The Last Suppers (18 page)

Doug squirted about five times as much liquid detergent into the sink as we would need. “Goldy, he could have been involved with
ten
women, I mean, the man could have had a
harem
the way they fell all over him. They used to wait outside the door of our Society of Chad meeting! We began calling Olson the magician. Women and miracles, what more could you ask for? Montgomery asked for his resignation from the society, but of course he didn’t get it. Then the bishop called me in and said, ‘Find out what Olson’s doing. He’s pulling in so much money, there must be something to it.’ Lord!” He flourished the dish detergent. “So here I am having to act the sycophant in Aspen Meadow, and
praying
that some of this chicanery will be exposed!”

“Doug, that’s enough soap.” He pulled back the container and looked dejected. I turned off the water. “I’m sorry, I know you’re terribly upset. Just tell me, what women were waiting outside the door of the committee meeting?”

He slapped the detergent down and pulled his alb around him as if it were a blanket. His eyes blazed. “I don’t remember. And you needn’t waste your pity on
me.
I will continue to carry on, as I always have. I will go in as an examiner day after tomorrow, with a level head, good organization, and the belief—no, the
knowledge
that the orthodox faith prevails—”

“Doug, I meant it. I can tell how upset you are. Please, help me. I’m just trying to find Investigator Tom Schulz. What I don’t know is who resented Olson. Do you know who his worst enemies were?”

Doug Ramsey released his alb and leaned in toward me. He hissed: “Olson’s worst enemy was himself.”

A
t the ten o’clock eucharist, the one favored by the charismatics and people who brought children (heartily loathed by the Old Guard, regardless of what Jesus had to say on the subject), Montgomery’s sermon was the same. This time, however, he ignored me as carefully as I did him. First he’d been friendly, then he’d yelled at me, and now he was indifferent. Grief could make people strange.

The second service was completely different from the first. If the 8:00 service was the liturgical equivalent of a golf game, the 10:00 was a soccer match. Perhaps it was the three women and one man enthusiastically strumming guitars, playing the drums, and banging tambourines near the altar. Or maybe it was the people themselves crowded into the pews, their hands raised in the air as they energetically sang the hymns. In addition to advocating a personal relationship with the Lord, the charismatics put great emphasis on praise through song.
Hearty
song. And of course, the wildness could have been at least partly attributed to the great multitude of children, all either chattering, sobbing, dropping books, or scrambling over the wooden pews. By the time we got to the intercessory prayers, I was ready for someone to blow a whistle. Instead, Bob Preston got up with a prayer book and a pad of yellow legal paper. His few strands of hair glimmered in the light from the electric candelabra. The deep hollows of his cheeks made him look
uncannily like Zelda. It was the first time I had noticed a resemblance between mother and son.

“I’m sure everyone knows by now that Father Olson was tragically killed yesterday.” Bob Preston paused to be certain everyone had heard him. His eyes swept the room. In the sudden hush, the only noise was the clicking silver ends of his bolo tie. “We put the news out on all the phone trees …” He tilted his head to one side and raised his voice. “The funeral will be Tuesday morning at ten.” At the first service, this announcement had been accompanied by tiny, discreet sniffs. Now sniffles developed into a wave of lamentation that quickly rose to a crescendo. People clutched each other as they wept; they patted each others’ backs and offered tissues. Father Olson had been, after all, one of them.

“We believe he did not die in vain.” Bob Preston’s voice soared over the sobs. “We believe that he did not die in vain!”

“Amen! Yes, Lord!” accompanied this announcement.

Father Doug Ramsey opened his eyes wide and tilted his head to catch Canon Montgomery’s attention for an I-told-you-so glance. I wondered if Canon Montgomery thought all this was better or worse than people snickering at his poetry. I perused the congregation for Mitchell Hartley. He sat in the pew across the nave from me, his red pompadour bobbing as he appeared to agree with Bob Preston.

“Now you know,” Preston bellowed, “Father Olson would have wanted us to continue with the prayer list. We need to pray for Victor Mancuso. Father Olson laid hands on him in the hospital, and we’re waiting for the tests to come back. We need to keep praying for Roger Bampton, who continues to show no sign of illness!”

In the midst of the tears, the congregation burst out clapping. Montgomery closed his mouth and twitched. Doug Ramsey put his face in his hands. I didn’t dare look at Mitchell Hartley again. Bob Preston went through the rest of the names on the list, pausing to make comments on the progress, or lack of progress, of each person. I began to
squirm when we got to the part of the list entitled “for those in troubled relationships.” My fears were confirmed when we heard of Hal and Marie, that Marie was still drinking and we needed to pray for strength for Hal. But the worst was yet to come.

Bob Preston held up his right index finger. It boasted a silver ring with a hunk of turquoise the size of a small boulder. At first I thought he was going to make an announcement about the jewelry raffle, but when he stabbed the air in my direction, my heart sank. “We need to pray for somebody who doesn’t usually come to this service. We need to pray for Goldy back there,” he bellowed ruefully.

All eyes turned to me. I thought I was going to throw up.

“… As you’ve probably heard, Father Olson died before Goldy’s wedding. Goldy’s fiancé,” Bob consulted the yellow pad importantly, “Homicide Investigator Tom Schulz, found poor Ted Olson in his final moments on earth. But then something happened to Investigator Schulz; no one knows what. The police think maybe he was abducted. But he left a note before he was taken.” He stopped to take a deep breath. “So Jesus,” he intoned, clamping his eyes tight, as if he were about to blow out candles on a birthday cake, “we just want to ask for strength for poor Goldy and that the Sheriff’s Department will be able to find the notorious criminal who did this!”

“AMEN!”

My throat closed. My skin had turned clammy.
I have to get out of here.
When Montgomery finally began the opening lines of the General Confession, I nipped into the kitchen, removed the muffins from the oven, and placed them on the counter to cool, then trotted out to my car. I remembered from Montgomery’s course that the confession was generally omitted at the Palm Sunday liturgy, at the discretion of the celebrant—in this case, Montgomery himself. But the canon clearly felt that the folks at the later service needed a dose of communal penitence. I, on the other hand, didn’t want to confess anything. I didn’t look back.

Ten minutes later I sat facing an enormous insulated pot of bad coffee at Carl’s Stagecoach Stop, a restaurant on Aspen Meadow’s Main Street. The Stagecoach Stop had been pure cowboy until Carl, a restaurateur from Zurich, had bought the place a year ago and attempted to make it Swiss.

“Business is gonna fall off,” Tom had announced when we’d celebrated our engagement by coming here for breakfast. “Carl needs to put back what everybody likes.
Müsli with Fruit
won’t hack it without
Stagecoach Steak and Eggs.”

Of course, he had been right. When Tom and I had visited again two months ago, the menu had been revamped, and the waitresses’ uniforms had been transformed into something along the lines of Dale Evans-meets-Heidi. “Listen to that,” Tom said, pointing to one of the speakers. It was not the usual piped-in German folk music. But Carl hadn’t reverted to pure country music, either. Tom had raised his bushy eyebrows and commented, “Waylon Jennings plays the polka.”

“Be all right,” I urged the image of Tom Schulz in my mind. It would be at least half an hour before either of the Prestons showed up for our brunch. To protect myself from people who might want to disrupt my solitude, I piled Father Olson’s Bible as well as the tome on feasts in front of me. With a not-quite-steady hand I poured myself some of the coffee—better than Carl’s cappuccino, which tasted like milky motor oil—and opened the Bible to look for Judas.

I perused through similar stories of the betrayal in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The common thread was that Judas offered to betray Jesus to the high priests for a sum, that at the Last Supper Jesus knew what was coming and confronted Judas, who left. Later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas arrived with an armed crowd. By kissing Jesus, Judas betrayed him to the soldiers. Things didn’t turn out too well for Judas when he was paid his thirty pieces of silver. According to the story, after the Crucifixion he hanged himself.

I reread the stories. What could Olson possibly have meant when he gasped
B.—Read—Judas
as he was dying? Had Tom been able to figure out what Olson meant by that command? Who was B.? Read
what
about Judas?

I put the Bible aside and picked up the book on feasts to look up Chad. Not the country in Africa, not half of the singing group Chad and Jeremy. There was a muddied photograph of Litchfield, England, where Chad had been buried in
A.D
. 672. Trained in the Celtic Christian tradition, Bishop Chad had been humble and devout. I noted the trademark of the Society of Chad, two entwined snakes that certainly looked Celtic, like something you might find in the Lindisfarne Gospels. I did not see how a society named after Chad could have as its nemesis
these people who are ruining the church.
But the thought of conversing with Doug Ramsey again about
these people
did not fill me with enthusiasm.

“Excuse me? Goldy?”

I looked up to see a gaunt-faced Agatha Preston hovering above me. Her apricot-colored sweater, skirt, and headband made her skin look jaundiced. Over a wide lace collar that was absurdly girlish, her only adornment was a long, expensive-looking double strand of jade beads. Her streaked hair was woven into two tight braids.

“Yes, Agatha. Hello.”

“Hello. Well. First of all, I want to apologize for that phone call yesterday.” She looked around at the assortment of bikers, churchgoers, and yuppies-in-corduroys and added, “I was quite upset, and I just sort of fell apart.” Her delicate fingers fumbled with her jade beads. “Bob couldn’t come, or rather, he might arrive in a little bit, he had to stay at church to talk to the police … about Hymnal House.” She glanced down at the book in my hands. “I’m sorry. Were you studying?” Without waiting for my reply, she looked around for a waitress. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”

She was making me nervous. “Sit down, Agatha.”

“Oh sure.” She pulled out her Swiss-style wooden chair with its heart-shaped back. A waitress wearing a ruffled
blouse, skirt edged in fake leather fringe, and cowgirl boots thumped up.

“I’m ready,” I said crisply. Ever partial to European fare, I ordered Müsli with yogurt and blueberries while Agatha stammered, changed her mind twice, and finally settled uneasily for a cheese omelet. The waitress slapped her order book closed and hightailed away.

“Start with the phone call yesterday,” I commanded with a smile and swig of coffee.

Her blue eyes turned huge. “Well, it all really starts before that.” She hesitated. “You see, you work, or I guess I should say, you work outside the home, so your relationship with the church is different.” Color flooded her sallow face.

“My relationship
with whom
in the church is different? Different from
whose
relationship?”

“Your relationship with the other women.
From
the other women. They just … don’t expect the same things of you. You get respect. I mean, I always wanted to do volunteer work, especially since I thought it would help Zelda … you know … have support. She’s gone through so much.”

“And did it?”

Her laugh was dry and brittle, a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding laugh. “I’m like their little pet. Hers and Lucille’s.” She raised her voice. “C’mere, Agatha! Answer the phone sixteen times a day! Go fetch! Stuff these envelopes! Mail out these raffle invitations! And whatever you do, don’t have any fun! You’re doing this for the church!” She regarded me intensely. “People talk about heaven all the time, but you know what’s weird? I think a lot about
hell
. And who I’d like to have there.” She smiled conspiratorially. “Do you ever think about that?”

“Let’s see.” I sipped coffee and tried to think “I saw the IMAX film on Antarctica. I thought
that
would be a great place for my ex-husband to spend eternity.”

“Oh.” She giggled and twirled a streaked braid with her index finger.

“How about your husband? Does Bob have fun in the church? Or is he one of the hell-folks?”

Agatha thrust her head back and giggled even louder, as if now I was being really naughty. “Oh, Bob, well, you know. He loves to run things, and he has the time to do it now. In the spring and summer he does construction projects like Habitat for Humanity, in the fall he goes out with Sportsmen Against Hunger, and they just have a blast shooting off their Remingtons at all those poor, innocent elk—”