The Mezzo Wore Mink (7 page)

I got up off the organ bench and made my way through the choir and down the stairs. Steve had already headed down, as had Mark Wells, Bev and Meg. As I came down the stairs, I saw quite a crowd standing around the door to the bell tower. In addition to the choir members, the ushers were also in attendance, several of them wringing their hands in distress.

“
It’s locked!” said Steve. “Whoever’s in there won’t answer and we don’t have a key.”

“
I’ll bet it’s that McCollough boy,” said Francis Passaglio, the head usher for October. “What’s his name? Moosejaw?”

“
His name’s Moosey,” said Meg. “Moosejaw’s a city in Canada. Anyway, it’s not him.”

“
I’ve got a key upstairs in the loft,” I said. “At least I think I do.”

“
The master key doesn’t work,” said Bev, her voice barely audible over another tremendous clang. “I tried mine.”

“
I’ve got some of the old ones,” I said. “The choir loft doesn’t open with the master either, but we never lock it so it doesn’t really matter.”

It took me a couple of minutes to run back up the stairs, rummage around the organ trying to find the key ring, and then to hustle back down. There were only three keys on the ring, so it didn’t take long to find the right one and give the lock a creaky turn. The door swung open just as the bell clanged again and we all froze at the sight.

Hanging from the bell rope by his neck, swinging like a pendulum, was Davis Boothe.

Chapter 5

I raced into the room and immediately concluded that Davis must have climbed the old wooden ladder leading to the first landing before tying himself a noose and swinging into space. I looked up. The ceiling was old tongue-in-groove pine, painted dozens of times over the years. In the center of the ceiling, fourteen feet above the floor, was a square hole, roughly two feet across, that had been cut to allow the bell rope to drop to a manageable distance. In fact, when the bell was still, the end of the rope hung about twelve inches above the floor. Now it was tied several times around Davis’ neck and looped around his arm. The old wooden ladder was fastened both to the floor and to the cutout in the corner of the ceiling. It was the only way up to the next room that, as far as I knew, was empty and unused except as an access to the pipe chamber by the organ tuner who showed up twice a year.

I pulled my pocketknife out of my pocket and climbed the rickety ladder as fast as I dared, at the same time seeing Mark and Steve come in behind me and grab Davis by the legs. They pushed him towards the ladder and I, reaching the apex, opened the blade and sawed at the heavy braided hemp, silently cursing the slowness with which each strand parted and gave way.

After what seemed an eternity to me, but was probably only thirty seconds, Mark and Steve placed Davis gently on the floor. Bev and Meg bent over him while the two men paused to catch their breath, having held Davis aloft as best they could, given the angle and limited leverage.

“
I think he’s dead,” said Bev. “He’s not breathing and his lips are black.”

“
Can’t you do CPR?” Meg asked me, panic on her face.

I skipped the bottom three rungs coming down and landed with a thud. Kneeling, I took Davis’ face in my hands and knew immediately there was probably no use. His head swung from side to side like a rag doll. Still, I started the CPR immediately. I could hear Meg behind me calling 911 and, in the distance, the sound of Carmel resuming her sermon. The ushers, I noted, were all standing around slack-jawed and of no help at all.

After three or four minutes, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at Mark Wells who shook his head sadly.

“
His neck’s broken,” he said. “It’s stretched probably two inches or more.”

“
Yeah, I know.”

I fell back off of my knees and sat staring at the corporeal body that had been Davis Boothe. Everyone was deathly quiet. The only sound was the Reverend Carmel Bottoms’ concluding sentence, heard as a far-off echo on the church’s antiquated sound system. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

“
Amen,” muttered everyone in the room.

•••

“
Let’s leave him for the time being,” I said, getting to my feet, “and lock the door until everyone’s out.” I glared at the crowd of ushers and various choir members peering through the door as I closed it behind me. “Not a word!” I warned, knowing it was a futile threat. “Not until everyone’s out of the church.” I turned to Meg. “Could you go and whisper to Carmel that we have an emergency and we should cut the service short—maybe after the passing of the peace? Everyone can come back tonight for communion.”

She nodded and disappeared.

I could hear the Nicene Creed begin and pointed the ushers toward the front door.

“
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen,” said the congregation.

“
You all can wait outside,” I said to the group. Then I turned to Bev. “The choir might as well stay up there until the prayers are over. Could you go up and tell them what’s happening after Carmel dismisses the congregation?”

She nodded without a word and disappeared as silently as Meg.

“
God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father,” continued the congregation.

I felt exhausted. I sat down on a bench in the narthex, pulled out my cell phone and dialed Nancy’s number.

“
On my way,” came the answer on the first ring. “Meg already called.”

I hung up without saying anything.

•••

The entire congregation loitered on the lawn of the church and watched the ambulance pull up and park in front of the double red doors. Nancy had gotten to the church just a few minutes after I’d called her and was in the bell tower room with the two EMTs. Most of the folks had already heard the news as word of the tragedy spread like wildfire among the huddled groups of parishioners. I broke the news to the rector.

“
He’s
what?!
” exclaimed Carmel Bottoms.

“
He’s dead,” I said. “It was suicide. He hung himself with the bell rope.”

“
Was he a parishioner?”

“
Oh, yes,” said Meg. “Very active. Well…active for St. Barnabas. He attended services probably once or twice a month.”

“
Did he have a family?” asked Carmel. “Was he married?”

“
I think he may have had a partner—he went out of town a lot—but he wasn’t married,” said Meg.

“
Partner? Was he gay?”

Meg looked at me. “We assumed so,” she said. “I don’t know for sure.”

Carmel’s gaze drifted from Meg to me. I lifted my hands and shrugged.

“
You know,” said the Reverend Bottoms, “Bishop O’Connell said that I shouldn’t pay attention to all the rumors going around the diocese.”

“
What rumors?” asked Meg.

“
St. Barnabas is cursed. That’s
what rumors!
People are horribly murdered in this church all the time. Horribly!”

“
Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “They’re not
all
murdered. This is a suicide.”

“
I’m leaving,” Carmel said, spinning on her heel. “I haven’t even finished unpacking! I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“
What about the communion service this afternoon?” I asked.

She gave me a withering look over her shoulder and didn’t answer.

“
Well,” said Meg. “That’s that. Maybe Tony will fill in.”

“
He’s out of town. We can call Father Tim from…what’s the name of that parish?…You know…across the ridge?”

“
Lord’s Chapel?”

“
Yeah, that’s it. I have his number in my office.”

Nancy and the two EMTs, nice fellows named Mike and Joe, wheeled the gurney out of the front doors and grunted it down the stairs. Our ambulance service came up from Boone—St. Germaine was too small a community to support its own—but considering the distance and the winding roads, Mike and Joe always made good time.

“
Another day, another St. Barnabas body,” said Mike with a wink as he passed me. I gave him my number two snarl.

“
Gives a whole new meaning to ‘corpus,’” said Joe. “Corpus! Get it? That’s Latin for…”

“
I get it,” I interrupted. “Take him over to Kent Murphee’s, would you? We need to get an autopsy.”

“
Coroner’s closed on Sunday,” said Joe. “But we’ll drop him at the hospital. Kent can pick him up tomorrow. Just call over there.”

They put Davis in the back of the ambulance, closed the doors and drove off without the sirens. Nancy stood at the curb as the crowd of churchgoers began to disperse.

“
I really liked Davis,” she said.

“
Me, too,” I said, although I didn’t really know him. “He was on the vestry,” I added absently.

“
We were in a Little Theater production together five or six years ago.”

I nodded.

“
That man could really dance.”

I looked at Nancy, then took out my handkerchief and handed it to her.

“
Why’d he do it?” she asked, knowing that none of us had an answer.

Chapter 6

Nancy and I found ourselves sitting in the station late Monday morning without much to say. We were still waiting for Kent Murphee to give us a call verifying suicide as the cause of death so we could give the go ahead on the funeral arrangements. We had found no next of kin.

Nancy was catching up on reports that had to be filed with the state to fulfill our quota of monthly bureaucracy necessary to receive our all-important government funds. I was in my office staring thoughtfully at a copy of Dave’s report on conflict management and negotiations. Seeing as I didn’t remember asking him to write it in the first place, I finally gave up and tossed it into an ever-growing pile on my desk.

I sat for a moment listening to the phone not ringing before announcing that I was going out for a while.

“
You have your cell?” asked Nancy, not looking up.

“
Sure,” I said. Then I checked. “Umm. I mean no. Do you see it anywhere around?”

Nancy looked up at me in mock exasperation. Then she flipped open her own phone and hit a number. A couple of seconds later I heard my muffled ring-tone—the theme to the
Muppet Show
. Nancy had put it on my phone as a joke, then somehow locked it, and now I couldn’t figure out how to change it. It was no good asking her. “It’s distinctive,” she said. “You’ll always know that it’s
your
phone that’s ringing.”

“
How about something by Bach?” I asked.
“That’s
distinctive. Or maybe the fugue to the Shostakovich
Second Piano Concerto?”

“
This suits your personality better,” said Nancy.

Even listening to the Muppets, it still took me a minute or two to locate my phone, now safely buried on my desk by the scattered pages of Dave’s report.