The Diva Wore Diamonds (7 page)

I’d asked Russ if there had been anyone inside the restaurant, and he indicated that the building had been empty.

“
No one comes in before ten,” he said through clenched teeth. “We open at noon. Well,” he added, “we used to.”

“
Maybe it’s not a total loss,” suggested Cynthia.

As if in answer to Cynthia’s observation, the rest of the roof fell in with a crash that we could hear over the rain and behind the closed glass door of the Music Shoppe.

“
Wow,” said Ian Burch, in his high, squeaky tenor, having collected his assorted rauschpfeifes from off the floor and set them back on the shelves. “It’s sort of like that preacher called down the wrath of God upon the Bear and Brew.”

I looked over at Meg. She raised her eyebrows in return.

“
That fat, little son-of-a-bitch,” Russ growled. “I’ll sue his damned pants off. Him
and
his church.”

“
You have insurance, don’t you?” asked Meg.

“
I’m not gonna file a claim,” said Russ. “New Fellowship Baptist Church is responsible. New Fellowship Baptist Church is gonna pay.”

Chapter 5

Celebration Sunday had awakened under a quilted blanket of fog, low-hanging tracts of “smoke” that gave the Smoky Mountains their unique character as well as their name. This was the Appalachians in June. At the intervals where the smoke vanished from the headlights, the hills in the lower gaps were awash in color. Meg and I drove slowly down the mountain, taking our time, not just because of the fog, but because the wildlife was plentiful and unconcerned by traffic. We slowed for a family of deer—a doe and two fawns—that had decided that the flowers beside the road would make a perfect breakfast. They looked up, startled, as we drove past, then dove into the purple blossoms of the rhododendron. By the time we arrived in town, the sun had managed to chase most of the fog back into the hollers, and the day was looking as the celebration and welcoming committee of St. Barnabas thought it should.

We’d rehearsed in the new sanctuary for the first time on Wednesday evening. Moving our rehearsals back from Thursday evening to Wednesday hadn’t helped our sight-reading any, but we were out of the courthouse at last and glad of it. The choir loft, still situated in the back of the church, had been outfitted with new chairs, music racks for folders, new hymnals—the works. The organ wasn’t quite finished, but most of the ranks were there and functional, having been voiced and tuned late in the week. I was playing the Bach
Little Prelude and Fugue Number 4 in F Major
for the prelude and had even managed quite a bit of practice in the last week. The choir had been working on
Behold, the Tabernacle of the Lord
by William Harris, perfect for the first Sunday back in our new church and one of the choir’s favorites. In addition, there was new service music, three hymns, the Psalm, and
Sicut Cervus
, the lovely Palestrina motet, to be sung during communion. It would be a full day.

I was in the church office, making copies of my latest literary effort and a couple of easy hymn descants to pass out to the choir, when Kimberly Walnut, our brand new Christian formation director, walked in.

“
Good morning, Hayden Konig,” she chirped, rattling her single piece of paper as if to say, “If you’re going to be using the machine for a while, I’m really in a hurry, so you should get out of the way and let me go first.” I wasn’t buying it.

“
Good morning, Kimberly Walnut,” I replied. The photocopier chugged away happily. “I hear you have quite a Bible School planned for next week.”

Kimberly saw that she wasn’t going to get to the copier any sooner, gave a disgusted huff through pursed lips and crossed her arms in annoyance.

“
Yes,” she said. “It’s a program I did with a large church in Kentucky when I was in seminary. It’s called Bible Bazaar 31 A.D. It’s all centered around a bazaar in biblical times. The kids all dress up. The adults as well. We do plays and skits about stories in the Bible and help the kids do activities. You know, like sandal-making and carpentry and pottery and baking and things like that. We didn’t have enough time to do it all ourselves, so New Fellowship Baptist and Sand Creek Methodist are going to join us. We should have quite a turnout.”

“
Sounds great,” I said. “Meg and I signed up. I’m the tax-collector. I think Meg is one of the tent-mothers.”

“
Meg said you’d write our creation play. Is it finished yet?”

“
She said
what?
”

“
She said you’d be happy to write our creation play. It’s for the second day.”

I sighed. The photocopy machine finished its chore with a final click, and I retrieved my papers from the tray.

“
I’m sure it will be great. I’ve heard good things about your writing,” said Kimberly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m
really
in a hurry.”

•••

Two hours with Ermentraud (and thirty bucks) later, I found myself back in the office picking potato skins off my slicker and avoiding accusing glares from Marilyn, my secretary.

“
You had two calls,” she said, tossing a couple of slips of paper onto the desk. Marilyn was a dame with more angles than curves, more spunk than smarts, and a Yugo. She looked at me from behind cheap dime-store glasses with eyes that looked as though they were being piloted by tiny mice in swivel-chairs.

“
Yeah? Any potential clients?”

“
One girl’s on the way up,” Marilyn sniffed. “I told her you’d be back by three so she made an appointment. The other guy wants to sell you some insurance.”

“
Tell him to buzz off,” I said. “I ain’t interested.”

“
I’ll tell him,” said Marilyn with a huff and a twirl, a half-eaten jelly donut suddenly appearing between her lips. She snorked at it delicately. “And it looks like your appointment is here.”

I just had time to settle behind my desk when the knock at the door came rattling across the room. I looked up at the dame lolling in the doorway; a broad with more curves than a Möbius algorithm in which x(u,v) (1 +
½
v cos
½
u), and I was hooked like a carp with a mouthful of chicken guts. So I did what any shamus worth his slide-rule would do. I fell in love.

She batted her peeper-shades at me, then, ballerina-like, rose gracefully en pointe, extended one slender leg behind her like a dog at a fire hydrant, and curtseyed. She seemed to have an ecclesiastical halo around her head as she made her way across the carpet in that particularly sexy way of walking which was really due to a partially slipped disc and incipient arthritis.

“
My name is Constance,” said the apparition. “Constance Noring. And I need your help.”

•••

“
Brilliant!” said Georgia, once the choir had gathered for our pre-service warm-up and rehearsal.

“
Awful,” said Meg.

“
Awfully brilliant,” I admitted. “Now, my dear wife, please fill me in on my volunteering to write a creation play for the Bible Bazaar.”

“
Oh…umm…” Meg bit the end of her finger in consternation and did her best to look chagrined. “Did I sort of forget to mention that?”

“
Where’s my music?” said Marjorie. “Someone stole my music!”

“
Besides,” said Meg, “if the lovely Constance Noring is any indication for your writing prowess, you should be able to knock out a creation play in a couple of minutes.”

“
Hey! Did you hear?” said Phil Camp. “Russ Stafford filed suit yesterday in District Court,” The basses were still milling around and trying to find their seats. “He’s suing the Baptist Church.”

“
I expect that Judge Adams will toss it out,” said Bob Solomon. “Anyway, Russ should just go ahead and file an insurance claim.”

“
He mentioned that he’ll go that route if he loses his lawsuit. The insurance company says they’ll be glad to wait and see what happens.”

“
I guess they will,” answered Bob. “They might not have to pay off at all.”

“
Palestrina,” I announced. “Then the Harris anthem. Sit up straight and sing it like you mean it.”

•••

As services went, this one was a doozy. Bishop O’Connell, in fine form and full regalia, Father Tony Brown in his new vestments, the acolytes, lay-readers, choir members, and Eucharistic ministers, all followed our champion thurifer, Benny Dawkins. Benny walked behind the crucifer who was proudly holding the church’s new brass and silver processional cross aloft, and the group entered in all possible pomp and pageantry. Benny Dawkins had finally realized his life’s ambition by actually
winning
the International Thurifer Invitational, held in Santiago, Spain, last summer. He wasn’t a long-shot to come out on top, by any means, having finished as one of the top-five thurifers for the previous several seasons, but the competition seemed to be going the way of his arch-rival, Basil Pringle-Tarrington, who was a sentimental favorite due to his losing an arm in an unfortunate incense-pot training exercise with his sensei in Japan. Benny, never one to be cowed by sentiment, took the competition right to Pringle-Tarrington, first stunning the judges with his new signature move,
St. Moulagh’s Breastplate
, a maneuver that left a startling vaporous vision of a Celtic cross hanging in the air above the altar before dissipating a moment later, only to be replaced by a phantasmic image of the Keys of St. Peter. The gasps from the crowd were gratifying enough, but nothing compared to the spontaneous weeping that followed as Benny turned and faced the crowd, whirled the thurible in front of him until it became a blur of gold, and the sheer speed of it made the glowing coal light the pot from within until it shone with a radiance matched only by Benny’s serene expression, then walked back down the aisle through a fairly reasonable smoky depiction of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” Pringle-Tarrington withdrew from the competition; many thought his spirit had been broken, and he’d never compete again.

I couldn’t see the magic Benny was performing this morning since I was playing the prelude when he came in, but there was appreciative applause as he censed the altar, made his turn and headed out the door to the sacristy. Our bishop didn’t care for incense—it made him sneeze—so Benny used special hypoallergenic smoke and got out of the nave as soon as he’d done his part.

The new organ was splendid, the choir sang exceedingly well, the bishop’s sermon was well-received, and the congregation even sang the hymns. Father Tony had banished the dreaded “children’s moment” soon after he’d returned to taking charge of the services. Now the kids follow the crucifer out to a special children’s service during the second hymn and come back in for communion.

Moosey and his gang were there, five ten-year-olds who struck terror in every Sunday School teacher that had ever had the pleasure of teaching a class on Noah’s ark while simultaneously trying to corral two of every reptile native to the St. Germaine ecosystem—reptiles that had been courteously provided by any one and possibly all of the afore-mentioned gang. Moosey, Bernadette, Ashley, and Christopher had recently added a fifth to their confederacy, someone to take the place of the departed Robert, a casualty of the seductive appeal of New Fellowship Baptist’s
Golgotha Funpark
. His name was Dewey.

The “Children of the Corn,” as they were known by the Christian education department, had been deemed too old for children’s church and so now congregated on the back pew where they spent the service passing notes and looking up all the smutty parts of the Bible they could find.