The Diva Wore Diamonds (15 page)

Meg sat there, stunned. “Noylene would never…”

“
Sure she would,” said Dave. “Noylene’s a mountain girl. She wouldn’t think twice about protecting what was hers, especially if it had been in her family for years.”

“
Will Brianna continue with the action?” asked Nancy. “This pasta’s great, by the way.” Meg smiled her thanks.

“
Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “She can’t. Russ was the only one who could have filed the suit because he was the only one who used the property.”

“
So with Russ dead…?” said Dave.

“
The point is moot,” I said. “Noylene keeps her property. And you can bet she won’t make the same mistake again. How about another beer?”

“
I’ll take one,” said Nancy.

“
I’m the one driving,” said Dave. “Thanks, though.”

Meg shook her head, then said, “Is that everyone?”

“
Ardine McCollough,” I said, getting up and getting two more brews out of the fridge. “Pauli Girl. Maybe Bud.”

“
What?
” said Dave and Nancy at the same time.

I looked over at Meg. She sighed.

“
We think that Pauli Girl’s been molested,” she said. “Or at least someone tried. I don’t know for sure because she wouldn’t tell me. Ardine certainly thought so.”

“
Russ?” asked Nancy.

“
We all think it was someone connected to the youth group at the church. An adult. That would be either Russ or Gerry Flemming.”

“
Or Brianna,” said Dave, with a wink. “Or maybe Wilma.”

“
Hadn’t thought of that,” Meg said. “But you’re right.”

“
I think we can assume it was Russ,” I said. “Since he’s the one who’s dead.”

“
But what if it
was
Ardine that killed him and she made a mistake?” Meg said.

“
Good point. Ardine’s certainly no shrinking violet, and we all know that she’s settled some scores in the past, but we also can’t discount Pauli Girl, if indeed, she was molested. She was standing right there, and she might have taken the opportunity to even things up.”

“
What about Bud?” said Dave.

“
Ardine was talking with him the day before. It’s why he missed his entrance during the skit. I wonder what his mother said to him.”

“
You think he was protecting his sister?” said Nancy.

I shrugged. “Can’t discount it.”

“
How about Brianna?” said Meg.

We all looked at her, blankly, waiting for an explanation.

“
She’s Russ’ wife, for heaven’s sake! Maybe she found out that he’d molested Pauli Girl.” Meg narrowed her gaze. “Maybe Pauli Girl wasn’t the first.”

“
Holy smokes!” said Dave. “Never thought of that.”

“
Anyone else?” I asked.

“
Anyone left?” said Nancy.

Chapter 10

Dr. Kent Murphee was a curmudgeon, easily identifiable by his tweed suit. Only a curmudgeon wears a tweed suit in June. Lovable, yes, but a curmudgeon nevertheless.

“
I hate to get up early on a Friday,” he grumbled, busily tamping down the tobacco in his pipe with the end of his fountain pen.

“
It’s ten o’clock,” I said. “And it’s Thursday.”

“
Ten o’clock, you say. How about a drink then?” he asked, pulling open his right-hand desk drawer and coming up with a bottle of bourbon.

“
I dunno, Kent,” I said. “If I start drinking at ten o’clock now, I won’t have anything to look forward to when I’m your age.”

Kent, the Watauga County coroner, was in his late fifties, but looked ten years older, partly due to genetics, partly due to a little too much to drink. His office was located in Boone. We didn’t have a coroner in St. Germaine. We didn’t have a hospital. We didn’t even have a full-time doctor.

“
Yeah, yeah,” he groused, pushing a glass across the desk in my direction. “If you want some ice, there’s some in that box over there.” He waved a finger toward a white plastic chest in the corner.

“
Kent,” I said, not unkindly, “isn’t that what they use to transport organs for transplant?”

“
Yeah,” said Kent. “But the dry ice is great in a drink. Just use the tongs. You don’t want to get that stuff on your hands.”

“
I’ll just have mine straight,” I said. “Now, how about that body we sent down yesterday?”

Kent looked across the desk at me and stroked his chin. “You know there’s a national park in Canada where the Indians used to run buffalo over a cliff?”

I shrugged and gave him a puzzled look.

“
It’s called ‘Head-Bashed-In-Buffalo-Jump.’ I visited there last summer. You know what they say when you call for information?”

I shrugged again, this time smiling.

“
Head-Bashed-In. May I help you?”

That brought a laugh.

“
So, you’re saying…”

“
Head bashed in.”

I chuckled. “Anything in the wound?”

“
Not much. He had a lot of hair, though. I’ll say that for him.”

“
He was a real estate salesman. Used cars, too.”

“
Ah,” said Kent, with a knowing look. “That explains it. Anyway, some dirt, other debris. Did you find the weapon?”

“
A big rock. It’s down at the lab.”

“
Sounds about right. I can match it exactly if you need me to. There’s a pretty nice impression on the victim’s skull.”

I finished my drink, stood up, and reached across the desk to shake Kent’s hand. “I’ll let you know,” I said. “Probably won’t need to if the blood and the tissue match, but I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“
Always glad to help,” said Kent.

•••

“
We have two problems,” said Bev Greene.

“
We have more than
that!
” said Kimberly Walnut.

“
Number one,” said Bev, ignoring her. “Now that the building is finished, we’ve got to find a full-time rector. Father Tony will only stay until the end of the summer. The last Sunday in August, he says goodbye for good. That gives us less than three months.”

I generally avoided church staff meetings as a rule. Thursday afternoons weren’t especially busy, but even so, the criminal element in St. Germaine certainly didn’t take Thursday afternoons off. That was my argument anyway. I suspected that, in reality, it
did
take Thursday afternoons off. Now, I was just hoping for some gunplay down at Noylene’s Beautifery to shake me loose—something that had been known to happen on occasion, especially when one of the new girls mixed up “Blue Rinse” with “Blue Wench,” apparently two distinctly different hair products.

“
How about getting a headhunter?” I said.

“
What’s that?” asked Marilyn. Besides Marilyn, the long-suffering secretary of St. Barnabas and the only one who truly knew what was going on, the meeting included Bev, Kimberly, Joyce Cooper, who had been in charge of the welcoming ministry for more than a few years, Georgia, and myself. Father Tony was always invited, of course, but hadn’t made a meeting yet.

“
You know, a headhunter,” I said again. “Someone to go out and find who we want, offer him or her a much better salary than he’s currently making, and spirit him into St. Germaine in the dead of night.”

“
Do you think that would work?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Might be worth a try.”

“
I’ll run it past the vestry,” said Bev, jotting notes to herself. “I wonder if it’s at all ethical.”

“
I guess we could always ask the bishop for help,” said Joyce. That brought a laugh from everyone.

“
Ethical, schmethical,” said Georgia. “We need a priest!”

“
Number two,” said Bev. “Diamonds.” She threw up her hands. “Now we’re sitting on diamonds. What are we going to do about
that
?”

“
I’ve been thinking about it,” said Joyce. “and I suggest we draw up an amendment to our charter forbidding any digging for diamonds on church property.”

“
Can we do that?” asked Bev, looking at me.

I thought for a moment. “It’s the right idea, but it would be easier just to restrict all the mineral rights to the property. Maybe put them in an irrevocable trust for, say, a hundred years.”

“
I’ll ask the lawyers about it,” said Bev, making another note.

“
Now, what about those kids?” Kimberly demanded, the ball finally falling into her court.

“
What kids are those, dear?” said Bev, sweetly.

“
Those little terrorists who tried to hijack my Bible Bazaar!”

“
Oh, they’re fine,” said Joyce, with a laugh. “Kids will be kids, after all. The important thing is to keep them busy.”

“
I agree,” said Georgia. “As long as they have something to do here at the church, it’s far less likely that we’ll have another incident like last summer.”

Bev and Joyce nodded gravely.

“
What happened last summer?” asked Kimberly suspiciously.

“
Best you don’t know,” said Bev. “We’ve all tried very hard to put it behind us.”

•••

It was June, but cool enough to have a fire going in the fireplace and, if there
was
a fire (and there was), Baxter would be lying in front of it on his old rug. Meg was curled up on the couch. Archimedes was preening himself atop the head of my stuffed buffalo, a present from Meg some years back that she had procured from some Western-style eatery going out of business. I was feeling pretty smug about the whole set-up.

“
Maybe you could start a children’s choir,” suggested Meg. She’d finished her biography and was now reading
The Shack.

“
Maybe not,” I said, feeling a cold chill creep up my neck. I flipped on the light over my typewriter and stuck Raymond Chandler’s fedora firmly on my head.

“
I think you should read this book when I’m finished with it. You’d like it.”

“
Doesn’t matter if I’d like it or not,” I said. “I won’t read it. It’s too popular. Maybe in a few years.” I rolled a new sheet of paper into the old machine.

“
You are so odd,” said Meg, looking at me with a smile. “What’s on the stereo? I really like it. It’s beautiful.”