The Last Suppers gbcm-4

by Diane Mott Davidson

  In another large frying pan, melt the butter over low heat and sauté the shallot in it for several minutes, until limp but not browned. Sprinkle the flour over the shallot and cook over low heat for 1 or 2 minutes, until the mixture bubbles. Stirring constantly, slowly add the chicken bouillon, milk, and wine, stirring until thickened.

  Combine the mayonnaise and mustard in a small bowl. Add a small amount of the sauce to the mustard and mayonnaise and stir until smooth, then add that mixture to the sauce. Stir until heated through. Add the cheese, stirring until melted. Add the pasta, shrimp, and peas and stir until well combined. Transfer the mixture to the buttered dish and bake, covered, for about 15 to 25 minutes or until heated through.

  Makes 4 servings

  “Damn! Catering’s hard work!”

  I said, “Let’s get going. I’m just fine.” I leaned over and gave her an awkward hug. “This luncheon wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for you.”

  “Don’t get sentimental on me,” she said as she unplugged the heating pad. I shambled into the bathroom and changed into the front-buttoning black dress Marla had picked out. The pain in my back was noticeable but not unbearable. Standing hurt more than walking. When I arrived back in the kitchen, Marla was already wearing a Goldilock’s Catering apron; she slipped one on me and tied it in the back.

  “Seriously, Goldy, this work is too hard. I hope you’re putting some money away in a retirement fund. If not, I need to get you together with my investment guy.”

  It hurt when I laughed. “To be perfectly honest, I haven’t thought about retirement lately. If you’re talking about a major life change, at this point, I’d rather get married.”

  She had finished tying my apron and I turned around. Dear cheerful Marla, my best friend, who sashayed through difficulty with flippancy and aplomb, had a look of such sadness and disappointment on her face that I knew it could mean only one thing, a thing she would never say. She thought Tom Schulz was dead.

  18

  We drove to the church in silence. The air was still cold, and gray lamb’s tails of cloud wafted just above the rim of the mountains. Several older women had already arrived in the church parking lot. They watched Marla’s and my arrival with hungry interest. When I tried to help Marla unload the boxes, a razorlike pain screamed across my back. Marla saw my wince: she promptly ordered me into the church. “Besides,” she announced, “here comes Bob Preston, and I just know he’s desperate to help me unload.

  Preston, who had clearly driven up in his just-waxed gold. Audi only to leave Agatha off, submitted to Marla’s orders after she rapped loudly on his car window with her ringed fingers and hollered at him through the glass. Sheepishly, he untangled himself from the gleaming car and picked up two boxes from the back of the van. I prayed that he would not have a hernia while carrying in a box and sue Goldilocks’ Catering. But for Bob, a macho display was more desirable than being embarrassed in front of a gaggle of churchwomen.

  Inside the church, Zelda Preston was already at work. Her wiry body and intent face were bent over a long table covered with a floral-print tablecloth. Her strong hands expertly set each place with the church’s beautiful matched silverplate, Inlaid Rose. When I arrest the wrong guy, Schulz had told me once cheerfully, I do my best to be real nice to him the next time I see him. I hobbled over to Zelda, knew better than to give her a hug, so merely picked up forks and spoons and started putting them around the table.

  “Eight,” was her laconic greeting. Well, at least she didn’t ignore me. I guess I was forgiven. On the other hand, maybe she was embarrassed that I knew she’d interviewed for the organist’s position with the Catholics, the same Catholics she’d deemed unworthy of receiving my unused wedding flowers.

  Unused wedding flowers. I looked up at the altar and the diamond-shaped window. I had imagined the ceremony so many times that just being in the church again with food and women bustling around made the welt on my back throb. The pain pill was wearing off. When I finished setting the table with Zelda, I walked out to the kitchen and downed another one. Might as well pretend I was an angel and float through the prayer meeting.

  By 11:35, eight women had assembled in the tiny church library that doubled as a meeting room for small groups. Marla announced it would make her nervous if I watched her fill the chafing dish with boiling water. That made two of us. I plugged in the electric heating pad I’d brought with me beside one of the library bookshelves, settled into a high-backed chair, and prepared to pray.

  “Oh, my dear,” said one of the women, all of whom were older than me by at least three decades, ”What happened to you?”

  “I hurt my back.”

  “We’ll add it to the list,” Lucille Boatwright declared solicitously as she settled onto the library couch like a hen adjusting to her nest. “Poor Goldy. Any word yet?’ When I shook my head, she added, “Perhaps we should start with a prayer for Father Olson.”

  Beginning with Lucille, the women took turns delivering halting words of supplication. This was very different from the higher-decibel, gut-spilling type of prayer I’d heard at the late Sunday service. A silence followed. I closed my eyes and conjured up an image of Father Olson. On the screen of my brain, he appeared and said urgently, “Call me.”

  “What?” I said out loud.

  “What/” chorused four women, their perplexed eyes suddenly open Lucille Boatwright rolled her lips against her gums and gave me a stern look that demanded: Are you on drugs?

  Prescribed pain pills, thank you very much. Still, I kept my mouth firmly shut as the women began a short prayer that God would lead the police to the murderer, and that Tom Schulz’s note would be deciphered and Tom found. I had intended to ask these women questions about the parish during this meeting. But the pill I had taken was making logical thought impossible. During their prayerful silence, I allowed my eyes to slip shut. This time I’d conjure up Tom Schulz. Instead, Father Olson’s face loomed again, his mouth open in supplication.

  “Ca-a-a-ll me-e-e.”

  No doubt about it, I was losing it. I heard serving utensils clatter loudly to the floor out in the narthex. That was all I needed – I made a slow, clumsy retreat out to where the catering action was taking place. Unfortunately, the very person I was not in the mood to chat with was Canon Montgomery. His toadlike presence filled the narthex. Or maybe it was the poetry that invaded my mind when I saw him smile approvingly at the pan of pasta: Only a wimp/eats shrimp.

  “Ah, Goldy,” he said with a large, synthetic smile. He moved toward me. “Just the person I’ve been looking for.”

  Marla gave me a helpless look as the Mountain Journal – in the person of Frances Markasian – breezed through the church doors. When Frances spotted me talking with Montgomery, she grabbed the wooden door behind her and eased it closed so that it would make no noise. I felt an equal amount of discouragement and unease.

  Ignorant of either woman’s presence, Montgomery confided, “Godly, I’m so very, very sorry that I was hard on you during the service yesterday.” He made a gesture of apology with his meaty hands. “I feel terrible that my grief expressed itself in an ugly outburst against you. I called and left a message with your son. But I wanted to tell you so myself.”

  I muttered, “Okay.” In her duct-taped sneakers, Frances Markasian tiptoed up behind Montgomery so she could eavesdrop on our conversation. The Stealth Reporter. I said nothing. In fact, I rather enjoyed the prospect of the canon theologian getting a painful does of our local journalism.

  “It’s just,” Montgomery went on, casting his eyes heavenward and warming to his topic, “that I’m still so terribly upset over losing Ted Olson. And this parish … I don’t know.” A cast of tragedy hung over every word. Frances Markasian was getting it all down. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Again. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, the stress, the pill. Or maybe it was the way Montgomery took himself so seriously that brought out the hyena in me “In any event,” he rushed on with a self-important sniff and pat of his middle-parted white hair, “we’ve decided to move up the exams by one day, sin
ce Olson’s funeral is tomorrow and the whole committee’s already here. Will this be a problem? To have dinner for fifteen at the conference center at six? Tonight? Do you have a staff that can help you? Penitential season, better have fish.” Frances scribbled madly but noiselessly; I wondered wildly if I should set an extra place for her. My mouth hung open. Dinner for fifteen a problem? Montgomery had to be kidding. “Afterwards,” he added in a rush, “we can go through the first three answers to the coffee-hour questions. If I could just figure out the fax machine in the choir room, I think I could notify the last of the candidates. I do remember we were planning on having you do the food … “

  Tom Schulz’s voice in my head said, Who’s we, white man? At least it was Tom’s voice this time. Anything was better than having the dead rector insist that I phone him in the Hereafter. Maybe this was what schizophrenia felt like. I waited for Frances Markasian to introduce herself, but instead she just held her fingers up to her lips in a shushing motion. I wondered if this was legal. We were, after all, in church.

  “Goldy?” Canon Montgomery raised his voice a shade. The last thing I needed was to have him holler at me again. Marla was shaking her head wildly and mouthing the words No food. But I knew I had to keep busy, even if the pain pills were playing tricks with my mind. The worst aspect of missing Schulz was the terrifying notion of having nothing to do, of being motionless at home waiting for the phone to ring. Not that I had done that much sitting around in the last forty-eight hours. But still …

  “Yes, dinner will be fine. Will the place be open?”

  He lifted his peaked eyebrows. “I’ve told Mitchell Hartley to leave the doors unlocked around the clock. That Bob Preston fellow protested – a little late for the person responsible for security to be upset, wouldn’t you say? I’m having a broken window fixed right now. Can you imagine?”

  “Actually, I can. That’s our fault – “

  He waved my protest away. “I’m assigning you and Doug Ramsey to examine Mitchell Hartley tonight, just for an hour. Go ahead and open your letter matching numbers with candidates, and concentrate on his written work. We hope Hartley’ll do better this time … “

  There was that we again. How’s Father Doug doing?”

  “Oh, well,” said Montgomery with a sniff. “You know he was upset with Olson over the miracle claims, and I do believe he was a trifle jealous, perhaps. Olson was so handsome and charismatic in every sense, a lady’s man, you know.” Frances Markasian wrote furiously.

  “He was never a lady’s man with me,” I said, my voice as stiff as my aching back. I didn’t wish to see any undocumented insinuations about Father Olson in the Mountain Journal.

  “I’m just saying,” Montgomery replied, testy and oblivious, “that I’ve been working with the clergy in this deanery to change suspicious, jealous attitudes. There have already been some meaningful changes. However, I do admit to frustration over priests’ feelings that the pie is only so big – “

  “Pie!” cried Marla. “I just knew there was something I needed to talk to Goldy about. Sorry that you’re feeling frustrated, Canon Montgomery. Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you about this other canon I knew. His name was Canon Glasscock. I said, ‘Glasscock? Is that your real name? Do you have crystal balls, too?’ “ Montgomery gagged; I bit my lip; Frances Markasian wrote. But Marla was unyielding. “You know what the clergy should do?” she said, wagging a bejeweled finger at him. “Give you a jingle when they feel blue. Here tell the Mountain Journal all about it. Frances here can write, ‘When you want/to feel all summery/you can call/Canon Montgomery!’ “ With that she grabbed my arm, whirled us both around, and marched in the direction of the kitchen.

  Behind us, I heard Frances say with potently false humility: “Hi, I’m from the paper, and I’d like to talk to you about your relationship with the murder victim. Father Olson? Could you talk a little bit more about those jealous attitudes?”

  “Brr-auugh!” howled Canon Montgomery.

  I didn’t dare look back to see how the canon theologian looked. I felt like a Filipino racing away from an erupting Mount Pinatubo. A Filipino with a bad back, no less.

  Marla took the hotel pan from the church’s over. She set it in the chafer with a minimal amount of overflow splashing, from which she deftly leapt away. “Hey, Montgomery deserves it after the way he treated you on Sunday, so don’t give me a lecture,” she said defensively. She scooped up the salad bowl, swayed her body from side to side, and chanted, “I truly don’t know/which is worse/Listening to his sermons/Or listening to his verse!” The woman was on a roll. I saw Montgomery storm out of the church with Frances Markasian in hot pursuit. My bet was on the journalist.

  The bakery-fresh smell of breadsticks heating filled the kitchen. I watched Marla toss the salad with the balsamic vinaigrette and wrap the warmed breadsticks in a linen napkin inside a wicker basket. When the ladies emerged from the prayer meeting, the oohed and ahed over the sumptuous array. In a fuzzy part of my brain, I registered that Agatha Preston hadn’t shown up; maybe Frances Markasian had nabbed her, too. Between refilling the salad bowl and breadstick basket, Marla remarked that she hadn’t seen Agatha either. But when I went outside to get a breath of fresh air and stretch my back, I saw Agatha on her knees digging around in the columbarium construction area. With its deep mud and frozen puddles, steep-sided ditches and erratic surface, perhaps Agatha was working in the mud and thinking about her favorite topic: hell.

  The women raved about the Canterbury Jumbles more than any other dish. This bore out the truth of the caterers’ maxim that you must serve a rich and sweet dessert after a fish course. This was true even if the fish is shrimp in a wine-and-cheese sauce. After virtuous behavior, even if it is not truly virtuous, people feel they have earned their right to calories.

  “Tata, dear!” one woman called gaily to me as she tied her Hermčs scarf under her chin. “I hope they find your fiancé!” Her tone was along the lines of, “I hope you buy a new car!”

  I glanced at my watch as Marla cleared the plates. 1:00. Tom Schulz had been gone for fifty hours.

  “You cannot cater tonight,” Marla insisted once we were back at my house, sitting in the kitchen with our feet up. “I won’t let you I’m too tired. Besides, we don’t have any food left.”

  I shook my head. The only message on my machine had been from Alicia, my supplier. That afternoon, she was bringing up the Chilean sea bass and vegetables I had bee planning to prepare for the first meeting of the Board of Theological Examiners. This was fortunate, as I was indeed out of shrimp. I said, “This committee is counting on me. I can’t just show up with no food.”

  “They were counting on you for tomorrow. Not tonight.”

  I got up slowly and took unsweetened chocolate, vanilla, and Amaretto from my pantry. “Look, Julian will be home soon, and he won’t mind helping. Dinner will be very simple,” I said as convincingly as possible.

  Marla scowled. “What kind of medication did Stodgy Hodge put you on, anyway, hallucinogenic Darvon? Was lunch your idea of simple?”

  Actually, the pain pills were helping. I melted butter and whirled chocolate cookies in the blender to make a crust. If we were going to have bass, especially teamed bass, then the caterers’ postfish maxim made chocolate cheesecake a dessert necessity. Besides, I wanted to use another of Tom Schulz’s recipes. It made me feel close to him.

  “I don’t believe I’m watching you do this,” Marla muttered. “At least it’s chocolate. Then we can both have some. Not to mention that your back will feel a lot better after a dose.”

  Nudging me aside gently, she beat cream cheese with eggs, sugar, and melted chocolate, then doused the smooth, dark mixture with cream, vanilla, and Amaretto while I patted the crumbly crust into a springform pan. When the cheesecake was safely in the oven, Marla poured herself a generous glassful of Amaretto. She announced she was going out to rest on the living room sofa.

  Chocolate Truffle Cheesecake

  Crust:

  9 ounces chocolate wafer cookies

  6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted<
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  Filling:

  ˝ pound unsweetened chocolate

  1 ˝ pounds cream cheese

  3 large eggs

  1 cup sugar

  ź cup Amaretto liqueur

  1 ˝ teaspoons vanilla extract

  ˝ cup whipping cream

  Whirl the chocolate cookies in a blender until they form crumbs. Mix with the melted butter. Press into the bottom and sides of a buttered 10-inch springform pan and refrigerate until you’re ready to fill and bake.

  Preheat the oven to 350 . In the top of a double boiler over boiling water, melt the chocolate. Set aside to cool. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the eggs and sugar and beat until well incorporate. Stir a small amount of this mixture into the chocolate to loosen. Add the chocolate mixture to the cream cheese mixture and stir well. Stir in the Amaretto, vanilla, and cream. Stir until all ingredients are well mixed. Pour the filling into the prepared crust and bake for 50 to 55 minutes or until the cheesecake is puffed slightly and no longer jiggles in the center. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled, at least 2 hours. Take the cheesecake out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before serving for ease of slicing. Remove the sides of the pan and cut with a sharp knife. If the cheesecake is hard to slice, hold a long, unflavored piece of dental floss in 2 hands and carefully saw through the cake to cut even pieces.

  Makes 16 servings

  “If you leave this house, I’ll never speak to you again,” she mumbled once she’d downed the liqueur and slipped off her shoes. “And another thing I’ll never do again is think catering is this easy, fun, glamorous profession.”

  I shook out the heart-in-the-center and cross-in-the-center afghans and gently placed them over her. “It’s nice to be appreciated,” I told her. But immediately I felt a wave of sorrow: Here I was catering a fancy meal to a bunch of examiners and examinees, when I should have been on my honeymoon.