The Last Suppers (8 page)

“They’ve already searched the whole place?” I could
not remember ever being so confused. Another wave of weariness swept over me. I ran a hand over the black enamel of Tom’s stove. “That’s hard to believe. Why did you … why did Olson have the pearls in the first place?”

“He always kept the stuff for the jewelry raffle and sale.” Marla sounded disgusted. “He kept the gold chains last year and the jade the year before that. He said a jewelry thief would never scope out Upper Cottonwood Creek. I told the police to keep looking for them, but they said his house wasn’t burgled, so it’s not as if they searched every nook and cranny. It’s just that the motive doesn’t look like robbery at this point. Of course Olson didn’t have a safe. And they won’t let me or anyone else go into his house to poke around. That Olson. He was such a squirrelly packrat, he probably hid them somewhere we’ll never find.” She groaned.

“Squirrelly packrat?”

“Sorry, I’m mixing my rodent metaphors. You going to eat these truffles?”

“Go ahead. Marla—Is there a church organization with the acronym P.R.A.Y.?”

She took a bite of chocolate and munched thoughtfully. “Pray? Not that I know of, and you know if anyone would know about church organizations, it’s me.”

“Well, when was the last time you read the story about Judas?”

Marla finished her first truffle, looked over the tray, and chose a second, this one a plump dark mound dusted with cocoa. She popped it into her mouth, put a hand on her large chest, and frowned. “I certainly don’t know. Why?”

“Tom wrote something down before Olson died,” I murmured. “He mentioned this P.R.A.Y. and Judas, but nobody knows what he was talking about.”

“Judas? He wrote something about Judas? Why?” I shrugged. Marla licked her fingertips. “Let’s see, what’s today? Still Lent. I always wait for somebody to read the story to me. You know, in church. The Last Supper, Maundy Thursday, then the betrayal by Judas. No, no, it’s the other
way around. Wait a minute. You’re the Sunday School teacher, you tell me. Is that all he wrote? What was it, some kind of ransom note?”

“No.” I’d probably already said too much. I gritted my teeth in preparation for further interrogation, but Marla pushed away the truffle tray and gazed in my direction, concerned. Clearly, she was more worried about me as a friend than she was about the details of the homicide/kidnapping investigation.

“Goldy, want to come and stay at my place? I can take care of you. Honestly, it’s the least I can do. Matron of honor and all that.”

“No, thanks. I have to stay by the phone. Until they find him,” I said uncertainly.

“They’ll find him,” Marla said firmly. She inched her chair over and put her hand on my arm. “Goldy, you cannot stay here alone.”

“You’re great, but honest. I’m not alone—Arch and Julian are with me. Talk to me about the church. Tell me how this could happen.”

“I swear, I don’t know. Olson was just—” She gestured extravagantly, like an Italian looking for a word. “—a cute charismatic who had a good grounding in theology? I don’t know. Does that sound prejudiced? I mean, when I told him we cleared twenty thousand on the gold chains last year, he didn’t say ‘Praise the Lord.’”

“That doesn’t help.” Twenty thousand dollars on gold chains? I felt hysteria rising in my throat and pushed it down. “With these jewelry raffles—you sell some and raffle some, right?” She nodded. “Who ordered the pearls for the fund-raiser? Do you know how many people knew they were out at Olson’s house? And what do the churchwomen use all that money for, anyway?”

“Hey whoa, Goldy, slow down.” She pressed her lips together. “Bob Preston ordered the pearls this year. You remember, the oil guy, husband of Agatha, son of Zelda. I guess I should say, former oil guy. He got some kind of deal from a friend of his in the Far East. As to what the church-women use the money for, there’s usually a
big
argument.
Lucille and the Art and Architecture Committee want to build the columbarium before they redo the kitchen. I’m running the raffle, and I want to give the money to Aspen Meadow Outreach. So Lucille Boatwright and I are at odds, which, believe me, is nothing new. Speaking of the crotchety angel, are you up to hearing about what happened after she collapsed at the church? Or do you want me to fix you some tea first?”

I really couldn’t focus on Lucille Boatwright and her autocratic ways. But decision making was beyond me. When I said nothing, Marla rummaged through cupboards, extracted a teapot and cups, opened a box of Scottish shortbread she had brought, and put a pan of water on to boil. The gestures reminded me of Tom. He loved tea. Loves.
Stop it.

“Anyway, Lucille Boatwright,” Marla persisted. “The Old Guard is still guarding. Old Lucy’s fine; she informed the doctors not to let Mitchell Hartley and the rest of the charismatics touch her precious columbarium construction in her absence. She had some arrhythmia, and Zelda Preston is down at the hospital with her.”

“Well, Zelda’s back, because she just called me from the church. Trying to plan Holy Week and Ted Olson’s funeral and wondering what to do with Tom’s and my wedding flowers.” Marla sipped her tea and rolled her eyes. “I told her to give the altar arrangements to the Roman Catholics.”

Marla choked. “Treading a bit close to the edge, aren’t we? I’m surprised Zelda’s involved. You know, she was just so irate about the music, spent all last month screaming about going to see the bishop. Oh, wait. Speaking of the bishop. Guess who he’s appointed to pastor the church through this crisis?”

“Marla. I really don’t care. All I can think about is Tom. A priest appointed to get us through this crisis? Could the bishop really move that fast?”

“He has to. I mean, a murdered priest, a halted wedding, not to mention a funeral? Our flock needs emergency pastoring.”

“Doug Ramsey, I guess.”

“Wrong. He’s too junior.” She dunked a shortbread cookie into her tea and carefully bit into it. “The bishop is sending in the poet.”

“The … oh, no. Not George Montgomery. He’s the canon theologian. He’s on the Board of Theological Examiners with me and always asks about the history of the eucharist.”

“Montgomery may
examine
about the sacrament of holy communion,” Marla said, “but he’s going to
versify
about everything else.” She finished her shortbread cookie and reached for another. “Be prepared for sermons that ask, ‘Where were you, God/when I laid sod/and found it crass/to ask for grass?’” She chuckled sourly.

I stared at Tom’s oven. The phone rang. I jumped for it.

“Yes!”

“Hello, is this Goldy?” A female voice, hesitant, raw from crying.

“Who is this?”

“Agatha,” gulped the voice, “Agatha …”

I put my hand over the receiver and mouthed to Marla, “Agatha Preston.”

Marla stage-whispered, “I saw her in the church kitchen. She looked like a WASP auditioning for
Song of Hiawatha.”

“Agatha,” I said into the receiver, “what is it? Do you have some news? What’s wrong?”

Marla’s eyes bulged. I shook my head firmly when she mouthed, “What? What?”

“I can’t, I can’t take it …” Agatha gagged, coughed, and let out a single sob. With great effort, she said, “Did you … I need to know if you … saw him.” She burst into a fit of crying.

“Saw him?” I was bewildered.

“What happened?” she sobbed. “Oh, God, I’m not going to make it. Oh, where is he?” She cried harder, and then her voice became distant when the phone thudded against a hard surface.

“Hello, who’s this?” A male voice. “This is Goldy the caterer. I was trying to talk to somebody.”

“This is Bob Preston. My wife coordinates the prayer list. As you can see, she is extremely upset. She’ll have to call you later.”

“But, Agatha asked me if I saw somebody. Who was she talking about?”

Bob Preston said: “I certainly don’t know. My wife’s beside herself. It would be in the best interest of the church if you could just let her call you back.”

My frayed nerves snapped. I yelled, “Look, dammit—”

But unlike most Episcopalians, Bob Preston had hung up.

“W
hat a creep!” I screeched. “Get out the phone book,” I raged at Marla. “I need to call back the Prestons. Agatha said she wasn’t going to make it, and had I
seen
him, and then Bob just more or less told me to forget it, she’d have to call me back! Where is my stupid phone book?”

Marla’s eyebrows climbed toward the stratosphere. Telling Marla to forget something was her idea of denial of civil liberties. I scrounged wildly for, and then through, the thin Aspen Meadow phone book. No Preston. What about the church directory? I looked for it, but then remembered I had cleared that shelf to make way for Tom’s cookbooks, which now lay in a disorganized pile above the counter. I had no clue to the directory’s whereabouts.

Marla clattered our teacups into the sink and turned on the faucet. I gave up looking for the Prestons’ number and announced I was out of physical and emotional fuel. I had Tom Schulz to worry about. Had he ever mentioned Agatha Preston to me?

“What is Bob doing now?” I demanded of Marla. I summoned up a mental image of Bob Preston, oilman extraordinaire: With his puffed-out chest and thinning red hair, Preston always reminded me of an aging rooster, although he probably wasn’t much past thirty. Over six feet, maybe six-feet-four, he had prominent cheekbones, a receding
chin, and narrow lips. I said, “What happened to his oil business?”

She began rinsing Tom’s cups with their tiny stylized roses. “Bob was riding high until the price of oil crashed in the mid-eighties. The price of natural gas hasn’t gone anywhere either, so it was too expensive to explore. His company went belly-up year before last. They haven’t called for you to cater lately, have they?”

I put my hand on Tom’s stove. “Caterers are always vulnerable to the vagaries of wider economic movements.” My voice sounded so morose it was clear that financial vulnerability was not the problem.

“Come on, I’m going to cheer you up,” said Marla decisively. “You have to get your mind off these things. I’ll tell you all the gossip about Bob and the Bob-projects. Not only do they include Habitat for Humanity right here in your neighborhood, he’s also heading this Sportsmen Against Hunger group. They go out into the woods with six-packs and rifles with scopes and shoot elk, then donate the—shall I call them ‘proceeds’?—to Aspen Meadow Outreach. Now if you were a poor, hungry person, how would you feel about eating an elkburger? Do you have a recipe for such a thing? How about venison chili?”

I shuddered. “I know about that group and the Habitat project. Just tell me who Agatha wanted to see.”

She gave me a look of determination. “Agatha is involved in everything down at the church. I don’t know who she was referring to.” She turned the last teacup over to drain on a towel and ran her fingers through her frizzled hair. “But you can bet I’m going to find out.”

Outside, the gears of the van ground as the tires crunched up the driveway. Julian had returned.

“Marla, I can’t stand being out of it. I can’t stand to just sit here by the telephone waiting for the police to call. I’ve got to do something.”

She sat down and squeezed my fingers, which were finally beginning to get warm. “Goldy, what you need to do is rest. Let Arch and Julian pamper you, if you’re not going to come to my place.”

Julian, dressed in a secondhand wool overcoat that was much too big for his compact, muscled body, clomped inside and threw himself into a kitchen chair. Marla, who is happiest when people are eating, asked him if he wanted some tea and shortbread.

“No, thanks.” The corners of his mouth quivered downward. His bleached mohawk haircut was wildly askew, and the five o’clock shadow on his jaw made him look older than nineteen. He’d exchanged the rented tux for patched jeans and an oversized T-shirt distributed by a local roofing company that had gone out of business. The logo shrieked:
The roof is the hairdo on a house! Think about it.

Julian snorted. “I went by the church to see if there was anything else I needed to pick up.” He gestured with his thumb. “The wedding cake’s in the van. I gotta freeze it. The people at the church told me what happened to Schulz. I can’t
believe
it, man. Schulz is so fast, so smart, I’m like, you’re
kidding.
Have you heard anything?”

I said no and tried to appear pulled-together. Julian had suffered his own share of upheavals, starting when the boarding department at Elk Park Preparatory School, where he was a scholarship student, closed. We had both been live-in employees for a few ill-fated months at a wealthy couple’s mansion, and when things fell apart there, Julian came to live with Arch and me. Less than two months away from graduating from Elk Park Prep, he was an excellent student, star swimmer, and ferociously good cook. He was desperate to get into Cornell so he could study food science. Eventually, he wanted to become the first vegetarian caterer from Bluff, Utah, to be written up in
Gourmet.
I thought he had a good chance to get into Cornell, although I had my doubts about his aspirations for
Gourmet.
That, however, could wait, as it was the coming week that would bring the college acceptance and rejection news. Adding this to the wedding preparations had put Julian’s anxiety into high gear. Still, Arch and I loved having him around, high anxiety or no. But now, with Tom gone, the teenager would be impossible. I knew from sad
experience that the emotionally volatile Julian became volcanic in the face of danger to those he loved.

“So what are the police doing about Schulz?” he demanded when I didn’t answer immediately. He glowered at me as if this were somehow my fault. “I mean, do they, like, know who snatched him, or
what?”

I patiently explained that a concentration of law-enforcement types were prowling about at Olson’s house the way they were searching the church, that they had found some things of Tom’s and a note containing abbreviations nobody could decipher. Julian chewed on his knuckles when I said Tom’s note seemed to be his catalogue of events up to the moment he was abducted by somebody whose identity we did not yet know.