The Last Suppers (31 page)

The conversation at dinner—how the new bishop in another diocese was faring, how some recent mass conversions to Anglicanism in Africa were going to affect the church worldwide—was light but somewhat forced. Canon Montgomery had said some volunteers from the Altar Guild were doing the dishes, and I was relieved when we could adjourn to the Hymnal House living room for Evening Prayer. This was followed by a brief, nonpoetic explanation of the meetings’ mechanics from Montgomery: The end of our meeting tonight would be signaled by the old bell on the deck. We would go to the funeral tomorrow, then meet all the rest of Tuesday. The board would make its decisions Wednesday morning. The nervous candidates gulped and strained to look confident.

Doug Ramsey and I were assigned to an old upstairs parlor. The room had been the subject of unfortunate redecorations, and now boasted a bright green shag rug and two donated yellow-painted wood-frame couches with screaming pink cushions. It wasn’t the best ambience to effect a reconciliation with Father Doug, to whom I hadn’t spoken since our disastrous tête-à-tête at church on Sunday. He marched into the room in front of me, snapped
open the latches on his briefcase, and took out a sheaf of papers with typewritten questions. To make things worse, he was acting inexplicably miffed.

“Hey, Doug,” I said, “don’t give me the ticked-off routine, okay? I did the dinner, didn’t I? Now let’s talk about how we’re going to examine this guy.”

“You didn’t contact those newspapers, did you? Tell them I was the bishop’s spy?”

“Of course not.”

“Some woman reporter interrogated Montgomery. She wanted to know if he was jealous of Olson because Olson was an alleged miracle worker.”

Good old Frances. “And did Montgomery agree with the allegations?”

At that moment, Mitchell Hartley entered the room. He coughed.

Doug Ramsey ignored him. He continued to me in a confidential tone, “There are
many
reasons why anyone would be jealous of the person in question, and not just for the monetary and …
other
reasons I mentioned to you on Sunday. He was attractive, he was smart. Why, I think he came through the ordination process in the
quickest
time on record, although I’d have to check that statistic—”

“Theodore Olson?” Mitchell Hartley’s face contorted into an ugly smirk. Four inches of waved red hair hovered over his forehead. “Yes, your statistic is correct. He came through in three years.” His eyes glittered feverishly.

“Please sit down, Mitchell,” I said.

He obeyed, keeping his mad gaze disconcertingly on me.

Father Doug began by asking questions about the Archbishops of Canterbury, then moved on to what Tillich had said about this, what Augustine had said about that, and what were the liturgical requirements for the laying on of hands. Mitchell stumbled and bumbled and most of the time said he didn’t know. Doug was just getting revved up to do the Anglican Reformation when there was a rap on the door. It was Lucille Boatwright.

“Zelda and I finished the dishes,” she said, glaring at
me.
How dare you come up here to examine with the men when there is women’s work to be done in the kitchen?
I said nothing; I was weary of Lucille Boatwright. She turned to Doug Ramsey. “We simply must talk to you about the liturgy for the memorial service tomorrow.” It was not a request.

Doug lifted his chin: Duty called. He stood, tucked his sheaf of papers into his briefcase, snapped it shut, and marched out without another word. Guess it was up to me to finish with the candidate.

“Mitchell,” I said as I reached to a dusty table and found a stub of pencil and piece of paper. “I found a photocopied page from one of your exams.” I wrote 92-492 on the paper.

He glanced at it and raised one red eyebrow. “Where’d you find it?”

For better or worse, I decided to tell him the truth. “At Olson’s house. Were you out there?”

At that moment, the outside bell gonged. Mitchell Hartley didn’t seem to hear it, however. He had a dreamy look on his face.

“You were, weren’t you?” I said to Mitchell. My voice was very quiet.

“I was not.”

“Cut the crap, Mitchell. You know something.”

“I do indeed,” he said secretively. “Now.” The bell gonged again. “You didn’t turn the search over to the Lord, and now the Lord has revealed something to me.”

“What? Please. It could be a matter of life or death.”

He stood and sauntered to the door. “Everything,” he said ponderously, “is a matter of life or death. Tonight’s exams are over, and I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

The door closed behind him.

I looked at my watch. 9:30. Despite the darkness of the night, there was a clear view of the conference grounds and driveway from the parlor windows. From where I sat, I could barely hear the voices and traffic from the front side of the conference building. And it was just as well. Mitchell Hartley wasn’t being forthcoming, and I was in no mood to
socialize with anyone else. I decided to wait right where I was and watch for Marla’s car to come down the driveway. I would be grateful to get home, to get away from the swirling antagonisms and petty jealousies of this group.

I thought about Tom Schulz. Was he cold? Was he in pain? Had he given his kidnapper the desired information?

Then I remembered Father Olson’s gentle compliment in our penultimate counseling session: “It’s rare that I work with a couple so much in love.” And yet tomorrow we were going to bury Father Olson, and no one knew if Tom Schulz was alive or dead. I let my head rest on the vibrant pink cushion. I was so tired.

I was not aware I’d fallen asleep until something jolted me awake. I felt as if I had climbed out of an avalanche, that I had heard a howl for help either in my sleep, or within the avalanche, or somewhere out on the road. I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window: Marla’s Jag was there, its tailpipe sending clouds of steam up into the night sky. I lifted my cramped body off the couch and painfully made my way down the outside steps, which had dim lights every five feet. Shouts had awakened me. They came from the other side of Hymnal House, maybe from the deck, it was hard to tell. On the other hand, perhaps it was bikers partying down on Cottonwood Creek again.

Marla had the windows closed and the engine running; the Jag purred like a small airplane.

“Did you hear something?” I demanded when I opened the passenger side door and stuck my head inside.

“Nothing juicy, at least not in the last two hours.”

I slid into the passenger seat, closed the door, and sighed. “Never mind.”

She put the car into reverse and sent gravel spewing on her way out the driveway. Marla could never learn to drive cautiously.

“Did the police call?” I could hear the plea in my voice.

“Boyd did. I asked him, ‘Boyd, do you have a first name?’ He said, ‘You can just call me Boyd.’ Where’d they get that guy,
Dragnet?”

“Marla.”

“Okay, Bob Preston hasn’t been at the Habitat house since Saturday, and he doesn’t have a clue about those keys. How about you? How’d the exams go?”

We shot down the road that would lead us to Main Street and the front of the cliff by Hymnal House and Brio Barn.

“I agree with Ted Olson,” I said, “in thinking Mitchell Hartley should fail. Montgomery said he’d probably pass this time, though—”

Without warning, when we were just below the conference center deck, the car screeched to a stop. Despite my seat belt, I went catapulting forward. When I had struggled upright, Marla cried, “Oh, God. Oh, Lord.”

“What?” I said, but she didn’t reply. I followed her gaze out the front of the car, along the line of blazing light cast by the headlight beams.

Mitchell Hartley wasn’t going to fail his candidate’s exam, and Mitchell Hartley wasn’t going to pass. Mitchell Hartley was lying in the middle of Main Street.

He was dead.

M
arla ran to a pay phone. Someone from a nearby gas station set out flares on the road. Within minutes, Boyd and his team had arrived. I sat in the Jaguar in a state of shock. I couldn’t look out at the activity, although I occasionally glanced up at the conference center, perched as it was on that cliff overlooking both the road and the church. Then I gazed briefly at St. Luke’s, on the other side of Main Street. I couldn’t look at the sprawled corpse of Mitchell Hartley. Marla came back to the car. We sat silently in the front seat.

After more police and the EMT had arrived, Boyd approached us.

I slid down the window. “Is he—?” I choked.

Boyd didn’t need to reply. His expression said it all.

“You don’t think he’s the one who killed Olson, do you? Do you think he knew where Tom Schulz is?” I demanded. My voice sounded shrill, and I was shivering uncontrollably. “Tell me. Do you think Hartley fell, committed suicide, what? Was he hit by a car?”

Boyd regarded me. Dark disks of shadow underneath his eyes showed his exhaustion. The past two days had been hard on him, too. “It doesn’t look as if Hartley was hit by a car. I don’t know about the rest. Need you to come and see something, though.” I got out of the car and followed him to where a cluster of people surrounded the body. I recognized Officer Calloway and other Furman County investigators.
“Weren’t you looking for this?” said Boyd. He pointed to a broken pearl choker lying near the center line of the road. In the circus-hued flashes from the police lights, it looked a child’s bauble. But when I leaned close I could see the handwritten price tag: $2000.

“What in the …?”

“It must have been in his pocket, or maybe he was holding it. Where do you suppose he got it?”

I repeated my theory that Olson had been keeping the chokers out at his house. There should be others, I added. Mitchell Hartley was poor, and he hated that, but he had never impressed me as a thief. Of course, I had not known him very well. Not very well at all.

“Okay,” Boyd said. He didn’t sound satisfied. “I told somebody to call your house. Julian Teller’s waiting up for you, but he’s not waking your son. Better not to upset him. You should get back into Marla’s car. Are you cold?”

I was still shaking, but not from the weather. Mitchell Hartley had been in the upstairs parlor with Doug Ramsey and me less than an hour ago.
The Lord has revealed something to me.
What that was, of course, I had no idea. Briefly, I told Boyd about my last conversation with Hartley. Boyd said nothing.

Marla restarted the engine.

“Just a sec. Goldy, are you listening to me?” Boyd’s face neared the open car window. I fastened my seat belt and tried to assume an attentive expression. “Don’t go anywhere, okay? Don’t try to figure this out. Somewhere along the line, whoever is doing this is going to make a mistake.”

“So you don’t think he fell from the conference deck.”

Boyd pushed away from the car. He slipped a match into the side of his mouth. “I’ll call you,” he said laconically, and turned back to the group around Mitchell Hartley’s body.

When we arrived home it was almost eleven. At my insistence, Marla left me off without coming inside and went home. All my supplies, cheesecake leftovers, platters, and bowls from the committee’s supper were still in the
Hymnal House kitchen, so there was not even anything to put away. Julian fixed me a cup of hot chocolate.

“I froze the wedding cake,” he announced, apropos of nothing. “I just couldn’t take it down to the church along with the other stuff.”

I nodded and ran my hand over the gleaming enamel surface of Tom’s stove.
Tell me what to do,
I mentally begged him. But there was no response. Whenever I was in a muddle, I cooked. But what did Tom Schulz do when he was faced with chaos, trying to sort things out? And then I remembered.

He took notes.

I poured out the hot chocolate and filled the espresso machine with water. Scout the cat made one of his noiseless appearances by the pantry, purring and arching his back. I fed him. Then I maneuvered the griddle attachment into Tom’s convection oven, pulled out some fat russet potatoes, and got out a pen and the spiral notebook from my apron pocket.

Julian ran the fingers of one hand through his short blond strip of hair. “What in
the hell
are you doing? It’s bedtime.”

“I’m hungry,” I answered him. “There’s been too much going on, and I didn’t have a bite of that fish. Plus I want some coffee.”

“I see. So at eleven o’clock at night, you’re going to drink some espresso, cook some potatoes, and then write about it.”

“Julian, chill. I mean, I appreciate your staying up to make sure I got in okay. After all, there’ve been many meetings going on today—”

“Yeah, the tobacco church. Hazardous to your health.”

“I just can’t think about what happened tonight.” I vigorously peeled potatoes. “Or at least I can’t get any perspective on it.”

“Now I get it. You’re going to make Duchess Potatoes, and then serve them at the next church meeting.”

“Julian, go to bed.”

I grated the potatoes into a dishtowel and then wrung
out their liquid over the sink. The chunk of butter I’d popped onto Tom’s griddle began to melt into a golden pool; I swished it through a puddle of olive oil. Working carefully—a challenge with Scout rubbing insistently against my legs—I formed the grated potatoes into four pancakes on the griddle. There was no way I’d be taking these to any church meeting, but maybe I could make my contribution to Anglican cuisine.