The Soprano Wore Falsettos (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

“Great,” said Nancy, finishing up her plate of waffles and draining the last gulp from her coffee cup. “By the way, can I borrow six million dollars?”

  “Nope,” said Rhiza.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Nancy. “Back to work then.”

  “We need to talk,” said Rhiza, after Nancy had left.

  “We’re talking, aren’t we?”

  “Nope. We’re not. But we need to. At your house.”

  “How about tomorrow?” I asked. “Nine o’clock?”

  “I can’t tomorrow. Can we do Thursday?”

  “I can’t Thursday. I’ll be in Asheville. Friday?”

  “Friday it is,” Rhiza said. She stood up and walked out of The Slab just as her plate of waffles arrived.

  “It’d be a shame to throw these out,” said Collette, putting them down in front of me.

  “A real shame,” I agreed.

  • • •

  “Are you losing weight?” asked Marilyn. I was at St. Barnabas to have a chat with Father George. He’d asked me to come in, and I suspected that it was concerning their recent opening in the church music department.

  “Nice of you to notice,” I said. “Pete Moss tried to talk me into expando-pants, but I decided to start exercising. I’ve been running a couple of miles every morning.”

  “So, what kind of pants are those?” asked Marilyn, peering closely at my waistband.

  “Just never you mind,” I laughed. “But they’re not expando-pants. And stop ogling me. That’s sexual harassment, you know.”

  “I know. Father George made me watch the video…again. Hey,” she added, “did you hear the news? Lucille Murdock is going to make her announcement on Monday night.”

  “She finally decided what to do with the sixteen million?”

  “Apparently. Father George and the vestry are pretty nervous. She won’t tell anyone anything until Monday night.”

  The door to Father George’s office opened, and the rector motioned me into his office.

  “Come in, come in, Hayden. It’s so good to see you. I hope you’ve been doing well.”

  I knew schmoozing when I heard it, and this was it in spades.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You, too.” I looked back at Marilyn and gave her a wink.

  Father George gestured to the chair across from his desk and I sat down. “I’ve been talking with the vestry,” he said, folding his hands, then raising them to his chin and tapping it with his two index fingers. “Also with Beverly Greene, our administrator, and we’ve decided to offer you your job back. You did a fine job substituting during Easter, and we think you’d be an excellent addition to the staff.”

  “I was on the staff. You fired me.”

  “Well, technically, you resigned,” said Father George, still tapping his teeth.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I guess I did.”

  “But circumstances have changed since then. Now we’d like for you to come back.”

  “No thanks,” I said, standing up and walking back to the door.

  “Wh…what?” sputtered Father George.

  “No thanks,” I repeated. I opened the door and walked out past Marilyn, giving her another wink.

  • • •

  I walked back to the office. The weather that, just ten days ago, had laid down a blanket of snow across the region, had now definitely turned to spring, and there was no going back. The leaves had burst forth, almost unnoticed, sometime during the last week, and the reflection of the sunlight off the new growth bathed the entire town in a sort of luminescent green.

  Nancy was out on patrol, but Dave was waiting for me when I came in.

  “Hi, boss,” he said, handing me a message. “You need to call Gary Thorndike. That’s the number.”

  “Yeah, I have it. Congratulations, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Dave said. “I think.”

  • • •

  “Hello, Hayden,” said Gary, after I’d identified myself. “Guess what?”

  “What?” I said.

  “We got another hit on the DNA sample.”

  “You mean Olga Spaulding?”

  “No, the other one. You remember what I said? Sometimes these matches take a while.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said. “So who is it?”

  “It came back from a database in Virginia. The person’s name is Renee Tatton.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “There were three DNA samples — the victim’s, a female that we identified as Olga Spaulding, and an unknown male.”

  “Right. But he’s not unknown anymore. His name is Renee Tatton.”

  Chapter 26

  I had been waiting for Nancy’s reaction, and it was as good as I’d hoped.

  “You mean…” she started, “that she…he…she…Renee…holy crap!”

  “Well put,” I said, with a grin. “We’ve been barking up the wrong tree. You can change your sex, but you can’t change your DNA.”

  “So Agnes Day knew Renee’s real secret.”

  “Since she was the head nurse at Dr. Camelback’s office, I’d go out on a limb and say that she did.”

  “Now we’ve got a real motive.”

  “And a good one,” I said. “Motive, opportunity, and a pretty good explanation for the confession note. She’s left-handed and she left DNA on the murder weapon.”

  “Yeah, we’re a couple of geniuses,” said Nancy. “Should I pick her up?”

  “By all means. The only thing I can’t figure out is why she tried to kill Kenny.”

  “They were dating. Maybe her surgery couldn’t hold up to that kind of scrutiny.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Before you pick her up, go ask him, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “But not in so many words,” I said. “Just in case he doesn’t know.”

  “Got it.”

  • • •

  Francine was waiting for me in my office when I walked in.

  “I heard you were over at Buxtehooters,” she said accusingly.

  “I had a few drinks,” I admitted. “Pedro and I were trying it out.”

  “I thought we had something special.”

  “We do, Francine,” I said, sitting down behind my desk. “Real special.”

  “Then why did you step out on me with that dame, Memphis Belle? Don’t try to deny it!” Francine was a woman scorned.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, Francine. It was just one of those things.”

  Suddenly Francine had a flash of light in her hand. I recognized it right away--a hospital razor. I shivered in remembrance of the last time I saw one. If there’s one thing you don’t quickly forget, it’s getting prepped for a hernia operation by a three-hundred pound Jamaican woman named Black Ethel.

  • • •

  It had been two days since we received the news about Renee Tatton. Neither Nancy nor I could find any sign of her. We had gone to Judge Adams and gotten a warrant to search her apartment, but she was gone. There were a few of her belongings in the apartment, to be sure, but most of her clothes were gone, along with her toiletries. I was afraid she’d flown the coop, but I wasn’t ready to put out an All Points Bulletin just yet.

  I was sitting at my kitchen table, eating my scrambled eggs and pushing a dead mouse around the table with a fork, waiting for Archimedes to show as much interest in his breakfast as I had in mine. It was a good thing that I wasn’t married, I thought. If Meg had been in the kitchen with me, she would have wanted me to use a different fork. Archimedes tilted his head, but made no move toward his rodent repast.

  I kept thinking about Renee Tatton. I had sure been fooled. I was pretty sure that everyone was. Nancy and I had decided that this information was not for public consumption, and so we had kept it to ourselves. I’d done some research in the meantime, doing a search of graduate degrees conferred by accredited music schools in the United States. Renee Tatton, or rather, William Renee Tatton, had received a Master’s degree in voice performance at the University of Minnesota in
1972. I had gotten a copy of her graduate recital program from the music library’s archives. She was, or had been, a countertenor. The first half of the program was Baroque, consisting of the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, sung with a soprano and accompanied by string quartet and harpsichord. The second half included Handel, Scarlatti, some Finzi songs and a performance of Benjamin Britten’s The Journey of the Magi. If Renee had been a talented countertenor, which she seemed to be, it would not have been that difficult to switch to the mezzo-soprano repertoire once the estrogen therapy had kicked in and the voice-lift had been performed.

  I was still thinking about Renee when Baxter barked and the front door opened.

  “Anyone home?” called Rhiza, walking into the den.

  “In the kitchen,” I said, picking up the mouse and quickly tossing him back into the coffee can. I popped on the plastic lid and stood up to put the can back into the fridge. Archimedes wasn’t interested anyway. He hopped up on the windowsill and stared at Rhiza as she walked in.

  “I see the gang’s all here,” she said with a dazzling smile as she dropped her coat off the back of her shoulders and hung it on an unused chair at the table. Baxter had followed her in, wagging his tail like he’d just discovered his dearest friend.

  “All present and accounted for,” I said. “Although the owl doesn’t seem to be hungry this morning. Now, what can I get for you?”

  “A cup of coffee and a cigar. And not one of those cheap ones either,” she said.

  “I believe I’ll join you,” I said. I got up and went into the den.

  “Put some music on, will you?” Rhiza called. “Some Strauss. Richard Strauss, please. You know how I hate Johann. How about the Romance for Cello and Orchestra?”

  “It’ll take me a little while to find it,” I called back.

  “Take your time. I’ll fix the coffee.”

  It didn’t take me but a few minutes to find the CD, put it on the WAVE and get a couple of my best Romeo Y Julietas out of my humidor.

  “Here you are,” I said, offering Rhiza one of the newly clipped cigars.

  “What else is on the CD besides the Romance?”

  “Don Quixote,” I said.

  “That’ll do,” said Rhiza, lighting her cigar carefully. I followed suit as the strains of Strauss — Richard, not Johann — filled the room.

  • • •

  “Remember,” began Rhiza, “when I told you that I checked on Malcolm’s accounts?”

  “Yeah. You found his passwords and logged in every month or so.”

  “Just to know where we stood,” said Rhiza. “Financially speaking. Malcolm doesn’t share that kind of information willingly, even with his wife.”

  “Force of habit, I guess.”

  “Maybe,” said Rhiza. “I asked him right after we got married if I could have a say in our financial future. He said ‘sure,’ but never did anything about it. He gave me an allowance and a checking account and, if I ever wanted anything, he always gave it to me — no questions asked.”

  “So what did you want to see me about?”

  “I checked his accounts earlier this week.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Malcolm’s broke.”

  This caught me completely by surprise.

  “He doesn’t know I know. I went in and brought up all his accounts. He’s been juggling funds and pushing money back and forth for a few months now.”

  “And you know this…?”

  “Because I have an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill. Duh!”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said with a laugh. “I forgot. Did you find out what happened?”

  “Oh, yes.” Rhiza took a long puff on her cigar and blew a smoke ring across the table. “Malcolm invested everything he had into a casino in Gulfport, Mississippi. It should have been a slam-dunk. I checked the prospectus. Solid company, huge returns — no reason not to, really. Malcolm hadn’t done well in the stock market in the past several years.”

  “No one did,” I said. “So what happened?”

  “The hurricane last September. They weren’t up and running yet and the construction insurance didn’t cover floods.”

  “It wasn’t a flood,” I said. “It was a hurricane.”

  “Technically, it was a flood,” said Rhiza, “and the insurance company won’t pay off. There’s a lawsuit pending, of course, but these lawsuits are filed after almost every hurricane by people who have hurricane insurance, but don’t get the flood coverage. The insurance companies hardly ever have to pay.”

  “So how much did Malcolm lose?” I asked.

  “About eight million.”

  “Man,” I said, leaning back in my chair and puffing on the cigar. “It’s a good thing you won the Powerball, isn’t it?”

  “Well, here’s the thing about that.”

  “You mean you didn’t win?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” Rhiza replied. “I won, all right. Thirty-four million, one hundred eighty thousand dollars and change.”

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “The money is mine. Malcolm has no claim on it.”

  “North Carolina’s an equitable distribution state,” I said. “What’s yourn is his’n and what’s his’n is yourn. At least what you’ve garnered since you’ve been married. I presume that would include lottery winnings.”

  “Ordinarily that would be true, but do you remember that unpleasantness with Mother Ryan a couple of years ago?”

  “How could I forget?” I said. “At least she’s been defrocked.”

  “Yes, she was, but that didn’t stop her from opening a psychotherapy practice in Greensboro. And it didn’t stop Malcolm from going up there for sessions once a month.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember you telling me. But I didn’t know he was still seeing her.”

  “It’s not something I wanted to talk about.” Rhiza said. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  I nodded and took another long puff. Rhiza got up, pulled two mugs down from the cupboard, set them on the table and poured us both a cup.

  “So,” continued Rhiza, sitting back down and taking a sip of her coffee, “do you also remember when I told you that Mother Ryan suggested to Malcolm that we should have a post-nuptial agreement?”

  “Uh-huh. And you agreed to it. But I still don’t understand why you’d agree to a post-nup.”

  “I don’t know either. I was just sad, I guess. Besides, if we get divorced, the settlement is very generous. Half a million dollars, whatever car I’m currently driving, one of the houses…you know, stuff like that.”

  “Enough to keep you comfortable.”

  “Sure,” she said. “It never was about getting all the money. I really loved him.” She took another sip of the coffee. “The post-nup states that I get to keep whatever I bring into the marriage at any time. I thought, back then, that I might like to try my hand at selling real estate. Malcolm thought it was a good idea. You know, keep the little woman busy and she won’t notice the occasional infidelity. So, our agreement states that, in case of divorce, I keep one hundred percent of everything I bring in. I guess Malcolm didn’t expect me to win the lottery.”

  “I guess not. And now, he’s broke.”

  “Well, not exactly broke. We have the two houses. But, from what I can gather, Malcolm has liquidated his other assets. And one of the houses will have to go pretty soon, unless I agree to put the lottery money in his account so he can ‘manage’ it for me. Like I said before, he doesn’t know that I know.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. “If you give him the money, does it become marital property?”

  “My lawyer says it does. So I’ve been putting him off.”

  “But he’s starting to push.” I said.

  “He is. He has to, I suppose. It would have been nice if he just would have confided in me. I’m just not sure if I still want to be married to him.”

  “Is there something else?” I asked.

  Rhiza sighed. “You know that he’s been cheating on me for ab
out a year.”

  “Yes. You told me. There was a lot of money missing from his accounts. Before the hurricane, I’m guessing.”

  “Yes, before the hurricane. Anyway, I finally went into his on-line banking account and looked at the checks on the Internet. Did you know that you could do that now?”

  I nodded.

  “So, in the past sixteen months, there were three checks written to Dr. Camelback totaling forty-six thousand dollars.”

  “Man!” I said. “Any of those for you?”

  “You must be joking. Just look at me!” She stood up and struck a fashion model’s pose. “Do I look like I need plastic surgery?”

  “Umm,” I said, looking her up and down very carefully. “No.”

  “Well, Malcolm thinks I do. But the money wasn’t spent on me. And I’m pretty sure Malcolm didn’t get any calf or pec implants. I would have noticed.”

  “So, did you find out who it was for?”

  “Nope. There wasn’t even any way to ask that wouldn’t give me away. I think I know who it is anyway,” she said. “In addition to the checks to Dr. Camelback, there’s been one check a month written to someone else. Someone in town.”

  “Big checks?” I asked.

  “Five thousand dollars a month. This is another thing that Malcolm doesn’t know that I know.”

  “Wow. Want to tell me who it is?”

  “Yeah,” Rhiza said. “You know, if I leave Malcolm, he won’t have a dime. He’ll have to sell the house and his car just to catch up on his debts. I’ll get the other house, my car and he’ll still owe me five hundred thousand bucks.”

  “Are you going to leave him?”

  “He thinks I will if I find out about his bimbos.”

  “You told him that?”

  “In no uncertain terms.”

  We had smoked our cigars down to the ends.

  “So?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me who it is?”

  “I guess.”

  I waited.

  “Her name is Renee Tatton.”

  My cigar fell out of my open mouth and into my coffee cup.

  Chapter 27