The Soprano Wore Falsettos (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  It might have all gone smoothly if the organist, who was also the pianist, had left the music for the soloist on the piano when they rehearsed. She did not. Although the camera had zoomed in on the wedding couple — they were now facing each other — to their left, clearly visible in the shot, the organist was frantically sorting through sheets of music. The soloist waited patiently, knowing that they still had time, but noticing that his accompanist was not yet seated at the piano. He finally glanced over his shoulder and saw what the rest of us were privy to: Agnes Day rooting through a pile of music sitting on the console of the organ. Finally, she apparently found what she was looking for, disappeared out a door into the sacristy and appeared a minute later through a side door that put her at the piano. The videographer, meanwhile, had widened his shot again, his microphone up at the front, picking up the vows of the betrothed.

  “Will you, Jerry, have Misty to be your wedded wife? To have and to hold…”

  The congregation, as is always the case in a religious service when something out of the ordinary happens, had turned its attention to Agnes Day. She had turned out to be much more entertaining than the wedding. The videographer, for whatever reason, kept his shot wide enough to include her unintentional antics.

  Agnes Day sat down at the piano, as the minister, having gotten the correct answers from Jerry, now switched his traditional interrogation to the bride.

  “Misty, will you have Jerry to be your wedded husband, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love him, comfort him, honor him and keep him…”

  Agnes Day sat down at the piano, opened her music, looked at it blankly for a moment and then closed it again to a few titters. It was obvious to everyone that she had brought down the wrong song. The crowd wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to the bride and groom, entranced, rather, by the drama that was taking place at the piano. The soloist smiled politely, rolled his eyes slightly and took a deep breath as Agnes Day got up from the piano bench to fetch the correct music. He looked nervous. Time was running out. He would have to sing as soon as they finished their vows.

  “Jerry,” Father George said, “repeat after me. In the presence of God and before these witnesses…”

  Jerry started repeating at the same time Mrs. Agnes Day did something extraordinary. Instead of going back out the door and around to the back entrance to the choir loft, she walked up the steps and leaned over the railing to pick up her whole stack of music. Perhaps she was thinking that it would be quicker to get all the music down to the piano and sort through it there. Perhaps she was thinking that it was almost time to play, an extra minute or two, an absolute eternity in wedding time, would be intolerable and this course of action would be quicker. Whatever she was thinking, I’m pretty sure she changed her mind when she over-balanced and tumbled head first into the organ pit.

  “…as long as we both shall live,” finished Jerry.

  Nancy laughed. “No, no. Wait…just wait…” she said. “It gets better.”

  Anyone who has ever fallen in public knows, in that awful moment, that there are two things you can do. You can either fall, make a fool of yourself, and get it over with, or you can somehow catch yourself, try to save your self-respect, and maybe maintain a shred of dignity. At least that’s what goes through our brain in that split second of terror we experience as we begin to topple. In reality, the second option almost never exists. And it didn’t for Agnes Day.

  “In the presence of God and before these witnesses,” said Misty. “I, Misty, take you Jerry, to be my husband…”

  Although we couldn’t see it, I was pretty sure that Agnes Day held onto her music, at least part of the way down. It’s what an organist would do, I thought, although she probably dropped it before her hands hit the pedal board. I don’t know why the pedal stops were on, but they were, and they made quite a racket.

  “Watch this,” said Nancy. The entire wedding party turned to face the organ and see what was going on, but there was no help for Agnes Day. The soloist was frozen in place, and no one in the party seemed to know what to do, this event not having been planned for in the two-hour wedding rehearsal. Father George, his view being blocked by eight bridesmaids and enough flowers to bury a crown prince, did the only thing he could. He continued.

  “For better, for worse.”

  “For better, for worse,” Misty growled, not having a clear view either, but knowing that on her “special day,” she was no longer the center of attention.

  Agnes Day wasn’t a particularly sturdy woman, and she was so far over that her arms were simply not strong enough to push the top of her body back over the rail. One option, and one she might have made had she been practicing by herself, was to slither ignominiously over the rail and onto the pedals. Even then, it was quite a drop into the pit, especially head first with not much arm strength to break the fall. This was not an option she was willing to take, so Agnes Day did the only thing she could. She started kicking her legs and bouncing her hands on the pedals hoping to move herself back far enough to allow her center of gravity to tip her out of the pit. It was a slim chance, made slimmer when her dress flopped up around her waist. The videographer made no more pretense of trying to photograph the wedding and had zoomed in on Agnes Day’s assets, modest though they were.

  “Holy cow,” I said, looking closely. “What is that thing?”

  “That’s what we call a ‘foundation garment.’”

  “Why is she still kicking?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t know that her dress is up around her waist.”

  “How can she not?” I asked.

  “Look,” said Nancy, pointing. “She’s wearing support hose, and that long-line girdle thingy. She can’t feel anything below her waist anyway.”

  The congregation, that had been chuckling politely at the beginning of the episode, was now laughing like it was the audience at a stand-up comedy act. A good one, not one of those HBO specials. Above the laughter, due to the judicial placement of the microphones, we heard Misty finish up.

  “…to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live.”

  Finally, after the vows, one of the groomsmen mercifully crossed the platform, reached over the railing and helped Agnes Day out of the pit. Her hair was disheveled, but she held onto a piece of music — the solo. She walked back to the piano to another round of laughter mixed with growing applause.

  “That’s it,” said Nancy, clicking off the tape. “Of course, it was even more hilarious with the network narration dubbed onto the tape. That, and they announced the wedding couple’s names and the city. I swear, I haven’t laughed so hard in a long while.”

  • • •

  Annette and I sat across the table, eyeing one another. Finally, she spoke.

  “Well, what did you want to see me about?”

  “I think you know, Annette.”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “It’s about Agnes Day.”

  Annette was silent, but her icy smile faded.

  “You know she was killed yesterday.”

  “I know she’s dead. I didn’t know she was killed.”

  “Killed,” I reiterated, “in the choir loft. You didn’t have a whole lot of good feelings toward Agnes Day, did you? By the way, before you answer, I saw the tape of last night’s show.”

  Annette reddened. “I don’t have a whole lot of good feelings toward you, either,” she said. “You were the one who refused to play for my…for Misty’s wedding. If Agnes Day was killed, that old cow got what was coming to her.”

  I looked at Annette and waited without saying anything. It was an old detective’s trick. Sooner or later the “interviewee” becomes uneasy with the silence and volunteers information you wouldn’t normally get. It worked like a charm.

  “That wedding and the reception cost over $65,000, and she ruined the whole thing. It’s all anyone could talk about. Then that idiot Todd Whitlock…” She spit out his name, venom dripping from her lips. “�
��didn’t bother to tape any of the vows, preferring instead to zoom in on Agnes Day’s underwear! And to top it off, he wouldn’t even give me the tape — a tape I had paid for. He said it would be worth more to him to send it in to the producers of the TV show.” Her eyes narrowed. “That was my tape.”

  “It sounds as though you might have more of a beef with Todd than with Agnes Day.”

  “Oh, I do, and you can bet that he’s being sued for a whole lot more money than he’ll ever see from that television show.”

  “Why didn’t you sue Agnes Day as well?”

  “My lawyer said I didn’t have a case, or I damn well would have. She’d be living in a refrigerator carton under the Blowing Rock overpass, if I had my way.”

  “Well,” I said, “she won’t be living anywhere now. Were you in church yesterday?”

  “I was.”

  “Did you go up to the choir loft after the service?”

  “I did not.”

  “Here’s your duckling,” said Cynthia, placing a plate down in front of Annette. “And here’s your sandwich.”

  “Thanks, dear,” said Annette, her icy smile returning. She looked back at me and concluded our conversation in her sweetest voice.

  “I do so hope that she had the good grace to die horribly.”

  Chapter 10

  “I talked to most of the old choir members. They’re excited about your return,” said Meg. “Even more so when I told them you had a new detective story.”

  “I’m not coming back. I’m just subbing until Easter. One week.”

  “They still want to see your story,” Meg coerced, sitting down on my lap and pulling my copy of Audiophile magazine out of my hands. “I told them all about it.”

  “Hmm. I think this is a trick. I am a highly trained detective, you know, and not susceptible to flattery.”

  “How about bribes? You do take bribes, don’t you?” Meg asked, running her hand through my hair.

  “Yes, being a highly trained detective, I do take bribes.”

  “What’ll it take?” she said softly in my ear. “For you to come back?”

  “Umm.” I was pretty sure that I had an answer, but all of a sudden, I couldn’t remember the question.

  • • •

  Miss Bulimia Forsythe was a legendary ringer in choral circles, making the rounds of most of the church choirs in the city. An interior decorator by day, she spent Wednesday nights driving choir directors wild. She could read anything at sight from eight-part Gesualdo motets to the solo cantatas of Scarlatti to Messiaen’s “Trois Petites Liturgies,” a piece so hard that it made choir directors weep like Tammy Faye Bakker at a Merle Norman display. She had perfect pitch and a voice like a Waffle House full of angels. She could make your soprano section sound like the Holy Ghost Choir with Jesus on cymbals--IF she showed up on Sunday.

  Sure I’d hired her. Who hadn’t? The director that tamed her could pretty much write his own ticket. It was like having a tetchy, musical Michael Jordan on your high school choir team. If you could get her to play, you were home free. You could go 25/0 without breaking a sweat and move right to the top of the choral league. But Miss Bulimia Forsythe was a fickle mistress. She could make you look good or, like I found out the hard way when I scheduled the world premiere of the Distler “Te Deum” for the second Sunday of Easter, she could put the last nail in your musical coffin. It wasn’t her fault, she said later as I was cleaning out my desk. She’d gotten a run in her stocking.

  Still, one question nagged at me like Mr. Ed’s wife. Why was Bulimia involved in the Presiding Bishop’s Committee on New Liturgical Colors? I knew she was a decorator, but what was in it for her?

  Pedro had heard of her, all right. They had been an item over at First Prez for about six months--the hap-piest six months of that director’s life. Their interpre-tation of the Purcell duets for soprano and counter-tenor had become renowned over the years. Six months of musical bliss--then it was over. But I don’t think Pedro had seen her for a while. No one had.

  • • •

  Nancy came into my office bright and early on Tuesday morning. “I talked to Benny Dawkins,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Agnes Day screwed him over big time.”

  “How so?” I stopped penning my monthly report to the city council and sat back in my chair.

  “Benny had an old violin that his great-grandfather had left him. He wanted to sell it, so he took it up to the church about a month ago and let Agnes look at it.”

  “Did he say why he did that?”

  “Well, he said that you weren’t around anymore, and he wanted a musician to give him an opinion. Anyway, she offered him eight hundred bucks for it, and he took it.”

  “That’s what Marilyn told me,” I said. “Eight hundred bucks. I assume it was worth a lot more than that.”

  “She sold it last week at an auction in New York. Guess how much.”

  I shrugged.

  “Two hundred fifty-five thousand dollars!” said Nancy, as she pulled out her pad and flipped a couple of pages. “The tag inside the violin said Guadagnini. It seems that Agnes Day didn’t mind telling folks about her acquisition. One of the choir members told Benny. He called the auction house once he found out and got the auction information. Here’s the auction flyer that he got off of the Internet.” Nancy handed me a printed sheet and continued talking, as I looked it over.

  “It was an original G.B. Guadagnini made in Piacenza, Italy, in 1745. Benny said that his great-grandfather brought it over in 1925, and it had been sitting on the mantle ever since. He only considered selling it because he’s three months behind on his farm loan. He’s pretty desperate.”

  “What did he do when he found out?”

  “He said that he went over to Agnes Day’s and told her she owed him that money. He even said he’d pay her a finder’s fee. Agnes Day laughed at him and showed him the bill of sale she’d made him give her. Benny says he didn’t threaten her, but I don’t know if I believe him.”

  “It doesn’t pay to make Benny mad,” I said. “You remember a couple of years ago when Greg Hardesty ended up taking Benny to court over that three acres of land that Benny said were his.”

  “I don’t remember,” said Nancy. “What happened?”

  “Greg’s barn mysteriously burned down the night after the verdict.”

  “Did you arrest Benny?”

  “No proof. And Benny had an alibi. He was at church.”

  “That’s a good alibi. Who was the witness?”

  “Me, of course.”

  “You think he’d kill Agnes Day just to get even?”

  “Well, he can’t get the money back,” I said. “And it sure sounds like motive to me.”

  • • •

  “So,” I said, “Agnes Day, who we assumed was one of the working middle-class, all of a sudden, seems to be quite well-heeled. Do we know who are the beneficiaries of her estate?”

  “No, we don’t. Net yet.”

  “Let’s find out, shall we?” I said, using the imperial “we” that Nancy knew meant that she’d be doing all the work.

  “I’ll check,” said Nancy. “How about Annette Passaglio?”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt that she hated Agnes Day.”

  “Enough to kill her?”

  “Never underestimate the fury of a status-seeking Monster-of-the-Bride, who wants her husband to run for Congress and has been publicly ridiculed in front of the entire county on national television.”

  “I see your point.”

  “I think that if Annette had been in the choir loft, and if she had tried to get an apology out of Agnes Day, and if Agnes Day snubbed her because she was playing her postlude, and if Annette saw the handbell sitting on the shelf…she might well have clunked her with it.”

  “I know I would have,” said Nancy.

  “There you go,” I said, holding up my hands in a there-you-have-it gesture. “But that’s a lot of ifs.”

  “On the o
ther hand,” said Nancy, “if I was Benny Dawkins, and if I went up to the choir loft to beg Agnes Day to reconsider, and if I was going to lose my farm, and if she blew me off because she was playing her postlude and if I saw the handbell and if I was really at the end of my rope…I might have been so pissed off that I might have clunked her with it.”

  “Quod erat demonstratum,” I said, holding my hands up again. “Still a lot of ifs.”

  “I went through her house yesterday, but I’ll check with the county attorney on her estate,” said Nancy. “Maybe that will turn up something.”

  • • •

  “Hi, Kent,” I said, when the coroner finally picked up his phone. “Hayden Konig, here. Did you find anything interesting?”

  “Just finished,” said Kent. “Hang on a second.” I heard the rustling of papers. “Here we go. Caucasian female, sixty-three years old with a touch of emphysema. Her heart was in good shape, though.”

  “What about the ding in her head?” I asked.

  “Good choice of words. That bell you brought in? That was the murder weapon. A clear match to the imprint, and there was blood on the bell as well.”

  “How about the sequins?” I asked.

  “Just sequins. They had remnants of hot glue on the back.”

  “Did you send the bell to the lab?”

  “Yes. No prints at all. The lab sent it over to Durham to get it checked for DNA. Just in case. My guy says that the bell was probably wiped down.”