The Last Suppers Read online

  “Just from falling down into the creek, we think.” Armstrong tsked.

  “Okay, look,” said Boyd, scratching his close-cropped head furiously and chewing the match, “we’ll tell you what we know. Schulz told Dispatch he was going to call you, because of the wedding. Did he?” I nodded. My heart was racing. “We need to talk to you about your conversation with him. But first we need you to go out there, to Olson’s place, to have you look at some stuff.”

  “What stuff? Stuff at Father Olson’s house?” Sick with confusion, I looked around the church office. Wouldn’t there be something here that would help? I tried and failed to summon Tom’s logical voice, his explanations of the inevitable steps in an investigation.

  Boyd interjected, “Don’t worry, we’re going to come back here. Eventually.”

  I said, “I just don’t understand.”

  Armstrong’s tall shape loomed too close to me. “It goes like this: A cop gets surprised. He’s going to try to distract the perp, especially if the perp has a weapon. So say the guy wants to kidnap the policeman. Our guy’s going to drop stuff at the scene, make clues, anything for us to follow—”

  I pressed my lips together and Armstrong abruptly fell silent. His words fogged my brain. Too much information, too disorganized, was coming too fast. Helen Keene patted my back. I longed to leave this room. Tom Schulz had disappeared. I wondered where Arch was, then remembered he had gone with Julian and my parents.

  “Miss Bear,” said Boyd. “Goldy. We really need your attention. Time’s important here.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m coming with you. I want to go right now.” I did not add this instant, although that was what went through my mind.

  Helen Keene helped me to my feet. Armstrong yanked on the office door. As we walked, my eyes caught the high mounds of dirt where Lucille and her committee intended for ashes to be interred. The columbarium was just an ice-filled ditch at this point, like a fresh wound in the earth. The fuss over the memorial project seemed so stupid now.

  Boyd flipped a page in his notebook as we crossed the snow-pocked parking lot. “Schulz was supposed to get married at noon. Call comes in, 11:14. Dispatch takes it, Schulz says he’s got a body, gives us the location of,” he squinted at the page, “the Reverend Theodore Olson. Out upper Cottonwood Creek, fire number 29648. Dispatch tells him it’s going to take us thirty minutes to get a team up there. He, Schulz, says Olson was the priest. Olson’s been shot and he just bought it—er, died. Looks like two gunshot wounds in the chest. Schulz tells Dispatch he has to call you. No wedding.” Boyd tapped the notebook. “He didn’t think there was anybody around, obviously. He didn’t mention another vehicle. Olson was dead. We’re analyzing the Dispatch tape now, trying to pick up background noise—”

  I stopped walking. “Do you think Tom chased the killer? Isn’t there a trail or something? Please. Tell me. I have to know.”

  Helen Keene picked up the quilt which had fallen from my shoulders. Shifting from one foot to the other, Armstrong hovered over us. My questions made him uncomfortable. Finally he said, “The trail ends at a vehicle. Two sets of footprints: Schulz and somebody. We just don’t know what happened. But finding an officer is our top priority. Always.”

  I whirled to face Armstrong. My voice was shrill. “If you’d killed a priest, wouldn’t you just leave? Why would someone hurt Tom?”

  Armstrong made another helpless gesture. “Maybe the perp heard Schulz. Or Schulz spotted him. Recognized him. So the perp panics, hides, and then just loses it. Figures he’ll be caught if he doesn’t take Schulz with him. Or maybe Olson wasn’t dead when Schulz got there, told him something and the shooter went nuts … or maybe Schulz followed him and …” He didn’t finish that thought.

  “For what it’s worth,” Boyd interjected, “we figure this is some kind of amateur. Not that you’re likely to get a professional hit on a priest,” he added uncomfortably.

  “You said there was some stuff Tom dropped. May I see it? Now?”

  “We couldn’t bring it to you.” These were the first words Helen Keene had spoken since her arrival. Her voice was surprisingly young and musical. “We have to leave it at the scene for photo and video. But we need you to come out and take a look. You may be able to help us identify it.”

  Armstrong’s and Boyd’s faces said, Let’s go. Silently, Helen Keene put her arm around me again. We walked quickly, heads down, to the waiting squad car.

  Father Theodore Olson’s house was located northwest of Aspen Meadow proper, in the area the locals call Upper Cottonwood Creek. Driving out of town under a darkening sky, we followed the meandering path of the creek, past ancient shuttered summer dwellings, past the entryway to Arch and Julian’s school, Elk Park Prep. After the school, there was a spate of immense custom homes built in the latest real estate boom—this one fueled by people fleeing the high cost of living in California. Farther up, the landscape turned pastoral. We passed the few ranches that remained from Aspen Meadow’s proud cowboy past. The ranches boasted wide, lush meadows that sprawled along the creek bed. Then Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve loomed suddenly into view, its peaks still covered with winter snow.

  While the police car sped along the winding road, Boyd and Armstrong asked me to repeat my brief conversation with Tom. I reconstructed every line of dialogue as best I could. Were there other voices, background noise, cars starting, any sounds like that? I said no. When I faltered, exhausted, Helen Keene began to talk. Her voice was warm and soothing. Quietly, she asked if there was anything I wanted or needed—coffee or water from their Thermoses? Were there family members who needed to be notified of my whereabouts? I glanced at the dashboard clock and remembered my parents’ flight from Stapleton Airport in Denver. Helen used the cellular phone to call our house. She asked Julian to drive them to their flight for me. I’d be home as soon as I could, she promised him.

  Outside, frozen pellets of snow began to drop, making a staccato noise on the windshield. So we would have had a snowy wedding. I could imagine the snow falling in soft waves past the diamond-shaped window above the St. Luke’s altar, my parents with tears in their eyes, Marla weeping unabashedly, Julian giving Tom and me the V-sign.

  Arch beaming.

  Stop.

  Helen Keene’s voice murmured into the receiver about my delay and helping the authorities. Helen did not mention that Tom Schulz was missing. I was grateful for her help; my voice would give me away, I knew.

  After Helen carefully clicked the cellular phone back in its holder, she turned back to me. She had wide-set brown eyes, thick dark eyebrows, and her long brown hair contained much gray. From the thin folds of dry skin on her square face, I judged her to be older than fifty, possibly even in her early sixties. I wondered if she had ever been an advocate for a bride before.

  She said, “My background is in crisis counseling. My training is in psychology. Schulz told me that was your training, too.”

  “College major. I cook for a living.”

  She smiled, showing large teeth streaked with yellow. “And you’re a mother. So am I, although my children are grown now.”

  I pulled the quilt over my shaking knees. I’d never talked with one of the Sheriff’s Department victim advocates, although their existence was well-publicized in the county. The advocates, both men and women, brought teddy bears and homemade quilts to the victims of accidents and crimes. Tom had told me that after a recent landslide, the advocates had spent the day in a hospital emergency room, giving out over forty quilts. They did a lot of good work, he’d said, with people who were hurt, with people who had lost loved ones….

  Helen’s smile held through my silence. Tom would have said, Tell me how you see her. What he meant was, describe her. Suddenly I could imagine Helen Keene bringing an oversize container of Kool-Aid into her children’s elementary school classes on Field Day. When the Shriners’ circus came to town, I saw her shuffling onto a schoolbus to help chaperone the boisterous class on its bumpy trip. Now her gentle smi
le faded to seriousness. “Goldy, we need to talk. You’re going to have to decide what people you’re going to tell about this. Among your friends, I mean. If you’re going to keep it together and help us, you need to take care of yourself.”

  “Decide who I’m going to tell about the canceled wedding, Tom disappearing, what? I want to help find him,” I said, without adding a doubtful comment on how effective I was afraid the Sheriff’s Department could be without Tom Schulz.

  Again Helen put her hand on my arm. Her short nails were spotted with chipped orange nail polish. Outside, the snow shower thickened; Boyd turned on the windshield wipers. “It’s like any kind of assault,” Helen told me. “It’s a personal violation. Your fiancé has disappeared. So maybe you feel stranded. High feelings, emotional vulnerability.” In the front seat, I heard Boyd snap his match between his teeth. I flinched. Helen went on, “But people won’t think of you as being in need of care. They’re going to think of you as a switchboard operator, full of information. They’ll feel they have to call you to find out the latest developments. Or maybe they’ll just be nosy to see how you’re holding up.” She continued firmly, “You need to decide. Who’re you going to tell how things are going? Who are you going to talk to about how you feel?”

  “All right,” I murmured. I did not know what I would say and to whom. I just wanted Tom back.

  “Something else.” Her voice was still matter-of-fact. “People are going to talk. They’re going to joke. They’re going to say Schulz staged this disappearance to escape getting married to you.” She chewed her bottom lip and looked at me expectantly.

  My face became hot. A spasm of pain swept over me. I said, “They already have. Or at least one woman at the church has. And of course my parents think he’s skipped,” I said with an absurd squeak of laughter.

  Helen shook her long hair. The police car turned right by a row of mailboxes where a Sheriff’s Department car was stationed. Its lights flashed blue and yellow in the snowy gloom. We started up a rutted, muddy road. “Look, Goldy, part of my job as victim advocate is working on how people are going to respond to unexpected cruelties. One of the hardest things I have to deal with is when a child is kidnapped, and the neighbors insist he ran away.” She said firmly, “I know Schulz loved you very much.”

  “Helen—please. Loves.”

  “Sorry.”

  Our car skidded through an ice-covered puddle before stopping by the broken-down split-rail fence that led to Father Olson’s house. With my nerves put on edge by Tom Schulz’s disappearance, I needed to find significance or clues in every detail. Had the fence been broken when I catered a vestry dinner here last month? I could not remember. A lanky policeman standing by another Sheriff’s Department vehicle motioned Boyd through.

  Boyd gunned the engine up the precipitously steep driveway. My mind snagged on a memory. The inclined driveway had been one of the reasons Father Olson had insisted to the vestry, that group of twelve lay people elected to run the temporal affairs of the church, that he needed a four-wheel-drive vehicle. And not just any four-wheel-drive, vestry member Marla had laughingly told me, but a Mercedes 300E 4Matic. The vestry, charged with raising and managing the church finances, had balked. But eventually, according to Marla, the group had acquiesced. This year, they’d even agreed there was sufficient money to hire a curate. Olson had hired the fidgety, over-talkative Father Doug Ramsey. What the vestry had grudgingly admitted was that unlike Father Pinckney, who only visited his favorite parishioners, Father Olson was diligent when it came to visiting shut-ins, even when they lived in the most remote locations. And when those shut-ins died, the treasurer meekly noted, they often left money to the church in direct proportion to how much the priest had come to call. The parishioners whom Father Pinckney had visited had, apparently, not been so generous. In the three years since Olson had arrived, only five shut-ins had died. Nevertheless, parish giving was way up.

  Not only that, Marla told me darkly, but Father Olson had hinted during the heated negotiations for his Mercedes that there was interest in him from another parish seeking a new rector. Forty thousand for a Benz was a lot cheaper than the hundred thou it would cost the parish to search for a new priest, especially since they had just gone through all that when they were looking for a replacement for Pinckney. A hundred thousand dollars? I had asked Marla incredulously. Absolutely, she’d replied, what with putting together a parish questionnaire, crunching and publishing the resulting data, making long-distance calls and flying candidates and committee members hither and yon for interviews, looking for a new rector was absolutely a far more expensive undertaking than buying a German luxury car. And besides, Marla said with a laugh, with the latest bequest, the parish could afford any vehicle or assistant Olson wanted.

  As we passed the first of what I judged to be a dozen police cars, I hit the button to bring down the window, then greedily inhaled icy air. What had happened to the parish with the interest in Olson? With Olson dead, our own church would eventually have to begin a rector search; unlike the Vice President, Doug Ramsey didn’t automatically step into the leader’s shoes. But we were a long way from all that, and the hiring of a new priest was the least of my worries.

  The Sheriff’s Department had to find Tom. I squeezed my eyelids shut as we passed the coroner’s van. Either that, or I would try to find him, I thought absurdly. I would not consider any other outcome. I summoned up Tom’s wide, handsome face, his laconic manner and affectionate smile. I clung to these images. What were Helen’s words? You need to take care of yourself.

  Our vehicle drew up to Ted Olson’s garage. The dusty silver Mercedes sat, hood lifted, amid an array of boxes and lawn clutter that included a badminton net and croquet mallets and wickets. Welcome to the Rockies, I thought, and recalled Tom’s dry comment on easterners who attempted to play croquet on their sloped properties: The guy uphill has the advantage.

  Parked behind the Mercedes was Tom’s dark blue Chrysler. Granite formed in my heart.

  We piled out of the squad car and threaded through lodgepole pines to the front of Olson’s place, a rambling single-story structure with dark horizontal wood paneling and a slightly buckled green shingle roof. Typical Aspen Meadow architecture from the late sixties, it was not too different from the rectory, a parish-owned house, that Father Pinckney had inhabited in Aspen Meadow before he retired. The rectory had been sold when Ted Olson arrived. He’d insisted he wanted to buy his own place outside of town.

  The snow ceased as suddenly as it had begun. A yellow police tape was strung across the walkway to the front door. I glanced up at the covered entranceway and saw a cloisonné pair of intertwined serpents. One of Father Olson’s memorabilia from a pilgrimage to England, no doubt. A mosaic of the serpents was on the floor of some English cathedral. Which one? I couldn’t remember. If the snakes were supposed to bring good luck, I thought uncharitably, they hadn’t worked.

  Another policeman directed us around the side of the house. Here the property sloped down to Cottonwood Creek. I pulled the donated quilt around my shoulders, and with Helen Keene, Boyd, and Armstrong, skirted the perimeter of taut yellow tape. The four of us made our way down the hill littered with fallen logs and underbrush that sloped to the creek. My wedding shoes skidded over slippery pine needles. I knew there was a short path down to the water out the back of Olson’s home. Because the weather had been unusually warm the night of the dinner meeting last month, the vestry had made the descent to and from the creek while I steamed pork dumplings in the kitchen before the stir-fry. From the noise to our left, it was clear that path was still being scoured for some indication of what had happened.

  As I plodded and slipped on the way down, my heart seemed to be taking a thrashing. It was like being caught in the undertow on the Jersey shore where I’d spent childhood summers. Within moments we slid into a narrow strip of meadow. Snow clung thick as dandruff to tufts of withered grass. Bare-branched cottonwoods edged the creek’s path. When I tried to walk towar
d the water, dark mud sucked on the soles of my shoes. Law-enforcement types trudged along the creek bank: One group was doing a video of the crime scene, another took photographs, a third painstakingly measured distances. A cluster of people stood or crouched around a covered bundle on the snow. A white-haired policewoman from one group noted our presence. She motioned us toward them.

  “We’re reconstructing how Schulz was taken,” she said to me without preamble. “Come on over and take a look.” T. Calloway, her nametag said. On the way to the creek bank, she thanked me for coming out and brusquely explained that they would not be ready to move any of the evidence until I identified it. This, she explained, was standard police procedure. “Which was why we needed you right away.”

  “So how could Tom Schulz have been kidnapped?”

  Investigator Calloway shook her head, then stopped abruptly at the six-foot drop-off to the water. She pointed to the other side. “The vehicle was over there. A four-wheel-drive of some kind. Somebody appeared to be prodding Schulz to move forward.”

  But my eyes were drawn to the creek bed itself, where the mud, sand, and rocks had been churned with activity. I saw footprints and ridges. I saw … ah, Lord.

  “I’m sorry,” said Investigator Calloway. “Tell me what you see. I need to know.”

  I pointed toward the water. At first my voice refused to engage, but I forced it out. “That’s Tom’s wallet…. That’s his key ring.”

  “Look out of the water itself. By that large rock.”

  Shallow water rushed around a boulder in the middle of the stream. I squinted. A sandy spit of land almost touched the boulder. On the sand was a small box, which I knew from its size and shape was covered with dark green velvet. The name embossed in gold on the top would be Aspen Meadow Jewelers.

  My headache cut like razor blades. Investigator Calloway’s distant voice said, “The box has a—”