The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries) (9 page)

Bev asked, "And what's the new network called?"

"HHN. The Home and Handgun Network. It's based out of South Carolina. I was down in Columbia all day yesterday talking with the executives. I didn't get home 'til close to midnight."

"Sounds like a winner," I said. "And this time you'll be more ... circumspect?"

Mr. Christopher glowered at me. "I know
exactly
who was responsible for the last unfortunate incident. Religious bigotry will not be tolerated."

"Ooo," said Meg, who loved gossip as much as she loved unpronounceable lunch. "Do tell? Was it Raoul?"

"Let's just say that he'll be helping me this time around. He'll be on 'Team Christopher.'"

"Excellent," I said. "Will you be pitching your show,
Fourteen Layers of Chintz
?"

"
Fourteen Layers of Style
," corrected Mr. Christopher. "A variant. I've gotten it down to nine layers. The problem is that this new network wants shows already in the can.
And
they want their stars to be partners in the network. It's a significant investment." He looked positively glutinous with self-approbation. "Not a problem. I'm going to form a production company, buy my way in, and do the shows myself. Muffy and Varmit have volunteered some space, so I'm setting up a studio out at Blueridge Furs. There's a warehouse they're not using. After this play, I'm taking all the sets out to the farm and repurposing them for the studio. That's why they have to be good."

"If anyone can do it," said Bev, "you can."

Mr. Christopher eyed me with that look that I've come to dread. "Hey, Chief, you don't want to invest, do you? I can offer you a twelve percent share,
and
I'll come to your house and do a complete redesign for free. Only seventy-five grand."

"Alas," I said, "if you'd just offered me that deal a half hour ago, I'd have taken you up on it. But now, I'm the wealthy patron of a nonprofit financial advisement company for low income investors."

"Alas, indeed," said Mr. Christopher. "I'm charging you double for that egg sandwich."

Chapter 9

"He certainly was killed," said Kent Murphee. "No doubt about it."

Dr. Kent Murphee was the Watauga County Medical Examiner and Coroner. He was in his late fifties, although he looked quite a bit older, due to his dress (the same tweed jacket and vest he'd worn every day for the twenty years that I'd known him) and his penchant for starting his drinking as early as eight in the morning. Not today, though. Today he was sucking on his briar pipe and studying his victim carefully.

I looked at the naked body stretched out on the examiner's table.

"Of course, it probably wasn't first-degree murder," he said. "Manslaughter, maybe. He wasn't
intended
to be killed."

"Is he a midget or something?" I asked. "He's tiny. Look at those hands. Like a child's, really."

"No signs of dwarfism," said Kent, blowing some smoke out between his clenched teeth, "although I'd have to do some tests to find out for sure. Since the affliction has to do with a genetic mutation of the fourth chromosome, and there's no real evidence, technically he's just a very small person. He's right at four feet ten inches tall. That's generally considered the cutoff. He's just, well, small."

"What's he weigh?" I asked.

"One hundred four pounds."

The hair of the victim was wet, obviously rinsed by Kent, and was spread out on the table in a fan behind his head. The lights on the office were unsympathetic fluorescent bulbs, and it was the first time I had a really good look at the dead man. We were right about him being a Native American. Everything about his countenance bespoke the characteristic look of the Native American. He had black, shiny hair, and olive skin with a slightly yellow undertone. His cheek bones were prominent, giving him a wide-looking face, and he had very broad, straight teeth. There was a fold of skin by the bridge of the nose that gave him the appearance of having small, narrow eyes as well as a flatter nose bridge. He was well muscled and had very little body hair.

"Time of death?" I asked.

"He arrived here at 10:30. I'd say he'd been dead for twenty hours, give or take a couple. Let's say between noon and four, yesterday."

"That's a pretty wide margin," I said.

"Hey! This ain't
CSI Miami
. He was sitting outside all night. Cool temperatures, lividity, blah, blah, blah."

"Okay," I said, "tell me about the cause of death."

Kent took the pipe out of his mouth and dropped it into the breast pocket of his jacket, something I'd seen him do so often that I didn't comment on it anymore. The pipe would continue to smoke in his pocket for a few minutes, then it would go out of its own accord. His jacket never seemed to catch fire.

"He died of a heart attack," Kent said.

"Really? You know that? You haven't even cut him open yet."

"Don't need to," said Kent. "I checked his blood. The enzymes were off the chart. Heart attack."

"You know what caused it, I assume."

"I can't know for sure, but I can make a good guess."

"Well?"

"Look here," said Kent, pulling a pen out of his pocket and tapping between the man's eyes. All of a sudden it occurred to me that if Kent had washed the body, why was there still an ashen cross smudged on his forehead?

"The cross. It's not ashes, is it?"

"No, it's not," said Kent, "although I can see why you might have thought so. With the coloring of the man's skin, it might be an easy mistake to make. No, they're burn marks. I'm pretty sure they're from a taser."

"I've never seen a taser leave marks like that," I said. "Usually it's two burn marks about an inch apart."

"Yep. But I looked this up on the internet. An amazing thing, the internet. Did you know that you can find almost any information you want?"

"Yes, yes," I said impatiently. "So this taser ..."

"It's made in Germany," Kent continued, "and it's much more effective than the older models, recharges faster, and gives a bigger jolt. It also leaves this particular kind of a mark because the electrodes are connected with a tungsten wire rather than needing two independent points of impact."

"And you think that this caused a heart attack?"

"I think it
probably
did. Like I said, I can never tell you for sure. But what I do know is that he got a jolt, and then he had a heart attack, and then he died. I suppose he could have had the heart attack first, then someone tried to restart his heart by tasing him on the forehead." Kent looked thoughtful, then said, "No, I don't think so. You might tase him in the chest to restart his heart. But not on the forehead."

"Why would anyone tase him in the forehead in the first place?" I asked.

"Well, think about it for a minute," said Kent. "If I stick out my hand with a taser and you're only four feet ten inches tall, where is it going to hit you?"

"Good point," I said. "Did you take fingerprints?"

"In the file," said Kent.

* * *

I filled Nancy and Dave in on Kent Murphee's findings. "Let's run the prints," I said. "We don't need to advertise all of it. Not just yet. Everyone knows by now that we found a body, but he died of a heart attack. That's our story and we're sticking to it."

Chapter 10

Five o'clock comes early and so does death; this is the motto of the alcoholic mystery writer. Friends?
Sure I had friends. Gerunds were my friends. Reciprocal
pronouns were my friends. I could conjugate verbs in seven tenses and dangle a participle like Kurt Vonnegut might dangle a wiener in front of his beloved Welsh Corgi, Sprinkles, until he lost that pinkie finger. I sent my metaphors Christmas cards,
I called my analogies on Mother's Day, but my similes
...
my similes I took dancing, bought flowers, and sent to community college, which is a real college, no matter what your Uncle Ollie says; besides, he's not even really your uncle, just some guy who moved in with your grandma. I slugged down a shot of rye and considered the matter.

This sheila's story stank like a walrus in a school bus, which was a timely analogy because Pastor Hank Langknecht, my Lutheran friend and confidant, had just told me he'd seen one, but Hank was prone to take a nip or two early in the day and what he'd probably seen was just a smelly kid with a glandular problem.

Suddenly a pigeon smacked into the window, a shot rang out, and Carrie Oakey jumped out of her chair like she was shot, which she was, a fact that made this particular simile all the more bittersweet, like chocolate. I smiled. That was it. This simile was chocolate, which actually made "simile" a metaphor, a "simiphore" if you will, but that sent up a red flag, so it was more like a conundrum. The pigeon was lagniappe.

"Ahhh
..." Carrie cried whimperously. Then cried again, one "h" longer, "Ahhhh
..."

"Hang on," I said. "I'm figuring out this grammar thing."

* * *

"I heard that you're writing us a new service music setting," said Martha Hatteberg, one of the altos. She was sitting in her usual place on the back row — one of the Back Row Altos, or BRAs, as they preferred to be known.

"I heard that there was a dead body behind Noylene's," said Rebecca Watts.

"I heard that Bev got fired," said Phil Camp. Bev walked in right behind him but didn't say anything.

"It's been a busy day," I said.

Our Ash Wednesday service had gone according to plan, and the choir had sung an anthem by William Bradley Roberts,
Prayer of John Donne
. I was planning on this anthem doing double duty and using it again on the Fourth Sunday of Lent a few weeks from now. It wasn't easy, but we'd been practicing it for a few weeks now. Rosemary gave a brief homily, and we all received the imposition of ashes. Kimberly Walnut couldn't find the ashes from the year before — it was our tradition to save a few palm branches from the previous year's Palm Sunday, burn them, and use the ashes for the Ash Wednesday service — so she manufactured some from somewhere. I didn't ask where. I just hoped she hadn't called the funeral home. Now, with the Ash Wednesday congregants dispersing, the choir members who had just been ashed were making their way back up to the loft.

"There was a man who died of a heart attack in the alley behind Noylene's," I explained. "We don't know who it was yet because he had no identification."

"I heard that he was a leprechaun," said Marjorie.

"He was a Native American," I said, then turned to Martha. "And I am composing a new setting of the mass. How did you hear about it?"

"I heard from Joyce. She seemed a little alarmed."

"Alarmed at what?" said Tiff St. James, coming into the loft and not wanting to be left out of the conversation. "The dead guy?" Behind her, following like a baby duck, was Dr. Ian Burch, PhD. They both had the smudges of repentance on their foreheads.

Tiff had been our alto section leader during the years she'd been a voice major at Appalachian State. She'd received a small stipend and a scholarship — well worth it, in my opinion. She had a beautiful voice and was a great sight reader. After she graduated, Tiff took a job in Boone teaching music in one of the elementary schools, but she still came over to St. Barnabas to sing with us. She was a looker — thin, but quite beautiful — with dark hair and a model's eyes and cheekbones.

Dr. Ian Burch, PhD, fell to the other end of the "attractiveness" spectrum. Some might blame his small, flat head, his long, Ichabod Crane nose, his beady eyes, or maybe his ears that stuck out like two open doors on a VW beetle. In my opinion, it wasn't any one of these, but the effect of the whole. Added to this was a personality that gave the word "irritating" a whole new meaning. This personality was the product of an incredibly high self-esteem, a PhD in musicology, and an intimate relationship with the music of Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474) that he would be happy to share with anyone who made eye contact with him. He'd been smitten with Tiff St. James for a year and a half, and, although he had no contact with her during the week, Ian was happy to bask in her presence during choir rehearsals and Sunday services. Tiff got used to it and now shrugged it off, hardly even seeming to notice him. Dr. Burch owned and operated an early music emporium in St. Germaine called The Appalachian Music Shoppe, specializing in Medieval and Renaissance instrument reproductions — shawms, hurdy-gurdys, sackbuts, flatulenzas, and the like. Most of his business was conducted on the internet, and he made a good living.

Dr. Ian Burch, PhD, took off his cape and draped it over his chair, then sat down in the alto section, his cross-sectional casting due to his freakishly high countertenor voice, and patted the seat next to him so Tiff would know where she was supposed to sit. She looked heavenward, sighed and sat down.

"What was Joyce alarmed at?" asked Tiff again. The rest of the choir was pouring into the loft.

"I think she's a little scared that Hayden has been asked to compose our service music for Lent," said Martha.

"Oh, no!" said Sheila DeMoss. "Who asked him?" She took a seat next to Tiff.

"Mother P asked him," said Elaine Hixon. "I was there. I heard it."

"Didn't anyone tell her?" asked Steve DeMoss, Sheila's husband, and a bass.

"Hey!" I said. "I think I'm offended."

Mark Wells ticked off a list on his fingers. "
The Mouldy Cheese Madrigal, We Three Queens, the Pirate Eucharist
..."

"
The Weasel Cantata
," added Bert Coley with a laugh. "
Crown Him You Many Clowns, The Banjo Kyrie
...
" Bert had been another of the ASU music students who had stuck around after graduation. He was currently a police officer in Boone.

"Don't forget
Elisha and the Two Bears
, the unknown Purcell masterpiece," said Bob Solomon. "My personal favorite."

Rhiza Walker chimed in. "
We All like Sheep
, the alternate aria from Handel's
Messiah
, found at the bottom of a chamberpot." She'd just come in and had skipped the imposition of ashes, judging from her clear complexion. Rhiza was a friend from way back. It was she and Pete who were responsible for my coming to St. Germaine as police chief. Rhiza was a soprano and a darn good one. She sat down next to Muffy LeMieux, joining Meg, Elaine, Georgia, and Bev. The only empty seat in the soprano section was Goldi Fawn Birtwhistle's.

"I don't know that one," said Martha. "Is it good?"

"No, it's baaaad," said Rhiza. "A lot of cadenzas on the word 'baa.' He wrote it for me specially, many years ago."

"How about that hymn you wrote for Brother Hog's Service of Re-Virgination?" said Meg. "Only you could rhyme 'liturging' with 're-virging.'"

I sighed.

"
The Living Gobbler
!" said Marjorie.

"Okay, okay, I get it," I said. "But I've also written a few nice things."

The choir loft was full. We had a good deal of room, but twenty-some-odd folks filled it up.

Joining Burt and Marjorie in the tenor section was Randy Hatteberg. Varmit, Fred May, and Phil Camp filled out the basses. Usually we had a few no-shows. This evening, only Goldi Fawn.

"Okay, let's get started," I said, and played a big chord on the organ to quiet everyone down. "We need to work on the offertory anthems, communion anthems, and the Psalms through Palm Sunday."

"How about the
Great Litany in Procession
?" asked Phil. "This is the First Sunday of Lent, right?"

The
Great Litany in Procession
was a tradition at St. Barnabas that usually happened either on the First Sunday of Advent or the First Sunday of Lent, and we'd skipped it in December. But fifteen minutes of chanting prayers while processing through the church behind a billowing incense pot didn't have many fans.

"I have a note here on the organ from the rector saying we won't be doing it this year."

"Praise the Lord!" said Marjorie. "Finally, a voice of reason."

"Hang on," said Elaine. "Back to the mass you're writing. If we're supposed to sing this new thing Sunday, shouldn't we be looking at a copy tonight?"

"It's not quite finished," I admitted. "Never fear. It will be easy enough. Rosemary wants the mass based on a well-known tune that the congregation will be able to pick up quickly."

The choir groaned.

"Now, now," I said. "I'll have it Sunday morning and we'll go over it before the service. It's no problem."

Dr. Ian Burch stood up. "Are you planning a parody mass or a
cantus firmus
mass?"

"An interesting question," I said. "Probably neither, as you know them. It'll be a tune that we all know with some sort of paraphrase of the texts. All the texts except the
Sanctus,
that is. The
Sanctus
has to contain the exact words, in either the Rite 1 or Rite 2 versions."

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

"Ah, a
cyclic mass
then, or some variant," said Ian Burch PhD. "The cyclic mass is a setting in which each of the movements shared a common musical theme, thus making it a unified whole. The cyclic mass was the first multi-movement form in western music to be subject to a single organizing principle. The period of composition of cyclic masses was from about 1430 until around 1600, although some composers, especially in conservative musical centers, wrote them after that date. In the first half of the sixteenth century this style was the dominant form. Then the Council of Trent, in a document dated September 10, 1562, banned the use of secular material stating 'Banish from church all music which contains the profane, whether in the singing or the organ playing, things that are lascivious or impure.'"

He paused a moment and leered at Tiff, followed by, "However, the reforms were most carefully followed only in Italy. In France, tastes had already changed, and, in Germany, the edict was ignored."

Ian sat down, placed his hands in his lap, and looked around the choir with a huge grin on his face.

"Thank you, Dr. Burp," muttered Tiff.

"Burch," corrected an oblivious Ian. "Dr.
Burch.
"

"You better watch out for the Council of Trent," said Mark Wells. "I hear those guys are tough."

"I have an announcement," Muffy chirped.

My shoulders slumped. "Yes?"

"As many of you know, the Little Theater is putting on their spring production and we open a week from Friday. The play is
Welcome to Mitford
. I have plenty of tickets for all y'all here in my purse. They're fifteen dollars apiece."

"Tell 'em about Sunday!" said Varmit.

Muffy managed, to her credit, to look a little embarrassed.

"Go ahead!" insisted Varmit. "Tell 'em."

"Yes," said Bev, just a tad too brightly. "Tell us."

"Okay, I will," said Muffy excitedly, starting to wriggle like a puppy. "Mother P asked me to sing a solo during communion this Sunday. She wants me to sing
On Eagle's Wings
. It's based on Psalm 91, the Psalm for the First Sunday in Lent. It's my favorite! I'm adding a verse about coming to the Living Water. Mother P says it ties in with her sermon."

I watched Meg's eyes go wide, then I looked at Muffy and said, "Do you have some music for me?"

"Don't worry about that," crowed Varmit, having waited for Muffy's chance at solo stardom for five long years. "She's singing with an accompaniment track. Muffy's gonna have the whole Nashville symphony backing her up!"