“Where are your other employees?” asked Nancy.
“I sent them up to Roanoke. There’s a mink farm closing down and we’re picking up a trailer full of cages. They’ll be back this evening.”
He led us into the well-lit barn. The center aisle was wide enough for a large truck to drive from one end to the other, exiting from either end through one of the matching double doors. On both sides of the aisle were pens separated by a four-foot high chain-link fence with a gate on the front. We walked over to the first pen and were startled by a very large animal standing on a hay bale. Upon closer inspection, there were a number of animals in the pen. I counted ten.
“What the heck are those?” asked Dave. “I thought you were raising minks.”
“Those are nutrias,” said Roderick proudly. “Coypu.”
“They’re rats!” said Nancy. “Giant rats!”
“Actually, they are,” laughed Roderick. “Giant aquatic rats. They’re not unlike muskrats and their fur is very desirable.”
“I’ve heard of nutria coats,” I said. “But it doesn’t have nearly the value of mink or chinchilla.” I paused and thought for a moment. “Does it?”
“No, it doesn’t,” admitted Roderick. “That’s where our secret weapon comes in.” He smiled. “Varmit, will you be so kind as to get one of our pacaranas?”
Varmit walked to the second pen down, unlatched the gate, disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with a strange creature in his arms. He walked over to us and set the animal on the floor. We surrounded it immediately.
“They’re not fast,” said Roderick, “and they’re very docile.”
“What is it again?” asked Nancy, squatting down to get a better look. I joined her.
“It’s called a pacarana. Latin name: dinomys branickii. They’re relatively rare in this part of the world. These little fellows are from the Andes Mountains in Ecuador.”
“I’d hardly call him little,” I said. The creature was three feet long and weighed about thirty pounds. It looked a bit like a woodchuck, but had a dark brown upper body, two white stripes along its back, and white spots down each side. Its ears were small and curved and I could see a deep cleft on its upper lip. Gray whiskers completed the distinctively strange package.
“The interesting thing about these rodents,” said Roderick, “is that they’ll mate with a nutria. The offspring are quite extraordinary. First generation offspring of a male pacarana and a female nutria retain all of the desirable fur-bearing characteristics of the nutria, with the distinctive color variations and size of the pacarana. They’re one-third bigger than the average nutria. That’s one-third more fur.”
“What about second generation?” I asked.
“Can’t happen,” said Roderick. “The offspring are sterile.”
“How many male pacaranas do you have?”
“Fourteen,” said Roderick. “With more on the way, hopefully. They aren’t endangered, but, as I said, they’re hard to come by.”
“So you’re counting on fourteen male pacaranas to impregnate five thousand females. That’s…” I tried to do some quick math in my head. “What?…Four hundred females apiece? That’s more than King Solomon had.”
“Three hundred fifty seven point one four,” said Dave. “Roughly.”
“A year,” said Roderick. “ Three hundred fifty seven a year. That’s only one a day if you give them all the government holidays off. The trick is to give a small dose of hormones to the female nutrias so they don’t all come into heat at the same time. We’ve got it down to an art. Besides, these little guys don’t seem to have a problem performing. Like all rats,” he laughed, “it’s what they do.”
“I’ll vouch for that,” muttered Nancy.
“Sounds like you have it all worked out,” said Pete.
“Well, we don’t have five thousand female nutrias yet,” said Roderick, “and by the time we do, I’m hoping to have a few hundred male pacaranas. We also have two female pacaranas, so we’ll be able to breed our own stock.”
“You mentioned a patent,” I said.
“A patent and a registered trademark. Good for ten years. We’re calling the animal ‘Minque.’ M-I-N-Q-U-E.”
“Minque?” I said.
“Minque coats, Minque collars, Minque mittens…you name it. Also,” Roderick added, “this isn’t public knowledge, but we’re hoping for a major celebrity endorsement.”
“That will certainly help,” said Nancy.
“Minque,” said Dave thoughtfully. “With one of those ® signs behind it? I like it. Can we see one of these Minques?”
“Absolutely. They’re in the other barn.”
Chapter 8
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Ginger Snapp cooed. “As a shamus, you come highly recommended.”
“How ‘bout as a good time?” I said smirkily, lighting a stogie.
I’d seen her around, but always hanging off the arm of some up-and-coming bishop. She was an ornament, a decoration, a prize that came with the pointy hat, the dress and the incense pot.
“Hmm. Let me think. As a good time you seem to rate slightly behind Pedro over there.” She tossed her head like a hair-covered hand grenade in the direction of Pedro’s snoring body, now lying under his table with a drink umbrella sticking out of his mouth.
“I’ve got information,” she said in a voice so low it could have been wearing spike heels and still skittered under Dick Cheney’s credibility. “AveMaria was just a warning and I’m afraid that I’m next.”
“Beautiful,” said Meg. “This is some of the most elegant prose it has ever been my pleasure to dispose of.”
“Dispose of?” I said. “Dispose of?”
“I meant ‘read.’ Did I say ‘dispose of?’ How silly of me.” Meg was sitting on the leather couch with a glass of red wine in one hand and my latest literary effort in the other. Her legs were tucked elegantly under her and the flickering light from the fireplace accented her features from continually changing angles. “Now tell me again about this hat thing.”
“I was standing at the door of the Blueridge Furs office,” I said. “I was wearing the hat. This hat. Raymond Chandler’s hat.”
Meg nodded.
“And this woman opens the door…”
“Muffy Lemieux,” said Meg.
“Yes, Muffy Lemieux. And then this sentence just pops into my head.”
“Sounds spooky. Just what does this Muffy Lemieux look like?”
“Well, she’s…um…sort of…you know…kind of gorgeous. She’s got these legs and these other things. You know…accoutrements.”
“I know exactly,” said Meg. “I would expect someone named Muffy Lemieux to be blonde. Very blonde.”
“Nope. Redhead. She says she’s going to come and sing in the church choir.”
“I’ll bet she does.”
“Anyway,” I said, “it’s not like she’s single or anything. She’s married to a man named Varmit. Apparently she’d like him to join the choir as well. Besides,” I added, “she’s been told that she has a voice like Loretta Lynn.”
“Better and better. But back to the hat, Mr. Hard-Boiled Author. Does this literary phenomenon happen often?”
“So far, whenever I put it on.”
“It’s on now,” she said, with a sly smile. “Anything come to mind?”
She sat reclining on the sofa, her heaving bosom rising and falling like twin boiling Christmas puddings on Boxing Day, and even as her mouth whimpered no, no, no, the rest of her body ached yes, yes, yes, except for her appendix which had been removed the year before and so didn’t care very much either way.
I didn’t take time to write it down.
•••
Worship Committee meetings at church are to be avoided if at all possible. This is Rule No. 1 in the Hayden Konig Church Musician’s Handbook. Rule No. 2 is never, ever agree to do anything that Meg asks in her sultry, Lauren Bacall voice while whispering in my ear. Closely following is Rule No. 3: If any
one complains about how loud the organ is, the best possible response is to pull out all the stops. There are a myriad of other rules. For example: Never sing any anthem in which the composer or poet tries to rhyme any word with Jesus. This includes squeeze us, frees us, please us, etcetera. There are exceptions, of course, and one of them was a brilliant Christmas madrigal, penned by myself, in which I managed to rhyme Holy Jesus with Mouldy Cheeses.
Unfortunately, Rule No. 1 had exceptions as well and one of them occurred when a new rector showed up for the first time. That was the canon under which I was currently operating as I sat at the St. Barnabas conference table surrounded by the Worship Committee: Georgia Wester, Carol Sterling, Meg, and Joyce Cooper. Marilyn, the long-suffering church secretary, was there to take notes.
We were busy sharing a pot of coffee and exchanging pleasantries when Beverly Greene walked in wearing her Parish Administrator demeanor, followed by an overweight and extremely muculent man in a priest’s collar. His hair was sparse and hung in damp tendrils around his ears. Perched on his nose was a pair of oversized glasses that he was continually pushing back up the slippery slope with his index finger. He was followed into the room by an unsmiling woman of equal girth and humidity, sporting a hairdo reminiscent of Moe Howard, the greatest of the Three Stooges. I shuddered involuntarily.
“This is our new interim rector,” said Bev, a frozen smile on her face. “The Reverend Dr. Adrian Lemming. Bishop O’Connell called this morning to give me the good news that he’s found us a temporary priest.” She put a lot of stress on the words “interim” and “temporary”—more, in fact, than might have been necessary—but the Reverend Dr. Lemming didn’t seem to notice. Mrs. Reverend Dr. Lemming did notice. Her nostrils flared just a bit and her eyes narrowed oh-so-slightly. Or maybe it was just my imagination.
“Good morning, everyone,” said the moist man in an even moister voice. He pulled out a handkerchief and blotted the beads of sweat off his pallid pate—sweat that had formed despite a room temperature in the low seventies. “First of all, I think you should call me Father Lemming. That’s really my preference, dontcha know.”
I shot a sideways glance at Meg. I knew for a fact that she hated it when people said “dontcha know.” Hated it! She was now displaying the same Arctic smile that spread across Bev’s features.
“This is my wife, Fiona Tidball-Lemming, dontcha know,” said Father Lemming, gesturing to the woman now seated at the head of the table with a nod.
Scattered “good mornings” and muttered “pleased to meet yous” filtered across the table as Father Lemming took a seat next to his wife.
“Why don’t we all introduce ourselves?” suggested Bev. “Father Lemming, perhaps you could start. Tell us a little about yourself.”
“The first thing I’d like to say is that Fiona and I are a ministry team, dontcha know.”
We nodded as though we did know.
“Fiona and I were raised Southern Baptist. In fact, I was a Minister of Music in a Baptist church in Bobo, Alabama, when I started out in church work. Worked there for the better part of twenty years, dontcha know.”
I could feel everyone’s eyes dart momentarily in my direction.
“Fiona was the church secretary,” he continued, smiling over at her, “and Director of Christian Education. After my divorce, she and I were married, and it was God’s will that we leave the Southern Baptist denomination. It was clear that He was calling us to the Episcopal Church to continue our ministry, dontcha know.”
We nodded again.
“I graduated from the seminary and here I am.”
“Your doctorate?” ventured Meg.
“I was granted a Doctor of Ministry degree in 1998 by Liberty University, dontcha know.
“Jerry Falwell’s university?” Joyce said.
“Oh yes,” said Father Lemming, proudly. “I had my Doctor of Ministry even before I went to the Episcopal seminary. Did it all from the comfort of my music office at the Baptist church, dontcha know. Liberty has quite a good Doctor of Ministry degree, dontcha know. They count ‘life experience’ toward your credits for graduation, dontcha know.”
The “dontcha knows” were now dropping from his mouth like teeth from Aunt Millie’s gums during last year’s taffy-pull. I thought Meg might scream.
“We’re very pleased to be here,” he continued, “and although this is our first position in an Episcopal church, dontcha know, I want you all to be assured that both Fiona and I bring a wealth of ministry experience.”
We nodded again and Carol added a “dontcha know” under her breath, but loud enough for me to hear and stifle a snort.
“Now then,” said Fiona Tidball-Lemming, offering her first smile of the morning—a smile designed by nature to freeze a predator’s prey before pouncing—“you’ve heard about us. Let’s find out about all of you.” Her fleshy finger moved around the table and rested on Meg. I could sense a gulp.
“I’m Meg Farthing. I sing in the choir. And I’m on the Worship Committee.” She paused. “Vestry, too.” It was as succinct a recitation of responsibilities as I’d ever heard from Meg.
Carol was next. “Carol Sterling. Worship Committee. Altar Guild.”
“Marilyn Forbis. Secretary,” said Marilyn in turn.
We made our way around the table, everyone being as concise as possible. No wasted words with this bunch.
“Georgia Wester. Building and Grounds. Vestry. Worship.”
Finally it was my turn. I was the last. “Hayden Konig, organist and choirmaster.”
The Lemmings smiled and nodded.
“First things first,” said Father Lemming. “It’s already mid-October. Do we have our plans for Christmas finalized yet?”
Everyone looked around the table and there seemed to be quite a bit of non-committal shrugging going on.
“Hayden,” he said, “tell us about our musical plans.”
“Hmm, let’s see,” I said, pulling out the pad Nancy had given me and flipping it open to the first page. There was nothing written in it, of course, but a little showmanship never hurt. “On the first Sunday of Advent…”
“Advent?” snorted Fiona Tidball-Lemming. “We’re talking about Christmas.”
“Ah,” I said, flipping four or five more pages. “Yes, of course. Christmas. On Christmas Eve we’ll be having the traditional two services, one at…”
“Not Christmas Eve,” said Father Lemming in exasperation. “We mean the Christmas season.”
“Yes,” I said. “The Christmas season. Christmas Eve to January 6th. Actually, as you know, the season of Christmas doesn’t really start until Christmas Day, but we always…”
“The Christmas season,” said Fiona. “December 1st through the 25th. There’s no sense in celebrating Christmas after Christmas!”
“Right,” I said, flipping back the pages. “So on the first Sunday of Advent—that would be December 2nd—I was planning on doing Bach’s Cantata No. 62—Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland—in English, of course, maybe with a smallish orchestra. Then on the 9th…
I’ll tell you what,” said Father Lemming. “Since we obviously don’t have any plans, we’ve got some really great ideas for Christmas, dontcha know.”
•••
“What’s the scam, Ginger?” I said. I knew the type. She was beautiful, as sassy as a three-year-old jar of mayonnaise, and so smart she spelled “floozy” with two z’s.
“What do you mean?” she jiggled. “Can’t a girl buy a gumshoe a drink?”
I sat down and whistled up a beer-fraulein. “I’ll have a Mummy Martini,” I said. The waitress raised her Arian unibrow in confusion. “So dry I have to blow the dust off the top,” I explained, raising an eyebrow of my own at my considerable cleverness as I leaned across the table, Ginger in my sights.
“I’ll have a Cement Mixer,” said Ginger, leaning in as well. “Hold the pickle.”
Our waitress trundled off to get our orders leaving us with nothing more than the space between
us, a space that was narrowing as fast as the profit margin at Paris Hilton’s “Things Go Better With Coke” discount shoe store.
Ginger’s face was close and getting closer. I could smell
her breath, a pungent mixture of lilacs, persimmons and furniture wax. Our nose hairs entwined and danced together in the smoke, anorexic ballerinas in a pas de deux of aphrodesia, as our lips reached across the gap, camel-like, and plucked at the thorny twigs of our desire.
“Man,” whispered Ginger in a husky whisper, her eyelids dropping to half-mast, “you can really write.”
“Baby,” I replied. “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
•••
“When we were at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Bobo,” Mrs. Tidball-Lemming said proudly, “we began a Christmas tradition that still continues even though we left the congregation four years ago. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it up here. It’s called The Singing Christmas Tree.”
Everyone at the table smiled politely.
“We’d like to bring this tradition to St. Barnabas, dontcha know,” said Father Lemming, “and make it our gift to the community. In Bobo, we had to keep adding performances to accommodate the crowds, dontcha know.” He looked around the table, making contact with each one of us. “People came all the way from Tupelo. Last year, over a thousand people saw the show.”
We continued smiling.
“I realize that it’s an expensive endeavor in the beginning. After all, the frame has to be bought and configured for the sanctuary, lighting and sound would need to be arranged for. But I think there is just enough time to get everything done if we start immediately. Besides, I understand that St. Barnabas has quite a generous endowment specifically for musical and artistic performances. And,” he added, “if we charged ten dollars per ticket—that’s what we charged in Bobo—we could easily make back our initial expenses over the course of seven or eight years.”
The Mezzo Wore Mink Page 7