Mark Schweizer - Liturgical 12 - The Cantor Wore Crinolines (4 page)

“Sure,” said Jennifer. “Several million bucks.”

“Right,” said Meg. “Well, it’s set up in several accounts, one of them being a discretionary account that the priest can use. We went to computer banking a few years ago when the bank started offering on-line services. What we didn’t realize, or even think about, was that since Rosemary was listed as a signer on her discretionary account, was that she could also transfer funds between
any
of the accounts. We don’t know when she discovered that she could do that, or even if Señor Enrique figured it out during pillow talk after one of their ‘training sessions’, but she transferred the money, withdrew the cash, and took off for Central America all within twenty-four hours. Of course, they’d been planning it for a while.”

“Wow,” said Pete.

“We plugged that hole pretty quickly, I can tell you,” said Meg. “It won’t be happening again. The clergy will have no access to anything but their own account and even then our accountant will monitor it.”

“On the upside,” said Bev. “Our full-time interim priest arrived in town this afternoon. He’ll be taking the service tomorrow morning.” She turned to me and said sweetly, “Will you be attending, Hayden?”

“As you know,” I answered, “I’m on sabbatical from St. Barnabas.”

I had decided, after Christmas, that it was time for me to take a few months off. I’d been going to church mad, leaving church mad, and finding myself fuming every time I walked in the doors. I called my friend Edna Terra-Pocks over in Lenoir and she was happy to sub for me during January. The music committee hadn’t found anyone for February through June, but they were still looking. I, myself, wasn’t looking. I was on sabbatical.

“It’s only called a sabbatical when you take time off to achieve something,” Bev pointed out. “Otherwise, it’s called a leave of absence.”

“Not really, no,” I said. “Technically a sabbatical is a rest from work. A hiatus. The origin probably comes from the book of Leviticus where there is a commandment to desist from working the fields in the seventh year. In the strictest sense, a sabbatical should last an entire a year. I’m only taking six months. It’s only in recent times that a sabbatical has been used to fulfill some goal — like traveling for research or doing some sort of continuing education.”

“Do you have a goal?” asked Cynthia.

“You bet,” I said. “I’m working on my detective story.”

This announcement was greeted with a resounding chorus of groans.

* * *

I looked across my desk at Pedro LaFleur, my right hand man, a loogan, a bruno, a button, a bindle stiff with a palooka face gone to seed. He slumped heartbrokenly in his chair like a sad sack of spuds slung over the shoulder of some broken-down Idaho wharfie who’d seen too many night shifts in a city where the only second chances were left to those who managed to get out of this burghal of Unitarian Churches, Bible colleges, and unaccredited law schools.

He had a drink in his hand and a hole in his heart, a hole big enough to drive a 2013 Honda Odyssey minivan (with satellite linked navigation and a multi-angle rearview camera) down the anterior vena cava, execute a three-point-turn at the atrioventicular valve (thanks to the rearview camera), then exit the pulmonary artery without ever once scraping the Celestial Blue Metallic finish that comes standard on the EX-L. This hole was courtesy of Claire Annette Reed, the ex-girlfriend who squeaked that they should just be friends

Pedro could sing, sing like a seraphim on angel dust – the sweet stuff, not that junk that you get from those stinkin’ cherubs down on 43rd, that junk will make your wings fall off and your halo burst into flames. He was a countertenor with high C’s to burn and if you wanted the Allegri “Miserere” in this town, you’d better call Pedro or you’d be pushing up daisies by Easter. It was part of his deal with the Family. Da Capo Nostra.

I took a slug of hooch, cheap hooch, snapped the paper open, and looked at the clock on the wall, watching that thing hanging underneath it swing back and forth like a pendulum. Page two. Obituaries.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Marilyn? Nah. Marilyn was in Vegas for the week at the National Literary Device Convention.

“Come in,” I called, and the door swung open.

* * *

Supper was delicious. As we ate our way through the brats and kraut, potato salad, and all the fixings, our
conversation turned from St. Barnabas to other things; Cynthia’s auction; Bud’s purchase and our plan for the new wine shop; Pete’s idea for renting out the Portia the Truffle Pig to trufflers for Saturday excursions; and all the reasons why Kent and Nancy found
Bones
to be the stupidest show on television.

“Really?” said Kent, waving his hands in the air. “They expect us to believe that the Smithsonian, or
Jeffersonian
as it’s obliquely called, has a multimillion dollar crime lab that can do 3-D holographic reconstructive modeling by tapping a couple of times on the screen of an iPad, and employs five highly trained über-scientists who are free to utilize all the resources of the government and the FBI — all to figure out the identity of a homeless guy found in a dumpster?
Really?
”

“Hang on,” said Nancy. “I’ll just collect some DNA from this tapeworm I found in the portable toilet and run it through our mega-database. Make sure you get a close up of the tapeworm crawling around the bottom of the crapper. Then I’ll check it against all the known DNA in the entire world, and have an answer for you in a couple minutes. I’m sure we’ll find a match.”

“How about some dessert?” asked Meg. “We have bread pudding.”

* * *

After supper, Pete and I went outside on the back deck to enjoy our cigars. Kent joined us, but eschewed our cheroots in favor of his pipe. This separating of the sexes after supper is a time-honored tradition in North Carolina. So, we were rather surprised when the door opened and Nancy joined us.

“You can’t come out here,” said Pete. “Men only. We’re smoking.”

“I brought my own cigar,” said Nancy, then flipped open a lighter with one hand while she rolled the end of the Cuban inside her pursed lips, wetting it.

“How does this jibe with your health coaching?” Pete asked.

“I’m a health coach, not a nut,” said Nancy. “I’ve already eaten two brats, German potato salad, and enough bread pudding to feed an African village for a week. Besides, I’ve got a gun.”

“Fair enough,” I said, then looked at the cigar band. “You stole that one from my desk, right?”

“Of course I did,” said Nancy, lighting the cigar and taking a puff. “But what’re you gonna do? These Cubans are illegal in every state in the union.”

The door opened again and Meg stuck her head out. “It’s freezing out here,” she said.

“Can’t be helped,” I answered. “Unless you want to let us back in the house.”

“Nope,” said Meg. “You’ll be fine.” She handed me my cell phone. “Here you go. It’s Dave.”

“Hi, Dave,” I said into the phone. “What’s up?”

“You know that house that you and Bud bought?” said Dave.

“Yeah.”

“Well, Bud was in there looking around after his shift finished at the Piggly Wiggly. The electricity was off, so he brought a flashlight. He had a key to the place.”

“Right,” I said. “Cynthia gave it to him right after the auction.”

“So he called the station and, well, since I’m the cop-on-call tonight it was forwarded to my cell.”

“Yeah?”

“The thing is,” said Dave with a heavy sigh, “Bud found a dead body in the bedroom closet.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. I’m here now.”

“We’re on the way.”

Chapter 4

Meg elected to stay home and clean up the dishes after supper. The rest of the dinner group headed into town, since Nancy and I were heading that way anyway. Nancy dropped Bev off and headed over to Bud’s new house. Kent and Jennifer wanted to stop by since it was on the way home and Kent had a professional interest in the discovery. Being the medical examiner, he’d be seeing the body eventually anyway. Jennifer, though, decided to stay in the car with the heater running. Cynthia held that since she was the mayor, she might as well come and see what was what. Pete wanted to be deputized immediately.

“Remember when I helped you guys solve that case of the kidnapping and the double murder? I don’t even know how I do it. I’m like some kind of crime solving genius.”

“I don’t remember that at all,” I said.

“Me neither,” said Nancy.

We were standing in the living room of what looked like a small craftsman-style vacation cottage. We couldn’t really tell very much about the house since we were all using flashlights. I kept two in my truck. Nancy had two as well. Dave motioned us toward a room in the back.

“In there,” he said.

“Where’s Bud?” I asked.

“I sent him home. That okay?”

“Fine,” I said.

“He seemed sort of shell shocked when I got here.”

“I’ll bet,” said Cynthia.

“Anyway, the body’s in the closet. It’s a woman.”

“Anyone we know?” Pete said, as we all followed Dave into the bedroom.

“I don’t know her,” said Dave. “At least I don’t think I do. It’s hard to say till we get enough light back there.”

“How about the ambulance?” Cynthia asked.

“On the way from Boone,” said Dave. “I told them no hurry. They’ll be here within the hour though.”

“They’ll drop her off at the morgue,” said Kent. “I can give her a look on Monday.”

We crowded into the small bedroom and huddled around the closet door. The room was empty except for an old chest of drawers against one of the walls. The closet was framed by a couple of louvered wooden doors, both of which were standing open. The beams of our flashlights all found the body at the same time.

It was a woman. A middle-aged woman. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the side wall of the closet. He legs were stretched straight in front of her, her feet splayed to either side. Her hands were folded in her lap and her eyes were closed. She was wearing a woolen dress that looked a little big for her, a scarf, and shoes with a short heel. Church clothes.

She’s been dead for a couple of days at least,” said Kent, putting his face close to the dead woman’s face, sniffing, and peering closely with his flashlight. He put a hand on her abdomen. “Probably longer. It’s been below freezing for what, two weeks or so? With no electricity on in here, it’s like a freezer. Hardly any decomp at all, but that’s to be expected since she’s solid as a rock.”

“It’s been winter since way before Christmas,” I said. “We’ve had a few days up in the forties, but even so, the temperature in here might not of climbed high enough to thaw her out.”

Kent nodded. “Yep. Once she was frozen solid, it’d take a few days to thaw her out. Think about a twenty pound turkey. That takes a day or so at room temperature. She looks to be maybe a hundred forty pounds. So even if she thawed a bit during the day, every night she’d freeze back up.”

“Anyone recognize her?” asked Dave. “I don’t.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s Darla Kildair. She didn’t live here, but she cut hair over at Noylene’s Beautifery until last year. Then she and Goldi Fawn Birtwhistle had a fight and Darla opened her own shop down around back of Dr. Ken’s Gun Emporium on Old Chambers. He gave her that basement space. Not easy to find unless you know where it is, although there’s a sign for it on the highway. Darla’s Hair Down Under.”

“So that’s what that is,” said Dave. “I had no idea.”

“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Nancy, shining her light right into the woman’s face.

“That’s not Darla,” exclaimed Cynthia with astonishment. “I saw Darla at Thanksgiving when I went over there for a haircut. This woman is older.”

“Pretty sure that’s her,” I said.

“What you’re seeing is some desiccation,” said Kent. “That’s to be expected, even with the freezing. When a body loses fluid, the aging process appears more pronounced.”

“Her hair’s different, too,” said Pete. “Didn’t she used to have blonde hair?”

“It was sort of auburn,” said Cynthia. “Now it’s almost black and a lot shorter. I guess it’s her though, now that I look closely.”

“Oh, Darla,” said Pete thoughtfully, “what has brought thou to this terrible end? A bad haircut?”

“That’s not funny,” sniffed Cynthia. “She was a nice person.”

“Sorry,” said Pete.

“I don’t imagine,” said Nancy, “that she wandered into a locked-up house, walked into the closet, and died of natural causes.”

“I don’t imagine she did,” I said.

“Lookee here,” said Kent, flashing his light on one side of her face, then the other. “She’s just got the one earring. The other one’s missing.”

I pointed at Pete and Cynthia and said, “You two keep quiet about that earring. That’s a clue, so don’t spread it around.”

“We won’t,” said Cynthia.

“What earring?” added Pete.

Kent stood up from his crouching position. “I can’t tell you anymore till I have a chance to take a closer look. Naturally, liver temp won’t do any good and I may never be able to give you a time of death.”

“Those
Bones
guys over at the Jeffersonian could do it,” Nancy said. “They’d just get a frozen blowfly larvae out of her ear, do a holographic 3-D analysis of the larvae’s intestines, and then figure out she died on January 13th at 1:32 a.m.”

“They’d also have the crime solved by the third commercial break,” growled Kent. “So you’d better get cracking!”