The Whole Enchilada

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Looks good,” said Julian. “May I have a taste?”

  “Sure.” I handed him a cracker loaded with the hot dip, and he nodded his approval. “Think you’ve got a winner here, Goldy. What are you going to call it?”

  I reflected for a moment. “Not-So-Skinny Spinach Dip.”

  “Good idea. Now why don’t you let me take some dip plus a sandwich out to Boyd, and then I’ll bring you all high-protein salad lunches?”

  “Sounds great. Thanks.”

  To my great satisfaction, Marla cooed happily over the dip. Julian brought us Niçoise salads a short time later. After we reluctantly put our dishes away, we started in again on the notes, looking for medical information. My eyes were beginning to cross when we were interrupted by Arch, of all people.

  “Mom?” he called down the stairs. “Are you here?”

  “Yes, and I even remembered you were bringing Gus over.”

  “Mom? It’s . . . something else.” He clomped down the stairs. His face was sweaty, and his toast-colored eyebrows hooked with worry as he regarded me anxiously.

  Fear raced down my spine. “Is everything all right?”

  “I don’t know.” He swallowed.

  “What’s up? You’re scaring me.”

  “When I drove Gus back here?” Arch continued in the typical teenager’s interrogatory. “Past the church? Your van was there. I mean, it looked like your van. I thought the painting on the side said, you know, ‘Goldy’s Catering.’ But those aren’t the exact words on your van, are they?” When I muttered in the negative, Arch rushed on. “Well anyway, I didn’t really think about it. I just figured you must have gone down to St. Luke’s to set up for the dinner tomorrow night. But then I got home, and Julian said your van was in the garage. He said when you came back from being out with Marla, you’d stayed here. So, what’s going on? Did you buy another van and have it painted . . . ?”

  “No, I did not.” When I enunciated each word, Arch stepped back as if stung. “It’s not you, hon. Kathie Beliar is what’s going on. Let’s check it out,” I said to Marla.

  So the straw had officially broken the camel’s back. Adrenaline fueled my somewhat faster limp back up the stairs. In the deep recesses of my brain, I knew you weren’t supposed to act on anger. I was aware that reacting to irritation by becoming aggressive was not the answer. All this zipped through my mind as I hobbled across the newly emerging grass. Technically Boyd could have taken me, but Marla was revving her Mercedes. Julian followed me out the door and helped me into the passenger seat.

  “Why is Boyd still here?” he asked.

  “Just tell him we’re going to St. Luke’s, will you? Kathie Beliar is there, trying to manipulate Father Pete.”

  But Boyd was already beside Marla’s window. She told him we had to go to the church.

  Julian begged, “Please don’t get into what’s going to be a fruitless argument.”

  “I thought fruitless was a type of salad,” I said.

  Julian shook his head and said he would keep the boys inside. Boyd told him to set the security system. I gripped the armrest while Marla, her face locked, raced toward the church. When Boyd flashed his lights at us, she slowed down a bit.

  “What do you think is going on?” Marla asked.

  “I don’t have a clue. But it’s about time I found out.”

  In the lot, a van that looked almost precisely like mine, with the words GOLDY’S CATERING on the side, was parked outside St. Luke’s. Father Pete’s battered old green Chevy was also there. I found this odd, as he had not answered the church line when Marla called. If Audrey Millard, Father Pete’s devoted secretary, had gone home—which would be normal for a Saturday—and Father Pete was the only one at the church, our dear rector always picked up the phone. Father Pete tried to expect the best, and usually got the worst. Had he deemed his meeting with Kathie Beliar too important to answer the phone? That just isn’t like him, I thought stubbornly. That damn Kathie Beliar.

  Marla heaved open one of the unlocked solid wood doors. Right behind her, Boyd said, “Wait. I’m going in front of you.”

  It took a moment for our eyes to adjust to the darkness of the sanctuary. Light from the sacramental candle shuddered. The air felt disturbed.

  “I hear something,” I said. We listened. After a moment, a faint groan coiled down the hallway to our left.

  “Dammit,” said Marla. “Let’s get—”

  “Stop,” Boyd ordered, pulling out his weapon. “Let me go first.”

  But Marla ignored him and ran down the hall toward Father Pete’s office. Slowed by my injured leg, I shambled behind a hustling Boyd, past the locked doors to the Sunday School rooms.

  Marla screamed. When I hobbled up beside Boyd and her, my stomach turned over.

  There were two bodies sprawled on the stone floor. Kathie Beliar, whom I recognized from her website photo, lay next to Father Pete. Blood slowly swirled out of both of them. An explosion of paper, hundreds of documents, along with scattered gray church files, lay littered on the floor. Some of them were sopping up blood. The back door to the church stood open.

  “Call 911,” Boyd ordered Marla. He held up his weapon. “Get behind me, both of you. Hey!” he called. “Police! Anyone here?”

  When there was no response, I dropped painfully to my knees. Marla was on her cell with emergency services. I asked Boyd if I could touch Kathie Beliar.

  He said sharply, “Wrist only.”

  Kathie Beliar had no pulse. If she was breathing, I couldn’t tell. Father Pete was alive, but barely. His eyelids fluttered. Another weak groan issued from his lips.

  Both of them had been stabbed. Whoever did this, I thought slowly, also broke into Audrey’s office and found the key to the file cabinets. The drawers had been dumped out; the contents lay strewn everywhere. Whoever had attacked Kathie and Father Pete had then stepped around, and partially through, the pools of blood, in order to get out the back door.

  I averted my eyes to keep from being sick. There were scarlet smears on the wall. If there was a weapon nearby, I couldn’t see it.

  Kathie’s wounds were so deep, and there was so much blood, I could not tell exactly where she had been cut. I asked Boyd if I could check on Father Pete. When he nodded, I pulled up Father Pete’s black clerical shirt, wiped away blood, and located two stab wounds on his abdomen. Without thinking, I tore off my sweater and pressed it into the cuts to stop the bleeding.

  Marla, when she wasn’t giving details to the emergency operator, could not stop saying, “I’ve never seen so much blood,” alternating with, “Do you think Father Pete’s going to make it? Oh, please, Goldy, tell me he’s going to be all right,” and “Yes, operator, I’m still here, yes, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Aspen Meadow . . . yes, two people. Sergeant Boyd is here.”

  We’d learned a lot of things in Med Wives 101, but whether someone was going to make it after so much blood loss was not one of them.

  It wasn’t long before two pairs of EMTs raced into the church. Then, although there was no fire, came engines from the Aspen Meadow Volunteer Fire Department. The four EMTs told us to back off and let them do their job. Boyd moved efficiently out of the way, but Marla and I had a harder time allowing our priest to be out of our sight. The two techs assigned to Kathie were quickly able to tell she was dead. But I also knew their protocol was to keep working on her until they sent telemetry down to Denver to have their diagnosis confirmed.

  I couldn’t see what the two medics ministering to Father Pete were doing, because they’d told us to go back down the hall and stay out of the way. Marla and I retreated to the church kitchen. Eventually the two techs who’d been working on Father Pete raced past us, with our priest on a stretcher.

  Finally, Tom came, along with more sheriff’s department cars. He conferred quickly with Boyd. Then he gave me that look of his, a mixture of relief and worry. “While our crime-scene guys are working on this, we’re going outside. You, me, Marla. You’re going to tell me
exactly why you came here, and what you were doing.”

  As we walked back through the vestibule, Marla insisted on telling the story, from Father Pete’s message to me, to her calling him back, to Arch relaying the news that some other van with the name Goldy’s Catering was parked at the church. We’d come down to St. Luke’s, Marla said, to, to, to . . .

  “To?” Tom prompted. We’d arrived in front of the church and were standing beside one of the tall, shaggy hemlocks.

  Marla slumped against the exposed rock of the church’s exterior wall. “I suppose,” she whispered, “we wanted to confront her. Kathie, I mean.”

  “And you two and Boyd found this scene.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” he replied, as he turned to a new page in his notebook. He looked me over carefully, and I was aware for the first time that I had Kathie Beliar’s and Father Pete’s blood on my clothes and skin. “You probably saved Pete’s life. All right, now, tell me why you think someone might attack this woman and our priest.”

  Without prompting, Marla went through the story again with Tom. This time he wrote down everything. I glanced at my watch: almost three. Without warning, I began to cry. I’d loved Holly. I hadn’t known Kathie Beliar, and now that she was dead, I felt guilty and small. But I adored Father Pete. He couldn’t, couldn’t die.

  “Goldy, in just a little bit here, you’re going to go home, shower, and rest,” Tom said, pocketing his notebook and pulling out tissues.

  “Right.” This actually made me laugh. I pressed my hands onto my closed eyes. I thought ruefully back to the doctor last night telling me I should take a week to recuperate.

  A team of victim advocates showed up in a van. They cleaned off our skin and gave us fresh sweat suits to change into in their van. Then they wrapped us in handmade quilts. Our relief at receiving comfort in the form of a quilt was tempered by the sight of the coroner’s van pulling up to the church.

  It was for Kathie Beliar.

  “I’m sorry, Miss G.,” Tom said. “I want you to be able to leave, but I need your story while it’s fresh.” He pulled his notebook back out and lifted his chin in my direction. “Start with when I left this morning. I know Boyd went a couple of places with you. But I want to hear the whole thing from you.”

  “Okay.” I told him about Marla coming over, that she’d had terrible nightmares, just like the Smythes and Patsie Boatfield. I remembered I’d stuck the piece of paper into my pocket that had the list of what everyone who’d had nightmares had eaten. I handed it over to Tom. “Have you found anything in Holly’s bloodstream?” I asked.

  “I’ll get to that. Keep going.”

  I told him about our trip to the country club, where muscle-bound Bob had been training an uninterested but very studious Ophelia. She’d appeared bored with us, but intent on her book. Tom wanted to know what she’d been reading, and I told him.

  “Architectural Planning?” Tom repeated incredulously. “Not exactly bedside-table reading material.”

  “Not exactly. What do you suppose it means?”

  “I don’t know. Why did you want to go to the club in the first place?”

  I told him that Holly’s having financial problems had made us wonder when, exactly, she had quit the club. We also wanted to find out if Bob knew something about Holly’s medical history. Bob told us, as he had the sheriff’s department, that yes, Holly had been a member of the club, and she had worked out in the new fitness facility. But she kept her own progress charts, which had been tossed by the club when they cleaned out the lockers. Tom nodded, but wrote nothing. Also, I added hastily, to show I was not a complete buffoon in helping figure out what had happened to my friend, Neil Unger said he had known Holly.

  “He knew her?” Tom prompted.

  “He didn’t offer any details. The main thing was, he wanted to find out if Holly’s dying would upset his party plans.”

  “After the country club, where did you go?”

  “To Edith Ingleby’s house,” Marla said. “What a bitch!”

  “The Inglebys’ house?” Tom asked me. “We did question them, Miss G.”

  “I know.” I stopped. “I took Edith some muffins that I remembered she liked. And Boyd was with us the whole time. Remember, you told me we could go out and talk to people. That’s why you put Boyd with us in the first place.”

  “I know, I know,” he said, his tone softer. “I just worry about you.”

  “We were still trying to find out more about Holly’s financial situation, why she moved Drew from EPP to CBHS, why she lost her house, why she didn’t seem to have any—”

  “You thought the Inglebys would share that information?” Tom asked.

  “Well, they didn’t,” I said flatly, and left Marla to tell the tale of Mustang Sally the maid, of Edith’s cheap mugs and even cheaper coffee, and her inability to get along with anyone. She also told him about George appearing overcome with despair, and Lena acting alternately protective and angry.

  “But you didn’t get any information on Holly,” Tom concluded.

  “Oh, but we did,” Marla said, her eyes lighting up. “Lena virtually spat out the news that Holly had an affair with Warren Broome. She didn’t say when this happened. But back at your place, I called my pals who might know. They said that indeed, they’d heard that Holly and Warren had had, you know, a moment. But they thought it was long over and done with.”

  Tom said, “Anything else?”

  I started sobbing again when I told him about the recorded call from Father Pete. Tom calmly asked what it was about, and I told him that once again, Kathie Beliar was pressuring our priest to let her help cater the dinner the following night. Marla called him back and left a message saying no deal. At this, Tom pulled aside one of his team and said to go to our house, to see if anyone there had actually talked to Father Pete.

  “Good idea,” I said. But wouldn’t Julian have mentioned it if he had? Tom nodded to me to continue. “The second message on our machine,” I went on, “was the one from Patsie.”

  “Warren Broome’s new wife,” Tom said. “To tell you about her nightmares? You called her, or vice versa?”

  “She called me. But I got Warren twice, before Patsie called me back.” I told him about Warren crying in the bathroom.

  “Any other details?” Tom asked.

  My brain seemed to fill with fog. I fought to clear it. “Remember, Patsie called me. We had the information from Lena, which we didn’t trust, and some second- and third-hand gossip from Marla’s pals. So after Patsie told me about Warren sobbing in the bathroom, I asked if she thought whether Warren actually knew Holly.”

  “You might have let us do that. But I know, I know, I told you you could talk to people.” He inhaled. “So what did Patsie say?”

  “She said Warren met Holly at a doctors’ meeting in Boulder.”

  Tom noted this. “When?”

  “Don’t know, but I figured it was the one from eighteen years ago.”

  “You said you talked to Warren Broome twice?”

  “When I was trying to return Patsie’s call, I phoned their house. Warren answered, and he was awful. He . . . he . . . doesn’t like Father Pete,” I blurted out.

  “He doesn’t?” Tom’s voice was sharp. “Why not?”

  “He wouldn’t say,” I replied.

  Again Tom motioned to a team member, and talked to him in a low voice. “All right,” Tom said to me. “Was that the first call to Warren, or the second?”

  “The second. He was so rude! But remember, we had that tidbit from Lena Ingleby, which nobody had confirmed yet,” I replied. “And . . . I wanted to get more information out of him, so I told him Holly had left a piece of news for him, that I was supposed to relate to him, and that I would do so at the fund-raiser tomorrow night.”

  “What news?” Tom said, his voice disbelieving.

  “Oh, well,” I said, feeling foolish, “there wasn’t any. Isn’t any. I just wanted to know why
he was gaping at Holly at the party, and if what Lena said was true. I thought I should sort of, you know, question him in person.”

  Tom shook his head. “Okay, Miss G., that was going too far. We are dealing with a murderer here. Even if Boyd accompanies you all over the Rocky Mountains, you do not set up meetings with people who were at the party, especially by using misinformation.”

  “Okay. But I was only trying to call Patsie back!”

  “When was all this?”

  “Oh, about an hour before Arch came home with the news that a van looking like mine was down at the church.”

  Tom pressed his lips together, thinking. “Miss G. I do appreciate your insights. I know you like to talk to people who are friends, or acquaintances, or former clients, or parishioners, or . . . whatever. And it’s helpful when you and Marla get folks to volunteer information to you. That’s different from interrogating people the way a cop does, okay? It certainly differs from telling someone you have information about his relationship to a crime victim that you really don’t have.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. Sorry.”

  “Now there’s something I’m sorry to tell you.” Tom took my hands in his. “Since the van Kathie was driving looked like yours, and since she’d made her appearance like yours, we have to consider that someone was trying to harm, or kill, you.”

  The bristle of activity around us momentarily dulled. I was left with the questions: Who would want to kill Father Pete? What could possibly be in the church files that a killer would want?