Dark Tort gbcm-13 Page 29

  I had known that Uriah was helping set up the pastoral center and had continued the work after Charlie’s death, and I had speculated that Charlie might have left his good friend something in his will. But I’d had no clue that Charlie was granting the bishop a sinecure post as part of his estate. Besides Charlie’s lawyers, only Uriah and officials at the Diocese of Colorado would have been informed of the bequest. Since Charlie’s will was still going through probate, Uriah could not yet officially take up his duties as director of the center, but it wasn’t unusual for the diocese to issue a press release to record a gift that was coming. It makes the donor—the testamentary, if you want to get technical—happy to be celebrated for his munificence during his lifetime.

  I didn’t read The Living Church—I didn’t have time—and apparently no one in Marla’s gossip network did either, as we’d picked up no word of Uriah’s windfall. Certainly, his position-to-be had not been publicized in Aspen Meadow. But in Utah, Althea Mannheim had seen the article about it, and had promptly traveled to Colorado and met with Charlie Baker. Which meant that she had indeed been talking about the bishop when she was dying in the Emergency Room. Suddenly the vague possibility of connections had become a live circuit.

  So the question became, What specifically had Althea known about Uriah and imparted to Charlie? If Uriah had stolen something, as Althea seemed to claim, what was she accusing him of stealing? K.D. had thought Althea had muttered “a pattern.” Hmm.

  As Grace had pointed out, I was an Episcopalian, too, and a long-time one, at that. Plus, I was married to a cop. So I had all kinds of knowledge about the church and its liturgies, and unfortunately, I knew all too well about the valuable ecclesiastical stuff that could be filched. One time, Tom had prosecuted thieves who’d stolen a gold cross from St. Luke’s. After that, Father Biesbrouck had been forced to lock up the church building at night. Another time, a shady husband of a member of the Altar Guild had purloined a jewel-encrusted chalice, and tried to pawn it.

  But there was another item of potential value that someone could steal. I doubted that Bishop Uriah, aka Bitch Yoreye, had pocketed a pattern. I conjectured—and maybe it was a leap, but not that much of one—that he’d pilfered a paten, the dish that holds the Communion wafers at the Eucharist.

  If the bishop had stolen a paten, and if this had successfully been kept secret, could the bishop have stolen paintings, too?

  Although I was trying to wean myself off of cell-phone usage while I was driving, I did put in a call to Tom. If it was possible that Bishop Uriah stole something, and delivering the news had had deadly consequences for Althea Mannheim, then it was time to get law enforcement to bring in Frederica Tuller, ASAP. Perhaps she could be scared into breaking whatever confidentiality she’d felt bound to keep, by hearing about what it meant to be a material witness after the fact.

  When I’d given Tom an abbreviated version of my visit with Grace Mannheim and the article in The Living Church, he said he would get right on the phone with law enforcement in Utah. Meanwhile, he said, he was fixing Mexican food for us for dinner. And oh yes, the events planner with the Diocese of Colorado had called, and could we please prepare a separate vegetarian entrée for tomorrow night? Two of the attorneys did not eat meat.

  “Not at meals, anyway,” I muttered, but Tom only laughed. I said we should be home in an hour.

  “Finally!” Julian cried when he hopped in the car. “I’ve been wanting to tell you something. Whole Foods is having a special on organically raised chicken, and I thought you might want to pick some up for tomorrow night.”

  “We could do that, but you’ll be delighted to know you were right. We do indeed need to come up with a vegetarian main dish for a couple of lawyers. And pick up some high-quality whipping cream, would you? We need a multilayered, show-stopping dessert. A dark torte.”

  Like Tom, Julian laughed. But at Whole Foods, I gave him free rein to choose ingredients to make whatever main dish he thought would suit the dinner. Then he got serious. And he appeared flattered.

  A little over an hour later, we were all back in our kitchen, bustling around with our various projects. Arch and Gus were spending the night over at the Vikarioses’ house. All weekend homework had been done, they’d assured Tom, and Gus’s grandparents would take them to school the next morning. I certainly hoped the two boys would not get tired of each other, but Tom assured me that they had quite a few years to catch up on being brothers, and they were going to be just fine.

  Julian announced he was going to come up with an Artichoke and Brie Pie for the next night. Once he’d decided on that, he concentrated on slicing Brie and lightly steaming artichokes. He filled a deep pie dish with the egg-laced mélange, placed it in the oven, then hunted around our cupboards for some dried fruits. Once he’d found some glacé apricots, he began melting dark bittersweet chocolate and unsalted butter over the stove and said he would have some Chocolate Lovers’ Dipped Fruits ready to go with, as he disdainfully put it, “your showstopper.”

  Yeesh!

  For my part, I needed a dark torte, one that did not include chocolate, so the flavors from Julian’s dessert wouldn’t clash with my own. I found some eggs in the walk-in, then worked on pulverizing zwieback biscuits and pecans, locating the most deeply flavored cinnamon money could buy, as well as measuring out ground cloves that were so fragrant they made me want to swoon.

  Tom was putting the finishing touches on a sauce made of fresh tomatoes, chilies, and onions that he intended to pour over a dish of fat cheese enchiladas that he had already made for us for dinner. About halfway through mixing up the torte, I had some trouble stirring all the ingredients into the batter I’d concocted. So I asked Tom for help.

  “I’m making a dark torte, husband. Could you help?”

  “A tort like a wrong, or a torte like a cake?”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Miss G., with you there’s no telling.”

  Honestly, that man. The three of us were having so much fun working together in the kitchen, I began to ponder the age-old question posed by the same folks who came up with the chicken-and-egg conundrum: Which is more fun, cooking or eating?

  Well. As soon as I sank my teeth into Tom’s juicy, fat, sizzling enchiladas, with their filling of three luscious melted cheeses spurting out beneath his savory topping of chilies, onions, and tomatoes from our own plants, I knew the answer to that one. And it wasn’t that cooking was more fun.

  “You haven’t asked how I did with Utah law enforcement,” Tom said, when we’d all oohed and aahed over his enchiladas.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have heard back this quickly!” I exclaimed.

  “Oho, Frederica Tuller sang like the proverbial Arizona cardinal.”

  “She’s in Utah,” Julian reminded him.

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t think of a good—”

  “Tom!”

  “Take it easy, Miss G. All right. To escape possible prosecution for obstruction of justice, Frederica Tuller told us the whole story. The reason Althea Mannheim probably was reluctant to tell her cousin Grace why she was visiting is that it was something belonging to their mutual grandparents that had been stolen. An antique gold chalice and paten, used for Communion services on Holy Days there at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. But they were found at Bishop Sutherland’s residence. When he was apprehended, he said the chalice and paten had been given to him, not to the cathedral. Which of course was baloney, since they’d been used at the cathedral since long before he’d gotten there.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Well,” Tom interjected, “for the church’s sake, everything got covered up. Because once Bishop Sutherland was caught, he worked out a deal with the Diocese of Southern Utah. A confidential deal, with the only people participating being the bishop-elect, the chancellor, who’s their lawyer, I guess—”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “And Bishop Sutherland.”

  “How di
d they ever apprehend him?” I asked.

  “That’s where our friend Althea Mannheim comes in. You see, she’s on the Altar Guild. And even though Bishop Sutherland had counted on getting away with this, he hadn’t counted on Althea Mannheim discovering the loss…and breaking into his house and searching it until she found them!”

  “I’ve heard of taking the law into your own hands,” I said.

  “This is the Wild West,” Julian said. “What did they do to Althea?”

  “You ever try to arrest an elderly woman who’s just uncovered, via breaking and entering, a three-million-dollar heist?” Tom asked mildly. “Piece of advice: don’t.”

  “Three million dollars?” I repeated, incredulous.

  “Black-market value of antique gold chalice and paten,” Tom said ruefully.

  Julian asked, “Did the church get their stuff back?”

  “Yes,” said Tom. “And Uriah Sutherland claimed he had heart problems. That’s how he got out of Utah with his reputation more or less intact.”

  “Less and less,” I said, “the more I know. Do you think Uriah Sutherland ran down Althea Mannheim?”

  “We don’t know,” Tom said. “But we’re working on that, too.”

  The next morning, it snowed. Gus and Arch called to say how ticked off they were that CBHS was still having classes. But as Gus’s grandfather drove oh-so-slowly down to Denver, the radio announced that CBHS had been closed after all. Arch called us, gleeful, from the road.

  The plumbing contractor who’d been working on the lines at the Roundhouse called to say he had good news and bad news. The good news was that the plumbing lines were done and that the Roundhouse was good to go for our dinner tonight. The bad news was that his subcontractors had tracked in “quite a bit” of mud over the past couple of weeks. If we were going to go ahead with the dinner in the Roundhouse that night, we might want to come in and do some cleaning.

  I said, “You can’t win.”

  Tom announced that they’d called from the department asking him to come in early, but he could stave them off for a few hours to help with the cleaning. I told him to go on, deal with Louise Upton. I’d rather clean.

  Julian cheerfully offered to help me with the scrubbing. Marla, who had had a sore throat—all that gossiping, Julian teased her—since the party Saturday afternoon, had missed the christening and was therefore “starved,” as she put it, for news. She would go to the grocery store and buy ammonia, buckets, and brushes, she promised, and might even help us do the work, she promised further, if we would fill her in on what she’d missed over the past—well, let’s see—day.

  We said we’d take all the help we could get.

  The actual mess at the Roundhouse would have been colossally depressing if I had not had Julian and Marla to help clean up. Marla, dressed in sequined orange jeans and silk T-shirt with matching headband, proved true to her word and immediately began wiping down the tables in the Roundhouse’s hexagonal dining room. Julian had claimed the kitchen, with at least half an inch of dried mud covering most of the wood floor, as his special province to get into working order.

  “You two will want to visit anyway,” he said by way of dismissal. “And I’ve heard all the latest gossip from Goldy already.”

  So I told Marla everything as we worked for six hours cleaning the Roundhouse. I told her about the paintings and inventories Dusty had hidden in her blind grandfather’s room, the arrest of Louise Upton (“I never trusted her” was Marla’s comment), my visits with K. D. Chenault and Grace Mannheim, and Bishop Uriah Sutherland’s stealing of valuable antiques. And then there was Charlie Baker’s changed will, the contents of which I doubted Richard Chenault would give up without a fight over a client’s right to confidentiality. Oh, confidentiality! Is it ever enforced?

  “And it may not matter to Richard,” I commented bitterly, “since Charlie’s dead.”

  “Charlie is indeed dead,” Marla replied. “But Uriah or no Uriah, once Charlie’s will is done slogging its way through probate, this Mountain Pastoral Center will get built, and Charlie will live through an institution that will do good things for clergy. Needed things.” She looked around the dining room as she stretched her back. “Listen, girlfriend, I’m officially wiped out. I’m supposed to be going to this ribbon cutting, and coming back here for the dinner, since I’m one of the ones who put up additional money so that the center could be started before Charlie’s estate was settled.”

  “Oho,” I said, “so that’s how they got the construction going so early.”

  “It is indeed,” said Marla. “But Meg Blatchford will be coming, too, to both the ribbon cutting and the dinner. So the evening won’t be totally without the possibility of fun. Meg,” she added, “was a great believer in Charlie and his work, too.”

  “I know,” I said quietly.

  Marla said she was too sweaty to give me a hug, but would give me a huge one once she returned for the dinner.

  Julian had wrought a miracle in the kitchen, every surface of which sparkled. This was a good thing, as it was already four o’clock. At five, the guests were having champagne—paid for by an anonymous donor, the events coordinator had assured me when she dropped off the ice cream—up by the construction site. I chuckled and shook my head. Marla had probably heard the diocese wasn’t planning to serve booze at the ribbon cutting and had immediately rectified that situation.

  At twenty to five, when I had almost worked my way through the necessary pounding of the chicken breasts, my cell rang. Aspen Meadow Imports? I was sure it was a wrong number, but I answered it anyway.

  “This is Gary over at A-M Imports,” came an insistent, hoarse male voice. “You the lady tore the door off the Rover?”

  “Um, well, sort of.”

  “Well, is you or isn’t you?” More impatient this time.

  “I am! I am! Have you found a replacement door already?”

  “No, but what I do got is a bear coming down every night, getting into our garbage! Had to put it inside, lock the doors, you unnerstand?”

  “Yes, but I’ve got a dinner—”

  “Just listen, will ya? You got garbage in this damn Rover! And it stinks! Bear comes down every night, starts pawing at the garage door, he can’t get in, so last night he broke one of the garage windows—”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, feverishly imagining the guests at the ribbon cutting swilling their champagne and commenting to one another about how hungry they were getting. “Tell me what you need.”

  “What I need? What I need is for you to come get your trash, lady! We’re on Highway 203, near the innerstate. Close at five. You don’t come get this garbage, I’m rolling the Rover into the street.”

  “No, don’t do that—”

  But he was gone.

  “Julian,” I said desperately, “we’ve got a problem.” I explained to him about the garbage situation, and how it was my fault.

  He stopped working on the wild rice. “Oh my, I forgot all about that trash.”

  “So did I. It was back when I first suspected Bishop Uriah was up to something. He was listening too intently to some of the conversations at the party, and I just thought…oh, never mind. It was a long shot. But if I don’t go get the garbage, Ghastly Grammar Gary is going to roll the Rover into the street—”

  “You want me to go get the trash bags?” asked Julian, eyeing his watch. “Or are you asking if you should…wait. You go. I’ve been working in a restaurant, I can get these dishes out in a hurry. I know what I’m doing, Goldy. You’ll be back by the time we serve.”

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t. Because the snow we’d had the previous evening had turned to ice with the setting of the sun, it took my catering van with its nearly bald tires almost forty minutes to get to Gary’s, well past closing time. Gary, who’d stayed late, was none too happy. But then he saw my van with its logo, and he hit me with a barrage of questions about the best way to cook brats. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ignore this interrogation because Gary sti
ll had the Rover locked inside his garage with its bear-broken window. I didn’t ask him why he hadn’t moved the car out into the street as he’d threatened, because at that point I was ready to roll Gary out into the highway myself.

  “Just cook the brats in beer!” I cried, exasperated. This, like “Drink me,” was the magic word that opened the door, and Gary explained that that was exactly how he’d told his wife to cook ’em, but she wouldn’t listen.

  “I wonder why,” I muttered under my breath, as I grabbed the Ellises’ garbage bag, heaved it over my shoulder, and raced to the van. Gary was still calling questions to me, this time about whether you should put mashed potatoes into taco filling. But I ignored him.

  Back at the Roundhouse, Uriah was addressing the group of assembled big donors. Judging from the glazed looks in the guests’ eyes, if they had the chance to do it all over, they would give their money to the library.

  “Gosh, boss,” Julian reprimanded me. “What the hell! Did you have to pay him for that trash?”

  “Pretty much,” I said, without elaboration.

  Julian, as usual, had managed magnificently. Everyone, he reported, had flipped for the Chicken Piccata, with its tart, creamy sauce of lemon, white wine, and butter. The Artichoke-Brie Pie had gone over well with the vegetarians. Even the wild rice and green beans had been hits.

  “Thank you so very, very much,” I kept repeating. “What’s happening?”

  “They’ve had their torte and chocolate-dipped fruits. Richard Chenault introduced his dear friend Nora Ellis, or at least that’s what he called her. Nora Ellis introduced her father, Uriah, Charlie’s dear friend, and so forth.”

  I eyed the stacks of plates. “Can we start on the dishes?”

  “Nope. Donald Ellis squirted back here a few minutes ago and said his father-in-law had asked for quiet while he’s talking.”