Liturgical Mysteries 01 The Alto Wore Tweed Read Online Free
Author: Mark Schweizer
kept one under the seat of my truck and the rest of them in a safe at my cabin.
“We might as well meet you there then,” he said. “I’ll ride with Nancy.”
“Meet at the church?”
“At St. Barnabas. There’s a body in the choir loft.”
• • •
Dave and Nancy are both homegrown and both wanted to be on the force since they were in high school together. Dave went to the community college for a couple years, Nancy to Appalachian State where she majored in Criminal Justice. I admit that Nancy was an Affirmative Action hire, but she’s worked out fine and is a top-drawer cop. She never married and so is “on call” all the time. Admittedly, there’s not a whole lot of “on-calling” but she does get paid a little extra. We have one car and one cell for prisoners in the station house, but then, there isn’t a lot of crime in St. Germaine. Nancy broke our big case last year—several home burglaries. Someone was breaking into houses and stealing wine. It turned out to be the McCollough boy and the story was that he was trying to get money to buy video games, which his mother wouldn’t let him play anyway because they have no television set, much less a Nintendo. But the Nintendo Defense was the official version as told to Judge Adams, thus completing the plea agreement and garnering a suspended sentence. I stayed out of the whole thing since I knew the family. The wine wasn’t that expensive—twenty to thirty dollars—and he rarely took more than a couple of bottles from any one house. Nancy found it all under his bed. As the kid’s sister put it, “He jest ain’t right and we all knows it.”
Part-time Dave watches the office and takes the phone calls between nine and three. We pay him minimum wage, but he makes ends meet thanks to a small trust fund set up for him by his grandparents. All 911 calls go down to Boone and they call them back up to us.
My job is to keep everything running smoothly, which it does most of the time. When I’m feeling particularly bored or envenomed, I get my ticket book out from underneath the stacks of papers on my desk and start giving out speeding tickets around town. Unfortunately, word travels fast and traffic around town slows to a crawl until my nasty mood passes. I usually only get to give four or five tickets before all of the St. Germainites get the word. Afterwards, I tend to feel guilty and tear the tickets up. The odd person that does send in his money gets a gift certificate for breakfast downtown at The Slab courtesy of the St. Germaine Police Department. The good thing is that St. Germaine property taxes are so high that our budget doesn’t depend on us producing revenue through ticketing speeders like some towns around these parts. The bad news is that our taxes are so high. I, however, don’t live “in town” and thereby escape the unkind tariffs that are the lot of the rest of the unlucky serfs. Plus, I get to use the gift certificates for breakfast now and again. It’s just one of my many perks.
• • •
“I gotta run,” I said as I headed through the kitchen toward the back door, grabbing my sweatshirt off the nail behind the door. October tended to get chilly once the sun went down.
“What’s up?” Meg looked concerned. The spinach pie and steak kabobs she’d been fixing for dinner were almost on the table. The food tempted me to leave the dead body to wait just a little longer. However, I could tell I wasn’t going to get any supper without an explanation. An explanation which, if I knew Meg, would only lead to more questions—questions to which I presently had no answers.
I grabbed a kabob to-go.
“Well, little dahlin’, it’s time for yo’ man to do some work for a change. Get your coat and a kabob and come on. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Chapter 2
I slid the Rachmaninoff Vespers Service into the CD player as we pulled out of the drive. My blue ’62 Chevy pickup, although showing its age, was
“We might as well meet you there then,” he said. “I’ll ride with Nancy.”
“Meet at the church?”
“At St. Barnabas. There’s a body in the choir loft.”
• • •
Dave and Nancy are both homegrown and both wanted to be on the force since they were in high school together. Dave went to the community college for a couple years, Nancy to Appalachian State where she majored in Criminal Justice. I admit that Nancy was an Affirmative Action hire, but she’s worked out fine and is a top-drawer cop. She never married and so is “on call” all the time. Admittedly, there’s not a whole lot of “on-calling” but she does get paid a little extra. We have one car and one cell for prisoners in the station house, but then, there isn’t a lot of crime in St. Germaine. Nancy broke our big case last year—several home burglaries. Someone was breaking into houses and stealing wine. It turned out to be the McCollough boy and the story was that he was trying to get money to buy video games, which his mother wouldn’t let him play anyway because they have no television set, much less a Nintendo. But the Nintendo Defense was the official version as told to Judge Adams, thus completing the plea agreement and garnering a suspended sentence. I stayed out of the whole thing since I knew the family. The wine wasn’t that expensive—twenty to thirty dollars—and he rarely took more than a couple of bottles from any one house. Nancy found it all under his bed. As the kid’s sister put it, “He jest ain’t right and we all knows it.”
Part-time Dave watches the office and takes the phone calls between nine and three. We pay him minimum wage, but he makes ends meet thanks to a small trust fund set up for him by his grandparents. All 911 calls go down to Boone and they call them back up to us.
My job is to keep everything running smoothly, which it does most of the time. When I’m feeling particularly bored or envenomed, I get my ticket book out from underneath the stacks of papers on my desk and start giving out speeding tickets around town. Unfortunately, word travels fast and traffic around town slows to a crawl until my nasty mood passes. I usually only get to give four or five tickets before all of the St. Germainites get the word. Afterwards, I tend to feel guilty and tear the tickets up. The odd person that does send in his money gets a gift certificate for breakfast downtown at The Slab courtesy of the St. Germaine Police Department. The good thing is that St. Germaine property taxes are so high that our budget doesn’t depend on us producing revenue through ticketing speeders like some towns around these parts. The bad news is that our taxes are so high. I, however, don’t live “in town” and thereby escape the unkind tariffs that are the lot of the rest of the unlucky serfs. Plus, I get to use the gift certificates for breakfast now and again. It’s just one of my many perks.
• • •
“I gotta run,” I said as I headed through the kitchen toward the back door, grabbing my sweatshirt off the nail behind the door. October tended to get chilly once the sun went down.
“What’s up?” Meg looked concerned. The spinach pie and steak kabobs she’d been fixing for dinner were almost on the table. The food tempted me to leave the dead body to wait just a little longer. However, I could tell I wasn’t going to get any supper without an explanation. An explanation which, if I knew Meg, would only lead to more questions—questions to which I presently had no answers.
I grabbed a kabob to-go.
“Well, little dahlin’, it’s time for yo’ man to do some work for a change. Get your coat and a kabob and come on. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Chapter 2
I slid the Rachmaninoff Vespers Service into the CD player as we pulled out of the drive. My blue ’62 Chevy pickup, although showing its age, was
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