The Last Suppers

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

“Tom. I don’t understand. Please. Tell me this isn’t real.”

“He just died a few minutes ago. When I got here, he’d been shot. Shot in the chest,” Tom Schulz added in the distant, flat tone he used when discussing his work. “I’ve called in a team. Look, I have to go. You know the drill. I need to go stay by the body.”

“But, how …? Are we going to get married? I mean, today?”

“Oh, Goldy.” Despair thickened his voice. “Probably not. The team will be here for hours.” He paused. “Want to try to do a civil ceremony tonight?”

“Do I—” I did not. Not a hurry-up ritual. Like it or not, I was an Episcopalian, what they call a cradle Episcopalian, the Anglican equivalent of the American Kennel Club. If I was going to get married again, then it was going to be in front of God, the church, and everybody, and the wedding was going to be performed by an Episcopal priest.

Oh, Lord. My hands were suddenly clammy. Father Olson.

I ripped the hat off my head. A knot formed in my chest. This was a mistake. This phone call was some awful nightmare. Any moment I was going to wake up.

I stammered, “Tom, what happened to Father Olson?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we have to find out. Do you want to go back to your place and wait for me?”

“Just come to the church. Please. I’ll wait.” I cursed the tremble in my voice. “Take care.”

I hung up. The air in the choir room suddenly felt thin. Father Olson’s absence loomed. I tried to erase images of a gun being raised menacingly in his direction. Of shots. Beside me, the silver bar holding the burgundy choir robes glimmered too brightly from the neon light overhead. In the hallway, shouts, squawks, and cries of disbelief rose to a din that rivaled the hammering in my ears. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.

“Goldy, what the—”

Slowly, I turned. Marla Korman’s large presence filled the door to the choir room. The noise from the hallway roared louder.

“Goldy, you look like hell! Hey! Why’d you toss your hat? I went to four stores to find that thing.” Marla closed the door behind her. “What’s all the commotion out there about? And look at your suit. Have you been sitting on the floor? For crying out loud!”

She click-clacked over in her Italian leather heels and put her small hands with their polished red nails on my shoulders. An incongruously conservative navy suit hugged her wide body, which was usually far more outrageously clad. The tight French twist taming her thick, normally frizzed brown hair seemed somehow absurd. She had worn the suit and pinned up her hair for my wedding. My wedding that now, suddenly, was not to be. I wondered how long it would take for the noisy news-sharing of the hallway to reach the people out in the pews.

“Hoohoo, Goldy!” she said brightly. “I know you’re in there. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

I tried to reply twice before I could say, “Olson’s dead. Tom …”

She grasped my shoulders more tightly. “Dead? Dead?” Her voice shrilled in my ear.

“Yes.” I made a feeble gesture toward the hall. “That’s probably the cause of all the racket. I don’t know. Has anyone out there said anything about the wedding?”

“They can’t—” Marla released me and pivoted on her heels. Her pumps gritted against the vinyl floor as she tiptoed back to peek down the hall. Again the noise roared in. After a few moments of observation, she quietly closed the door and turned back to me. “Looks like Lucille Boatwright passed out, but she’s conscious now. What happened to Father Olson? What do you mean, he’s dead? Did he have a heart attack, or what?”

Tom’s advice: Give away nothing. Abruptly I remembered his green eyes and handsome face turning grimly serious one night as he wiped his floral-patterned Limoges dessert plates and spoke to me about his work. If I confide in you, Goldy, tell no details to anyone, not even to those you trust, because you don’t know where those details are going to end up. One did not divulge facts such as shot in the chest to Marla. I knew too well her large body and large spirit did not prevent her from being an even larger gossip, best friend or no.

Marla’s small hands moved frantically along the pearl choker at her neck, another one from the upcoming raffle. “I mean,” she was saying, “did he have some kind of medical problem we didn’t know about? Aneurysm? Stroke? I mean, him of all people. With all that talk about healing, you know. Oh, listen to me. I even went out with him …”

I told her the minimal story as I knew it would soon become available: that Tom Schulz had gone to Father Olson’s place to pick him up. That an intruder, or someone, had mortally wounded Olson before Tom arrived.

“Oh, my God, he was killed?” Marla’s plump cheeks went slack with disbelief. There was a knock at the choir room door. Marla opened it, dispensed with the intruder, then turned back to me. Her voice turned fierce. “Oh, why did Olson insist on living way out Upper Cottonwood Creek?” She tensed up her plump hands, crablike, and gestured widely. “He thought all he’d need was a fancy four-wheel-drive vehicle. Didn’t he realize not having neighbors close by could hurt him? I just can’t believe it. He was only, what, thirty-five?”

My mind reeled again, trying to compute. “I guess. But I do know that the … ceremony is off.” The deep breath I attempted to take didn’t alleviate a cold wave of shivers. “All the food …”

Marla tilted her head to consider. “Want me to get one of the folks tending Lucille in here for you? I heard someone say they were calling Mountain Rescue.”

“No, no. Thanks.”

“I still don’t understand how Olson was killed.”

“Well, I guess that’s what the police team will find out.” I was suddenly deeply embarrassed by the thought that my parents, son, friends, and acquaintances were all sitting in the church pews, waiting for my wedding procession to begin. “Does everyone out there know what happened?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.” She hesitated, then minced tentatively back out the door. The din in the hall had shifted to a more pronounced tumult of raised voices and stamping feet out in the congregation. The pain in my chest made an unexpected twist. I was still having trouble breathing. Within minutes Marla returned to report. “Apparently, when Tom called, he wanted to talk to you but Lucille wouldn’t let him. They argued. You can imagine Lucille insisting the bride couldn’t be disturbed. Even if it was the groom calling. And the groom was a cop. So Schulz finally told her about Olson. He said to send someone for you immediately.”

Marla began to pull the pins out of the French twist. No ceremony, no fancy hair.

“So then Lucille collapsed,” she went on grimly. “There was a priest nearby who tried to tend to her, and she told him that your fiancé wanted you on the phone. Eventually she gasped out the news that Olson was dead. Father Doug Ramsey just made an announcement that your wedding would be postponed. And why. Good old Doug is trying to start a silent prayer service. Of course, silence is the last thing the poor guy’s going to get. It’s pretty crazy out there. Looks as if the cops who were here, Schulz’s friends, are scrambling outside for their car radios.” She shook out her mass of crimped hair, stowed the hairpins in her suit pocket, and with sudden resolve took my arm. “We have to get you out of here. People are going to be coming in to use the phone. And you’re the bride, you don’t need to have everyone asking you questions. Let them read it in the paper. Where were you before Lucille put you in the sacristy to wait?”

“Olson’s office.”

“Anybody else there?”

I shook my head.

“Let’s go.”

She steered me out of the choir room. Lucille Boatwright was now sitting, slumped, in a kid-size chair hastily provided from one of the Sunday School rooms. She was moaning again, so I assumed she was not in imminent danger. Marla and I made a quick left out the side door beside the sacristy, the same door I had come through with so much hope only fifteen minutes before. All the attention focused on Lucille meant the exit of the would-be bride and her matron of honor went unnoticed. Thank God for small favors, my father would say.

The chilly air outdoors was a pleasant shock after the too-warm, too-close air in the church. When my beige shoes slipped on the ice, I begged Marla to sit with me on the bench by the side door for a moment. I needed to clear my head of the image of a bloodstained Father Olson. She reluctantly took a place beside me and muttered that someone could find us here. But she took my right hand anyway, and firmly held it in hers.

At length she said, “Look, Goldy. Don’t think about Olson.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Then let’s go into the office.”

“I can’t.”

I shivered and glanced at the columbarium that Lucille and the parish Art and Architecture committee were having built in honor of old Father Pinckney. Lucille hadn’t obtained Father Olson’s permission, much less a building permit, but excavation was moving ahead anyway, despite the fact that St. Luke’s, and the columbarium, were in the county floodplain. The idea of Father Olson’s ashes being the first interred there made me avert my eyes and look up the steep hill across the street, where the old Aspen Meadow Episcopal Conference Center’s Hymnal House and Brio Barn overlooked our church and Cottonwood Creek. I could see Lucille’s henchwomen still moving through the doors of Hymnal House with platters of food. So much for our wedding reception in the historic district.

“Let’s go,” I said. “This is depressing me.”

Once we’d entered the church office building, Marla sat me down and asked if I needed anything.

“Just Arch. And nobody else, please. Maybe Julian,” I added. “I don’t want to go home, and Tom promised he’d be along as soon as he could get away.”

“Gotcha.” Marla shut the heavy wooden door behind her.

The air in the office building seemed stuffier than the church. Some of the remnants of the ongoing renovation were piled by the desk in the secretary’s outer office: torn-out drywall, pipes, an old faucet. My street clothes and garment bag hung forlornly on a door hook beside a faded reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. I gazed at the painting, in which a sunlit Jesus and eleven followers talk and gesticulate while Judas reaches for food, his face in shadow. My eyes were drawn to the photographs above the desk: Father Olson, somber with Sportsmen Against Hunger and the carcass of an elk, smiling with the Aspen Meadow Habitat for Humanity Committee, standing proudly with the committee I was on with him, the diocesan Board of Theological Examiners. Had been on with him. Someone would have to call the diocesan office. A photograph over the desk made my ears ring: dark-bearded Olson, holding a tiny white-robed infant and bending over the baptismal font. Someone would have to arrange the funeral. The first rites to the last.

I tried to open one of the old windows, but it was painted shut. I turned away and willed myself not to think of Ted Olson dying. Dead. What ran through my head were images of him alive. Olson laughing and arguing at our Theological Examiners’ meeting; Olson rolling his eyes as I shook out an enormous molded grapefruit salad for the Women’s Prayer Group; Olson preaching on his favorite topic—renewal.

And then in my recollection his face was suddenly, vividly, up close, in one of our early premarital counseling sessions. I had never really known Ted Olson until we began that very personal journey into discussing Tom’s and my relationship. I recalled the skin at the sides of his eyes crinkling deeply when he laughed, his slender fingers absently stroking his dark beard when he listened. For the sessions, he had worn jeans topped with dark turtlenecks instead of his customary black clerical shirt and white collar. Sitting in his tweed-covered swivel chair, he had lifted one dark eyebrow and eyed me skeptically.

“And why exactly do you want to get married again?”

“Second time’s the charm.”

A mischievous smile curled his mouth. “Do you always hide behind the flip answer?”

“It helps.”

Sometimes it helped. And now Olson was gone. I tried again to breathe deeply and told myself to stop thinking about him. But I couldn’t.

“Mom?”

Arch stood uneasily between the secretary’s desk and a stack of contorted water pipes. He bit the inside of his cheek and tugged on the hem of the tux.

“Do you want me to leave? Marla said I should come over.”

“No, no, I’m glad you came.” I asked him to sit down so I could explain that Father Olson, who had been due to present Arch for confirmation this month, wasn’t going to show up. And why.

“Yeah, I heard,” he said haltingly when I’d told him the news. He raised his chin and pushed his glasses up his freckled nose. In Aspen Meadow, a mountain town that was more like a village than a suburb, Arch had had much experience of death. Here, the two of us knew a larger group of people than I ever had in the towns I’d lived in before moving to Colorado. For Arch, to experience townspeople killed in skiing and car accidents, in avalanches, by cancer or of heart attacks, was unfortunately commonplace.

He asked in a low voice, “Do they know how it happened yet?”

“Tom will.”

Beneath his freckles, Arch’s face had turned translucently white. The skin under his eyes was dark as pitch. “Where is Tom? Will he be here soon?”

When I nodded, he said, “Julian wants to know what you want to do with the food.”

“Oh, Lord. I don’t know.”

Arch waited for me to elaborate. Then he went on. “Something else. Mrs. Boatwright, you know?” When I nodded, he said, “Well, they’re waiting to take her when the Mountain Rescue Team gets here. But …” He stopped.

“What is it, Arch? Things couldn’t get much worse.”

“She was sitting out there in the hall, you know, after she passed out. Then she saw me and like, signaled me over. She told me in this loud whisper to ask you to donate the food to Aspen Meadow Outreach. ‘Obviously your mother won’t be able to use it today,’ ” Arch whispered in an uncannily throaty imitation, “ ‘and I’ve seen this kind of thing before.’ ”

“Seen a priest die before a wedding?”

“No.” Arch drew his lips into a thoughtful pucker, then continued. “Mrs. Boatwright said she’d seen a groom change his mind.” He singsonged, “ ‘Sometimes they just can’t go through with it.’ ” He’d always had a talent for imitation, but I’d never been devastated by the results before.

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I’d have to ask you. About the food. I didn’t say anything about Tom. I mean, is that rude or what?”

“Very. The nerve. Listen, Arch,” I said defiantly, “Tom called here and asked for me, for heaven’s sake. He didn’t change his mind. Father Olson is dead. And Tom asked if I wanted to get married tonight, just not in the church.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not, are you?” my son asked. When I groaned, he added, “So what should we do with the food platters?”

I rubbed my temples. I was developing a blinding headache. “I’ll figure something out when I get home. I can’t fret about it now. Would you please ask Julian to pack everything into the van?”

“Okay, but there’s one more thing …”

“Arch!”

“Mom! Sorry! Julian wants to know what he should do with your parents.”

“Give them to Aspen Meadow Outreach.”

“Mom! And I hate to tell you, but Grandma and Grandpa asked me if the groom had changed his mind, too.”

“Great.” I reflected for a moment. I couldn’t just abandon my parents at the church. They’d been reluctant to venture from the Jersey shore to the high altitude of the Rockies in the first place. They felt uncomfortable in my modest house, with my modest life. I mean, I’d married a doctor, which they’d deemed good, gotten a divorce, which they saw as unfortunate, and gone into food service, which they found lamentable. Now I was marrying a cop. My parents did not view this as a move in the right direction, and unspoken behind their cautionary words about hasty marriages was the sense that they hadn’t done very well on their investment in their only daughter. “Invite them back to the house,” I told Arch. “Their plane goes out late this afternoon anyway, wedding or no wedding. Tell them I’ll be along as soon as Tom gets here. Then we can make a few plans. And Arch—thanks. I’m really sorry about all this.”

He hesitated. “So there isn’t going to be a wedding, then.”

I gave him a brief hug. “No, hon. Not today.”

“I’m really sorry, Mom.” He pulled away and concentrated his gaze on the bookshelves. “You don’t think Tom Schulz would just not show up, do you?”

My ears started to ring. “With the priest dead? No. It’s just, you know, with this—” I did not finish the thought. “Don’t worry,” I said finally. “Tom and I are going to get married. Here at the church, too. Just not this very minute.”

When he raised his head, Arch’s young face was taut with disappointment. Wordlessly, he clomped out of the office door.

An oppressive silence again descended on the old building. I sat pleating the beige silk between my fingers. Within moments there was the sudden overhead scraping from the family of raccoons. When they were undisturbed by the presence of people, they noisily reclaimed their territory. Their scratching made my flesh crawl.

“Enough!” I shouted as I heaved a hymnal at the ceiling. It slammed against the rafters with a satisfying thwack.

That shut them up. I picked the hymnal off the floor and threw it against the wall. The shock reverberated through a bookshelf. A pile of theology books thudded to the floor; notes popped off a bulletin board; my street-clothes fell from the hook. I walked across the office, lowered myself into the tweed swivel chair, then quickly jumped out. The chair was Ted Olson’s.

Disconsolately, I threaded my way through the debris of torn pipes and broken drywall to the secretary’s office. Through the thick windows I saw the Mountain Rescue ambulance arrive and then swiftly depart, presumably with Lucille Boatwright. Guests streamed out of the church, heads bowed, as if it were the end of the Good Friday liturgy instead of an aborted wedding ceremony. So much for the silent prayer service.

Gripping bowls and then the cake, Julian Teller did his loyal-assistant routine and made several laborious trips out to my van. I yearned to help him. But I couldn’t bear the thought of clearing the parish kitchen of food that was supposed to be served after my own wedding. Finally Julian escorted my bewildered parents, with Arch, to the parking lot. The van revved and took off.

What seemed like an eternity later, a cream-and-black Sheriff’s Department vehicle pulled up in the lot. First one, then a second and third official car skidded on patches of ice. Their tires spun and spewed small waves of gravel before coming to a rest on the other side of the columbarium construction. Uniformed officers emerged. My breath fogged the window as I waited anxiously for Tom Schulz to appear. I folded my chilled hands and debated about rushing out. I should have told Tom I would be in the office.

I tapped on the glass when two grim-faced policemen I knew, partners named Boyd and Armstrong, climbed out of their cars and strode to the church entrance. After a few moments, both officers emerged from the church’s side door. They walked up the muddy flagstones to the office building. I knew they were on duty that day as they had been unable to come to our wedding. Pacing behind them somewhat stiffly was a woman with long brown hair. She carried a bulging Hefty bag. She was familiar looking. A policewoman, perhaps.

Boyd and Armstrong pushed into the office first. Like most policemen, they had a brusque, businesslike air about them. Boyd, short and barrel-shaped, stopped abruptly at the sight of me. He stood, feet apart, and rubbed one hand over black hair that had been shorn close in a Marine-style crewcut. Underneath his unzipped Sheriff’s Department leather jacket, his shirt was too snug around his bulky midsection, a pot belly that had increased in size since he’d stopped smoking several months ago. He was gnawing one of the wooden matches he had taken to chewing to keep from overeating. Behind him, tall, acne-scarred Armstrong, whose few wisps of light-brown hair had strayed off the bald spot they were supposed to conceal, surveyed the room bitterly. The woman, whom I judged to be about fifty, unbuttoned her oversized black coat. That task concluded, she held back, clutching her bag to her chest, mutely watching me.

“Where’s Tom?” I demanded.

Boyd and Armstrong exchanged a glance. Boyd bit down hard on the match. The woman gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head, sending her lanky hair swinging.

Boyd said, “Sit down, Miss Bear.”

“Why?” I remained standing. “Don’t patronize me, please. And you know my name is Goldy, Officer Boyd. Where’s Tom? He called me about Father Olson. Does Tom know I’m still here?”

Boyd stopped chewing the match. His eyes flicked away from me before he said, “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

“What?” Panic creaked in my voice. What else could go wrong on this day that was supposed to be so wondrous? “Is Tom all right? Where is he?”

Armstrong held up one hand. He looked seriously down his pockmarked nose at me before replying. “Somebody must have been out there. Still there,” he announced with agonizing logic. “We think. Out at the priest’s place. Schulz called us, then you. Looks like he went back out to be by the body. Maybe he wanted to look around.”

“Where is Tom?” I repeated. “Why are you all here?” I demanded, too loudly.

Boyd stopped rubbing his head and looked me squarely in the eyes. He gestured at the woman. “Helen Keene here is our victim advocate.”

I said, “Victim advocate? But Olson wasn’t married, he lived alone. Who’s the vic—”

“I’m sorry, Goldy.” Boyd shifted the match from one side of his mouth to the other, inhaled raggedly, and looked at a small notebook he’d pulled out of his pocket. “We got to Olson’s at 11:46. Didn’t see Schulz, but his vehicle was there. Signs of a struggle near Olson’s body, which was near the bank of Cottonwood Creek.” He studied a grimy page of his notebook, then added, “Looks like Schulz might have fallen or been pushed down the bank. He dropped some articles, then dragged himself up the creek bank.”

“Where is he?”

Boyd took another deep breath. “It appears somebody got the drop on Schulz.” He glanced at Armstrong, avoiding my eyes. “Looks like the perp was still there. Something happened, there was a struggle—”

“Tell me.”

“Schulz is missing,” Boyd said tonelessly.