The Treble Wore Trouble (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  The antique feed store itself had provided the ambiance for the restaurant long before "country store chic" had become de rigueur: wide plank floors stained with neatsfoot oil, fertilizer, and saddle soap; old wooden counters nicked and carved by countless penknives; pickle barrels with checkerboards affixed; metal signs advertising everything from tractor parts to windmills to chicken feed. There had been a jukebox in the corner, the kind that still played 45s, good solid tables, and wooden chairs left over from the Great War. When the Bear and Brew opened, the local beer aficionados discovered a place that made their dreams come true. There were twenty-two micro brews and six national brands on tap, an even better selection in bottles, and pizza that became famous across the state in a matter of months.

  The new Bear and Brew had been constructed on the footprint of the old structure and included as much character of the original as modern building codes would allow. The design still embraced the Appalachian barley barn motif, but also now included an up-to-date kitchen, clean bathrooms that worked, and a definite drop in the rodent population. Old, original signs had been replaced with reproductions — new tables built out of reclaimed lumber and sawdust was sprinkled on the floor at regular intervals. One thing that hadn't changed was the pizza. It was still delicious. The Black Bear Special, for example, was made with the restaurant's homemade bear sausage — ground bear meat mixed with secret spices and a bit of pork — topped with black truffles, mushrooms, a double helping of mozzarella cheese, and Black Krim heirloom tomatoes, grown locally. All things considered, as far as the customers were concerned, the fire hadn't been such a bad thing.

  Cynthia returned to the table with steam coming out of her ears. "Amber Jo didn't turn the order in," she said in disgust. "She thought we wanted it brought to the table with our pizza. Now, why on earth would we want garlic knots at the same time as our pizza? I told her to forget it."

  Nancy snorted, having even less patience with inefficiency than Cynthia did. She smoothed the front of her shirt and straightened her badge. Nancy, unlike me, dressed for duty in her police uniform. I favored khakis and a flannel shirt.

  Nancy's winter uniform was much the same as her summer outfit: official dark brown pants with a tan stripe, and a long-sleeved, tan uniform shirt with dark brown lapels and pocket flaps. The evidence of her office, her shield and her gun, were displayed prominently, the SGPD badge on her breast pocket, a Glock 19 9mm in a black auto-locking holster on her belt. She favored a black leather trooper's jacket in the winter, or, if the snow was really coming down, her law enforcement issue parka, but wouldn't wear a hat unless it was bitterly cold, preferring to simply tie her brown hair back in a ponytail. When the temperature outside reached ten degrees or so, Nancy would eschew pride for practicality and reach for the muskrat trapper-style hat that she'd bought in Canada some years ago. Her opinion was, however, that this hat bestowed upon her the "Fargo" look, and, although this was a movie that she found hilarious, it was not a look that she was eager to cultivate.

  As second in command at the St. Germaine Police Department, Nancy was all business when duty called, and being one of the two police folk who answered calls in the township (the other being myself), "duty" usually called her first. I lived a good ten miles from town, and Nancy didn't mind the responsibility. Dave would handle the occasional emergency if Nancy and I were both unavailable, but that was a rare event.

  St. Germaine was a town that didn't have many emergencies, if you didn't count the murders. According to Dave and Nancy, murders weren't really emergencies, the damage having already been done. Still, a dead body demanded a police presence, and we had to go and sort things out, collect crime data, look for clues, that sort of thing. We had a good closure rate on murder cases. We should. We had enough practice. When Pete had been mayor, he'd come up with a good town slogan: "St. Germaine, come for the murders, stay for the shopping!"

  A town of fifteen hundred souls, St. Germaine was larger than it appeared at first blush. The downtown square — the part of town that gave St. Germaine its structure — was built around Sterling Park. The street that ringed the park and passed in front of all the downtown shops, City Hall, Noylene's Beautifery, the Slab Café, the Ginger Cat, Eden Books, St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, and a few other buildings was Sterling Park Court, but everyone called it the "The Square." If someone wanted to send a letter to St. Barnabas Church, the address would read: St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, The Square, St. Germaine, North Carolina. This flew in the face of the U.S. Postal Service, which generally demanded actual street addresses, but the Postmistress of St. Germaine, a fine southern lady named Mary Miller, didn't seem to mind, and all the mail was delivered in a timely fashion.

  Outside the square, the town meanders into the surrounding mountains, tree-lined streets snaking their way into the hills and hollows. There is a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, many churches, a drug store, small businesses, Christmas tree farms, a library, nearby summer camps, a couple of cemeteries, a fur farm, and many, many residential avenues — all things that create a community.

  "Ah, here we are!" exclaimed Pete, seeing Amber Jo hoist a large aluminum platter from the counter and look our way. "Dinner is almost served."

  A few moments later we were divvying up the pie and digging into a sumptuous repast.

  "My," said Cynthia, "this is everything that Our State magazine said it was."

  "That review last month?" asked Nancy. "You haven't eaten here since then? This Black Bear pizza is the best thing since their last thing, whatever that was."

  "The Polar Bear Special," said Meg. "Alfredo sauce, fresh spinach, sun-dried tomato, artichoke hearts, feta, provolone and mozzarella."

  "You have the menu memorized?" I asked.

  "You bet," Meg said, happily.

  "You've been busy," Cynthia said.

  "It's the truffles that makes this great," declared Pete. "That and the bear sausage. But mainly the truffles."

  "These are mostly mushrooms," said Meg, holding one of the black, shapeless blobs aloft on her fork. "There may be a smattering of shaved truffles, but I'm almost sure that what we're tasting is just some truffle oil. Real truffles would be cost prohibitive."

  "It's true," I said. "Truffles are very expensive."

  "Which is why I've called you all here," said Pete. "And why we ordered the Black Bear Special."

  "Why?" said Cynthia.

  "You see," began Pete, "as you may or may not know, last week a Mr. Willard Shady from Troutdale, Virginia, was digging a grave for his cat, Frisky, under a large oak tree, and dug up a white truffle weighing just over two pounds."

  Nancy swallowed the last bite of her pizza, and chased it down with a gulp of beer. "Is that a big one?" she asked, taking another slice and putting it onto her plate. "Two pounds seems sort of big. Bigger than a turnip, anyway."

  "About the same size as Frisky's head, I'm told," said Pete. "Anyway, Mr. Shady sold his truffle in New York City for one hundred eighty thousand dollars."

  "Are you kidding?" said Meg.

  "Nope," said Pete. "The size is the key. Truffles go for six to seven thousand dollars a pound normally, but if you find a big one, the sky's the limit. Here's the thing ..." Pete looked around the table, smiling. "Troutdale is fifty-three miles due north of St. Germaine, well within the acceptable geographical norm. Therefore, according to Hiram Kennedy, our extension agent, there is no reason why truffles shouldn't be growing here in St. Germaine or the surrounding areas."

  "So what causes truffles to grow where they do?" asked Nancy.

  "No idea," said Pete. "Spores or something. That's not the point. The point is, how do we find them?"

  "Pig?" I said.

  "Exactly," said Pete. "We're going to need a truffle-pig. Then we're heading up into the mountains. I asked the game warden. He doesn't care about roots. Any truffles we find are ours to keep."

  The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest chain of mountains in North America and run from Newfoundland down to Georgia. I
n our area — here in northwestern North Carolina — we are blessed with majestic mountains, deep forests, rocky crags, breathtaking waterfalls, and sparkling lakes. Little towns are nestled all along the range, but most of the land is still undeveloped, much of it being part of the National Park system. If Pete could take a pig into the parks, and if there were truffles to be found, he might just get lucky.

  "These days, some people use dogs," I said. "The dogs don't eat the truffles they find."

  "Too slow," said Pete, dismissing the idea. "A pig is faster and has a better nose. She can smell truffles three feet under the ground. Don't worry. I can keep her from eating the merchandise."

  "Why a her?" asked Cynthia. "Can't you use a boy pig?"

  "Nope," said Pete. "Has to be a sow. I've done the research. A girl pig is attracted to the smell, because a truffle smells like a boar's sex hormones."

  "Eeew," said Meg. She stopped eating and stared at her half-eaten piece of pizza with a look of dismay.

  I took it from her hand. "Are you telling us all this for a reason?" I asked, before finishing the remains in a single bite.

  "I want to know if you guys want to invest," said Pete.

  "You're buying a pig?" asked Cynthia, surprised. I suspected that this was the first she was hearing of it.

  "We're buying a pig, honey," said Pete.

  "Don't you 'honey' me!" said Cynthia. "I don't want a pig."

  "Too late," said Pete. "She's on the way."

  "On the way from where?" asked Nancy.

  "From France, of course," said Pete. "Gascony."

  "How much does this imported pig cost?"demanded Cynthia.

  "She's highly trained," explained Pete. "She has one of the highest truffle ratings in France."

  "Truffle rating?" said Meg with a giggle.

  Cynthia narrowed her eyes. "How much?" she repeated.

  "Umm ..." said Pete. "Did I mention her pedigree? She is a full-blooded Mangalitsa, a breed originally from Hungary, but now ..."

  "Pete ..." warned Cynthia.

  "With the shipping, six thousand."

  "Dollars!?" screeched Cynthia.

  "She'll pay for herself in no time," said Pete. "Really." He picked up the last slice of pizza and took a big bite.

  "I'm in," I said.

  Meg stared at me.

  "What?" I said to her, splaying my hands. "I've always wanted to invest in a truffle-pig. It's been a lifelong dream of mine."

  "Mine, too," said Nancy. "Count me in. If we don't find any truffles, at least we can have bacon."

  Chapter 2

  St. Barnabas Episcopal Church is a place where miracles occur, if not with regularity, at least every few decades or so. The church had been founded in either 1842 or 1846, depending on which faction you believed — the Winslow Coterie or the Entriken Cabal. Actual records don't exist any longer for reasons that will soon be made clear.

  Two of the matriarchs of St. Barnabas are Wynette Winslow and Mattie Lou Entriken, both now in their seventies, and, although they have been fast friends since childhood, they have differing narratives as to the founding of St. B.. They are both lifelong members of the parish, as were their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents before them. In matters of church history, their collective memories are relied on almost exclusively, and in almost all cases their chronicles tended to jibe remarkably well. Except when it concerns this one thing.

  Wynette Winslow and her coterie have held that the church was founded by Father Alastair Crawly in 1842. She has made this assertion because she had in her possession a letter that had been passed down through her family, a letter written to her great-grandmother by the very same Alastair Crawly who, in 1862, had been captured by the Union forces in Virginia and sent to Alton Prison in Illinois. In this prison letter, explains Wynette, Alastair Crawly declares his longing to return to his beloved town and "take up the reins of that great work so eagerly begun those two decades past."

  For Wynette, the math is simple. 1862 minus two decades puts the founding date at 1842. This, and the avowed attestation by her sainted forebears, is enough for Wynette.

  There are three problems, according to the pundits, with Wynette's dating of the founding using the aforementioned correspondence. The first is that Alastair's "great work" written about in the letter didn't actually mention St. Barnabas Church. Therefore, the reference might be to his fledgling ministry, with the actual founding of the church to have occurred later. Secondly, "two decades," although specific in one sense (the meaning to be taken as exactly twenty years), is vague in another. "Two decades" could be easily be construed to mean "about twenty years, give or take a few on either side."

  The final problem is that there is no letter. No letter she can produce anyway. Wynette lost it or misplaced it, but she is adamant about the contents.

  Mattie Lou Entriken (as well as the rest of the Entriken Cabal) dismisses Wynette's great-grandmother as a floozy who was always trying to cause trouble. She can say this with certainty because Father Crawly was Mattie Lou's grandmother's uncle and Mattie Lou's Grandma Gertie had said that Wynette's distant relative, known to the Entriken clan as "Betty the Blue Ridge Bombshell," had no business writing letters to a married man whether he was in prison or not.

  Mattie Lou's proof consists of a printed bulletin from 1896 that advertised, in the "announcement" section, a need for firewood, a plea for prayers concerning Arthur Ackerman's cow, and an announcement about the upcoming celebration of the Golden Jubilee. Mattie Lou's math is as exact as Wynette's, setting the founding date for the congregation as "St. Barnabas Day, 1846." Unfortunately, her proof has the same drawback as Wynette's. That is, it can no longer be found.

  "It's here somewhere," said Mattie Lou. "When I'm dead, y'all can go through all this stuff and find it if you want."

  Adding to the problem was the fact that Wynette's mother and the Winslow Coterie were in charge of planning the centennial celebration, and so the church commemorated the event in May, 1942. The sesquicentennial followed in 1992. This cemented the 1842 date.

  All bickering aside, clearly the community of St. Barnabas formed just about the time that St. Germaine itself became a township. The old wooden church survived the Civil War, when many of the town's buildings did not, by serving as headquarters for Colonel George Washington Kirk. Kirk had been charged with holding the mountain passes of Deep Gap and Watauga Gap for General George Stoneman as he marched through North Carolina in March of 1865. Although Kirk's men were Union sympathizers from the area, both they and Stoneman's soldiers had little regard for the locals and engaged in stealing, general destruction of property, killing animals, burning buildings, and destroying all courthouse records. The church building was spared for another thirty-four years.

  In January, 1899, the first of our legendary miracles occurred when the church caught fire. The miracle wasn't that the church didn't burn to the ground. It did. The miracle wasn't that no one was hurt, although no one was. The miracle (verified by a photograph!) was that when the congregation showed up on the lawn on that frigid Sunday morning after the Saturday night fire, their despair changed to wonder as they gathered around the altar of St. Barnabas — a six hundred pound oaken altar with a marble top that should have been destroyed in the flames, but was instead sitting outside in the snow, across the street in the park, the communion elements all in their place. The episode was credited to the work of angels.

  It was this altar that became the centerpiece of the new church building this time made of stone and mortar instead of pine clapboard, and based on the familiar American design.

  The church was in the shape of a cross. The main part of the church, or the nave, was filled with pews on either side of a center aisle. The transepts formed the arms of the cross and contained pews as well, these facing inward. The altar was in the front. Over the years it had moved from where it stood against the front wall in the days when the priests celebrated with their backs to the congregation, to a few yards beyond the
chancel steps, as the church rethought its liturgy and the priests offered the Great Thanksgiving facing their flocks. The choir loft was in the back balcony, accessible by steps found in the narthex, known by other denominations (and motels) as "the foyer." Two hidden doors in the front paneling offered access to the sacristy — the room where the clergy put on their vestments and where communion was prepared. The pews could accommodate about two hundred fifty worshippers.

  It was a lovely church.

  It burned to the ground on Thanksgiving weekend four years ago.

  The fire began during a Thanksgiving Pageant and again, a miracle occurred. Two miracles, actually. The first was thanks to the St. Germaine Volunteer Fire Department. This time it truly was a miracle that no one was hurt, since the church was packed with people. Against all odds, the volunteers made sure everyone was out of the building and contained the fire to the church building itself, even though there were many other structures in the immediate vicinity. Most of the congregation — in fact, the entire town — watched in horror and deep sadness as the building was consumed and fell inward in a conflagration of flames, sparks and smoke.

  Rising out of this chaotic scene was the second miracle of the night, the one that the town still talks about and the one that made all the papers. On the morning after the fire it was discovered that while everyone was occupied with the bedlam that was the town square, the altar of St. Barnabas — the same holy table that had been part of the church since the beginning — had once again been moved from the burning building into the park across the street. When the congregation gathered the next morning, intent on having a service of thanksgiving, they found the altar amongst the fallen leaves, the communion bread and the wine right where they were expected to be.

  The rebuilding of St. Barnabas took a little over a year and a half. The new building was a copy of the old, even down to the stone that had been ordered from the same quarry as the turn-of-the-century structure. The grounds were expanded to include a meditation garden in the back and, although some differences had been made in the office area, by and large, members of the church in 1950 would have recognized the St. Barnabas they knew without any trouble.