“I don’t know anymore, I really don’t. Maybe Barney and some of the others were right. Maybe it was just some deranged individual.” He coughed noisily and shook his head. “If so, Roy paid the ultimate price for my anxieties.”
“Other churches in the area have been resentful of your success. Might somebody from one of them have written the notes, as harassment?”
That struck a nerve. “Mr. Goodwin, you’re talking about fellow Christians!” he fumed. “I can’t believe that any churchman would degrade himself that way. Besides, whatever anger there was about our success came in the first few years. Once we were established, the resentment — which was really exaggerated by the press anyway — died down, partly because we draw so many people from Manhattan and even farther away. We haven’t eaten into the attendance at nearby congregations all that much. I think it’s been seven years, maybe even longer, since another church complained about the Silver Spire luring members away. In any case, the note problem seems to have gone away; there haven’t been any for the last two Sundays.”
“Might Meade have written them?”
He looked aghast. “That’s really... absurd. What in the world would Roy have had to gain by doing such a thing?”
I shrugged. “After all, he wanted to run this place, didn’t he? Maybe he figured he could scare Bay into an early retirement.”
“I’m sorry,” Morgan huffed as he got up, “but this conversation has taken an unpleasant turn. I wasn’t close to Roy, but I don’t wish to continue this discussion. It demeans him, and the Silver Spire as well. Besides, there isn’t any more I can contribute to your investigation — if there ever was — and you’ve got others to see. Marley, right?”
“And Elise Bay.”
“Oh yes, and Elise. I don’t believe she’ll be in till noon today, but Marley should be in his office right now. I’ll point the way.”
I couldn’t think of anything else Morgan could contribute either, so I went out the door behind him, ready to face the man who makes the music.
Ten
Morgan couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. When we were out in the hall, he gestured toward Wilkenson’s office but made no effort to do any escorting, which was fine with me.
“It’s the third door on the left, across from the main office,” he muttered. “If Marley’s not there, you’ll probably find him in the choir room; one of the women in the office can give you directions.”
I considered thanking him, but took a pass on that bit of civility. Besides, Morgan ducked back into his office so fast and shut the door that he wouldn’t have heard me anyway. All by myself, I was able to find my way to a door that had a small brass MARLEY WILKENSON plaque engraved with musical notes. I rapped my knuckles on oak and heard something that sounded vaguely like “Come in.”
Pushing the door open, I was in another well-decorated layout, this one done up in about ten shades of brown, from the carpeting and the walls to the draperies and the furniture and the lamp shades. Wilkenson, his white hair as impressive as Fred had described it, sat behind a desk that looked as if it belonged in the Oval Office, scribbling furiously with a fountain pen the size of a small howitzer that probably set him back almost as much as his brown three-piece pinstripe. He looked up without expression. “Yes?”
“I’m Archie Goodwin; I believe Mr. Bay mentioned me to you.”
“Yes, Doctor Bay did,” he said, standing me corrected and fixing me with light blue eyes that were every bit as friendly as his voice. “Please sit down. Will this take long?”
“Not very,” I told him, dropping into one of the two matching upholstered guest chairs — brown, of course — in front of his desk. “Just a few questions.”
“Your ‘just a few questions’ is about all I have time for right now,” he declared. “In fact, I don’t even have that luxury, but after all, Barney did ask me to see you.”
“I promise that I’ll be brief. If I understand this operation correctly, you’re in charge of all the music at the Silver Spire.”
“You hardly needed a meeting with me to confirm that,” Wilkenson said, smiling sourly.
“Just a feeble attempt to be sociable,” I responded with an honest-to-goodness grin, my sincere one. “Did your job bring you into contact with Meade often?”
“Correct.”
I waited for some more words, but they didn’t come. “How did the two of you get along?” I asked.
“We each had our jobs,” he responded sharply. “We rarely interfered with each other.”
“How did you feel about Meade?”
Wilkenson sniffed. “What possible relevance can my feelings about Roy have? Or do I get damned simply by refusing to answer?”
“You aren’t about to be damned by me under any circumstances,” I said, rerunning my sincere grin. “The truth is, with my track record, I’d be hard-pressed to damn the devil himself.”
That drew a real smile, which spread across Wilkenson’s long, bony face and was joined by a chuckle. “I have to say I like your candor, Mr. Goodwin. Are you by any chance a tenor?”
“Beats me.”
“I’m short a couple of first-rate tenors right now. One had the misfortune of being transferred to Philadelphia by his company, another decided to move to Colorado and to find himself, whatever that’s supposed to mean these days.” He snorted. “Well, you’re not here to listen to my problems. As far as my feelings about Royal Meade, they were frankly ambivalent. Roy was an incredibly dedicated man — a real workaholic. It seemed like he was always in the office, early mornings, nights, Saturdays. And he was a good preacher, too. But that intensity...”
“What about it?”
He studied his handsome pen, then looked up at me and wrinkled a white brow. “Roy could never unwind — at least I never saw it. He was always in high gear, tense. Now, this is a big operation, Mr. Goodwin, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. But I don’t think of it as a business — at least not like the businesses across the harbor.” He made a vague gesture with a hand in the direction of Manhattan.
“But Roy was the only one of us, other than Lloyd, of course, who seemed like... well, a businessman rather than a churchman sometimes, if you follow me. He was — hard, there’s no other word for it. And his people skills frankly weren’t very good; he didn’t have much patience with anything less than perfection — at least his definition of perfection.”
“That can’t have made him very popular.”
“He wasn’t very popular. Oh, on the surface everyone was rowing the same boat, but that’s because most of the staff and the lay leaders of this church and the other members of the Circle of Faith are fine Christians who practice their faith. They tend to forgive breaches in manners and avoid confrontation. And everybody knew how much Barney valued Roy, so they didn’t want to complain. A few of us did talk to Barney about him from time to time, though. As I mentioned earlier, I got along reasonably well with Roy — the music operations are in the main self-sufficient. But others have complained to me about his brusque and even insensitive attitude toward them. I felt Barney should know, so I mentioned it to him — without naming names, of course.”
“Care to name names now?”
I got another ice-blue glare. “I do not.”
“Tell me about the night of the murder.”
“Good Lord, the papers and TV have been full of it! What’s left to know? Fred Durkin all but accused somebody in the meeting — he didn’t say who — of writing those blasted threats Barney was getting, and Roy came down on him like an anvil. Then Durkin blew his stack and started cursing, and Barney stepped in. We all went away to cool off for fifteen minutes, and you know the rest.”