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

choir loft made me quickly put the bowl back onto the shelf.
    Meg found a couple of empty liquor boxes in the corner of the kitchen by the sink and started to empty the refrigerator, glad for something to do. Dave came over from where he was trying to decide if he dared to try some duck-beak soup and began helping her.
    “Come on, Nancy,” I said. “Let’s go wait for the coroner.”

Chapter 3

    It was a long, quiet twelve miles back to the house.
    “I liked your prayer,” Meg said finally, breaking the silence and giving me a kiss on the cheek. “The one you gave outside the church. I was afraid for a minute that you were going to do one of your stupid prayers.”
    I looked offended. “There are no stupid prayers.”
    “You know...like the one you offered last Thanksgiving at my house, in front of my relatives. If I may I quote you. ‘Thank you God for dairy products including cheese and on this, the 26th day of November, we thank you especially for Roquefort, Brie and all the many varieties of cheddar. Thank you God for turkeys who willingly gave their lives that we might celebrate your bounty. Thank you God for grain from which we get our bread and beer. Thank you God for all your many vegetables, especially Raymond Burr. And thank you God for hamsters and all the little things that make our life worth living. Amen.’”
    “How could you remember all that? I didn’t think your memory was that good.”
    “I told Mother to record it.”
    “What!?”
    “I told her that she wouldn’t believe it, so she had better record it. She wrote it down afterwards for posterity. And possibly blackmail.”
    “I’m glad to have made her life a little brighter.”
    “Well” she sniffed, “she was not amused. She takes Thanksgiving rituals very seriously. And Raymond Burr’s been dead for years.”
    “He was the only vegetable I could think of on the spur of the moment.”
    “You’re supposed to be a man of the church.”
    Actually Meg’s mother seemed to like me a lot. Although she’d wanted Megan to meet me, I doubt that she originally viewed me as son-in-law material. I’m sure Meg changed her mind by casually dropping some information about my portfolio along the way.
    The silence broken, we wound our way through the mountains, making small talk and managing somehow to dance delicately around the looming hippopotamus named Willie, until we finally saw the cabin lights we had left burning in our hasty departure. Over the years, Meg has learned to let me ponder for a while before drawing me into speculation about a case. We pulled into the drive, turned off the truck and went back through the kitchen door.
    My cabin is situated on about two hundred acres about twelve miles from town. It included some good bottom land that was originally used to grow tobacco, several mountains and a good sized creek winding through the whole thing. I call it a “cabin” because one of the rooms—now my office—is a twenty-by-twenty log cabin with a loft that was originally built in 1842. I bought it from a fellow in eastern Kentucky who swore he had documentation that the cabin was built by Daniel Boone’s granddaughter. I’m not sure I believed him, but the cabin was in great shape, having been covered with clapboards for the last hundred years, and it came with a good story. We numbered the logs, took it apart and moved it to North Carolina. The rest of the rather large house was built to complement it. It sported a huge stone fireplace, a stuffed elk head above the mantle, and a lot of leather furniture. It suited me just fine.
    I grabbed a beer and I sat back down at the typewriter, hoping that a little imaginative prose would help clear my thoughts.

    • • •

    “ I heard about the hymn selection last Sunday.”
    Her voice was low as she stood in front of me, filling out a brown tweed suit the way Reggie White filled out the Packers ’ front line. Usually I didn ’ t care for tweed on women. I was more of a