The Diva Wore Diamonds by Mark Schweizer Read Free Book Online Page A

find a store where they could lie low, wait out the heavy rain, and pretend they hadn’t been involved.
    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.