"I will," said Jacki. "I certainly will."
Jacki, having checked on her cakes and satisfying herself as to their viability, was standing outside chattering with Elaine as Billy hooked the Bobcat to the rear axle, then pulled the car up and out of the ditch.
I paid for my donuts and walked by Roger's cubicle on my way out. He was peering over the top of his half-wall and had viewed the entire episode.
"What just happened?" he said.
I smiled and shrugged and went out the front door to my truck.
And that's how it started.
Chapter 9
"What am I doing here?" I asked, looking around the lobby. "I don't even like this woman."
"Just go in with me," said Pete. "It isn't going to kill you, and besides, I hate going into nursing homes by myself."
The Sunridge Assisted Living facility is located between Blowing Rock and St. Germaine. It's not a top of the line nursing home, but it's okay. The gathering area smelled vaguely of rubbing alcohol, camphor, menthol, and other odors best not ruminated over. There were a number of residents gathered in the room: some around tables, playing cards, dominos, or working puzzles; a few gathered in front of a TV watching CNN; two or three sitting by themselves, either reading, or, in the case of Bessie Baker, scooted up in front of an old spinet piano in her wheelchair.
She was playing slowly and deliberately. A Chopin piece I recognized as Fantaisie-Impromptu, easily identifiable by its memorable melody purloined for a popular tune, I'm Always Chasing Rainbows. Pauli Girl McCollough was standing behind the piano, listening, her elbows resting on the lid. She waved to us as we came in.
Pete and I walked to the piano and stood politely while she finished the piece. Pete applauded. Bessie glowered at him from beneath unplucked, heavy white eyebrows.
"What do you two want?" she said.
Bessie Baker was small, smaller than I remembered, but then again, I hadn't seen her for fifteen years or so. Her hair was snow white and still thick, although now cut very short. The last time I'd seen her, her hair had been in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her bright blue eyes were clear, but her color wasn't good. Her mouth was nothing more than a slit, turned down at both ends.
"Hi, Miss Baker," said Pete. "I just came over to visit for a bit. You might not remember me..."
"I remember you perfectly well, Mr. Moss," she said in a dry voice. "I assumed you'd be in prison by this time."
"Nah," said Pete. "They couldn't prove anything."
If Miss Baker got the joke, she didn't let on.
I stuck out my hand. "You remember me as well?" I said. "I wasn't one of your students..."
"I know you, Hayden Konig." She ignored my outstretched hand. "What are you two doing here?"
"Pete came to visit, Miss Bessie," said Pauli Girl. "He was telling us down at the café about what a great English teacher you were. I invited him up to say hello."
"And I brought Hayden," Pete said.
"Well, hello and goodbye," said Bessie. She turned back to the piano and began playing another piece. Beethoven I thought, but it was difficult to tell.
Pauli Girl gave us the stink-eye and motioned for us to continue the conversation, such as it was.
"You know, Miss Baker," said Pete, fishing for words, "you were probably the best teacher I ever had."
Bessie stopped playing and glared at him. "How the devil would you know? You were asleep in the back row for the entire year. What are you doing here? Really?"
"It was my idea," I fibbed. "I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions."
Bessie's eyes narrowed.
"I wonder if you were in St. Germaine in 1942? Christmas Eve to be exact?"
Her expression turned to a glare.
"I know that you're a long-time member of St. Barnabas, but, as you know, the church burned a few years ago, and all the records were lost. I don't exactly know when you joined the church, but Wynette thinks it might have been around that time." Okay, a small white lie, but in my defense, I'm a cop. I'm used to interrogating suspects. I paused for a moment, hoping Bessie would offer some information, but she didn't. "Did you happen to sing with the choir?" I ventured.
Bessie backed her wheelchair away from the piano.
"I wasn't in the choir."
"Can you tell me what happened on that Christmas Eve? There was a cantata that was scheduled to be sung, but as far as we can tell, it was never performed."
"I don't remember," she said. She spun her chair in a tight circle and rolled it toward a pair of double doors at the end of the room. Pete, Pauli Girl, and I watched in silence as the automatic doors swung open and Bessie Baker wheeled herself down the corridor.
"That went well," said Pete.
"She knows what happened," I said. "And she may be the only one."
* * *
"Merry Christmas, Hayden," chirped Helen Pigeon. She was walking across the frozen tundra of Sterling Park, loaded down with packages. "Done your shopping yet?"
"Not yet," I answered. "How are you this afternoon, Helen?" I was a little surprised by Helen's festive disposition. It was just yesterday that I saw Helen grab the clerk in Schrecker's Jewelry Store by the lapels and shake her like a terrier with a dead squirrel. Brittney Jo had gift-wrapped a package using regular cellophane tape instead of magic transparent cellophane tape. "What were you thinking?!" screamed Helen as the woman's head rattled back and forth. It took both Mr. Schrecker and myself to pull her off the poor woman, who then tried to retaliate by reaching under the counter for her canister of pepper spray. Luckily, it was empty since Brittney Jo had already used it on several customers in the past few days, and what might have been another shopping related tragedy was averted.
"I'm great," said Helen. "No, better than that. Wonderful! I've just been over to Schrecker's."
I froze. "Are there some bodies I should know about?"
Helen laughed. "No, silly! It's the oddest thing. I was over at the Ginger Cat for lunch and just in the worst mood. You know...the holiday grumps. I was talking to Annie about something or other, and then Georgia came in from Eden Books next door. The next thing you know, we're laughing and chatting about our kids, and singing funny Christmas carols." A look of confusion crossed Helen's face. "It was weird."
"Yeah," I agreed. "Weird."
"Annie and Georgia told me about your special music on Christmas Eve. It sounds wonderful! I can't wait to hear it."
"I think it's going to be good," I said.
"Anyway, I felt sort of guilty about yesterday, so I decided to go over to Schrecker's and apologize, and take Brittney Jo a jar of cherry preserves that I picked up at the Ginger Cat while I was there. She couldn't have been nicer. She and Luke are coming to our Christmas open-house on Saturday."
"Wow," I said.
"You and Meg are coming, aren't you? I found a fabulous new caterer this morning. She's all the rage."
"Umm...I can't say for sure. Meg is in charge of our holiday calendar."
"Well, of course she is! I'll give her a call just in case she forgot. Bye now! Merry Christmas!"
Helen almost skipped across the park.
Something was happening.
* * *
Our rehearsal on Thursday night went well. We knocked out the second movement of the cantata and reworked the first.
"This is just wonderful," Rebecca said. "I know the poem, but I've not ever sung anything using a text by Sara Teasdale. Do you think that the composer might have known her?"
The second movement was on a poem entitled Stars. It began with a marvelously haunting duet between the two bassoons. They were soon joined by the oboe carrying the melody, and by the time the choir came in two pages later, the mood was magical. And this was just with organ accompaniment. With the instruments added, I knew the effect would be spine-tingling.
Alone in the night
On a dark hill
With pines around me
Spicy and still,
And a heaven full of
stars
Over my head,
White and topaz
And misty red;
Myriads with beating
Hearts of fire
That aeons
Cannot vex or tire;
Up the dome of heaven
Like a great hill,
I watch them marching
Stately and still,
And I know that I
Am honored to be
Witness
Of so much majesty.
"I've no idea if the composer knew her," I said, "but I think she certainly was a fan. Elle de Fournier not only set this poem, but another one in the last movement as well."
"I've never heard of her," said Phil Camp.
"Sara Teasdale lived in St. Louis, but moved to New York in the 1930s," Rebecca said. Rebecca was the town librarian and well versed in poetry. "She committed suicide, I think, but she was very influential and celebrated in the twenties and thirties."
"Popular with the girls," said Pete. "At least when I was in high school. They were always memorizing Sara Teasdale poems for English class. I was more an Edgar Allan Poe type of guy. You know, 'Quoth the raven, nevermore.'"
"I can just picture the shepherds looking up into the heavens on that night," Elaine said.
"Can we sing it again?" asked Marjorie. "Just one more time? I tell you, I can't get enough of this stuff."
Chapter 10
She delivered her cantata to Mr. Dearman, the choirmaster, at the beginning of November. He had specified the date, and even though she hadn't worked out the final movement, what she'd finished was enough for the choirmaster to get started on. Besides, she told herself, the alternate suggestion she'd provided for the ending would be fine for the premiere. She'd work out the final version later and have the whole thing completed by Christmas at the latest. It would be a present. Accompanying the score she gave to Mr. Dearman was a letter from Nadia Boulanger expressing her delight that one of her favorite pupils was composing again and that she was sure the premiere of La Chanson d'Adoration would be a wonderful success. The choirmaster was thrilled. The singers were thrilled. Everyone was thrilled. Rehearsals started almost immediately, although not really in earnest until after Thanksgiving.
The choir sounded good, she thought, and Stan Dearman had arranged for musicians to drive up from Asheville for the performance. The Christmas Eve service was scheduled for 10:30 in the evening and would last well past midnight, but the cantata would begin at ten o'clock. A pre-service concert.
It was a Thursday, she'd remember in years to come. Christmas Eve. The dress rehearsal had gone splendidly the previous evening, and the weather forecast (always a concern in late December) was for a clear, although cold, night. Perfect, she thought.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, she was fixing herself a cup of tea when there was a knock at her front door.
* * *
Meg and I decided to drop by her mother's house after choir rehearsal. In truth, we'd been invited for fruitcake and coffee. Many sons-in-law would view an invitation such as this as cruel and unusual punishment, but not me. Not only did I greatly enjoy Ruby's company, I really liked fruitcake, especially the homemade kind that had been soaked in rum for six months.
"Oh, I almost forgot," said Ruby, once we were seated at the kitchen table, our fruitcake topped with whipped cream placed delectably in front of us. "I have a present for you, Hayden. Let me get it."
She disappeared into the living room and came back a moment later with a wrapped box the size of a large book. I'd known Ruby longer than I'd known Meg. They were two peas in a pod, same beautiful smiles, same gray-blue eyes that conveyed a wicked sense of humor, and although Ruby's hair was now silver, one trip to Noylene's Beautifery, and they might be taken for sisters. She handed me the wrapped box.
"What's this?" I said. "It's not Christmas yet."
"I thought you could make use of this present ahead of time."
"So I should open it?"
"Absolutely!" said Ruby.
I removed the wrapping paper and looked down at a box of hand-rolled, authentic, one hundred percent Cuban cigars. Fifty Romeo y Julietas. Illegal in every state.
"Mother!" said Meg. "You know how I feel about cigars!"
"Wow!" I said. "This is incredible!"
"I got them from a gentleman friend that I met in Miami last summer," said Ruby. "He's Cuban."
"Mother!" said Meg again. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Ruby put on her most innocent expression. "I don't tell you everything, dear. Now eat your fruitcake."
"Don't worry," I said to Meg, conscious of the smile plastered across my face. "I won't smoke them all the first day."
"Humph," said Meg.
We ate our fruitcake and I filled Ruby in on the mystery of the Christmas cantata. Ruby always liked a good mystery.
"So you went and visited this English teacher at the nursing home?" Ruby said.
"Pete and I did," I said. "I shot a few questions at her. I think she knows more than she's saying. She just doesn't want to tell me."
"Why not?"
I shrugged. "She's never liked me much, I guess. Maybe that's it. When she was active at the church, she complained about the music all the time. But that was fifteen years ago."
"She had a lot of musical opinions, did she?"
"I guess."
Ruby laughed. "And you call yourself a detective."
"What?" I said.
"Elle de Fournier?" Ruby said. "How's your French, anyway?"
"Not as good as my German," I admitted.
"Fournier is French...for 'baker.'"
It took me a second or two to make the connection. "You think?"
It was Meg's turn. "What?" she said, looking first at me, then at her mother.
"Elle...Elisabeth...Bessie," said Ruby.
"Elle de Fournier," I said. "Bessie Baker. Baker the Grade Shaker."
Chapter 11
"Mozart, isn't it?" I asked, when the music stopped.
Bessie Baker didn't look up from the spinet, but instead started the next movement of the sonata. The slow movement. "It is," she said.
"You play it very well."
We were alone in the gathering area of the nursing home. I supposed that the rest of the residents were in the cafeteria at breakfast. I'd come into the lobby and signed in as a visitor. Hearing the piano, I walked into the main room and stood several paces behind.
"Nonsense," she said, concentrating on the dingy ivory keys. "The first movement was about half speed and you know it. My fingers are almost a century old. What do you want, Hayden?"
She still had a good ear. I was pretty sure she never saw me come in and she'd only heard me speak once in the past fifteen years.
"I came over to tell you that the church choir is singing your cantata on Christmas Eve."
She stopped playing, removed her fingers from the keys, and slowly shut the keyboard lid.
"My cantata?"
"I believe so." I moved to a nearby chair and sat down. "I may be wrong. The style is distinctly American modernist. Written in the '30s or '40s, I'd say, even though the name of the composer is French. Elle de Fournier."
"You think this 'Elle de Fournier' is me?" She rolled her wheelchair backward away from the piano and spun it to face my chair.
"I do."
"And how, pray tell, did you come to this absurd conclusion?"
"Elementary," I said.
"Oh, puhlease! Spare me your juvenile literary allusions."
Pauli Girl came into the room, spotted us right away and came over.
"You obviously have musical training. A lot. People don't play the Mozart sonatas, especially No. 18, from memory, no matter how slowly, unless they have some chops. Added to that, I looked back over some of the letters you wrote to Father Tony complaining about the music at the church after I was hired." I pulled out my small, black notebook and opened it. "And I quote," I said, reading. "Totally ignores dynamic traditions...ill eq
uipped to deal with the nuances of the French literature..." I turned a page. "The musical aestheticism of a Philistine...heavy-handed, ham-fisted, hymn playing suitable only for tent revivals and Methodist services." I closed the notebook and slipped it back into my pocket. "Those are pretty specific criticisms."
Bessie folded her hands and placed them in her lap. "Well...I do have a way with words."
"Second," I said, "two of the movements are composed on texts of Sara Teasdale. Pete Moss mentioned that the girls in his, or rather your, English class always memorized poems by Sara Teasdale. Now, granted, she's an important poet of the early 20th century, but in my experience, the teacher tends to steer the impressionable student towards what they themselves enjoy."
Pauli Girl was paying rapt attention.
Bessie thought for a moment. "Yes," she granted. "Your pedagogical assumption may have validity. Sara Teasdale is a particular favorite of mine."
"Third, Elle de Fournier equals Bessie Baker. Not that much of a stretch, although I'll admit that it was Ruby Farthing who pointed me in the right direction. I should have gotten it earlier, but my French is poor, and it never occurred to me that the composer might still be alive, not to mention that I might be able to talk to her."
Bessie sighed heavily. "So what do you want from me?"
"It is you?" asked Pauli Girl.
"Of course it is!" Bessie snapped. "Try to keep up, child."
"I have some questions," I said. "About the score, but also about the premiere performance."
"I don't want to talk about either one," said Bessie.
"But, Miss Baker," interrupted Pauli Girl, "you have to. Here's the thing. That music is changing people. All over town!"
Bessie Baker looked at Pauli Girl as if deciding whether to believe her or not. Her lower lip quivered ever so slightly. Then she put her hands on the wheels of her chair and pushed herself toward the hallway.
"Rubbish!" she said, over her shoulder.
The Christmas Cantata (The Liturgical Mysteries) Page 7