Liturgical Mysteries 01 The Alto Wore Tweed Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sundays.
    Climbing the stairs to the loft, we saw Dave and Nancy bending over a body lying next to the organ.
    “What’s the verdict?” I asked.
    “He’s dead all right,” Dave offered.
    “Maybe he heard Sunday’s sermon,” I muttered under my breath, perhaps a little too loudly. I looked up. Sure enough, Mother Ryan was glaring at me. I gave her a sheepish grin.
    “I don’t see any wounds.” Nancy squatted and took a closer look. “There doesn’t seem to be any bleeding. Should I turn him over?”
    Dave reached for the body’s shoulder. “Here, let me help you.”
    Nancy was probably strong enough to turn the body over by herself. She was slim and tall and had a swimmer’s upper body strength. I never asked her if she was a competitive swimmer or perhaps a low brass player, but she sure had a trombone player’s shoulders. Her uniform, which she always wore while on duty, slightly accentuated her cultivated masculinity. She kept her brown hair fairly short and her figure, from what I could tell, was more boyish than voluptuous. When Dave was around her, though, he was like a lovesick puppy. If the two of them were to arm wrestle for a beer, my money would be on Nancy. Where Nancy looked like a TV cop always ready for business, Dave looked more like Dilbert with an even worse haircut.
    They struggled to turn him over. A dead body is always more unwieldy than a living one, but we all already knew who it was. People you’re familiar with are identifiable even from the back. It was Willie Boyd, the sexton.
    Willie wasn’t exactly the likable sort. In fact, most of the parishioners avoided Willie like the plague. As the sexton, he was basically the janitor and was in charge of cleaning the church and locking up after everyone had left. It was a job that he completed mostly at night and the staff left him notes as to what needed doing to avoid personal contact. This arrangement was just fine with the staff because in addition to his abrasive and generally nasty personality, Willie usually smelled of cheap aftershave which he used liberally to disguise his questionable bathing habits, his equally unwashed clothing and the cheap cigar he always had dangling from his sneering lips. He had been the sexton at St. Barnabas for about a year and had been the only applicant for the position that had been advertised for six full months. There weren’t a lot of unemployed folks in St. Germaine, and those that were didn’t want or need a part-time job as a janitor. Something like a job tended to mess up the unemployment check.
    My first thought was that Willie had had a heart attack but my thinking changed once he was rolled onto his back. His eyes were open, and his lips were pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. He had vomited before he died and upon further inspection I noticed that he had lost most of his vittles all over the organ console.
    “Jeez,” I said. “It might be a heart attack, but I don’t think so. Get the coroner and an ambulance down here from Boone. We’re gonna need an autopsy. And Nancy, let’s scrape whatever crap we can off the keyboard, put it in a plastic bag and send it down with him. I’ll have to take the stupid thing apart to clean it before Sunday.”
    Mother Ryan was standing toward the back of the loft, watching with dispassionate distaste. Megan was closer to the stairs as if she would dart down them at any second.
    “Who called it in?” I asked Nancy, who immediately flipped open her notepad in a most officious manner.
    “The 911 came up to me from Boone. It was made in by an unknown caller from the church’s number.”
    “Who was here?” I wondered aloud. “Well, nothing we can do till the coroner arrives,” I said. Let’s get a cup of coffee in the kitchen.”
    “I’m leaving,” Mother Ryan announced, pushing past Meg. “I still have a guest sitting in the car.”
    I reached under the organ bench to see if my 9mm was still there. It was. I thought I might be able to