“I’ll buy you the cookbook,” I said magnanimously. “It’s the least I can do to assuage my affluent guilt.”
“How about me?” said Davis. “I need a cookbook.”
“Nope,” I said.
“I love Rip Van Winkle,” said Meg. She looked over at her mother. “I remember Daddy reading it to me.” Ruby nodded.
Hyacinth returned with a book wrapped in tissue paper.
“I prefer The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” I said. “It was one of my favorites growing up. I didn’t even mind the Disney cartoon. I had a dog named Icky after Ichabod Crane.”
Hyacinth laughed and handed the book to Davis. “Where I’m from, the college mascot is the Ichabods,” she said.
“How much is it?” asked Davis, opening the book gently and laying it on the counter. He studied the page.
“Four thousand five hundred dollars.”
“What?” said Ruby. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I’ve really got to go now,” said Davis, in a barely audible voice. He closed the book carefully. “It’s way too expensive for me anyway. I’d better be getting back to work.”
“How about you, Chief Konig?” asked Hyacinth. “Interested?”
“Very. Let me think about it.”
Hyacinth smiled and the book disappeared under the counter. “Don’t wait too long. Once I put it up for sale on my website, it will go quickly.”
“Could you give me a few days?”
“Of course. In fact, I’ll hold it for a week. I’d rather you have it than someone I didn’t know.”
“That’s very kind. Thanks.”
I bought Ruby the cookbook after eliciting a promise of at least two meals Martha Stewart would be proud of.
“Complete with Lemon Meringue Fluff,” I added. “That’s the deal.”
The ladies said their goodbyes and headed for the door.
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you and I’m sure we’ll talk soon,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll sell a lot of books, but I don’t know how much…umm…prognosticating you’ll be able to do here in St. Germaine. We don’t tend to attract the spiritualist community.”
“That’s just fine, dear,” said Hyacinth. “I do mostly internet readings. And St. Germaine needs a good bookstore.”
•••
St. Barnabas was a lovely little stone church, rebuilt in 1904 after a fire destroyed the original 1846 building. We could seat three hundred comfortably, and more on Christmas Eve and Easter morning if need be. I looked down from the balcony on this Sunday morning, the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost, and surveyed the nave, empty except for a couple of altar guild ladies arranging flowers. I’d skipped the hastily called staff meeting on Thursday, and so wasn’t quite sure how our new rector would be handling the service. This was the very reason I was early, although a Rite II Eucharist was pretty cut and dried. I just needed to know if she would be intoning the Sursum Corda and whether to give her a pitch. Everything else should flow very nicely.
I opened the bulletin and gave it a quick look. Everything seemed to be in order. Maybe I was expecting some new unsingable hymn with appalling lyrics snuck into the service by a newly ordained, middle-aged, female seminary graduate, who decided to enter the priesthood because she had an experience at a Christian retreat weekend and after she’d written a poem about it, knew that God was calling her to a higher purpose because her children had all left home leaving her nothing to do all day but feel guilty about the ozone layer and anyway, she always thought she looked good in black. Or maybe Meg was right and I was getting jaded in my old age. Okay, I decided. Meg was right.
I heard a sound behind me and turned to see the Reverend Carmel Bottoms come into the loft. “Good morning,” she said, cheerfully, in a voice so husky it could have won Best of Show at Westminster.
“Morning,” I answered.
“Sorry you couldn’t make the staff meeting.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“I understand though. I imagine that being the police chief is quite a responsibility. It must take almost all of your time.”
I nodded in agreement.
“I didn’t change anything in the service,” she continued. “I realize I’m just the interim priest, but I may be here for quite a while. Let’s just keep everything going until St. Barnabas is settled with its new appointment.”
“Huh?” I said. This was not what I expected.
“I’d rather not chant without proper rehearsal, if you don’t mind, so I’ll just speak the words of institution this morning. Maybe sometime next week we can arrange to go over the chants if that’s what you’d prefer. I don’t have a great voice, but I don’t have a problem staying on pitch. I played the flute in college, so I have a little bit of musicality. Of course, that was a long time ago.”
“Huh?” I said again.
“I don’t know why Bev said you’d be difficult to work with. You’re just delightful.” She held out her hand and I shook it almost absently. Then she turned to walk back down the stairs.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What about your poem?”
Carmel Bottoms looked confused for a moment, but smiled almost immediately. “I’ve written a few, but they aren’t very good. I’ll just keep them to myself.”
“Christian retreat weekend? Cursillo? Emmaus?”
“Never been.” She shrugged. “I guess I should go to one and see what all the fuss is about. Anyway, it’s been great chatting. I need to go have a word with the lay ministers.”
•••
“It’s about time we got a new story,” said Marjorie as she settled into her choir chair and found my newly printed missive in her folder. “The Mezzo Wore Mink. Very nice. I have a fondness for mink.”
“Me, too,” said Georgia, who had just opened her folder and was thumbing through the music. “Although I prefer chinchilla.”
“Really?” said Bev.
“Well, I don’t know for sure since I don’t have either one,” admitted Georgia. “But I might.”
“I have a mink,” said Bev. “I don’t wear it very often.”
“I was thinking of getting a man-mink,” said Mark Wells, one of the basses. “To go with my murse.”
“What’s a murse?” asked Phil.
“You know. A man-purse.”
“You have a man-purse?”
“Nah,” answered Mark.
“I have sort of a weasel-stole-thingy that I got from my mother,” said Marjorie. “It has a head on one end and a tail on the other and you can clip the tail into the mouth. It’s very beautiful. Well, except for the moth-eaten parts.” She paused. “And the eyes,” she added. “The eyes are creepy.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Weasel can be very fetching and creepy. But you all can read the story at your leisure. Let’s look at the anthem.”
Half an hour and a short run-though later, I began the prelude.
•••
The service started uneventfully as we sang the opening hymn, heard the collect, and began the Gloria. The Old Testament readings, the Psalm and the Epistle followed. Another hymn. Then the Gospel and it was time for the sermon. Carmel Bottoms began by introducing herself in her gravelly voice. Then she began her homily on the text “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” She seemed to be doing a pretty good job when the church bell began to ring.
“What’s going on?” hissed Meg. “Who’s ringing the bell?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Elaine whispered back.
The St. Barnabas church bell was one of the two remaining relics from the old wooden church to survive the fire of 1899, the other being the altar. St. Germaine legend held that when the parishioners arrived on that cold Sunday morning in January to find the ruins of their church still smoldering, the heavy altar, complete with its marble top, had been miraculously carried outside the wooden structure and was sitting on the snow-covered grou
nd with all the communion elements in place. The people of St. Barnabas held the morning service right there in the snow, convinced of God’s grace and declaring that the only way the altar could have been removed from the church was by angelic intervention.
The bell, on the other hand, was four hundred pounds of forged bronze and not likely to melt in a wood fire, no matter how intense the inferno. After the church burned, the bell had been used by the city and kept in the clock tower until St. Barnabas was rebuilt, then moved back to the bell tower where it announced services and important civic events. It was still rung to usher in the Fourth of July and Founder’s Day, among other less notable occasions such as the mayor’s birthday—a tradition started by Pete. Now it was ringing like it was Easter morning.
“What’s going on?” said Steve DeMoss, getting up. “Sheesh. And what are the ushers doing? Playing cards again?”
Carmel Bottoms was valiantly trying to continue her sermon, but we could all tell she was distracted beyond measure. Finally, her thought process ground to a halt and she just stood there smiling for a moment before saying, “Could someone see what’s going on, please?”
I got up off the organ bench and made my way through the choir and down the stairs. Steve had already headed down, as had Mark Wells, Bev and Meg. As I came down the stairs, I saw quite a crowd standing around the door to the bell tower. In addition to the choir members, the ushers were also in attendance, several of them wringing their hands in distress.
“It’s locked!” said Steve. “Whoever’s in there won’t answer and we don’t have a key.”
“I’ll bet it’s that McCollough boy,” said Francis Passaglio, the head usher for October. “What’s his name? Moosejaw?”
“His name’s Moosey,” said Meg. “Moosejaw’s a city in Canada. Anyway, it’s not him.”
“I’ve got a key upstairs in the loft,” I said. “At least I think I do.”
“The master key doesn’t work,” said Bev, her voice barely audible over another tremendous clang. “I tried mine.”
“I’ve got some of the old ones,” I said. “The choir loft doesn’t open with the master either, but we never lock it so it doesn’t really matter.”
It took me a couple of minutes to run back up the stairs, rummage around the organ trying to find the key ring, and then to hustle back down. There were only three keys on the ring, so it didn’t take long to find the right one and give the lock a creaky turn. The door swung open just as the bell clanged again and we all froze at the sight.
Hanging from the bell rope by his neck, swinging like a pendulum, was Davis Boothe.
Chapter 5
I raced into the room and immediately concluded that Davis must have climbed the old wooden ladder leading to the first landing before tying himself a noose and swinging into space. I looked up. The ceiling was old tongue-in-groove pine, painted dozens of times over the years. In the center of the ceiling, fourteen feet above the floor, was a square hole, roughly two feet across, that had been cut to allow the bell rope to drop to a manageable distance. In fact, when the bell was still, the end of the rope hung about twelve inches above the floor. Now it was tied several times around Davis’ neck and looped around his arm. The old wooden ladder was fastened both to the floor and to the cutout in the corner of the ceiling. It was the only way up to the next room that, as far as I knew, was empty and unused except as an access to the pipe chamber by the organ tuner who showed up twice a year.
I pulled my pocketknife out of my pocket and climbed the rickety ladder as fast as I dared, at the same time seeing Mark and Steve come in behind me and grab Davis by the legs. They pushed him towards the ladder and I, reaching the apex, opened the blade and sawed at the heavy braided hemp, silently cursing the slowness with which each strand parted and gave way.
After what seemed an eternity to me, but was probably only thirty seconds, Mark and Steve placed Davis gently on the floor. Bev and Meg bent over him while the two men paused to catch their breath, having held Davis aloft as best they could, given the angle and limited leverage.
“I think he’s dead,” said Bev. “He’s not breathing and his lips are black.”
“Can’t you do CPR?” Meg asked me, panic on her face.
I skipped the bottom three rungs coming down and landed with a thud. Kneeling, I took Davis’ face in my hands and knew immediately there was probably no use. His head swung from side to side like a rag doll. Still, I started the CPR immediately. I could hear Meg behind me calling 911 and, in the distance, the sound of Carmel resuming her sermon. The ushers, I noted, were all standing around slack-jawed and of no help at all.
After three or four minutes, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at Mark Wells who shook his head sadly.
“His neck’s broken,” he said. “It’s stretched probably two inches or more.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I fell back off of my knees and sat staring at the corporeal body that had been Davis Boothe. Everyone was deathly quiet. The only sound was the Reverend Carmel Bottoms’ concluding sentence, heard as a far-off echo on the church’s antiquated sound system. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
“Amen,” muttered everyone in the room.
•••
“Let’s leave him for the time being,” I said, getting to my feet, “and lock the door until everyone’s out.” I glared at the crowd of ushers and various choir members peering through the door as I closed it behind me. “Not a word!” I warned, knowing it was a futile threat. “Not until everyone’s out of the church.” I turned to Meg. “Could you go and whisper to Carmel that we have an emergency and we should cut the service short—maybe after the passing of the peace? Everyone can come back tonight for communion.”
She nodded and disappeared.
I could hear the Nicene Creed begin and pointed the ushers toward the front door.
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen,” said the congregation.
“You all can wait outside,” I said to the group. Then I turned to Bev. “The choir might as well stay up there until the prayers are over. Could you go up and tell them what’s happening after Carmel dismisses the congregation?”
She nodded without a word and disappeared as silently as Meg.
“God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father,” continued the congregation.
I felt exhausted. I sat down on a bench in the narthex, pulled out my cell phone and dialed Nancy’s number.
“On my way,” came the answer on the first ring. “Meg already called.”
I hung up without saying anything.
•••
The entire congregation loitered on the lawn of the church and watched the ambulance pull up and park in front of the double red doors. Nancy had gotten to the church just a few minutes after I’d called her and was in the bell tower room with the two EMTs. Most of the folks had already heard the news as word of the tragedy spread like wildfire among the huddled groups of parishioners. I broke the news to the rector.
“He’s what?!” exclaimed Carmel Bottoms.
“He’s dead,” I said. “It was suicide. He hung himself with the bell rope.”
“Was he a parishioner?”
“Oh, yes,” said Meg. “Very active. Well…active for St. Barnabas. He attended services probably once or twice a month.”
“Did he have a family?” asked Carmel. “Was he married?”
“I think he may have had a partner—he went out of town a lot—but he wasn’t married,” said Meg.
“Partner? Was he gay?”
Meg looked at me. “We assumed so,” she said. “I don’t know for sure.”
Carmel’s gaze drifted from Meg to me. I lifted my hands and shrugged.
“You know,” said the Reverend Bottoms, “Bishop O’Connell said that I shouldn’t pay attention to all the rumors going around the di
ocese.”
“What rumors?” asked Meg.
“St. Barnabas is cursed. That’s what rumors! People are horribly murdered in this church all the time. Horribly!”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “They’re not all murdered. This is a suicide.”
“I’m leaving,” Carmel said, spinning on her heel. “I haven’t even finished unpacking! I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“What about the communion service this afternoon?” I asked.
She gave me a withering look over her shoulder and didn’t answer.
“Well,” said Meg. “That’s that. Maybe Tony will fill in.”
“He’s out of town. We can call Father Tim from…what’s the name of that parish?…You know…across the ridge?”
“Lord’s Chapel?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I have his number in my office.”
Nancy and the two EMTs, nice fellows named Mike and Joe, wheeled the gurney out of the front doors and grunted it down the stairs. Our ambulance service came up from Boone—St. Germaine was too small a community to support its own—but considering the distance and the winding roads, Mike and Joe always made good time.
“Another day, another St. Barnabas body,” said Mike with a wink as he passed me. I gave him my number two snarl.
“Gives a whole new meaning to ‘corpus,’” said Joe. “Corpus! Get it? That’s Latin for…”
“I get it,” I interrupted. “Take him over to Kent Murphee’s, would you? We need to get an autopsy.”
“Coroner’s closed on Sunday,” said Joe. “But we’ll drop him at the hospital. Kent can pick him up tomorrow. Just call over there.”
They put Davis in the back of the ambulance, closed the doors and drove off without the sirens. Nancy stood at the curb as the crowd of churchgoers began to disperse.
“I really liked Davis,” she said.
“Me, too,” I said, although I didn’t really know him. “He was on the vestry,” I added absently.
The Mezzo Wore Mink Page 4