Liturgical Mysteries 01 The Alto Wore Tweed (15 page)

“5:10?”

“Probably close to that,” she said. I decided that she actually was trying to remember. Her story wasn’t quite tight enough to have been rehearsed.

“Willie came into the sacristy through the alley door. I guess he’d come from the kitchen. He walked over to the phone, looked up a number in the phone book and dialed. He said something about wine being missing and fixing a lock, but he didn’t talk very long, and I didn’t hear everything he said.”

“Did he have anything with him?”

“A bottle of communion wine. One of the big ones. I thought he was swiping it, but I didn’t want to say anything. There might have been another explanation, and I didn’t want to get him in trouble.”

“Did he leave after the phone call?” I asked.

She bit her lower lip again. “He did something very weird,” she said. I nodded at her to continue.

“He went over to the closet where the priest and the communion servers keep their vestments.”

“That closet’s kept locked, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is, but Willie had a key. He opened the closet door, slid the robes around for a second and pulled out a cross. It looked like Mother Ryan’s cross. You know, the one made of olive wood that she got in the Holy Land.”

I remembered the cross. Herself had made quite a big deal out of consecrating it during a Sunday morning service when she brought it back from her pilgrimage. It also occurred to me that she hadn’t worn it since Willie was killed.

“Then what?”

She hesitated. “He...um....”

“What happened, Bev?” I asked her sternly, my patience starting to wear.

“He kissed the cross and put it in his pocket. He didn’t see me,” she said quickly and softly.

“He kissed it?” I asked. “How did he kiss it?”

“Well, you know,” she added, now embarrassed. “He held it up sort of in front of his lips and he kissed it.” She paused. “It was a long kiss. He closed his eyes.”

“A long kiss?”

“I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but it was creepy.” Her eyes went to the floor. “And that wasn’t the first time he’d taken it.”

I waited for her to explain.

“He’d taken it before. Mother Ryan caught him at least once putting the cross in his pocket. And a couple of times it was missing, but then showed up a few days later. I don’t know why she didn’t just give it to him.”

“OK, then what happened?”

She looked up again. “He locked the closet door back and went out the sacristy door into the church.”

“Did he take the wine with him?”

“Yeah. He took it. I forgot.”

“Beverly, why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I persisted.

“If I
do
tell you, will you promise not to arrest me?” She looked into my eyes and I could tell she was quite serious.

“I can’t promise you that,” I said. “But I will try to talk the judge into a minimum sentence. Just tell me the problem and we’ll work it out.”

Her shoulders tensed as she readied her confession. “I was called for jury duty that morning in Boone, but I told them that I had made a doctor’s appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester six months ago that I couldn’t reschedule. So they let me off.”

My laugh could have been heard in the jury room.

“It’s not funny!” she exclaimed. “They’ll throw me in jail. You can’t just skip jury duty.”

“Did you write the note I found on the organ?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“What note?”

.

• • •

After I got back to the office, I phoned Kent Murphee at the coroner’s office.

“Hi, Kent, this is Hayden Konig.”

“Hayden! How’re you doing?”

“I’m just fine. Listen, I’ve got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“You remember Willie Boyd?”

“The oleander poisoning? Sure, I remember.”

“Did he have anything in his pockets when he was brought in?”

“I don’t remember. Hang on a sec.”

I heard the rustling of papers and hoped that Dr. Murphee was a little more organized in his professional life than I was.

“Got it,” he said, coming back on the phone. “Let’s see...here it is. A bottle cap from a Red Dog beer, a ring of keys, a wallet with various business cards, three dollars, a library card and his driver’s license, forty-three cents in change and a wooden cross on a chain.”

“No kidding? A library card?” I was surprised. “What happened to all that stuff?”

“We sent it back with Mr. Boyd.”

“To the funeral home?”

“Yeah. No one claimed it.”

“Thanks, Kent. You have a fine day. Oh, and if I don’t see you again before the Yuletide season begins, have a Merry Christmas.”

“You do the same. Bye.”

My next call was to Swallow’s Mortuary in Boone, the outfit that had seen to Willie’s burial.

“Mr. Swallow, please.”

“Speaking,” came back a low, gravelly bass voice straight out of a Dickens novel.

“Mr. Swallow, this is Detective Konig from St. Germaine.”

“Yes sir, how may I help you?”

“You made the arrangements to have a Willie Boyd interred here in St. Germaine about six weeks ago.”

“I remember.”

“When he was sent over to the mortuary from the coroner’s office, were his effects sent with him?” I asked.

“That is usually the case.”

“I need to look at those personal effects.”

“Well,” said Mr. Swallow. “Let me check my records.” He must have had them close at hand because it wasn’t more than a few seconds before he was back on the phone.

“We sent Mr. Boyd’s effects to St. Barnabas Church in St. Germaine.”

“St. Barnabas?” I asked.

“The church was paying for the funeral and there was no next-of-kin. It seemed the prudent thing to do.”

“Thanks for your help, That should take care of it.”

“One more thing,” Mr. Swallow added before he hung up the phone. “He had a wooden cross.”

“Yes?”

“I placed it in his hands myself before we sealed the coffin. I thought it would be a comfort to him.”

• • •

I phoned Judge Adams in Boone and got a court order to open Willie’s coffin. We would dig Willie back up on Wednesday morning. I didn’t think he’d mind. Then I stopped by the church office.

“Marilyn?” I asked. “Did we get a package from Swallow’s with Willie Boyd’s belongings?”

“We got a package. I didn’t open it though.”

“Where’d you put it?”

“It’s in the kitchen pantry I think. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“That’s great. Thanks,” I said, heading out the door with the kitchen in sight.

I found the package in the kitchen pantry just where Marilyn said it would be. I opened it up and dumped Willie’s effects onto the counter. In front of me, on the stainless steel counter, was a bottle cap, Willie’s wallet and library card, some change and his ring of keys. I picked up the keys and looked at them carefully. Then I took them over to the wine closet and, not finding the old skeleton key on the ring, reached into my pocket and returned the missing closet key to Willie’s collection.

• • •

Later that afternoon I got a call from the bishop.

“Hello Hayden,” he said in a vacuous baritone. “This is Bishop Douglas.”

“Well, hello George. Good to talk to you.” It always irked him when I called him George, which is probably why I continued to do it.

“Listen Hayden, I’ll get right to the point. Loraine Ryan has called my office three times in the last two hours to complain that you won’t play the organ for her Women’s Conference. I want you to get over to St. Barnabas right now. Don’t give her any more trouble.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of services she’s planning?”

“It’s a conference for women in the ministry. I presume the services are from the prayerbook.”

“Well, George,” I explained gently, my ire rising. “These services are definitely
not
from the Book of Common Prayer. And not that I am accountable to the diocesan office, but sincwe are on a first-name basis, I will offer you this purview of my inexplicable actions. Firstly, I’m an employee of the church only for insurance purposes. I take no salary. My compensation is put back into the music department’s trust account which is managed by the music committee—not the church. That being said, I will play for whomever and whatever I want, and I would no sooner play the organ for those wacko services than I would give a recital of Christy Lane’s Greatest Hits. Now I suppose the church could replace me, but I doubt that they will.”

“Ah. Well, I didn’t understand the situation.”

“Yes. Well, now you do. Bye, George.”

“Hayden, just a min—” Click.

My, but that was satisfying.

• • •

I wanted to see Meg that evening and fill her in on the recent developments, but she was off to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville with her mother to view the Christmas festivities. So Monday night I was home alone with a couple of Cubans—
Romeo and Julietta
—some Blanchet’s Single Barrel Bourbon and J. S. Bach’s
Magnificat
and
Christmas Oratorio
. Three hours of Baroque bliss.

• • •

Tuesday morning found me at The Slab. I generally met Nancy and Dave for breakfast on Monday to have our departmental meeting and hit the highlights of the week ahead but Nancy had been under the weather and I had business to attend to. So it was Tuesday. On this glorious morning, Pete was acting as waiter, cook, cashier and host due to the flu bug that had laid low his help. Luckily for him, we were the only ones in the café.

“I hope it hasn’t been too busy,” I joked, as he brought the dishes to our table.

“It was a bit hectic around eight, but I just told Louise and Carlton they had to make their own breakfasts. They jumped right in.”

“And paid you for the privilege, I’ll bet.”

“Yep. And left a tip to boot,” Pete said, pulling up a chair. “Dave, get me some coffee, will you?”

Dave laughed and got up to bring the pot over to the table.

“You know,” I said. “If this is an
Official Meeting
...”

“I can’t afford any more of your
Official Meetings
,” Pete broke in. “Let’s just say I’m sitting in as an interested party—and as such, would there happen to be any developments in the Boyd case that I can pass on to the council? It’s still on the ‘old business’ portion of the agenda.”

“We were just going to talk about that,” said Nancy, attacking her pancakes with gusto. “It would be a shame to let these get cold though.”

“Good point,” I said, picking up my fork.

We polished off the major portion of our breakfasts in short order. Pete made another pot of coffee and I pulled out my list.

“OK, first on the agenda is the Boyd case.”

Dave was pouring his fourth cup of coffee. “It’s really the
only
thing on our agenda.”

“Not so,” I replied. “Don’t forget the Christmas parade and the Living Crèche on the eighteenth. We’ve got to get the street closed and hire a couple of guys from Boone to help us with the traffic.”

“I’ll take care of that,” said Nancy, twirling the last bit of pancake through the remaining maple syrup on her plate like an imaginary ice skater doing a triple toe loop before popping it into her mouth.

“I thought the Supreme Court decided that live manger scenes in public places were against the law,” Dave said. “Wasn’t it some sort of ACLU case?”

Pete broke in. “The
hell
with that! If we can’t have a goddamn manger scene, what’s the point of Christmas?”

“Elegantly and succinctly put,” I said, hiding a smile. “I presume that the Rotary Club is still in charge of the event.”

“I think this is the year that Kiwanis does the parade and Rotary does the crèche,” Pete said. “I’m pretty sure that last year Rotary did the parade.”

“Dave, will you check with Bob Solomon? He’s the president of the Rotary. Who’s in charge of Kiwanis?”

“Marta Jenkins,” Pete said.

“And check with Marta about the parade,” I said to Dave who was diligently taking notes. “They should have everything all planned out, but we’ll still have to touch base with them. We need to know starting times, who’s in charge, their contact people...anything else?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. I’ll check on everything,” Dave said. “If something else comes up, I’ll let you know.”

“Now,” I said, pulling my tattered list from my pocket. “Let’s see where we are. You understand, Pete, that this is all highly confidential.”