The Soprano Wore Falsettos (21 page)

“Moosey drew his pictures on the attendance forms,” I said. “The forms are in these pads, and there’s one pad per pew. When Father George asks everyone to be sure to sign the attendance pad, they, in theory, sign the form, and pass it down to the next person. After every service, Carol collects the forms so we know who’s been here. I don’t know what we do with the information,” I said, “but in this case, it may be just what we’re looking for. If the form that Moosey wrote on had this indentation, then it’s reasonable to assume that whoever wrote the confession note used the attendance pad as his or her writing desk.”

“I get it,” said Nancy. “The original attendance form would have the same indentation.”

“And would tell us who was sitting in the pew,” added Meg.

“Bingo,” I said. “Now, Marilyn, give us some good news. We still have the attendance forms from Thursday night, right?”

“I have them right here.” Marilyn opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a stack of papers. “Even if we do find out who wrote the note, is that a confession? Will it put the killer behind bars?”

“I doubt it seriously,” I said. “There’s always deniability where an anonymous note is concerned, and, even if the person admits to writing it, they can always say it was a prank. What it
will
do is point us in the right direction. Then we can look for other, more compelling, evidence.”

“What’s the plan?” Meg asked. “Do we have to shade all these forms? That’ll take hours.”

“No need,” I said. “Nancy?”

“Got it right here, chief,” said Nancy as she reached into her jacket and pulled out a fingerprint kit.

“We’ll just put some black fingerprint powder on the brush and dust each of the forms,” I said. “The indentations should pick up the powder and make the writing easy to spot.”

We watched Nancy dust the notes one at a time. She’d finished about thirty or so when she said, “That’s the one.” The powder dropped into the indentations and we could read most of the words. There, on the note, in black fingerprint powder, we could all read
killed the…had no choice…forgive me.
I put our copy of the confession next to the words. They were a match. I blew off the excess powder and all of us squinted to read the names on the pad.

There were four people sitting in that pew — Malcolm and Rhiza Walker and Annette and Francis Passaglio.

Chapter 20

Nancy and I were in the office on Monday morning when Kenny came in. I’d found him in the parish hall after the service on Sunday. He was being mobbed by all the well-wishers that had heard the grim news of his demise, so I asked him to come on down to the office in the morning. He walked in with one arm bandaged and in a sling, but other than that, looked pretty healthy.

“Man, Kenny,” said Nancy. “I thought you were dead.”

“We all did,” I added.

“I very nearly was,” said Kenny. “It was the darndest thing. I saw this bright light, and I was just walking towards it.”

“Do you remember what happened?” Nancy asked. “I mean, before the bright light.”

“Sure,” said Kenny, smiling at us. He smiled at us for about fifteen seconds before Nancy realized he needed more prompting.

“Do you think you might tell us?” she growled.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Some of this I can remember, but when I got into town, everything went black. Then I remember some more in the hospital.” Kenny smiled at us again.

I didn’t wait the fifteen seconds. “Okay, Kenny,” I said slowly. “You need to tell us what happened.”

“Pothead,” muttered Nancy, under her breath. “Medical marijuana, my Aunt Millie’s butt!”

“Oh yeah. Sorry,” Kenny said again, still smiling. “I saw this bright light…”

“Before that,” I said. “When you got shot.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry. Let’s see…where was I?”

Nancy was getting tired of waiting. “You went into the barn,” she prompted. “You went in the back door…”

“Yeah,” said Kenny. “No, wait a minute. I went in the front door and walked to the back of the barn. I was gonna clean out this hornet’s nest that I saw the other day. I had some bug spray and a rake. I went into the barn and sprayed the nest. But they weren’t hornets. They were bees.”

“Was that a problem?” I asked.

“For me it is. I’m allergic to bee stings.”

“But not hornet stings?” I asked.

“Nope. The weird thing is, these bees were in a hornet’s nest.” Kenny shrugged. “I guess they found it and moved in.”

“Yeah,” I said, “sometimes they’ll do that. What happened next?”

“Hey, did I tell you guys about the bright light? It was amazing!”

“Before the light,” Nancy said. “You sprayed the nest.”

“Oh yeah. I sprayed the nest, but I guess I missed a couple of those little guys. They stung me on the arm.” Kenny stopped talking and smiled again.

“And?” Nancy prompted.

“And my arm started to swell up. That’s how I knew they were bees. I usually have a shot I can give myself up at the house, but I remembered I used the last one in the summer. I have about twenty minutes before I pass out. So then I figured I’d better get to town as quick as I could.” Kenny stopped and smiled again. “You guys have any donuts? I’ve got the munchies something fierce.”

“Sorry,” said Nancy.

“I thought all police stations had donuts,” said an obviously disappointed Kenny.

“Nancy’ll take you down and get you one after we hear your story,” I said. Nancy glared at me. “So what happened after you got stung.”

“My arm started to swell up. That’s how I knew they were bees. You see, I have this shot that I can give myself…”

“We remember!” barked Nancy. ‘The bees stung you, you didn’t have a shot, you were going to drive to town, you had twenty minutes left to live…which is about what you have right now unless you finish this story!”

“Here’s the thing,” said Kenny, with another genuine smile. “Did you know that when you’re dying, there’s this really bright light? You sort of walk toward it and…”

“Arrrgh!” said Nancy.

“Kenny,” I said, calmly, “after you decided to drive to town, what happened?”

“I went out to the truck, got in and started it up.”

“You didn’t get shot?”

“Umm…yeah. I’m getting to it. I started the truck up, and then I remembered that the emergency room guys like to have one of those bees that stung me. So they can see which kind it is, I guess. I drove around to the back of the barn, opened the back door and —

Ka-Blam!”

“You got shot,” I said.

“Finally,” said Nancy.

“Sure did,” said Kenny. “A shotgun. Lots of pellets. The good thing was that it went off when I was opening the door, so most of the pellets had to go through the wood to get to me. It’s a pretty thick door.”

“Was that your shotgun, Kenny?” I asked. “Did you set it as a trap?”

“Nope. I don’t own a gun.”

“You didn’t set a spring gun to protect your grass?” asked Nancy.

“’Course not,” said Kenny. “Why would I do that? It’s perfectly legal. Anyway, I knew I wasn’t hurt bad although there was a lot of blood. The doc said that the pellets in my chest only went in about a quarter inch. They just popped them out with tweezers. I did get some into my arm. That’s why it’s in a sling.”

“So you drove into town,” I said.

“Yeah. But I think I passed out when I got to the square. Lucky that ambulance was there, huh?”

“Very lucky.”

“The doc said that once Joe and Mike cleaned me off, they could see it wasn’t bad, and they got a tube down my throat. That’s what happens with these bee stings. My throat closes up, and I can’t breathe. We got to the hospital, they gave me a shot, and took these pellets out. But then, that night, I had another reaction to the bee sting, and they sent me down to Kingsport.”

“Why did the hospital say you were dead?” asked Nancy.

“Don’t know. Maybe they just lost the paperwork.”

“Do you still have the gun?” I asked Nancy.

“It’s in my car. I’ll send it down to the lab.”

“You can do that after you take Kenny in for some donuts,” I said, with a grin. “One more question, Kenny.”

“Yeah?”

“Why’d you come to St. Barnabas on Sunday? I haven’t seen you in church for ten years.”

“Well, it’s like this. It was Easter and I just had a narrow escape from death.”

“That’s a good enough reason,” I said, with a nod.

“That, plus I’ve been dating one of the singers in the choir,” added Kenny.

“Really,” I said. “Who is it?”

“Renee Tatton. She really likes me. She says I remind her of an actor named Tab Hunter.”

• • •

“Hello, Hayden. This is Gary Thorndike. I have some news for you,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “The lab’s really busy, but I moved your case to the head of the line.”

“Hi, Gary,” I said, recognizing the voice right away. “Thanks. I hope the news is good.”

“Mixed,” said Gary. “The note you sent down?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing on it we could come up with. There were a couple of partial prints but they’re unreadable. If you have a handwriting sample we could compare it to, we can probably match it up.”

“We don’t have one. So, let me get this straight…we’ve got three DNA samples on the bell and nothing on the note.”

“I’m afraid that you are correct. But I do have some other news that might be of use.”

“Yeah?”

“I had our guys look closely at the note. You know, put it under a microscope, do an ink analysis…that sort of stuff.”

“What did you find?”

“It was written by a ball point pen. Probably by a southpaw.”

“Good to know,” I said. I didn’t tell him we already knew about the lefty.

“Here’s the part you’ll like,” said Gary. “The inky part.”

“Yeah?”

“The ink’s from a certain kind of pen. Specifically a Montblanc Miesterstuck Solitare. This would be the original cartridge, not a refill. The refills have a slightly different chemical makeup. So you might be looking for one that’s fairly new. Maybe a Christmas present.”

“You can tell this from the note?” I was astounded.

“Sure. Ink, even black ink, is a mixture of several different dyes. We use thin layer chromatography to break it down. It’s a big business with all the medical malpractice cases going on. Lawyers have to know who checked what on which patient chart and who wrote which bad prescription. All the Montblancs are in our database. Apparently, it’s a very popular pen with doctors.”

“How much does one of those pens go for?” I asked.

“They’re out of my league, but I’d say maybe five hundred. The ball points aren’t as much as the fountain pens.”

“That’s still a lot of cash for a pen,” I said.

“Not if you’ve got it,” said Gary.

Chapter 21

I was missing something--that much was obvious. The clues were all there. They had to be and I oughta know. I was the one that wrote them. I lit a cigar and walked down the street, mulling over the case like it was a jug of last year’s Christmas wine. Maybe I had left a clue out. It wouldn’t be the first time, I thought to myself. I should have put it into Chapter 10, but if I’d forgotten, no wonder I couldn’t solve this case. I turned into Buxtehooters and whistled for the waitress. I went with Scarlatti’s Little Fugue in D minor. It seemed to work. I had a beer in my hand before my fundament hit the chair.

Pedro was waiting for me. “Did you remember to put the clue into Chapter 10?” he asked. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere.”

“
I can’t recall,” I said. “I certainly hope so.”

“
Well,” said Pedro, thinking hard. “I wasn’t in Chapter 10, so I don’t know. Who have we got?”

“
We’ve got Miss Bulimia Forsythe, but I don’t think she killed Memphis,” I said. “She’s in the color scam up to her lilac-colored eyeshadow, but she’s not a murderer.”

“
How about her boys?”

“
Raoul, Biff and D’Roger?”

“
Yeah, them,” said Pedro, gulping down a bottle of Schnitzenfahrt.

“
Nah. They’re harmless. They may be a danger to some bolts of velveteen, but only if they don’t run with the scissors.”

“
We gonna quash the color scam?”

“
Yep.”

• • •

I looked up from my typewriter, chomped down on my cigar and surveyed my domain. Meg was sitting on the old, worn, leather couch, working on her laptop, Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto was on the WAVE, a fire was blazing in the hearth, and all was right with the world.

“I can see that your writing career is blossoming,” said Meg, closing up her computer. “I just read
The Alto Wore Tweed
on your new blog page.” She got up and jostled the embers with the poker. A fire in April wasn’t uncommon for these parts, but this one might be our last of the season. Channel Four was calling for temperatures in the low eighties by the end of the week.