The Last Suppers

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Yes,” I interrupted. “He would have had that box with him.” I did not need to be reminded of the box’s contents, the thin gold band Tom and I had picked out. His ring was still in Father Olson’s office at the church. I said, “He was so big, strong … I still don’t understand how someone could have, that is, could there have been more than one person—”

  Calloway held up one finger. She shook her head. “Besides Schulz’s, there’s only one set of footprints.”

  There was a fresh rustle of activity from the group by the creek bank. Investigator Calloway motioned us back toward the voices.

  “Yeah, it’s his.”

  “I think so.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me …”

  Calloway lifted one bushy white eyebrow. “Looks like we might have one more thing for you, Miss Bear.”

  Together we walked to a group of police officers by the thick stand of cottonwoods. My eyes were drawn to the corpse-sized lump covered with dark material. It was hard to believe I would never see Father Olson again. The crowd fell silent, then parted abruptly in front of us.

  “Schulz might have tossed it over here. Have her take a look at it.” The speaker was an angular man with shaggy red hair and a gravelly voice. He pointed to a small soggy spiral notebook under the cottonwoods. Someone threw a poncho on the wet grass and mud in front of the notebook. Awkwardly, I knelt as directed, feeling all eyes on me. Investigator Calloway crouched beside me and spoke gently.

  “Don’t touch it. Again, you’re more familiar with him, you can tell us if it’s Schulz’s.”

  The top page of the notebook was wet. The writing on it was slightly smeared. I barely noticed Boyd as he squatted beside Calloway and me. Slashing strokes written with a blue ballpoint indicated the notes had been hurriedly taken, undoubtedly scribbled in an awkward position. Timidly, I read aloud:

  w Nissan van

  1049 v alv gswx2chst

  d d

  B. - Read - Judas?

  vm p.r.a.y.

  1133 vdd

  My head throbbed. I reread the scribbles.

  “Well?” demanded Inspector Calloway.

  I said nothing.

  Boyd grunted.

  Frustrated, Investigator Calloway asked, “Is there anything you can tell us?”

  I pulled back and looked into Calloway’s shrewd hazel eyes. Her look and her questions were urgent. I knew she needed my help to find Tom and solve this horrific murder. Pain squeezed my voice. I told her, “The handwriting is Tom Schulz’s. I don’t know what he was trying to say.”

  4

  Boyd pressed his thin lips together, scowling down at the sodden spiral notebook. “Schulz and his notes. Memory enhancer, he called it.” He flung his match into the snow and craned his stubby neck to reread the scribbles. “GSW times two. Two gunshot wounds, we knew that. DD. Looks like he might have gotten a dying declaration.”

  Investigator Calloway sighed. “Now if we could just figure out what the victim said. And we’ll need to read up about Judas.” She concentrated her gaze on me. “Know anybody with a white van? People with names, initials VM or B?”

  I felt dizzy. His handwriting. I could hear my teeth chattering. A vision of a shotgun welled up. Where was the gun now? How much ammunition did it have?

  “Please, Miss Bear. A van. A white Nissan van. Sound familiar?”

  “Ah, I have a white van. It says …” I groped for words. “Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! on the side. But it’s a Volkswagen, not a Nissan.”

  “Is your van missing? Where was it this morning?”

  With difficulty, I thought back. My van had spent the morning being filled with platters of food for our wedding reception. I told her so. Investigator Calloway nodded. She assured me her investigative team would check with Olson’s neighbors as well as with people who lived along Upper Cottonwood Creek Road, to see if anybody else saw a van.

  I stared at the wilted notebook that Tom had, presumably, somehow managed to toss into the bushes. The paper in front of me must hold some clue to what had happened out here. Impenetrable hieroglyphics stared back.

  “Don’t you cops use some kind of standard shorthand? That’s what it looks like to me.”

  Boyd pulled out his pad and began writing on it. “Nothing standard,” he said gruffly. “GSW and DD I already told you. Gunshot wounds. Dying Declaration. The victim was alive. The victim was dead. Somebody drove a van. A reference to praying and the Bible. We’ll get you a copy of this. If you can puzzle over it some more, that would sure help.”

  “Wait, though,” said Calloway. “Wait. Look at it again, Miss Bear. VM P.R.A.Y.? Could all those periods in there have some significance for Schulz? Or something from your church, maybe? Is P.R.A.Y. an acronym for some church organization? Schulz used V for victim on the first line, so could VM refer to that? We’ll check through his files, see what we can come up with. Maybe you have something else he’s written, some notes to you, something with abbreviations?”

  I said no and did not mention that Tom Schulz had written me few notes in the time we’d known each other. Our courtship had emerged from crisis. When the attempted poisoning of my ex-father-in-law had led to the temporary closing of my catering business, I had responded reluctantly to Tom’s interest in me. As our relationship developed over the last eighteen months, we’d had phone conversations, barbecues, outings in the mountains or in Denver. These outings invariably concluded with meals I fixed in my professional cooking area or dinners Tom prepared in the fabulously equipped kitchen of his cabin. And only very recently, when we were alone, those meals were followed by lovemaking.

  We had not written.

  Calloway persisted. “But you must have something of his, a notebook, journal, calendar, anything that might contain some of these abbreviations. If you did, or if such written material existed, would it be at your house? Or his?”

  I knew she was doing her job. Trying to find their premier homicide investigator, the police would ruthlessly unearth every scrap of information. But I wasn’t up to discussing our complex domestic arrangements, especially when it involved so much stuff in boxes that had just been moved to my house from Tom’s cabin. In fact, I wasn’t up to discussing much of anything. I said, “I’m not sure. But I’ll look. I promise.”

  “Who has keys to his place?” she wanted to know. “And his car? I mean, besides that set in the creek.”

  My eyes were burning, my hands were numb with cold. I muttered that I had a set of keys to his home but not with me. Anyway, I added, his place was empty. At that moment, another officer summoned Calloway. She promised that Boyd or Armstrong would stay in touch, and directed that I keep the phone line to my house open. I asked Boyd when I could have the articles Tom Schulz dropped at the crime scene. He clomped off, then reported back that when the lab was done with them, someone would come by my place with Tom’s things.

  “Was there any blood?” I asked Boyd. I cleared my throat. “Tom’s blood? You said he was hurt.”

  Boyd winced sympathetically. One of his rough hands reached out impulsively for mine. Quietly, he answered, “Looks like he got scratched on the rocks. Maybe he turned his ankle or broke a leg bone coming down the bank. I’m not going to lie to you: He could be hurt bad.” I couldn’t listen, couldn’t look at Boyd, couldn’t bear to have him touching me. I turned my gaze to the snowy ground and pulled my hands away. Boyd went on. “That’s the only way the perp could have overpowered him, we think. If that’s what happened. You know, Schulz is muscular, he’s a tough guy. Street smart and regular smart. We’re going to bring you a copy of the note,” he added, changing the subject, “for you to study.”

  A cold, wet breeze swept the frigid meadow. The end of the snow and advent of watery afternoon sunshine had not materialized into anything warm and springlike. I clasped my upper arms but couldn’t stop trembling. Helen Keene shambled over to me and again threw the victim-advocate quilt around my shoulders. Slowly we walked dow
n the muddy driveway to Boyd’s squad car. She asked me for directions and then drove us home. We passed the ranches, the custom homes, the preparatory school entrance. The time spent in Olson’s meadow had been hard on my wedding suit; cold, wet silk clung to my legs. In my mind’s eye, I kept seeing Boyd, Armstrong, and Helen Keene walking across the flagstones to the St. Luke’s office with their terrible news. I couldn’t control a gutteral groan. I needed to get home, to be with Arch and Julian.

  “Please keep your phone line open,” Helen said after I’d turned down her offer to come into my house and stay for a while. She handed me her card. “And keep the quilt,” she added softly. “A group of women from your church donates them to the Sheriff’s Department and to Aspen Meadow Outreach just for situations like yours.” The questions bubbled up in my brain: Situations like mine? What exactly was my situation? But Helen held me in her steady gaze. “Goldy—please call me if you need me.”

  I thanked her and extricated myself from the police car. On the sidewalk across from my house, a trio of neighbors watched, apparently oblivious to the cold. How bad news traveled so quickly in this town I did not know. Stumbling dizzily toward my front door, it was all I could do to keep the quilt awkwardly clutched around my muddied wedding suit.

  Once I had come through our security system, I called for Arch, then Julian. The silent house felt deserted without the customary rich smell of cooking. My suitcase, packed for our honeymoon, sat forlornly in the front hall. I turned away from it.

  “Oh, Mom, you’re here!” cried Arch as he galloped down the stairs. He had changed from the tux to a gray sweatsuit. “Julian took Grandma and Grandpa to the airport. He’s taking our tuxes back, too. I was just about to start putting the food in the walk-in, the way Julian told me. Where’s Tom? How come your clothes are so messy? Where’d you get that blanket thing?”

  “Oh, hon. It’s a long story.” I begged off immediate explanations by announcing I would take a shower while he put the platters away. Wearily, I climbed the stairs. Every muscle in my body ached. In the bedroom that Tom had begun only recently to share with me, I stood in front of the mirror and gazed at the ruined beige silk outfit. A middle-aged Miss Haversham, my reflection mocked back. A flood of anger sent my fingers ripping at the tiny pearl buttons. Two flew off and pinged on the wooden floor. A half-formed sob squawked out of my throat. I carefully removed the churchwomen’s necklace. I don’t deserve this, I reflected bitterly. Selfish to worry about what I didn’t deserve, but I didn’t care. Tears leaked out of my eyes as I groped around on my knees until I found the buttons. I have suffered enough already. Hey, God? Did you hear me? If you’re really there. After placing the buttons on my bureau, I reached for Tom’s pillow on the bed, then buried my face in it. I sobbed and gasped, then inhaled deeply. Even though he’d spent the last few nights at his cabin, the pillowcase had the wonderful smell of him.

  In the shower the spray went to scalding as I rocked back and forth, back and forth. Eventually I wrapped myself in a thick terrycloth towel and sat on the bed, dizzy and exhausted. I rose and pulled on a sweatsuit. Again I caught a glimpse of my wan reflection. What to say to Arch? To Julian? I didn’t even know what I was going to say to myself.

  In the kitchen the counters were empty except for a tray of marzipan-covered petit fours and chocolate truffles that had been meant to be take-home presents for our wedding guests. I asked Arch if anybody had called. He said no and went back to methodically pulling off the wrapping and then eating truffles, one small bite at a time. I hugged myself and began to rock again. Arch stopped in midbite, his eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

  “What’s going on, Mom?”

  “Oh, Arch … I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  “Father Olson. I heard.”

  “No. This is about Tom.” Arch was one of the people who had to know. I braced myself, then flatly recounted the bare outlines of the story: Tom finding the mortally injured priest and then apparently being hurt and forcefully taken.

  As I spoke, my son’s freckled face went numb with shock. When I’d finished, he sat motionless for a long time, then, carefully, he put the half-eaten truffle back on the paper napkin embossed with Tom and Goldy, April 11. He pushed his glasses up his nose and clasped his hands under his armpits.

  “Tom Schulz was kidnapped?”

  “They think so.”

  “They’re going to find him, aren’t they?”

  There was no point in equivocating. I hope so, or The police are working on it would only lead to a tangle of unanswerable questions and a flood of worries. There was no reason to voice the unwanted fears that chilled my spirit the way winter winds howl down the mountains. I saw myself picking out a plain coffin for Tom Schulz. In a few short years, Arch would go off to college. I would live out my days alone.

  “Yes,” I told my son firmly, with more conviction than I felt. “They will find him.”

  Arch started to sweep the kitchen floor, an order-restoring chore he often undertook when his outer life was in chaos. My stomach said I should eat, but one glance inside the walk-in refrigerator at the platters of beautifully decorated reception food made me turn away. Would whoever abducted Tom feed him? I paced around the kitchen, felt the gnawing in my stomach develop into spasms, willed the pains away. Arch finished the floor, took out his drawing materials, and sat at the kitchen table. He knew I would want him within sight.

  My business line rang. The sudden noise made me cry out as if I’d been struck. I dived for it.

  “What?” I shouted. If it was a client, I thought belatedly, I could kiss this booking good-bye.

  “Goldy?” came the tentative, frightened voice of Zelda Preston. “Are you all right? I mean, I know you aren’t all right … you can’t be after what’s happened …”

  Zelda Preston, mother-in-law to scarecrow Agatha in the church kitchen, was a current Altar Guild member and, until very recently, the organist at St. Luke’s. Zelda and Lucille Boatwright had both been widowed about a decade ago. The two women were almost constantly in each other’s company now, except when Zelda met with the master swimmers and did her weekly three miles’ worth of laps. With her attenuated face that always reminded me of a camel’s, her wiry muscles, and her long braid of gray hair wound on top of her head, Zelda Preston seemed the tall, rod-thin counterpart to Lucille’s stodgy, solid self.

  I said, “Are you calling about Lucille?”

  “Oh, my dear Goldy. No. I’m calling about you. I want to do something for you, poor dear….” Her voice faltered.

  Zelda carried a painful past, but we’d never had any sisterly soul-baring talks. An older female Episcopalian would rather die impoverished than discuss psychic wounds, a conversation she would put in the same category as comparing bra sizes. Nevertheless, Zelda’s attempt to offer sympathy touched me, and awakened guilt. I hadn’t called her this past month, when the many disagreements she and Father Olson had had about ecclesiastical music had ended up with his firing her. Still, what would I have said? You want to have lunch and talk about how getting fired is like getting divorced? I didn’t think so.

  “Zelda. You are thoughtful to call. I don’t need anything, thanks.” I cleared my throat, keenly aware that I needed to keep both phone lines clear in case the police needed to reach me. I didn’t know which number they had. Since I had no call-waiting, I couldn’t risk giving the police a busy signal. But explaining all this, plus Tom’s disappearance, were more than I could handle at the moment. “I need to go.”

  “Oh, all right. But Goldy,” she went on meekly, “I am so terribly sorry to bother you about this, but I’m just trying to see what you want done with your wedding flowers. Lucille isn’t available, as you probably know, so I need to step in for her to help plan the Holy Week services and the funeral for Father Olson.” She paused. “Have you heard anything? I mean, about what happened to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well … If you wish, we could try to use these flowers for Father
Olson … I know it sounds petty, but someone must start to make the decisions, and Doug Ramsey is impossible…. If you donated the flowers, it would certainly save the parish money, goodness knows. However, I do not know what our new priest will want. Not our new priest,” she corrected herself, “whoever those people down at the diocese send to us.” Zelda’s voice dropped on the word diocese in a way that left no doubt as to her opinion of that ecclesiastical body.

  “Tell you what,” I said placatingly, desperate to clear the phone line. “Why don’t you donate them to the Catholic church? Their parish is bigger; they’re sure to have a wedding coming up soon.”

  “The Catholics! Having a wedding during Holy Week? For heaven’s sake, the least you could do is donate them to someone from our parish who is ill. Honestly, Goldy. The Catholics.”

  “Fine, Zelda. Really. Who’s in the hospital at the moment? Whatever will make you happy.” This whole conversation was absurd. But however much we might disagree or be upset, Episcopalians did not hang up on each other.

  She trilled, “Roger Bampton is home from the hospital, although …” She broke off and announced, “Victor Mancuso has shingles, but I don’t know which hospital he’s in, and of course it would be difficult to track down the church secretary, since she took her Easter vacation early.” She paused again. “And it’s you I want to have happy, my dear.”

  “Victor Mancuso?” I said, incredulous. VM. I demanded, “Who’s Victor Mancuso?”

  “No one really, he’s the secretary’s uncle. She just put him on the prayer list before she left. Nobody else knows anything about him, I already asked.”

  On the prayer list, on the prayer list. P.R.A.Y. I struggled to think: The prayer list contained names of all those for whom the parish offered intercessory requests. Or, as Arch maintained, it was the list of people and things we wanted God to fix. The charismatic segment of the congregation, those parishioners who put ultra-enthusiastic emphasis on spiritual gifts and a personal relationship with Jesus, offered intercessions on a much more regular and serious basis than most of the rest of us. There was also a small noncharismatic women’s prayer group that met weekly. Zelda, I remembered, was a member of this group. Maybe she could help decipher the acronymns in Tom’s note.