Liturgical Mysteries 01 The Alto Wore Tweed (22 page)

“I agree. Not only that, but the mushrooms are ready.”

• • •

What would come to be known locally as
The Crèche War
was shaping up nicely. The Kiwanians were all set to begin their show on Thursday evening and run it each night through Sunday. Four evenings, all beginning at 7:00 and going until 8:30. An hour-and-a-half outside in December was about all the shepherds could stand. Mary and Joseph could bundle up, the wise men would be layering, but the shepherds and the angels were out there in the wind and it was going to be very cold, long underwear or not. So the Kiwanians were set. That is, until they found out what the Rotarians were up to.

The Rotarians, knowing the Kiwanians’ schedule, decided that they would begin on Thursday and go from 6:30 to 9:00. The Kiwanians, having none of that, decided that they would up the ante by adding another day and another half hour. Finally the town council stepped in and set the hours, citing the need for police protection and traffic control. It wasn’t true, but it worked. The hours were set for both groups. Thursday through Saturday, 7:00 to 8:30.

• • •

I met with Nancy and Dave over a cup of coffee at The Slab. I missed our breakfast gathering due to oversleeping. Nancy and Dave had no problem eating breakfast without me and charging it to the department. I couldn’t blame them.

We sipped our coffee and were on our third cup, finishing our old business and the upcoming Christmas plans before I told Nancy and Dave about the clue that Meg and I had discovered. Pete, walking by for the twelfth time with the coffee pot listening the best he could while pretending to wait on the other customers, finally sat down at the table and said “OK, fill me in.”

“Excuse us,” I said. “Police business.”

“Aw, give me a break. The council has been on me for weeks to find out if you’re making any progress.”

“We’re making progress. We’re just methodical.”

He snickered. “Oh, haha. If I was as methodical as you, my customers would die of starvation. So what’s the deal? Who did it?”

“If I tell you, you’ll keep it quiet? You can’t tell the council.”

He nodded, trying to look as somber as possible.

I told him about the clue and the Bible verse. Matthew 9:5. “For which is easier, to say ‘your sins are forgiven,’ or to say ‘Rise, and walk?’”

“So who is it?” he asked, not understanding.

“Well, according to the clue, which may or may not point to the real killer, the murderer is Rhiza Walker.”

He looked confused for a moment. But only for a moment.

“Ah...rise and walk.” He nodded his approval. “Very clever.”

Dave and Nancy looked at each other and I saw Nancy’s eyes roll ever so slightly heavenward.

“You can’t say anything to anyone,” I admonished. “It would hamper the investigation.”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

We all knew he was lying. Oh, he’d try not to tell but Nancy, Dave and I—even Pete himself—knew that he had the biggest mouth on this side of the Cumberland Gap. That, coupled with the fact that I had told Marilyn, the church secretary, almost guaranteed that I’d be having a meeting with Rhiza and or Malcolm before the afternoon was over. Which is what I wanted.

• • •

Back at the station, I had Dave run the phone records on the Walker’s home and cell phones. Malcolm had a satellite phone, which I also had Dave run a trace on. A half hour later, I had a list of every call they had made for a week on either side of the murder—specifically, every call they had made to Loraine Ryan’s home and cell phone. They may have had a good reason for calling her at home. But forty-seven phone calls in three days? I doubted it.

• • •

I walked into choir rehearsal to an impromptu performance of one of my finer dramatic musical works. Actually, the BRAs had gotten there early to inaugurate a new choir member who, when I walked in, happened to be almost on the floor in hysterical laughter. The offending work was one of my Epiphany musicals concerning the Three Queens of Orient. In my own defense, these were written for choir parties and werenot scheduled for liturgical performance.

The Three Kings, being acted by Bob Solomon, Sammy Royce and Fred May, all reading from the script with great declaration and verisimilitude, meet at the beginning of the play and decide to take their gifts to the newborn king, who they are sure has been born directly under a very bright star in the East.

After they leave posthaste, the three queens, named Leona, Imelda and Hillary, get together to discuss what is to be done while the Kings are on their journey. Leona is the mean, bossy soprano who keeps having all her servants executed for failing to keep the bathroom clean. Imelda is the large alto who needs a small caravan just to carry her shoes. Hillary, the savvy mezzo who made her fortune in illegal inside camel trading, points out that since these kings are already from the Orient, if they follow a star in the East for any length of time, they’ll end up in the Pacific Ocean.

I must say here that the work includes many beautiful arias including the Song of the Lowly Handmaiden,

I know I’m just a concubine,

But won’t you be my valentine?

There’s also the most famous of the trios which the ladies were currently singing with great glee.

We three Queens of Orient are

All our husbands followed the star

They thought it was mannish,

But they don’t speak Spanish,

They probably won’t get far. Ohh-ohhhh.

Star of wonder, star so blessed;

Shining in the East celeste.

So we ponder as they wander,

Why on earth did they go West?

I’m Leona, bitter as gall,

I can cause a terrible squall,

Rich as Midas, star to guide us,

I am the queen of all. Ohh-ohhhh.

Star of wonder, star so keen,

But I’m the biggest star you’ve seen.

We’ll travel slowly, tax the lowly,

’
Cause I am the Queen of Mean.

I’m Imelda, jolly and quaint,

Rather large, a face like a saint,

My shoes I can carry, on one dromedary,

If I show real restraint. Ohh-ohhhh.

>
Star of wonder, star most fair,

I’m wandering without footwear.

It may seem callous, but at my palace

I have around three thousand pair.

I am Hillary, savvy and wise,

My king has some wandering eyes,

But if I scare him in the harem

He’ll get a real surprise! Ohh-ohhhh.

I have traveled from afar

Following my husband’s star

When I squeezed him if I’d pleased him,

He said, “Close, but no cigar.”

The choir finished up with a rousing chorus and applauded themselves mightily.

“Hayden, this is Rebecca Watts,” said Georgia seeing me come in. “She’s a new alto.”

“Well, she won’t last too long in this choir if you treat her like this.”

“No, no. I love it.” said Rebecca. “It’s the best choir rehearsal I’ve ever been to.”

“It’s a pleasure to have you with us,” I said in my best ‘welcome-to-the-choir’ voice. “Did you get a folder?”

“We were planning to sing
The Weasel Cantata
next,” said Marjorie.

“Maybe later,” I said putting her off. “We have to hit the Charpentier
Midnight Mass
pretty hard this evening.”

After the rehearsal, I checked my pager. Sure enough, there were two calls from Rhiza and three from Malcolm. I’d get to them tomorrow morning. I was beat and I still had to feed Archimedes.

• • •

I began the next morning with a cup of coffee and the Vince Guaraldi Trio playing the soundtrack from
A Charlie Brown Christmas
. I followed my coffee up with a couple of phone calls. I was contemplating getting a new 100 CD changer that I saw in a catalog, hooking it up to the stereo and putting in a hundred Christmas CDs to capture that Christmas spirit that had been lacking of late. Here it was, mid-December and I still hadn’t put up my tree. Meg and I had planned to go out to the tree farm later this afternoon, but she had canceled due to a client in a panic about his 401k.

My first call was to Malcolm Walker’s satellite phone. There was no answer which, in itself, was odd. Malcolm always answered his phone and with a satellite phone, he was never out of range. My next call was to Rhiza’s cell. She answered on the first ring.

“Hi Rhiza. It’s Hayden.”

“Hayden, thank God.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I hadn’t expected such a panicked reply.

“Everything is wrong. I don’t know what to do.”

“Why don’t you come over and see me. I’m at the house.”

“Malcolm left last night and didn’t come home. I don’t know where he is and he won’t answer his phone.”

“I know. I just tried him.”

“I’ll be over in a little bit,” she said and hung up.

I spent the next hour going through my music collection, trying to pick the top hundred Christmas CDs. I admit I have a rather large CD collection. Well, four or five thousand anyway. I join music clubs regularly and just have them send their monthly offering, which my accountant pays as a matter of course. Then, when I’m at Tower Records, I’ll buy a couple of dozen recordings that catch my eye. One thing I did spend some money on, after I had become flush, was trading in my vinyl for CDs. I still kept the vinyl recordings—in some ways the sound is much better—but if I found one that I couldn’t replace or duplicate with a CD from the record label, I paid a student at Appalachian State to transfer it for me.

Rhiza knocked on the door and opened it in the same motion just as she had always done. I didn’t mind. We were old friends.

“C’mon in,” I called from the kitchen. “I’ll bring some coffee.”

“Thanks.” She plopped down in my reading chair as she had a hundred times before, letting the leather and overstuffed cushions catch her as she dropped. I had seen her look better. “Haggard” was probably a good word to describe her. She was wearing an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. No makeup. Not exactly the Rhiza I was used to seeing around town for the past few years. Make no mistake; she was still a knockout. In a lot of ways, to my eye anyway, more appealing in her natural state than in the trophy wife getup.

Rhiza and I had a history. She was quite a clever girl and when she dropped the husky-squeaky voice that enraptured Malcolm in favor of her gentle North Carolina mountain accent, her whole personality changed for the better.

“Put on a Mozart symphony, will you?” she asked. “Number 26 if you can find it. God, I get so tired of listening to Mannheim Steamroller all Christmas long.”

She hopped up, went over to the humidor, took out one of my R&J’s, snipped off the end and lit it up. She fell back into the feather cushions, puffing on the cigar, and draping a long leg over the arm of the chair. On her, I have to admit, that cigar looked good.

I found the Mozart CD and replaced Charlie Brown jazz with the Viennese classical.

“In our house it’s either Mannheim Steamroller or Windham Hill from Thanksgiving to New Years. What did Doonesbury call it? Air Pudding. It makes me want to become a brunette again,” she said as I handed her a cup of coffee.

I had first met Rhiza at Chapel Hill when I was a grad student and she was a freshman. She was a music history major and we hit it off right away. In fact, it was Rhiza and Pete who had called me about the job in St. Germaine after I found my second career. When I met her in grad school, she was a decent pianist with no illusions about a professional career. She was on a teaching track and doing some good research on folk music of the Outer Banks. She was also a brunette, drop-dead gorgeous, and quite interested in consciousness altering experiences of various kinds—musical, chemical, and sexual. I must admit, she had aged more gracefully than I. If anything, she was more beautiful now than she had been then. I was pretty sure that no one in town knew about us, although she continued to drop by the cabin until she got hooked up with Malcolm five years ago. Now she stopped in occasionally for some coffee and to chat, but she didn’t drop by. I’m sure Meg didn’t know about our background, and since we didn’t ever discuss our ancient history, I didn’t feel guilty about not telling her.

“I didn’t do it,” she said, sipping her coffee, the cigar dangling in her other hand while the strains of Mozart 26 filled the room. “You’ve got to believe me.”

Her eyes were smoldering--smoldering as the passion which hung heavy in the room like some gigantic velvet curtain smothering the atmosphere, which rose like the thin wisp of smoke from the cigar dangling like an extra appendage from her delicate, well-manicured hand. Yep. They always came to me for help.