The Last Suppers gbcm-4

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Oh, well, let him have a fit. I sprinted up the steps, ducked under the yellow ribbon, and pushed hard on the rotting door to get in. I passed quickly into Olson’s office. On the desk blotter was a skewed pile of correspondence and notes. I suppressed qualms of guilt and leafed through the bits of paper. Some bills and advertisements, some printed church circulars, a list of phone numbers, a couple of letters to Olson from friends. Would there be an appointment book here, something to tell who the priest was supposed to meet with on Saturday before the wedding? The I remembered what Tom Schulz had told me when he was working a homicide investigation, that the investigators would come to a victim’s office to look around and gather evidence, primarily for the victim’s appointment book. So if the book had been here, it wasn’t here anymore. The police surely would have removed it.

  Wait. Had I heard something/ I stood still and held my breath. The raccoons? No. Was someone coming? The moments clicked by as my anxiety went into overdrive. I peered out one of the windows. I saw no one.

  With clammy hands, I began to riffle through the pile of files that had been dumped on the floor by the vandal. There was no tab marked P.R.A.Y. I lifted out the folder marked Diocese.

  The priest who saved everything hadn’t felt the need to toss anything from his bulky, overstuffed files, this one included. It was chockfull of newsletters from the bishop dating back three years. There were notices of upcoming conferences and meetings, announcements of priests who had renounced their orders, and other ecclesiastical communications that were meaningless to me at a cursory glance. I couldn’t tell if something had been removed, such as anything pertaining to the Halt the Hootenanny petition. And the cursory overview was all I could manage at the moment, since it wouldn’t be too cool to be caught sifting through the vandalized files of our murdered rector. Again I listened – for doors opening, someone approaching – but this time was greeted only with oppressive silence.

  I put the notes from the top of the desk into the file and laid the copious diocesan folder aside. I flipped through pile after pile and finally found Board of Theological Examiners, which I lifted out. Father Packrat Olson had been head of the committee, and the folder was predictably heavy. There were old exams, announcements of meetings with agendas, lists of examinees from previous years. Olson’s letter to the bishop telling about my appointment to the committee, and the last item, a brief notice from the diocese about the glitch in photocopying the exams last week. Olson would hear from the diocesan office, the note promised, as soon as the exams were ready.

  I slapped the file closed. Out the dusty window, I could see parishioners dispersing, reverently clutching pale green sheafs of palm. They’d finished with their coffee-hour treats and were heading toward their cars. The 8:00 service was over and I hadn’t discovered a thing.

  Someone associated with the church.

  I slipped the Diocese and Board of Theological Examiners files into two of Olson’s books: a thick Bible and an oversized tome on the church’s feast days. Hoisting the heavy volumes, I noiselessly closed the door to the little building and went back the way I’d come, around the rear of the church, toward the parking lot. With any luck I’d be able to stow the books in my van, unnoticed. My fingers ran over the worn leather covers. I wondered if I looked suspicious. After all, you didn’t usually see caterers walking around hefting overstuffed volumes on religion.

  Outside, the cool breeze and liquid rush of snow-swollen Cottonwood Creek blended with the hum of departing cars. Before I could reach my van, someone yelled from behind me, “Hoohoo! Goldy-y? The woman in the pew?” At that moment, a huge roar erupted from the road. I flailed wildly and dropped the book on holy feasts. Papers scattered. In a fast, clumsy pirouette, I managed to hold on to the Bible, superstitious that it was like the flag and shouldn’t touch the ground. Mitchell Hartley leaped from where he’d been waiting and almost blocked my view of the approaching cavalcade of roaring motorcycles. I looked furiously at Hartley, whose pale face seemed to contrast and files lying everywhere in the mud at my feet. Damn Hartley. Furious, I knelt and awkwardly tried to pick them up.

  “Don’t help me,” I said angrily, although he’d made no effort to do so. “This is all confidential stuff.”

  I glanced up to make sure he wasn’t memorizing the papers I’d stolen from Father Olson’s office. But Mitchell Hartley was gazing at the loud parade on the road by the creek. The bikers were on their way to the Grizzly Saloon on Main Street. It was part of a spring ritual that shouldn’t have taken me offguard. It’s the migration of the Harley-Davidsons, Tom Schulz had noted enthusiastically. The weather grows warm, and Aspen Meadow becomes the gathering place for flocks of hefty folk in black leather, mirrored sunglasses, bandanas, ponytails, and single earrings. Makes so much noise you could shoot off firecrackers and nobody’d notice. The sole requirement for the motorcycles, unfortunately, seemed to be that all their mufflers were removed prior to setting out for Aspen Meadow.

  “Wow! I’m always amazed when we get that kind of racket in a mountain town! It’s like a jet runway!” shouted Mitchell Hartley from above me. I opened the feasts book and swiftly packed the last of the damp, dirty papers between loose dry ones, stuffed them in the book, and rose unsteadily. The sun emerged from behind the clouds. Mitchell Hartley’s startling orange hair shone in the sudden bright light; his dark blue eyes scanned first the books in my hands and then my face. “Any news?” he asked, too cheerily for my taste.

  I raised my voice over the roar of the motorcycles. “Excuse me. Mitchell, why did you call to me to stop?”

  When he smiled, his crooked, wide-gapped teeth reminded me of something Tom had told me while explaining how he sized up suspects. People who grow up poor have bad teeth, teeth that are either crooked fro lack of orthodonture or worse, missing altogether from lack of proper care.

  “I came over to the conference center early to study,” Hartley replied, with more false cheer. “I live next to a kennel, and it is noisy like you would not believe. I’m staying in Hymnal House.” He waved vaguely upward in the direction of the Aspen Meadow Conference Center. “It’s quiet now, before everyone gets there.”

  His awkwardness in my presence translated alternately into arrogance or too-familiarity. The effort to be polite made him nervous. It was as if he were waiting for me to say that I liked him, that this time he was going to pass his exams because God was in charge, that everything was going to be okay. But his resentment of my purported power over his career seeped through every pore. I almost blurted out that I’d been appointed to theological, expertise. But there was something else.

  The bikers continued to roar past us. “Mitchell, how could you possibly have gotten into Hymnal House? The place was locked yesterday morning when we were trying to get in for the reception and – “ The motorcycles drowned me out. I fell silent.

  “The place was open,” he cried back defensively. “What reception was that?’

  The last of the motorcycles growled past. I had invited Hartley to our wedding, as I had all the parishioners. But since he had responded that he wouldn’t be able to come, I gave a brief overview of the previous day’s postponement of the ceremony after Olson’s murder. And about Tom missing. Ah, but he knew all about that. Hartley informed me that someone had put the news about Schulz on both the parish and the diocesan prayer chain.

  He furrowed his brow; the red pompadour shook ominously. In a quickly assumed pastoral tone, he said, “Goldy have you turned the search for your fiancé over to the Lord?”

  I replied evenly, “I’ve turned the search over to the Furman County Sheriff’s Department.” His flinch almost made me laugh. “Mitchell. Who made the arrangements for you to get into Hymnal House? Was it before or after you heard about Father Olson? It just seems so weird,” I added pensively, with an equally pastoral brow.

  Mitchell Hartley backtracked to give his story of how he’d come to know about Olson’s murder. Last night, his calls to Olson to ask when the exams would start had gone unanswered. Frustrated, Hartley had then phone Mont
gomery, the next most senior person on the Board of Theological Examiners. Montgomery had tearfully told him the news he’ heard from the bishop, that Olson had been shot by an intruder. Of course, Hartley informed me, he was dreadfully concerned about Father Olson’s tragic demise, although he was joyful that Olson was now with the Lord. But, Mitchell went on in a worried tone, as a candidate for Holy Orders, he was also frantic about whether the exams would still be held. So, as he’d planned – I could check with the diocesan office, if I wanted – Hartley had come to Hymnal House last night. Like my own experience with catering up there, he’d never given a thought to the building not being open, which it had been because someone had broken a window.

  “I put a piece of cardboard over the broken pane and locked the place up when I went to bed,” he said in hi sown defense. “But I left it unlocked toady, since I didn’t have any keys.” He shrugged.

  “The police are on the way up,” I said. I didn’t mention the abandoned diocesan vehicle they had found. “Be sure to tell them about your arrangements.” I had every intention of filling Boyd in myself about Mitchell Hartley’s unorthodox residency across the street from the church. I’d also ask that the police check with the diocesan office on his reservation. When Hartley made no move to leave, I added, “Mitchell, I’m feeling really stressed out from all that’s happened, and I need to go home and check on my son and finish some cooking – “

  “I’ve been in this diocese for ten years.” He leaned toward me. His voice was suddenly raw with anger.

  “Well, I guess the ordination process takes a long time … “

  “A long time? A long time?” The blue eyes blazed. “Some people get through in three years. That’s what it is in other dioceses. But not Colorado. They seem to take a kind of … pleasure in making people wait. Making some people wait, anyway.”

  I wanted desperately to put the books with the stolen files in my van, wanted even more desperately to be one of this conversation. I tried to look dour, the grieving bride.

  I said, “Guess I need to shove off.” He didn’t get the hint. I added, “I don’t believe in making people wait.”

  He lifted his chin and shot me a suspicious look. “You don’t?”

  I edged backward toward my van. Mitchell Hartley, unrelenting, followed. I wanted to ask, Have you turned your waiting over to the Lord? But I didn’t want to hear the answer. Instead I sped up my retreat. Ever eager to impress, Hartley kept remorseless pace right beside me. “I know waiting is supposed to make you grow stronger,” I said noncommittally, “but that depends on who or what you’re waiting for, doesn’t it? How does that psalm go? ‘I waited patiently upon the Lord, he stooped to me and heard my cry.’ Like that.”

  Effortlessly keeping up with me, Hartley glanced down at the books in my hands. He shook his head almost imperceptibly: This woman doesn’t interpret the psalms correctly, and she hasn’t turned the search for her fiancé over to the Lord. In a sadly condescending tone, he said, “Of course, I know the psalm.” We’d reached my van. He leaned against the door so that I couldn’t open it.

  I took a deep breath. “I heard last year didn’t go so well for you. At the exams, I mean.”

  “Some of the questions were really off base,” he replied impassively. “In fact, I was wondering what kind of questions I could expect from you. If you’re coming, that is.”

  Hmm. “How about,” I said thoughtfully, “eschatology?” Maybe Hartley had a unique take on ‘til death do us part.

  “What about it?”

  “Anything about it.”

  “Well, that’s not very helpful.” His eyes had turned icy.

  “Mitchell, please. I really must go – “

  “Look, Goldy, I’m really sorry about your policeman. I just – I want to tell you something. But don’t say you heard it from me, okay?”

  Of course, I was immediately interested. “Don’t say what?”

  “Ted Olson had, like, a double life. He … well, I saw him in a restaurant on Colfax, down in Denver near the Diocesan Center. He was with a woman. I knew it was him because of that fancy Mercedes he always drove around. Then I heard he was having an affair, that the bishop was about to discipline him. They’d found some letters or something.”

  This was Mitchell Hartley who had avidly told Boyd about a heated argument between Father Olson and Canon Montgomery? What was he trying to do here? I asked, “Who was Olson having an affair with? Did your source know that? What did the woman look like? Not that it’s against the law to have lunch with someone. Even if she is a woman.”

  He ignored my flippancy. “She had on a scarf and sunglasses. That’s all I remember. I tried to talk to Ted about it once.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He acted like I’d hit him.”

  “You weren’t trying to talk about what he was going to ask on the exams, were you? I mean, since he’d flunked you once already.”

  Mitchell Hartley’s blue eyes darkened; he scraped one large, scuffed shoe across the gravel and pivoted to walk away. Over his shoulder he said harshly: “I thought Ted Olson was someone I could rely on. But it was revealed to me that he was not.”

  10

  I heaved the stolen books and files into my van. Boyd thought Schulz knew the whereabouts of something, something perhaps belonging to Father Olson, a something the killer needed. And now that model candidate for the priesthood, Mitchell Hartley, was making more accusations, this time about illicit affairs, some letters, and what God had spoken in his ear. I sat for a moment in my van and tried to think. What would Tom be asking? What would happen if you had a letter or some letters, say, or needed to know where something was? What good would having that something do? I had a sudden image of Tom being interrogated, and Boyd’ suspicions about something else going on. That’s why the killer is keeping him alive.

  When I went back into the church, Zelda Preston and Lucille Boatwright were engaged in a spirited conversation that ended abruptly with my appearance. Before I could figure out a reason to ask them about the Hymnal House keys, Marla sashayed up to my side. In the parking lot, I hadn’t noticed that her hair had returned to its normal willful tumult, despite the fact that it was held here and there by barrettes covered with tiny flowers fashioned of green and pink silk. Outside of the pew, I now also had a chance to admire her fashionable floral-print chiffon dress, which clung in thin folds around her ample body. Tiny rows of appliquéd pink flowers adorned the neckline and hem. Marla always dressed according to the season. This was obviously the couture statement for spring.

  “Well?” she demanded sotto voce. She pressed her fingers into my forearm. Her rings sparkled with pink diamonds and pale emeralds. “What did Boyd say? Have they found him? Did they figure out what that note meant?”

  “No news. They did find the car that he was transported in.” I didn’t tell her the car belonged to the diocese. “Listen, Marla,” I said earnestly, “you didn’t tell anybody about that note Schulz left, did you? I don’t think Boyd would approve of anyone else knowing about it.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could speak, Bob Preston strutted over and assessed us. With difficulty, he wriggled his hands into his double-stitched denim pockets and rocked back on his cowboy-boot heels. It was clear that the church was one of Bob’s domains.

  “I feel so bad about hanging up on you yesterday, Goldy! So to make it up to you, Agatha and I would like to take the town’s prettiest caterer out to brunch. After the ten o’clock service.”

  “Gosh, Bob,” said Marla, “don’t mind me.”

  He didn’t. I consulted my watch. Nine fifteen. I was becoming oddly popular. Bob Preston either didn’t know or wasn’t worried about the police coming back to Aspen Meadow to question him. Before I could respond, and just as Marla was saying a warning “Uh-oh,” under her breath, Zelda Preston and Lucille Boatwright approached us.

  “How are you, Goldy?” asked Zelda. Her voice was filled with concern. “Poor dear. Did you get the casserole?” Unlike Lucille, Zelda did not dress in understated, expensive outfits. Her faded turquoise knit dress, with its sl
oping shoulders and hemline from a decade past, screamed thrift shop. A single strand of not-exactly-antique glass beads decorated her throat. Her face was a wrinkled mass of worry. “You haven’t mentioned it since you came to church.”

  “I’m … hanging in,” I told her, “thanks. And thanks for that lovely orange afghan, too. So thoughtful of you, when the weather’s still so cold – “

  Her concern turned to puzzlement. “Afghan? I use electric blankets. Goodness! But at least my lasagna arrived safely.” Her gaze drilled into the guitarists arriving for the second service. “I suppose I should be leaving.”

  “Oh,” I begged hastily, “please stay. I really want to talk to you about … “ How to say, about whether you had the car and Hymnal House keys? About the guitar music petition you were battling over with our murdered priest? “About … lasagna. And the Halt the Hootenanny petition.”

  Marla groaned.

  Lucille Boatwright narrowed one flinty blue eye at me. Because I was divorced, because I was commonly engaged in food service, and probably just because I existed, Lucille did not like me. She would be suspicious of me if Mother Teresa were giving me a kiss. Now she bristled inside her dark gray double-breasted wool suit with its armory of tiny, ornate gold buttons. I thought she was probably still assessing where Schulz had run off to, abandoning me at the altar. Tahiti. Borneo. But instead she announced, “We had fifty signatures, but Father Olson wasn’t interested. So we took it to the bishop.”

  Marla giggled. Incredulous, I choked. “You did what?” These two dutiful women in their sixties had bypassed their rector and taken their petition directly to the bishop? That kind of authority-flaunting behavior would have been unthinkable during old Father Pinckney’s time. “What happened?” I demanded.