The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries) (17 page)

"Amen," answered the congregation.

The choir sang the new
Kyrie
to stunned silence.

"Now, will the children please come forward for the Children's Moment?" said Mother P, smiling happily.

Children's Moments had never gone particularly well at St. Barnabas. In fact, we'd done away with them, sending the kids out to their own service in the chapel during the second hymn and having them return in time for communion. This seemed to work well for our previous rector and had been Mother P's practice during her first few months in residence. Now it seemed that Kimberly Walnut, an outspoken proponent of the Children's Moment, had persuaded the rector to give it a go once again.

Ten or so preschool and kindergarten children wandered haplessly up to the front of the church and stood in front of Mother P. When Moosey and Bernadette and their crew were young enough to take part in the Children's Moment, every Sunday was a new exercise in terror for the priest and an opportunity for hilarity across the congregation. Now that those kids had graduated to the upper grades, and not having had a "Children's Moment" for a number of years, we didn't know what to expect. Still, the congregation was hopeful, and all leaned forward in their seats, vying for a good view of the festivities.

"How many of you know what this is?" said Mother P, pointing at the giant bird on the altar.

"Well, duh!" said a towheaded kid whom I recognized as Charlie Whitman. I knew his mother and father quite well. "It's a squirrel, of course."

At this the other kids giggled, and the congregation sat back in their pews, content in the knowledge that this was only going to get better.

"No," said Mother P, "I mean the eagle."

"An eagle got my kitty, I think," said a little preschool girl whom I didn't know. She was dressed in a light-pink pinafore over a white dress with loads of ruffles. "That's what Daddy said."

"Yes, well, eagles are large birds, and they sometimes do catch ... um ... smaller animals ... er ... for sustenance."

"To
eat
them?" asked the little girl in horror.

"Of course to eat them!" said Charlie, pointing at the eagle. The raptor's white-tipped wings spread across the entire width of the altar. Its white head was horrifying, and its eyes and beak bespoke metaphoric death to anything that might fall into the grasp of its fearsome talons, from America's most powerful enemies to rodents with dental issues.

"Look at that squirrel!" Charlie continued. "That eagle's not takin' him to a picnic, y'know!" The little girl started to whimper.

"Wait," said Mother P, trying to salvage her story. "God is like an eagle. He'll carry you up ... "

"Like
that?
" interrupted another little boy, pointing at the taxidermied rodent, its terror so vividly and excellently interpreted by Bear Niederman: eyes wide, lips peeled back in a horrific grimace. "
No, thanks!
"

"Daddy says that my kitty went to heaven," sniffed the little girl. "Will I see her when I get to heaven?"

"Yeah," said another, younger boy. "What about my dead gerbil? Will I get to see my gerbil? It wasn't an eagle that got him, though. Mom said it was parasites."

"Well, we don't believe that animals go to heaven," said Mother P, now looking around but unable to escape. "Heaven is just for people." This was a theological can of worms that she didn't want to open, not during the Children's Moment. "But let's get back to the eagle ... "

"So my kitty's not in heaven?" sobbed the girl. "Daddy told me the eagle took her to heaven."

"Just like God'll do," said Charlie, nodding grimly. "He'll swoop down and snatch you up when you least expect it."

Mother P glared at Charlie, then turned back to the girl. "No, sweetie, your kitty's not in heaven. And God won't take
you
to heaven either." She looked confused for a moment. "No, wait," she said. "He will, someday. What I mean is ..."

"If that cat's not in heaven, then it's in hell, right?" said Charlie, coming to the obvious conclusion and willing to pin down the rector on the unshakable tenets of her faith. He spun on his heel, pointed at the younger boy and yelled, "Along with your stupid gerbil!"

"My gerbil is
not
in hell!" yelled the boy. "You take that back!" He lunged across the carpeted aisle at Charlie, his fists clenched and murder in his eyes. The other boys chose sides in a heartbeat and didn't hesitate to leap into the fray in support of their comrades. By the looks of it, this was a long-standing feud between the two boys and any excuse to renew their animosity would be acted upon.

"Waaaahhh!" cried the kitten girl, and the other three girls in the group loudly joined her in loud pangs of sympathetic grief for the poor cat, forever doomed to scratch in the flaming litter-box of eternal damnation. "Waaaahhh!"

As soon as Mother P had pronounced that all pets would, in fact,
not
be going to heaven, a couple of mothers had begun moving unobtrusively to the front of the church via the side aisles, sensing that this Children's Moment, like so many others, was not going to end well. Now, with Mother P frozen in disbelief at the sobs and at the brawl in front of her, the two parents waded into the mob and separated the warring youngsters. Julie Whitman, Charlie's mother, grabbed Charlie and the other boy both by an ear, pulled them apart, and marched them down the center aisle to the youngsters' squealing protests.

"You just wait until I get you home, Charlie Whitman!" she hissed. "And you, too, Howard! Your mother is going to hear about this!"

The girls and the other combatants were corralled, pacified, and herded out the side door into the choir robing area, finally heading, we presumed, back to their classrooms. Mother P stood at the top of the chancel steps. She raised her arms in a sort of pathetic gesture and muttered, "God is like this eagle."

"Nice!" said Bev, crossing her arms and giving herself a little hug.

* * *

It was during communion that the unspeakable happened. Muffy had disappeared from the choir loft during the Prayers of the People to ready herself for her Special Music.
On Eagle's Wings
, written by Michael Jonas, had been around since the 70s. It is now considered a "standard" in most Praise and Worship services. Muffy and Varmit had no trouble in procuring the accompaniment track recorded in the correct key by the Nashville Philharmonic Digital Orchestra and backed up by the Holy Faith Word of God Tabernacle Choir.

The communion elements, the bread and wine, had been placed in front of the eagle — the only place for them, really — and this meant that Mother P had to do her celebrating in front of the altar with her back to the congregation, rather than vice-versa. It wasn't difficult to hear her — she had a loud and authoritative voice and the flat mic on the altar had been turned around to accommodate her — but it was a bit disconcerting nevertheless and reminiscent of the old pre-Vatican II days. The choir sang the
PWD Sanctus
at the appropriate spot and headed down to take communion. I stayed up in the choir loft, noodling around on the hymn tune
Aberystwyth
, planning to play until Muffy was ready to begin her tribute. I did notice that neither the children nor Kimberly Walnut had come back in for communion. As the choir came back up the side aisles toward the loft, Muffy stepped up beside the eagle, took the microphone from where it had been hidden under the tail feathers, draped the black cord artistically around her other hand and waited for the music to begin.

It was a sound that hadn't been heard in St. Barnabas for twenty years, at least as far as I knew. We didn't sing with taped music, and we didn't sing with microphones. The rector and the lay readers did use mics and they were placed where they'd do the most good: on the two lecterns and on the altar. We'd had a clip-on mic for the priest at one point, but it went horribly wrong in a bathroom incident when the priest forgot to turn it off. Since then, and because St. Barnabas is fairly small and acoustically well designed, the stationary mics have been more than adequate. Our architect, however, did allow for the fact that we might want other mics on occasion, and so jacks had been placed in auspicious points in the chancel. Varmit had plugged Muffy's mic cord into one of these. She clicked the microphone on with an audible pop that echoed through the building as the music swelled. The speakers that had been put in the church were first rate. The amplification was state-of-the-art. Unfortunately, the orchestra was a bad imitation done with computer generated sounds, and the excellent sound system did nothing to disguise that fact.

The performance was something that Muffy had obviously rehearsed. It was staged as well as any country music video choreographer could have done. Muffy waited for the introduction, then sang the opening verse, all her choral training thrown to the wind, her Loretta Lynn twang echoing forth in all its rural splendor.

She closed her eyes in prayer, both hands clasping the microphone in front of her, then she opened her eyes and moved slowly down left, away from the altar and toward the baptismal font.

And he will raise you up on eagle's wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn
...

Mother P's sermon did have something about Living Water in it. I wasn't sure of her point or what it had to do with the eagle and the squirrel, but it was my Lenten Discipline to give her the benefit of the doubt. Besides, she had more than enough explaining to do to the vestry after this service was over. It didn't occur to me that anything was amiss as Muffy went over to the font and began another verse, the one that she'd written to go with the sermon.

For to his people he's given a command

to walk in his footsteps always:

Come to the Living Water,

Come and be restored.

She closed her eyes again, this time holding the mic in her right hand and reaching into the font with the other.

And he will raise you up on eagle's wings,

She dipped into the water and raised a handful of liquid grace shoulder high, letting it spill dramatically from her fingers back into the font. She reached down into the pool again.

Bear you on the breath of dawn
...

That's as far as she got. There was a loud, horrible buzzing sound followed by a loud
bang
, a bright flash that silhouetted Muffy for a split second, and then the lights in the sanctuary went dark. Although there was daylight coming in through the stained glass, the sudden change in the ambient light inside the church made it difficult to see. The emergency lights popped on a second later and the fire alarm started buzzing loudly. Some smoke was visible in the front of the church, by the chancel steps.

"Everyone outside!" shouted Fred from the balcony. "Don't push. Leave by the nearest exit."

I was already down the stairs and racing for the baptismal font.

Chapter 19

Muffy was dead.

Kent, the coroner, put the cause of death as electrocution. I contacted my electrical contractor that Sunday afternoon and had him come and look at equipment. Terry Shager had been doing electrical work all his life. He'd lost all his left toes and the hair on the left side of his head to a high voltage accident a decade ago, but he was the best electrician in town. Terry came in the front door of St. Barnabas wearing his faded blue bib overalls and a button-down, long-sleeved white shirt with a yellow tie. He listed slightly to the left as he marched down the aisle in his heavy, rubber-soled work boots. His gray hair was cut short on the right side of his head and he was still hopeful, after these ten long years, that the missing hair might grow back on the left. In anticipation of this, and under Noylene's supervision, he rubbed his scalp every night with a healthy dose of Italian vinaigrette salad dressing. His blue eyes twinkled and he was usually smiling, although his walrus mustache hung down past his lower lip so sometimes it was tough to tell.

"Hayden," he said as he limped in. "How you doin'?"

"I'm okay, Terry. Did you hear what happened this morning?"

"Sure did. Sorry about Muffy. I worked for her and Varmit over at the fur farm when they were setting up."

"Yeah," I said. "Terrible thing. Could you take a look? Be careful, though."

"I'm always careful," Terry said, "these days. Only a year 'til retirement, and I need all the hair I've got left. There's this woman I'm thinking about asking out. Stacey."

"Stacey down at the Ag Center?"

"Nah. Stacey down at St. Germaine Federal Bank." He got a sly look in his eye. "Gives me a lollipop every time I come in."

I nodded. "I know Stacey. Redhead, right? Want me to put in a good word for you?"

Terry's shoulders shook with an embarrassed chuckle. "Well, okay. If you wouldn't mind." He looked around the church and said, "So what's the deal?"

I pointed toward the baptismal font. "Muffy was singing into the microphone, then dipped her hand in the water and that was it." I thought for a moment. "She didn't get the jolt until she dipped her hand into the water the
second
time."

"I'll find out what happened," promised Terry. "Gimme a half-hour or so."

He was as good as his word. Terry's verdict was that the wiring in the amp was improperly done: one extraneous wire that should have been grounded, providing an energized connection to the mic cable shielding, and since we hadn't ever used the amp with a corded microphone, no one had any idea of the problem. Because the outer casing of the mic was hard plastic, it was the metal on/off switch that got all the juice. When Muffy reached into the font the second time, her thumb came in contact with the switch and the electrical circuit was complete. It was a terrible accident. The amp hadn't been plugged into a GFCI plug — a ground fault circuit interrupter — because the electrician hadn't seen the need to install one. Not his fault, said Terry. The outlet was nowhere near any water and the building code didn't require one.

"Any chance of foul play?" I asked him.

"Sure," replied Terry thoughtfully. "Always a chance." He showed me the offending ungrounded wire. It didn't mean anything to me.

"Lookee here. If someone moved this ground from this here screw over to this one, that'd do it."

"Does it look tampered with?" I said.

He squinted hard at the components in front of him. "Nah," he said. "I don't guess so."

After Muffy's accident, Varmit was beside himself. He'd made it to the baptismal font before I had, knowing something had gone horribly wrong when the amp had shorted out. The flash that we'd all seen in the sanctuary had been duplicated at the sound system console in the sacristy where Varmit had been monitoring Muffy's performance. He burst through the side door, saw the lovely Muffy laid out in her lavender angora sweater and gray stretch pants, and almost leapt upon her. She looked utterly beatific in repose, the one exception being her carefully-coiffed hairdo that had become unstrung and was standing on end like a bright-red version of Buckwheat's bouffant in the
Little Rascals
. The only reason that Varmit hadn't leapt upon her is because I arrived at the scene a half-second later and yanked him back, then performed CPR on Muffy for the next ten minutes until the ambulance arrived. I had been hoping that someone, anyone, had called 911, since I didn't take the time to do so. I needn't have worried. Forty people reported the incident.

The CPR was a vain hope and I knew it about three minutes in. There was no pulse, no breath. I kept it up for Varmit's sake and let the EMTs carry her out with an oxygen mask over her mouth. They took her to the hospital to have her pronounced. Varmit rode along in the back, holding Muffy's hand, the picture of a grieving husband.

The two Indians had watched in stony silence from the middle of the park as Muffy was loaded into the ambulance and her husband climbed in beside her. If Varmit noticed them, he gave no indication. They watched the ambulance drive off, then stared at me for a long moment, turned and walked off in the direction of the courthouse.