The Diva Wore Diamonds

by Mark Schweizer

  Two white, fifteen-passenger Ford Econoline church vans had just pulled up in front of The Ginger Cat. “New Fellowship Baptist Church” emblazoned on the side in red block letters identified the owners, and “Follow Me To Jesus” in fancy script across the back doors gave tailgaters a reason to stick tight. The van’s engines rattled to a stop in concert, and thirty retirees piled out, dragging their poster-board placards behind them. The signs had obviously been hastily prepared—hand lettered with magic markers and stapled to yardsticks.

  “Good morning, Brother Hog,” I said, greeting the driver of the first van and obvious leader of this elderly congregation.

  “Chief Konig,” he said politely, sticking out his hand.

  Brother Hog—Dr. Hogmanay McTavish— was the pastor of New Fellowship Baptist Church. He’d begun his ministry as an evangelist and was quite successful, never venturing into the somewhat dubious world of TV evangelism, but preferring the old-fashioned tent-revival as his oeuvre. He had grown plumper since I’d last seen him, but his trademark hairstyle, unique to preachers and used-car salesmen, employed one of the finest comb-overs it had ever been my pleasure to ogle. It began behind his right ear, swung up and around his brow like a magnificent gray halo, then circled his head twice before terminating in a burst of tufts that protruded from the middle of the nest like sprigs of ashen grass; all this held in place by enough hairspray to stick a poodle to a brick wall. Unwound and unstuck, Noylene and I suspected his hair was a couple of feet long and something to behold. Noylene had tried to get him into the Beautifery for a firsthand look, but to no avail.

  Brother Hog had come to NFBC as the second interim pastor after Brother Jimmy Kilroy was murdered during the baptism of Kokomo, the talking gorilla. The first interim pastor was the church’s district apostle, Apostle Jerome, but he could only stay for a few months before he had to get back to his circuit. Brother Hog had come in and taken charge and, after a few months, had decided that being settled was a whole lot easier than putting up and taking down a circus tent every week. In addition, he reported that “scripture chickens”—large chickens that Brother Hog used to choose the passage on which he would base his message—were becoming harder to train. Hog blamed it on the additives that big companies were putting in the chicken feed. “Those chickens are just getting dumber and dumber,” he told me. “They got big breasts, but no brains. I tell you, it’s a metaphor for our society.” I had to agree.

  We shook hands as the passengers gathered their possessions from the vans and congregated on the sidewalk.

  “What’s all this then?” I said, in my cheerful-yet-stern Andy Griffith police voice.

  “We’ve come to protest,” said Brother Hog. “Did you see this?”

  He held up the morning copy of the St. Germaine Tattler. The headline read “Liquor Sales on the Lord’s Day—Yes or No?”

  “No, I haven’t seen it,” I said with a sigh. “I thought the paper was just going to list the referendums on the ballot for next week.”

  “It was,” said Hog. “But Jethro Batch—he works at the Tattler on the layout desk—happened to read the referendum while he was working on it and brought it to the attention of Calvin Denton, who, as you know, is the editor. Both of these fine gentlemen attend New Fellowship.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know Jethro, but Calvin had been a parishioner at St. Barnabas before he had been hit in the head by a pigeon during an ill-advised Pentecost re-enactment and had used a bunch of his “golfing words” in church. His wife had decided it was time to try another denomination.

  “I don’t know what shenanigans the mayor is trying to pull,” said Brother Hog, “but we are opposed to liquor sales on Sunday. It’s bad enough we have liquor sales at all. But Sunday? That is just beyond the pale. It seems to me the City Council was trying to sneak this by in a referendum that no one would bother to come out and vote on. I assure you, this is no longer the case.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I figured something like this would happen.”

  “We’ve come to protest, Hayden,” said a white-haired woman whom I know only as Miss Ethel. “We have a right to protest. It’s guaranteed in the Constitution.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But you’ll need a permit.” I pointed to the police station on the other side of the square. “Lieutenant Parsky will be happy to help you.”

  “We’ll go and get it, Brother Hog,” said Miss Ethel. She and another lady toddled off in the direction I’d pointed.

  “Thank you kindly,” called Brother Hog after them.

  The rest of the elderly mob had divided, half going into the bookstore to check out the latest issue of Mature Digest, the other half peering through the window of The Ginger Cat at the alimentary knick-knacks that were inviting but unattainable, at least until the restaurant opened for lunch.

  “Are all these folks members of your church?” I asked.

  “Heavens, no,” said the minister. “I made some calls, then went around to several churches this morning and collected our concerned citizens.” He held up his fingers as he counted them off. “Sinking Pond Baptist, Melody Mountain Baptist, Brownwood Pentecostal Holiness, Maranatha Four-Square Church of God With Signs Following, and a few folks from Sand Creek Methodist. We’ve been making protest signs for about an hour.”

  “I notice that all your protesters are of a certain age,” I said.

  “Retired folks. Everyone else is working, but we’ll have a good group out in force on Saturday.”

  “Who are you going to picket?”

  “We thought we’d picket the mayor’s office, but then we found out she doesn’t have one,” said Brother Hog with a smile. “Then I thought, who stands to gain by beer sales on Sunday?”

  “And?”

  “The answer is obvious. The Bear and Brew. They’re the only establishment open on Sunday that would have any reason to sell liquor.”

  “So you’re going to picket the Bear and Brew?”

  “We’ll be having prayer meetings outside until they change their mind about wanting to serve liquor on the Lord’s day.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but here’s the deal. You stay on the other side of the street and you don’t interfere with any customer who’s going in or coming out of that place of business. You do, and this protest is finished, and I’ll lock you up until the election’s over. Do we understand each other?”

  “We understand each other perfectly,” said Brother Hog with a happy grin. “We’ve got the Lord on our side on this one.”

  Chapter 3

  “I’ve got news,” said Marjorie promptly at 6:48.

  Choir practice, during our exile, had been scheduled on Thursday nights, a departure from our traditional Wednesday evening routine, but the St. Germaine chapter of Shopaholics Anonymous had first dibs on the courthouse rotunda since they’d been meeting there on Wednesdays for a few years. Rehearsals were moved to Thursdays at 6:30 which meant that Marjorie’s proclamation was right on time, just barely preempting my own second announcement that we needed to get started.

  “Noylene Fabergé-Dupont is pregnant!” Marjorie said with a flourish.

  “What?” said Georgia, aghast.

  “What?” said Meg, equally aghast.

  “Noylene’s what?” said Bev, not sure she heard correctly.

  “She’s what?” said Rebecca.

  “You heard me,” said Marjorie, smiling the smile of the cat that ate the Pentecostal pigeon. “I heard it from Mr. Christopher.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial level. “He’s Dr. Dougherty’s nurse’s yoga instructor’s interior decorator, and she told him that Noylene was due in November.”

  “Maybe he misunderstood,” said Fred from the bass section. “Maybe her bill is due in November.”

  “He didn’t misunderstand,” sniffed Marjorie. “I know of what I speak. The wonders of the grapevine shall not be besmirched.”

  “But I thought they weren’t having any kids,” said Elaine Hixon.

  “Because Wormy’
s her cousin,” added Bev.

  “Eeew,” said Tiff, from the back row of the alto section.

  “Wormy told me he was incontinent,” said Mark Wells. “No…that’s not right. Impudent. He said he was ‘impudent.’ Something about volunteering for medical experiments down in South Carolina.”

  “Guess he’s not impudent no more,” said Varmit Lemieux. Varmit was married to Muffy Lemieux. They both worked out at Blueridge Furs, Varmit as foreman and Muffy as secretary. Muffy had a good voice, but couldn’t manage to get that Loretta Lynn twang out of her country soprano. Varmit came to choir practice to keep an eye on Muffy, as did most of the rest of the basses. Muffy was a redhead of singular comeliness and since the calendar had rolled over into June, had exchanged her signature tight angora sweaters, in various pastel shades, for her summer look: tight short-sleeved angora sweaters in various pastel shades.

  “How old is Noylene, anyway?” asked Elaine.

  “Forty, I think,” said Phil.

  “Not that it’s any of our business,” Meg added demurely.

  “Well, I’m sure she and Wormy are very happy about it,” said Bev.

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re very happy. Now let’s look at the Psalm for Celebration Sunday. It’s in the back of your folders.”

  “Have you met the new Christian education director?” asked Steve DeMoss.

  “She prefers to be called the Christian formation director,” said Bev. “It’s the new church-speak buzzword.”

  “Yes, I’ve met her,” I said. “Kimberly Walnut.”

  “And?” said Steve.

  “She seems uncharacteristically qualified,” I said. “Brilliantly so.”

  Bev jumped in. “And while we’re on the subject, I’m supposed to make an announcement. We need to enlist volunteers to help out with the Bible School program the week after our celebration. It’ll take place in the late afternoons behind the church in the garden. It’ll be fun!”

  “But more about that after rehearsal,” I said. “The Psalm…”

  “Where’s our detective story?” asked Muffy. “You promised.”

  “It’s on the back of the Psalm,” I said, my shoulders slumping. “But you can read it later. Could we maybe sing a bit?”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” barked Elaine. “Get cracking! We’re not here for our health, you know!”

  •••

  By the time Meg and I arrived home, it was close to nine in the evening. Too late for a big meal, but on Thursdays we always had a late lunch at the Bear and Brew and then had a snack when we came in from choir practice. A snack followed by a drink. Sometimes two, depending on the rehearsal.

  Meg always arrived home first. We were in separate vehicles anyway, and I had to lock up the courthouse where we’d been holding choir rehearsals. While Meg rooted around in the fridge, I fed Baxter, put a dead baby squirrel outside on the window sill for Archimedes, and wandered into the den to put on some Mozart to cleanse my aural palate. Symphony 39 in D Major. The majestic introduction with accompanying brass fanfares filled the house, and I sat down at the typewriter.

  Meg came in a few minutes later with a braunsweiger and onion sandwich on toasted Russian black bread and a cold bottle of Ommegang Abbey Ale. She set the plate on the side of the desk.

  “Sorry,” she said, with an apologetic kiss. “We’re out of Old Thumper.”

  “Old Thumper is good,” I said, “but this is the perfect beer to drink with a braunsweiger and onion sandwich on the first day of June.”

  She settled onto the couch, first setting her glass of red wine on the coffee table in front of her, then cradling her plate in her lap and tucking her legs beneath her on the soft leather cushions. “I called Noylene on the way home. She’s pregnant, all right.”

  “I take it that this is a surprise?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Meg. “When they got married, both she and Wormy thought he was, in her words, ‘shootin’ blanks.’ Of course, that original test was twelve years ago.”

  “I thought he got re-tested right after the wedding.”

  “That’s what he told us. He needed to get the loan for his Ferris wheel.”

  “I remember,” I said. “He put his sperm count down as income. Ah, those were heady days for borrowing money. Getting a loan was as easy as lying to your banker.” I took another bite of my dinner. “This is a great sandwich. Really!”

  “Glad you like it,” said Meg with a smile. “But don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  Yep. I was married.

  •••

  Buxtehooter’s was always bustling on “Two-Dollar Thursday.” The Baroque sing-alongs had been relegated to Friday and Saturday nights since the big brawl on Pachelbel’s birthday, so the crowd was less rowdy than usual, but the beer-fräuleins were still hustling buckets of two-buck suds delivered primly on jutting chests the size of Myron Floren’s accordion. The owners had put a TV over the bar and tuned it to the local religious network — a mixture of shows that included “Are You Smarter Than A Lutheran?,” “Dancing With the Baptists,” and “CSI: Vatican.” It drew a small crowd. Unitarians mostly.

  I grabbed a seat at a table and whistled at Ermentraud, my current favorite Buxtehooter’s soubrette. She sashayed over in a dirndl packed as tightly as the coach section of a 747.

  “Hiya, Erms,” I said. “Gimme some tonsil varnish and put a head on it.”

  “Ja, ja!”

  “And maybe we can meet later? When you’re off work?”

  “Ja, ja! Ich werde Sie hinter den Abfalleimern treffen, meine mollige Gans. Ich freue mich darauf, Ihr Geld zu nehmen.”

  I got the “Ja, ja” part, smiled, and tucked a sawbuck into the bouquet of bills that sprouted from the top of her blouse like some kind of hydroponic, milk-fed cabbage patch. It’s good to be a detective.

  •••

  “Nice,” said Meg, reading over my shoulder. “And by ‘nice,’ I mean terrible. What does the German mean?”

  “You’ll have to look it up, meine mollige Gans,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” said Meg. She descended gently back onto the couch and picked up the biography she’d been reading. That was the thing about Meg. She never flopped. She never plopped. She descended, she alighted, she settled gracefully. It was marvelous just to watch her exist.

  “How is the protest going at the Bear and Brew?” she asked, without looking up from her book. She licked the tip of her finger and used it to turn a page.

  I took my beverage over to the couch and plunked down beside her. Unlike Meg, I plunked.

  “Brother Hog is true to his word. He’s been holding a prayer meeting every morning all week long, and no one has bothered any of the patrons. So far, so good. The Bear and Brew is even letting the old people use their bathrooms.”

  “I think that’s sweet,” said Meg. “It’s good to have a civilized demonstration.”

  “But Saturday, there’ll be a whole lot more people. Most of Brother Hog’s congregation has been working during the meetings. On Saturday, they’ll be off work and out in full force.”

  “I’m sure you and Nancy can handle it, dear,” she said, reaching over and patting me on the cheek, her eyes still scanning the words on the page in front of her.

  “You know who one of the owners is?” I said, trying to draw her out of Raymond Chandler’s life story.

  “Russ Stafford?”

  “What? How did you know that?”

  She put her book down and laughed. “He’s been in on it since the beginning. A silent partner. I’m his accountant, remember?”

  “No, I didn’t remember.”

  Russ had been a high-roller, a real-estate developer before everything went south. After his most ambitious development, The Clifftops—a gated, golfing community eighteen miles from town—went belly-up, he’d gone to Asheville to see if he could make a living selling cars. He could and did. Russ was a born salesman. Within a few months, he was back on top, had moved ba
ck to town, and had been concentrating on his real-estate business. Even with the downturn in the economy, we all knew Russ was doing well. He was well-liked, smooth as a well-shaved eel, and along with his wife, Brianna, had even started chaperoning the St. Barnabas youth group. Together with another couple, Gerry and Wilma Flemming, they hosted a Sunday night youth get-together at their respective homes that the Staffords had christened Afterglow.

  “Not only didn’t I remember you were his accountant, but I certainly didn’t know he had an interest in the Bear and Brew.”

  “I think he owns sixty percent,” said Meg. “Something like that. Francis Passaglio has a smaller share. They don’t do any of the day- to-day stuff, though. Why do you think the youth group gets all those pizzas at half price?”

  The Bear and Brew had begun life as a feed store in the 1920s. The new owners had kept the heart-pine floor boards; the tin signs advertising tractor parts, chicken feed, windmills and most everything a farmer could want from a mercantile; and the ambiance that comes with an old store that had seen four generations gather around the pickle barrel, swap stories, play checkers, and whittle untold board-feet of kindling. It had good, sturdy tables, wooden chairs, and an old 1950s juke-box in the corner, the kind that played 45’s. There was still just the hint of saddle soap and leather in the air, but mostly what the Bear and Brew had was pizza. Good pizza and good beer, a bar and a couple of sixty-inch plasma televisions. The owners thought they could sell a lot of beer on a Sunday afternoon when the Carolina Panthers took the field or if North Carolina, or Duke, or Wake Forest, or any one of a hundred other college teams was shooting hoops.

  “Well, either way,” I said, “it’ll all be over next Tuesday, and we can get back to normal. As normal as we get.”

  “Have you seen the weather forecast?” asked Meg. “We’re supposed to get a squall on Saturday. It should be a doozy. One of those summer thunderstorms.”

  “That could be a blessing in disguise. The protesters might stay home.”