The Last Suppers gbcm-4

by Diane Mott Davidson

  We both looked at Arch, who avoided our gaze. He was mortified, but not in pain. He’d had a fright, and probably should take some aspirin and go to bed for the rest of the day. Or course, neither of these was likely. I looked up at the broken ceiling. It appeared that the wood had rotted through. This place needed renovation more than the church office, no question about it.

  “Lucille? Are you hurt? I am so sorry this happened. I can’t believe the conference center doesn’t have somebody check these floors before they rot!”

  “Well, my dear … Honestly! There I was, one minute,” she gestured helplessly toward the file cabinet with a shaky finger, “and then he, why, I thought the whole place was caving in – “ She swallowed. “I suppose we should notify someone of this. And then be leaving, of course. This is a dangerous place, no situation for a child – “

  “Let me see if the police have arrived,” I interjected. “If you’re sure you’re all – “

  But she was not all right. She took one step and cried out in pain. Her aristocratic face crumpled. “The spray bottle didn’t get me, but my ankle is twisted,” she announced stoically.

  “Stay with Mrs. Boatwright a few minutes,” I quietly ordered Arch.

  He nodded sullenly. I vaulted up to the barn. No Sheriff’s Department, inside or out. When I arrived back at the storage room, Arch was handing a seated Lucille Boatwright the last of the beads from her broken necklace, which she held in a piece of crumpled paper in her palm. She awkwardly folded the paper and put it into her purse, next to the neat pile of folders in her lap. In my absence, she had managed to smooth her hair and he clothing. Because of her injured ankle, I felt obligated to suggest that I drive her home in the van before finishing what I’d come for. She insisted that we all go back to her house to get cleaned up. I told her I had to stay at the conference center to do some looking around.

  “For what?” Lucille demanded in her customary regal manner. “There’s nothing here.” She gave me a look that said, I am always right and am seldom disobeyed. I glanced at the files in her lap. A faint pink wash of color climbed her cheeks.

  “I’ll tell you all about the church’s filing problems when we get back to my house,” she said in crisp defense. “But my ankle is turned. I can drive my car, I simply cannot walk on it. I need to be brought to it.” She pressed her lips together and with rusty effort added, “Please.”

  At that moment, Investigator Boyd stuck his head through the door of the storage room. His eyes took in the broken ceiling, the mess on the floor, and our forlorn trio. He swore under his breath.

  “What is going on here? You three all right?”

  He seemed satisfied by the simultaneous cacophony of assurances he got from us.

  “We’re going through the conference center,” said Boyd. He wagged a finger at me. “We got permission. That’s we, not you, got it?”

  “Aye, aye,” I said agreeably. “Lucille, please give Arch and me a few moments to make space for you in the van.”

  Disheartened, Arch packed flashlights into the back of the van while I tried to start the engine.

  “Arch, you realize the noises we heard probably came from Mrs. Boatwright opening the file cabinets, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He paused. “You never did tell me what all this stuff was back here,” he said with a sulk in his voice. There was the sound of rustling papers. “Gosh, Mom, don’t these files belong to Father Olson or the church or something? Y’ever heard of ‘Thou shalt not steal?’ “

  “Chill out, buster.” The engine refused to turn over. I turned the key again and pumped the gas. “Officer Boyd told me to look through anything that would help figure out that note, and this is all I have. You want to find Tom, don’t you?”

  He tsked over the reluctant whine of the engine. After a moment, he said, “Father Olson always said, ‘Y’have to wrap your faith around you, like a blanket.’ I think he said somebody famous said that.”

  The engine almost caught and then died. I sat back, infinitely frustrated, and ran Arch’s remark through my brain. I said, “Sounds like Linus. And I don’t need a blanket, I need my van to start.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t need a blanket either. So I asked him, if I had faith that the mean kids at school would stop picking on me, would that be like having a blanket? And he said the only behavior you could control is your own.”

  I twisted the key and the engine turned over. Maybe the only power you could control was your own; those built by the auto industry belonged to fate. Anyway, Olson certainly had been capable of giving the right answers about behavior. At least for others. “Sounds as If Father Olson made you think about faith, anyway.”

  Arch snorted. “Hate to tell you, Mom, but I think about Jolt cola, and that doesn’t mean I have any.”

  “Arch!”

  “Just kidding.”

  I gave up. The van skidded loudly over the wet gravel by the outside bench where Lucille Boatwright was sitting primly with her files and her purse. I put my head on the steering wheel and murmured to Arch, “Just cover up the stuff back there and help Mrs. Boatwright into the van, will you?”

  Arch muttered, “Did you ever hear of Watergate?” But before I could reply he had rustled around and then gingerly jumped out. We drove Lucille to her silver car, which was the pristine, sleek Park Avenue in the church parking lot. She insisted she could drive, even with a sprained left ankle. Because I was anxious to know why she felt she had to ferret through church files on a Sunday afternoon, and why she had parked at the church lot instead of Brio Barn, I acquiesced to her insistence that we come over for a bit. My van chugged and popped behind the Buick to Lucille’s Tudor-style home in the Aspen Meadow country club area. Refusing help, she limped ahead of us into the marble entryway, past polished cherry buffets, tables, and a magnificent étagčre featuring animal figurines made of ivory. Arch made appropriate cooing noises until Lucille took him by the elbow and led him to the bathroom to get cleaned up. She disappeared herself for a few moments, then reappeared with the green outfit sponged clean of its dust.

  “I settled Arch in front of the television with a soft drink,” Lucille said with that characteristic lift of her dictatorial chin. “I didn’t want him to hear how disorganized that church is.” She led me into her kitchen, a vaulted-ceiling, ultraclean space with tall cabinets of glowing light-blue laminate and a brick-colored tile floor. I had a sudden, blinding realization: that Lucille wanted, as I had with Frances Markasian, to protect Arch from hearing what the church was really like.

  I waited while Lucille ladled Droste cocoa and sugar into her gilt-edged Royal Crown Derby china teapot, then mixed the two together with cream. Whisking with her free hand, she expertly poured steaming milk into the pot and set it aside. I wondered what she’d done with the files. In her usual highly ordered fashion, she slowly brought to her cherry kitchen table two cups, saucers, and spoons, sugar cubes in a Waterford bowl, cream in a matching pitcher, and finally a small plate with butter shortbread. As she poured the hot chocolate, another, more painful thought assailed me: I realized how much Schulz would have enjoyed chatting with Lucille about English bone china, ivory figurines, Queen Anne cherrywood, and the merits of Scottish shortbread.

  If Arch doesn’t like what’s on TV, he’ll come to see what we’re doing,” I warned. “I’m sorry you were hurt, Lucille, but isn’t it dangerous for you to be down in that file room in Brio Barn? I mean, it’s so decrepit!”

  She shook her rows of silver curls and gestured for me to drink my hot chocolate. While it’s hot, she seemed to be saying. “I was looking in the file storage area because that man Olson was such a pig. I mean, Father Pinckney would never – “ I made a tiny, impatient throat-clearing noise. Lucille plunged ahead. “You just don’t understand, Goldy. Olson was ruining our church. He was taking it in a direction, I mean, with those charismatics – “

  “Whoa, Lucille!” I set down my cup. “We were talking about files, and then you made the leap to ruining the church. Please explain how you got from one to the other.”

  Lucille reached up to smooth the ba
se of her neck, and with a sudden jerking motion of her wide, age-spotted hand, realized her necklace was not there. She sipped her hot chocolate and seemed to be struggling with where to begin her story.

  “We used to be a family. Our congregation, you know. Maybe there were things that didn’t work, like the annual giving, but we all got along. It was tragic that Father Pinckney had to retire. He loved everybody, you know that’s true.”

  Actually, I knew it had not been true. Pinckney had pastured his little clique; the genuine pastor-to-all had been Ted Olson. But disagreeing on points of view wasn’t going to get Lucille’s motive for shuffling through the file storage on a Sunday afternoon.

  Her voice rose. “Now it’s like we’re two separate churches,” she shrilled. “The charismatics pushing against the old traditions, destroying everything with their guitar music and their huggy-kissy, trying to take over everything, even the Altar Guild. You know what we called Olson?” When I shook my head, she said triumphantly, “Father Touchy-Feely. And of course he only cared about them, you know that.”

  Again, I did not. But lucky for me I’d majored in psychology and could pull out the Carl Rogers routine on command. I said, “You felt the didn’t care about you.”

  She sipped the cocoa, shook her head, and looked at my cup. “Now, drink that while it’s hot, Goldy. You know it’s not going to stay warm forever.”

  Lucille was incapable of getting more than two sentences out without giving a command. But I obliged anyway. The chocolate was marvelously hot and creamy. And it smelled wonderful. I set my cup down delicately and commented, “You didn’t feel appreciated.”

  “Why, of course not! With all I did for that church, do you think he appreciated even one thing? Oh! I could tell you about the weddings I’ve raised … and all that man Olson ever did was disagree with me. Disagree with me and make it difficult to deal with these frantic families who were trying to get their children married. Not to speak ill of the dead, but you know. We had terrific argument about the office procedures, then more conflicts about the fund-raising – “

  “So you got the files, Why?”

  “Well no, just wait. Let me tell you. Where should I start?” She pressed her lips together. “All right, listen. Zelda Preston has been the organist at St. Luke’s for many years. You know she trained at Northwestern, just had years and years of training. Not that Olson ever appreciated her. And she has been extremely loyal to St. Luke’s. I know personally that she’s given thousands of dollars over the years, thousands, much more than that riffraff that Father Olson has brought into our parish could ever appreciate.”

  I could see where the locus of disagreement over office procedures would have occurred between Olson and Lucille. All the pledges and treasury information were supposed to be completely confidential. But if the police had been able to find out about the money flowing in, then it was not too much of a stretch to think that Lucille Boatwright had known about it long before. I was willing to bet that thrift-shop Zelda didn’t share that much of her money.

  “So when Olson fired Zelda,” Lucille fumed, “after all her loyal years of service, picking hymns and practicing with the choir and Lord only knows what all, why, I thought back to that petition. The bishop was supposed to write to us about the guitar music. They promised us from the diocesan office, I don’t know how many times, that we would get a reply, that a reply was on the way. We wanted it banned, don’t you see? And since Olson – so disorganized! – hadn’t told us about the response, whatever he’d received, I thought I’d go look for it – “ She stopped and took a sip of chocolate, gesturing with her free hand for me to draw the obvious conclusion. Which was not so obvious. I knew she was lying.

  I said, “You were looking for the bishop’s letter answering the petition because you thought it would help now? What difference would it make with Ted Olson dead? I should think that you’d be planning his funeral or something.

  She fluttered her hand again as if to say, Immaterial, immaterial. “So we won’t have to listen to that music anymore, what do you think? How can I plan a funeral if the charismatics are going to come waving their guitars at me? And if we have a letter from the bishop, we’ll be able to get off on the right foot with whoever our new man is.”

  “I just think its… . awful early for that.”

  “Listen,” she said suddenly. Her eyes brightened. “I want to talk to you about the luncheon tomorrow. I do want to pay you for all your supplies. I know how expensive food is, believe me, in this day and age! So send me a bill, won’t you? Don’t tell Zelda or the other women, we don’t want them to worry about it.”

  A kind of muddle descended on my brain, which was probably her intent. I can talk about business or I can talk about nonbusiness. I am incompetent at mingling the two in one conversation. Arch had not rejoined us. I figured he’d found a cable channel. I didn’t know what to say about the luncheon. As it stretched on, the silence between Lucille and me became increasingly uncomfortable.

  “Tell me,” I said with feigned puzzlement, “about the pearl choker raffle.”

  “Oh! Well, you know, none of the women want to work in the church anymore. They all have jobs.” Except poor Agatha, I thought. “We couldn’t have our annual Home Tour because we simply could not get enough women to be guides in the homes! Would you loan your luxury home to the church for the day if there weren’t enough guides? I mean!”

  “But you thought if you got necklaces … “

  She handed me the platter of shortbread. I declined. “For the past two years, it’s been a painless way to make money. This year, of course, we wanted to finish the columbarium. Bob Preston – you know, Zelda’s son-in-law – had a friend in the Far East from his oil-dealing days. He found a supplier in Hong Kong. Even with the duty fees, we would make five hundred dollars per necklace, and we would raffle several for those who couldn’t buy. We figured, women in the church and in town, here in the club, would want to buy them, or at least buy a single raffle ticket. So we wouldn’t have to try to get women to work who simply weren’t willing to. You must have received your flyer about this in the mail, Goldy. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I was trying to plan a wedding,” I said flatly.

  Lucille Boatwright shivered slightly, as if to say that she would not have ignored a mailing from the church, even if she were planning a dozen nuptials. “This was supposed to take place the week after Easter. Didn’t want to do it during Lent, of course, although some women said if they won the pearls, they would want tow wear them to church on Easter. Frankly, I could see their point, but Lent is Lent.”

  “Ah. And why did Father Olson keep the pearls?”

  Her facial expression evolved into a sad I-told-you-so. “He thought his house was safe. But where in his house? That’s what no one seems to know, and of course the police won’t allow us to look. Thank God I took out a rider on the church’s insurance policy to cover them, or the church would have lost a bundle. We had to pay Bob Preston when those pearls were delivered. Why Olson insisted on keeping them, I don’t know,” She concluded, exasperated.

  We looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. I said softly, “You felt he deserved to die.”

  “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” But the aristocratic chin quivered.

  I sipped my cooled cocoa and reflected. “Lucille, you’ve never told me a thing about how the church is run – “

  “You never asked,” she interjected.

  “ – but now you’ve asked me into your home and offered to pay for lunch tomorrow, for which I was already going to send a bill to the churchwomen, thank you very much. You’ve been extremely nice, really, and told me all kinds of things. What I’m trying to figure out is, why are you telling me all this?”

  She looked down at he hand, which she was running slowly over the cherry tabletop.

  “I think,” I persisted, “That you’re afraid of something.” I thought back: the pearls, the petition, the file room. The files. “You weren’t just straightening up at the conference center.”

  She looked away from me and out int
o her living room. At her Queen Anne wing chairs with their hieratic floral pattern on polished cotton. At her striped sofa in the same muted colors. AT the well-polished Stieffel lamp next to the arrangement of dried eucalyptus in a ginger jar. At her money, her familiar order, her security.

  With dawning clarity, I remembered Saturday morning, right before my wedding was supposed to begin, the new organist playing the triumphant opening bars of Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary. And then Zelda’s words: I am a professional. What would a professional most fear? Being maligned as a professional. Not being able to be a professional anymore.

  I said gently, “You were looking for some letter from the bishop, because you think Zelda wants it. Isn’t that right? You think she needs it, for some reason.” Lucille rubbed her fingers delicately against the side of her china cup and remained stubbornly mute. “You think Zelda wanted the bishop’s letter from Olson, so that she could save face. Find a job someplace else, maybe.” A tear was rolling slowly down one of Lucille’ elegant, powdered cheeks. “Lucille. You think Zelda killed him. Don’t you?”

  15

  She sniffed and stood up. “Absolutely not. How can you say such a thing? I think it’s time for you to go.”

  “You have to call the police. Right now, from here. If Zelda has Tom Schulz – “ I couldn’t finish. “Where was she yesterday morning?”

  Lucille forced a smile. “I don’t know! Why do you keep insisting?” She moved toward the kitchen door. “I am so glad your son is feeling better. I’ll just go call him down from upstairs. The churchwomen have a funeral to plan, and I’m due at a meeting at five o’clock.”

  She minced neatly out of the room, all of her control reasserted by the threat of my urgent desire to extract information. I watched her wide retreating body, her neat silver curls shining like a metallic shield. Dammit to hell.

  In the corner of her kitchen I spotted a light-blue wall telephone, almost invisible because of its exact color match to the cabinets. I grabbed it and dialed 911. Identifying myself, I said I needed to leave an emergency message for Boyd, that I found out some things about the Olson murder and he should question Zelda Preston. I swallowed and added that Zelda was strong, a swimmer, that she might have Tom Schulz. When I hung up and turned around, Lucille Boatwright was standing at the door of the kitchen with her arm around Arch’s shoulders.