The Christmas Cantata (The Liturgical Mysteries) Read online

  Chapter 2

  It was a Monday, and there were exactly three weeks until Christmas. As the choir director and organist at St. Barnabas, this concerned me. In my capacity as the police chief of St. Germaine, I was less concerned, but at this time of year it was not difficult to let the one responsibility slide in deference to the other.

  I'd been the chief for nineteen years, ever since I'd been hired by Pete Moss, the then-recently-elected mayor of St. Germaine who had found himself in need of a constabulary officer. Detective Hayden Konig, Chief of Police: that's what my card said. I'd been the musician at the church for almost as long as I'd been the chief, although I'd taken the occasional hiatus. I had a Master's degree from UNC in music and another one in criminology. This, apparently, gave me all kinds of credibility in both fields. I could spot a French 6th chord or a double parked car with equal proficiency.

  Pete's primary occupation, now that he was no longer the mayor (which didn't pay that much anyway), was to be the purveyor of "fine dining" at the Slab Café. "Fine dining" might be a stretch, but if you asked any local about the food at the Slab, they'd say, "Oh, it's fine." It was enough for Pete to slap the motto on the front of the menu. In fact, the Slab served a great breakfast; sandwiches, burgers, and just good all-around lunch fare; and had a pie case full of homemade desserts.

  I was sitting at our "designated" table (reserved for the SGPD and friends) in the Slab Café at seven in the morning. I expected Nancy to join me shortly. Dave wouldn't make it into the office until nine or so. There were three other customers in the restaurant. I didn't recognize them.

  When I first came to St. Germaine, I comprised the entire police force. Now we numbered three: myself, Nancy Parsky, and Dave Vance. Nancy was a great cop. Dave was great at filling out reports and running errands for Nancy. He was also in charge of donut procurement.

  "What do you want?" said Pete, from behind the counter. I could tell he was not in a good mood. Crabby. "Noylene will be here in a bit. She just called in. Frozen pipes." Pete, unlike the rest of the folks in the Slab, was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. He'd given up his flip-flops once the health department complained. Still, in essence a hippie from the seventies, he now tied his gray hair in a ponytail and only wore his earring on days that started with a "T."

  "Just coffee right now," I answered.

  "Get it yourself, will you?" Pete crabbed.

  "Oh, sure," I answered as snarkily as I could. "Don't worry about it. Allow me!" If Pete noticed my sarcasm, he ignored it.

  The coffee station was at the end of the counter and Pete had a couple of full pots resting on warmers and another one brewing. In front of the counter were four stools, one of them occupied by a man with his wool cap pulled down over his ears. The other two customers were men as well, both in the insulated coveralls that marked them as utility workers. They sat across from each other in one of the six booths that lined one of the walls. The tables, mine included, were covered with red and green checked vinyl tablecloths and decorated with a few Christmas ornaments. There were colored holiday lights strung throughout the café, and Noylene had put some of her "signature" homemade Christmas wreaths up on the wall, along with the prices, just in case someone might like one for their home.

  Noylene was a woman of many talents. Along with waiting tables at the Slab, and being the owner of the Beautifery, she also ran the Dip-n-Tan, a contraption by which anyone with $24.95 could be lowered, naked, into a vat of tanning fluid and generally come out looking like they'd just spent a week in the Caribbean. If the formula was slightly off, though, as it frequently was in the early days of the Dip-n-Tan, a customer might end up a lovely shade of pumpkin. Noylene had taken to testing the formula before dipping a nervous customer by lowering a pig head into the vat, leaving it there for two minutes, then pulling it out and comparing it to a chart she'd fixed to the wall. She'd gotten so she could gauge the strength of the tanning fluid pretty well and pig heads were free since she'd made that bartering deal with Jenny Limpet, the butcher's wife. She traded professional beautifying in exchange for pig heads, and she had a freezer full. A bonus was that she could sell the heads (after they'd been organically tanned) to a restaurant specializing in Scottish cuisine where her son, D'Artagnan Fabergé, worked as a sous chef.

  "Noylene say how many of her pipes burst?" I asked.

  "She didn't know," grumbled Pete. "She told me D'Artagnan was coming over to crawl under the house and check."

  "It's a wonder mine didn't bust," said the man at the counter. "Five degrees last night. Who ever heard of weather like this so early in December?"

  "I remember the same thing back in '89," said one of the utility workers. "It was eleven below zero. I remember because it was my first year on the job. I've never been so cold."

  "At least we ain't gettin' snow," said his companion. He got up to refill his coffee cup.

  "Too cold for snow," said the man at the counter. He took a loud, slow slurp of his own coffee. "Supposed to drop down even lower tonight."

  "Sheesh," said Pete. "That's too dang cold. I don't care how Christmasy the town is. Nobody's coming in to shop if it's below zero outside."

  The cowbell tied to the inside of the door banged noisily against the glass and Cynthia Johnsson came into the restaurant, smacking her gloved hands together, trying to get some feeling back into her numbed fingers.

  "You should have called me," she said to Pete. She peeled off her gloves, then took off her coat and scarf and hung them on one of the hooks that lined the wall beside the door. "Noylene sent me a text. Her pipes are broken."

  "Yeah, I know," said Pete. "I just didn't want to wake you." His tone softened for the first time since I'd come in. "Thanks for coming in, though."

  Cynthia and Pete had been a couple since Cynthia defeated Pete in a hotly contested mayoral election a few years ago. Pete, a two-time loser in the marriage department, was magnanimous in defeat and showed no animosity at all, preferring now to be the power behind the throne. "I'm not saying that Cynthia's a puppet ruler," he told me. "I'm just saying that a lot of ideas get tossed around under the covers after the town council has gone to bed."

  Cynthia walked behind the counter, gave Pete a peck on the cheek and donned her half-apron. She reached under the counter and came up with a book, then walked over to the table.

  "I brought this in yesterday," she said. "I don't know if you might want it or not, but I found it in one of the file boxes in the basement of the courthouse. I don't think anyone's been through that stuff for thirty years."

  "I can guarantee it," said Pete. "I was just gonna throw it all in the dumpster about ten years ago, but then I forgot."

  "Anyway," continued Cynthia, "the state says everything is going digital, so we have to scan all the records and whatever else is lying around, including Pete's expense vouchers for the past twenty years."

  "What?" said Pete. "Hang on...that stuff's classified!"

  Cynthia ignored him. "We were clearing out the papers we didn't need, and found this." She handed me the book. "It has nothing to do with city business, so just throw it away if you don't want it."

  The book was oversized, about ten inches by sixteen, and had a blank hardboard cover and stitched binding. The title page announced La Chanson d'Adoration by Elle de Fournier, not a composer I knew. I flipped to a random page and perused the hand-copied music manuscript, beautifully done. I knew the look. This was a performance score, notated by one of any number of copyists working in New York City when classical musicians could supplement their meager income by putting composers' scrawl into legible form. This was done in the days before computers had taken over the music engraving business, or even before copy machines. I turned back to the beginning of the score.

  "So what do you think?" asked Cynthia.

  "I'll look at it, but to be honest, most of this kind of stuff isn't worth the time and money it took to have it transcribed. It most probably got one performance, if that, and was relegated to t
he composer's resumé."

  "Well, whatever," said Cynthia. "I thought you'd like to see it."

  "Thanks," I said. "I really will give it a look. You never know."

  The cowbell clanged again and Nancy came in, mimicking the hand slapping that Cynthia had just gone through.

  "Man, it's cold," she said, unbundling.

  "Not my fault," said Pete.

  "Never said it was," snapped Nancy.

  Nancy Parsky was dressed, as she always was when she was on duty, in her police uniform—standard issue dark brown pants and khaki shirt, this one long sleeved. Her badge was prominently displayed and her gun was holstered high on her hip. She had on her law enforcement issue parka and a trapper style hat of muskrat fur and leather that made its appearance whenever the temperature dropped below ten degrees or so. Lieutenant Parsky had picked this one up on one of her summer trips to Canada and, although she didn't care for hats and usually didn't wear one, the bitter cold made almost everyone, including Nancy, forsake fashion for comfort.

  "Who's making breakfast?" Nancy asked. "Is Manuel here?"

  "Nope," said Pete. "His car wouldn't start. I'm cooking a breakfast casserole. Eggs, spicy sausage, bread, cheese...It's Manuel's recipe. He read it to me over the phone. It'll be ready in five minutes."

  "Figures," said Nancy. "Pete's home cooking. It's gonna be another one of those days. Well, bring it on I suppose." The skepticism was evident in her voice. Since Manuel had taken over the kitchen a few months ago, culinary expectations had risen dramatically.

  "We're all hoping for the best," said the man at the counter.

  "Hey!" said Pete, "if you guys don't like it..."

  "Everyone calm down," said Cynthia. "What's going on here? It's like this all over town."

  "Crabby Christmas," I said. "Happens every once in a while."

  "Positive ion bombardment," said Pete, as if this explained everything. "Or maybe sunspots. Sorry I snapped. It'll pass."

  Nancy walked to the coffee machine, poured herself a cup, then sat down next to me.

  "You're up early this morning," she said.

  "Well, I had to get up and run five miles. I figured after that, why not come into work?"

  "Five miles?" said Nancy. "Really?"

  "Of course not," I grumbled. "You think I'm one of those crazy people that runs five miles when it's a few degrees above zero? You could die out there! Nope. I've gone back to my expando-pants for the winter. I'm just hoping to gain only fifteen pounds between now and New Year's Day."

  "Huh," said Nancy. "I'm not sure I can respect a man who wears maternity clothes, even if it is five degrees outside."

  "Expando-pants!" I said, putting my thumb into my waistband and giving them a tug. "Look, they have these side-gussets."

  "Yeah, yeah," said Nancy. "Well, I ran my five miles." She picked up the music manuscript. "What's this?"

  "Some music that Cynthia found in a box in the basement of the courthouse."

  "Is it worth anything?" asked Nancy. Nancy was a fan of Antiques Roadshow.

  "I doubt it, but I'm going to give it a look."

  "Well, who's the composer?" Nancy already had her iPhone out and was busy bringing up her Google page.

  "Elle de Fournier." I pushed the book, opened to the title page, across the table. Nancy checked the spelling, typed the information in, and shrugged her shoulders a moment later.

  "Nope," she said. "There are a couple Elisabeth de Fourniers, but none that look like composers."

  "I didn't think there would be," I said. "I'll play through it though. Maybe there's something in it worth excerpting."

  "Hang on," said Nancy. She'd turned the title page and was now looking at the verso side where a quarter sheet of folded, lined paper was glued into the binding. She unfolded the paper gently, taking care not to pull it loose. "Look here," she said. "Premiered at St. Barnabas Church, Christmas Eve, 1942."

  "Really?"

  She spun the book around and pushed it back across the table. The inscription was in faded red pencil, but easily read.

  "Interesting," I said.

  "Maybe you can check the church records," said Cynthia, looking over my shoulder. "There's got to be some mention of it somewhere. A bulletin maybe."

  "All the church records were burned up in the fire three years ago," I said. "Bulletins, baptisms, weddings, old pictures, the whole lot. Someone might remember singing it..."

  "I doubt it," said Cynthia. "That was over sixty years ago. I can't remember the sermon I heard last week."

  "How about the newspaper?" asked Nancy. "I mean, this was a premiere performance. Certainly newsworthy."

  "The St. Germaine Tattler didn't even exist until 1950," said the man at the counter. "There was a paper in the '20s. Another in the '30s and '40s. Both long closed and out of business. The Watauga Democrat might have something, though."

  We all looked over at him. He shrugged and splayed his hands. "What?" he said. "I work for the Democrat. Over in Boone. You want me to check on it for you?"

  "That'd be great," I said, and watched him scribble the information on a napkin.

  "No old copies anywhere?" Pete said. "Of the St. Germaine papers, I mean."

  "Not that I know of," answered the newspaperman. "I don't even remember the names of those old rags."

  "Even if it wasn't in one of the newspapers," I said, folding the notation back into the position in which Nancy had discovered it, "some people have long memories."

  Premiered at St. Barnabas Church, Christmas Eve, 1942.

  Chapter 3

  She'd met Henry Greenaway at her twenty-sixth birthday party in September, 1941. A tall, bespectacled, thoughtful man, she hadn't given him a second look when her younger cousin Emily first introduced him to their circle of friends. Emily, it seemed, had her cap set for Henry and clung to him like a treed possum, although he appeared indifferent to her coquettish behavior. She was no classic beauty unless one tended to favor a female with an equine countenance. Emily was said to bear a striking resemblance to Eleanor Roosevelt, but unlike Eleanor, she had quite a figure and, if rumors carried any truth to them, was determined that potential suitors would remember her for her other attributes rather than for her horse-like features. Her Seabiscuit face, accentuated with a dental configuration that allowed her to win each and every "bobbing for apples" competition she'd ever entered, was framed by a mane of peroxide-white hair, but if a young man could focus his attention below her clavicles, he would find her to be very attractive. And willing. Yes, very willing indeed.

  Early in the evening, Emily had managed to fall into the swimming pool and, since she hadn't brought a change of clothes, remained in her wet, clinging, white silk charmeuse dress until the chill of the autumn air was too much for her to bear and she donned a full-length mink coat that just happened to be in the trunk of her car. Henry had gallantly offered her his tweed jacket after she had fallen in, but she had refused it repeatedly, preferring the warmth of the stares of the other young gentlemen at the party. The other girls were not amused.

  One of the gawkers (really, who could blame him) was her own date, Rod Fontineau, a baseball player who played for the Asheville Tourists. She had no patience for such shenanigans, and soon gravitated to the quiet, introspective fellow who seemed unfazed by Emily's antics and obvious lack of undergarments. They sat by the pool, sipped summer wine, and discussed various topics including literature and poetry, two subjects that had always managed to stump poor Rod, while the rest of the party danced far into the night.

  Henry had asked her out that very evening just before bundling a very inebriated Emily into her car, getting behind the wheel, and driving her home. During the weeks that followed, she'd discovered that Henry was a Yale grad and that his interest in music and poetry was well and truly grounded. He'd double-majored in English literature and business and, although he had no formal musical training, he'd sung with the Yale Glee Club for four years and had, in fact, been one of the Whiffenpoofs.
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  It was April when he proposed. April, 1942. They'd talked about their future together and she was over the moon when he practically begged her to give up her teaching job and go back to her first love, music. Money would not be a problem, he'd said. With a job waiting for him in the family business, they had a life to look forward to. He'd be back home in just a few months, a year at most.

  They married at the Asheville courthouse, much to her mother's dismay. Two weeks later, he shipped off to the Army's 18th Infantry and left for North Africa.

  * * *

  "What are you playing?" asked Meg. I was in the den, seated at the grand piano, doing my best to read the open score which included two bassoons, oboe doubling on English horn, flute, clarinet, and organ. The den was an original log cabin and, if the sketchy provenance I'd been provided meant anything, had originally been constructed for Daniel Boone's granddaughter. The rest of the house had been built around the cabin and its old square-cut logs framed the one room that Meg hadn't the heart to put her feminine stamp on when we'd married a few years ago. Oh, I had no complaints. She didn't go crazy putting up lace, or country ducks, or ringlets, or flounces, or whatever you call that girly stuff that pervades home shopping networks, but one could certainly tell a difference in the decor since she'd moved in, and in a good way. Not only did her decorating skills suit my taste exactly, but on one memorable Christmas, she'd even given me a full-sized stuffed buffalo. Sure, it was relegated to the den, but a buffalo! How could you not love a woman like that? The rest of the house still had plenty of leather furniture, polished wood, some great art, books—all stuff that made you happy to come home. The house, the cabin, as we called it, although it was hardly that, was now no longer a work-in-progress. Meg had spent a pretty penny on it since we'd been married, but we could afford it.