Liturgical Mysteries 01 The Alto Wore Tweed (23 page)

It was déjà vu all over again.

Chapter 16

“I didn’t do it. You know I couldn’t have, “ Rhiza said. “I can’t believe it’s all over town.”

“What’s all over town?”

“The rumor. Apparently there’s a clue that says I did it. I’m the murderer.”

The town grapevine was more effective than I’d thought. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours.

“Well, we do have a clue and it does point to you,” I told her honestly. There was no point in lying to her at this stage.

“What’s the clue?” she asked. “Can I see it?”

“I have a copy of it here somewhere. The original’s down at the station.” I started rummaging through papers on the table, which were stacking up at an alarming rate. I found the Xerox as Mozart’s 26th moved into the slow movement and handed it over to her. She chomped down on the cigar, freeing up her non-coffee hand and gave the note a quick read.

“What the hell does
this
mean?”

She stared at me while I went through all the permutations of the anagram, the hymn numbers and the Bible passages, finally ending with “Rise and walk.”

“That’s it? That’s the clue?”

“I admit it’s weak,” I said, sitting down on the couch. “And it doesn’t really point to anyone specifically.”

“You’re damn right it doesn’t. Why didn’t you just cll me and ask me?” Rhiza was a little chapped. “Malcolm is fit to be tied. He took off yesterday and I haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”

“OK, now I’m asking. Why would someone leave an obscure clue to the murder pointing to you? What’s going on? And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

She looked at me for a long moment. “Do you ever think about me, you know, dropping by?” she asked, using our euphemism.

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Sometimes. But I’m semi-attached, and you’re permanently attached. That’s not trouble we want.”

“Nobody would have to know.”

“I appreciate the offer, madam, but I’m afraid I must decline,” I said, trying my best to make a quick joke out of the invitation. I wasn’t at all sure that she was serious, but we had enough history to make me think she was.

Rhiza nodded and smiled a sad smile. “You’re a good guy, Hayden. That’s the problem.” She got up, walked over to the fireplace and tossed in the half-smoked cigar. “Malcolm’s having an affair.”

I tried not to look surprised, although news like that always catches me off guard.

“Do you know who?” I asked.

“Yep.”

I waited for the other shoe to drop.

“Loraine Ryan.”

• • •

When I thought about it, Mother Ryan would not be considered unattractive by most of the male population of St. Germaine. She wasn’t a beauty queen by any means, but she had a look about her, a look my old music department chairman used to call “bedroom eyes.” She was an ash-blonde with shoulder length hair, fairly slim, and had a nice figure. In fact, when she showed up at St. Barnabas, I remember thinking, lecher that I am, that working with a lady priest wouldn’t be half bad. That is, until she opened her mouth. Then, for me at least, the magic was gone.

“Loraine and Malcolm? Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

“I always assumed that, being an unmarried militant feminist—well—that she ‘danced at the other end of the ballroom,’ if you get my meaning.”

“I’m pretty sure that she dances at
both
ends, if you get mine.”

“Wow,” I said, caught off guard by this particular revelation. I must have sat there in stunned silence for a good thirty seconds before blurting out, “Wanna feed my owl?”

She laughed for the first time, that wonderful laugh that sounded like bells. “OK, Romeo, but that’s the first time I’ve heard it called
that
.”

“No, really. I’ve got an owl in the kitchen. C’mon.”

One thing you could never say about Rhiza was that she was squeamish. She had grown up in the mountains and whatever pretensions she had put on for Malcolm’s benefit disappeared when she reached into the coffee can and came out with two dead mice. I opened the kitchen window and about twenty seconds later Archimedes stepped through.

“No
WAY!
This is so cool!”

I could see she was impressed. “He used to take about ten minutes to notice the window was open. Now he spots it almost immediately.”

“You don’t think he’s becoming dependent, do you?”

“I don’t think so. We don’t feed him enough. A couple of mice a day. He’s got to eat more than that to stay alive. It’s just a mousy supplement.”

Archimedes took both the offerings from our hands and left just as quickly as he came.

As I waited my turn to wash my hands in the kitchen sink, Rhiza said, “So what do I do now?”

“I don’t know. I sure am sorry to hear about Malcolm, but I need to figure out this clue. Why would anyone go to all this trouble to point the finger at you? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“No it doesn’t. Is there any other evidence?” She finished up and was drying her hands leaving the water running for me to wash.

“Not really. A lot of...stuff. Circumstantial. I sure would like to know who did it though.”

“I really love Malcolm. He’s, well, he’s comfortable,” she said, finally finding the right word. “I wish we hadn’t gotten involved with that woman, but he’s Senior Warden, y’know? Someone had to be nice to her. Almost everyone else hates her guts.”

I, being a sensitive kind of guy, didn’t add, “With good reason.”

“Look, Rhiza,” I said finally, “she’s not a nice person and as a priest, she’s a disaster.”

“I know. I’m not a complete fool. But Malcolm liked her from the beginning. He was always in her office – meetings in the mornings and late at night. I don’t know what to do.”

“How do you know he’s having an affair?”

“I heard one of the voice mail messages on his sat-phone. He hadn’t erased it because he hadn’t heard it. And he
doesn’t
know that
I
heard it.”

“What did it say?”

“Hello darling. Call me.”

“That’s it? And you call
my
evidence weak?”

“It’s enough. I know her voice. I ought to.”

• • •

Six hours later I pulled up in Meg’s drive, got out of the truck and gallantly opened the door for her to climb aboard. First to dinner, then a movie. I even wore my new mock-turtle neck.

“Hayden, Can we please take
my
car?”

“Do I get to drive?” I asked.

“Oh, I insist.”

On the way into Boone we listened to the Vaughan Williams’
Hodie
and I gave Megan the highlights of Rhiza’s visit. Well, if not the highlights, the parts about Malcolm and Herself.

“I don’t believe it. Malcolm and Loraine?”

“My thoughts exactly. But there’s something else going on.” I broke out my best Alfred Hitchcock voice. “Even now, all is not as it seems.”

“You’ll let me know if something else happens, right? This is really getting interesting. I may have to write my own book.”

“Consider it done.”

Chapter 17

“
This is going to be a pleasure,” said a sadistic, very low, and only slightly feminine voice. Denver Tweed moved toward me like a schoolyard bully after a sixth grade violinist. Her head was pulled down into her shoulders like a demented tortoise, making what little neck she had disappear entirely, her massive hands clenching and unclenching as she measured the damage her country ham fists would do to me. I backed into the bookcase. There was nowhere to run.

Amber Dawn, Personal Trainer, and Isabel watched with amusement. I could see that Amber still had her gun trained on me, but Ms. Tweed
’
s corpus magnum was beginning to block out the rest of the room. I figured my odds were about as good as those of a floral design consultant in a biker bar.

I took a chance and threw the first punch, a looping right hand which glanced off her head, doing no real damage. Her chin was buried deep into her shoulder blades, but I could see her cold smile as she raised her fists high in response to the blow. Her black, beady eyes locked on mine and she moved in close, pinning me against the shelf. She didn
’
t fake a punch--she just hit me. She hit me high. She hit me low. Too low. Then everything went black.

When the haze finally began to lift, I saw Denver, Amber and Isabel ransacking my office. Every book had been pulled off the shelves, all the drawers emptied and dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the room, the rugs pulled up and the pictures yanked off the walls. My office was beginning to resemble my old apartment. They had found my wall safe, which was hidden behind a portrait of J. Edgar Hoover
’
s mother, and were working on opening it. From my fetal position, I reached to my ankle holster and pulled a small Taurus .38 special from its hiding place. It was small, but packed a wallop. I hoped it was enough.

• •  o

The morning brought the first snowfall of the season. Pristine and sparkling, it covered the view in every direction. I dropped the old truck into four-wheel drive, just in case I needed the traction, and headed in toward town, taking the winding highway at a nice, slow pace, enjoying the scenery as well as being particularly careful. In my experience, most of the winter accidents in St. Germaine happened during or right after the first snowfall. Many times, here in the mountains, the snow was just a powdered sugar sprinkling over a cake of solid ice.

Meg and I had rescheduled our Christmas tree outing for the afternoon, barring any unforeseen police or financial crisis. If the cold and slightly overcast weather held, this would be a fine time to pick out a tree. With the snow hanging on the branches, we wouldn’t even have to imagine the finished product.

After a quick stop at The Slab for a Danish to go and brief holiday salutations to Pete and Bob Solomon, I was off to the station for a few phone calls. The first was to Dr. Dougherty, the local GP.

“Hi Karen. Hayden Konig.” I said, once I had sweet-talked my way past the receptionist.

“How are you, Hayden?” she said. Karen Dougherty was a pediatrician before she retired and after moving to St. Germaine, worked a couple of days a week as the one and only practitioner of the medical arts in town. Almost everyone with an emergency or who visited a doctor on a regular basis went into Boone, but Dr. Dougherty was happy to do well-baby checkups, routine vaccinations, flu shots and the like.

“I’m fine, Karen. I just have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you ever see Willie Boyd? I mean, on a professional basis.”

“He did stop in once a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly, he was complaining of chest pain. Let me look.”

While I was on hold, I took the opportunity to rummage around on the top of my desk and find a pen and a pad of paper, vowing once again to clean up my desk, or at least to have someone else do it.

“Got it,” she said, coming back to the phone. “Hmmm,” she said, using the doctor’s familiar “hmmm,” which they are all taught in the first year of medical school. “I listened to his chest and then sent him down to the free clinic in Boone. That’s all I’ve got. No follow-up. They didn’t call me, so I presume they took care of it.”

“Do you have a number for the clinic?”

“I’ll give you back to Polly. She’ll get you what you need.”

After thanking her and getting the phone number from Polly, my next call was to the clinic in Boone.

• • •

The
Crèches of St. Germaine
, as the event was being advertised in the
Watauga Democrat
, was scheduled to kickoff on December 18th at 7:00 in the evening. The forecast was for snow and an Arctic front, which was nice for the Christmas ambiance, but terrible for the relatively scantily clad angels who had to endure the single-digit temperatures for an hour and a half. There was some talk at The Slab about cutting the time down from an hour-and-a-half to an hour, but neither organization was ready to give an inch. The First Baptist Church Elder Adult Handbell Choir, known as the
Nana Pealers
, if you could believe their monogrammed, sky-blue windsuits, was scheduled to play at the Kiwanis display for the first half hour. The Rotarians, trying for a quick
coup de gras
, had hired a brass quintet from the university, but yesterday, after seeing the weather projection, they had called and canceled, explaining that their mouthpieces would freeze to their lips.

“We’re in trouble,” Bob Solomon told Pete as I waited in line to pay for my Danish. “The brass players are wimping out.”