The Last Suppers (23 page)

I said, “You were looking for the bishop’s letter answering the petition because you thought it would help now? What difference would it make with Ted Olson dead? I should think that you’d be planning his funeral or something.”

She fluttered her hand again as if to say, Immaterial, immaterial. “So we won’t have to listen to that music anymore, what do you think? How can I plan a funeral if the charismatics are going to come waving their guitars at me? And if we have a letter from the bishop, we’ll be able to get off on the right foot with whoever our new man is.”

“I just think it’s … awful early for that.”

“Listen,” she said suddenly. Her eyes brightened. “I want to talk to you about the luncheon tomorrow. I do want to pay you for all your supplies. I know how expensive food is, believe me, in this day and age! So send me a bill, won’t you? Don’t tell Zelda or the other women, we don’t want them to worry about it.”

A kind of muddle descended on my brain, which was probably her intent. I can talk about business or I can talk about nonbusiness. I am incompetent at mingling the two in one conversation. Arch had not rejoined us. I figured he’d found a cable channel. I didn’t know what to say
about the luncheon. As it stretched on, the silence between Lucille and me became increasingly uncomfortable.

“Tell me,” I said with feigned puzzlement, “about the pearl choker raffle.”

“Oh! Well, you know, none of the women want to work in the church anymore. They all have
jobs”
Except poor Agatha, I thought. “We couldn’t have our annual Home Tour because we simply could not get enough women to be guides in the homes! Would you loan your luxury home to the church for the day if there weren’t enough guides? I mean!”

“But you thought if you got necklaces …”

She handed me the platter of shortbread. I declined. “For the past two years, it’s been a painless way to make money. This year, of course, we wanted to finish the columbarium. Bob Preston—you know, Zelda’s son-in-law—had a friend in the Far East from his oil-dealing days. He found a supplier in Hong Kong. Even with the duty fees, we would make five hundred dollars per necklace, and we would raffle several for those who couldn’t buy. We figured, women in the church and in town, here in the club, would want to buy them, or at least buy a single raffle ticket. So we wouldn’t have to try to get women to work who simply weren’t willing to. You must have received your flyer about this in the mail, Goldy. What’s the matter with you?”

“I was trying to plan a wedding,” I said flatly.

Lucille Boatwright shivered slightly, as if to say that she would not have ignored a mailing from the church, even if she were planning a dozen nuptials. “This was supposed to take place the week after Easter. Didn’t want to do it during Lent, of course, although some women said if they won the pearls, they would want to wear them to church on Easter. Frankly, I could see their point, but Lent is Lent.”

“Ah. And why did Father Olson keep the pearls?”

Her facial expression evolved into a sad I-told-you-so. “He thought his house was safe. But
where
in his house? That’s what no one seems to know, and of course the police won’t allow us to look. Thank God I took out a rider on the
church’s insurance policy to cover them, or the church would have lost a bundle. We had to pay Bob Preston when those pearls were delivered.
Why
Olson insisted on keeping them, I don’t know,” she concluded, exasperated.

We looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. I said softly, “You felt he deserved to die.”

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” But the aristocratic chin quivered.

I sipped my cooled cocoa and reflected. “Lucille, you’ve never told me a thing about how the church is run—”

“You never asked,” she interjected.

“—but now you’ve asked me into your home and offered to pay for lunch tomorrow, for which I was already going to send a bill to the churchwomen, thank you very much. You’ve been extremely nice, really, and told me all kinds of things. What I’m trying to figure out is, why are you telling me all this?”

She looked down at her hand, which she was running slowly over the cherry tabletop.

“I think,” I persisted, “that you’re afraid of something.” I thought back: the pearls, the petition, the file room. The files. “You weren’t just straightening up at the conference center.”

She looked away from me and out into her living room. At her Queen Anne wing chairs with their hieratic floral pattern on polished cotton. At her striped sofa in the same muted colors. At the well-polished Stieffel lamp next to the arrangement of dried eucalyptus in a ginger jar. At her money, her familiar order, her security.

With dawning clarity, I remembered Saturday morning, right before my wedding was supposed to begin, the new organist playing the triumphant opening bars of Jeremiah Clarke’s
Trumpet Voluntary.
And then Zelda’s words: I
am a professional.
What would a professional most fear? Being maligned as a professional. Not being able to be a professional anymore.

I said gently, “You were looking for some letter from the bishop, because you think Zelda wants it. Isn’t that
right? You think she needs it, for some reason.” Lucille rubbed her fingers delicately against the side of her china cup and remained stubbornly mute. “You think Zelda wanted the bishop’s letter from Olson, so that she could save face. Find a job someplace else, maybe.” A tear was rolling slowly down one of Lucille’s elegant, powdered cheeks. “Lucille. You think Zelda killed him. Don’t you?”

S
he sniffed and stood up. “Absolutely not. How can you say such a thing? I think it’s time for you to go.”

“You have to call the police. Right now, from here. If Zelda has Tom Schulz—” I couldn’t finish. “Where was she yesterday morning?”

Lucille forced a smile. “I don’t know! Why do you keep insisting?” She moved toward the kitchen door. “I am so glad your son is feeling better. I’ll just go call him down from upstairs. The churchwomen have a funeral to plan, and I’m due at a meeting at five o’clock.”

She minced neatly out of the room, all of her control reasserted by the threat of my urgent desire to extract information. I watched her wide retreating body, her neat silver curls shining like a metallic shield. Dammit to hell.

In the corner of her kitchen I spotted a light-blue wall telephone, almost invisible because of its exact color match to the cabinets. I grabbed it and dialed 911. Identifying myself, I said I needed to leave an emergency message for Boyd, that I had found out some things about the Olson murder and he should question Zelda Preston. I swallowed and added that Zelda was strong, a swimmer, that she might have Tom Schulz. When I hung up and turned around, Lucille Boatwright was standing at the door of the kitchen with her arm around Arch’s shoulders.

“We’re just getting to be the best of friends,” she said to me, presumably of her relationship with my son.

Arch said, “Huh?”

I said, “I’m sorry. We need to go.”

“Arch,” said Lucille, “I just need to talk to your mother for another moment.”

Arch gave me a questioning look. “You want me to go to the van, or back up to the TV room? Is this about the church again? I guess you want me to just go.”

I said evenly, “Stay where you are.”

Lucille’s cheeks colored. She said fiercely, “The problem is that she won’t tell me where she was yesterday morning. If she would just tell me. That’s all I ask.”

“Does Zelda live near here?”

Lucille opened her mouth to talk, but nothing came out—first time I’d ever seen that happen. Arch sighed deeply, the same sigh he always gave when faced with an interminable number of boring errands. “Mom,” he begged, “can’t we go home? Nobody knows where we are, and somebody might have called, and Julian will get worried—”

I said, “Yes, soon. Where does Zelda live?”

“I’m sorry.” Lucille faltered. “I should have told you yesterday, or the police, or something.” She caught hold of herself and wagged a finger. “You mustn’t frighten her.” When I made an impatient noise, she went on, “A one-story white brick on Golf Course Lane. Less than two blocks away, on the left side of the street. You know she might be swimming. Her back is acting up severely, and she thought it might help to do some extra laps.”

I didn’t answer. We were walking hurriedly through the marble entryway on the way to the van. Arch was trotting ahead of me. Since he was dedicatedly unathletic, this was a sure sign of his desperation to leave. I felt the need to keep a semblance of relationship with Lucille, in case Zelda knew nothing of Olson’s death and Tom’s disappearance. There wasn’t a soul in the church who knew more about its inner workings and dark secrets than the elegant woman escorting me out of her house. And after all, she
had
apologized.

“Is it possible she might have been at the doctor yesterday? Seeing about the back pains?” I asked.

“We don’t talk about it,” Lucille said without looking at me. She put her hand to her throat again. No necklace. “When you get to be our age, it’s too depressing to discuss your aches and pains and those of your peers. It would be all that we talked about. Not that you would be interested in something like that, of course. People don’t want to hear about getting old.”

We came out her gleaming front door and stood on the stone steps. The April afternoon air had gone from chilly to intensely cold. I said, “But I care—”

She waved this away. “And when you don’t have someone to look out for you, you just have to do it yourself. Or do as Zelda and I do, take care of each other. Ted Olson,” she added fiercely, “did not give a tinker’s
damn
about us. In fact, I think he would have been glad to see us gone.”

“Oh, Lucille, you can’t be serious.”

“My dear, I am entirely serious.”

This outburst of personal bitterness meant either Lucille was letting her guard down or pretending to do so in a very convincing manner. In spite of my anger over her refusal to help and my desire to be out of there, I felt an intense pang of sympathy for her. I knew well what it meant to be unnoticed by a man whose appreciation and affection you craved. I had wasted seven years trying to get from The Jerk what he was incapable of giving to any human being. I reached out for the papery skin of Lucille’s forearm. Maybe I could act convincing, too.

I said, “I know about taking care of myself; I’ve done it for almost a decade.” Lucille shrugged my hand away; we kept walking. “If Zelda’s in a lot of pain,” I ventured, “why didn’t she … talk to Olson, even if she didn’t like him? I mean, after all I’ve been hearing lately, things like that Sunday School teacher, and then Roger Bampton—”

Lucille’s sudden laughter was crude and shockingly hoarse. “What hogwash! What utter and complete nonsense! You don’t honestly believe that, do you, Goldy? If you do, you’re even less intelligent than I thought.”

We had reached the door of my van. I let Lucille’s opinion of my IQ pass. “So you don’t believe Roger recovered
from leukemia?” I asked with a brow I hoped was innocently furrowed. Arch, who was already sitting in the front seat, gestured impatiently for me to come on.

“The whole thing was a lie!” Lucille faced me, her ice-blue eyes blazing with indignation. Her wrinkled hands made a dismissive gesture. “A complete fabrication! Roger Bampton is a drunk. Going in to see a doctor because he felt bad? I ask you. He probably thought chemotherapy was like sticking a needle full of Jack Daniels into one of his arteries. Of course, Father
Pinckney
tried to get Roger into alcohol rehabilitation, but no one remembers that.”

“You remember.”

Her laugh this time was much lower, kind of self-mocking. “One of the few who does, my dear. Not that it matters.” She hesitated, then returned the affection of my gesture, pressing her fingers into my arm. Soft green cashmere brushed my skin. “Zelda is my dear friend,” she said earnestly. “You mustn’t upset her. You mustn’t let the police frighten her. She is easily hurt—you know what she went through when her son died. Surely you know that she hasn’t dealt well with the way Olson treated her.”

I wanted to hug her, but remembered in time her objection to displays of affection. Besides, what I wanted most was to be away from this perfect Tudor house with its perfect rooms and perfect landscaped garden. “Look, Lucille. Probably this will turn out to be nothing. When the bishop gets back, maybe his office will find a copy of the letter in his files, or maybe they’ll find out he never wrote to Olson after all.” Although I hoped not. Oh, God, I wanted Tom Schulz to be over at Zelda’s house, I wanted Zelda to have killed Olson in a fit of passion, I wanted this all to be over.

“Will you call me?” Lucille pleaded earnestly when I had climbed into the van and rolled down the window.

“I thought you had a meeting.” When she gave me a blank look, I added, “Do you have an answering machine?”

“Of course not. I hate those infernal things.” Her authoritarian chin wobbled ominously. “Don’t disrupt Zelda,” she warned with the same commanding tone and finger she had used during the prewedding instructions.
She took a quick step in front of my van. “And call me as soon as you know anything. Promise.”

“Yes, Lucille!” I revved the engine and cursed her silently for making me feel like a dutiful twelve-year-old daughter. “Thanks for the cocoa.” When she did not move, I threw the gearshift into reverse and backed out of her driveway, miraculously avoiding the laddered plantings of shrubbery and aspens.

“Doesn’t have an answering machine!” Arch cried when I paused to read a street sign. “Man! She doesn’t have cable! She doesn’t have remote control! Not to mention that she doesn’t have any video games! Where has that woman been for the last fifty years? Brother!”

I finally figured out how to get to Zelda Preston’s one-story white brick house on Golf Course Lane. On the way, I reflected that ecclesiastically as well as technologically, Lucille and Zelda both would have preferred to turn back the clock.

“Man, Mom.” Arch was still disgusted. “I don’t know why you stay at the church. If I went to a church like that and everybody was mean, I’d leave.”