The Last Suppers (10 page)

“Man, Goldy, I can’t
believe
you went inside when you saw the place was trashed.” Julian slapped one of his schoolbooks open on the table and glared at me. “Don’t you think that was, you know,
dangerous?
I mean, you really ought to think about taking care of yourself, don’t you think? And no offense, but you look terrible.” Upstairs, water gushed into Arch’s bathtub. I looked around the spotlessly clean kitchen. In his usual methodical way, Julian had finished the dishes, set Arch on his evening routine, and now sat leaning back in one of the kitchen chairs. Even though it was Saturday night, he’d brought out some work to do. Julian despised inactivity—for himself, anyway. “I think you should stay home,” he advised. “You know, just wait for the cops to call.” He shifted the chair to balance at a precarious angle and crossed his arms impatiently. “So. Did you get the ring or what?”

“Yes, I got the ring. And I don’t normally think of the church office building in the early evening being a dangerous
spot,” I replied stiffly. But in light of the day’s events, Julian was right. I was about to show him the ring box when something under the shelf of Tom’s cookbooks caught my eye. In the spot where Julian usually upended drying pots and pans, he had cleared the counter and spread one of his bandanas. On top of the bandana was Tom’s recipe box; on top of the box was a small pile of what looked like potting soil.

“Julian? Is that dirt on my counter?”

His face turned sheepish. “Well, yeah. Kinda.”

“Are we into voodoo here or what?”

“I figure you need to cover all the bases.”

“Julian? What base is this? The one under home plate?”

He slammed the chair down onto the floor, sprang over to where I stood, and pointed at the mound. “This is dirt from Chimayó,” he announced, as if that would explain everything.

“I know Chimayó is in New Mexico,” I said. My patience was wearing thin. “And I know it’s famous for its chili powder. But you’re going to have to enlighten me on the dirt.”

Julian rubbed two fingers across his sparse hedgerow of bleached hair. “It’s, you know … like magic. People make pilgrimages to the sanctuary at Chimayó because the dirt has this … special healing power. The Indians thought so, and they were in that spot first, you know. Then the Spanish Christians said it was miraculous too, so they built this sanctuary place. So when the swim team went to Santa Fe for a meet, I went over with some of the guys. You just scoop the dirt out of this big hole. I figured if the Indians and the Christians thought it was powerful stuff, then I should get some too, in case I ever needed it. So now I want to use it.” Avoiding my eyes, he reached out to press his fingers lightly into the earth. “For Tom.”

I was touched. Before I could think of something appropriately grateful to say, Arch joined us. He was wearing an enormous white terrycloth bathrobe Tom had given him. His wet brown hair stuck out like pine needles. He said, “Was the ring at the church?”

“Yes, hon. But somebody had broken into the church office. It was a mess.”

“Oh, gosh.” Arch stood beside me, bleakly silent. “Mom?” he said finally, his voice serious. “I’ve been thinking. The next time you go out investigating, I’m coming with you.” I exhaled thoughtfully; it was nice to know I had both a twelve-year-old and a nineteen-year-old intent on mothering me. “What in the world is
that?”
He was looking at the pile of dirt.

“Something of Julian’s. He can tell you all about it.”

Julian began, “It’s from Chimayó—”

“Oh, yes,” said Arch knowledgeably, “I know all about Chimayó from
Stories of the Weird.
But Mom? If the Health Inspector pays a surprise visit and sees that? You are going to get into so much trouble.”

Before I could protest, the front doorbell rang. We all bolted for it. It was Boyd. Behind him stood Helen Keene, carrying another overstuffed Hefty bag. Their bleak faces said they had not found Tom. I ushered them into my living room, where Boyd handed me a photocopy of Tom’s note and a plastic bag containing his wallet and the other wedding ring box, sodden from being in the creek. With soft-spoken composure, Helen asked if she could meet with Arch and Julian one-on-one, to see if they needed someone to talk to. She’d brought them quilts, too. Julian replied by asking her if she was hungry. Without waiting for a reply, he led her out to the kitchen. Arch muttered that he didn’t want a quilt if it looked as if it belonged to a girl, and traipsed along behind.

Boyd declined food, although he looked longingly in the direction of the kitchen. I told him about the mess at the church office and that I’d called the Sheriff’s Department.

“Damn it to hell,” he said angrily as he sat on the living room couch. He had changed into a bright green down parka that did not go with his uniform pants. From his uniform shirt pocket that had at least four ballpoints hooked on it, he drew out a pen and his battered spiral notebook. It was similar to the one Tom Schulz had tossed
into the bushes. With his free hand, Boyd surreptitiously slid a wooden match into the side of his mouth. “You want to tell me what was in the church office? I mean, do you know anything someone would want to rip off? Or conceal, maybe?”

I told him that the tickets and chokers were supposed to be at Olson’s house, not in the church office. Boyd had already heard plenty, he said, about the necklaces from both Marla (“that big, funny woman”) and Lucille Boatwright (“hysterical battle-ax”). I showed him the wedding ring I had retrieved. The church office contained an appointment book, notes, and files, too, I added, but Olson was such a packrat, only someone who knew exactly where to look for something would be able to find it. And that was before someone broke in and trashed the place.

Boyd stopped scribbling in his notebook and picked up the ring box. “I wanted to come to your wedding,” he said with a remote sadness. He handed me back the box. “But I pulled weekend duty.”

With the other crises hanging over us, neither Boyd nor I wanted to talk about the possibility of rescheduling. Instead, assuming a crisp tone, he ran through the names of Olson’s neighbors. None had seen anything this morning but nondescript cars coming down Upper Cottonwood Creek Road. Hard to believe that this was all the same day, that it was only this morning that Olson had been killed. Yes, Boyd was saying, the neighbors had heard two shots, but in rural Colorado, you heard shots all the time.

Boyd’s tired brown eyes gave me a level, detached gaze beneath black eyebrows that stood up like magnetic filings. “I’m telling you this, Goldy, because it’s our policy to keep the next-of-kin informed of every detail when there’s a kidnapping. And something I tell you might jog your memory or make you remember some detail that could help. Try to concentrate, and then let me know.”

I rubbed my temples and wondered how many times in his career Boyd had asked distracted and grieving folks to concentrate.
The neighbors had heard shots.
The common experience of hearing gunfire was true even in my own
neighborhood off Aspen Meadow’s Main Street. Coloradans waste no time blowing away anything bothersome, from garden snakes to woodpeckers to bears; ecologists be damned.

Helen reappeared with her customary silence and sat down next to the cold fireplace. Boyd snapped his ballpoint open and closed several times, then asked if he could run a few things by me. I murmured that I wanted to be helpful.

He flipped through several crumpled pages of his notebook. “There doesn’t seem to be anything missing from Olson’s place. At least, nothing that we can tell, like a stereo ripped out of the wall, or pearls gone from a jewelry box. But you’re right, the guy was a packrat. Looks as if he kept every piece of mail since the time he moved there. But the audio equipment, computer, church supplies—plates and goblets and stuff made out of gold, silver, brass—all look untouched. We’re not sure what the guy had in the first place. But I’ll tell you this,” he said as he chewed furiously on the match, “I don’t want a bunch of churchwomen traipsing around in there looking for jewelry while we’re conducting an investigation.”

I thought of Olson’s living room with its shelves of thick books, its ornate sacramental vessels—called patens and chalices, not plates and goblets—and his mantelpiece with its beautifully carved creche from Santa Fe. I wondered if Olson ever made a pilgrimage to Chimayó. Boyd shifted his bulk, tapped his notebook, and said thoughtfully, “Anyway, especially after this church break-in, we can’t completely rule out burglary as a motive. Or somebody trying to destroy something. Here’s one thing that’s puzzling us: Olson’s Mercedes started right up. He didn’t have car trouble. So why d’you think he’d call Schulz to pick him up?”

Involuntarily, I thought back to the silly disagreement Tom and I had in last night’s counseling session with Olson. Did any other couples argue about whether marriage lasted into the afterlife? Did they argue about it the night before their wedding? Probably not.

“Maybe,” I said, then hesitated, imagining Olson’s desire
to deal with conflict. He tried to bring about reconciliation no matter what. That was his way. Had been. “Maybe Olson wanted to talk to Tom before the wedding,” I ventured, “to reassure him that everything was going to be all right.” I sighed. “I blew a gasket in front of both of them after our supper last night. Maybe Olson felt the only way Tom would accept some pastoring before the wedding was by pretending to have car trouble.” I knew better than Boyd how reluctant Tom Schulz had been to see Father Ted Olson for counseling.
Shrinks,
he’d muttered,
they can drive you crazy in court.
I’d told him Father Olson wasn’t a shrink, he was a priest. A
religious shrink,
Tom had grumbled. But in the course of our sessions together, Father Olson had insinuated himself into Tom’s affections. Olson had genuinely admired Tom’s powers of observation; he even professed envy of Tom’s ability to bring about justice. All he ever got to do, Olson complained, was forgive people.

Boyd interrupted my thoughts. “Blew a gasket about what?”

“Oh … just some dumb thing about the marriage vows lasting forever. I was stressed out.”

Boyd puckered his lips and shrugged. “Olson could have just talked to him at the wedding.”

“No, there wouldn’t have been time. Do you think Tom’s disappearance has anything to do with needing to be in court next week? Someone involved in the case who needed him to conveniently disappear?”

Boyd shook his head. “Nah, it’s a forger. The guy’s still in jail, I checked. And no known accomplices. About your theory of the reverend wanting to talk to Schulz before the wedding. Maybe Olson was afraid of something. Didn’t want to tell Schulz his fear over the phone. So he got Schulz out there with a fairy tale about car trouble. Maybe he wanted Schulz for protection from somebody. Was Father Olson having problems?”

“What kind of problems?”

“Woman problems. Money problems. Church problems. You tell me.”

My fingers brushed over the moist crushed velvet of the box that held my wedding band. I felt my heart compress, the way that air becomes more dense when the temperature suddenly drops.

Boyd scowled. “Goldy. He was your priest, he’d been at your parish for three years. You must have known how he was doing.”

I held the velvet ring box tightly. “There are a number of different groups within our church. One is the Old Guard. That would include priests like our former rector, Father Pinckney, and people like Lucille Boatwright, head of the Altar Guild and Art and Architecture Committee, and Zelda Preston, who was our organist. Emphasis on the
was.
Olson had just fired Zelda, and knowing how much he hated conflict, that must have been painful.”

“Oh yeah? Zelda Preston?” Boyd wrote in his notebook. “What’d he ax her for?”

“They fought continually over the music. He would pick the hymns and she would change them without telling him.” I stopped, uncertain of how to elaborate. “Father Olson was a charismatic, which means he wanted people to have a
personal
relationship with the Lord. The kind of music he favored was sort of, ‘Jesus Loves Me’ set to folk music. The Old Guard, on the other hand, prefers, say, ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.’”

Boyd stopped writing and raised his eyebrows. The match drooped from the side of his mouth. “That’s it? Changed hymns? The Old Guard guards the hymns?”

“Well … not exactly. When it comes to Zelda, I mean.”

There was a silence in which Boyd drummed his knee with his free hand.

“Okay, look,” I went on. “I know what I know about Zelda because we were in a Lenten discussion group together when we were both going through some difficult times.” Privacy was a precious thing, and little of it survived exposure, especially at church meetings. In a small town, gossip was the weapon of choice in destroying your enemies. And Zelda had been my friend.

Boyd grunted. “I’m trying to find Schulz, not write an article for the local paper.”

“Don’t even mention the local paper to me.”

“Goldy!” interjected Helen Keene. They were her first words since she’d rejoined us from the kitchen. “For heaven’s sake!”

“All right, all right.” I paused. “It was five years ago. We were discussing something very innocuous, a book called
In the Wilderness,
and Father Pinckney was the leader. I went because I was depressed about the awful state of my marriage, and had to get out of the house. I figured a daytime church discussion group would be kind of nice.” I held out my hands in a helpless gesture. “One day Zelda very unexpectedly broke down. You see, she had two sons. One is Bob Preston, who is a parishioner at the church. His wife’s name is Agatha.”

“Yeah, I want to talk to you about her,” Boyd said. “But go ahead.”

“Zelda’s other son, Mark, had leukemia. Mark was the swimming coach at Elk Park Prep, and he was married to Sarah Preston, who lives in Elk Park with their son Ian, who was twelve at the time.” I looked out my front window. But instead of seeing the cold night, I pictured Zelda’s gray braid wobbling on top of her head as her body shook with sobs. “On Ash Wednesday of that year, Mark, who was in his mid-twenties and had had the leukemia for about six months, went into a coma in a hospital in Denver. What kept him alive while he was comatose were the daily blood transfusions Sarah had to okay. After a couple of weeks of this, I guess Sarah just decided she’d had enough. So she refused the daily transfusion.”