The Alto Wore Tweed (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  I handed her a New American Standard version of the Bible and The Hymnal 1982.

  “Now,” she said picking up the hymnal and turning to the index in the back. “Hark, the Herald Angels, hymn number 87. You see? It’s Him, It’s Matthew. O hark the herald angels sing. Hymn number 87. Matthew 8:7. Pretty clever, yes?”

  “You’re a wonder, do you know that?” I said admiringly. “How about a kiss?”

  “Not now! Can’t you see we’re about to solve the murder? All we have to do is look up the verse and we’ll know who the killer is.” She was already thumbing through the well worn book.

  “And he said to him ‘I will come and heal him,’” I quoted.

  “What?” she said, distracted and finding the passage.”

  “And he said to him ‘I will come and heal him,’” I repeated. “Matthew 8:7.”

  “How did you know that? Do you have this whole book memorized?” She was genuinely shocked.

  “Well, no. Actually I looked it up this morning.”

  “You stinker!” she shouted, laughing. “I might have known.”

  “Now, about that kiss, Ms. Farthing....”

  “Not on your life. Get away from me. Lips that touched goat lips will never touch mine.” She ducked under my halfhearted grope and slid to the other side of the table.

  “Well then, who did it?” she asked, picking up the note again and looking at it intently as if the answer would leap forth from the paper. “A doctor?”

  “It could be, but that’s still a stretch. It’s certainly not a definite identification of the killer. There have to be eight or ten doctors in the church not to mention dentists, nurses, EMTs, and whoever else might bmployed in the health care field. And let’s not forget, it may be someone that isn’t a member.”

  “I think it is,” said Meg suddenly quiet, her playful mood dropping away. “I think it is a member of St. Barnabas.”

  • • •

  October was drawing to a close. It was my favorite month and this one was certainly one for the books. The mayor had called me in to see about our progress on the case. Of course, the mayor was also known as Pete Moss, the owner of The Slab.

  “How’re you doing Hayden?”

  “Is this an Official Meeting?” I asked. “’Cause if it is, I want a complimentary piece of Boston Cream pie and a cup of coffee.”

  “Yes, it’s official. Doris,” he called, “get the detective some pie and a cup of coffee, would you?”

  “Boston Cream,” I yelled out.

  Pete dragged up a chair. “The city council wants to know about your progress on the Boyd case.”

  “Ah, the council.”

  “Any progress?”

  “Some,” I said. “Not very much though.”

  The pie and coffee arrived right on schedule. I always enjoyed these high-level meetings.

  “That’s it?” asked Pete.

  “That’s it.”

  Pete nodded and his eyebrows went up. “Well, thanks for coming in.”

  “Always a pleasure,” I muttered, my mouth full of the scrumptious pastry.

  • • •

  I pulled up to the McCollough’s trailer later that afternoon. Moosey met me at the door, grinning, with his hands behind him and rocking back and forth on his heels. This time I hadn’t forgotten.

  “Here you go, young man,” I said, handing him a big bag of M&Ms. He was out the door and down the steps in half a second.

  “Moosey,” his mother called after him. Don’t eat those before dinner.” She sighed and turned to me with a mock frown showing on her face.

  “You shouldn’t oughtta give him that stuff.”

  “OK, I’ll try to cut back.”

  “Well, thanks,” she said. “C’mon in. Is this about Bud?”

  “No, actually it’s not. I came to get some expertise and maybe a little advice.”

  “Sure,” she said, confused. “Have a seat.” She motioned to the couch and took a chair facing it.

  “Do you know anything about oleander?” I asked.

  The color drained out of Ardine McCollough’s face so fast I thought she was going to pass out. If I had had a polygraph on her, it would have been playing Chopsticks.

  “Um...it’s a plant, I think,” she stuttered, her voice in a half-whisper, her hand moving to her collar.

  Whatever skills Ardine might possess, I could tell that lying was not going to be one of them. I hadn’t even posed a pointed question and already she was ready to confess. I admit that I now had an idea what had happened to PeeDee McCollough, but that wasn’t why I was here.

  “Listen, Ardine,” I said. “I’m not here to cause you any trouble. I figure PeeDee just up and left. It happens a lot around here and I’m sure that you’re glad he’s gone.”

  “I am glad,” she replied, relaxing just a little but still sitting stiffly in the chair, her hands clenched and primly in her lap.

  “But there was someone else in town killed by oleander,” I continued, “and I want to know if anyone called you for some advice.”

  “I don’t know if I should say,” said Ardine, her voice quiet and without emotion. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

  “And I know your promise is important,” I said, leaning forward to impart the importance of the question. “But I need to know who it is.”

  “Yes. I guess you should know.”

  I waited for about six beats, not saying anything.

  “It was that woman from the church.”

  “The priest?”

  “No. The one that works in the kitchen. She said her name was JJ.”

  For someone who has a comment for every occasion, I was speechless.

  Chapter 9

  The smoke of my stogie circled my head as I rounded the corner of the bar. Then I saw her. She caught my eye like that little fish hook that your brother casts over his shoulder without paying attention. A long, tall blonde. I’d seen her before--the bishop’s personal trainer.

  “Hi handsome,” she purred. “I’m Amber. Amber Dawn.”

  “Hi Amber. I saw your photo spread last month in ‘Hymns and Hers.’ Very impressive.”

  “Thanks babe. I’ve been looking for you. The bishop wants you to take a look at this.”

  She handede a memo. It was from the bishop all right and I was his church music commission toady. I opened the memo and gave it the once over. Another PCD--Politically Correct Directive.

  “Beginning immediately,” the memo said, “all new music compositions must contain a minimum of 50% ‘nonwhite’ notes. (Also, in keeping within the national and diocesan guidelines, all whole and half notes will be known as ‘pigmentally impoverished.’)

  “As church musicians, we must also be aware that, although albino-genetic recessive notes tend to move faster and jump higher than pigmentally impoverished notes, we must not perpetuate this stereotype. Pigmentally impoverished notes must be allowed to achieve their true and full potential, and not be held back by any of the ‘so called’ traditional composers. By the same token, notes-of-color must be allowed to proceed at their own pace.”

  I had heard it all before, but now the bishop was taking it up a notch.

  • • •

  Christmas, as always, was coming up too fast. I planned to enjoy the holidays every year, but it never worked out. My Christmas vacation generally started on December 26th.

  In addition to my church duties, which multiplied during the holidays, there was a myriad of constabulary duties that needed taking care of, not the least of which was this murder. Now more than six weeks old, it was out of the thoughts of almost everyone else. However, I am nothing if not dogged, and I was pretty sure I would have it wrapped up by Christmas.

  After speaking with Ardine McCollough, my next visit in the case of the dearly departed Willie Boyd was to JJ. I found her, after a couple of misses, in the kitchen back at the church fixing something for the evening fellowship meal.

  “Hi there, Hayden. Wassup?” JJ was dumping a pil
e of what I hoped were vegetables recognized by the USDA into the boiling pot.

  “Well, not too much, my dear. What’s cooking today?”

  JJ was sporting her ever-present white painter’s overalls with one of the straps dangling down over her shoulder, a flannel shirt, a bandanna around her neck, and a baseball cap.

  “I can’t decide what kind of soup it’s going to be. I’m just putting the stock together.”

  “Smells good.”

  “You can have some tonight if you get here on time for a change.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I poured a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter. I tried to act nonchalant, but couldn’t pull it off.

  “I’ve got to ask you something, JJ.”

  “Well, go on then,” she said, stirring the pot with her canoe paddle.

  I took a sip, then said, “What do you know about oleander?”

  “Oh, hell!” she said, stopping for a moment and looking at me, then turning her attention back to the soup. “I knew someone would find out sooner or later.”

  I was shocked. Almost as shocked as when Ardine gave me JJ’s name in the first place.

  “JJ, I’ve got to tell you, I think you should get a lawyer.”

  “Why? Is that crazy woman going to press charges?”

  “It’s out of her hands,” I said, thinking that Herself probably wouldn’t hesitate in letting JJ walk. There was no love lost between Willie and Mother Ryan. “It’s our jurisdiction, but an indictment will have to be brought.”

  “An indictment? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about oleander poisoning.” I said, as seriously as I could.

  “Yeah, well. I guess I’m guilty then.” JJ said. “But I’ve got to tell you, I was just sick and tired of it.”

  “I understand,” I said, nodding and not understanding at all. “What was the final straw? The wine?”

  “The wine? There wasn’t any wine. I just thought it was time I did something.”

  “So you used the oleander?”

  “Well,” she said, “It’s virtually untraceable. And it’s only dangerous to the thing that consumes it. If we ate the meat afterwards, there wouldn’t be any risk and no one would ever know,” she said matter-of-factly, as she continued to stir the soup.

  “If we...ate the meat...afterwards,” I said, slowly, trying desperately to make sense of this conversation.

  “Yep,” she said, reaching down beside the counter and picking up a wrinkled brown grocery bag with the top rolled down. She handed it to me. It weighed close to twenty pounds. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

  I opened the bag and looked in.

  “Hedgehogs?” I asked, not really believing what I was seeing. “You were poisoning Mrs. McCarty’s hedgehogs?” JJ lived next door to the eccentric pet breeder.

  “They’re all in my yard and they’re crawling in my heating ducts. There was one stuck in my dryer last week. It crawled up through the vent and lodged itself in the heating unit. It cost me a hundred-and-twenty bucks to get the dryer fixed, and my clothes all smelled like roast duck. That’s when I came up with the idea.”

  “What idea?”

  “Roasted hedgehog soup.”

  “Ahhh. Come to think of it, I don’t think I%ll be here for dinner this evening.”

  “Well, don’t tell anyone. Almost no one knows and I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  “Almost no one?” I asked.

  “Yeah, last week when I was mixing up the oleander, Mother Ryan was in here getting some coffee. I might have told her I had some pests I needed to get rid of. She might figure it out.”

  “I doubt it,” I said smiling. “She’s got bigger problems.”

  • • •

  The boy’s descent which lifted up the world.

  It bothered me, that last line.

  • • •

  Mother Ryan was getting ready for her fifteen minutes of fame. She had finagled the bishop into allowing her to host a conference for women priests. Of course, on the brochures it said wimmyn priests and she had contacted all the appropriate news groups to make sure the conference was well-covered, at least in ecumenical circles. She discovered when she spelled womyn with a “y,” the reporters came running.

  The first week of Advent was when her conference was to take place. ReImagining God the Mother in the Twenty-First Century was the cognomen the wimmyn had chosen to celebrate their collective ecufem consciousness. Three days of speeches, seminars and services. Along with the three leaders, there were twenty-three women priests signed up and at least that many reporters booked into the B&Bs. The priests were staying with parishioners. The reporters were on expense accounts. And although I was ordered by Herself to be present to play for the services, I was planning on staying as far away as possible.

  I knocked on Mother Ryan’s office door and waited for the requisite “Come!” uttered as a command rather than a polite request. I think she heard the fractured greeting in a police drama on television and decided it demonstrated her authority. Hearing the dictate, I opened the door and entered her rather masculine study, which she had appointed herself and charged to the decorating committee’s budget, much to their consternation. Leather and walnut—a nice combination.

  “Yes?” she asked curtly as she looked up from the papers on her desk. “I’ve got a lot of work to do before Monday. Can this wait?”

  “Well, not really, Loraine,” I said in my sweetest voice. “You see, I still have to find out who murdered Willie.”

  “Do you have any information?” she asked, going back to her work.

  “Well, yes I might. We got the lab report back and we know how Willie died. It was oleander poisoning.”

  Perhaps the only indication that she heard what I said is that the mechanical pencil in her hand snapped in half. Still, I was a trained detective and I notice these little things, especially since it sounded like a firecracker going off.

  “So do you know anything about th?” I asked innocently.

  “Why would I know anything?” her voice rasped.

  “Apparently, JJ was mixing up a concoction in the kitchen for some...mmm...pests. She was using oleander leaves.”

  “So you think JJ did it?”

  “No. JJ didn’t do it. But she mentioned that you were with her in the kitchen.”

  “No, I don’t remember that,” she obviously lied, her eyes dropping back to the papers in front of her.

  “Well, JJ remembers it pretty well,” I said, still sweetly. “I don’t think she’d forget something like that.”

  “I said I don’t remember. That’s all,” she said dismissively, waving me out without looking up.

  I closed the door behind me, wondering what she was up to. She was guilty as original sin and in this up to her ears, but I still didn’t know her role in the drama. Shoot. I didn’t even know all the players. Did she kill Willie Boyd? Maybe. Could I prove it? Not yet.

  • • •

  As usual, the first Sunday of Advent fell on the first Sunday in December. The first Sunday of Advent was actually the closest Sunday to the Feast of St. Andrew, which was on November twenty-eighth and marked the beginning of the church year. It was our custom to begin the season of Advent with the Great Litany chanted in procession and led by the priest. We only dragged the thurible and the incense out of the closet a couple of times a year, but this was the big one. All the smells and bells as they say in the biz.

  Herself had not ever practiced chanting the Great Litany and this was her first Advent processional at St. Barnabas. When I mentioned to her, on Sunday morning before the service, that I’d be happy to go over it with her—a magnanimous gesture on my part, I thought—her reply was smug and to the point.

  “I’ll just let the Holy Spirit take care of it.”

  “Why don’t you give me ten minutes of rehearsal and we’ll let the Holy Spirit worry about something else this morning,” I fired back.

  She
didn’t take the hint. Added to the fun of the procession was the sound of bells being rung around and about the church and a cloud of smoke from the incense pot that would do credit to the Santiago de Compostela. I—yes, even I—think they may have overfilled the incense pot just a tad.

  The man in charge of the incense was our resident thurifer Benny Dawkins and he, unlike the current priest, took his job very seriously. He began practicing in September, diligently getting the hang of swinging the smoking thurible. He would start slowly with a straight swing which he called the Tallulah Bankhead in honor of the sardonic actress’s famous quote “Dahlin’, your gown looks fabulous, but your purse in on fire.” The rest of September would be spent perfecting the Big Ben and the Cross Your Heart. He’d practice every day in October until he had finely honed the Around the World and the very difficult Walk the Dog. In November he put the final touches on his ultimate maneuver, the Doubly-Inverted Reverse Swan, which he had only attempted once in plic and where he, unfortunately, had knocked out poor Iona Hoskins when the heavy, smoking pot caught her behind the left ear and set her wig on fire. Other than that one incident, which many in the congregation viewed as a blessing due to the change in Iona’s attitude after the accident, Benny had an unblemished record, in services as well as in competition. At the International Thurifer Invitational in London, he entered in the Singles, No Side-Boat division and was awarded second place for the tricks portion of the event, a highly respectable third in freestyle and won the Bronze medal in the overall, losing only to the legendary Alaister Hewish from Yorkminster and an upstart wunderkind from St. Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Benny would incorporate all his signature moves and several improvisations into his procession, all the while walking in strict time, looking straight ahead and never losing a grain of incense. It was a pleasure to watch him work.

  Mother Ryan took a big breath to begin the procession. The Great Litany is a rather long recitation and apparently the Holy Spirit wasn’t helping her out: she was lost before the first paragraph was finished. Then she panicked and started hyperventilating. I could tell this, as could the rest of the congregation, because she was walking right behind Benny and when she started to gasp for breath, what she got was smoke—and a lot of it.