The Last Suppers (34 page)
Authors: Diane Mott Davidson
“What?” I yelled. I grabbed Father Doug Ramsey by the lapels of his black suit.
Kept underground.
Father Doug would know this, he was an expert on the liturgy, as was Canon Montgomery, who
always asked about the history of the Eucharist.
Montgomery, who’d just happened to be close by Agatha and me when we were dialing on the church office phone. The church office, where there was a whole underground space being dug out for new plumbing. “Quick!” I cried. “Help me.”
Father Doug Ramsey pulled his chin into his neck.
“Now
what?”
“We have to go look at the church office, where they’ve been doing that renovation. Underground!” But I was already moving quickly, running to the hallway by the Sunday School rooms.
Doug Ramsey yelled after me, “Do we have to do it right
now?”
Roger trotted along behind me as I dashed, barefoot, down the hallway past the choir room, through the side door, and up the icy steps to the bunkerlike office building. The man from the creek was helping Agatha up. She seemed to be stunned, but I didn’t stop to determine her condition. Instead of turning left to go into the office, I darted right and flipped the switch of the dim bulb hanging in the area that was being renovated.
I swallowed. The large space was dark, stripped to the walls. I walked across a board that had been put down across the subfloor to the far side of the room, then turned on another dim bulb in a room that was torn out to its framing. Beyond that was only a small tunnellike space where the pipes had all been ripped out.
“Here,” said a panting Roger Bampton behind me.
Bless him, he seemed to be reading my mind. “You’ll need this. I’ll be right behind you.”
I switched on the flashlight he thrust at me. My light flickered over a sleeping bag, and some provisions. I eased myself down to the entrance of the dirt tunnel. Earth fell on my face and got in my eyes. My clenched hands banged against the remaining shafts of pipe. I had heard that same noise when I was looking around Olson’s trashed office. I flashed my light ahead. I rounded a turn and sent the beam as far in as it would go.
It was another tunnel. My beam reflected off of something. Coming closer, I saw that it was the missing chalice, paten, and ambry from Olson’s house. I reached out to touch the cold metal, then lifted the lid on the ambry. But I already knew what I would see when I shone the light inside: the pearl chokers, glistening and lustrous in the narrow shaft of light. Only Montgomery would be able to figure out that Olson had kept the
pearls of great value
in something he valued equally: the sacramental vessels.
I slogged ahead into the blackness. There was another turn in the tunnel. I remembered placing my scrolled intercession in the hand of a statue. I prayed now, hard. I
believe; help thou my unbelief.
My flashlight beamed through the shadows.
There. At the end of the dark dirt cylinder, tied to a chair, was a motionless figure. Tom Schulz. Slowly, he lifted his head at the light and squinted. He was gagged.
I ran toward him and tugged the gag off.
“Goldy?” His voice was hoarse from disuse, and I could not see his eyes in the dim light. “Is it really you?”
“You bet,” I told him, and then I grasped him in a wordless hug.
W
e were married the next afternoon, after the church emptied from Father Olson’s funeral service. My parents flew in, joyful; Boyd and Armstrong met them at the airport. A small group from St. Luke’s came, including a fussy Lucille Boatwright. I called Zelda and said I needed her to play the organ, would she? She said that of course she would, I didn’t want that trash charismatic music, did I? No, just whatever she wanted; but I apologetically added that there was one condition to her playing. She had to let me invite her daughter-in-law, Sarah Preston Black, and her grandson, Ian Preston. “Just use me as an excuse,” I told her. “I can’t get married, and be happy, knowing you still have all that old pain.”
Zelda gasped and then started to cry. “I guess I’ve been wanting to … in my heart. It’s all felt so heavy there, like a dead weight. I think that’s why I auditioned to play the organ at the Catholic church. Somehow, I really did want to see them …” She stopped, then said weakly, “All right. If you’ll call them …”
Which I did. They would be happy to come. With much fussing and worry, Father Doug Ramsey agreed to perform the nuptials. I gave Marla the recipe for Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms, and she made them. Arch hauled the wedding cake out of the freezer.
Tom Schulz was weak, but he refused a wheelchair. His left ankle was broken; Boyd had driven us down to the
hospital the night before and questioned him while Julian, Arch, and I had waited for Tom’s cast to be applied. In nearly three days of captivity, Tom had only had some water. He hadn’t known what Montgomery wanted with blood tests. But he’d bluffed him right along, though.
PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS STUFFED WITH GRILLED CHICKEN, PESTO AND SUN-DRIED TOMATOES
4 large Portobello mushrooms (approximately 1 pound)
M
ARINADE FOR
M
USHROOMS:
5 tablespoons best-quality olive oil
5 tablespoons best-quality dry sherry
M
ARINADE FOR
C
HICKEN:
½ cup best-quality olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 garlic clove, pressed
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, each cut in half
¼ cup pesto
2 tablespoons finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, drained and patted with paper towels if packed in olive oil
Carefully clean the mushrooms with a damp paper towel and trim. Remove and chop the stems. Place the mushroom caps, tops down, and the chopped stems in a 9- by 13-inch glass baking dish. Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon sherry over the underside of each mushroom cap; pour the remaining olive oil and sherry over the stems. Cover and set aside to marinate at room temperature for 1 hour. Mix together the marinade for the chicken and pour over the chicken slices. Cover and set aside to marinate at room temperature for 1 hour.
Preheat a grill. Grill the chicken quickly, about 1 to 2 minutes per side (they will be cooked further).
Preheat the oven to 400°. Carefully spread 1 tablespoon pesto over the underside of each mushroom cap. Sprinkle 1 ½ teaspoons sun-dried tomatoes on top of each pesto-covered mushroom. Evenly distribute the marinated mushroom stems on top of the tomatoes. Place 2 slices of chicken on top. Place the stuffed mushrooms in a greased 9- by 13-inch pan. Bake for approximately 20 to 25 minutes or until heated through. Serve immediately.
Makes 4 servings
“Blood tests?” Tom protested. “Why would I know about them? But I pretended to know something, so the guy would keep me alive.” I shook my head in disbelief.
Boyd swore none of it had made sense. The keys at the Habitat house seemed to implicate Preston; the pearls with Mitchell Hartley made it look as if robbery was the motive. All planted by Montgomery. Now
that
made sense. At Agatha’s request, Boyd shredded her letters to Olson. Bob Preston would never see them. Agatha told me that she and Bob had decided to go into counseling; it was easier than divorce.
Back once more in their rented tuxedos, Arch and Julian beamed. With the morning mail, Julian had received his acceptance to Cornell. Marla added a wobbly
Congratulations
in frosting on the side of the thawed wedding cake.
The Prestons: Agatha, Bob, a wary Sarah, looking somewhat like a short Nefertiti in a silk pantsuit, and Ian, a compact swimmer like his deceased father, all came in to the church together. Ian brought an orchid corsage for his grandmother, whom he had not seen for five years. While Zelda and Ian were tearfully embracing, a triumphant Bob Preston told anyone who would listen, “Now
that’s
a miracle.”
At the part of the wedding where you say the vows, I said, “… for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish. We will not be parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”
Father Doug Ramsey, who was flustered, seemed to be rethinking the sermon he’d given on the trinity. He didn’t notice. Tom Schulz squeezed my hand. Then, carefully and distinctly, he repeated my vow. We exchanged the rings I’d been saving in my china cupboard.
“Now, finally, I’m Goldy Schulz,” I declared happily as I hugged Tom’s wide, wonderful body during our jovial
reception in the narthex. “I’m so glad I finally was able to get rid of that last name Bear, you can’t imagine.”
Tom Schulz’s large, beautiful green eyes seemed to be looking into my soul.
“God,” he said softly. “Goldy, I missed you.”
I kissed him. “You’re not going to believe this,” I told my husband truthfully, “but you were with me all the time.”
DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her family. She is the author of eleven bestselling culinary mysteries.
If you enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s
The Last Suppers,
you won’t want to miss any of the tantalizing mysteries in her nationally bestselling culinary mystery series! Look for
CHOPPING SPREE,
the newest mystery, at your favorite bookseller’s.
CHOPPING
SPREE
by
Diane
Mott
Davidson
Turn the page for an exciting preview….
Success can kill you.
So my best friend had been telling me, anyway. Too much success is like arsenic in chocolate cake. Eat a slice a
day,
Marla announced with a sweep of her plump, bejeweled fingers, and you’ll get cancer. Gobble the whole
cake?
You’ll keel over and die on the spot.
These observations, made over the course of a snowy March, had not cheered me. Besides, I’d have thought that Marla, with her inherited wealth and passion for shopping, would
applaud
the upward leap of my catering business. But she said she was worried about me.
Frankly, I was worried about me, too.
In mid-March I’d invited Marla over to taste cookies. Despite a sudden but typical Colorado blizzard, she’d roared over to our small house off Aspen Meadow’s Main Street in her shiny new BMW four-wheel drive. Sitting in our commercial kitchen, she’d munched on ginger snaps and spice cookies, and harped on the fact that the newly frantic pace of my work had coincided with my fourteen-year-old son Arch’s increasingly rotten behavior. I knew Marla doted on Arch.
But in this, too, she was right.
Arch’s foray into athletics, begun that winter with
snowboarding and a stint on his school’s fencing team, had ended with a trophy, a sprained ankle, and an unprecedented burst of physical self-confidence. He’d been eager to plunge into spring sports. When he’d decided on lacrosse, I’d been happy for him. That changed when I attended the first game. Watching my son forcefully shove an opponent aside and steal the ball, I’d felt queasy. With Arch’s father—a rich doctor who’d had many violent episodes himself—now serving time for parole violation, all that slashing and hitting was more than I could take.
But even more worrisome than the sport itself, Marla and I agreed, were Arch’s new teammates: an unrepentant gang of spoiled, acquisitive brats. Unfortunately, Arch thought the lacrosse guys were beyond cool. He spent hours with them, claiming that he “forgot” to tell us where he was going after practice. We could have sent him an
e-mail
telling him to call, Arch protested, if he only had what all his pals had, to wit, Internet-access watches.
Your own watch could have told you what time it was,
I’d told him, when I picked him up from the country-club estate where the senior who was supposed to drive him home had left him off.
Arch ignored me. These new friends, he’d announced glumly, also had Global Positioning System calculators, Model Bezillion Palm pilots, and electric-acoustic guitars that cost eight hundred dollars—and up. These litanies were always accompanied with not-so-tactful reminders that his fifteenth birthday was right around the corner. He wanted everything on his list, he announced as he tucked a scroll of paper into my purse. After all, with all the parties I’d booked, I could finally afford to get him some really good stuff.
And no telling what’ll happen if I don’t get what I want,
he’d added darkly. (Marla informed me that he’d already given
her
a list.) I’d shrugged as Arch clopped into the house ahead of me. I’d started stuffing sautéed chicken breasts with wild rice and spinach. The next day, Tom had picked up Arch at another friend’s house. When my son waltzed into the kitchen, I almost didn’t recognize him.
His head was shaved.
“They Bic’d me,” he declared, tossing a lime into the air and catching it in the net of his lacrosse stick.
“They
bicked
you?” I exclaimed incredulously.
“Bic,
Mom. Like the razor.” He rubbed his bare scalp, then flipped the lime again. “And I
would
have been home on time, if you’d bought me the Palm, to remind me to tell the guy shaving my head that I had to go.”
I snagged the lime in midair. “Go start on your homework, buster. You got a C on the last anatomy test. And from now on, either Tom or I will pick you up right from practice.”
On his way out of the kitchen, he whacked his lacrosse stick on the floor. I called after him please not to do that. I got no reply. The next day, much to Arch’s sulking chagrin, Tom had picked him up directly from practice.
If being athletic is what success at that school looks like,
Tom told me,
then maybe Arch should take up painting.
I kept mum. The next day, I was ashamed to admit, I’d pulled out Arch’s birthday list and bought him the Palm pilot.
Call it working mom’s guilt, I’d thought, as I stuffed tiny cream puffs with shrimp salad. Still, I was not sorry I was making more money than ever before. I did not regret that
Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! had
gone from booked to overbooked. Finally, I was giving those caterers in Denver, forty miles to the east, a run for their shrimp rolls. This was what I’d always wanted, right?
Take my best upcoming week, I’d explained to Marla as she moved on to test my cheesecake bars and raspberry brownies. The second week of April, I would make close to ten thousand dollars—a record. I’d booked an upscale cocktail party at Westside Mall, a wedding reception, and two big luncheons. Once I survived all that, Friday, April the fifteenth, was Arch’s birthday. By then, I’d finally have the cash to buy him something, as Arch himself had said,
really
good.
“Goldy, don’t do all that,” Marla warned as she downed one of my new Spice-of-Life Cookies. The buttery cookies featured large amounts of ginger, cinnamon, and freshly grated nutmeg, and were as comforting as anything from Grandma’s kitchen. “You’ll be too exhausted even to make a
birthday cake. Listen to me, now. You need to decrease your bookings, hire some help, be stricter with Arch, and take care of yourself for a change. If you don’t, you’re going to
die.”
Marla was always one for the insightful observation.
I didn’t listen. At least, not soon enough.
The time leading up to that lucrative week in April became even busier and more frenetic. Arch occasionally slipped away from practice before Tom, coming up from his investigative work at the sheriff’s department, could snag him. I was unable to remember the last time I’d had a decent night’s sleep. So I suppose it was inevitable that, at ten-twenty on the morning of April eleventh, I had what’s known in the shrink business as a
crisis.
At least, that’s what they’d called it years ago, during my pursuit of a singularly unhelpful degree in psychology.
I was inside our walk-in refrigerator when I blacked out. Just before hitting the walk-in’s cold floor, I grabbed a metal shelf. Plastic bags of tomatoes, scallions, celery, shallots, and gingerroot spewed in every direction, and my bottom thumped the floor. I thought,
I don’t have time for this.
I struggled to get up, and belatedly realized this meltdown wasn’t that hard to figure out. I’d been up since five
A.M
. With one of the luncheon preps done, I was focusing on the mall cocktail party that evening. Or at least I had been focusing on it, before my eyes, legs, and back gave out.
I groaned and quickly gathered the plastic bags. My back ached. My mind threw out the realization that I
still
did not know where Arch had been for three hours the previous afternoon, when lacrosse practice had been canceled. Neither Tom nor I had been aware of the calendar change. Tom had finally collected Arch from a seedy section of Denver’s Colfax Avenue. So what had this about-to-turn-fifteen-year-old been up to this time? Arch had refused to say.
“Just do the catering,” I announced to the empty refrigerator. I replaced the plastic bags and asked the Almighty
for perspective. Arch would get the third degree when he came down for breakfast. Meanwhile, I had work to do.
Before falling on my behind, I’d been working on a concoction I’d dubbed Shoppers’ Chocolate Truffles. These rich goodies featured a dense, smooth chocolate interior coated with more satiny chocolate. So what had I been looking for in the refrigerator? I had no idea. I stomped out and slammed the door.
I sagged against the counter and told myself the problem was fatigue. Or maybe my age—thirty-four—was kicking in. What would Marla say? She’d waggle a fork in my face and preach about the wages of success.
I brushed myself off and quick-stepped to the sink. As water gushed over my hands, I remembered I’d been searching for the scoops of ganache, that sinfully rich melange of melted bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, and liqueur that made up the heart of the truffles.
I dried my hands and resolved to concentrate on dark chocolate, not the darker side of success. After all, I had followed one of Marla’s suggestions: I
had
hired help. But I had not cut back on parties. I’d forgotten what taking care of myself even felt like. And I seemed incapable of being stricter with Arch.
I hustled over to my new kitchen computer and booted it up, intent on checking that evening’s assignment. Soon my new printer was spitting out lists of needed foodstuffs, floor plans, and scheduled setup. I may have lost my mind, but I’d picked it right up again.
“This is what happens when you give up caffeine!” I snarled at the ganache balls. Oops—that was twice I’d talked to myself in the last five minutes. Marla would not approve.
I tugged the plastic wrap off the globes of ganache and spooned up a sample to check the consistency. The smooth, intense dark chocolate sent a zing of pleasure up my back. I moved to the stovetop, stirred the luxurious pool of melting chocolate, and took a whiff of the intoxicatingly rich scent. I told myself—silently—that everything was going to be all right. The party-goers were going to
love
me.
The client for that night’s cocktail party was Barry Dean, an old friend who was now manager of Westside Mall, an upscale shopping center abutting the foothills west of Denver. I’d previously put on successful catered parties at Westside. Each time, the store-owners had raved. But Barry Dean, who’d only been managing the mall for six months, had seemed worried about the party’s dessert offering. I’d promised him his high-end spenders, for whom the party was geared, would
flip
over the truffles.
Maybe I’d even get a big tip, I thought as I scraped down the sides of the double boiler. I could spend it on a new mattress. On it, I might eventually get some sleep.
I stopped and took three deep breaths. My system craved coffee. Of course, I hadn’t given up espresso
entirely.
I was just trying to cut back from nine shots a day to two. Too much caffeine was causing my sleeplessness, Marla had declared. Of course, since we’d both been married to the same doctor—consecutively, not concurrently—she and I were self-proclaimed experts on all physical ailments. (Med Wives 101, we called it.) So I’d actually heeded her advice. My plan had been to have one shot at eight in the morning (a distant memory), another at four in the afternoon (too far in the future). Now my resolve was melting faster than the dark chocolate.
I fired up the espresso machine and wondered how I’d gotten into such a mental and physical mess.
Innocently enough, my mind replied. Without warning, right after Valentine’s Day, my catering business had taken off. An influx of ultrawealthy folks to Denver and the mountain area west of the Mile High City had translated into massive construction of trophy homes, purchases of multiple upscale cars, and doubling of prices for just about everything. Most important from my viewpoint, the demand for big-ticket catered events had skyrocketed. From mid-February to the beginning of April, a normally slow season, my assignments had exploded. I’d thought I’d entered a zone, as they say in Boulder, of
bliss.
I pulled a double shot of espresso, then took a sip and felt infinitely better.
I rolled the first silky scoop of ganache into a ball, and set it aside. What had I been thinking about? Ah, yes. Success.
I downed more coffee and set aside the porcelain bought-on-clearance cup, a remnant of my financial dark days. Those days had lasted a long time, a fact that Arch had seemed to block out.
When I began divorce proceedings against the ultra-cute, ultravicious Doctor John Richard Korman,
I’d
been so determined that he would support our son well that
I’d
become an Official Nosy Person. Files, tax returns, credit card receipts, check stubs, bank deposits—I’d found and studied them all. My zealous curiosity had metamorphosed into a decent settlement. Wasn’t it Benjamin Franklin who’d said,
God helps those who help themselves?
Old Ben had been right.
I bathed the first dark ganache globe in chocolate. OK, I’d replaced marital bitterness with bittersweet chocolate and bitter orange marmalade, right? And my life had turned around. Two years ago, I’d married Tom Schulz. As unreal as my newly minted financial success might seem, I did not doubt the miracle of my relationship with Tom, whose work as a police investigator had actually brought us together in the first place. Tom was bighearted and open-armed toward both Arch and me. So far, Tom and I had passed the tests that had been flung our way, and emerged still together. In this day and age, I thought, such commitment was commendable.
I rolled ganache balls, bathed them in chocolate, and set them aside to dry. Scoop, bathe, set aside. Marla could grouse all she wanted; I savored my new success. I was even considering purchasing a new set of springform pans, since I’d already bought a new computer, printer, and copier, not to mention new tableware, flatware, and knives—a shining set of silver Henckels. I
relished
no longer renting plates, silverware, and linens! I laughed aloud when I finished the twentieth truffle, and made myself another espresso. The dark drink tasted divine. No wonder they called financial solvency
liquidity.
I rewarded myself with a forkful of ganache, which sparked more fireworks of chocolate ecstasy. I did a little
two-step and thanked the Almighty for chocolate, coffee, and business growth.
Roll, bathe, set aside. I was appreciative that I had scads of new clients. In hiring me, they offered testimonies from friends (Marla in particular), or claimed they’d caught the reruns of my short-lived PBS cooking show. Some even said they just
had
to hire this caterer they’d read about, the one who helped her husband solve the occasional murder case. Well, why they hired me didn’t matter. New clients were new clients, and glitzy parties paid the bills. It had been stupendous.