The Mezzo Wore Mink (23 page)

Fiona Tidball-Lemming came down to give the children’s sermon, but the children, not knowing they would be required, had left during the second hymn and gone on to Children’s Church as was their custom. Father Lemming, singing the hymn with gusto, didn’t see them depart and, when the hymn was over, invited the now-absent children to come forward while Mrs. Tidball-Lemming waited on the chancel steps. She was dressed in a white alb like her husband, complete with a matching ministerial stole and looked more than a little put out when there were no children to attend to her ministrations. Knowing the children of St. Barnabas as I did, she got away easy, but she huffed her way back to her position as lay Eucharistic minister with her children’s sermon still in her pocket. Father Lemming gave
his
sermon a few moments later. It wasn’t a particularly memorable message, but it wasn’t awful. It did, however, contain more than a few “dontcha know”s.

Our new priest seemed quite happy—almost giddy, in fact—when, during his welcome and announcements, he invited all interested parties to come in and audition for
The Living Gobbler
. He and Fiona would be personally holding the auditions on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon with rehearsals to begin the following week.

“
Hey, great news, dontcha know,” said Meg to the rest of the soprano section as they were passing the peace. “If we don’t audition, we don’t have to be in it.”

“
Au contraire,” I said, overhearing their nefarious plan. “The whole choir is in it. I’ve already ordered your rutabaga and pilgrim costumes.”

“
I’d like to be Pocahontas,” said Marjorie as demurely as she could manage in her whisky tenor.

“
You’re pushing eighty, Marjorie,” said Phil. “And pushing it pretty hard. Pocahontas was an Indian maiden.”

“
Bite your tongue, you little whippersnapper,” said Marjorie.

“
You’ll have to audition for the Lemmings,” I said. “I’m afraid I hold no sway in the casting process. Pocahontas has a lot of lines though. And there’s the big love scene with Squanto.”

“
John Smith,” corrected Meg.

“
Whoever.”

“
I don’t mind,” said Marjorie. “I could use a little lovin’.”

“
Meg said that you haven’t even started writing it,” said Bev. “How do you know how many lines Pocahontas has?”

“
It’s all right up here,” I answered, tapping my noggin. “Almost finished.”

“
It’s a good thing
Whispering Hope
isn’t in the hymnal,” said Elaine. “It’d be the grand finale.”

Suddenly several screams emanated from the nave below. Those of us on the front row leaned over the edge of the balcony to see what had precipitated such a Pentecostal outburst. Those choir members seated further back stood up and craned forward to get a look. Running down the aisle and heading for the open doors was a Minque.

Chapter 15

“
Okay,” I said to Ginger. “I’ve got the picture. Now spell it out.”

Ginger leaned in and spilled her guts like a sorority pledge after the Homecoming dance.

“
Here’s the grift, goombah. The bishops are opening a

Mexican mink farm to supply the Liturgical Hairpiece industry. They’re going to smuggle mink skins up to the border in a Taco Bell truck.”

I nodded. The old mink skin disguised as a burrito trick.

“
No, not the old mink skin disguised as a burrito trick,” said Ginger, reading my thought bubble. “They’re going to load the skins into a giant cannon and shoot them across the border. They’ll be picked up on the other side. You see?”

“
Yeah,” I said, thoughtfully running one hand across Ginger’s grizzled chin. “The Taco Bell cannon indeed. But how can they make the scam pay off?”

“
That’s the best part,” said Ginger. “Here’s the way it works. They’re going to start with one million minks.”

I nodded. A million minks. Sure.

“
Each mink averages twelve minklets a year. The skins can be sold for 33¢ a piece. This will give them twelve million skins at three for a dollar. You with me so far?”

I nodded again and started counting on my fingers.

“
That’s a gross revenue of almost four million per year.”

“
Four million,” I said. “Got it.” One thing was for sure. I was going to need more fingers.

“
That’s about $10,000 per day,” said Ginger, “not including Sundays and holidays. A good Mexican worker can skin about 50 minks per day and will work all day for $3. It will take 566 workers to operate the mink farm. That’s $1700 for the workers. So the profit will be $8300 per day.”

I’d run out of fingers and had taken off my shoes.

“
Now,” continued Ginger, “the minks will be fed exclusively on rats. The bishops are going to start a rat farm right next to the mink farm. They’re going to import one million rats from New York.”

“
Sounds about right.”

“
Rats multiply four times as fast as the minks so there will be four rats per mink every day.”

“
Good eatin’,” I agreed.

“
Then the rats will be fed on the carcasses of the minks that they skin. That will give each rat a quarter of a mink.”

I was beginning to see the beauty of the operation. “Of course!” I said. “The minks eat the rats, the rats eat the minks and the bishops get the skins!”

“
Exactly!”

“
It’s brilliant,” I said.

“
There’s more!” said Ginger. “Eventually, the bishops are going to cross the minks with snakes. Sninks. This will launch them into the Liturgical Cowboy Boot market as well as get the minks to skin themselves twice a year.”

“
Not only that,” I said, “but they could get two skins for one mink.”

“
If word gets out, they’ll never get those cheap skins across the border. That’s why…”

Ginger never finished her sentence. Her eyes grew wide and her head suddenly hit the table and bounced twice exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

She was dead.

•••

“
Is Davis’ body still down at the morgue?” I asked. I had the phone pressed to the side of my head and my shoulder was doing the best it could to keep it there. My two hands were busy—a plate of nachos in one and the TV remote in the other as I tried to keep track of three football games at once.

“
Yes,” said Nancy’s voice. “I had Kent keep him on ice. There’s no next of kin, so it wasn’t a problem.”

“
Do me a favor…hang on a minute.” I flipped through the channels. “I think the Colts just scored.”

“
They did. A fifty-five yard field goal. ”

“
You watching the Colts and the Broncos?”

“
Yep. Dave and me.”

“
Listen, tomorrow morning would you go down to the morgue and take Davis’ fingerprints? Then run them through the FBI data base.”

“
You think he’s wanted somewhere?”

“
It’s a possibility,” I said. “Young, single guy just shows up in town seven years ago. No family, no connections to the area. It’s worth a look.”

I could hear Nancy thinking on the other end. “Makes sense,” she finally said. “I’ll do it first thing. It’ll be a few days before we hear anything though. Those FBI searches take forever.”

“
Dagnabbit! Tampa Bay just scored on the Panthers.”

“
What channel?” she asked.

“
Thirty-five.” Nancy and I both had satellite TV and could get thirteen pro football games on any given Sunday. She was a Denver fan but, like me, flipped between games as soon as a commercial came on or the outcome was no longer in doubt.

“
Like I was saying,” said Nancy, “first thing tomorrow. Oh, crap…now Jay Cutler’s down.”

“
See you then.”

•••

Noylene’s Beautifery was bustling. Many hair salons were closed on Mondays but Noylene only took one day off, preferring to take her free time in the mornings. The Beautifery didn’t open until eleven. Along with hair styling, Noylene’s also offered manicures, pedicures, and, in the back room, did quite a brisk business with an invention she had cooked up called the Dip ’n Tan. Her son D’Artagnan, and his friend Skeeter Donalson had built the contraption, an absolute marvel of engineering that consisted of a winch, a trapeze bar, and a five-hundred gallon vat of spray-on tanning fluid. A brave customer could hold onto this bar and be lowered into the vat for an all-over tan. Early on, many folks could be seen around St. Germaine sporting the pallor of giant carrots, but as Noylene refined the formula and the timing, her customers looked, more or less, like people who were native to the Brazilian rain forests. Still, as Noylene so delicately put it, “brown fat looks better than white fat,” and the Dip ’n Tan had its devotees.

Noylene Fabergé and Woodrow “Wormy” DuPont had gotten married by Judge Adams early in August. They’d been planning a double ceremony with Collette and Dave, but after Brother Kilroy, the pastor of New Fellowship Baptist Church, was murdered and Dave broke his engagement with Collette, Noylene had decided on a private ceremony. She and Wormy were first cousins on the Fabergé side, but that wasn’t an obstacle to marriage in North Carolina and Judge Adams was happy to oblige. Noylene had decided to hyphenate for professional reasons and was now officially and legally Noylene Fabergé-DuPont. D’Artagnan, age twenty-four, for reasons known only to himself, had decided to adopt the hyphenated moniker as well.

I stopped in at the Beautifery on Monday afternoon to talk to Ruby. Meg’s mother had a standing appointment at the Beautifery every Monday at 2:15 pm. The three cubicles were all in use. Noylene was in the one farthest from the door and gave me a wave as I walked in. The other two licensed beauticians, Darla and Debbie, were snipping, coloring, and razoring like the professionals they were, all the while keeping up a continuous and simultaneous chatter with the three customers. Ruby wasn’t one of them.

“
Afternoon, ladies, ” I said, tipping my gray felt hat. The chairs were occupied by Hannah, Grace, and Amelia, the three checkout girls from the Piggly Wiggly. “Checkout girls” was really a misnomer. All three ladies were in their early sixties and, since the robbery last spring, were all known for packing heat.

“
I love a man in a hat,” said Hannah from the chair nearest the door. “It’s lucky I’m sitting down or I’d swoon straight away.”

“
Thank you,” I said. “I’m trying to bring the fedora back into style.”

“
You and Brad Pitt,” said Grace. Grace had a head full of aluminum foil. I didn’t ask.

“
Who’s minding the Pig?” I asked.

“
Roger’s working the register,” said Amelia. “He’s not very good at it, but Mondays are slow.”

“
I thought Ruby would be here.”

“
She called this morning and cancelled,” said Noylene. “Said she was going out to the crematorium.”