If I could just find the pearls, perhaps in some biblically related hiding place, then maybe with them, I’d find whatever it was the killer was looking for. I remembered what I’d said to Boyd: Olson was such a packrat, you’d have to know exactly where to look to find something. Now I had an idea of where to look. The church office had been trashed, perhaps when someone was searching for the pearls, or something unknown. Figure the motive and you’ve got the perp, Tom was fond of saying. I sipped the rich espresso and decided my best bet would be to drive around the way that the intruder had, via the dirt road that led to Upper Cottonwood Creek and the back entrance to Olson’s house. Four-wheel-drive was a must, especially since I’d had such trouble starting my own van yesterday. I took the keys to Julian’s vehicle, a Range Rover inherited from our wealthy former employers. Sorry to take your car, I hastily penned, I promise I’ll be back! And with that I picked up my coffee and quietly slipped out.
Aspen Meadow in the so-called spring is about as inviting as a snow cave, especially when daily television images of azaleas and cherry blossoms remind us of April in the rest of the world. The Rover’s steering wheel was frigid under my grasp; the engine barked its reluctance. I had always harbored a vague notion that T. S. Eliot lived in the high country when he wrote that April was the cruelest month. This dark morning certainly did not promise kind weather.
The Rover growled down my street in first gear, past the Habitat for Humanity construction site. Above the foundation, ice-covered two-by-fours loomed ominously in the bright moonlight. No red flag was visible; I wondered if construction had indeed been blocked. My attention was immediately drawn back by the Rover tires skidding through a stop sign; treacherous black ice glazed the pavement. Once I had edged out on Main Street, the Rover’s headlights picked out stalactite icicles along the storefronts. The bank thermometer said 18°. Instead of allowing the morning’s unbearable chill to penetrate my bones, I imagined the cocoon of warmth Tom’s body had made nestling around mine. I wondered what the churchwomen would have said about the fact that Tom Schulz and I had been sleeping together in the five months since we’d become engaged. Lucky for me, I didn’t give a hoot about ecclesiastical opinion.
A fox scurried under a split rail fence just before the turnoff for Olson’s place. Half a mile later, I turned left on the dirt road that led across a bridge, then bumped over ruts in a wide arc to the other side of Cottonwood Creek. I parked between ponderosa pines as tall and ominous as frozen giants. When I jumped from the Rover, my breath made clouds of vapor in the moonlight. I fumbled with the flashlight and cursed the cold. When I finally could see where I was going, I headed for the creek bank. My boots crunched over the new snow. Every now and then, they cracked through mud puddles thinly covered with ice.
I was going into Olson’s house when no one was there, I told myself firmly, because Boyd had ordered me to let the police do their job. In other words, I wasn’t supposed to call them in every time I had a hunch. Besides, they had already gone through Olson’s house. What I was looking for, and it really was a wild hunch, were the missing chokers, with something, in an unusual hiding place, a place where a squirrelly person who laughingly gave the head of the raffle committee gold chains gift-wrapped in a frankincense box would stow them. There were references to pearls in the Bible: Don’t throw them before swine, a merchant who finds a pearl of great value and sells all he has to obtain it. There were probably others, I just couldn’t think of what they were. I had already looked up Judas: He’d only dealt in silver coins.
I tried to focus on what Tom would think about this crazy excursion. Overhead, the wind swished through the snow-covered trees and showered my head with fine, cold flakes. I always look for what’s out of place, what’s there that shouldn’t be there, what’s not there as well as what’s there, I could hear Tom say. I stepped over a snow-covered log and tried to visualize Olson’s home as I’d seen it during the vestry dinner: the Stickley couch, wood floors, worn Kirman rugs, shelves of books, religious artifacts and knick-knacks, the plants, the teapots, and trays. That was the problem with a packrat. In all the jumble, it was hard to remember exactly what stuff Olson had possessed.
Well, you’re going to have to. Schulz’s voice invaded my thoughts with his patented chuckle. I felt a great wave of affection for him then, and did not know if the sigh I heard was my own or the wind moving through the cottonwood trees at the edge of the creek. I stopped by the precipitous bank and saw a fragmented reflection of the moon in the rushing water seven feet below. This was where Tom had dragged himself, or been forced, across. I firmly placed my right boot at an angle and made a series of careful steps down the muddy, snow-covered bank.
My feet squished through the mud as I focused my concentration on seeing Olson’s rooms: shelves of Bibles in several translations, biblical commentaries, leatherbound biographies of the saints, oversized art books featuring Chartres, Canterbury, and other cathedrals. In the realm of religious artifacts, I pictured the rubbings on Olson’s living and dining room walls. Medieval, I thought, from my college course in art history. And then on a shelf were his own beaten silver paten and chalice, for serving the sacrament, and his portable ambry, a hammered bronze box rimmed in brass for storing the consecrated host. A portable wooden case in his home office held his sterling flatware service. When I’d stored the overflow of covered pans in Olson’s office before the vestry arrived, I’d noticed a mind-boggling number of disheveled piles of papers on the desk and on the floor: the true mark of the Highly Disorganized. Without a secretary at home to keep his act together, Ted Olson had undoubtedly had a vague desire to sort through his correspondence one of these days. But when I’d asked him where to put the pan of pork dumplings, he’d swept the dish out of my hands and left it teetering on what looked like a stable pile. I’d realized Olson had no intention of ever sorting through the paper disaster, much less throwing anything away. After the dinner, he’d repacked the silver flatware himself and left it on an unused bed in the bedroom-turned-office.
I turned my attention back to the creek. The stones protruding from above the roiling surface of the freezing water looked wet and slippery. This was where Schulz had dropped the box containing my wedding ring. Don’t think about it. I hopped lightly across the rocks. Breathing hard, I clutched the flashlight and scrambled up the other side of the creek. When I arrived at the snow-whitened meadow below Olson’s house, it looked as if the sky was beginning to brighten. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part after the deep shadows of the creek bed.
My eyes involuntarily traveled to the place where the police had found Father Olson’s body. Instead of being smooth like the rest of the meadow, that area was indented. Odd. I breathed deeply and walked over to the spot.
My flashlight played over the shallow rectangle. Someone had carefully spaded up and removed the dirt from the area where Father Olson had lain. The artificially made ditch was covered with snow, and at one edge of the dug-up area, someone had put a crudely made cross of lashed-together twigs. This couldn’t be part of police procedure, I reasoned. They might analyze the soil where someone fell, but they wouldn’t leave a cross. You’re going to have to call Boyd and tell him about this. I could hear Tom Schulz’s voice in my brain as clearly as if he were standing next to me. Boyd wasn’t going to be happy. The fresh snow on top of the rectangular hole left by the Mad Digger indicated that this activity had not taken place in the last few hours. That was good, anyway. The last thing I needed was to be hit over the head by a lunatic wielding a shovel.
I swept the flashlight beam in a circle around the spaded area and saw a clear path of small ruts: the outline of footprints leading up to and away from where I stood. Successive sweeps of the light revealed shallower footprint ruts surrounding the spaded area. I guessed them to be from all the police activity here on Saturday afternoon. And shallower still, of course, there would be the footprints of Tom Schulz and the suspect. Didn’t want to think about that, though.
/> Time to go up to the house and look for pearls. Maybe Olson had a hollowed-out Bible. Maybe he has a phone that you can use to call Boyd. I ignored the sour taste in my mouth and, careful to avoid the footprint path, walked to the wooden steps leading up to Olson’s house.
There was no yellow police ribbon around the back, at least that I could see. I climbed the stairs and tried the back-door handle. To my surprise the door was already partway open, and I ended up crashing into one of the kitchen counters. My chest shuddered painfully. I rubbed my hip, which had taken the brunt of the blow. My free hand moved along the wall and flipped on the kitchen light.
This was not just disorganization, I thought as I looked at open cupboards, pots pulled out on the floor, cornmeal and flour indiscriminately dumped. Fresh snow had blown into the kitchen through a smashed window. It lay on top of the dumped-out food like confectioners’ sugar. The place had been vandalized, and not in the last few hours.
“Damn it to hell,” I said aloud, and looked for the phone. A black wall model, it had been wrenched from the wall. So much for fingerprints, I thought as I picked it up and examined the cord. I plugged the cord back in, was astonished to get a dial tone, and dialed 911. Boyd was going to yell at me and I deserved it. I told the dispatcher where I was and that the house had been vandalized. No, I said, I did not think I was in any danger. She wanted me to stay on the phone, but I could not. There would be plenty of time for accusations and recriminations as soon as the Sheriff’s Department showed up.
I stepped over an upturned kitchen chair and shined my flashlight on more chaos in the living room. I flipped on the overhead brass light fixture. The answering machine had been axed in two. The Stickley’s dark plaid cushion had been slashed and emptied; down and feathers lay sprinkled over the detritus on the floor. I couldn’t even see the Kirmans. Mountains of books lay by overturned brass lamps, dumped potted plants, and the remains of the framed rubbings. They had been torn from the wall and smashed. Shards of glass glittered in the wreckage.
I was so angry I thought I would shriek. First the church office and now here. Couldn’t I ever get somewhere before it was destroyed? Had the intruder found the pearls? Or something, anything else? Boyd had said whoever was keeping Tom Schulz might want a particular thing whose location the expiring Olson might have told the trusted police officer who had found him. Too bad Tom’s note hadn’t mentioned it in any way the rest of us might have been able to figure out.
“I hope you didn’t find it,” I said loudly to the devastated room. My boots crunched across the broken glass and piles of feathers. But at that moment my eye caught the shelves where Olson had kept his church-related supplies. No chalice, no paten, no ambry. Perhaps the motive for his murder had been robbery, after all. The criminal just hadn’t gotten everything the first time around.
I moved hesitantly down the hall toward the bedroom-turned-office. I stepped over coats, hats, gloves, and hangers dumped from the hall closet. Whoever did this is gone, I reminded myself as I entered the new space; snow was everywhere in the kitchen.
I switched on the overhead light in the office, one of those square, frosted-glass types that must have been an original fixture with the house. It cast a sallow light over the piles of papers. The contents of file drawers lay strewn on top of what had already been there. It looked as if all the papers had been gone through, but instead of being left in a mess as they had been in the living room, these had been neatly restacked in piles and pushed against the walls. Why would you trash the house, but organize the papers? The silver, Schulz’s voice said sharply in my mind, where is it? Stacks of papers covered the office’s incongruous bed. I stepped carefully around the side of the bed and saw the cherrywood case for the silver. It had been emptied. Glinting in the weak light, Grande Renaissance knives, forks, spoons, and serving utensils lay haphazardly everywhere, like a child’s game of Pick-Up Sticks. Either robbery had not been the motive for this rampage, or this was one incredibly stupid thief.
I picked up the cherrywood case and pulled out the small drawer at the bottom. A slim packet of letters was wedged into the back. The sloped, feminine handwriting of the return address said they were from A. Preston.
Judas had received silver. Agatha had betrayed her husband. Olson had put the traitor’s letters in the silver box. Whoever had trashed this place either hadn’t found her letters or hadn’t cared. I put the letters in my parka pocket. Maybe Tom’s mystifying notation of B. - Read - Judas had something to do with Bob Preston and his wife. Damn. More ideas for Boyd.
Two more places to check: Olson’s bedroom and the one bathroom. I knew there was a single bathroom and that the office had been the only other bedroom besides Olson’s. Olson had bought the old place at a bargain because it had only one bath and two bedrooms, not much space for today’s families. I wondered if the vestry would have been willing to move him into a mansion if he’d brought the church’s receipts for this year up to half a mil.
Concentrate, Tom Schulz’s voice in my mind reprimanded. I wondered if I was hallucinating. Is that what happened when you really missed somebody? Or was hearing voices a phenomenon of sleep deprivation?
I felt a pang of sadness, or perhaps it was the guilt of intrusiveness when I turned on the light in Olson’s bedroom. The covers of the bed had been pulled off and lay in a heap on the floor. The mattress leaned against the box spring at a steep angle. Both had been slashed open. Olson’s bureau drawers yawned, their contents of socks, underwear, and dark clothing in piles. On Olson’s bureau, a painted Florentine tray lay heaped with an assortment of keys, receipts, and clerical collars.
Something hanging on his wall made me stop dead. Dark maroon, with a purple heart at the center. It was an afghan. Except for the colors, it was the exact design of the one that had been left on my porch.
Nausea swept over me. I tripped on my way out of his room and fell hard on the bed frame. I forced myself to get up and careened back down the hall to the living room, where there was at least a chair to sit.
Come on, Miss G., get a grip. I allowed Tom Schulz’s affectionate imperative to flow from my brain down into my body, which was cold, very cold, from the lack of heat in the house. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if the afghan left at my house was meant to be some kind of sign. Something along the order of, You’re next.
I had the ridiculous notion that if Boyd was going to bawl me out anyway, I might as well turn on the heat. I scanned the living room walls for an adjustable thermostat and saw that it was on the other side of the room, beside the empty shelves. Exhaustion paralyzed me. I wasn’t going to turn on the heat, even though it was unbelievable how much the temperature had dropped in the last twenty-four hours. The splintered answering machine lay on the table. It was the kind with a receiver, too, and I wondered if it had been from here that Tom had made his call to me at the church.
I hugged myself and rocked back and forth to get warm. Where was the Sheriff’s Department, anyway? It felt like forever since my call. There was no working clock remaining in Olson’s destroyed house, of course. Outside his living room window overlooking a deck and the creek, the gradual brightening between the trees indicated the sun was finally making an appearance. Even though I hadn’t found any pearls, it was time for me to go; Julian and Arch would need a hot breakfast on such a frigid morning.
I sat cemented to the chair. The last time we spoke, Tom had been here. He had called me at the church when I was so full of hopeful anticipation. I closed my eyes and for a moment felt sleep hover just behind consciousness. It had been warmer on Saturday morning when Tom had called from here. Why, I’d even heard windchimes through an open window in the background.
Windchimes?
Wakefulness came with a jolt. My flashlight hadn’t picked out any windchimes. This doesn’t matter, my tired brain insisted. Just go home. What had Tom said when he called the church office? He’d told me about Olson and that there would be no wedding. Then there was a distant tinkle, and he’d
told me to wait. He hadn’t found anything or he would have told me, wouldn’t he? It was so insignificant that I’d even forgotten to tell Boyd and Armstrong about it.
I hauled myself out of the chair and headed toward the back door. There had been a jingling, glasslike noise in the background. Windchimes, I’d thought. But Coloradans usually stored their windchimes until June. The danger of harsh winds and unexpected ice could reduce the chimes to fractured bits. But this guy kept his croquet set in the garage, Tom’s voice said to the far reaches of my brain. Maybe he didn’t know you were supposed to store your windchimes.
I’m losing it, I reflected ruefully as I scrambled onto the deck off Olson’s kitchen. Light crept up from the eastern horizon. My flashlight beam played over the deck. No chimes. I inched down the short outside wooden staircase, careful to avoid the center of each step, where a dark glaze of ice crystals no doubt lay under each fresh layer of snow. At the bottom of the stairs was a crawl space under the house that Father Packrat Olson had used for storage. My light scanned a paint-chipped lawn mower that would never cut another blade, at least a dozen straw baskets still wired with rotting floral clay, a higgledy-piggledy collection of boxes stamped with the name of the moving company that had brought Olson to this abode. One of the boxes was upturned, its contents spilled. They were tall iced-tea glasses made of a light green, translucent shell-type material.
The Last Suppers Page 20