The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  He paused a moment and leered at Tiff, followed by, "However, the reforms were most carefully followed only in Italy. In France, tastes had already changed, and, in Germany, the edict was ignored."

  Ian sat down, placed his hands in his lap, and looked around the choir with a huge grin on his face.

  "Thank you, Dr. Burp," muttered Tiff.

  "Burch," corrected an oblivious Ian. "Dr. Burch."

  "You better watch out for the Council of Trent," said Mark Wells. "I hear those guys are tough."

  "I have an announcement," Muffy chirped.

  My shoulders slumped. "Yes?"

  "As many of you know, the Little Theater is putting on their spring production and we open a week from Friday. The play is Welcome to Mitford. I have plenty of tickets for all y'all here in my purse. They're fifteen dollars apiece."

  "Tell 'em about Sunday!" said Varmit.

  Muffy managed, to her credit, to look a little embarrassed.

  "Go ahead!" insisted Varmit. "Tell 'em."

  "Yes," said Bev, just a tad too brightly. "Tell us."

  "Okay, I will," said Muffy excitedly, starting to wriggle like a puppy. "Mother P asked me to sing a solo during communion this Sunday. She wants me to sing On Eagle's Wings. It's based on Psalm 91, the Psalm for the First Sunday in Lent. It's my favorite! I'm adding a verse about coming to the Living Water. Mother P says it ties in with her sermon."

  I watched Meg's eyes go wide, then I looked at Muffy and said, "Do you have some music for me?"

  "Don't worry about that," crowed Varmit, having waited for Muffy's chance at solo stardom for five long years. "She's singing with an accompaniment track. Muffy's gonna have the whole Nashville symphony backing her up!"

  "That'll be great," I said, after a hard swallow — God is faithful, and will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it — then added, "I'll be looking forward to it."

  Chapter 11

  "I think your detective story is going well," said Meg, busy chopping onions and dropping them into a cast iron frying pan. "Or as well as might be expected." The onions joined a couple of red and yellow peppers that were already sectioned and seasoned.

  I was in the kitchen with my lovely wife, doing my grilling thing. This had become our pattern after choir rehearsal on Wednesdays. We'd go to church early, I'd do a little music planning, then rehearsal, followed by a late supper at home. Two rib eye steaks sizzled on the gas grill that was part of our monster stove. In addition, I had an outdoor charcoal grill — a taste I preferred — but with the temperature still in the upper 30s, I bowed to convenience.

  "I think so, too," I replied, prodding the meat with a long fork. "I may even come up with a plot before long."

  The phone rang and I paused in my steak poking to answer. It was Pete.

  "What's the word on the stiff?" he asked.

  "Kent says it was a heart attack. We still don't know who it is, but we have finger prints, so if they're in the system we'll know something soon and find his next-of-kin."

  "Okay, I'll tell Cynthia. You doing anything tomorrow morning?"

  "Nothing pressing," I answered. "Why? What's up?"

  "We need to go over to Tri-Cities Airport. Our pig is here."

  "Really? Excellent!"

  "What's up?" asked Meg.

  I put a hand over the mouthpiece. "Our truffle pig is here," I told her. "Tri-Cities Airport."

  Pete said, "The terminal where we're supposed to pick her up opens at eight in the morning. I have the paperwork all filled out. You want to pick me up about seven?"

  "Can do. Where are you going to keep her?"

  "Out back of the house," said Pete. "I built a pen with a little heated pig barn and everything."

  I put my hand over the phone again and said to Meg. "He built a pig pen behind the house."

  "Does Cynthia know about this?" asked Meg.

  "Here," I said, handing Meg the phone.

  "Does Cynthia know you've built a pig pen behind your house?" Meg asked into the phone, then listened to Pete's answer. "Really?" she said. "I think you might want to tell her. Uh-huh ... uh-huh ..."

  I went back to the grill, flipped the steaks over, and put on some mushrooms that I had marinating. Meg talked with Pete for a couple more minutes, then handed me the phone.

  "Tomorrow morning," Pete said. "Come by the Slab at seven."

  "I'll be there."

  "He hasn't told Cynthia that there's a pigpen in the backyard," said Meg, when I'd hung up the phone. "She's been gone all week. Some kind of mayor conference."

  "I wondered why I hadn't seen her at the Slab. It shouldn't be a problem, though. They live outside the city limits. There's no zoning out there."

  "You're right about one thing. Zoning won't be the problem."

  "What then?" I asked. The steaks were almost done. I pulled them to the bottom of the grill, then pushed the mushrooms around a bit, rolling them with my fork.

  "Have you ever lived next to a pigpen?" asked Meg.

  "No, but there are many people who keep pet pigs. I'm sure there's a way to keep everything ... umm, fragrant. Besides, we can't just put a six-thousand-dollar pig on somebody's farm. I expect she might be sleeping in the family bed before too long."

  "Yikes," said Meg, then asked, "What kind of beer would suit you this evening?"

  "Hmm. Let's see. Steak, roasted potatoes, grilled and sautéed vegetables ... a couple of bottles of Pliny the Younger should be just perfect. I got some bottles in yesterday from the west coast. Back of the fridge."

  "Sounds great."

  "You having one, too?"

  "Absolutely."

  Baxter the Wonder Dog had risen from his slumber in the den, smelled the steaks, and sauntered happily into the kitchen. He sat down beside the table and looked at us in expectation, first me, then Meg, his eyebrows moving up and down, independent of each other, as he considered his chances of getting lucky. A moment later, the electric window next to the sink slid open and Archimedes the owl stepped across the sill and onto the counter. We were all here.

  "I'll get Archimedes a treat," Meg volunteered, setting two bottles of suds on the table. "You start the vegetables. They won't take a couple of minutes."

  "Got it," I said. I put the frying pan onto the stove top, then lit the burner.

  "Bacon grease?" I asked.

  "Olive oil," said Meg.

  "It won't taste as good," I said.

  Meg opened the refrigerator again and rummaged in the lowest crisper drawer, the one reserved for Archimedes. "Squirrel or rat?" she asked, her head hidden behind the door.

  "Rat," I said. "He likes rats when we're having steak."

  "Hey, there are still some mice in a shrink-wrap pack here in the back."

  "Let's pull one of those out, too. He might be hungry. He hasn't been around for a few days."

  "So one rat and one mouse?"

  "A big rat," I said.

  Baxter was now watching me exclusively, as I pulled the steaks off the grill and onto our plates. "You want me to cut Baxter a piece of your steak? I know you'd want him to have it."

  "No, your steak."

  "We'll split the difference. A bit of both."

  Meg held a deceased mouse by the tail in one hand and a large rat in the same manner with the other. She pushed the door of the fridge closed with her rear end, then walked across the kitchen floor toward Archimedes. She offered him the mouse first and he took it in his beak, flipped it up and swallowed it in two gulps. His large, yellow eyes closed slowly, then opened, and his head swiveled around as he surveyed the kitchen. He took a moment to preen the white feathers on his breast, then reached up slowly with one talon and took the rat gently from Meg's extended hand. He hopped up onto the sill, the window slid open, and he disappeared, without a sound, into the night.

  "I never get tired of watching him," said Meg. "And I don't even mind the dead rodents anymore. What
are we listening to, by the way?"

  "Mass for Double Choir by Frank Martin. It's part of my Lenten discipline."

  "How about some Carmen McRae instead? You might get lucky later ..."

  "Lucky, you say."

  "Well, you know what smoky jazz does to me."

  "Carmen McRae it is."

  * * *

  The blood that was pooling underneath Carrie Oakey resembled a Rorschach inkblot test, invented in 1921 by Hermann Rorschach, and Detective Jack Hammer, who was not a fan of the test ever since the time he had identified image number 3 as "Me and my pet monkey, Cashmere, kissing," and the psychologist's secretary tweeted about it (OMG!), and once the squad found out, the teasing was merciless, poked at the body with the toe of his new brown wingtips that he got from Zappos on a really good sale.

  "You ice her?" asked Hammer.

  "Nah."

  "Harrumph," he harrumphed. "I had to ask. Police procedure. Know who she is?"

  "She said her name was Carrie Oakey."

  Hammer nodded. "I've heard the name. Shot came from outside, I'm guessing."

  "Good guess."

  Hammer pulled out a hanky and wiped a face that was glistening like a quail's egg, either one fresh out of the quail but with most of the bird gunk scraped off, or one popping in a frying pan, covered with just a soupçon of oil, a smidgen of rosemary, and a niggle of white pepper; the point is that his face was moist, shiny, and just that color. "You got any thoughts on this?" he asked.

  "Nope." I had thoughts, all right, deep thoughts that hung on the mustard-colored wall like a case of false teeth, but none I was going to share with this dumb button.

  "Case of false teeth, eh?"

  I shrugged.

  "All right with you if I ask Marilyn some questions?" he said, looking out the door. She was sitting primly at her desk reading a romance novel and eating a radish.

  "Be my guest," I said.

  I needed to talk with Pedro and I knew just where to find him.

  * * *

  On Thursday morning, I rose early, dressed, and pointed the old truck toward town in the predawn darkness that was 6:30 a.m. I couldn't even budge Baxter from in front of the fireplace, giving him a nudge with my foot, and a quiet whistle as I walked by. Not interested. Too early and too cold. This time last week, I would have had an easy drive in the early morning light. Sunday, though, had marked the beginning of Daylight Saving Time, and we were now cultivating the afternoon and evening hours.

  I put the Frank Martin Mass recording into the player — the one I'd begun listening to last evening, before I was so delightfully interrupted. Meg hadn't been bluffing. Smoky jazz was just the ticket.

  It was still too frigid for any of the foliage to begin breaking out, even though the beginning of spring was right around the corner. The snow was gone, at least, but the mountains were cold and sere. I drove carefully, watching for patches of ice that might appear around a switchback, unseen until too late.

  Coming into town, I slowed, then stopped and parked in front of the Holy Grounds Coffee Shop. I got out of the truck and walked in. Kylie Moffit, the owner, was working behind the counter. She and her husband, Biff, bought the coffee shop about three years ago. The original owners of the shop had renovated the old McCarty house just a year before and transformed the old American four-square into a thriving business: their Christian Coffee Shop occupying the bottom floor, and a wellness center specializing in massage and aroma therapy on the top floor — The Upper Womb, a place of healing. The design of the house was very popular at the turn of the century. Two stories tall, each floor contained four rooms — square, of course. A broad porch stretched across the length of the front of the house. When the Moffits bought the business, they converted the upstairs into their living quarters. The downstairs had tables, coffee stations, many cases of pastries, and a large counter, behind which Kylie was making pots of coffee in steaming, hissing machines that looked like gleaming, stainless steel, submarine apparatus, what with their knobs, dials, pipes, and gauges.

  "Good morning, Hayden. You're up early!"

  "Yes, I am. Pete and I are making a morning run to the airport."

  "Coffee?"

  "Yes, please." I looked around the shop. Six of the tables had people sitting at them, all with at least one open laptop adorning the tabletop — wireless access, obviously. A couple of customers had newspapers out. They all had coffee.

  Kylie pushed a strand of dark hair away from her face, then wiped both her hands on a dish towel. Kylie Moffit was a girl who took fitness seriously. She could be seen out jogging around town on most afternoons, and, since she lived in the downtown area, everyone knew her enough to wave and shout a hello as they drove by.

  "I heard about the dead guy," she said. "Wow! He just, like, died of a heart attack?"

  "That's what the coroner says."

  "And after he'd been to church and everything," she said. "Well, at least he had time to repent. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that. I'm more of a New Testament believer, though. I don't need to repent all the time, because I'm saved once and for all." She smiled at me. "Now, what kind of coffee would you like?"

  "Hot."

  She laughed. I'd been in before. "How about our house dark roast?"

  "As long as you don't tell me the name of it."

  She laughed. "Fair enough. You want room for milk?"

  "Please. Give me two, if you don't mind. Big ones."

  "Two ventis," said Kylie. "That's a twenty-ounce coffee. I could put a shot of espresso in them, if you like."

  "Sure," I said. "Let's do that."

  * * *

  Two blocks down, I stopped in front of the Slab Café. It was full of people. I never ceased to be amazed at how many people got up this early in the morning and stopped for breakfast. Pete was ready and watching for me and, when I drove up, he didn't even wait for me to get out of the truck. He opened the passenger side door and climbed in.

  "We don't have to listen to any of that churchy music this morning, do we?" he said. "It's a long drive."

  "Nope." I handed him his coffee and switched off the CD player.

  "What's this?"

  "Coffee from Holy Grounds. Shot of espresso, cream, and three sugars."

  "Ahh," he said, then took a long, slurping sip. "I've already had two cups this morning, but this is good. What kind is it?"

  "No idea," I answered. "You have our pig papers?"

  "Right here," said Pete, patting the left breast pocket of his olive-green army coat. "Everyone in the Slab wanted to know about the dead Indian. You have any more scoop yet?"

  "Not yet," I said. "We should get something off the prints if he's in the state system. If not, and he's in the national data base, it'll take longer. If he's not there either, we may never know."

  "Did you guys call down to Cherokee?"

  "Nancy's checking on it, and she emailed a picture down to the Cherokee police, but it's a long shot."

  We drove through town and out Old Chambers Road heading for Highway 321 toward Elizabethton. The airport was about sixty miles away, but in mountain miles that was an hour and a half, maybe a little more. Old Chambers was a torturous drive with a speed limit of forty, but we wouldn't be on it long. It intersected with the highway just past old Camp Possumtickle. We all still called it Camp Possumtickle even though it had been purchased and transformed into a Christian Nudist Camp at the same time, and by the same people who opened Holy Grounds. They had changed the name of the camp to "Camp Daystar," home of the Daystar Naturists of God and Love (DaNGL), but everyone who grew up around here knew the landmark as Possumtickle. The camp had been around since the 1940s, and almost all the kids had attended it in some form or fashion — Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies, Cub Scouts, Indian Guides, 4-H, church camps. They all knew it and loved it. Few went out there now. There were naked people everywhere. It just wasn't safe.

  We headed up 321, around Lake Watauga, through Elizabethton and Blountsville, and pulled i
nto the Tri-Cities Airport at 8:15. The airport served Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol, and was the only Tennessee airport of any size on this side of Knoxville. We looked for the freight signs and followed them to a large hangar some distance from the passenger terminal. The sign out front said "Air Cargo Logistics Center." Pete and I got out of the truck, walked in the front door, and Pete presented his papers to a tall, heavy man wearing light-blue coveralls and a white baseball cap with ACLC embroidered on the front. He had a day's worth of beard stubble, and hair that hadn't seen shampoo for several days. An unlit cigarette hung from his lips. He spread the papers across the counter and pretended to understand what they said.

  "We're here for my pig," Pete said finally, helping him along.

  He looked up. "That pig is yourn?" he asked, eyeing Pete's ponytail and earring suspiciously.

  "Yessir," said Pete. "That's my pig. Or mon cochon, as we say in Gascony." He tapped the papers. "Says so right there. All in order with proper stamps and such. Approved by the FDA, the SPCA, the FBI, and the King of France."

  I gave a snort.

  "It's stinkin' up the place," said the man.

  "No doubt because my pig has been quarantined and probably hasn't had the straw changed for about a week."

  "Yeah, that's prob'ly it," he said, then gave a nod toward the side of the building. "Pull your truck around there. We'll put the crate in the back."

  The crate was made of oaken boards six inches wide and an inch thick. The gaps between them were enough for the truffle-pig to stick her snout through and grunt at us when we walked up. She seemed to be in good spirits, although the man was right. The crate was stinkin' up the place. One of the sides of the crate was fastened with two heavy iron hinges and a padlock held the door closed. There was an envelope fastened with duct tape to the top of the crate. Pete pulled it off, opened it and scanned through a set of papers before dumping the envelope into his hand. A key fell out.