The Soprano Wore Falsettos (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  “Look at this!” hissed Meg, thrusting a shapely leg in my direction, as the sopranos made their way back into the loft. “Just look at this!”

  I looked down at what had once been a pair of red high-heels. The toes of the shoes were now black.

  “They’re ruined! Those idiots didn’t even get new buffers! They still have black polish all over them! And it was too dark to see.”

  “Oh my,” I said, not daring to smile. I looked at the rest of the ladies coming back into the loft. Each and every one of them had black toes except for Georgia who, thanks to a stroke of luck, had worn black shoes to the service.

  “What a tragic development,” I gulped, trying to keep the tears back. It was no use. I kept playing as I stuffed my handkerchief in my mouth, snorts of laughter, I’m pretty sure, coming out of my ears.

  Renee Tatton glared at me with the eyes of a snake. “These shoes cost four hundred dollars,” she spat. “Who’s going to pay for these?’

  I could only shrug my shoulders and shake with what I hoped was silent merriment.

  “Okay, Hayden. This is not funny!” Bev said, holding up her pumps, one light-brown and one now two-toned. Mark cackled, and the rest of the men, who, by this time, had joined us in the loft, started laughing as well. The shoe polishers were still making enough noise to wake the real St. Barnabas, and I pulled another couple of stops on the organ and opened the swell box just to keep up.

  Marjorie was the last one up. She walked up beside me and looked down at her feet. I followed her gaze and howled with laughter. Marjorie had one white sandal and one black foot. Now, even the women started to giggle, and in three beats everyone in the choir loft was snorting into their hymnals.

  “I don’t know what’s so funny,” said Marjorie. “Next time, I’m not waking up.”

  • • •

  The shoe-polishing service had finally finished up, the altar had been stripped and we had all sung Were You There in semi-darkness. This was, traditionally, where the Maundy Thursday Service at St. Barnabas ended. The congregation usually left in silence to return again on Easter morning. Father George held a Good Friday service as well, but there was no organ playing involved. The organ fell silent after the second verse of Were You There — the third being sung unaccompanied — and wasn’t heard again until Sunday.

  Tonight, however, we still had the “Nailing Service” to finish. Father George got up to make the announcement.

  “It will be very meaningful,” he began, using a word that had become less and less “meaningful” as this service wore on, “if all of you will find the purple post-it-note in your bulletin and write down one sin that you have committed in the past week. Then we’re going to take them to the altar and nail them to the cross. When we come back on Easter, our sins will be removed and replaced by flowers. What a perfect metaphor for what Jesus has done for us.”

  “Now, as the organ plays softly, please come forward and give your sins to Jesus Christ. After you’ve nailed your sin to the cross, please go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

  That was my cue. I had flipped the hymnal open to the Holy Week section and began to play as the choir jotted their sins on their pieces of paper and, as they finished, made their way down the stairs.

  I was halfway through the first hymn when the first sin was nailed up.

  KA-THWAACK! went the nail-gun. KA-THWAACK! KA-THWAACK!

  I glanced down to see the nail-gun being passed from one person to the next as they tacked their sins to the big wooden cross that St. Barnabas brought out once a year. At least, I thought, Brenda had the good sense not to use a nail-gun that needed an air compressor. This one was self-contained. I looked at the bright-orange contraption as closely as I could from up in the balcony. The Altar Guild had decorated it with some thorns interspersed with purple ribbon. There was also someone (I couldn’t see who) helping folks with the nailing. A carpenter, I hoped.

  KA-THWAACK! went the nail-gun again. KA-THWAACK!

  KA-THWAACK! KA-THWAACK!

  I started into another hymn. This was going to take a while.

  When I survey the wondrous cross, KA-THWAACK! On which the prince of Glory died; KA-THWAACK! My richest gain KA-THWAACK! I count but loss, KA-THWAACK! KA-THWAACK! And pour contempt on KA-THWAACK! all my pride.

  Chapter 16

  “Where are we going?” I asked Pedro, not really caring.

  “A new dive just opened up across from St. Gertrude’s. It sounds like our kind of place. Good looking beer-fräuleins in tight shirts, lots of German brews, and Baroque organ music from a three-manual Flentrop with a sixteen-foot heckelphone you can really hang your hat on.”

  “Sounds sweet,” I agreed, suddenly interested. “What’s this place called?”

  “Buxtehooters.”

  • • •

  “Buxtehooters! You’re going to get it for that one,” said Meg.

  “It’s brilliant,” I said. “A new pinnacle in my writing career. I don’t know how I do it.”

  “Neither do I,” said Meg. “But the more important question is, why you do it?”

  I ignored the barb. “Hey!” I said, changing the subject as neatly as a Democrat in a tax debate. “Do you want to go to the grand opening of Noylene’s Beautifery?”

  “Noylene’s what?”

  “Noylene’s Beautifery. She’s opening her shop tomorrow.”

  “I just have two questions. Do we have to get our hair styled and is ‘Beautifery’ actually a word?”

  “The answer to both questions is ‘I don’t think so.’ We may get some coupons for haircuts at a later date. But Skeeter says there will be balloons and pie.”

  “What kind of pie?” asked a suspicious Meg.

  “Does it matter?”

  • • •

  I had decided to start exercising. My decision wasn’t based on the thought of a future in expando-pants, but rather a realization that I wasn’t getting any younger, and if I was going to keep some semblance of my current non-pear shape, while still eating copious amounts of pie and Belgian Waffles, I’d better do something about it. So, after much procrastination, I’d begun jogging a couple of miles every morning. At least I told myself it was a couple of miles. It was probably closer to a mile and a half. Friday morning, I had already finished my run, taken a shower, and was having my second cup of coffee when the phone rang.

  “Hayden,” someone whispered. I realized it was Marilyn. “Hayden, you’d better get in here.”

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Just come in as quickly as you can.” The click on the other end was abrupt and final.

  “Well, that was cryptic,” I said to Baxter, as I gave him a biscuit. He wagged his tail in appreciation and walked to the door to be let out for a full day of chasing squirrels, beavers or whatever else crossed his path.

  “Didn’t you think that was cryptic?” I yelled after him, as he bounded away. “Well, I thought so,” I said to myself. I grabbed my coat, locked the door to the house and climbed into my truck. It was still cold out, but the snow had stopped, leaving a couple of inches of slush on the ground. I slipped my new recording of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers Service into the CD player, turned it up, dropped the truck into four-wheel drive and headed toward St. Barnabas Church.

  • • •

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” whispered Marilyn. “Let’s go into the kitchen and get a cup of coffee.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I just…”

  “Come…into…the…kitchen,” she repeated, this time accompanied by “the look” and a nod toward Father George’s closed office door. I’d seen “the look” enough times in my life to know when something was up.

  “Right. The kitchen.” I followed her down the corridor, through the parish hall and into the kitchen where we found a couple of mugs and filled them with coffee. I took a sip and poured it into the sink.

  “I see Father George is still buying the cheap stuff,” I said.

  “You get u
sed to it after a while,” said Marilyn. “Now pay attention. I came in this morning at eight o’clock.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And there was a manila folder sitting on my desk. I opened it up. It was full of post-it-notes.”

  “From the service last night?”

  “That’s what I thought. Extras. But they weren’t. They were the ones that were nailed to the cross.”

  “Brenda must have taken them all off after the service,” I said. “We have a Good Friday liturgy at noon. Maybe she didn’t want to come in this morning and clean up, so she did it last night. It would be pretty unsightly to have all those notes nailed up for today’s service.”

  “I thought so, too. But that’s not why I called you.”

  “Then why?”

  “I pulled the notes out of the envelope. I…umm…thought it would be good to straighten them up.”

  “Marilyn!” I laughed. “You just wanted to read those people’s sins.”

  “I did not! I just thought that I’d give them to Father George and…and…oh, fine,” she admitted. “Well, who wouldn’t? I admit it.”

  “I’ll bet Brenda didn’t read them,” I said. “She’s a better person than that. More scruples.”

  “She probably didn’t have time,” sniffed Marilyn.

  “That could be the another reason,” I said. “Anything good in there?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. There was quite a lot of juicy stuff. All unsigned, of course.”

  “Of course. But you recognized some handwriting? Had some unsubstantiated rumors confirmed?”

  “Of course,” Marilyn said. “But that’s not why I called you. One of the notes that I happened to see while I was straightening them out…”

  “Straightening them out?” I interrupted.

  “Yep. One of the notes said I killed the organist. I had no choice. Please forgive me.”

  “What?!”

  “It said I killed the organist. I had no choice. Please forgive me.”

  “Where’s the note?”

  “Father George walked in, and I shoved it into the envelope with the others. He took them into his office. You can’t tell him, Hayden. He’ll know I was going through them.”

  “What if I told him you saw that one by accident.”

  “He won’t believe you. He’ll fire me.”

  “Yeah, probably. Listen, the service is at noon. There’s no organ music, so I don’t have to play. You’ll have to let me into his office during the service.”

  “I don’t have a key. He changed the locks when you left. I think he thought you had a master key to the whole place.”

  “He was right,” I said with a grin. “Let me think about it. I need that note. There may be a fingerprint, some DNA, we might get a handwriting sample — any number of things. By the way,” I added, “you didn’t happen to recognize the handwriting did you?”

  “Nope. It was written in cursive though. And it was in black ink. Can’t you just subpoena all the notes?”

  “Well, if I were him and I didn’t want to show them off, I’d say they were protected by priest-penitent privilege. We could get them, I think, but it’d take a while before some judge decided we were right.”

  • • •

  I went out the back door, took the long way around the church and came back into Marilyn’s office about five minutes later.

  “Good morning, Marilyn. Is the good Father in?” I asked with a wink.

  “Why, I believe he is,” said Marilyn, then hissed under her breath, “Don’t you tell him!”

  “Have no fear,” I said. “Would you buzz him please?”

  A minute later, Father George opened his door and ushered me into his office. “Good morning, Hayden,” he said, stiffly. “What can I do for you?”

  “I had a thought, George. You know, we have quite a list of suspects for the murder of Agnes Day.”

  “I had heard that, yes. It’s a terrible thing.” He shook his head side to side.

  “And, although I wouldn’t have thought that the Nailing Service was a particularly good idea for Maundy Thursday, it occurred to me this morning that since most of our suspects are St. Barnabas communicants, maybe one of them wrote down that particular sin and nailed it up on the cross. May I go into the church and look through them? They’re unsigned, aren’t they?”

  Father George blanched. “I don’t know if they’re signed or not,” he said. “We’ve already taken them down, but I haven’t read them and I won’t. Whatever is in those notes is between that person and God.”

  Excellent, I thought. I’d already caught him in a lie, and now he was trapped. He’d read those notes as soon as he came into the office. It was as plain as the nose on his face.

  “Since you haven’t read them, George, what would be the harm in me looking through them? Just to make sure.”

  “A confession to a priest is sacrosanct. Every court in the nation has upheld the sanctity of the confessional.”

  “I agree totally. But nailing a post-it-note confession onto a cross in a public building is hardly a confession made to a priest.”

  “I’m prepared to defend my argument. In court, if necessary.”

  “What’s the big deal, George? Wait a minute. Did you read those notes?”

  “Umm…no, of course I didn’t. It’s the principle of the thing.”

  I looked at him for a long minute. He tried to keep his eyes locked on mine, but they kept flitting around the room. Finally I spoke. “Here’s what I think, George. I think you read those notes, and someone wrote something that you don’t want me to read. There may be any number of notes with some illegal or embarrassing admissions. I don’t care about them. There’s only one note that I would be interested in, and that note has to do with the murder of Agnes Day. If you tell me now that you didn’t read them, I’ll believe you, and I’ll go and get a subpoena for all of the notes. You know as well as I do that they’re not protected by the priest and penitent privilege. Then I’ll go over them all with a fine-tooth comb and, since I’ve told you that I’m going to do this, if you destroy the notes before the subpoena gets here, you will be committing a felony by destroying evidence. However, if you want to change your story right now, I’ll understand that you were in a difficult spot and didn’t know how to react.”

  I stood in front of his desk for thirty seconds before he opened the top left drawer and handed me a purple note, folded in half. I pulled a baggie that I’d purloined from the kitchen out of my pocket and had him drop the note inside.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to touch it yet. What does it say?”

  “It says I killed the organist. I had no choice. Please forgive me.”

  “And you weren’t going to give it to me?” I asked, incredulously.

  “Probably. I had to think about it. I didn’t know what to do.”

  I opened his office door. “I’ll need to get your fingerprints and a DNA swab for exclusionary purposes.” Father George looked shocked. “Since you touched the note,” I explained. He relaxed and turned back into his office.

  “You, too,” I mouthed to Marilyn. She smiled and nodded.

  • • •

  I took the note down to the station after alerting Nancy to the find, then sent her down to the church with a couple of DNA swabs and a fingerprint kit. Dave greeted me as I came in.

  “I hear you have a clue,” he said.

  “That’s what we’ve got, sure enough,” I replied, pulling the bag out of my pocket. “We need to do a couple of things. Call Gary Thorndike in Durham and see if he can get some DNA off this note — tell him I need it fast. You may have to drive it over to him. But first, we need to get a copy of it and get a handwriting analyst up here from Greensboro. Just put it on the copy machine. Got all that?”

  “Got it,” said Dave, opening the bag.

  “And Dave,” I added, with a sigh. “Don’t touch the note, okay?”

  “Oh…yeah
. Sorry.”

  • • •

  I was getting ready to meet Meg at Noylene’s Beautifery when Nancy stuck her head into the office.

  “The handwriting guy is coming down this afternoon. He’ll be here at about four o’clock. You must really have some clout, boss.”

  “Oh, yes. Lots of clout. You going over to Noylene’s? I hear there’s going to be pie.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Nancy answered. “I’ll walk over with you.”

  The slush had melted in the afternoon sun, and although it was still cold, you could sense spring trying to shove the last vestiges of winter aside and muscle its way back to the front of the line. The wind had stopped and, if you weren’t standing in the shade, the weather almost seemed to have reverted to its pre-snow, vernal condition. The buds on the trees were quite visible, although the actual leaves had steadfastly refused to be fooled by what the hill folk called “blackberry winter.”

  It was a short walk across the park in the center of the town square. Noylene’s Beautifery had its doors unlocked, its sign lit, and, true to Skeeter’s promise, inside, we were treated with balloons and pie.

  “Here’s a coupon,” said Skeeter, greeting us as we walked in. “Three dollars off.”

  “Three dollars off how much?” asked Nancy.

  “Jes’ depends,” said Skeeter. “The prices are on the board over yonder.”

  “Thanks, Skeeter,” I said. “We’ll be sure to take a look. But let’s get to the important matter at hand, shall we? What kind of pie do you have?”

  “Pies are in the back,” said Skeeter, gesturing toward the back of the shop. “I can’t talk. I gotta hand out these coupons.”

  Meg came in and received her three-dollar coupon while we were deciding whether to wait or head for the pie table without her. Luckily, we didn’t have to make that decision.