The Alto Wore Tweed (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  After they leave posthaste, the three queens, named Leona, Imelda and Hillary, get together to discuss what is to be done while the Kings are on their journey. Leona is the mean, bossy soprano who keeps having all her servants executed for failing to keep the bathroom clean. Imelda is the large alto who needs a small caravan just to carry her shoes. Hillary, the savvy mezzo who made her fortune in illegal inside camel trading, points out that since these kings are already from the Orient, if they follow a star in the East for any length of time, they’ll end up in the Pacific Ocean.

  I must say here that the work includes many beautiful arias including the Song of the Lowly Handmaiden,

  I know I’m just a concubine,

  But won’t you be my valentine?

  There’s also the most famous of the trios which the ladies were currently singing with great glee.

  We three Queens of Orient are

  All our husbands followed the star

  They thought it was mannish,

  But they don’t speak Spanish,

  They probably won’t get far. Ohh-ohhhh.

  Star of wonder, star so blessed;

  Shining in the East celeste.

  So we ponder as they wander,

  Why on earth did they go West?

  I’m Leona, bitter as gall,

  I can cause a terrible squall,

  Rich as Midas, star to guide us,

  I am the queen of all. Ohh-ohhhh.

  Star of wonder, star so keen,

  But I’m the biggest star you’ve seen.

  We’ll travel slowly, tax the lowly,

  ’ Cause I am the Queen of Mean.

  I’m Imelda, jolly and quaint,

  Rather large, a face like a saint,

  My shoes I can carry, on one dromedary,

  If I show real restraint. Ohh-ohhhh.

  >Star of wonder, star most fair,

  I’m wandering without footwear.

  It may seem callous, but at my palace

  I have around three thousand pair.

  I am Hillary, savvy and wise,

  My king has some wandering eyes,

  But if I scare him in the harem

  He’ll get a real surprise! Ohh-ohhhh.

  I have traveled from afar

  Following my husband’s star

  When I squeezed him if I’d pleased him,

  He said, “Close, but no cigar.”

  The choir finished up with a rousing chorus and applauded themselves mightily.

  “Hayden, this is Rebecca Watts,” said Georgia seeing me come in. “She’s a new alto.”

  “Well, she won’t last too long in this choir if you treat her like this.”

  “No, no. I love it.” said Rebecca. “It’s the best choir rehearsal I’ve ever been to.”

  “It’s a pleasure to have you with us,” I said in my best ‘welcome-to-the-choir’ voice. “Did you get a folder?”

  “We were planning to sing The Weasel Cantata next,” said Marjorie.

  “Maybe later,” I said putting her off. “We have to hit the Charpentier Midnight Mass pretty hard this evening.”

  After the rehearsal, I checked my pager. Sure enough, there were two calls from Rhiza and three from Malcolm. I’d get to them tomorrow morning. I was beat and I still had to feed Archimedes.

  • • •

  I began the next morning with a cup of coffee and the Vince Guaraldi Trio playing the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas. I followed my coffee up with a couple of phone calls. I was contemplating getting a new 100 CD changer that I saw in a catalog, hooking it up to the stereo and putting in a hundred Christmas CDs to capture that Christmas spirit that had been lacking of late. Here it was, mid-December and I still hadn’t put up my tree. Meg and I had planned to go out to the tree farm later this afternoon, but she had canceled due to a client in a panic about his 401k.

  My first call was to Malcolm Walker’s satellite phone. There was no answer which, in itself, was odd. Malcolm always answered his phone and with a satellite phone, he was never out of range. My next call was to Rhiza’s cell. She answered on the first ring.

  “Hi Rhiza. It’s Hayden.”

  “Hayden, thank God.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I hadn’t expected such a panicked reply.

  “Everything is wrong. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why don’t you come over and see me. I’m at the house.”

  “Malcolm left last night and didn’t come home. I don’t know where he is and he won’t answer his phone.”

  “I know. I just tried him.”

  “I’ll be over in a little bit,” she said and hung up.

  I spent the next hour going through my music collection, trying to pick the top hundred Christmas CDs. I admit I have a rather large CD collection. Well, four or five thousand anyway. I join music clubs regularly and just have them send their monthly offering, which my accountant pays as a matter of course. Then, when I’m at Tower Records, I’ll buy a couple of dozen recordings that catch my eye. One thing I did spend some money on, after I had become flush, was trading in my vinyl for CDs. I still kept the vinyl recordings—in some ways the sound is much better—but if I found one that I couldn’t replace or duplicate with a CD from the record label, I paid a student at Appalachian State to transfer it for me.

  Rhiza knocked on the door and opened it in the same motion just as she had always done. I didn’t mind. We were old friends.

  “C’mon in,” I called from the kitchen. “I’ll bring some coffee.”

  “Thanks.” She plopped down in my reading chair as she had a hundred times before, letting the leather and overstuffed cushions catch her as she dropped. I had seen her look better. “Haggard” was probably a good word to describe her. She was wearing an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. No makeup. Not exactly the Rhiza I was used to seeing around town for the past few years. Make no mistake; she was still a knockout. In a lot of ways, to my eye anyway, more appealing in her natural state than in the trophy wife getup.

  Rhiza and I had a history. She was quite a clever girl and when she dropped the husky-squeaky voice that enraptured Malcolm in favor of her gentle North Carolina mountain accent, her whole personality changed for the better.

  “Put on a Mozart symphony, will you?” she asked. “Number 26 if you can find it. God, I get so tired of listening to Mannheim Steamroller all Christmas long.”

  She hopped up, went over to the humidor, took out one of my R&J’s, snipped off the end and lit it up. She fell back into the feather cushions, puffing on the cigar, and draping a long leg over the arm of the chair. On her, I have to admit, that cigar looked good.

  I found the Mozart CD and replaced Charlie Brown jazz with the Viennese classical.

  “In our house it’s either Mannheim Steamroller or Windham Hill from Thanksgiving to New Years. What did Doonesbury call it? Air Pudding. It makes me want to become a brunette again,” she said as I handed her a cup of coffee.

  I had first met Rhiza at Chapel Hill when I was a grad student and she was a freshman. She was a music history major and we hit it off right away. In fact, it was Rhiza and Pete who had called me about the job in St. Germaine after I found my second career. When I met her in grad school, she was a decent pianist with no illusions about a professional career. She was on a teaching track and doing some good research on folk music of the Outer Banks. She was also a brunette, drop-dead gorgeous, and quite interested in consciousness altering experiences of various kinds—musical, chemical, and sexual. I must admit, she had aged more gracefully than I. If anything, she was more beautiful now than she had been then. I was pretty sure that no one in town knew about us, although she continued to drop by the cabin until she got hooked up with Malcolm five years ago. Now she stopped in occasionally for some coffee and to chat, but she didn’t drop by. I’m sure Meg didn’t know about our background, and since we didn’t ever discuss our ancient history, I didn’t feel guilty about not telling her.

  “I didn’t d
o it,” she said, sipping her coffee, the cigar dangling in her other hand while the strains of Mozart 26 filled the room. “You’ve got to believe me.”

  Her eyes were smoldering--smoldering as the passion which hung heavy in the room like some gigantic velvet curtain smothering the atmosphere, which rose like the thin wisp of smoke from the cigar dangling like an extra appendage from her delicate, well-manicured hand. Yep. They always came to me for help.

  It was déjà vu all over again.

  Chapter 16

  “I didn’t do it. You know I couldn’t have, “ Rhiza said. “I can’t believe it’s all over town.”

  “What’s all over town?”

  “The rumor. Apparently there’s a clue that says I did it. I’m the murderer.”

  The town grapevine was more effective than I’d thought. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours.

  “Well, we do have a clue and it does point to you,” I told her honestly. There was no point in lying to her at this stage.

  “What’s the clue?” she asked. “Can I see it?”

  “I have a copy of it here somewhere. The original’s down at the station.” I started rummaging through papers on the table, which were stacking up at an alarming rate. I found the Xerox as Mozart’s 26th moved into the slow movement and handed it over to her. She chomped down on the cigar, freeing up her non-coffee hand and gave the note a quick read.

  “What the hell does this mean?”

  She stared at me while I went through all the permutations of the anagram, the hymn numbers and the Bible passages, finally ending with “Rise and walk.”

  “That’s it? That’s the clue?”

  “I admit it’s weak,” I said, sitting down on the couch. “And it doesn’t really point to anyone specifically.”

  “You’re damn right it doesn’t. Why didn’t you just cll me and ask me?” Rhiza was a little chapped. “Malcolm is fit to be tied. He took off yesterday and I haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”

  “OK, now I’m asking. Why would someone leave an obscure clue to the murder pointing to you? What’s going on? And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “Do you ever think about me, you know, dropping by?” she asked, using our euphemism.

  “Yeah, I do,” I said. “Sometimes. But I’m semi-attached, and you’re permanently attached. That’s not trouble we want.”

  “Nobody would have to know.”

  “I appreciate the offer, madam, but I’m afraid I must decline,” I said, trying my best to make a quick joke out of the invitation. I wasn’t at all sure that she was serious, but we had enough history to make me think she was.

  Rhiza nodded and smiled a sad smile. “You’re a good guy, Hayden. That’s the problem.” She got up, walked over to the fireplace and tossed in the half-smoked cigar. “Malcolm’s having an affair.”

  I tried not to look surprised, although news like that always catches me off guard.

  “Do you know who?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  I waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “Loraine Ryan.”

  • • •

  When I thought about it, Mother Ryan would not be considered unattractive by most of the male population of St. Germaine. She wasn’t a beauty queen by any means, but she had a look about her, a look my old music department chairman used to call “bedroom eyes.” She was an ash-blonde with shoulder length hair, fairly slim, and had a nice figure. In fact, when she showed up at St. Barnabas, I remember thinking, lecher that I am, that working with a lady priest wouldn’t be half bad. That is, until she opened her mouth. Then, for me at least, the magic was gone.

  “Loraine and Malcolm? Are you sure?”

  “I think so.”

  “I always assumed that, being an unmarried militant feminist—well—that she ‘danced at the other end of the ballroom,’ if you get my meaning.”

  “I’m pretty sure that she dances at both ends, if you get mine.”

  “Wow,” I said, caught off guard by this particular revelation. I must have sat there in stunned silence for a good thirty seconds before blurting out, “Wanna feed my owl?”

  She laughed for the first time, that wonderful laugh that sounded like bells. “OK, Romeo, but that’s the first time I’ve heard it called that.”

  “No, really. I’ve got an owl in the kitchen. C’mon.”

  One thing you could never say about Rhiza was that she was squeamish. She had grown up in the mountains and whatever pretensions she had put on for Malcolm’s benefit disappeared when she reached into the coffee can and came out with two dead mice. I opened the kitchen window and about twenty seconds later Archimedes stepped through.

  “No WAY! This is so cool!”

  I could see she was impressed. “He used to take about ten minutes to notice the window was open. Now he spots it almost immediately.”

  “You don’t think he’s becoming dependent, do you?”

  “I don’t think so. We don’t feed him enough. A couple of mice a day. He’s got to eat more than that to stay alive. It’s just a mousy supplement.”

  Archimedes took both the offerings from our hands and left just as quickly as he came.

  As I waited my turn to wash my hands in the kitchen sink, Rhiza said, “So what do I do now?”

  “I don’t know. I sure am sorry to hear about Malcolm, but I need to figure out this clue. Why would anyone go to all this trouble to point the finger at you? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No it doesn’t. Is there any other evidence?” She finished up and was drying her hands leaving the water running for me to wash.

  “Not really. A lot of...stuff. Circumstantial. I sure would like to know who did it though.”

  “I really love Malcolm. He’s, well, he’s comfortable,” she said, finally finding the right word. “I wish we hadn’t gotten involved with that woman, but he’s Senior Warden, y’know? Someone had to be nice to her. Almost everyone else hates her guts.”

  I, being a sensitive kind of guy, didn’t add, “With good reason.”

  “Look, Rhiza,” I said finally, “she’s not a nice person and as a priest, she’s a disaster.”

  “I know. I’m not a complete fool. But Malcolm liked her from the beginning. He was always in her office – meetings in the mornings and late at night. I don’t know what to do.”

  “How do you know he’s having an affair?”

  “I heard one of the voice mail messages on his sat-phone. He hadn’t erased it because he hadn’t heard it. And he doesn’t know that I heard it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Hello darling. Call me.”

  “That’s it? And you call my evidence weak?”

  “It’s enough. I know her voice. I ought to.”

  • • •

  Six hours later I pulled up in Meg’s drive, got out of the truck and gallantly opened the door for her to climb aboard. First to dinner, then a movie. I even wore my new mock-turtle neck.

  “Hayden, Can we please take my car?”

  “Do I get to drive?” I asked.

  “Oh, I insist.”

  On the way into Boone we listened to the Vaughan Williams’ Hodie and I gave Megan the highlights of Rhiza’s visit. Well, if not the highlights, the parts about Malcolm and Herself.

  “I don’t believe it. Malcolm and Loraine?”

  “My thoughts exactly. But there’s something else going on.” I broke out my best Alfred Hitchcock voice. “Even now, all is not as it seems.”

  “You’ll let me know if something else happens, right? This is really getting interesting. I may have to write my own book.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Chapter 17

  “This is going to be a pleasure,” said a sadistic, very low, and only slightly feminine voice. Denver Tweed moved toward me like a schoolyard bully after a sixth grade violinist. Her head was pulled down into her shoulders like a demented tortoise, making
what little neck she had disappear entirely, her massive hands clenching and unclenching as she measured the damage her country ham fists would do to me. I backed into the bookcase. There was nowhere to run.

  Amber Dawn, Personal Trainer, and Isabel watched with amusement. I could see that Amber still had her gun trained on me, but Ms. Tweed’s corpus magnum was beginning to block out the rest of the room. I figured my odds were about as good as those of a floral design consultant in a biker bar.

  I took a chance and threw the first punch, a looping right hand which glanced off her head, doing no real damage. Her chin was buried deep into her shoulder blades, but I could see her cold smile as she raised her fists high in response to the blow. Her black, beady eyes locked on mine and she moved in close, pinning me against the shelf. She didn’t fake a punch--she just hit me. She hit me high. She hit me low. Too low. Then everything went black.

  When the haze finally began to lift, I saw Denver, Amber and Isabel ransacking my office. Every book had been pulled off the shelves, all the drawers emptied and dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the room, the rugs pulled up and the pictures yanked off the walls. My office was beginning to resemble my old apartment. They had found my wall safe, which was hidden behind a portrait of J. Edgar Hoover’s mother, and were working on opening it. From my fetal position, I reached to my ankle holster and pulled a small Taurus .38 special from its hiding place. It was small, but packed a wallop. I hoped it was enough.

  • • ³c

  The morning brought the first snowfall of the season. Pristine and sparkling, it covered the view in every direction. I dropped the old truck into four-wheel drive, just in case I needed the traction, and headed in toward town, taking the winding highway at a nice, slow pace, enjoying the scenery as well as being particularly careful. In my experience, most of the winter accidents in St. Germaine happened during or right after the first snowfall. Many times, here in the mountains, the snow was just a powdered sugar sprinkling over a cake of solid ice.