The Soprano Wore Falsettos

by Schweizer, Mark

  My prelude was by G.F. Handel, in keeping with our mostly Baroque theme — a transcription of the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba from Solomon . The choir then sang the Hallelujah Chorus as a choral introit from the balcony, and I launched into the processional hymn, Jesus Christ Is Risen Today. The choir had to scramble down the stairs to be part of the procession, then, as usual, once around the church and back up to the loft.

  I could see, out of the corner of my eye, that the crucifer was in the lead, followed by a couple of acolytes, Benny Dawkins swinging the thurible and sending clouds of smoke billowing upwards, Father George and the choir.

  I noticed Russ Stafford sitting toward the front of the church, right on the aisle. He was hard to miss, his Easter finery consisting mainly of a green and yellow plaid sport jacket. All of a sudden, I had a flashback.

  Back, a few years ago, when Benny Dawkins was learning the Doubly Inverted Reverse Swan, the trick that won him third place in the International Thurifer Invitational in London a few years back, he was perfecting the maneuver at St. Barnabas when, one Sunday morning, he happened to catch poor Iona Hoskins behind the ear with the pot, knock her out cold and catch her wig on fire. Iona was sitting on the aisle, and, as I suddenly recalled, didn’t care for Benny very much. In fact, she had lodged a complaint with Father Tony Brown because Benny had been sneaking into the church kitchen on his way to work and eating a bowl of cereal — cereal that Iona bought especially for her breakfast club. We all assumed that it had been a terrible accident, but now, as I watched the thurible tumble and pirouette on its chains in almost slow motion, I suddenly had another thought — a thought that was interrupted by a terrific “CLANG!”

  I looked up from my music long enough to see Benny glance down at an unconscious Russ Stafford. He never broke his rhythm or his stride, executed a perfect Skin The Cat , and continued up to the front of the church. Father George, however, didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to stop the Easter procession, but Russ was clearly knocked cold. Not only that, but Russ’ hair was beginning to smolder just as Iona’s had done. Father George didn’t stop the procession, but he did pause long enough to pat Russ’ head and put out the embers of incense that had escaped from the pot during the collision.

  I could hear Russ moan during the pause between stanzas, and I figured he was all right. A couple of ushers followed the choir in, helped him out of his seat and out the front door. I looked back at Benny. He was completing his patented Spank The Baby In The Bell Tower, the thurible flying around the altar like a smoking Sputnik. Suddenly, as the hymn came to an end, Benny stopped the pot dead in its course. Then he gave it three short swings symbolizing the Trinity and hung it on its stand.

  The choir came up the stairs to the loft. Meg walked over to me and whispered, “Did you see that?”

  “Yes,” I whispered back. “I told you I wouldn’t want to make Benny mad.”

  “Is Russ okay?”

  “I think so. He walked out on his own with just a little help.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe Agnes Day was killed with the incense pot instead of the handbell?” Meg asked.

  I didn’t have time to think about it. It was time to play the Gloria.

  In the Episcopal liturgy, there’s quite a lot of music that goes on at the beginning of the service. There’s the prelude, the opening hymn, the Gloria or Kyrie , and the Psalm accompaniment. Then there’s the gradual hymn, neatly sandwiched between the Epistle and Gospel lessons. As an organist, you have to stay on your toes. Added to all that, on this particular morning, the choir sang the Hallelujah Chorus as the introit. It was a full day of playing and singing even before we got to the sermon.

  It was during the gradual hymn that we all received our Easter surprise. This was the hymn that Father George had printed in the bulletin. I was right. About half the congregation knew it — about half of the choir as well. The verses were slow, and the chorus was a lot more animated. At least in my rendition.

  Low in the grave He lay, Jesus my Savior,

  Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!

  Up from the grave He arose,

  With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,

  When we got to “Up from the grave He arose,” who should come walking down the center aisle but Kenny Frazier. He walked up to the third pew and took the seat recently vacated by Russ Stafford.

  “Hey, Kenny!” yelled Moosey McCollough, from the back of the church with a seven-year old’s enthusiasm, “we thought you was dead!” Kenny just smiled and waved at him with the arm that wasn’t bandaged. I could imagine Ardine clamping a hand over Moosey’s mouth to keep him quiet.

  He arose a Victor from the dark domain,

  And He lives forever, with His saints to reign.

  He arose! He arose!

  Hallelujah! Christ arose!

  Meg pointed at Kenny walking in. She had a huge smile on her face. I nodded and kept playing, the smile spreading across mine as well. As an Easter miracle, it wasn’t bad.

  • • •

  “Wanna see my drawings?” said Moosey, running up to me as I came down out of the loft.

  “You bet,” I said. “Let me get my vestments off, and I’ll give them a good look.”

  “Oops,” he said, shoving the stack of papers in my hand. “I forgot. I’ve gotta go get some Easter candy in the parish hall.” He was already at a dead run when he shouted back over his shoulder, “Before those other guys get it all.” Moosey was out the door and gone before I could answer.

  • • •

  I hung my robe up in the sacristy and waited for Meg, who was schmoozing with church members that she saw only once or twice a year. The rest of the crowd, though, seemed to be concentrated around two particular members. There was one group of people surrounding Kenny Frazier, patting him on the back and asking him what on earth had happened. The other group of people was surrounding and congratulating Rhiza and Malcolm Walker. The Walkers had been in attendance on Thursday night, but since the congregation left in silence after the Nailing Service, I suspected that this was the Walker’s first real public appearance since the big Powerball news.

  I had put Moosey’s drawings in my pocket. Now, as I waited for Meg, I pulled them out to look through them — at least enough to tell Moosey that I thought they were almost masterpieces. He had drawn them on two pages that he had torn out of the attendance pads. The first was a picture of what I thought might be the Easter Bunny, but it might just as well have been a penguin with antlers or an anteater standing on his hind legs. It was the second picture that stopped me cold.

  In my hand I held a drawing of some trees, or what I thought might be trees. But, the trees were not the important part of the picture. Moosey had used the side of his pencil to shade the leaves of his drawing, and his shading had revealed an underlying text. I could make out a couple of words in the corner — please forgive me.

  • • •

  “What did you think about Benny leveling Russ with the incense pot?” Meg asked.

  “He said it was an accident. I talked to him in the sacristy.”

  “Yeah. Right,” said Meg. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I tend to agree,” I said. “But we have no real proof. It could have been an accident.”

  “What about Agnes Day?”

  “If Benny did kill her, he didn’t do it with the incense pot. She was definitely killed with the handbell. The DNA samples came back last week, and Kent Murphee says the dent in her skull matched the handbell perfectly. There were three samples on the bell. Agnes Day’s, an unknown man’s and an unknown woman’s.”

  “Any idea who the unknowns might be?”

  “Nope. Could be anyone.”

  “Well,” said Meg, “back to the drawing board.”

  “Not quite,” I said.

  • • •

  I called Nancy and Marilyn and told them to meet Meg, Ruby and me in the church office at one o’clock. That gave us time to brave the snowdrifts, walk over
to The Slab, and get a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and some fries. We made it back to the church office just as Nancy was coming in the door. Marilyn came in a couple of minutes later.

  “Here’s what I have,” I said, spreading Moosey’s picture out on Marilyn’s desk. “Look here at this corner. It’s very faint, but the shading brought up the indentation of the words written on the piece of paper that was on top of it. These are the last three words of the confession note.” I turned to Nancy. “Did you bring it?”

  “Here it is,” said Nancy, pulling out our photocopy of the original note. I laid it next to Moosey’s drawing. The words were difficult to make out, but we could all see that they were a match.

  “Moosey drew his pictures on the attendance forms,” I said. “The forms are in these pads, and there’s one pad per pew. When Father George asks everyone to be sure to sign the attendance pad, they, in theory, sign the form, and pass it down to the next person. After every service, Carol collects the forms so we know who’s been here. I don’t know what we do with the information,” I said, “but in this case, it may be just what we’re looking for. If the form that Moosey wrote on had this indentation, then it’s reasonable to assume that whoever wrote the confession note used the attendance pad as his or her writing desk.”

  “I get it,” said Nancy. “The original attendance form would have the same indentation.”

  “And would tell us who was sitting in the pew,” added Meg.

  “Bingo,” I said. “Now, Marilyn, give us some good news. We still have the attendance forms from Thursday night, right?”

  “I have them right here.” Marilyn opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a stack of papers. “Even if we do find out who wrote the note, is that a confession? Will it put the killer behind bars?”

  “I doubt it seriously,” I said. “There’s always deniability where an anonymous note is concerned, and, even if the person admits to writing it, they can always say it was a prank. What it will do is point us in the right direction. Then we can look for other, more compelling, evidence.”

  “What’s the plan?” Meg asked. “Do we have to shade all these forms? That’ll take hours.”

  “No need,” I said. “Nancy?”

  “Got it right here, chief,” said Nancy as she reached into her jacket and pulled out a fingerprint kit.

  “We’ll just put some black fingerprint powder on the brush and dust each of the forms,” I said. “The indentations should pick up the powder and make the writing easy to spot.”

  We watched Nancy dust the notes one at a time. She’d finished about thirty or so when she said, “That’s the one.” The powder dropped into the indentations and we could read most of the words. There, on the note, in black fingerprint powder, we could all read killed the…had no choice…forgive me. I put our copy of the confession next to the words. They were a match. I blew off the excess powder and all of us squinted to read the names on the pad.

  There were four people sitting in that pew — Malcolm and Rhiza Walker and Annette and Francis Passaglio.

  Chapter 20

  Nancy and I were in the office on Monday morning when Kenny came in. I’d found him in the parish hall after the service on Sunday. He was being mobbed by all the well-wishers that had heard the grim news of his demise, so I asked him to come on down to the office in the morning. He walked in with one arm bandaged and in a sling, but other than that, looked pretty healthy.

  “Man, Kenny,” said Nancy. “I thought you were dead.”

  “We all did,” I added.

  “I very nearly was,” said Kenny. “It was the darndest thing. I saw this bright light, and I was just walking towards it.”

  “Do you remember what happened?” Nancy asked. “I mean, before the bright light.”

  “Sure,” said Kenny, smiling at us. He smiled at us for about fifteen seconds before Nancy realized he needed more prompting.

  “Do you think you might tell us?” she growled.

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Some of this I can remember, but when I got into town, everything went black. Then I remember some more in the hospital.” Kenny smiled at us again.

  I didn’t wait the fifteen seconds. “Okay, Kenny,” I said slowly. “You need to tell us what happened.”

  “Pothead,” muttered Nancy, under her breath. “Medical marijuana, my Aunt Millie’s butt!”

  “Oh yeah. Sorry,” Kenny said again, still smiling. “I saw this bright light…”

  “Before that,” I said. “When you got shot.”

  “Oh yeah. Sorry. Let’s see…where was I?”

  Nancy was getting tired of waiting. “You went into the barn,” she prompted. “You went in the back door…”

  “Yeah,” said Kenny. “No, wait a minute. I went in the front door and walked to the back of the barn. I was gonna clean out this hornet’s nest that I saw the other day. I had some bug spray and a rake. I went into the barn and sprayed the nest. But they weren’t hornets. They were bees.”

  “Was that a problem?” I asked.

  “For me it is. I’m allergic to bee stings.”

  “But not hornet stings?” I asked.

  “Nope. The weird thing is, these bees were in a hornet’s nest.” Kenny shrugged. “I guess they found it and moved in.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “sometimes they’ll do that. What happened next?”

  “Hey, did I tell you guys about the bright light? It was amazing!”

  “Before the light,” Nancy said. “You sprayed the nest.”

  “Oh yeah. I sprayed the nest, but I guess I missed a couple of those little guys. They stung me on the arm.” Kenny stopped talking and smiled again.

  “And?” Nancy prompted.

  “And my arm started to swell up. That’s how I knew they were bees. I usually have a shot I can give myself up at the house, but I remembered I used the last one in the summer. I have about twenty minutes before I pass out. So then I figured I’d better get to town as quick as I could.” Kenny stopped and smiled again. “You guys have any donuts? I’ve got the munchies something fierce.”

  “Sorry,” said Nancy.

  “I thought all police stations had donuts,” said an obviously disappointed Kenny.

  “Nancy’ll take you down and get you one after we hear your story,” I said. Nancy glared at me. “So what happened after you got stung.”

  “My arm started to swell up. That’s how I knew they were bees. You see, I have this shot that I can give myself…”

  “We remember!” barked Nancy. ‘The bees stung you, you didn’t have a shot, you were going to drive to town, you had twenty minutes left to live…which is about what you have right now unless you finish this story!”

  “Here’s the thing,” said Kenny, with another genuine smile. “Did you know that when you’re dying, there’s this really bright light? You sort of walk toward it and…”

  “Arrrgh!” said Nancy.

  “Kenny,” I said, calmly, “after you decided to drive to town, what happened?”

  “I went out to the truck, got in and started it up.”

  “You didn’t get shot?”

  “Umm…yeah. I’m getting to it. I started the truck up, and then I remembered that the emergency room guys like to have one of those bees that stung me. So they can see which kind it is, I guess. I drove around to the back of the barn, opened the back door and —

  Ka-Blam!”

  “You got shot,” I said.

  “Finally,” said Nancy.

  “Sure did,” said Kenny. “A shotgun. Lots of pellets. The good thing was that it went off when I was opening the door, so most of the pellets had to go through the wood to get to me. It’s a pretty thick door.”

  “Was that your shotgun, Kenny?” I asked. “Did you set it as a trap?”

  “Nope. I don’t own a gun.”

  “You didn’t set a spring gun to protect your grass?” asked Nancy.

  “’Course not,” said Kenny. “Why would I do that? It’s perfectly legal.
Anyway, I knew I wasn’t hurt bad although there was a lot of blood. The doc said that the pellets in my chest only went in about a quarter inch. They just popped them out with tweezers. I did get some into my arm. That’s why it’s in a sling.”

  “So you drove into town,” I said.

  “Yeah. But I think I passed out when I got to the square. Lucky that ambulance was there, huh?”

  “Very lucky.”

  “The doc said that once Joe and Mike cleaned me off, they could see it wasn’t bad, and they got a tube down my throat. That’s what happens with these bee stings. My throat closes up, and I can’t breathe. We got to the hospital, they gave me a shot, and took these pellets out. But then, that night, I had another reaction to the bee sting, and they sent me down to Kingsport.”

  “Why did the hospital say you were dead?” asked Nancy.

  “Don’t know. Maybe they just lost the paperwork.”

  “Do you still have the gun?” I asked Nancy.

  “It’s in my car. I’ll send it down to the lab.”

  “You can do that after you take Kenny in for some donuts,” I said, with a grin. “One more question, Kenny.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why’d you come to St. Barnabas on Sunday? I haven’t seen you in church for ten years.”

  “Well, it’s like this. It was Easter and I just had a narrow escape from death.”

  “That’s a good enough reason,” I said, with a nod.

  “That, plus I’ve been dating one of the singers in the choir,” added Kenny.

  “Really,” I said. “Who is it?”

  “Renee Tatton. She really likes me. She says I remind her of an actor named Tab Hunter.”

  • • •

  “Hello, Hayden. This is Gary Thorndike. I have some news for you,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “The lab’s really busy, but I moved your case to the head of the line.”

  “Hi, Gary,” I said, recognizing the voice right away. “Thanks. I hope the news is good.”