The Last Suppers

by Diane Mott Davidson

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.

  THE FIRST WASP LATKES

  4 large or 8 small russet potatoes (approximately 2 pounds), peeled

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  salt and pepper to taste

  Grate the potatoes onto a large clean kitchen towel that can be stained. Roll the potatoes up in the towel and wring to remove moisture. (It is best to do this over the sink, since it will produce a surprising amount of liquid.)

  Melt the butter with the olive oil on a large griddle. Form the grated potatoes into 4 pancakes. Cook the pancakes over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until the bottom is golden brown, then flip the pancakes. Cook on the other side for about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve plain or with sour cream and applesauce.

  Makes 4 servings

  “What do you think, Scout? Bishop’s Potato Pancakes?”

  Scout stayed still. Guess that meant no. Once again, my sanity seemed to be fraying, but I didn’t care.

  “Well, how about, The First WASP latkes?”

  Scout did one of his elaborate body rolls on the kitchen floor, ending with his stomach facing the ceiling and his paws curled. Clearly, this was a yes.

  While the WASP Latkes sizzled, I picked up the pen and began to write.

  1. The Reverend Theodore Olson. Smart, attractive, charismatic, “the magician.” Went through ordination process fast. Protégé of Montgomery. Fired the organist, to whom he preached reconciliation. Loved folk music and charismatic liturgies. Unloved by Pinckney crowd. Involved with miraculous healing of Roger Bampton? Involved with Agatha Preston? Dead.

  2. Mitchell Hartley. Not smart, not attractive, not rich. Theologically conservative; charismatic. Worked at diocesan center. Going through ordination process slowly; flunked by Olson and Board of Theological Examiners once. Nobody’s protégé. Knew something about exam paper at Olson’s. Had pearls. Not at wedding. Dead.

  3. Zelda Preston. Unreconciled about son’s death from leukemia. Fired by Olson over music disagreement. Member of Altar Guild responsible for missing/found Hymnal House keys. Best friend Lucille thinks she might have killed Olson. Looking for letter from bishop about guitar music (Could Tom S. know where it is?). Not at wedding.

  4. Bob Preston. Money problems, might have wanted pearls. Jealousy problems, might want letters from Agatha to Olson (Tom would know where?). Mother Zelda expects too much of him? Ego wrapped up in volunteer work; Olson causing problems with Habitat house? Vehicle keys found at Habitat house. Rifle-toting member of Sportsmen Against Hunger. Not at wedding.

  5. George Montgomery. Thinks his protégé ran amok? Bad temper, bad preacher, bad poet. Jealous of Olson because of parish giving? Because of miracles? Is he the one Agatha referred to when she said, ‘Someone demanding to see the blood tests?’ At wedding, according to Father Doug Ramsey.

  6. Agatha Preston. Loathes her mother-in-law, loathes her husband, loathes her life. Obsesses about hell but was deeply in love with Olson. Digging in columbarium area. At wedding.

  I got up and flipped the latkes. The cooked sides were golden brown and crusty, and the delectable smell of potatoes crackling in melted butter made my mouth water.

  I frowned at my notepad. What I had not written down was that Father Olson’s office and house had been trashed and his death site vandalized. Not on my list were Lucille Boatwright, whom Arch had literally stumbled upon while she was surreptitiously snooping through church files, and Doug Ramsey, who, like Lucille, had wasted no love on Ted Olson. Father Doug Ramsey, also known as Father Hyperbole, Father Insensitive, Father Overtalkative. But I had seen him at the wedding as I had Lucille. You couldn’t be kidnapping Tom Schulz if you were waiting for him to show up at the church.

  And then there was Tom. I had felt his presence so clearly the night I had gone to Olson’s. Now he felt absent to me, as if a phone were ringing, but no one was home.

  You may feel God’s presence or you may sense God’s absence, Olson had said in a sermon once, but God is still there, like the man who buys Halloween candy every year, yet no trick-or-treaters come.

  I gently removed the pancakes from the griddle and put them on a plate. I searched for applesauce and sour cre
am. Finding neither, I merely salted and peppered the potatoes and had a bite. They were hot, crunchy, and divine. God is still there. I lifted the phone from its cradle and dialed Tom Schulz’s voice mail. His deep, rich voice filled my heart with hope.

  Call me, Olson’s voice said in my ear. I gasped. My mind had been working on the puzzle of Tom’s note for two and a half days, and suddenly I’d figured it out. Or perhaps I’d gotten some kind of message from Olson on The Other Side. Better not ponder that one. With a shaking hand, I dialed the church’s number.

  “This is St. Luke’s Episcopal Church,” Ted Olson’s voice happily announced, “on Main Street in Aspen Meadow next to Lower Cottonwood Creek. Services are …” And he went on to announce the two Sunday morning eucharist times. I tapped my foot. He continued, “If you would like to leave a general message, press one. If you have a confidential message for Father Ted Olson, please press two.”

  I stood in my kitchen, transfixed. Churchgoers, especially those going through a hard time, desperately desired confidentiality. I had found out the hard way just how elusive please don’t tell anyone was. From as long ago as my divorce to as recently as the news about Tom Schulz, I had seen details of my personal life spread in the church like fire through a grove of dry aspens.

  And it was in the note from Schulz that Olson had given a key to who his attacker had been. VM wasn’t Victor Mancuso. And it wasn’t Vestry Member. VM, I was willing to bet, was Voice Mail. But what was P.R.A.Y.? I stared at my phone, trying to remember Tom Schulz retrieving messages from his own voice mail. He waited for the message, and then pressed in a code….

  Four digits. Could P.R.A.Y. be a four-digit access code Olson had chosen? Unfortunately, I did not know how to use the code for the church’s voice-mail system. Think, commanded Tom Schulz’s voice inside my head.

  “I am,” I said out loud. I had already gone through Olson’s files on the Board of Theological Examiners and the diocese twice. There had been no voice-mail instructions. And what if Olson had simply discarded his messages after he’d listened to them?

  Are you kidding? Schulz’s voice again. That guy didn’t throw away anything.

  I looked at my kitchen clock. Almost midnight. I called the Sheriff’s Department and left a message for Boyd: Please call me A.S.A.P. He was probably getting tired of these messages.

  I put the phone down. There was no way I could go to bed now. Besides, Tom Schulz, if he was still alive, probably wasn’t asleep. I needed to concentrate. I covered the potato pancakes and put them in the walk-in, then scanned my kitchen.

  By my own phone I had a list of numbers: Tom Schulz, Julian’s and Arch’s school, Marla, Alicia’s supply company, Arch’s friend Todd, the library. What had Olson had by his phone? The bulletin board in his office had all kinds of phone numbers on it; I remembered that from my time in there before the wedding was cancelled, and afterward, when I’d thrown the hymnal and notes had popped off the bulletin board.

  And the answering machine at Olson’s house had been destroyed. Could that have been the motivation for the mayhem out there: to destroy evidence, rather than steal anything? But why hit me and take the solitary exam paper from my hand? And what did B. - Read - Judas mean? I did not know. But I had no doubt that the phone messaging was key, and that was where I had to concentrate. Perhaps whoever had done the vandalism out at Olson’s had not realized just how voice mail was stored. Maybe someone from a generation that did not like or understand developments in communications technology.

  I looked out my kitchen window: A powdery, soft snow had begun to fall. I wanted to rush to the trashed church office, study the remains of Olson’s bulletin board, and come up with an accessing phone number that would provide the answers to so many questions. As if in protest, my back contracted with pain—not enough for a pill, I told myself. I needed to stay sharp. On the other hand, I dared not go back to the church alone. Boyd would never forgive me. I hugged myself, angry with my own indecision.

  Snow tends to muffle noise. That was why I waited to hear the faint stomping noise again. When it came, the fur on the back of Scout’s neck ruffled. Someone was on my front porch.

  I moved stealthily through the dining room and into the darkened living room. I heard more shuffling and stepping, even a small grunt. By the light from a street lamp, I could see yet another afghan hanging from my porch-swing hooks. The figure that hopped off the swing was Agatha Preston.

  “Don’t leave!” I shouted as I flung open my front door.

  “Agh!” Agatha screamed as she reeled backward. “This was supposed to be a surprise! I’ve been so worried … and I just wanted you to have something … !”

  On the deck railing was a mayonnaise jar filled with coffee. Or at least it looked like coffee.

  I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Please, Agatha, come in.”

  She tossed her braids over her shoulders, reverently picked up the jar, and tiptoed inside my house. She was wearing a pink-and-white warm-up suit with matching pink boots. Pocahantas as a candy cane.

  “Ooh, please don’t get mad at me, Goldy. I told you I don’t have a job, so I just crochet all the time, and I had these on hand, so I thought maybe …”

  “Thanks, Agatha, I should have known they were from you’. I saw one at Olson’s house.” She blushed the color of her suit. I wondered what color she was going to turn when I told her about the letters I’d found. I said, “What’s in the jar?”

  “Oh. Well you know, Ted really had the Power.” Her eyes brightened. “Miraculous powers. And so I heard on television that if you dig up the dirt where the blood—”

  “Don’t go on, I know all about it. My son saw the same program. Come on out to the kitchen.”

  “But … I already poured some of this water around over at the church, because we have so much unhealing there—” She moved hesitantly into the kitchen, put her jar on the table, and sat down.

  “At the columbarium site? I saw you—”

  “—and I just thought,” she turned to me breathlessly, “that since you’d had so many things going wrong in your life, you really needed healing, a supernatural kind that was sure to work—”

  “Please. That is not miracle, Agatha. That is superstition.”

  She looked at me, her mouth open. “What’s the difference? Don’t you pray for things? Don’t you think we need a childlike faith?” She stood and sidled over to Julian’s mound of dirt. “What’s this? Is it from Chimayó?”

  “It belongs to somebody who works for me.”

  “Oh.” She regarded me earnestly. “Didn’t you ever in your life pray for something specific?”

  “Of course.” Agatha was, as I’d told Arch, part of the church family. I wanted to relate to her, I just didn’t know how. I searched my memory for the kind of kindred experience she meant. “Let’s see,” I faltered. “Oh, yes. My parents sent me to a Roman Catholic school for first grade. I loved it because we made butter in the classroom.”

  “That’s what you were praying for?” asked Agatha, confused. “Butter?”

  “No, no. My mother had an unusually bad case of appendicitis. She was in the hospital for weeks. So I …” Suddenly I felt terribly foolish, but Agatha was leaning forward, expectantly. “So I wrote, ‘Please make my Mommy well’ on a piece of paper, rolled it up, and placed it between the stone fingers of a statue of the Virgin Mary in the school courtyard.” I let out a tiny laugh of embarrassment.

  “Wow. And was your mother healed?”

  “Well … yes, but,” I said, groping for words, “I think you have to test what you would call the Weird against church doctrine and tradition, maybe.” My own words gave me pause. I sounded like a member of the Old Guard! I ought to believe in the Weird anyway. I certainly had experienced enough of it lately.

  She pouted. “Your attitude is a cop-out. Ted had the Power.”

  “Great. What were you doing out at Ted Olson’s? Did you steal a paper from him?”

  She colored brillia
ntly. “I … I … was getting the dirt from the place where he fell. Is that a crime? What paper?”

  I studied her carefully. For the moment, I was willing to believe she was telling the truth.

  “I’m sorry, Agatha,” I blurted out. “I found the letters you sent to Ted Olson. I gave them to the police.”

  The color drained from her face. “Oh, God,” she said softly. “Oh, God … Well, at least Bob doesn’t have them.” She stared straight ahead, no longer wishing to discuss miracles, apparently.

  And then I had an absolutely wonderful idea. It filled me with more lightness and excitement than I had felt since Tom’s disappearance. “Agatha. Do you know how Ted accessed his voice mail?”

  “Yeah, I think, I mean I don’t know the code, but he had one. You see, first he had to call this number at U.S. West, and then he’d dial in the church number—”

  Hallelujah. “Is there anybody at the church now, do you know?”

  She looked at the kitchen clock, puzzled by my question. 12:30 A.M. “Now? I think they’re having some kind of vigil until the funeral. The people at the ten o’clock Sunday service set it up.”

  Great. If Agatha accompanied me, then Boyd couldn’t possibly get upset with me for wandering out. If there were people at the church, then it wasn’t as if we were going into an empty place at night.

  I could hear my heart beating. I whispered, “Do you know where Ted kept the number for U.S. West accessing?”

  “Sure, somewhere on the bulletin board of his office. But why?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way to church,” I promised her.

  21

  There were only two automobiles in the parking lot, not exactly a crowd for a vigil. I did not recognize either car, but then again, I didn’t usually go to the later Sunday-morning service, and was unfamiliar with the charismatics and their vehicles.