The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries) (12 page)

"Why are you putting the screen up? I mean, if Muffy's singing a solo."

"It's for next week," said Varmit. "We're not going to use it yet. Mother P thought it'd be a good idea to let everyone
see
the screen and get used to it for a week before we start putting the words to the choruses up there. She says she wants to get the congregation out of their comfort zone."

"Ah," I said. "If that's her plan, she's right on track."

* * *

"His name," said Nancy, "is Johnny Talltrees."

"You're kidding," said Dave. "Talltrees?"

"He was in the system?" I asked.

"He's in the system, all right," said Nancy. "He has a rap sheet taller than he is. Assault, extortion, illegal selling of alcohol, racketeering, illegal gambling, drug possession, you name it. He did some time in north Georgia."

"Where's he from?" I asked.

"Cherokee. You were right about that. I also got an email from the Cherokee police. They have him down as extremely dangerous. He's known to carry a box cutter and a small caliber pistol. He'll also kick you with those silver-tipped boots."

"Quite the little banty rooster," Dave said.

"Someone caught him by surprise," I said. "So what was he doing around here?"

Chapter 13

Pedro LaFleur would be holding court at Buxtehooter's, a pipe-organ bar in the Village that collects the beautiful people the way Russell Crowe collects Precious Moments figurines. The beer-fräuleins, buxom, bewitching, and beautiful, were busy sloshing suds across the bar, singing Tyrolean Himmelfahrt carols, and playfully snapping each other's dirndl straps. The organist, a bird named Twelve-Fingered Teddy, was cutting loose on a
Gottlieb Muffat toccata as the crowd started the two-step. I elbowed my way past a couple of passacaglia groupies, slugged a gink who was trying to pick a pocket, and pulled up a chair at Pedro's table.

"You want some wine?" Pedro asked with a belch. "I'm laying off the beer. I heard it was fattening."

"Sure," I said.

Pedro was my right-hand man, a countertenor with high notes that would make Beverly Sills blush and a repartee that rivaled Sylvester Stallone's cocktail banter. He was mean as a bull snake, chewed coal tar instead of breath mints, and had a face like a snapping turtle wearing a goatee. He dribbled me a glass from a bottle of Rosé that poured pinkly, like a stream of urine five hours after eating a beet salad.

"You want half of this beet salad?" he asked.

"Nah. Listen, we got trouble."

"Big trouble?" he interrogued.

"Yeah. A dame just got shot in my office."

"So what else is new? That happens every other Thursday."

"This is different. It was
...
Carrie Oakey."

Pedro stopped eating his beets in mid-mastication and they fell from his lips like half-chewed pieces of raw liver. I didn't blame him. The mere mention of Carrie Oakey made my own head spin like a coconut when it's being spun by one of those island guys who spins coconuts for cruise ship tourists, the fine hairs of which (the coconut's, not the tourist's) were standing on end in fear, as if the coconut had been reading Stephen King.

"You sure?" he said, his mouth half-full of beets, or half-empty, depending on one's personal philosophy. "Carrie Oakey is dead?"

"Dead as that pet hamster I was keeping for you," deciding to break all the bad news at once.

"What happened?" said Pedro, sadly.

"Wet tail," I said, "and a bullet."

* * *

"
How about a dramatic reading?" asked Meg. "You could do one for Mother P's Wednesday night Lenten program. You know, right before choir practice. They start next week."

"I think they're doing a Bible study, if I'm not mistaken. Will you be in attendance?"

"They are, and no, I shall not be in attendance. They're
watching a video series and answering questions from a workbook. Not my cup of tea."

"It's a new world," I said.

"I'm sure they could make room for a well-known author such as yourself."

"You are being sarcastic," I replied. "In point of fact, some of these chapters have found their way onto Al Gore's international interweb. I am becoming very well known in some circles."

"Probably not circles I would brag about, if I were you," Meg warned. "Where are they showing up?"

"Mostly on my Facebook page."

"You have a Facebook page? When did this happen?"

"This afternoon," I said smugly, "and I have three friends already. You're not the only interweb genius in this household."

* * *

"We gotta go see the Big Brickle," I said. "Brickle. That's the way in."

Pedro nodded.

"You know what happens if all this gets out?" I said.

"Holy crap, it's the end of the world," Pedro said, missing yet another chance to demonstrate that he
could differentiate between scatology and eschatology.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Riots in the streets. Total anarchy."

"2012," said Pedro. "We knew it was coming."

* * *

Friday morning at seven o'clock the phone rang. I was awake, trying to psyche myself into enjoying my run, and it was Meg who answered it. She talked for a moment — I couldn't hear what she was saying — then came dashing onto the back deck and handed me the receiver.

"It's Noylene."

I took the phone and put it to my ear.

"Morning, Noylene," I said.

"Rahab's been kidnapped!" Noylene shouted into the phone.

"Hang on. Calm down a minute and tell me what's happened."

Noylene was frantic. "I got up this morning and got ready for work. I didn't bother the baby 'cause I thought he was still asleep and Rosa has the Slab covered until seven thirty. Then I went in to check on him before I left and he was gone!
His bed was empty!
" She was almost screaming now.

"Calm down. Calm down," I said into the phone, hoping she could give me the story. "You said 'kidnapped.' Maybe he just wandered off. I've heard of toddlers doing that."

"He did
NOT
wander off!" She broke down into sobs.

"Where's Hog? Maybe Hog has him."

"He doesn't. He's right here."

The next sound I heard was the voice of the Rev. Dr. Hogmanay McTavish. He sounded scared. Very scared. "Hayden," he said, his voice breaking, "there's a note. A ransom note!"

"Put the note back where you found it," I said. "Don't touch anything else. I'll be right there."

* * *

Meg called Nancy while I quickly changed clothes, jumped into the Chevy, and headed down the mountain at a dangerous clip. Noylene and Hog lived up on Quail Ridge, five miles on the other side of town from our place. There was no easy shortcut. I had to do the ten miles into town, then the five miles up the ridge on the other side. It'd be a half hour before I got there. Nancy was closer and could get there quicker. I tried to call her as I came flying down the two-lane road, but, like I figured, there was no service. Sometimes I can pick up a signal if I'm lucky. Not today. Nothing about this felt like a lucky day. Meg had yelled to me that Nancy would meet me there as I was climbing into the truck. I'd waved and floored it all the way up the long drive, not taking my foot off the gas until I'd nosed onto the highway.

Noylene's place on Quail Ridge, as I remembered, was about a hundred and thirty acres. It wasn't uncommon for fourth or fifth generation mountain folk to have huge tracts of land. Land had been cheap, very cheap, and, if the land had stayed in the family, many of these families were land rich and cash poor. That is to say that they lived a hand-to-mouth existence, sometimes living on welfare checks and food stamps while they sat on several hundred or sometimes thousands of acres that, under different circumstances, might afford them comfortable sustenance. But, for these people at least, the land was the thing. Quail Ridge had been in Noylene's family for a long, long time, but unlike many of these mountain families, Noylene had money. How much, I didn't know. What I did know was that she didn't spend any of it on a fancy house.

I sped through town, considered stopping at the station, but thought better of it, then continued through St. Germaine and took Highway 184 up toward Quail Ridge. When I saw her drive, I braked hard, turned and spun my tires on the gravel, then tore up the mile-long trek to her home. She, Hog, and little Rahab lived in a doublewide trailer set on concrete blocks about halfway up the ridge. I skidded to a stop behind Nancy's Harley and got out of the truck. Noylene's little, red 4x4 Toyota pickup was in the drive next to Hog's big, white Cadillac. Both of the vehicles were older, Hog's being a vintage '94 model, bought back when the Caddy was the choice of evangelists everywhere. Now, I supposed, preachers gravitated toward a Lexus SUV or a Land Rover, but in Hog's heyday the white boat was the thing.

The doublewide mobile home was anything but mobile. It sat securely on blocks and had eighteen-inch skirting around the bottom. It had recently been painted a powder-blue color. The trim was white and provided some contrast. White plastic shutters had been applied to the vinyl siding on each of the windows that faced the front. The trailer was sixty feet long and thirty feet wide. Eighteen hundred square feet of living space and that didn't include the screened-in porch that Noylene had added to the back. I walked up the front steps and knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately.

I looked into the face of Brother Hog and was struck immediately by how old he appeared. His color was bad. His usually carefully-coiled coif was stuck in a haphazard way onto his head. He had a day's-worth of white stubble and his eyes were bloodshot and unblinking.

He opened the door and stood to one side. "Come on in, Hayden."

Nancy was with Noylene in the living room. I looked around. The layout of the trailer was what designers call "open concept." The kitchen was open to the living room with an island separating the two spaces. A dining table with four chairs sat beneath a glittering crystal chandelier. There were no dishes on the table, but the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes. I noticed a dishwasher, but it was closed. The living room was carpeted. Nancy and Noylene sat on a green and brown plaid sofa. Perpendicular to the sofa was a matching love seat, and a leather recliner occupied the other corner, all facing a large, flat-screen TV. A wide hallway headed toward the far end. Another, narrower hallway led off the kitchen to the near end of the house.

"Tell me again what happened," I said, sitting down on the love seat and facing Noylene. Hog walked over and sat down on the edge of the recliner and leaned forward, his feet planted on the floor.

"Like I told you," said Noylene. "I got up at six and got ready for work. I thought that Rahab was asleep and I didn't want to wake him and I didn't have to be at the Slab 'til seven thirty. Around seven, when I went to check on him and kiss him goodbye, he was gone. The bed was empty."

"This was on the pillow," said Brother Hog. He held out a piece of paper.

"I told you to put it back where you found it," I said, looking at Noylene. She shrugged.

"We'd already handled it and read it," said Hog. "Didn't seem smart to put it back."

I pulled a pair of latex gloves out of my pocket, took a minute to snap one on, and took the note from his hand.

We have your boy. We want $75,000 in non-sequential hundred dollar bills. We'll contact you this afternoon. If you involve the police or fail to follow our instructions, we will dispatch the boy. We care nothing for him and are already killers. We have nothing to lose.

It was obviously written on a computer and printed out on any one of a million generic laser printers that almost everyone had in their homes. The font was a san-serif, nondescript choice that could be found on everyone's computer. Arial or something like that. I turned the paper over. Nothing on the back. Twenty pound copier paper found in every printer in America.

"Why seventy-five thousand?" I asked.

Hog shook his head and said, "No idea."

"Would these people know how much money you have?" asked Nancy.

"I don't know how," answered Noylene. "They obviously know we have
some
."

"You have this much?" I said. "I mean, that you can get your hands on today?"

Noylene glanced over at Hog, then said, "Yeah. We can get it."

"It's buried in the backyard somewhere, isn't it?" I said.

"We ain't saying," said Hog.

"Somebody knows about it," said Nancy. "They know you. Think! Who did you tell?"

"We didn't tell anybody anything," Noylene growled. "Did we, Hog?"

"Not a word," said Hog. "You
know
we didn't."

"Yeah, I know," I said. Nancy nodded her agreement. They wouldn't have told a soul. It wasn't the mountain way. I was pretty sure that Noylene didn't even tell Hog everything. And Hog probably had a few financial secrets of his own.

"Let's look in the bedroom," I said.

"I looked when I got here," said Nancy and we walked down the narrow hall. "Nothing but a broken window."

Rahab's bedroom was behind the kitchen. It and a bathroom were the only rooms on this side of the trailer. It was a nice large room, with windows on two sides, one facing the driveway, one facing the backyard. It was carpeted in the same beige stuff that was in the living room, and the walls were painted a bright yellow. It was a toddler's room — lots of toys scattered around, a small bookshelf, and a set of wooden bunk beds. Rahab's bedding was unmade on the bottom bunk. A book was next to the pillow. The blue letters on the cover said
Baby's First Old Testament
. The top bunk was made and had a few stuffed animals on it.