The Soprano Wore Falsettos (27 page)

“Witness protection?” asked Nancy.

“Not exactly. But I did have to drop out of sight. You can check all this with the FBI if you have to, but then I’d probably have to move again.”

“No need for that,” I said. “It’s our secret. What about the bell? Did you pick it up? Maybe on the day that Agnes Day was killed? That would have been Palm Sunday.”

Rebecca thought for a moment and then nodded. “Yep. I handed the bell to Fred right before the Psalm. He was on the other side of the organ. I picked it up by the handle and gave it to him.”

“Did he hand it back when he was finished?”

Rebecca thought again. “No,” she said. “No, he didn’t, because I had moved. He gave it to someone else I suppose or maybe put it back himself.”

“Okay, then,” I said, with a smile. “We just needed to check.”

“You know,” said Rebecca, “I wasn’t kidding. If this gets out, I’ll have to relocate. And I really like it here.”

“You aren’t a contract killer for the AGO, are you?” asked Nancy. “You know, trained to kill bad organists in seventeen different ways?”

“AGO?”

“American Guild of Organists,” I answered. “It’s a terrorist group, actually.

“If I was, would I have left my DNA on the murder weapon? Nope. I was a secretary in the Egyptian consulate. But I
can
make a killer basboosa,” Rebecca laughed. “That’s an Egyptian cake, by the way.”

“Your secret is safe with us,” I said. Nancy nodded in agreement.

“What do you think?” Nancy asked, as we walked back to the office, by way of The Slab Café.

“I think…Belgian Waffles.”

“Me, too,” she said.

• • •

Our waffles were good, the coffee was good, the service was good, and Nancy had stopped growling at Collette.

“I’m actually glad she and Dave are getting married,” Nancy said. “Maybe it will give him some ambition.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so,” I said, mixing maple syrup with the quickly melting butter sitting atop my scrumptious repast. “Dave’s got a trust fund. I don’t even think he has to work. He just does it for something to do.”

“That’d be nice,” said Nancy. “Seems like I’m the only one who has to actually work for a living around here.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s tough.”

“Speaking of never working again,” said Nancy, just before a forkful of waffles disappeared into her mouth. She nodded toward the door. Walking into The Slab, and headed for our table, was Rhiza Walker.

“Hello, Rhiza,” I said, standing up and pulling out a chair. “Join us, won’t you?”

“Wow,” said Nancy, swallowing. “I’ve seen him stand up and offer a chair to only one other person in the ten years that I’ve known him. And that’s because he thought he was going to get lucky.”

“I did get lucky,” I said. “And speaking of lucky, we certainly are lucky to have this lovely multi-millionaire joining us here at the Café du Slab.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Rhiza, “I’ve been a millionaire for years. Order me some of those waffles, will you?”

I nodded to Collette who was doing her best not to hover, but she’d never been in the same room with a Powerball winner before. She scurried into the kitchen.

“I guess you’ll have to move to the Riviera or somewhere to escape all the publicity,” Nancy said.

“Nah,” replied Rhiza. “It’s not that bad. We got a bunch of calls from salesmen early on, but Malcolm knows how to handle them. Mostly, the furor has died down.”

“Great,” said Nancy, finishing up her plate of waffles and draining the last gulp from her coffee cup. “By the way, can I borrow six million dollars?”

“Nope,” said Rhiza.

“I didn’t think so,” said Nancy. “Back to work then.”

“We need to talk,” said Rhiza, after Nancy had left.

“We’re talking, aren’t we?”

“Nope. We’re not. But we need to. At your house.”

“How about tomorrow?” I asked. “Nine o’clock?”

“I can’t tomorrow. Can we do Thursday?”

“I can’t Thursday. I’ll be in Asheville. Friday?”

“Friday it is,” Rhiza said. She stood up and walked out of The Slab just as her plate of waffles arrived.

“It’d be a shame to throw these out,” said Collette, putting them down in front of me.

“A real shame,” I agreed.

• • •

“Are you losing weight?” asked Marilyn. I was at St. Barnabas to have a chat with Father George. He’d asked me to come in, and I suspected that it was concerning their recent opening in the church music department.

“Nice of you to notice,” I said. “Pete Moss tried to talk me into expando-pants, but I decided to start exercising. I’ve been running a couple of miles every morning.”

“So, what kind of pants are those?” asked Marilyn, peering closely at my waistband.

“Just never you mind,” I laughed. “But they’re not expando-pants. And stop ogling me. That’s sexual harassment, you know.”

“I know. Father George made me watch the video…again. Hey,” she added, “did you hear the news? Lucille Murdock is going to make her announcement on Monday night.”

“She finally decided what to do with the sixteen million?”

“Apparently. Father George and the vestry are pretty nervous. She won’t tell anyone anything until Monday night.”

The door to Father George’s office opened, and the rector motioned me into his office.

“Come in, come in, Hayden. It’s so good to see you. I hope you’ve been doing well.”

I knew schmoozing when I heard it, and this was it in spades.

“Yeah,” I said. “You, too.” I looked back at Marilyn and gave her a wink.

Father George gestured to the chair across from his desk and I sat down. “I’ve been talking with the vestry,” he said, folding his hands, then raising them to his chin and tapping it with his two index fingers. “Also with Beverly Greene, our administrator, and we’ve decided to offer you your job back. You did a fine job substituting during Easter, and we think you’d be an excellent addition to the staff.”

“I was on the staff. You fired me.”

“Well, technically, you resigned,” said Father George, still tapping his teeth.

“Yeah,” I said, “I guess I did.”

“But circumstances have changed since then. Now we’d like for you to come back.”

“No thanks,” I said, standing up and walking back to the door.

“Wh…what?” sputtered Father George.

“No thanks,” I repeated. I opened the door and walked out past Marilyn, giving her another wink.

• • •

I walked back to the office. The weather that, just ten days ago, had laid down a blanket of snow across the region, had now definitely turned to spring, and there was no going back. The leaves had burst forth, almost unnoticed, sometime during the last week, and the reflection of the sunlight off the new growth bathed the entire town in a sort of luminescent green.

Nancy was out on patrol, but Dave was waiting for me when I came in.

“Hi, boss,” he said, handing me a message. “You need to call Gary Thorndike. That’s the number.”

“Yeah, I have it. Congratulations, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Dave said. “I think.”

• • •

“Hello, Hayden,” said Gary, after I’d identified myself. “Guess what?”

“What?” I said.

“We got another hit on the DNA sample.”

“You mean Olga Spaulding?”

“No, the other one. You remember what I said? Sometimes these matches take a while.”

“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “So who is it?”

“It came back from a database in Virginia. The person’s name is Renee Tatton.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “There were three DNA samples — the victim’s, a female that we identified as Olga Spaulding, and an unknown male.”

“Right. But he’s not unknown anymore. His name is Renee Tatton.”

Chapter 26

I had been waiting for Nancy’s reaction, and it was as good as I’d hoped.

“You mean…” she started, “that she…he…she…Renee…holy crap!”

“Well put,” I said, with a grin. “We’ve been barking up the wrong tree. You can change your sex, but you can’t change your DNA.”

“So Agnes Day knew Renee’s
real
secret.”

“Since she was the head nurse at Dr. Camelback’s office, I’d go out on a limb and say that she did.”

“Now we’ve got a real motive.”

“And a good one,” I said. “Motive, opportunity, and a pretty good explanation for the confession note. She’s left-handed and she left DNA on the murder weapon.”

“Yeah, we’re a couple of geniuses,” said Nancy. “Should I pick her up?”

“By all means. The only thing I can’t figure out is why she tried to kill Kenny.”

“They were dating. Maybe her surgery couldn’t hold up to that kind of scrutiny.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Before you pick her up, go ask him, will you?”

“Sure.”

“But not in so many words,” I said. “Just in case he doesn’t know.”

“Got it.”

• • •

Francine was waiting for me in my office when I walked in.

“
I heard you were over at Buxtehooters,” she said accusingly.

“
I had a few drinks,” I admitted. “Pedro and I were trying it out.”

“
I thought we had something special.”

“
We do, Francine,” I said, sitting down behind my desk. “Real special.”

“
Then why did you step out on me with that dame, Memphis Belle? Don’t try to deny it!” Francine was a woman scorned.

“
I didn’t mean anything by it, Francine. It was just one of those things.”

Suddenly Francine had a flash of light in her hand. I recognized it right away--a hospital razor. I shivered in remembrance of the last time I saw one. If there’s one thing you don’t quickly forget, it’s getting prepped for a hernia operation by a three-hundred pound Jamaican woman named Black Ethel.

• • •

It had been two days since we received the news about Renee Tatton. Neither Nancy nor I could find any sign of her. We had gone to Judge Adams and gotten a warrant to search her apartment, but she was gone. There were a few of her belongings in the apartment, to be sure, but most of her clothes were gone, along with her toiletries. I was afraid she’d flown the coop, but I wasn’t ready to put out an All Points Bulletin just yet.

I was sitting at my kitchen table, eating my scrambled eggs and pushing a dead mouse around the table with a fork, waiting for Archimedes to show as much interest in his breakfast as I had in mine. It was a good thing that I wasn’t married, I thought. If Meg had been in the kitchen with me, she would have wanted me to use a different fork. Archimedes tilted his head, but made no move toward his rodent repast.

I kept thinking about Renee Tatton. I had sure been fooled. I was pretty sure that everyone was. Nancy and I had decided that this information was not for public consumption, and so we had kept it to ourselves. I’d done some research in the meantime, doing a search of graduate degrees conferred by accredited music schools in the United States. Renee Tatton, or rather, William Renee Tatton, had received a Master’s degree in voice performance at the University of Minnesota in 1972. I had gotten a copy of her graduate recital program from the music library’s archives. She was, or had been, a countertenor. The first half of the program was Baroque, consisting of the Pergolesi
Stabat Mater,
sung with a soprano and accompanied by string quartet and harpsichord. The second half included Handel, Scarlatti, some Finzi songs and a performance of Benjamin Britten’s
The Journey of the Magi.
If Renee had been a talented countertenor, which she seemed to be, it would not have been that difficult to switch to the mezzo-soprano repertoire once the estrogen therapy had kicked in and the voice-lift had been performed.

I was still thinking about Renee when Baxter barked and the front door opened.

“Anyone home?” called Rhiza, walking into the den.

“In the kitchen,” I said, picking up the mouse and quickly tossing him back into the coffee can. I popped on the plastic lid and stood up to put the can back into the fridge. Archimedes wasn’t interested anyway. He hopped up on the windowsill and stared at Rhiza as she walked in.

“I see the gang’s all here,” she said with a dazzling smile as she dropped her coat off the back of her shoulders and hung it on an unused chair at the table. Baxter had followed her in, wagging his tail like he’d just discovered his dearest friend.

“All present and accounted for,” I said. “Although the owl doesn’t seem to be hungry this morning. Now, what can I get for you?”

“A cup of coffee and a cigar. And not one of those cheap ones either,” she said.