The Last Suppers

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Now the clock said almost four A.M. Soon it would be dawn. No time to start reading theology, that was for sure. I lifted the towel to check on the rolls, and fatigue struck with such ferocity that my knees buckled. I grabbed the side of Tom’s convection oven for balance. I turned away from the unread papers, left the rolls to rise at room temperature, and flopped back on the living room couch.

  The wind had died down, as it often did near sunrise. Still, the house felt cold. I burrowed into the hard cushions and regretted giving back my victim-assistance quilt.

  Tom. Be all right.

  Holding that thought, I tried to relax. Frightful nightmares of falling into mud accompanied fitful sleep. I awoke abruptly, feeling stiff and chilled, and realizing unhappily that the canceled wedding, the murder of Father Olson, and the unexplained disappearance of Tom Schulz had not been bad dreams, but odiously real.

  I opened one eye to see what time it was. Something was wrong. Above Tom’s boxes, my mantelpiece clock was just visible: half past six. Had a noise startled me out of sleep? Now, as I listened for Arch and Julian, the house was silent. What was wrong? What had awakened me with that sensation of something odd, out of place? I inhaled deeply and blearily scanned the room.

  It was the light. The living room was suffused with a tangerine-colored glow. A red sky in the morning promised snow. Big deal. My neck screamed with pain; I stretched carefully. My body insisted I would regret attempting the usual yoga routine. I felt confused. Even with a red sunrise, the light in the living room was too orange. It was not the sunlight that was colored; something was coloring the sunlight.

  With effort, I extracted myself from the cushions. I tiptoed to the window and looked through the knots of the lace curtains. I stared at, but could not comprehend, what I saw. Hanging from the roof of my front porch was a handmade knitted blanket. It was bright orange, and had a red heart at the center.

  8

  When you’ve slept in your clothes, forty degrees feels frigid. Ignoring the cold, I hopped gracelessly onto the porch swing and wobbled perilously there for a moment. Sunlight was brightening thin smears of cloud that shone like mother-of-pearl. Very gently, I pulled the orange blanket into the light and tried not to slip on the frosted swing seat while examining the tiny stitches. The coverlet was not knitted, as I had thought, but double-crocheted with a small hook and thin, expensive wool yarn. A chill wind blew through my sweatsuit and threatened my precarious balance. I snatched down the afghan, then looked around to see if any of my neighbors were about. But the cold weather, especially on a Sunday morning, meant people were still snuggling deep under their coverlets and blankets. Not to mention afghans that didn’t come from a source unknown.

  I scanned the crocheted rectangle for a note of some kind and saw none. From victim assistance? A thoughtful neighbor? The previous night’s fierce wind might have blown off any attached notes. I bunched the afghan over my shoulder and jumped down from the porch swing. While my joints reminded me I was no longer a limber teenager, I noticed a foil-covered oblong dish sitting primly to the left of the front door. Casserole, courtesy of the Altar Guild. And this time there was a note in a firmly lettered hand on top of that: Please take care of yourself. Our women’s group is praying for you. Zelda. With my free hand, I picked up the icy glass dish and scuttled into the house.

  Her note hadn’t mentioned the afghan. Imagining wiry Zelda Preston, or even stolid victim advocate Helen Keene, scaling the wall of my porch to make a dramatic visual statement by hanging a Valentine-type afghan made me smile. I made espresso and watched it spurt merrily into a cobalt-trimmed cup. It was Hutschenreuther, a gift from Tom Schulz. Pain seared through me. The phone rang and I grabbed it.

  It was my mother calling from New Jersey, so concerned that she and my father hadn’t been able to say good-bye, and was I all right? Remembering Helen’s advice, I did not mention Tom Schulz’s disappearance. They would only worry and call me incessantly. Yes, I assured my mother, we were fine. The two of them had just come back from the early church service, she said, and when was the wedding going to be? I stalled. Ah, well, we were working on rescheduling. Did they find out what happened to your priest? No. But will you get married when things are back in order at the parish? Of course, I promised. When we have a new priest.

  And a groom, I thought grimly after replacing the receiver. Dread, worry, and stinging guilt made a simultaneous assault. If only I hadn’t insisted Tom and I get married in the church. Tom Schulz never would have known Ted Olson. He never would have gone out there yesterday morning. He would be sitting here right now having coffee with me, instead of being in peril. Or worse. Or worse …

  Stop this.

  My espresso had turned cold. I slugged it down anyway, stared at Julian’s pile of Chimayó dirt, and waited for my brain to click into gear. Not much happened; there’s only so much caffeine can do on two hours of sleep. I slammed the risen cinnamon rolls into Tom’s oven. With great reluctance, I showered and dressed in a dark blue suit, then put in a call to the Sheriff’s Department. Without Tom there to tell me what was going on, the center for county law enforcement felt like a foreign outpost. Boyd was not at his desk. I left a message asking for an update, and gave the number to my personal line.

  In a great rush, I repunched buttons on my business phone and got Tom’s own voice mail. The sound of his rich, deep, vocal recording was nectar. I listened to it while Scout rubbed against my leg to remind me it was feeding time. I listened to it while writing a note to Julian and Arch and inhaling the deep, rich, mouth-watering smell of the just-baked cinnamon rolls. I listened to it again while assembling ingredients for the poppy seed muffins that I would make between the services in the church kitchen, since the cinnamon rolls would just be enough for the first service. At last, the clock said 7:30. As I was slathering cream cheese frosting on the warm cinnamon rolls, my business line rang. I snagged it.

  “Goldy, this is Frances Markasian of the Mountain Journal—”

  “Don’t.” I could just imagine stringy-haired Frances Markasian perched aggressively at her desk, smoking a cigarette with a great length of ash and swigging Diet Pepsi spiked with Vivarin. The woman never slept.

  “Goldy, please, I’m sorry about this—”

  “The heck you are.” I cursed myself for not taking Helen Keene’s advice. I should have disconnected as soon as I heard Frances’s voice.

  “We know about Olson and we know about Schulz,” Frances continued as if I had not spoken. “We know Mitchell Hartley’s a suspect. But I saw some big heart thing hanging on your porch when I drove by this morning, and I took a picture—”

  In spite of my upbringing, I hung up. The doorbell rang; it was Boyd. His black crewcut glistened in the morning sun; a battered leather flight jacket did not quite cover his pear-shaped belly. He was chewing vigorously on his match, and he didn’t look happy.

  “We don’t have him,” he said abruptly when I opened the door, without waiting for me to ask. The uniform shirt he wore underneath the flight jacket was so wrinkled I was certain he’d been up all night. “But you and I need to talk.”

  “I was just about to go to church—”

  “I’m coming with you. Think I look okay?”

  “You look fine. But go to church with me? You’ve got to be joking. Why?” I looked at him sympathetically. “You look exhausted.”

  “I’m okay. And I don’t joke.”

  Boyd wanted to take my van so we could talk on the way. I asked him to hold the rolls in his lap. He obliged and we took off.

  “Go the long way,” he ordered, “whatever that is. I need to know a few things before we get there. What do you know about Olson being the protégé of a priest named Canon George Montgomery?”

  I obligingly swung the van right instead of left on Main Street. Our trip to church would take ten minutes instead of five. “Montgomery is the canon theologian and one of the staunchest conservatives in the diocese. He’s not the kind of fellow who would fall o
n his sword over the old hymns. I mean, this fellow’s dream is to go to sleep wrapped in the Shroud of Turin. He used to be the rector of a big church in Pine Creek, but now he’s semiretired. Montgomery’s on the Board—”

  “Yeah,” said Boyd, “Theological Examiners, we know. Served with Olson at the cathedral some years back, when Montgomery was dean. They were real thick until they had a big spiritual disagreement, sort of like the ones you’re telling me about in your parish. They get along on the committee?”

  I remembered Montgomery complaining bitterly in one of our meetings about a candidate’s explanation of prayer. “Well, the only disagreement I can recall was when Montgomery insisted that prayer was about relationship and not about making coconuts grow. He really worked himself up into a dither. The next meeting, Olson brought in a giant coconut. Montgomery didn’t think it was funny. That’s the only conflict I can remember they had.”

  “Late last night,” Boyd drawled, “Mitchell Hartley told us Canon Montgomery and Father Olson had another argument. This one was last week in some other meeting. About whether miracles were happening at your church. Sounds as if there was a lot of yelling. Hartley said they could hear it through the doors of the meeting room at the diocesan center.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I said. I didn’t add, But nothing would surprise me, arguments are the church’s way of life. I’d made that pretty clear to Boyd yesterday. “Are you thinking their animosity was really bad? Bad enough to kill for? Because if you are, Father Doug Ramsey mentioned Montgomery was at St. Luke’s yesterday waiting for our wedding to start.”

  “Ramsey. The guy with the windy explanation for everything. He said Montgomery was at the church?”

  I nodded and swerved around a corner. Maybe I was driving too fast. I eased my foot off the pedal. “I invited all the parishioners, as well as the board. Twenty minutes before our wedding was supposed to begin, Ramsey said, ‘The whole committee’s here.’ Nobody in the church could have gotten out to Olson’s and back in that amount of time.”

  “Well, that’s really not what we’re thinking about. This guy Hartley says—”

  “Hartley was at the diocesan center when he heard this argument between Father Olson and Montgomery? Doing what?”

  “He says he works in the office of Congregational Services there, and he hears things. Was there resentment or anger over this miracles thing? From anybody in the church? Maybe somebody wanted to get healed and didn’t?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, I haven’t heard anything about that. But my friend Marla might. She’s a lot more involved with the various groups than I am. And by the way, a reporter called me this morning and said Hartley was a suspect. Is that true?”

  “Everybody’s a suspect at this point, Goldy. That’s just our policy until we know differently.”

  Boyd shifted the rolls around in his lap and seemed to be formulating a new question. Poor Boyd, I thought. This wasn’t the greatest way to introduce somebody to church life. I slowed down behind an exhaust-spewing truck.

  “All right. You’ve told me about some of the people. What you didn’t tell me was why the Old Guard hated Olson. I mean, besides the fact that they had different tastes in music.”

  I pulled the van onto a muddy shoulder one block away from the church. I cut the engine and looked over at Boyd. “It’s what he represents. Represented. A lot of things have changed in our church over the last two decades. The Old Guard hates the liturgical innovations of the last twenty years, especially the passing of the peace, a point in the service when people embrace each other.”

  Boyd chuckled. “People in their sixties and seventies not liking body contact with strangers? Not surprising. Now give me the two-minute drill on what they hate about the music.”

  “Zelda and the traditionalists dislike the new hymnal. Intensely.” I explained to Boyd that when the Episcopal hymnal had been revised in 1982, we’d lost “The Son of God Goes Forth to War” because it was deemed too militaristic, “Once to Every Man and Nation” because it supposedly undermined traditional theology, and “We Thank You, Lord of Heaven” because one of the things the hymn was thankful for was “dogs with smiling faces.” This last never did bother me. Why not also be thankful for “cats with inscrutable faces”?

  Boyd glanced at his watch. “Get to the point, Goldy. The service starts in fifteen minutes.”

  “Well, what the older crowd is most allergic to is the folk music booklets that Father Olson had tucked in every pew. The Old Guard wanted no part of the new songs. The way they settled the issue at St. Luke’s was to have the earlier service traditional, the later service the one for the charismatics. To the traditionalists, the guitar-and-tambourine tunes are a flood of disrespectful noise that sounds an awful lot like ‘Jesus, the Magic Dragon.’”

  “Huh,” muttered Boyd. “I can see we’re getting into some important issues here.” He fingered something in his breast pocket that looked suspiciously like a pack of cigarettes. Then he cast a longing look at the plump cinnamon rolls in his lap. Wordlessly, I reached into my supply bag for a knife, paper plate, and napkin.

  “Please have one,” I urged as I sliced through the thickened brown sugar syrup that clung to the rolls’ sides. I lifted out a dark, dripping spiral, maneuvered it onto the plate, and handed it to him. He groaned with delight.

  “Go on about the music.”

  “Okay. Even though the first service the Old Guard attends has traditional music, and the second service has the renewal music, they didn’t want it at St. Luke’s at all,” I explained as I pulled the van back on the road. “To them it was like creeping communism, remember that? Anyway. The Old Guard had finally gotten a petition going. They called it Halt the Hootenanny and they had a bunch of signatures. Lucille Boatwright had just begun her rotation onto the chairmanship of the Altar Guild, and she was going to present the petition to Olson. They thought that might force him to drop the new music. That was the last I heard.” I pulled into the church parking lot.

  Boyd chewed thoughtfully. Finally he said, “I still need to talk to you about the Prestons.”

  “If you want to be at the service from the beginning, we need to go in now. Or if you want to talk—?” Boyd shook his head, folded the empty paper plate, and started to open his door. I took his plate to put in my van trash bag and said, “Wait. Don’t come in with me. Don’t sit with me or act like you know me. Please.”

  “You care to tell me why not?”

  I took the rolls from him and carefully rearranged the plastic over them. “Two reasons. If people see you and your Sheriff’s Department uniform, they won’t tell me a thing. On the other hand, they might tell you something they wouldn’t share with me.”

  “Yeah? What’s reason number two?”

  “People will talk,” I said simply. I gave him a steady look. “They’ll say Tom Schulz left me because I was having an affair with you. And I don’t even know your first name.”

  “It’s Horace. And now you know why I prefer Boyd. And there’s not even a shred of truth—”

  “So what? Horace. Boyd. Please. I’ll go in first, you lock my van and follow.”

  He grunted. “I thought this was gonna be a place where people would be happy to see me.”

  “Welcome to the church, Horace.”

  When I came through the heavy wooden door into the narthex, I immediately realized it was Palm Sunday, a liturgical fact that had slipped my mind with all the disasters of the past twenty-four hours. My wedding flowers had disappeared. They had been replaced with the elaborate fans and sprays of the palms that symbolized Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and in the church, the beginning of Holy Week. We were only seven days away from Easter, the most sacred festival of the church year, despite all the hype about bunnies and baskets. Whether Boyd knew all this or even cared I did not know.

  In any event, Palm Sunday always brought out more folks than was customary during Lent. The activity in the church kitchen was at a fever pitch.
I intended merely to leave my pans of cinnamon rolls for someone to dole out after the service along with the other baked goods. However, when I appeared by the oven, all activity ceased. Six women, including a remarkably stalwart Lucille Boatwright, eyed me with a combination of surprise, pity, and unnervingly intense silence.

  “For after the service,” I said lamely. I put down the pans.

  A chorus of “We’re so sorry” and “Isn’t this just so awful” and “My poor dear, you shouldn’t have gone to the trouble” sent me reeling back into the narthex. There I was greeted by a frantic Father Ramsey.

  “Doug,” I interrupted matter-of-factly before he could rattle on, “we need to talk. It’s about Father Olson. And the bishop.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Boyd, looking extremely uncomfortable, leafing through the pamphlets at the back of the narthex.

  Doug Ramsey raised startled dark eyes. “Oh, Goldy, how are you? I’ve been so worried, but with everything going on, a funeral to plan, the meetings … honestly! Are you managing all right? Did the food arrive?” His black clerical suit was wrinkled and covered with dandruff, as if he too had slept in his clothes. I wondered why he wasn’t wearing his vestments. His eyes darted past me to see who was coming through the parish door. “Sorry, I can’t talk now,” he said. “We’ve had the most extraordinary mix-up. Have you decided to do the food for the board meeting?” When I did not immediately respond, he again assumed a sympathetic expression and made his voice low and serious. “Have you heard anything about the … your …?” I shook my head. Doug Ramsey strained his neck inside his white clerical collar and shook his head of floppy dark curls. “Well, ah, I must go tend to some last-minute problems. The money the churchwomen are raising selling raffle tickets for pearl chokers? I thought they had their spending plans all set. Now it turns out that a third of them want to give it to African famine relief, a third want to use it for the columbarium stones, and another third want to invest in more pearls for next year. They want me to arbitrate, which means two-thirds of them are going to hate me … Then Zelda came back in this morning wanting her old job back, and Canon Montgomery was trying to be pastoral, so he said yes—”