The Soprano Wore Falsettos (17 page)

“Straightening them out?” I interrupted.

“Yep. One of the notes said
I killed the organist. I had no choice. Please forgive me.”

“What?!”

“It said
I killed the organist. I had no choice. Please forgive me.”

“Where’s the note?”

“Father George walked in, and I shoved it into the envelope with the others. He took them into his office. You can’t tell him, Hayden. He’ll know I was going through them.”

“What if I told him you saw that one by accident.”

“He won’t believe you. He’ll fire me.”

“Yeah, probably. Listen, the service is at noon. There’s no organ music, so I don’t have to play. You’ll have to let me into his office during the service.”

“I don’t have a key. He changed the locks when you left. I think he thought you had a master key to the whole place.”

“He was right,” I said with a grin. “Let me think about it. I need that note. There may be a fingerprint, some DNA, we might get a handwriting sample — any number of things. By the way,” I added, “you didn’t happen to recognize the handwriting did you?”

“Nope. It was written in cursive though. And it was in black ink. Can’t you just subpoena all the notes?”

“Well, if I were him and I didn’t want to show them off, I’d say they were protected by priest-penitent privilege. We could get them, I think, but it’d take a while before some judge decided we were right.”

• • •

I went out the back door, took the long way around the church and came back into Marilyn’s office about five minutes later.

“Good morning, Marilyn. Is the good Father in?” I asked with a wink.

“Why, I believe he is,” said Marilyn, then hissed under her breath, “Don’t you tell him!”

“Have no fear,” I said. “Would you buzz him please?”

A minute later, Father George opened his door and ushered me into his office. “Good morning, Hayden,” he said, stiffly. “What can I do for you?”

“I had a thought, George. You know, we have quite a list of suspects for the murder of Agnes Day.”

“I had heard that, yes. It’s a terrible thing.” He shook his head side to side.

“And, although I wouldn’t have thought that the Nailing Service was a particularly good idea for Maundy Thursday, it occurred to me this morning that since most of our suspects are St. Barnabas communicants, maybe one of them wrote down that particular sin and nailed it up on the cross. May I go into the church and look through them? They’re unsigned, aren’t they?”

Father George blanched. “I don’t know if they’re signed or not,” he said. “We’ve already taken them down, but I haven’t read them and I won’t. Whatever is in those notes is between that person and God.”

Excellent, I thought. I’d already caught him in a lie, and now he was trapped. He’d read those notes as soon as he came into the office. It was as plain as the nose on his face.

“Since you haven’t read them, George, what would be the harm in me looking through them? Just to make sure.”

“A confession to a priest is sacrosanct. Every court in the nation has upheld the sanctity of the confessional.”

“I agree totally. But nailing a post-it-note confession onto a cross in a public building is hardly a confession made to a priest.”

“I’m prepared to defend my argument. In court, if necessary.”

“What’s the big deal, George? Wait a minute. Did you read those notes?”

“Umm…no, of course I didn’t. It’s the principle of the thing.”

I looked at him for a long minute. He tried to keep his eyes locked on mine, but they kept flitting around the room. Finally I spoke. “Here’s what I think, George. I think you read those notes, and someone wrote something that you don’t want me to read. There may be any number of notes with some illegal or embarrassing admissions. I don’t care about them. There’s only one note that I would be interested in, and that note has to do with the murder of Agnes Day. If you tell me now that you didn’t read them, I’ll believe you, and I’ll go and get a subpoena for all of the notes. You know as well as I do that they’re not protected by the priest and penitent privilege. Then I’ll go over them all with a fine-tooth comb and, since I’ve told you that I’m going to do this, if you destroy the notes before the subpoena gets here, you will be committing a felony by destroying evidence. However, if you want to change your story right now, I’ll understand that you were in a difficult spot and didn’t know how to react.”

I stood in front of his desk for thirty seconds before he opened the top left drawer and handed me a purple note, folded in half. I pulled a baggie that I’d purloined from the kitchen out of my pocket and had him drop the note inside.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” he asked.

“I don’t want to touch it yet. What does it say?”

“It says
I killed the organist. I had no choice. Please forgive me.
”

“And you weren’t going to give it to me?” I asked, incredulously.

“Probably. I had to think about it. I didn’t know
what
to do.”

I opened his office door. “I’ll need to get your fingerprints and a DNA swab for exclusionary purposes.” Father George looked shocked. “Since you touched the note,” I explained. He relaxed and turned back into his office.

“You, too,” I mouthed to Marilyn. She smiled and nodded.

• • •

I took the note down to the station after alerting Nancy to the find, then sent her down to the church with a couple of DNA swabs and a fingerprint kit. Dave greeted me as I came in.

“I hear you have a clue,” he said.

“That’s what we’ve got, sure enough,” I replied, pulling the bag out of my pocket. “We need to do a couple of things. Call Gary Thorndike in Durham and see if he can get some DNA off this note — tell him I need it fast. You may have to drive it over to him. But first, we need to get a copy of it and get a handwriting analyst up here from Greensboro. Just put it on the copy machine. Got all that?”

“Got it,” said Dave, opening the bag.

“And Dave,” I added, with a sigh. “Don’t touch the note, okay?”

“Oh…yeah. Sorry.”

• • •

I was getting ready to meet Meg at Noylene’s Beautifery when Nancy stuck her head into the office.

“The handwriting guy is coming down this afternoon. He’ll be here at about four o’clock. You must really have some clout, boss.”

“Oh, yes. Lots of clout. You going over to Noylene’s? I hear there’s going to be pie.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Nancy answered. “I’ll walk over with you.”

The slush had melted in the afternoon sun, and although it was still cold, you could sense spring trying to shove the last vestiges of winter aside and muscle its way back to the front of the line. The wind had stopped and, if you weren’t standing in the shade, the weather almost seemed to have reverted to its pre-snow, vernal condition. The buds on the trees were quite visible, although the actual leaves had steadfastly refused to be fooled by what the hill folk called “blackberry winter.”

It was a short walk across the park in the center of the town square. Noylene’s Beautifery had its doors unlocked, its sign lit, and, true to Skeeter’s promise, inside, we were treated with balloons and pie.

“Here’s a coupon,” said Skeeter, greeting us as we walked in. “Three dollars off.”

“Three dollars off how much?” asked Nancy.

“Jes’ depends,” said Skeeter. “The prices are on the board over yonder.”

“Thanks, Skeeter,” I said. “We’ll be sure to take a look. But let’s get to the important matter at hand, shall we? What kind of pie do you have?”

“Pies are in the back,” said Skeeter, gesturing toward the back of the shop. “I can’t talk. I gotta hand out these coupons.”

Meg came in and received her three-dollar coupon while we were deciding whether to wait or head for the pie table without her. Luckily, we didn’t have to make that decision.

“Hi, Meg,” said Nancy. “We were just going to try some pie.”

“I’m sure Hayden was, anyway,” said Meg. “You couldn’t keep him away from a free piece of pie.”

“True,” I said, “but why would you want to?”

“Be polite,” said Meg, under her breath. “Let’s look around first.”

“I knew we should have gone for the pie,” I said to Nancy. “Now we’re stuck.”

“You mean,
you’re
stuck,” laughed Nancy. “I’m having pie.”

Meg slipped her hand into mine and dragged me to the counter where Noylene was greeting her new prospective clientele.

“Hi, Noylene,” said Meg. “Tell me about your shop.”

“We do just about everything,” said Noylene, pride evident in her voice. “From pedicures, to styling and coloring, to fingernails. And,” she pointed to the back of the store, “we got somethin’ no one else has. We invented it. It’s called the Dip ’n Tan.”

“Dip ’n Tan?” said Meg. “What’s that?”

“Come on with me, and I’ll show you,” said Noylene, leading the way.

“Gee,” I said to Meg, under my breath. “I wonder what
this
could be.”

“I’m afraid I know,” whispered Meg. “I was being polite.”

“Polite enough to give it a try?”

“Nope.”

Noylene opened the door that was between the two styling bays —

the door marked “Dip ’n Tan” in large white letters. We followed her into the rather small room that featured a large tank, about six feet tall and about four feet in diameter. The raised letters on the side of the tank said “564 gallons.” Off to the side of the tank was a platform that someone had built, and above the tank hung a trapeze bar. Attached to the bar was a cable that ran across the ceiling, through three pulleys, down the far wall and terminated at an electric winch.

“See this?” said Noylene. “This is the Dip ’n Tan. We applied for a patent, but we haven’t heard back from the government yet.”

“Who’s we?” I asked.

“Well, I designed it, but Skeeter and D’Artagnan did the actual building.

“What’s in the tank?” asked Meg.

“Tanning fluid,” said Noylene. “It ain’t cheap either. I got it for fifty-five dollars a gallon. That’s the bulk-rate price for us distributors. Otherwise it’s about a hundred bucks. Most places spray it on, but this gives you a much better tan.”

“How many gallons are in there, Noylene?” I asked, gingerly peeking into the barrel. “How could you afford it?”

“I got me a government grant for Appalachian women to start a small business. A lady over in Boone helped me fill out the papers. It paid for about two hundred and fifty gallons of tanning spray and a hundred gallons of alcohol. I asked the manufacturer, and he said we could cut it with alcohol. You just have to stay in a little longer.”

“My,” I said, “this is really ingenious. Let me see if I’ve got this right. First you take off all your clothes…”

“Well, you’ve got to put this hair protector on first,” said Noylene, holding up a shower cap. “Either Skeeter or me will be in here depending on if you’re a bull or a heifer,” said Noylene. “You won’t have to worry about that.”

“I wasn’t worried,” I said. “Okay, you put on the hair protector. Then you hang onto the trapeze and Skeeter, or you, Noylene, if I was a heifer, would switch on the winch, and I’d be lowered gently into the tanning broth.”

“That’s all there is to it,” said Noylene, proudly.

It looks like it’s only about four feet deep,” I said, looking into the tank. “What about the upper parts?”

“Well,” Noylene admitted, “until I get enough money to buy some more tanning spray, you’d sort of have to squat down there in the tank.”

“Ewww,” said Meg, quietly.

“Well that certainly would get some places tanned that God probably never intended to see the sun,” I said. “I applaud your efforts, Noylene, and I wish you the best of luck. I, personally, don’t see any need to be tanned artificially, but I’m sure there are many that do. Meg, here, for instance, has been known to darken in the dead of winter, much to my amazement.”

“How often do you change the fluid,” asked Meg.

“There’s no need,” said Noylene, with a big smile. “The alcohol kills all the germs. We just need to add a gallon every now and then, to keep the level up. See?”

“Yes,” said Meg, with a shudder. “I see.”

• • •

“This pie is good,” I said. “Strawberry Rhubarb. You should try it.”

“Nope. I got a piece of Pumpkin and some Blackberry Cobbler,” said Nancy.

“Here’s the EMT boys,” said Nancy, and then whispered to Meg, “I’m dating the tall one. His name’s Mike.”

“’Bout time,” I said, as the two ambulance drivers made their way into the shop. “He’s been asking you out for two years. You invited them to the pie-fest, I presume.”

Nancy ignored me, smiled and made her way up to the front to greet them.

Mike and his partner Joe got their coupons from Skeeter and fell in line for the next Dip ’n Tan tour. I suspected that they thought it was the line for pie. The ambulance that Mike and Joe were assigned to was sent out of Boone but covered all of Watauga County. It was a lot of area.