The Countertenor Wore Garlic (The Liturgical Mysteries) (16 page)

"Cloven Tongues of Fire appetizers," he said. "Garlic and jalapeños. Nasty business."

***

The Slab had its share of afternoon customers on Sunday, but they mostly consisted of the late church crowd, so by two o'clock, it was Meg, Pete, Cynthia, and I and the remnant of New Fellowship Baptist's Older Adult Sunday School Class who were finishing up their meals. The weekend leaf-gawkers had journeyed back to their own haunts.

Meg and I had eaten lunch at the Ginger Cat after church, but had come over to the Slab for dessert after failing to make sense out of a menu that featured Tambo-Tambong, a concoction that our waitress informed us was sort of hot Filipino fruit soup, and Gooseberry Pudding with Chantilly Cream. All of a sudden, Noylene's homemade apple pie sounded especially good. It was.

"How was church?" asked Cynthia. "This was the first one for your new priest, wasn't it?"

"It was," I said. "I thought it went well."

"
What?
" said Meg. She gave me a withering look, then turned to address Cynthia's question. "It was awful. He did a twenty-minute sermon on Hell..."

"Which was very compelling," I interrupted, "if not informative."

"Based on some obscure text from the Book of Proverbs," she continued, ignoring me. "He scared Marjorie to death. Then he did a Children's Moment that we couldn't even hear. He didn't take communion at all. He put all the leftover elements back into the tabernacle."

"That's the Reserved Sacrament," I said, taking a big bite of my apple pie.

"What's that?" asked Pete.

"During the week, the Reserved Sacrament is taken to the sick, hospitalized, and housebound so that they may receive Holy Communion as an extension of the Sunday worship."

"Not the wine," argued Meg. "The priest always finishes the wine."

"Not always," I said as I finished the last of my dessert. "There are provisions. Depends on the priest. What if he's an alcoholic? What if he has apple pie in the back?"

"Harumph!" answered Meg.

"Since he's not going to be at St. Barnabas during the week," I explained to Pete and Cynthia, "the congregation is going to have to step up and do the visiting as well as home communion. They're not used to that."

"Anyway," said Meg, "church wasn't much fun. Then, to top it all off, he didn't even show up for coffee time. It was his first Sunday. He should at least stick around to meet people."

"I sure wish I could serve beer," said Pete, looking around at the dwindling crowd. "The Bear and Brew is killing me on Sunday afternoons. Beer and football. Tough combination to beat."

"Why don't you come up with a new angle? Maybe some advertising?" said Meg.

"There's no advertising budget," said Pete. "Maybe Cynthia could belly dance in the window."

"Oh,
brother!
" said Cynthia.

"How 'bout High Tea," said Noylene as she filled our coffee cups. "You could advertise High Tea. With some strumpets and such."

"Or crumpets," I said. "Although I wouldn't mind having tea with some strumpets."

"I do like a nice, hot-buttered strumpet," agreed Pete.

The cowbell jangled against the glass of the front door and we looked over to see Nancy come in, followed closely by Dave. Nancy had her iPad in her hand. She pulled a chair up to the table and sat down next to me. Dave looked over her shoulder.

"Wait 'til you all see this," she said. "You aren't going to believe it."

The rest of the group, curious, gathered around her screen and she opened up a YouTube video.

"This is some video shot by Salena Mercer's publicist. She took it during the zombie attack on the vampires waiting outside the bookstore."

"It was hardly an attack," I said.

"It was an attack, all right," said Pete. "I was there."

Nancy shushed us and turned up the volume. "This was posted on Salena Mercer's website this morning. Georgia called the station and told me about it. The publicist apparently thought it was great footage."

"That's an iPad?" said Meg. "This is so cool. I am definitely getting one of those!"

The movie started, shot from the vantage point of inside the store looking out through the plate glass window, and we watched the hoard of zombies shuffle across the park right toward us. Nancy, Pete, and I strolled into the picture and set up facing the mob, our backs to the camera. Vampires milled about, sometimes looking into the store to check on the line, but mainly keeping an eye on the zombies.

"Wow," said Pete. "Is my butt that big? I've gotta go on a diet."

"I'm sure it's not, honey," said Cynthia. "Maybe the window sort of bends the reflection. You know, like a fun house mirror."

"Yeah," said Pete. "That's probably it."

The publicist had moved to the door and panned the camera down the sidewalk where the vampires were in their queue. Now we had a good view of the girls waiting in line.

"Look at the third girl," said Nancy. She paused the YouTube video, put her fingers on the screen and enlarged the image. We looked and saw a skinny girl with short, dark purple hair, multiple ear and lip piercings, black lipstick, and some sort of neck tattoo. She looked to be wearing a tight, black leather dress, six inch heels, and a necklace adorned with a silver bat.

"What about her?" I said.

"Look closely," said Dave. Nancy enlarged the picture even more, bringing the girl's face into focus.

"I know that face," said Pete. "Who...?"

"Holy smokes!" said Cynthia. "That's Collette!"

***

Collette Bowers hadn't been seen in St. Germaine for almost three years. She'd been a waitress at the Slab and engaged to Dave before their memorable breakup. Nancy might have been somewhat to blame. She'd been Dave's heartthrob from the time she had joined the force, and they'd had an ill-advised fling during his and Collette's engagement. When Collette found out, she was not amused. So "not amused" was she that she destroyed the interior of the Slab Café in a fit of pique (and by "pique," I mean "berserk rage") and almost killed her soon-to-be-ex-fiancé with a sugar shaker.

Being a joiner, and in need of a support system, she'd found a fundamentalist church willing to mentor her through her time of trial and after they'd pointed out that she was allowed, under biblical principles, to "name it" and "claim it," she'd decided to name Dave and claim him as her rightful helpmeet. It was God's plan for her and Dave to be together after all. She moved back to St. Germaine, got her old job back from Pete, and was well on her way to getting shot by an increasingly irritated Nancy when St. Barnabas caught on fire. Collette was last seen running into the burning building and, since we never found her body in the ruins of the church, we'd all assumed she'd gotten out safely and left town.

Now, there she was on Nancy's iPad, dressed in Vampire Gothic, chomping on a piece of gum, and waiting for Selena Mercer to sign her copy of
Swollen Nimbus.

"That's quite a change," Meg said. "Christian fundamentalist to vampire. I would never have recognized her."

"I would have," snarled Nancy.

"I think she looks kind of hot," said Dave. Nancy punched him in the arm.

"Could be a cult-follower thing," said Cynthia. "Swapping one group for another. It's a personality type. I saw something about it on The Learning Channel."

"Maybe," I said. "Still, it could just be a coincidence. She could just be one of the four hundred girls that showed up to get their books signed."

"On the same day that Flori Cabbage was killed," added Nancy. "I don't know if I buy it."

"You think they have some kind of connection?" asked Meg.

"Be good to find out," I said.

"This isn't the only thing we have," said Dave. "It's been a full morning of police work."

"Right," said Nancy. "Flori Cabbage's apartment was ransacked."

"Turned upside down," said Dave. "The lock was broken. Not only broken, it was altogether missing. The door had been kicked in."

"Really?" Meg said. "Did anyone hear anything?"

"Hardly any chance of that," said Nancy. "She had a room over a garage on Pecan Drive. There's no one in that house. It's been vacant and for sale since March. Apparently Flori was getting a break on the rent for looking after the place."

"Kathleen and Bill's house?" said Pete. "I didn't know that Flori Cabbage was staying there."

"Could you tell what might be missing?" I asked.

"Looks like her laptop is gone," said Nancy. "There's an ethernet cable hooked to a modem, but no computer. There's no way of telling what else was taken. The place was a wreck."

"You guys dust for prints?"

"Not yet. I'll do it, but I kind of doubt that there will be any that we can use. There weren't any on the pumpkin. I checked that early this morning. One other thing," added Nancy. "I almost forgot. Bud's missing."

"What do you mean, 'Bud's missing?'" I said.

"Ardine called this morning. She's at her sister's house in Anderson. Bud's home for the week and he was supposed to check in every evening. He didn't and she got worried."

"Is Bud supposed to be watching Moosey?"

"Nope. Moosey's staying with..." Nancy pulled out her notebook, flipped it open, and read the name. "The Kentons, Monica and Julian. They've got a kid the same age. Bernadette."

"Yeah," I said. "I know them."

"Pauli Girl's home. I called up to the house and she answered. She hasn't seen him."

"I saw him run into the zombie crowd after the movie," I said. "He was worried about Elphina." I pointed to Nancy's iPad. "Anything else on that video?"

"I don't think so," said Nancy. "It's twelve minutes long. I'll look at it again to make sure. There were a few boys in the line, but I didn't see Bud."

Chapter 12

The four of us exited Buxtehooters to an en chamade flourish, and skipped, hand-in-hand, down the street.

"Where are we going?" asked Tessie, probably feeling like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, except instead of the Tin Woodsman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow, she was accompanied by a countertenor with homicidal tendencies, a shoefly with lust in his heart, and a Romanian lawyer who kept eyeing her assets like she was liquidating under Chapter 14: Moral Bankruptcy, so not really.

"The crypt, Sweet-knees," I said. "The undercroft of St. Sanguine's in the Swale."

Lapke Baklava sniffed Tessie like a dog sniffing another more attractive dog, but slightly higher up, which was good, because I didn't want to have to shoot him right there on the sidewalk.

"I think there will be some necking wery soon," he whispered, almost to himself. "And wery wigerously."

"Keep your dirty talk to yourself," said Pedro, "or I'll smack you so hard you'll think the werewolves have come out to play."

"I am not afraid of your werewolves," Lapke snapped.

"I am," said Tessie, suddenly grabbing onto Lapke's arm like remora onto a shark, or a soon-to-be-unemployed weather girl onto a rich lawyer: same thing, really. "I'm very afraid, but I can't run away." She fluttered her eyelashes like they were hummingbird wings, or maybe bumblebee wings since many physicists maintain that bumblebees are aerodynamically incapable of flight and so, apparently, was Tessie. "You'll protect me, won't you?"

Lapke oozed some oil. "I will protect you, my wiwacious little wixen." He exuded a few more splotches, then blotted the slick from his forehead with a purple silk handkerchief. "And I shall have my rewenge," he muttered ominously and forebodingly.

***

Dr. Kent Murphee was a first-rate coroner and he often proved how good he was by performing autopsies one-handed. During these examinations, his other hand was generally holding a tumbler of bourbon, or, as was the case this morning, a glass of twenty-year-old tawny port. The patient rarely complained.

"Another body from St. Germaine," he said when he saw me come into the autopsy room. "Why am I not surprised?" He filled his glass from the open bottle sitting on the instrument table.