Murder in the Choir Loft

Mary North, the church organist, stealthily slid onto the piano bench in the small choir practice room off the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Pierce. This room served many purposes: bell choir rehearsal room, music library, groom's room during weddings, and doubled as a family room for funerals if you pulled the curtain on the side to view the sanctuary.
John Truman, the choir director, announced, “Let’s rehearse this morning’s anthem, ‘Be Strong in the Lord.’” As the introduction started, most choir members with various degrees of preparedness and attention started singing.
Dorothy Shroder, a sweet elderly lady who had been in the choir for decades and was in the beginning stage of dementia, asked her equally elderly friend Gertrude Smith, “What did he say?”
Dorothy and Gertrude had lived in Pierce their whole lives. They had learned, laughed, loved, and sang together and were determined to finish well together. Gertrude answered a little too loudly, “He said we are singing ‘Be Strong in the Lord,’” and set about to find the anthem in Dorothy’s folder.
Others had parts of their choir robes on and were struggling to juggle their folders, sing, and get dressed all at the same time. Bass Vic Roberts asked what side of the reversible choir stole they were supposed to show. “Is this communion Sunday? Aren’t we supposed to wear white?”
Bass Don Rojas said, “Today is the fifteenth, silly. This is a Baptist church, buddy. We only celebrate communion on the first Sunday of the month, just like Jesus did. We are wearing the burgundy ones like always. See.” He pointed to everyone in the room. None of this bothered Music Minister John Truman or anyone else in the choir because it was so typical. By the first chorus of the anthem, taken from Ephesians 6:10, almost everyone was in place, dressed appropriately, and sounding pretty good from John’s hearing. The choir sang out, “Be strong, be strong, be strong in the Lord.”
This is going to be a good Sunday. At least the parts I’ve planned, John Truman thought. The choir likes this anthem, and they sing it well. I knew they would. But everyone knew there would be one more hurdle to overcome before the service started.
The choir then rehearsed the little musical interludes that would knit the service together. Director John was getting tense as the service time approached because it still had not happened yet. They are ruining everything I’ve planned. This has got to stop!
Other choir members were feeling it too. Thoughts like, Why does this always happen? What can we do to stop it from happening? were in the minds of many in the choir. But it seemed no amount of planning, talking, or praying would stop it.
Senior Pastor Robert Petersen slipped beside Truman for prayer before everyone filed into the choir loft. It happened. Two panicked men, identified by most as the Wilson Boys, came through the side door of the rehearsal room. They were not brothers but father and son. The Wilson Boys was what everyone called them because they were seldom seen apart. They were always late, constantly entering like bulls in a china shop. And they often delayed the start of the service by several minutes. Despite many conversations with the music minister and senior pastor, these two were unable to see the importance of being on time or changing their behavior. It was always someone else’s fault. They blamed each other, the numerous cats they lived with, or their wife and mother. They never took responsibility for their tardiness.
There was no doubt that John Truman had control issues, and the Wilsons pushed all his buttons because he couldn’t control them. The only time Director John thought he had them was the Sunday they were so late that he locked the side door to the rehearsal room and took his place on the platform. He couldn’t help but think, That will teach them. However, the Wilson Boys came down the side aisle no sooner than John finished directing the choir’s opening song. They walked past the entire congregation into the side room to put their robes on. Then they moved over half the choir’s back row, stepping on toes, to the center of the tenor section. John Truman thought he heard audible groans and felt like steam was coming from his ears.
This was Pierce, a small oil field town in the mid-1990s. Despite its location in California, in many ways, it was like a town found in the deep southern United States. This mainly concerned the oil patch surrounding Pierce, as locals called it. People from the oil fields of Texas, Oklahoma, and the Gulf states could move to the Golden State of California to find similar jobs and escape some of the humidity. One of the jokes that ran around town was, “Did you know when the people left Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and came to California, they raised the IQ of both states!” Because of the small town and this southern attitude, life here was friendlier, kinder, safer, slower, and more accepting of people like Don and John Wilson and a few others in the choir, congregation, and community.