Mark Schweizer - Liturgical 12 - The Cantor Wore Crinolines (13 page)

Chapter 16

The Bear and Brew was the meeting place of choice for the Blue Hill Bookworms. I had presumed that, considering their highfaluting pedigree, they’d be tasting watercress mini-sandwiches and drinking tea — pinkie fingers extended — at the Ginger Cat. They weren’t. When I found them, they were gathered around a table with a large
Panda Spinacis
pizza in the center — mozzarella, spinach, and shiitake mushrooms. The concession to the lack of ambiance in the Bear and Brew was their choice to drink champagne rather than order one of the brews on tap. In reality, the Bear and Brew had plenty of ambiance, just of a different sort. Where the Ginger Cat was an upscale eatery serving pretentious, bite-sized portions of things like Oysters Gerard with carrot mousse. The Bear and Brew, on the other hand, was modeled after an old feed store and served gigantic pizzas, a few other Italian dishes, and twenty-seven beers on tap.

“Champagne?” I said as I walked up to the table. “Why champagne?”

“We always have champagne,” said Diana. “It a Bookworm tradition. We bring it ourselves if the restaurant doesn’t have any.”

“We used to go to the Ginger Cat,” said Sara Black, but Annie decided to charge us a fifteen dollar “corking” fee, and that was the end of that.”

“Too bad, too,” said Catherine Duncan. “I really liked the carrot mousse.”

“No one likes carrot mousse,” said a woman I recognized, but couldn’t put a name to. She introduced herself. “I’m Rachel Barstow, Hayden. Nice to see you again.”

I took the hand she extended and shook it. “Nice to see you again, too. All of you.”

I’m Annabel Stratton,” said the curly haired blonde woman to Rachel’s right, and the other women I didn’t really know introduced themselves as well: Alison Jaeger, Sarah Aspinal, and Stephanie Bilton. Eight total.

“Stephanie,” I said, shaking her hand. “You’re the personal assistant, right?”

“Used to be,” she said with a shrug. “There’s not much call for it anymore. Now I’m working for an insurance agent.”

“We’re all here,” said Diana. “Except for the newest member. She won’t be invested until our meeting in May.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Oh, we can’t reveal that,” said Diana. “It very hush-hush.”

“Top secret,” said Stephanie.

“We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you,” joked Rachel, then put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God! I didn’t mean that. We’d never kill anyone!”

“You did tell Ruby Farthing that she was’t getting in, though.”

“Sure,” said Stephanie. “We had to tell the ones that
aren’t
getting in. That’s only polite.”

The waitress showed up at the table, took my drink order and went to get my pint of Thunderstruck Coffee Porter, a seasonal brew that I’d never tried. The ladies were attacking the pizza and I, with expert maneuvering, managed to get a slice without losing any digits.”

“It’s no wonder you all eat like you’re starved,” I said, counting my fingers. “It’s probably that miniature food you eat at the Ginger Cat. Man does not live by carrot mousse.”

“It’s true,” said Sarah Aspinall. “We should really come over here for our meetings.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Alison. “This isn’t an
official
function. We could never be seen having our meetings here. Maybe at Virginia’s Tea House, but not in a beer and pizza joint.”

“I agree with Alison,” said Annabel. “We do have a reputation to maintain.”

“Which is why I’m surprised that you’re reading a third-rate murder mystery,” I said. “A cozy, no less.”

All the women except Diana blanched.

Stephanie leaned across the table and whispered, “Who told you that?”

Diana caught my eye and gave me a panicked look.

Rachel said, also in a hushed tone, “We are
not
reading any such thing!” Alison agreed by shaking her head.

My beer arrived at the table and I took a sip. Good. A robust porter with some hints of chocolate, mild hops, and a hint of coffee. “Here’s the thing,” I said. “It’s on your blog. Your whole reading list is on the blog along with all your reviews, comments, and everything else.”

The ladies looked confused and Sara B said, “Sure, but that blog is private. You can’t read it unless you’re a member. You have to log in.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “I went right to it. Bluehillbookworms/blogspot.com.”

“Are you
kidding
?” said Annabel. She glared at Stephanie. “Sure, you can get onto the Bookworms’ site, but our blog is private,
right
?”

Stephanie looked uncomfortable and squirmed in her seat. “Well, it used to be, but then I updated it and couldn’t get the privacy settings to work right. I
though
t it was private, but then we never had to log in anymore. Didn’t you notice?”

“
What?
” said Sarah A. “I thought my browser had just saved the password as a cookie or something. You mean everyone has been reading our blog?”

“Not everyone,” I said, in between bites of my pizza. “I’m sure there are many people in the world who don’t really care what you’re reading.”

“You know what I mean,” said Sarah A, glumly. “Can everyone post comments as well?”

“No,” said Stephanie. “Thankfully, you still have to log in to do that.”

“This is awful,” said Catherine. “I wonder how many people have read our private posts?”

“I can tell you that I know at least three people who have been on your blog site,” I said. “Myself, Lieutenant Nancy Parsky, and Ruby Farthing.”

“Ruby’s been reading it?” said Stephanie. “Oh,
no!
She knows we’ve been reading that trashy beach mystery!”

“Yes, she does,” I said, “and she was quite appalled. She told me that she found the Bookworms’ taste in literature to be totally bourgeois. Or maybe she said ‘banal.’ I don’t quite remember, but you get the drift. She’s said she’s considering joining the faculty wives’ book club over at Lenoir-Rhyne University.”

“She said that?” asked Catherine, thoughtfully. “Oh, my. Maybe we should reconsider her application.”

“I
do
think we should reconsider,” said Diana. “We haven’t announced yet our new member yet. We might want to rethink our choice.”

“Whatever,” I said. “That’s not what I asked you here to talk about.”

“Oh,” said Diana. “Of course. The murders.”

“Indeed.” I looked around the table. “You know about the similarities?”

Diana said, “It didn’t take long to figure it out, Hayden. It’s all anyone has been talking about all week. I finished the book last night and called the Bookworms, and
…
well
…
it was obvious why you wanted to talk with us.”

“How many of you have finished the book?” I asked.

All the women raised their hands and Sara B said, “We all finished it last night after Diana called us and told us what was happening.”

“I read it last summer,” said Stephanie.

“Then you know that these three killings are copies of the ones that took place in the
See Your Shadow.
”

Everyone nodded.

“Have any of you seen the
Tattler
this morning?” I asked.

No one had, or admitted they had.

“Well,” I said, “quite frankly, this book makes you all suspects.”

“
What?
” said Sarah A. “Why?”

“Because, as far as we can tell, up to this point, you eight are the only ones that have had occasion to read this book. You all, Nancy and myself, and Ruby, and Ruby is my mother-in-law and therefore above reproach.”

“Really? Above reproach?” said Rachel.

“Absolutely. Oh, she might have murder in her heart, but I can’t see a seventy-year-old woman, no matter how spry, hauling three dead corpses into dark, locked houses.”

“You do have a point,” said Alison, who’d been mostly quiet till now. “Ruby’s not a big woman. She’s tall certainly, but fairly thin.”

“So that leaves you eight,” I said, counting them off around the table. “Eight prime suspects.”

“Well, then,” said Catherine, “have you come up with a motive? In the mystery, the victims were all members of the same Sunday School class. Is it the same with these three?”

“No.”

“What about the victims?” said Diana. “In the book, victims were a personal injury lawyer, a book publicist, a hair dresser, and a priest.”

“A minister, to be precise,” I said. “Almost the same as here, or close enough.”

“How about the minister?” asked Sara B.

“We haven’t found another victim, but we also don’t have the resources or probable cause to search every vacant house in St. Germaine. Many of these are vacation homes. The three houses where the women were found had all been owned by the same corporation and were all up for auction on the same day. That’s a connection we can’t ignore. Also we don’t have a timeline on any of murders. With this cold we’ve been having, the medical examiner can’t give us any reasonable time of death.”

“Well, it had to be after January 12th,” said Catherine. “That’s when we decided to read the book and put it up on the blog.”

“Good to know,” I said.

“How about the missing earring?” asked Stephanie. “Is that part of it?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“We’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

“What are the names again?” asked Alison. “I remember Crystal Latimore, because I knew her. She was a patient of mine a few years ago, but I haven’t seen her for some time. She might have found a new doctor, but I don’t think so. I would have sent her records over and I don’t remember signing off on that.”

“Darla Kildair and Amy Ventura were the other two,” I said. “Do any of the rest of you know these women?”

“Sure,” said Rachel. “I knew Amy and Darla.

“I knew Crystal,” said Stephanie. “Not the other two, though.

I took a count and discovered that all the Bookworms knew at least one of the victims, none knew all three, or rather, none admitted knowing all three.”

“How about a female member of the clergy?” I asked. “Do any of you know one?”

Silence, then Diana said, “Does Kimberly Walnut count?”

“Yes, she does.”

No one else admitted knowing one, so I turned to Sara B. and said, tell me about ergodic literature.”

“Sure,” she replied. “Espen Aarseth coined the term in his book,
Cybertext
, Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be non-ergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoemic responsibilities placed on the reader except — for example — eye movement and the arbitrary turning of pages.”

“Great,” I said. “I have no earthly idea what that means.”

“Neither do any of us,” said Diana. “We pretend it’s all about subtexts.”

“It’s not,” said Sara B, her exasperation evident. “We all read
Landscape Painted With Tea.
I’ve gone over this with you a hundred times!”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Would you guys like to see my latest story?” I was feeling pretty darn good about my efforts as of late, and I wouldn’t mind the Bookworms cheering me on. “I happen to have a few copies. Eight copies.”

“Absolutely,” said Stephanie.

I passed the pages around, and finished the last slice of the
Panda Spinacis as
they were reading it. It was only about 2600 words at this point, but some of my finest writing to date.

* * *

“Care for a pickle?” Kitty offered, opening the jar on the table easily with her giant man-hands. Something was odd about this one. Maybe it was the dark hair on her knuckles, maybe it was the Adam’s apple jutting from her throat like she’d swallowed one of those painted pet turtles without chewing, maybe it was the three-day stubble on her upper lip, but my gut told me this dame would be trouble. I usually listened to my gut when it was yacking. It was my only friend.

Kitty gronked a gherkin in one bite, then leaned in with a crooked finger, motioning us to do the same.

“I’m undercover,” Kitty growled lowly. “The real name is Holly. Holly Tosis. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

He reached into his camisole, came out with a cheap business card, and slid it across the table.

The name was as familiar as that Praise Chorus that you could never remember but left you feeling sort of nauseous and made you want to go wash your hands to get the praise off. Then, leaning in, I smelled his breath and it all came rushing back to me. ‘Hollywood Tosis’ it said on his flimsy card, shoofly from the East Side. Not much in the way of a snoop, but cheap as a pair of disposable underpants.

“You probably know my sister Ginger.”

“Ginger Vitas?” I interrogued.

Pedro snorted into his beer. Everyone who knew Ginger Vitas knew her in the Biblical sense, both Old and New Testament with a little bit of the Coptic Gospels thrown in for fun. She was a good-time girl and as easy as C Major.

“That’s enough of that!” snapped Holly, mad as a snapper, which is why he snapped, probably.

I lowered my usually euphonious tone to a whisper. “So tell me, Holly, what’s with the petticoats?”

“I’m working for the Anglo-Catholics. They want nothing to do with this St. Groundlemas. Not enough mysticism. This groundhog merger is bad for business.”

“And?” I said expectantly. Getting the whole story out of Holly Tosis was like pulling teeth, and not teeth from someone who wants all their teeth pulled because they found out that the government was giving away free teeth, but rather someone who is having all their teeth pulled because their breath is so bad it would make sewer rats take up dental hygiene and that brought us back to Holly.

“They all wear this stuff. Those Anglo-Catholics have already forgotten more about snoot than the Roman Catholics ever knew! Choir ruffs, crinolines, seven layers of robes, silly hats, incense, smoke and abalone … you name it, they’ve got it.”

“Does this have anything to do with Anne Dante?”

“Of course it does! She was involved up to her pretty little scapulars. In fact, she was supposed to broker a deal with Jimmy the Snip to get the two front paws of Punxsutawney Phil and bring them back for the reliquary.”

“So what’s with that wig, makeup, and eyeshadow?” Pedro asked.

“Well,” said Holly with a smile as coy as a pond full of giant goldfish, “a fella’s gotta look nice.”

* * *

“Wow,” said Sarah A. “You’ve got some
…
uh
…
real good writing going on.”

Alison slowly nodded her agreement, then said, “Holly Tosis, Ginger Vitas. A dentally superb cast of characters.

Rachel added, “And many metaphors and similes which are, of course, the writer’s hammer and tongs.”

“I’ve really got to get back to work,” said Stephanie, and they all popped to their feet. “Thanks for lunch, Hayden.”