Liturgical Mysteries 01 The Alto Wore Tweed (17 page)

I let her rattle on without interruption. Denver wasn
’
t smart enough to have come up with this on her own. It was a brilliant idea but I knew why the Bishop quashed it. They hadn
’
t included the mandatory clerical kickback in her business plan. If the Bishop didn
’
t get a piece of the money pie, the pie never got near the oven.

“What happened to Isabel Gerhardt?” Meg asked. “You know, the soprano from Chapter 5. And Amber Dawn?”

“Oh yeah. I forgot about Isabel. Amber’s still around I think. The problem is that my characters keep wandering off. Do you suppose it’s because they’re jealous of my writing prowess?”

“No. As a writer, you stink. So far you have three women in this story and no one seems to know what’s going on. There’s no plot and no continuity,” she complained.

“Look, I’ll try to tie everything together.”

“Please do.”

• • •

The owl showed up on Tuesday night. It was a good omen, I thought, but I didn’t know of what just yet. We walked in and Meg spotted it at once—in the window over the sink, almost translucent in the moonlight. The young white barn owl, not yet fully grown, was peering intently into the house with a mouse dangling from his beak. We sat quietly at the table, and as we watched him, careful not to make any sudden movements; he tossed the mouse up, caught it by the head and swallowed it in two bites. Then, after preening his feathers to our utter delight, he launched himself in a flurry of motion and was gone into the darkness.

“I don’t know. I hope he comes back though.”

“Me too,” she said. “That was cool.”

• • •

At the gravesite, the backhoe was at work, carefully removing the still loose earth from the lid of Willie Boyd’s final resting place. Mr. Swallow, the backhoe operator and one of Swallow’s minions named Bill were here to do the dirty work. Nancy and I were here as witnesses and to pick up the article in question. As the top of Willie’s vault came into view, Bill jumped into the hole with a flat shovel and cleaned the remaining dirt off the steel covering that kept water off the coffin. Working quickly, he and the backhoe operator, who had found a shovel of his own, removed the remaining earth from the grave, giving themselves room to slide a couple of nylon straps past the blocks and under the floor of the vault. While Bill attached the straps together, making a sling to lift the vault out of the hole, his partner swung the backhoe around, presenting the front-end loader for the heavy lifting. Bill hooked the straps to the bucket and the hydraulic monster lifted the vault out of the grave with no apparent effort. During the entire process, Mr. Swallow, dressed in his immaculate black suit, stood silently, his hands pressed together as if in prayer, with no expression crossing his visage.

“It shouldn’t be long now,” I said to Nancy, who had been strangely quiet during the whole process. “We’re almost there.”

Little Willie, silk and sashes

Fell in the fire and was burned to ashes,

Now even when the room grows chilly,

We haven’t the heart to poke up Willie.

It was an old poem from the turn of the century that my mother used to read to me just before bedtime. “Little Willie” rhymes were always my favorite. I used to recite them in Sunday School to the delight of my classmates and the horror of my teachers. I don’t know why the poem suddenly wormed its way out of my subconscious and into my frontal lobe, but there it was along with a new one.

Little Willie, in the choir

Stole some wine, results were dire

He really dug the wine that killed ’im

And now we’re digging Little William.

OK, technically the wine didn’t kill him, but it was still a good “Little Willie” rhyme. However, I didn’t share it with Nancy, who seemed to be having a hard time.

The vault was lifted out and set next to the pile of dirt, just beside the headstone that St. Barnabas had paid for. Bill unhooked the straps from the bucket, released the hammers that held the floor of the vault in place, and then reattached the straps to the handles on the top of the steel covering. The front-end loader slowly lifted the the vault clear of the coffin, leaving it resting on the ground, looking strangely out of place.
/p>

“It’s much more difficult if a vault isn’t used,” Swallow explained, breaking his silence. “Or if it’s an older burial. It can get fairly messy. We don’t encourage the family to attend.”

I nodded. “How do you open the coffin?”

“There’s a crank that seals the coffin here on the end.” Swallow produced a metal object from his pocket. “Not hard to get into when you know how. Bill will have it open shortly.”

Nancy wasn’t watching. She was looking off into the woods. I didn’t blame her.

“That’s it,” said Bill, opening the lid and backing away.

Swallow and I leaned over the coffin. Willie looked much the same as I remembered him. I looked at him for a few moments and then realized that I hadn’t taken a breath since the coffin had been opened, probably to protect my nose from the smell that I thought would hit me. I took a tentative breath. It was a musty odor, nothing more. Swallow reached in and took the cross from Willie’s folded hands and, dangling it by the chain, handed it to me. I dropped it into a plastic bag.

“Is that all you need?”

“Yep. That’s it. Make sure you wash your hands. The cross has poison on it.”

“I always wash my hands,” Swallow said.

Nancy and I didn’t stay. We left the three men to reinter Willie without ceremony.

“Thanks for your help. Send your bill to the police department,” I called over my shoulder as we got into my truck. I slipped the
German Requiem
into the CD player. Brahms was always good at a funeral. Nancy didn’t say a word on the way to town.

I dropped Nancy off at the station with instructions to send Dave over to Boone that afternoon to deliver the cross to Kent Murphee. Then I headed over to the library for a church staff meeting that had been rescheduled due to the lack of electricity at St. Barnabas. Denise Franks, a member of the worship committee and a lay reader, worked at the St. Germaine library and often offered the little-used conference room for community meetings. I was fairly late, hoping that there hadn’t been too much discussion. The services of Advent had been planned for months, but lately I didn’t take anything for granted.

I got out of my Chevy and was walking up to the front door of the library when the entire group, minus Denise, trooped out. Herself was in the lead, still none too happy about her canceled conference. She walked right past me without a word. Beverly Greene was behind her followed by Georgia. They both stopped to chat and fill me in.

“She is mad,” Georgia said.

“Well, at least she can’t blame me.”

“Yes she can,” said Bev. “I don’t know how exactly, but I get the distinct impression that it’s all your fault.”

“Next Wednesday night should be quite a show,” Georgia added.

"What’s happening next Wednesday?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” Georgia laughed. “It’s a children’s service.
The Christmas Crib.”

I’m sure I had a look of dread on my face and Bev couldn’t wait to fill me in.

“Mother Ryan is assigning parts this Sunday. The children are each supposed to be an animal visiting the manger. They have to write a song or a poem and sing it or recite it to the baby Jesus.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Oh yes, she’s serious,” Georgia chimed in. “The parents have to make the costumes.”

“You both are enjoying this way too much,” I said.

“Oh, there’s one other thing,” Bev added with a sly smile. “The Bishop will be there.”

• • •

On my way home, I stopped by the McCollough’s trailer and dropped off some groceries. Moosey was munching away on the Butterfinger I had brought him when I had a brilliant idea. Or, conversely, a terrible idea. I didn’t know which yet, but I knew I was committed. Or would be.

“Moosey, can you sing?”

“Oh, yes. I love to sing,” he said through a mouth full of chocolate and forthwith determined to prove it. “Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear—”

“That’s good,” I said laughing, trying to shut him up before he spewed half-chewed candy across the carpet. “That’s one of my favorites. But I need you to learn a new song and sing it at a program next Wednesday night. Can you do it?”

“Can I, Ma?” Moosey asked, looking at Ardine, who was putting away the groceries.

“How late will it be?” she asked me. “He can’t stay up too late.”

“He’ll be home by seven,” I assured her. “You can come and watch.”

“I have to work late at the tree farm till Christmas,” Ardine said. “It’s the busy season.”

“OK. I’ll bring the song by and we’ll practice it. Then I’ll pick him up on Wednesday and bring him home.” I turned my attention back to Moosey who was licking the remaining chocolate off his fingers. “Can you memorize the song?”

“Sure I can! Listen! Je-sus loves the lid-dle chil-ren,” he sang at the top of his lungs.

“Great,” I said, quieting him down. “I’ll bring you your song tomorrow. It’s about a penguin.”

“Je-sus loves the lid-dle pen-guins,” Moosey sang as he ran out of the front door and down the steps. “All the pen-guins in the world!”

I said hello to Bud, who was reading the current
Wine Digest
in his room, and got his recommendation for a nice light dessert wine. I also checked in with Pauli Girl, whs doing a science report on deep sea fish, and then took my leave.

Now I needed a song and penguin costume.

• • •

I drove up to the house listening to the Christmas portion of
Messiah
and as I turned off the truck, I heard the phone ringing inside. I unlocked the door, went in and picked up the phone. On the other end of the transatlantic call was Geoffrey Chester, calling from jolly old England. Geoffrey was an accomplished composer and a headmaster at a choir school. He also was quite a linguist and lexicographer. I had put in a call to him a couple of days ago, but he’d been out of town.

“Here’s the clue,” I said after filling him in on the particulars and engaging in the appropriate amount of chit-chat.

I saw who did it. It’s Him. It’s Matthew.

O hark the herald angels sing;

The boy’s descent which lifted up the world.

“Ah,” said Geoffrey, in his upper-class English accent. “It’s obvious, of course.”

It wasn’t, and I could hear him scribbling away with a pen. I gave him a couple of minutes as he worked through the puzzle.

“The first line is a clue, but it’s not central to the meaning. The second two lines are crucial. ‘O hark the herald angels sing; the boy’s descent which lifted up the world’ appears to me to be an anagram. The syntax and word structure is such that an anagram would be the most obvious solution. From everything you’ve told me, the first line I would take to mean a hymn and the gospel of Matthew.”

“That’s what we thought, too. But we missed the anagram,” I said. “I’ll get someone working on it tonight.”

“Let me know if you need me to come across and direct the investigation,” Geoffrey said. “I’d enjoy some detective work for a change. These little blighters are driving me crazy.”

I knew he was kidding about that last remark. The English hardly ever say “little blighters.” I hung up the phone, walked into the kitchen to get some supper and looked out the kitchen window. The owl was back.

Chapter 12

Suddenly a shot rang out, the door flew open and there stood Amber Dawn, Personal Trainer.

“
Amber,” I said. “How nice to see you again. But you didn
’
t have to shoot the lock off the door. It was open.”

She hoisted her two thirty-eights back into her spandex where they belonged and sauntered into the office.

“
Hi Denver. Isabel here yet?” she asked, ignoring me and dropping into a chair like a hundred and twenty pounds of beautiful cement.

“
She
’
s on her way up,” Denver said, twirling the shotgun in her pudgy little hand like the head majorette in the homecoming parade. “She
’
ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

“
How are you, Amber?” I was trying to get a friendly conversation started. I didn
’
t like the way this day was turning out and Amber wasn
’
t taking the bait. She did, however, reach out and take half of my sandwich. For a personal trainer, Amber Dawn ate like a racehorse.