Father George bristled. "And why is that?"
I shrugged and decided to hold my peace. "Just a gut reaction, I guess."
"Well, it's my decision and I think that Rob would be fine in the position. He's available, he's helpful, and he really wants to get involved in the life of the church."
"As you said, George, it's your decision," I said.
"Also, have you spoken with Brenda about her 'puppet- moment?' I suggested to her that some music might be nice. She didn't seem too keen on the idea, but I think it might get the Puppet-Moment off to a good start."
"Is this puppet thing something that we're going to do on a regular basis?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"Maybe once a month or so. It depends on how it goes."
* * *
"I hear your son's in town," said Nancy to Noylene as she made her way to our table. Sundays were usually Noylene's day off, but she was filling in for one of the other waitresses. I was sitting glumly at the "after church" table with Meg, Beverly Greene and Georgia Wester. Nancy, dressed in her new black motorcycle leathers, joined us, but apart from our little group, the place was empty.
Noylene was beaming. "He got in last night. He'll be stopping by in a little bit."
"Why so gloomy?" Nancy asked. "I thought I'd come in and show off my new duds, but you guys look pretty much down in the dumps."
"Church business," Bev said. "I do like your outfit, though."
"Rob Brannon has been made 'parish administrator,'" Georgia added.
"I don't trust that guy as far as I could throw him," said Nancy, joining our circle of dejection.
"And you've got a pretty good arm," I said. "I know what you mean. I've got a bad feeling about him, too. Can't put my finger on it though."
"Well, we've been through worse," Meg said. "Just remember back to this time last year."
We all looked at her, trying hard to remember last year's sacramental angst.
"The Wimmyn's Conference?"
We all silently nodded and took a unison sip of our coffees.
"Mother Ryan? And the sex dolls?"
We sipped again.
"So, this too will pass," said Meg, hopefully.
We nodded once more, all of us staring down at the table in a picture of dejection.
"And he might not be bad at all." Meg wasn't convincing any of us.
"Nothing we can do anyway," said Bev. "So let's look on the bright side. Maybe he'll get everything running smoothly."
"Maybe," said Georgia.
"Maybe," said Meg.
"In a pig's eye," I snarled.
* * *
"This here's my son, D'Artagnan," said Noylene, interrupting our melancholy with a happy chirp. "He's studyin' to be a detective."
We all looked up at Noylene who had come up unnoticed. On her arm was one of the strangest looking men I ever hoped to meet. D'Artagnan Fabergé was about six foot, six inches tall and as big around as a medium-sized pencil. His hair style might once have been called a "mullet," but he'd taken it to another level. The top and sides of his coif were cut short, the notable exception being the thick lime-green strip of hair that ran right down the middle of his head and was just long enough to fold over on itself like the comb of a giant Martian rooster. In the back, his hair flowed in pink locks down to his shoulders. He was wearing black horn-rimmed glasses of the sort favored by Buddy Holly and he sported a wispy blonde mustache, a bad complexion and an earring made from a Pepsi bottle cap and a paperclip.
It wasn't terribly cold out, but mid-October generally meant sweater weather in St. Germaine and this Sunday was no exception. D'Artagnan, in contrast with the rest of us, was wearing a thin white t-shirt, faded jeans and orange high-top Converse tennis shoes. The arms sticking out of his t-shirt looked like long, animated twigs.
I heard a gasp, but it wasn't me, although I thought at first that it might have been. It was Bev. I just smiled and gulped, "Hi there."
"Would you like something to eat?" asked Georgia, the first at our table to regain her wits. She pushed a plate of Pete's rejected cinnamon Madonnas across the table. "You look starved. I mean…you look famished. I mean…you must be very hungry."
"Georgia!" Bev whispered through clenched teeth and unmoving lips. "Shhh."
"Nah. He just ate," said Noylene. "I made him a big lunch before I came in."
"I wouldn't mind having one for dessert," said D'Artagnan in a bass voice an octave lower than my own and accentuated with a prominent North Carolina drawl. He took the largest roll, the one that I thought looked a little like a genetic accident involving Yitzhak Rabin and a lobster, pushed the entire bun into his mouth and finished it in two quick bites as we all watched in amazed silence.
"I…" started Megan. I looked over at her. Her mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. Finally she managed, "I hear you’re a detective."
"Well, ma'am, I just now got my certifyables, but I'm not really a detective, per se," said D'Artagnan, with special emphasis on the per se. "I'm a bounty hunter."
"A bounty hunter," said Georgia. "Fascinating. And whom do you hunt?"
"Criminals mostly." D'Artagnan sniffed with an air of authority that Barney Fife would envy. "Bail jumpers." He nodded his head and flipped his mullet off his shoulder with a wave of his skeletal hand.
"And are there many criminals in St. Germaine?" asked Beverly.
"I wouldn't know 'bout that, ma'am. I come to find the missin' artifac'."
"I don't like his hair like this," said Noylene, flipping the bottle cap hanging from the paper-clip with a long red fingernail. "Or that earring. He was such a handsome boy."
"I tol' you, Mama," D'Artagnan said as he pushed her hand away and stopped the miniature pendulum banging him in the neck. "I need to blend in with the unsavories. That's my job."
"Do you carry a gun?" I asked, knowing I didn't want to hear the answer. Everyone at the table stopped breathing.
"Not yet," he admitted. The table relaxed. "I applied for my permit though. It'll take three weeks." He brightened. "You know, I'm allowed to shoot folks. If they don't comply, that is."
"Yes. I remember reading that somewhere."
"But you're going to be working in Asheville, right?" asked Georgia.
"Yeah. Mostly. Now tell me about this artifac' I'm supposed to be lookin' for."
"Let me get Pete," Noylene said. "He can give you the particulars."
* * *
Pete and D'Artagnan took a booth over in the corner while the rest of us finished commiserating.
"Hey, Nancy," I said. "Before I forget, what do you think about following up on the Lester Gifford case?"
"I thought we'd sort of put that one to bed. Whoever did it is most likely dead by now anyway."
"True. But it's a remarkable case: body that didn't decompose, a seventy-year-old murder in the church. If you could solve it, it'd be worth some state and maybe national recognition in the journals."
Nancy nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah… it would."
"You could hit the law-enforcement convention circuit. Maybe do a couple of forensic papers. Kent said he'd be happy to help you out. Who knows? It might work out really well."
"Yeah. It might."
"Of course, you'd have to solve it."
"Oh, I'll solve it."
"We haven't heard anything for a while," said Georgia. "Can you fill us in?"
"Sure," said Nancy, pulling her pad out of an inside pocket of her black leather jacket.
"You carry that thing with you all the time?" I asked.
"All the time. Here's what I've got.
"Lester Gifford was found in the church on October 6th. He was probably murdered sometime between January 15th and February 8th, 1937. He was thirty-two and worked as an assistant manager at Watauga County Bank. He left a wife, Mavis. No kids that I could find."
"How did you come up with the dates that he might have been killed?" asked Bev.
"He was mentioned in a newspaper article on January 15th.
There was a bank merger that happened at the end of February. There was a fire in the records room of St. Barnabas on February 8th. I don't think the fire is a coincidence, but it might be."
"No, I think you're probably right about that," I said. "I'd put his murder closer to the 8th."
"Me too," said Nancy. "So we'll assume he was killed on or around February 8th, 1937."
Everyone nodded their assent.
"Did his wife report him missing?" asked Bev.
"We don't know for sure, but I assume she did. The police records about that sort of thing don't go back that far," said Nancy. "Kent says that Lester was hit in the back of the head by a blunt object. That's what killed him. His body, strangely, didn't decompose in the normal manner. As a result, no one found the body until Billy and his crew dropped the altar and the back popped off."
Nancy turned a page and continued. "Neither Lester nor his wife ever had any connection with St. Barnabas as far as we could tell, but the president of the bank, Harold Lynn, was also the Senior Warden of St. Barnabas. And there was a Sunday School teacher named Jacob Winston who was arrested, but never tried for the murder of Lester Gifford."
"How do you know?" asked Meg.
"The arrest record was in the paper in March. I did another search for Jacob Winston to see if there was any kind of trial. There wasn't. He is mentioned in an article about St. Barnabas and the war effort in 1945, so I've got to assume that nothing ever came of his arrest."
"We still have those papers back at the office," I said. "They're in the folder that we found with Lester's body. Maybe there's something in there."
"You haven't even looked through them?" Georgia asked.
"Rob has," I answered. "It's not a high priority. There's nothing we can do. There's no murderer left. No family we can find. It's a non-case."
"I think you owe it to Lester to find his murderer," said Bev.
"Which is what Nancy plans to do. Right, Nance?" I said.
"Yeah. I'll find out who did it."
"What are they going to do with the body?" Meg asked.
"Kent did an autopsy," I said. "It was the strangest thing. As soon as the body got to the morgue, it started to decompose at a normal rate. So Kent embalmed him and he's lying in the cooler. We can bury him whenever we're ready."
"How about Friday?" said Georgia. "I'm out of town until Friday, but I want to be there. We really should give him a decent burial."
"It's all right with me," I said, looking around the table. The others nodded. "I'll ask George to do the service. Two o'clock okay?"
* * *
Pete came up to the table and sat down with a heavy sigh. D'Artagnan had disappeared from sight.
"Well, he's on the case."
"You're a nice man, Pete," said Meg. "How much did you offer him to find the bun?"
"He wanted a thousand dollar finder's fee."
"And what was your counter offer?" I asked with a laugh.
"Let's just say we settled on fifty."
"Fifty dollars?" said Georgia. "That's not much."
"Plus breakfast for a week while he's looking." Pete shrugged and smiled. "How much can he eat? He's skin and bones."
"Speaking of favors, you owe me, Pete-—" I said.
"Excuse me? I don't think we were speaking of any favors I owe you."
"Be that as it may, remember when I got you out of that speeding ticket in Hickory?"
"Yeah."
"And Asheville? And the one in Lenoir, and that other one in Hendersonville?"
"Yeah." Pete was getting worried. This was a lot of payback.
"I need you to go with me tomorrow."
"Where?" Pete was wary.
"I have to go on this overnight event. And you have to go with me." I looked over at Meg. She was smiling demurely and sipping her coffee.
"And then we're even?"
"As even as we can be."
"Okay," said Pete. "I'll do it. But then we're square."
"We're square," I said.
"Where are we going?"
"The Iron Mike Men's Retreat," I said with a grin.
It's a good thing that the place was almost empty because Pete's cry of anguish would have put most of his patrons off their feed.
Chapter 15
Pete and I threw our stuff into the back of the pick-up late on Monday afternoon. I figured it would take us no more than an hour to find a campsite and get set up before the first activity of the Iron Mike Men's Retreat began. We brought a couple of sleeping bags, a good-sized tent, some snacks, and enough dry wood for a campfire. The stuff at the campsite was bound to be wet, and I wanted to be able to start a fire if we wanted one. Pete was all for bringing a case of beer, but I vetoed it. There was no beer allowed on the premises, and I didn't want to get kicked out before the fulfillment of my wager was complete. Meg had made her stipulations quite clear. And, after all, there was still Seattle to look forward to.
"What do you think of D'Artagnan?" Pete asked.
"I don't know. He's an odd fellow."
"I can tell you this much. I hope he finds that bun before too long. He ate about thirty bucks worth of stuff for breakfast this morning."
"He's thin as a rail. I thought you said he wouldn't eat much."
"Guess he's got a tapeworm or something. I've never seen anyone eat like him."
"What about Haystacks Hornby?" I asked, referring to our local four hundred pound pie-eating champion.
"This guy'd eat Haystacks under the table. I'm not kiddin'. Oh, Haystacks is good—there's no denying that. But D'Artagnan had four plates of eggs down his neck as quick as Noylene could bring them to the table."
"Well, eggs…"
"Plus about fourteen pancakes, a pound of bacon, some country ham, two baskets of biscuits, molasses, grits and about a gallon of orange juice." Pete sighed. "That's just while I was watching. I don't even know what else he ate."
"Wow!"
"Yeah, wow. I told him he had to find that stupid bun within a week, but I don't know if I can afford him that long. He indicated that tomorrow he'd like some waffles."
"Waffles are cheap. Just try to keep him away from the meat," I suggested.
"That's a good plan. I'll try it," said Pete. "Now, tell me again why we're going to get in touch with our inner man."
"Because Meg said so."
"Oh. Right."
* * *
I sat in my office, looking out the window, watching the sun disappear behind the city skyline like a giant orange-yellow yolk being slowly consumed by a determined egg-sucking weasel. I had put out the word for Jimmy Leggs, but I hadn't heard anything. I might never hear anything. Jimmy showed up when he wanted and where he wanted. I was pretty sure that he was the one who capped Candy Blather né Latte Espresso. It was his M.O. The question was, who had hired him?
I needed a suspect and I needed one bad. Toby Taps? Piggy? But who was behind it? I was thinking. Thinking hard. So hard it made my hair hurt. So hard that I didn't hear the voice at the door.
"Excuse me."
I spun around in my chair with my .38 in my hand, leveled it at the squeaky voice and let two shots go, just for meanness, right above his head. He hit the floor like a burlap sack filled with 120 pounds of tuna casserole.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to sneak up on a P.I.?" I growled.
"Yes, yes they did. They told me, but I forgot," stammered the mouse in front of me, brushing himself off and getting to his feet. He was a diminutive man--bald, with a mustache that looked like a wooly caterpillar without all those little pink feet.
"Whaddya want?" I was still sounding mean.
"I heard you were looking for a suspect. In the Candy Blather case."
"Maybe. What's it to you?" I waved him into the client chair with the barrel of my roscoe.
"I was her friend."
"Her friend?" I asked, menacingly.
"Well, her boyfriend, actually. Her lover."
"Her lover?" I lowered the gun in astonishmen
t. Candy was about five foot ten. This guy might make it up to her belly-button. If he was wearing lifts.
"I know who did it," he squeaked. "I know who set her up."
* * *
Pete and I turned into the Baptist Conference Center at about 4:30. There were cardboard signs directing us past the main building and down a dirt road toward the campground. We drove up and pulled in behind several cars that had already arrived.
"Y'all are going to want to go on and pick out a campsite," said a genial man clad in hunting fatigues as he came up to my open window. "Just head down this road until you find one that's not taken. You guys already registered?" He lifted his clipboard up to the window.
"I believe we are," I said. "Hayden Konig and Peter Moss. We're here to get in touch with our inner men."
"Yep. Here you are." He checked us off his list. "All squared away. Y'all go get yourselves a site. Pitch your tent if you want. We won't get started till it gets dark."
"Great," I said. "We can't wait."
* * *
The beauty of a pop-up tent is that you can pitch it in about a minute and a half. It takes slightly longer to take down, but not much. What took us the most time was filling our air mattresses from the electric pump that I had plugged into the cigarette lighter.
"This isn't too bad," said Pete as he tried out his mattress. "Remember that time in college when we went squirrel hunting? Three days in the rain, sleeping bags lying soaked on the ground and nothing to eat but that one mangy squirrel that wandered up to the campfire."
"That squirrel wasn't right," I said. "A squirrel just doesn't walk up to a campfire, sit down and stare down the barrel of a .22 rifle."
"I remember that I was praying for him to," said Pete. "It was the one truly religious experience of my life."
"Well, get ready then 'cause you're about to have another one."
* * *
Our first meeting—our orientation—was just after a pretty good supper of steaks and baked potatoes. A "he-man" supper, Pete called it. No salad. No broccoli. No quiche. No key lime pie. Just a big t-bone steak and a one-pound baked potato. A beer would have been nice—and appropriate to the character of the manly repast—but rules were rules. We had iced tea. Unsweetened.
The Tenor Wore Tapshoes (The Liturgical Mysteries) Page 11
