“There’s a thought,” said Ardine, a smile finally appearing on her worn face.
“I like Harry Potter better,” said Moosey. “Not as many slugs.”
“Are y’all gonna come up and get a Christmas tree this year?” asked Ardine. “We’ve still got some nice ten-foot-tall blue spruces left. I’ll give you a real deal.” Ardine was a seasonal employee at the Pine Valley Christmas Tree Farm.
“What kind of deal?” Meg asked, always on the lookout for a bargain.
“Forty-five bucks,” said Ardine. “No one wants them ten-foot trees. They’re two years too late in the harvesting. All we can do with ’em is chop ’em up for garlands and they’re even mostly too big for that. Needles too far apart.” She looked around the living room. “It’d go great in here, though.”
“It would,” agreed Meg. “We’ll come up on Saturday morning and pick one out.”
“Why so late?” asked Ardine. “Most folks around here get their tree up right after Thanksgiving.”
“We like to leave ours up a little longer,” Meg answered. “So we wait until a couple of weeks before Christmas to put it up.”
“You know,” I said, “the twelve days of Christmas and all that.”
“Ten frogs a-leaping,” sang Moosey, breaking into song and jumping over the ottoman to illustrate the verse. “Nine ladles prancing, eight days of milking, seven swiney swimmers, six something-something...” He went down on one knee and stuck his arms out like Al Jolson. “Five gooool-den riiings!...”
“That’s the one,” I said. “The very song. Here. Have a cookie.” I tossed him a springerle from a basket on one of the end tables. Springerles are very hard Christmas cookies made from an old German recipe that uses quarry stone as the main ingredient. The upside is that they will last indefinitely, impervious to mold, insects, nuclear wars, and the ravages of time. The downside is, if you’re not careful, you will break all your teeth trying to eat them. I liked springerles and ordered a tin of them every Christmas.
Moosey caught the cookie and immediately tried to take a bite. “Ow!” he said, then took it out of his mouth and looked at it in consternation.
“You’ve got to work at it,” I told him. “Once you break through the outer shell, it’s the most delicious cookie you’ll ever eat.” I didn’t tell him that it was all outer shell.
“Tastes a little like licorice,” said Moosey sitting down on the sofa and gnawing on the hardtack. “I like ’em.”
He kicked his feet back and forth and sang to himself while trying to figure the best way to break the springerle code. He finally decided to lick it into submission. “Four clawing birds, three wenches, two turkledoves, and a parson up a psaltree.”
Chapter 12
The first big snowfall of the year in St. Germaine is a beautiful thing, and this one was no exception. Getting snow the second week of December was about business-as-usual for us in recent years. Old-timers talk about getting blizzards in early November, but that hasn’t happened for a while. Oh, every now and then a cold front will come through early in the season, but we don’t really get geared up for a good, heavy snow until December.
Meg had driven me into Asheville the day before and I’d rented a new Toyota Tundra four-door pickup: four-wheel drive, automatic everything, a sound system with eight speakers, satellite radio, and more bells and whistles than you could shake a stick at. It rode like a dream, or so it seemed compared to a 1962 Chevy that saw its last new shock absorber when Nixon was president. More than that, I could make a turn with only one hand. My other hand rested on the steering wheel, encased in plaster, in a supporting role.
I drove slowly into town and was amazed, as I always am early on a sunny, cold morning following eight inches of powder, at the sparkling beauty of the square—the boughs of the fir trees weighed down with new snow, drifts resting against the gazebo in the middle of the park, the streets still pristine and unmarked except for the occasional footprints of other early risers. It was a picture that Norman Rockwell would have been proud to paint. It wouldn’t last long, of course. As soon as traffic picked up and businesses opened, the snow on the streets would turn to sludge. But right now, it was a beautiful sight.
The Kiwanis Club had begun to put up their Christmas crèche, a project that would take most of the week. It was quite a structure, a full-sized stable with post and beam construction, and was being erected in its now-traditional location, the southernmost corner of Sterling Park, just across the street and down seventy yards from the front doors of St. Barnabas. The main posts had been set into the ground and the rest of the construction materials—beams, siding, thatching for the roof, and everything else—were stacked neatly in the vacant lot on the other side of Maple Street. Everything had been covered with tarps and looked, on this cold morning, like a mountain of snow. The Living Nativity program would begin a week from Wednesday and continue every night until the Sunday before Christmas. Five shows, each lasting forty-five minutes. The park would be packed. Our other big event, the Rotary Club’s Christmas parade, was scheduled for this Saturday at two in the afternoon.
I parked my truck in front of the police station, went inside and was making a pot of coffee when the phone rang. It was Meg.
“Can you make a phone call over to England?”
“I guess so,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I just spoke to an Arthur Farrant. He’s a vicar somewhere in Nantwich, wherever that is. He wants you to call him back.”
“I don’t know anyone named Arthur Farrant.”
“I think Geoffrey put him in touch with you.”
Geoffrey Chester was an old friend who worked at York Minster. He knew absolutely everyone. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll give him a call. What’s the number?”
Meg read it to me. I wrote it down and sat at Nancy’s desk, flipping idly through the week’s reports until the coffee pot sputtered to a stop. Then I poured myself a mug and went into my office to make my overseas call.
•••
Gaylen Weatherall wasn’t in the church office when I walked across the park to St. Barnabas about an hour later. Marilyn told me that, until Gaylen felt a little better, she wasn’t planning to come in except for emergencies and Sunday mornings. She’d do her day-to-day business from her house.
“Would you like to see Deacon Mushrat?” she asked, her eyes darting to his open office door across the hall. “He’s always here.”
I declined the offer and decided that, on a beautiful morning like this, a walk up to the parsonage would be just the thing.
“I’m just going to go get my gun,” I told Marilyn. “I’m getting in some target practice this afternoon. I’ll drop in on Gaylen and see how she’s doing.”
I unlocked the side door of the church, entered the nave, and walked up the stairs to the choir loft. I slid behind the organ console, reached underneath the bench and felt for the box that my friend Michael Baum, of the Baum-Boltoph Organ Company, had built into the seat. I found the two hidden levers, released them both, and the drawer popped open. Then I took the Glock 9 mm pistol out of the box and slid it into my coat pocket.
•••
Gaylen answered the door when I rang the bell, looking pretty good, all things considered. Her makeup almost covered the two black circles under her eyes. Almost, but not quite. And the piece of tape that crossed her nose was flesh-colored. If you saw her from a ways back, she looked just fine. Or, as Raymond Chandler once wrote, “From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.” Her right hand was in a cast up to her elbow, and she held it tightly against her side.
“Glad to see you’re up and about,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Gaylen answered.
“C’mon. I know you can talk. Just use your lips.”
“Yes, yes,” she grumbled, her lips drawing away from her teeth in her effort to form words through a broken jaw that was wired shut. “I can talk.
Slowly and softly. And it takes a lot of effort. Come on in.”
I followed her into the living room, a comfortable room with an old sofa and two overstuffed arm chairs facing a gas fireplace. The fire was blazing. Heart-pine floors, original to the house, were tastefully covered by worn Persian carpets. The plaster walls had been freshly painted just before Gaylen had moved back and the pictures she’d chosen for the walls made the room both informal and inviting.
“Coffee?” asked Gaylen, through gritted teeth.
“I’ll get it,” I said, picking up Gaylen’s empty mug from the side table. She sat down heavily in her arm chair, favoring her left side, and I saw a grimace before I disappeared into the kitchen to refill her cup and get one for myself. I was back a moment later with hers.
“Cream, no sugar,” I said, as I handed her the cup.
“Thanks.”
I headed back to the kitchen and hollered back over my shoulder. “Now that I’ve got this broken arm, I’ve got to make two trips to do everything.”
Gaylen waited until I’d come back with my own coffee before replying. “I’m so sorry about the accident,” she started. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I feel so terrible...”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. And good news! All the baby skunks survived.”
Gaylen couldn’t help but laugh. “Great. That’s just great. All the skunks survived. The story of my life.”
“How’re the ribs?”
“They hurt, but they’re getting better.”
“That’s good. So you’ll be celebrating the Eucharist this Sunday?”
“That is the current plan,” Gaylen said slowly, working very hard to enunciate her words. “Donald will be doing the sermon. I heard that your cantata was excellent last Sunday. I’m sorry I missed it.”
“It was okay,” I said. “I didn’t care for the organist’s registrations. And her prelude...”
Gaylen put up her hand and smiled. “We’ll get through this. I’ll be back to work full-time by Epiphany.”
“That’s why I’m here, actually,” I said. “I have a proposal.”
Gaylen’s eyebrows went up in interest.
“I just had a phone call from a vicar in Nantwich,” I said.
“Nantwich?”
“Northwestern England. Geoffrey Chester gave him my name and number. The church there has decided to schedule a tour of some religious treasures. Apparently, once the tour was announced, the vicar got a phone call identifying St. Barnabas as one of the wealthy churches on the east coast of the U.S.”
“A dubious distinction,” mumbled Gaylen. “I’m pretty sure our illustrious bishop flagged us.”
“Be that as it may, this is quite an interesting proposition.”
Gaylen settled back into the cushion and took a sip of coffee. “Okay, I’m all ears.”
I reached into the pocket of my coat and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I took notes,” I admitted. “This is quite an amazing story.” I unfolded the papers and began.
•••
“Arthur Farrant is the vicar of a small parish in Nantwich called St. Hywyn’s. Like many of the parish churches in England, St. Hywyn’s is trying desperately to raise money to repair the 16th-century building and keep the church going. It’s in a very poor section of the town. The vicar says that the main mission of the parish is running a soup kitchen and providing clothing for the poor.”
“You got verification?” Gaylen asked.
“I called Geoffrey and he gave me the number of a friend of his at St. Mary’s in the same town. They both told me Farrant’s on the up and up and does great work. He’s even been featured in his local paper several times. But the British economy is as bad as ours and they’re hurting for funds.”
Gaylen nodded, but didn’t say anything. She motioned for me to continue.
“So St. Hywyn’s hired this fund-raising group. It was just a local firm and they didn’t charge much, but they gave them some ideas on how to raise some money. One of the ideas was a throw-back to the Middle Ages.”
“Don’t tell me. They’re going on a crusade.”
“Nah. You’re thinking of Billy Graham. This is even better. Relics.”
“Relics?”
“Yep. January 6th is the Feast Day of St. Hywyn,” I said.
“Same as the Feast of the Epiphany.”
“Yep. Here’s his story.” I looked at the folded paper in my good hand to get my facts straight. “Some of this is just legend, of course. But still...”
“Let’s hear it,” said Gaylen.
“St. Hywyn,” I began, “also called Owen or Ewen, was a disciple of St. Cadfan in the 5th century. He founded monasteries and churches in Wales and western England. No one knows how the little church in Nantwich became associated with this saint, but it may have been because of his feast day and what happened in 1164.”
“My knowledge of medieval history being what it is, you’ll have to elaborate.”
“Really? You don’t know what happened in 1164?”
Gaylen snarled.
I laughed. “In that year, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa gave the bones of the Three Kings to the cathedral at Cologne. According to the St. Hywyn parish legend, the bones were carried to Cologne in a caravan headed by a Welsh priest, coincidentally also named Ewen. The relics were enshrined and are in Germany to this day. But here’s the rub. Ewen managed to get home to England with some of the relics hidden in his bags. He and they landed in the little monastery at Nantwich where the bones were stored for some seven hundred years. The reliquary where the bones are kept dates from the 1400s. Apparently it’s quite a work of art, made of wood with silver and gold inlay. And these bones kept the monks flush for many, many years.”
“You’re saying that one of the Three Kings is in Nantwich?”
“That’s the legend.”
“One of the Three Kings that visited Bethlehem? The gold, frankincense, and myrrh Three Kings?”
“The very ones.” I checked my notes. “The reliquary was hidden by the monks in 1536 when the monastery was shut down. It was rediscovered in 1892 and returned to the church where the monastery stood. It’s been there ever since, along with Hywyn’s staff, little known and rarely visited. Anyway, the vicar and the vestry thought that, if advertised correctly, sending the relics on a short tour of the eastern U.S. might generate several thousand pounds after expenses. The reliquary is to be displayed at several well-to-do churches. We’d have to make an offering to St. Hywyn’s.”
“Hmm. And the money would go to the feeding and clothing of the poor?”
“Well, that and the upkeep of the building. If that isn’t done, there won’t be any more feeding or clothing going on at all. Here’s a picture of the reliquary.”
I handed the last page of my notes to Gaylen, the page that I’d printed off the internet with a beautiful photograph of the Nantwich Reliquary. There had been a lot of information, once I’d Googled the subject, most of it put out by the publicity firm the church had hired.
Gaylen studied the photo, then pointed to the bottom of the page and said, “I see some links here to some auction sites. They’re not selling it, are they?”
“Not that I know of. Farrant didn’t mention that. But I suppose they would sell it if they had to.”
“Hmm. How much will it cost us?”
“Four thousand bucks. And we get the reliquary the first week of January. It would be a great centerpiece for our Epiphany service. We can take up an offering for the mission work as well.”
“Sounds reasonable. Just to be clear, you’re saying that we’re going to have the bones of one of the Three Kings on display for our Epiphany service?”
“Yep.”
Gaylen managed a smile. “Well, why not?”
Chapter 13
The Slab Café was bustling for lunch, but with our reserved table status, Nancy and I calmly pushed our way through the line of would-be patrons and sat down to the
angry glares of many out-of-towners.
“You know, dear,” said one of the men to his wife, but loud enough for everyone in line to hear, “it’s amazing that the police in these little burgs think they can just barge in wherever they want and get a table without waiting in line like civilized people.”
Nancy stood back up, put her hand on the butt of her gun and gave him a hard look. “Patriot Act,” she said.
The man mumbled something unintelligible and Nancy sat back down, followed by Pete a few seconds later.
“Don’t scare the customers,” he said.
Nancy pulled a sheaf of papers out of her inside overcoat pocket and put them on the table. “This is Sal LaGrassa’s dossier. The hit-man. Remember?”
“Of course,” I said. “Do I have to read the whole thing, or can you give me the highlights?”
“Highlights it is,” said Nancy. “But first, some breakfast.”
“Or lunch,” suggested Pete. “It’s eleven o’clock.”
“Breakfast,” said Nancy.
“Breakfast,” I agreed.
“I’ll order it in the kitchen,” said Pete, getting to his feet. “But don’t tell anything until I get back.”
Nancy held her coffee cup aloft just long enough for Pauli Girl to spot her and come dancing over with a half-full carafe.
“Here you go, hon,” she said, filling both our cups and Pete’s as well. By the time we’d taken our first sips, Pete was back at the table.
“You’re getting omelets,” he announced. “And biscuits with gravy.”
“Sounds fine to me,” I said, then turned to Nancy. “Okay, what have you got on Sal LaGrassa?”
Nancy thumbed through her papers. “Born Salvator Francis LaGrassa. Forty-five years old. Six feet even, a hundred and ninety pounds. Wanted for questioning in sixteen murders-for-hire. He’s also suspected in several major heists. Never arrested, never convicted, never even brought in for questioning. No siblings, no wife, no kids...no family at all, for that matter. His mother, apparently his only close relative, died in New York five years ago. He’s rumored to be one half of a team. The FBI suspects that the other person may be a woman.”
The Organist Wore Pumps (The Liturgical Mysteries) Page 8