy, Boog, and I went through the house. We didn’t find an address book and we didn’t find a computer. We did find a cable modem, a wireless router, and a WiFi printer. An obvious setup for a laptop, but no laptop. As a court advocate, Crystal probably carried her laptop with her daily.

  “Here’s your keys,” called Cooter. “I’m leaving them on this here dining table.”

  “Thanks,” I called back from the kitchen.

  The rest of her house was neat as a pin. Nothing out of place, although there were dirty dishes in the dishwasher. There was a small load of laundry still in the dryer. The trash can in the kitchen, however, was empty, as was the small one in the bathroom. Everything seemed to be in order. In the bedroom, the bed was made and next to it on the bed table, was an open book, face down marking the page. The cover said The Devil in the White City. I picked it up and turned it over, then flipped to the front. St. Germaine Public Library.

  “Nothing here,” said Nancy rifling through the closet. Boog was rifling through the dresser but came up empty as well. After an hour of going through the house, we called it quits, and left. I gave Boog one of the keys and Nancy put the other one on her key ring.

  Crystal’s late model Chevy Trailblazer was sitting on the street. Nancy popped it open and we gave it a thorough going over, but found nothing. We said our farewells, promised to stay in touch concerning the case, and headed up to Tinkler’s Knob.

  We made a quick stop in St. Germaine since it was on the way, and Nancy got her own set of lock picks out. Tinkler’s Knob was way out in the county and would be the county sheriff’s jurisdiction, but I’d already called him and he really didn’t want to bother driving all the way out there since I was going anyway. He wasn’t anxious to have a murder on his plate.

  Amy Ventura’s house was a log-cabin. Not an old one like mine built of two-hundred year old, hand-hewn chestnut logs, but one of the new round-log kits that were popular about twenty years ago. The logs had an orangish stain and they were topped with a green tin roof. A narrow, covered, front porch stretched the length of the house and two large windows were positioned on either side of the wooden front door. There was no garage or carport, and the driveway, as well as the road up to Tinkler’s Knob was unpaved. Amy’s Jeep Wrangler was sitting in the drive. It wasn’t locked. The cabin seemed to be in good repair, although some settling was evidenced in the cracks in the chinking. Not an expensive house, but comfortable, probably.

  Nancy went to work on the door while I walked up to check the mailbox. I found an electric bill and two circulars from Dollar General. Nancy had the door open by the time I made it back to the front porch.

  “We’re up in the middle of nowhere,” I said, and checked my phone. “No cell service.”

  “She worked from home,” Nancy said. “A grant writer. There has to be satellite internet and probably TV as well.”

  “Yeah. I just got that satellite internet service. It’s great.”

  We spent the next hour or so going through Amy’s house and by the time we were finished, the sun had dropped down behind the hills and an early dusk was upon us. Nancy was right about the satellite setup, but again, no laptop. Amy was less of a housekeeper. The bed was unmade, there were dishes in the sink, and a laundry basket full of dirty clothes waiting to go into the washing machine, but everything was fairly tidy and clean. Her vacuum cleaner had been left in the living room, plugged in, and several of the lights in the house had been left on.

  Nothing in the Jeep.

  We were no further along than we we’d been when the day had started.

  Well, maybe a little.

  Chapter 13

  “I think we have a good layout,” said Bud. “I brought a drawing with me.”

  “Well, let’s see it then,” I said, clearing a space on the table.

  “Absolutely,” said Meg.

  We’d decided to meet at the Slab and review the plans for the wine shop. Bud had already met with the architect and I had spoken with the contractor, but neither Meg
nor I had seen any plans yet. Bud unrolled the drawing and spread it out. It wasn’t a detailed rendition, but was a contractor’s drawing showing walls, outlets, bathrooms, fixtures, and the like. A floor plan.

  “Here’s where the shelves go,” said Bud, pointing to the main room. “All along the walls, and two in the center with plenty of room to get around. There’s a bar here and shelves behind that as well. We’ll use that for tastings. Here’s a sink and a big rack for wine glasses. Now, this is the kitchen … “

  Bud went on excitedly for about thirty minutes, showing us where each vintage would be kept and why, where the stools would go, the stairs to the basement wine cellar, his office, the shipping room, the new kitchen, cash register, everything.

  “Wow,” said Meg when he was finished. “This is quite impressive.”

  “Thanks.” He looked over at me for approval.

  “Good job, Bud! I think we’re on our way. Roberto will be there tomorrow morning to get started. I want you to be there, too.”

  “I met with him yesterday. He’s bringing his crew and I called and arranged to have the dumpster dropped off at seven. I’ll be there first thing.

  “Good deal.”

  “I’m heading back to the house,” he said, rolling his drawing back up and snapping a rubber band around it. “I’m still gonna clean up a bit. It’ll save some time tomorrow.”

  “Have fun,” said Meg. “We’re really proud of you, Bud.”

  “Indeed we are.”

  * * *

  Buxtehooters was a pipe-organ bar with something to prove. It was a classy joint, not like those other pipe-organ bars downtown - The PipeRack, Celeste’s, and the Bearded Gamba, to name a few. Buxtehooter’s had all the panache those dives forgot and a velvet rope besides - the rope to keep the Southern Baptists from sneaking in. Yeah, they said they were only coming in to pass out some Bible tracts and shepherd these sinners back on the path to righteousness, but they spent a little too much time up at the bar, especially on wet-dirndl night. Who could blame ‘em? The waitresses at Buxtehooter’s were blonde, pigtailed Tyrollean dolls. They could sing like Moravians, shimmy like Methodists, and pour suds like Lutherans, all of which made them very attractive to the Southern Baptists, the ones that managed to slip past Big Lucille.

  Pedro and I grabbed our table in the back and listened to one of the girls standing on the bar warble a Geisserlieder, something unintelligible in Medieval German, while some of the more fervent patrons had formed a flagellant dance line and were gaily beating themselves around the floor with umbrellas.

  “Guten Abend!” said the waitress who suddenly appeared at the table. “My name is Klingel. What can I get you boys?” She smiled a smile that could make Wagner order a Matzah ball.

  “Gimme a pitcher of Schweinestinke extra-dark,” said Pedro.

  “Ja, ja,” tinkled Klingel.

  “Same for me,” I said, and stuffed a sawbuck into the top of Klingel’s dirndl. She was a looker all right, but it was Pedro she was giving the eye to. I thought about taking my sawbuck back.

  “You’re a peach,” I said, shooting her a look and thinking she really was much like a peach except for her not being a fuzzy three-inch fruit of the genus Prunus produced by a tree with pink blossoms and that she had internal organs and could talk, so not really.

  “You gonna fill me in?” I asked Pedro, as Klingle chingled away.

  “I told you,” said Pedro. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”

  “Hmmm,” I pondered. “I believe you, but this is gonna come back on us. I mean, we can prop up the body in Marilyn’s chair for a while. I don’t think anyone will notice. But then Marilyn’s coming back from Vegas.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Pedro. “Anne Dante’s gonna be ripe as a peach in a week.”

  “And if you didn’t do it, then who did, and why?” I rankled sleuthily, summing up my work for the day.

  “I think it has to do with groundhogs,” Pedro said. “There was an article in the paper this morning on the religion page along with her picture. You’d have recognized her if you’d gotten past the obituaries.”

  “I was getting there. I had to see who was dead, didn’t I?”

  Something was bothering me and it suddenly hit me: hit me like a huge squishy bug that smacks into your teeth when you’re riding your motorcycle and bothering me like one of its legs that lodges behind a molar and you flick at it with your tongue but can’t get it out without flossing.

  Anne Dante’s name was in the obituaries. I’d read it.

  But she hadn’t been killed yet.

  * * *

  The choir members were all in their chairs when I walked up the narrow stairs and entered the choir loft. “Welcome back!” said Mark Wells, the first one to see me standing in the doorway. This was followed by a chorus of welcomes that made me feel downright humble. I’d come up earlier in the afternoon and put music and my new detective story on each chair.

  “I’m glad you’re back, too,” said Marjorie. “I don’t get this story, though. As usual, it’s beneath me.”

  “You mean, beyond you,” said Martha Hatteberg, one of the altos. Marjorie sat on the edge of the alto section for appearances, but sang the tenor part most of the time. On the other side of her sat Martha’s husband, Randy, and Bert Coley, a police officer in Boone.

  “I know what I said,” sniffed Marjorie. At age seventy-plus, she was the eldest in the choir and had vowed to drop down to the bass part when the tenor line became too high for her to manage.

  “I like the part about the squishy bug,” said Sheila DeMoss.

  Tiff St. James raised her hand like the dutiful student she was. “Excuse me, but this title says The Cantor Wore Crinolines. What the heck are crinolines?” Tiff was our unpaid choir intern from the music department at Appalachian State.

  Marjorie guffawed. “You don’t know what crinolines are? You poor, deprived child. I remember when I had to wear them for my confirmation.”

  “Well, what are they?” asked Tiff again.

  “Petticoats, dear. Horrible, stiff petticoats. The hold your dress out like one of those Southern Belles in Gone With the Wind.”

  I had to wear them when I was a girl,” said Martha. “Hated ‘em. In the old days, some of them had hoops. Not mine though. I’m not quite that old. Marjorie’s probably had hoops made out of whalebone.”

  “They did not!” barked Marjorie.

  “Originally,” said Bert Coley, reading while his fingers scrolled across his Smartphone, “crinoline was a French fabric made by weaving horsehair with another fabric. Very stiff. Then it came to mean the actual petticoats that offered shape to women’s dresses. You’ll be gratified to know that crinolines, as a fashion statement, are now making a comeback in bridal attire.”

  “I am gratified to know that,” said Elaine, then asked me, “Now, why are you writing about crinolines?”

  “An author’s genius is often not recognized during his own lifetime,” I said, finally making my way through the choir and down to the organ console.

  “That’s true,” said Rebecca Watts, the town librarian and acknowledged literary expert. “Take Emily Dickinson, for example. Or Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “Or Jesus,” said Goldi Fawn Birtwhistle, a soprano-turned-alto who had just recently decided that Marjorie might be right and that her high G’s were reminiscent of a swan being gutted alive and roasted on a spit. She had sadly traded all her solo accompaniment tracks for ones in a lower key.

  All the altos were all accounted for except for Dr. Ian Burch, PhD, our countertenor with a PhD in early music, who was on a two-week tour of France with the Appalachian Rauschpfeife Consort.

  Also present was a full compliment of sopranos including Bev, Georgia, Elaine, Rhiza Walker. Four basses and three tenors filled out the choir. Eighteen singers and all the parts covered.

  “I heard the new priest has already found your replacement,” said Phil Camp.

  “My sabbatical replacement,” I said. “I�
�m only off until the end of the June.”

  “Well, who is it?” asked Phil. “Anyone we know?”

  “No one you know,” I said. “If I remember correctly, Father Dressler told me he has a master’s degree from Oberlin. He’ll whip you guys into shape in no time flat.”

  “What’s his name?” asked Bob Solomon. The basses all sat in the back row under the shadow of the life-sized, stained glass image of St. Barnabas himself.

  “Umm … hang on … ” I hunted around in my jacket pocket for the slip of paper on which I’d written the name of Father Dressler’s organist. “Here it is. The Chevalier Lance Fleagle.”

  “The Chevalier?” said Marjorie. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

  “Apparently, he’s a knight,” I continued. “He would like to be referred to as ‘The Chevalier.’

  “Well, if that don’t shellac the beetle to the brisket!” said Marjorie. “A real knight?”

  “Named Lancelot, no less” I said, “but he won’t be here until a week from Sunday, so you’re stuck with me until then. Now, I’ve put some new music on your chairs, so let’s give it a look. Our interim priest is an Anglo-Catholic so we’ll be changing some things about the service.”

  “An Anglo-Catholic?” said Goldi Fawn. “What’s that?”

  Meg said, “As choir president, I’ve done my due diligence on the subject and am now prepared to offer a report.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her choir folder, stood up, and put on her reading glasses.

  “Lay it on us,” said Steve DeMoss from the bass section.

  “The term Anglo-Catholic describes people, beliefs and practices within Anglicanism which affirm the Catholic heritage and identity of the various Anglican churches, rather than the churches’ Protestant heritage. In this ‘catholic’ revival, Anglicans began again to embrace the rituals of the ancient church with renewed enthusiasm for the gift of the Sacraments, recognizing that a biblically informed, Gospel-centered church need not be at odds with the catholic tradition and is strengthened by the expression of God’s love in both Word and Sacraments.”