The Last Suppers (24 page)

I groaned. “It’s my family, hon. And not everybody is mean.”

Two police cars already had arrived in front of Zelda Preston’s home. Not more than fifteen minutes had passed since I’d called from Lucille’s. When they were looking for a fellow officer, they sure could move quickly. No red and blue lights flashed; I had heard no siren. I remembered Tom’s words:
When you’re trying to catch somebody, you don’t announce your arrival.
I was stopped by a deputy who recognized me.

“They’re securing the perimeter.”

“Please let me go with them,” I begged. “I have to see if Tom is in there.”

His face turned from impassive to stony. “There isn’t a chance in hell you’re getting any closer to that house than you already are.” Cops.

At that moment a very confused-looking Zelda Preston,
wearing what looked like a bathrobe, appeared at the door. She squinted at the officers on her steps, at the police cars, and at my van stopped on the grass by her driveway. Her front door immediately opened as she let the officers in. My heart sank. If she’d had Tom inside, she surely would have at least put up some kind of resistance.

Ten minutes later, Boyd and Armstrong came out together. Boyd hoisted his rotund self up the driveway while Armstrong, long and lanky, strode alongside. I glanced at the sky, now turned darkly ominous with a promise of evening snow. Whether my teeth were chattering from the cold or nervousness at the message I was about to receive, I did not know. As if to prepare me, Boyd shook his head. I crossed my arms and sagged against the van.

“This Preston woman is beside herself,” he began. “She wants us to search through her house so that she’ll be above suspicion. Her words. We did a quick look-see. No Schulz. Whatever made you think—”

“Now don’t start,” I warned, my voice shaking. “You told me to call you and I did. Where was she yesterday?”

Towering above us, Armstrong cleared his throat and answered for Boyd. “Interviewing for the organist’s position at the Catholic church. Although she doesn’t want the people at your place to know.”

My eyelids felt like sandpaper. My brain had turned to the consistency of dryer lint.

“Look, Goldy,” said Boyd. His tone was compassionate but undeniably impatient. “I told you we’d keep you informed. I’ve asked you questions about that church of yours, sure. But there’s a difference between your answering questions and trying to do our job for us, okay? This is the second time today I’ve responded to a frantic call from you about where you think Schulz is.”

“Haven’t you found
anything?”
I despised the pleading in my voice, but wanted to hear any shred of news or hope.

Boyd bit on each word. “I can’t
find
anything when I’m running around on your wild-goose chases!” He shook his head. “I’ll call you.”

As I gunned the van and rolled it past Zelda’s house, Arch muttered, “Man! Was that guy grouchy or what?”

“They’re just trying to find Tom, hon, you know that.”

But lack of progress brought depression. Or perhaps it was the end of the day, the hardest time to be reminded of separation from someone you love. To the west, there was no fiery sunset, only a further darkening of the sky caused by the sun slipping past the clouds and behind the mountains. The temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees. As we rounded Aspen Meadow Lake on our way home, large, wet snowflakes powdered my windshield. In front of the van, the wind whirled the flakes into thick tornadoes of white. Spring snow: good for the crops, or so they were always telling us on the radio. But bad for someone kidnapped, who might be in an unfamiliar and unheated place. When I finally pulled the van in front of the house, it felt as if all the energy had drained out of my body.

“Come on, Mom,” said Arch. “Cheer up.” He pointed at the Jaguar parked at a precarious angle by the sidewalk. “Look, Marla’s here.”

And indeed she was, fretting around in the kitchen, setting the table and standing back to admire the enormous basket arrangement of flowers she had brought with her. Oblivious of her, Julian pinched and pressed pizza dough into springform pans. When we came through the door, the two of them stared at our disconsolate faces.

“Goldy?” Julian’s eyes were wide. “Any news?”

I shook my head grimly. I didn’t trust my voice.

“Dinner is Mexican Pizza,” he announced, turning away so I couldn’t see the despair on his face. “Fifteen minutes.”

I sat heavily in one of my kitchen chairs. “Tell me how you’re doing,” I said to Julian. “I’m getting tired of always focusing on my own crises.”

He looked up from his work. “Me?” He had not shaved; the circles under his eyes made him look haggard. The college admissions. He was supposed to hear this week, and he hadn’t ventilated any of his worry. He shrugged and wiped his hands on the white apron he was wearing over a
much-washed black sweatshirt that had frayed at the sleeves. His baggy black cotton pants had lost their knee patch. It was one of Julian’s scrounged outfits from the Aspen Meadow secondhand store. He carefully sloshed picante sauce over the dough in the pans. In his typical offhand manner, he said, “Don’t worry about me.”

“But I do,” I said, and my voice choked. I felt a sob welling up, the first one in twenty-four hours. “I am worried about you,” I cried. Involuntary tears came in earnest.

“Come on, Goldy,” commanded Marla. “Out of the kitchen. Into the living room. Arch, do you know what sherry is?”

“It’s from Spain, right? Comes in a bottle in a burlap bag? Mom uses it for cooking.”

“Yeah well, right now Mom’s going to use it for her psyche. Could you find it and bring it out to the living room with two small glasses? Please? And Julian,” Marla added, “keep going with that pizza. I’ll bet she hasn’t had food in a while, either.”

Julian nodded grimly as he sprinkled handfuls of cheddar cheese on his creation. Out in the living room, Marla sat me on the couch, eased down on the adjoining cushion, and pulled out a tissue from one of her pockets.

“Do you need a hug?” she asked when the outburst of crying was over and I was reduced to sniffles. She waved a hand at the bottle of Dry Sack that Arch had brought out. “Or do you just need sherry?”

“Both.”

She obliged. The sherry warmed my throat. Arch, who had been watching me nervously from the hearth, set about constructing a complex fire of aspen, pine, and Russian olive logs.

I said to Marla, “Tell me why all this is happening.”

She gazed at the first flames licking the fireplace wood. “How about, because the church is a strange place?”

“Our church in particular, or the church in general?”

She turned her mouth down at the corners. “Aw, go for the broad view. Big hospital for sinners. Only some
people stay sick.” She tipped up her glass to finish her sherry.

“But you knew Father Olson,” I insisted. My voice had a watery, hiccuping tone from crying. “I mean, you went out with him a couple of times, didn’t you? Was he really so bad? Why would someone hate him that much? I mean, so he had charismatic churchmanship. So what? Just because someone doesn’t agree with you doesn’t mean you have to kill him.”

Marla’s expression was full of sadness and affection. “Depends on how much they disagree with you, I guess.” She smiled and looked at her Rolex. “Fifteen minutes! Come on, Goldy, it’ll make you feel better to eat.” As if on cue, Julian swept into the living room carrying a tray with plates and steaming pizzas.

After she’d had a few mouthfuls and made the appropriate noises of praise, Marla said reflectively, “You know, I didn’t really date Ted Olson. I was single, he was single, we went out for dinner a couple of times. I always thought he was more interested in my net worth than my body or soul.” She giggled and finished a last bite of pizza. “Not necessarily in that order. Besides, I told you, the guy was squirrelly.”

Arch tore a piece of crust from his mouth with sudden interest. “You don’t mean, like a
rodent,
do you?”

“Of course not,” said Marla as she smilingly accepted a second large piece of pizza from Julian. “This is my last piece, I promise.” She took a dainty bite. “I mean, he’d say, ‘Don’t leave a message on the church voice mail or the women will say we’re having an affair.’ What was the matter with that, I wanted to know? Give the religious man an air of mystery. Which he got anyway, once Roger Bampton opened his big mouth.”

“Squirrelly in what other ways?” I asked. I bit into the pizza and felt a shiver of delight: Hot melted cheese oozed around spicy picante sauce and a light, chewy homemade crust. Julian was an artist.

“Well,” Marla went on, “when I ran the jewelry raffle last year, we had the worst ruckus over who was going to
keep the gold chains. You know Lucille always insists on getting a separate insurance rider, and I have a safe in my house. Either of those would have been better than letting Ted Olson keep them out at his unsecured place in the boonies. But no. He insisted on being the caretaker for the chains, said he could outwit any thief, and he had to take responsibility for something of that value.”

I stopped eating and leaned toward her. “Do you know where he kept them?”

“What are you looking at me like that for? I don’t know. When I drove out there to get them, he just gave me that chipmunky look—sorry—and handed me a package. It was a gift-wrapped box, mind you, but the box was one that said, Church Frankincense. When I opened it, he said, ‘Sorry, no myrrh today.’ Then he laughed like he was some kind of biblical jokester and should go on
Jeopardy.
I mean, the guy had an attitude.” With that, she smiled broadly at Julian and took another slice of pizza.

“He was a good confirmation teacher,” said Arch.

“He was weird,” said Julian.

After Marla left and Arch reluctantly had finished his homework, while Julian was still banging around cleaning up the kitchen—at his insistence—I took my second shower of the day and resolved to get some sleep. I had been so tired when we finished dinner that twice I had felt myself sway forward with my eyes closed. The Sheriff’s Department would call if anything developed. As my head touched the pillow, I belatedly remembered my promise to call Lucille Boatwright. Undoubtedly Zelda had already done so, and with much embellishment told of the policemen’s untimely arrival at her door. I wondered if she had also mentioned the interview at the Catholic church.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I visualized the ocean on a calm day. I saw Arch as a baby, laughing. I imagined seeing Tom Schulz again, what I would say, how I
would hold him and not let go. I sent him a silent message to hang on.

All for nothing: Wakefulness pierced every thought. The dishwasher finished its cycle. The distant whine from Julian’s radio subsided. Snow whisked against the house. When I felt panic rise in my chest, I opened a window, inhaled the chilly, moist air, and exhaled steam. Since traffic through town was sparse, the rush of swollen Cottonwood Creek was unusually loud. I closed the window and sat down on the bed. Sleep would be impossible.

I stared at the wall. The one utterly predictable aspect of being a caterer is that you always have cooking to do. The work never ends unless you go out of town. With a noisy sigh, I trundled down to the kitchen to get a start on preparing for the women’s luncheon.

I fixed myself an espresso and pulled out the pile of Tom’s recipes. Immediately, I felt better, as if his presence emanated from the three-by-five cards. At church, Lucille had requested a seafood dish. Since it was Lent, she’d said. I had nodded to her arched eyebrow and question, I don’t suppose you have any shrimp? I had told her, Oh sure. So much for fasting.

Tom’s collection yielded a shrimp and pasta concoction that would ideally suit the churchwomen. With a cheese-based sauce, it would hold well in a chafing dish; the deep green of peas beside the pink of shrimp would make it look beautiful; and if I used wagon wheel-shaped pasta instead of spaghetti, nothing would dribble embarrassingly down anyone’s chin. Since cooked shrimp demand last-minute preparation, I set the recipe on the counter and turned with zest to the dessert section.

I flipped through Tom’s cards for apple cheese tart and Chocolate Truffle Cheesecake. Ladies’ luncheons do better with cookies for dessert, I’d discovered long ago, for a couple of reasons. The dieters can take only a few and not feel cheated. Unlike cake, where the public taking of more than one piece is viewed as piggish, the nondieters can have numerous cookies in unobtrusive fashion. I would offer two types, I figured, one with chocolate and one without.
For the chocolatey ones, I decided on Canterbury Jumbles, a chocolate-chip-and-nut affair that had such a wonderful Anglican name the women would feel duty-bound to eat them. I mixed up that batter, put it in the cooler, and then flipped through Tom’s recipes until I came to Lemon Butter Wafers. On the side of the card, Tom had written,
B. -Dinner - Captain.