The Last Suppers gbcm-4

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Flat broke,” added Frances. “Busted. And in hock up to his sanctimonious ears.”

  “I thought he had oil well royalties or something.”

  She chugged more Jolt and made a satisfied lip-smacking noise. “That’s why I’m the reporter and you’re the caterer.”

  “Cut the chorizo, Frances. What are you saying? And who’d you get this financial information from?”

  I tried to stare her down. Unfortunately, her eyes were mostly concealed by that dark stringy hair that looked as if it’d just been released from dreadlocks. “Bob’s well,” Frances intoned with a swipe at the hair, “is dry. Literally and figuratively. But then there are forty thousand dollars worth of pearls floating around somewhere.” She rubbed the cigarette between her fingers and smirked. “Forty thousand clams – or is it oysters? – might not be enough to kill for, but it would give somebody a nice little stake. Now about Agatha and your priest, Olson – “ Frances studied my face avidly. Since I didn’t have any dreadlocks to hide behind, I kept my expression resolutely blank. She went on “ – I heard she wanted him a whole lot more than he wanted her.”

  “Really? Who told you that? Please, Frances, I need to get into the conference center to look for my stuff. The police were here, and they’ll be back soon.”

  “What’s the hurry?” She glanced over her shoulder at the broken window. “What’d you leave over here, pans? They’re probably stolen by now, if anybody would think to look up here.”

  If anybody would think to look up here. This woman was driving me crazy. I shrugged. If I let her know I was waiting for the police so we could look for Tom Schulz, I’d never get rid of her.

  Frances chugged more Jolt. “How are you feeling about the kidnapping of your fiancé?”

  “One more personal question and I’m driving home.”

  “Okay, try this. Think your bishop would have put up with a priest having an affair?”

  My parish, my priest, my bishop. Pretty soon she’d have me owning the Anglican church worldwide. “No, Frances, of course I don’t.” All across the country, female parishioners had been suing dioceses, claiming psychological damage when their priests were their lovers. All it took was a few million dollars lost when the women won their suits for the church to take notice.

  I said, “You think we’re looking at a lawsuit? Or that we were?”

  She blew smoke rings to Arch’s rapt admiration. “I think we might have been looking at blackmail.” Arch raised his eyebrows dramatically.

  “Blackmail from whom?” I demanded “From Agatha Preston? And where would Olson figure in that?”

  “Say the priest is having a little illicit tickle between the sheets, or he’s scared people will think he is.” Arch’s brow wrinkled, and I could imagine his mind working: Who is getting tickled? Frances continued, “Don’t you think that Bob Preston could use this knowledge to blackmail Olson? Maybe to find out where those pearls were?”

  “And then shoot him? Why not just sue and recover a couple mil?”

  Frances inhaled noisily and warmed to her subject. “Say the priest refuses to give him information he wants, about his wife or the pearls or something. Or,” she added pensively, “maybe the canon theologian, Montgomery, has a little heart-to-heart with his beloved former student, Olson. The heart-to-heart turns loud, and a bunch of folks at the diocesan center overhear them yelling.” She paused. “Maybe the diocese is saying to Olson, give up fair Agatha or else.”

  “Or else they’ll kill him?”

  She held out her arms and shrugged dramatically. The big trench coat collapsed like a nosediving black kite. “Look, Goldy, I’m just trying to put this unconvincing naďveté. “There’s one more thing. You know the Habitat house they’re building over by you?” I nodded. “There’s a flap among the neighbors, in case you weren’t aware. They’ve just gotten the project red-flagged. They say it violates the neighborhood covenants ‘cuz it’s too small. The neighbors enlisted Olson to be their go-between with their Habitat board, where Bob Preston is a big old striped bass in a teensy-weensy pond. Know anything about that? There’s going to be an article in the paper this week.”

  I said no and wondered if Arch was following all this. To my dismay, he was staring open-mouthed at Frances Markasian. I wasn’t sue, but I thought I saw awe in his eyes.

  She gave me a skeptical look before lighting another cigarette with the glowing end of the one she’d been working on. “So what do you think was going on between the head of the Episcopal Church Women and your priest?” The first cigarette landed at her feet.

  “Gee, Frances, guess you’ll have to ask the head of the Episcopal Church Women that one.” I crushed the cigarette stub under my heel and stood up as an act of dismissal.

  Frances took a deep drag, looked across the street at the roof of St. Luke’s, and blew smoke. “What do you know about Roger Bampton?” she asked.

  “Nothing that isn’t common knowledge in town. How much of it is true in another question.”

  “Do you believe his healing was a miracle?”

  “Do you?”

  She shoved herself to her sneakered feet, sighed, and heaved the bag over her shoulder. “The only thing I believe in is the power of the press. That’s where the truth is. For me, anyway.” She gave me a good-natured handshake and half-smile around the drooping cigarette. “Well, Deep Throat, if you hear anything else, be sure to give the Mountain Journal a jingle.”

  “My pleasure,” I lied.

  “Stop by the office some time, Arch. I keep a fridge full of Jolt back by the press.”

  Arch’s face turned momentarily jubilant until he caught my don’t-even-think-about-it glare. When Frances had hopped back down Hymnal House’s stone steps and roared away in the smoke-spewing Fiat, Arch and I picked up our flashlights to go back to the driveway and wait. When we got near the entrance to Brio Barn, we heard something. Something like a drawer or a door being closed hard. Or a metal chair sliding across a floor. Arch shot me a look.

  “What was that?”

  “Honey, I don’t know.”

  “We have to go in, Mom.”

  “Forget it.” Despite my words, I eyed the barn door.

  “It could be him! He could be trying to get out! Mom! Are you listening to me? He might be trying to signal somebody! But maybe he’s about to pass out or … And anyway, check it out!” He gestured widely to the houses near the conference center, the row of old cars puffing through Aspen Meadow. “This is like, a neighborhood. Nobody’s going to bother us in the middle of the day in a neighborhood. But if you say we can’t, then he’ll probably be unconscious by the time the police get here, and we won’t find him until – “

  He stopped talking again as the scraping sound again reached our ears.

  “Okay, look.” My voice quavered. Arch already was walking down the old stone steps to the barn. “Don’t call out to see if anybody’s there until we get inside and have a look, say, on the stage, underneath the stage, in the storage areas, and so on. Do you want the Mace?”

  Arch’s voice said firmly, “Okay. I don’t know where anything is in this place.”

  “I’ve catered here enough to know the ins and outs. Just follow me.” I spoke with more confidence than I felt.

  The padlock chaining the barn doors was unhinged. I didn’t stop to wonder why as I threaded the rusty metal loops over and up to free the door handles. WE swung the creaking doors open to the cavelike, shadowy space and were immediately greeted by a current of icy, dank air. What the hell am I doing here? my inner voice demanded. I groped for the switch to the overhead light that I knew existed. When I snapped it, nothing happened. Of course. Although winter was technically over, the electricity would be off until the summer conferences began. That meant that anywhere except Hymnal House, there would be no power, and anyone kept here would be cold. I thought of Tom shivering from exposure.

  “Turn on your flashlight.” My voice sounded like gravel. We swept fragile beams of light into the interior. The theater-shaped space was primarily used for rehearsals, choral concerts, and conference liturgies. In front of us across the wooden floor
, the old pipe organ stood like a tall museum ghost. Sensitive to cold, it wasn’t used here, merely stored. The stage was on our right; chairs were stacked haphazardly against the walls. The smell of old, musty wood was strong. I didn’t want to shine my flashlight upward. The thought of creatures that could be skittering through the rafters was a distinctly unpleasant one. Gooseflesh prickled my arms. I was going into cold, abandoned, semidark space on a cloudy Sunday afternoon to look for Tom Schulz. I didn’t know which was worse, the earringing fear or that recurring thought that I must be losing my mind. Actually, what was worse was the fear that Tom might indeed be … worse than unconscious.

  “You do remember my birthday is this coming Sunday,” Arch said in a low voice.

  Leave it to a kid to bring up a birthday. Discussing something completely unrelated might relieve anxiety, after all. And where were the police?

  “Yes,” I said as I moved tentatively into the room. My voice came out too loud and echoed along with my footsteps. “It doesn’t usually fall on Easter, but it does this year.”

  “I think when I grow up,” said Arch courageously as he parted from me and walked in the direction of the stage, “I’m going to be the kind of guy who does people’s taxes. Four days after tax day every year is my birthday. Then I’ll always be able to have a big celebration, even though I’m grown up.” He hesitated, then hissed, “Shouldn’t we be calling his name, anyway? Since it doesn’t look as if anybody’s here? If he’s in a storage area, maybe he could make noise …”

  Good idea. “Tom!” I called weakly. My voice echoed from the cold, wooden walls. “Tom!”

  Nothing.

  I continued forward into the semidarkness, focusing my flashlight on the dusty wooden floor a yard in front of my shoes. Every few steps, I lifted the beam to the old organ. Its dull metal pipes rose toward the ceiling like prison bars. Once I shone my flashlight all the way up to the pitched ceiling. Hanging from the barn beams were not bats, but dusty embroidered banners from parishes whose organists had attended the music conference for many years. From the teas I’d catered in this space, I knew there was a closet behind the organ that served as storage for music and educational materials. This closet was opened for the July and August conferences of choir directors and Sunday School teachers. After I checked it we would go underneath the stage to check the dank stone basement that was used to store old church files. Neither sounded like much fun.

  “Mom?” The beam of Arch’s flashlight shone weakly in my direction.

  “Over here. You were talking about what kind of party you were going to have when you grow up.”

  “Okay. I’m moving up onto the stage.” The beam of his flashlight disappeared.

  “Are you worried you won’t have a party this year?” I asked, slightly louder.

  “Sometimes I think I’m too old for that kind of stuff.” His voice was muffled. From his shaded, moving light, I knew that he was checking behind one of the stage’s heavy velvet curtains. “I would like a cake, thought,” he announced when he emerged. His small voice echoed. “Maybe a little family party. Are there dressing rooms or anything back here, any place where Tom could be? Maybe he’s gagged.”

  I stopped walking. “Flash your light along the wall.” He did, and revealed nothing but dusty paneling. With false cheer, I said, “What do you want for birthday presents?”

  His voice was both earnest and fierce. “Tom Schulz back, Mom, what do you think? Did you look behind the organ?”

  “I’m about to.” I swallowed, ignored the pounding in my ears, and walked briskly to the organ. Going behind a large instrument, into a dark space where who-knew-what could be lurking, was intimidating. The keys and pipes were covered with cobwebs. I’d been bitten once by a poisonous spider. It wasn’t fun. I shuddered and came around behind the pipes. A pile of chairs stood in front of the closet door. I put my shoulder to the middle of the stack and strained hard to push it out of the way. The chairs didn’t budge. I took a deep breath and tried again. They made an unearthly scraping noise. They also moved an inch.

  “Gosh, Mom,” came Arch’s horrified cry. “What are you doing?”

  I put my shoulder against the chair-pile and shoved. If Tom Schulz was in this closet, whoever had put him in there was extremely strong. I pushed again, then stopped to rest. I pulled the bench around to use as a lever. I groaned and heaved my weight into it. After a moment, the bench and the pile of chairs scraped in an arc away from the door. The thought of Tom trapped in the closet gave me the strength to pick up the organ bench and smash the doorknob. Both disintegrated in the process. By the time Arch and I finished with this place, they’d need a federal grant for renovation.

  I grabbed the flashlight with one hand, stuck the fingers of my other hand through the hole made by the missing doorknob, and yanked the door outward. I took a deep breath of dusty air and flashed the light into the windowless closet space.

  Lining the walls were floor-to-ceiling shelves spilling over with yellowed papers and booklets. The smell of mold was dreadful. Except for dust devils and intricate spiderwebs lining the corners, the room was empty. Disappointment congealed heavily in my chest.

  “I want to tell you what kind of cake I want,” said Arch’s distant voice. I came out of the closet in time to see his flashlight shining huge and scarlet in back of the stage right curtain.

  “What?” I directed my beam up on the stage just as Arch’s shape emerged from behind the curtain. His footsteps echoed across the wood.

  “Pepper – mint!” His light wobbled against the ceiling. “Agh!” A loud cracking noise, like wood breaking, made me momentarily lose the grip on my beam. I refocused it shakily on the area where Arch was. Or had been. The stage floor was collapsing beneath him.

  “Help!” my son shouted.

  “Oh! Lord help us!” came the cry of a woman from the floor below.

  14

  My body felt impossibly cumbersome as it clattered over to the stage. I jumped up three steps, tripped, then crab-crawled to the place where the boards had given way. Arch had fallen through. I knew he was alive because I could hear his surprised voice half-talking, half-crying. I directed my light downward and peered through the hole of jagged boards to a whitewashed stone room lined with gray file cabinets. Arch was struggling, a knot of dark sweatsuit and long legs, on top of Lucille Boatwright, a wide and clumsy apparition in expensive-looking dark slacks and matching sweater. She was moaning, and her outfit was being ruined by the rolling action she was making on the dusty floor. I speculated wildly. Was Arch’s back broken? Would the hone up at Hymnal House be connected? Would Mountain Rescue be willing to send an ambulance for Lucille Boatwright two days in a row? “Arch! Are you okay? I’m up here! Are you hurt? Don’t move if you feel anything’s broken!”

  “I hate this place, Mom!” he shrieked. Sweat prickled coldly over my body at the relief of hearing him respond. “This whole place is just so old!”

  Poor kid. He was embarrassed and trying to cover it up with anger. Making a huge effort, he untangled himself from Lucille. Recriminating questions crowded my brain. Hadn’t Lucille heard us in the barn? Why didn’t she let us know she was down in the file room? Would the neighbors come running when they heard the commotion?

  As I stared helplessly from above, my eyes gradually adjusted to the fact that there was more light in the basement than there was in the barn. A fuzzed stripe of dim grayness from the cloudy afternoon sky filtered in through the small basement room door that Lucille had left open. On the table was a tin-colored, battery-operated camping lamp that looked too new and expensive to belong to the conference center. It cast a metallic glow over the once-white masonry walls and the crowded row of file cabinets. With his knees drawn up, Arch leaned against one of the cabinets and vigorously rubbed his shins. One of the drawers in the adjoining cabinet was open. Next to it, a small stack of drab-colored files lay in a neat pile of a massive oak table. Groaning, Lucille rolled over on her side. She grasped the leg of the table and struggled to get to a sitting position. I knew the woman well enough to know that
as soon as she was standing, she would set about scolding Arch. I needed to help him get out of there; I needed to protect him. I scrambled off the stage and out the barn doors. Slipping on wet pine needles, I skidded down the small slope to the basement and through the door of the storage room. The two were still seated on the filthy floor; both looked dazed.

  I came in close to Arch’s face, which was liberally smeared with dust. His glasses were askew. “Can you move? Are you okay? Oh, honey, talk to me.”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Just leave me alone, okay?”

  “My goodness gracious, land sake’s,” Lucille huffed. Disconcerted, she tried to get control by brushing ineffectually on her filthy green outfit. Her silver hair was disheveled; dust covered her everywhere. The physical surprise of the fall made her seem more elderly, and there was a wild look in her eyes. The Mace. Oh, Lord. I offered her my hand. She took it without compunction and jerkily cranked herself to a standing position, breathing heavily.

  Arch groped to straighten his glasses. His fingers slid back over the floor. He picked up the Mace canister and then small and round, which he examined close to his lenses. “Are you all right, Mrs. Boatwright? Did I get you with the Mae?” He made a gargling noise, and I was afraid he was going to be sick. “Looks like you broke your necklace.”

  “Arch, please, hon, stand up.” Clutching his finds in two tight fists, he again refused my hand and struggled to stand up next to me. His cheek was scraped, and his sweatsuit was covered with thick stripes of dust. But mercifully there was no blood.

  “Did the Mace hurt you?” I asked Lucille. I didn’t quite have the courage to ask, What the hell are you doing here?

  “No, but that is dangerous stuff, heaven knows. Now, your son. How is he?”