The Last Suppers

THE LAST SUPPERS

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON

Wedding Reception Menu

Smoked Trout with Cream Cheese, Vegetable Terrines, Water Crackers

Spinach Phyllo Triangles

Bacon-Wrapped Artichoke Hearts

Portobello Mushrooms Stuffed with Grilled Chicken, Pest, and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Salad of Field Greens with Balsamic Vinaigrette

Fusilli in Parmesan Cream Sauce

Sliced Roast Tenderloin

Fruit Cup of Fresh Strawberries, Black Grapes, and Kiwi

Heated Sourdough and Parkerhouse Rolls

Dark Chocolate Wedding Cake with White Peppermint Frosting

1

Never cater your own wedding reception. It’s bad luck, sort of like the groom seeing the bride before the service. Death or destruction could result. Not to mention ruined cake.

Thirty minutes before I was due to get married for the – second and last I’d sworn – last time, I was trying to check on stuffed mushrooms as I listened to directions from Lucille Boatwright, head of the Altar Guild, about how to walk. Sixtyish, with an aristocratically wide, high cheekboned face framed by silver hair curled into neat rows. Lucille made the decisions about how the weddings were run at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, no matter what you read in the prayer book. Sway and pause, sway and pause. Goldy are you paying question to me?

At that moment, I would have given anything to see Tom Schulz, bad luck or no. But the groom-to-be was not around. Perhaps he’d had a call on his beeper. The Sheriff’s Department of Furman County, Colorado, put great stock in Tom; he was their top homicide investigator. Still, it was hard to believe the Sheriff’s Department would call on him on this of all days. While Lucille yammered on, I longed for a comforting Schulz embrace before the ceremony. Suddenly our parish’s newly hired organist sounded the opening notes of the first piece of prelude music: Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary. Lucille Boatwright stopped swaying and pausing, whisked the platter of mushrooms out of my hands, and bustled me out of the church kitchen.

In the hall, Lucille crisply ordered a group of whispering women back to work in the kitchen. Then she scurried to retrieve my garment bag from the church nursery. The Sunday School rooms had no privacy, she informed me briskly, and the bride traditionally dressed in the church office building, even if that antiquated edifice was undergoing a horrid renovation. And speaking of horrid: l asked if anyone had been able to get into Hymnal House, another church-owned building, where Tom’s and my wedding reception was supposed to be held. Unfortunately, the old house across the street was locked up tight. Lucille’s stalwart body bristled inside her scarlet suit. She shook the perfect rows of silver hair and announced that Father Olson was supposed to have opened Hymnal House this morning. She herself had had to open the priest’s office building when she’d arrived. Imperiously, she pointed to the empty, unlocked office building, ten yards from the side door of St. Luke’s. Goldy! Pay attention! Twenty-seven-and-a-half minutes.

Great. No groom, no historic Hymnal House dining room, no food being set up. And no caterer; I was trying to be the bride. Clutching my garment bag, l hopped gingerly across the walkway. Gray flagstones and buckled wooden steps led to the St. Luke’s office, a squat century-old building that originally had served as a stagecoach way station between Denver, forty miles to the east, and points west. Small squares of thick-glass windows peeked out from the thick angling of vertical unpeeled pine logs. Now the office building formed part of a national historic district along with the buildings from the once-famous Aspen Meadow Episcopal Conference Center across the street: rustic, log-built Hymnal House and cavernous Brio Barn. I glanced at the higgledy-piggledy boarding-up job that was it the only indication of the pipes that had exploded in the office during a hard freeze this February. At the old conference center, Brio Barn was also falling apart, but the office emergency and its renovation had taken priority. Our parish priest, Father Olson, had told me historic districts ate money way catering clients gobbled hors d’oeuvre. Once I’d pushed through the door to the office, I couldn’t see or hear a soul, much less catch the strains of prelude music, all of which had undergone the required approval of Father “Please-call-me-Ted” Olson. The only noise reaching my ears as I hastily wriggled into my beige silk suit was from a family of raccoons scratching in the attic over the office. I concentrated on a dozen tiny pearl buttons that made me wonder if I should be serving smoked oysters instead of smoked trout. From a purple satin bag looped around the suit’s hanger, I carefully removed and then snapped on a double-strand pearl choker on loan from an upcoming Episcopal Church Women’s fund-raiser. Marla Korman, my best friend and matron of honor, had somehow convinced the churchwomen that letting me wear the two-thousand-dollar bauble would be great advertising for their upcoming jewelry raffle. When she’d proffered the necklace, Marla had waved a plump, bejeweled hand and boasted to me about the unique advantages of her fund-raiser than a bake sale, and a thousand times more profitable.

I looked around for a mirror. Where was Marla, anyway? I sighed; there wasn’t time to worry about what was out of my control. My mind raced over post-wedding details ‘that would have to be altered if no one could find the keys to Hymnal House. lf we had the receiving line and photographs at the church, that would still give my helpers enough time to set up the food in the Hymnal House dining room. – once they forced their way in.

Poking a pearl-topped pin to secure a brimmed hat to my unruly blond hair, I imagined parishioners’ comments on my bridal appearance: Shirley Temple dressing up as Princess Di. I shuddered and visualized the reception food. All the lovely platters and heavy chafing dishes had been hastily left in the church kitchen when the helpers couldn’t get into Hymnal House. Whether the hotel pans would survive the transport across the bumpy ice and gravel of the church parking lot, across the bridge over Cottonwood Creek and Main Street, and up the walkway to the conference center was questionable. One unexpected bump on the gravel, and the smoked trout with cream cheese could spew everywhere. An inept move could send a layer of the carefully constructed cake on a slide into the frigid creek. And if Father Olson droned on about the loveliness of marriage – about which he knew nothing – the Portobello mushrooms would be history.

The low door into the slope-ceilinged office building bumped open.

“As usual, Father Olson is late,” Lucille Boatwright declared, her ice-blue eyes ablaze. “We can’t keep you over here any longer. If Olson wants to give you the premarital blessing, he’ll have to do it in the sacristy. She looked me up and down. “Father Pinckney never would have been late. Never in fifteen years was Father Pinckney late for one wedding.” Blandly conservative Father Pinckney, now retired and living in his native South Carolina, had attained hero status among the older generation in our parish. Despite the fact that the charismatic Father Olson had become our new rector three years ago, Lucille and her cohorts had, for the most part, managed to ignore him.

She lifted her chin. It was wide and dauntingly sharp, and boasted a shuddering dimple. “The bridal bouquets I have arrived.” She narrowed her eyes at the pearl choker. “Did Olson say he was picking up the groom? It looks as if they are both late.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. I bit my lip, then stopped when l realized I was wearing lipstick not my custom. “I don’t know their transportation arrangements, sorry. I haven’t seen either since last night. We had a small supper after the rehearsal here at the church… .” I did not mention to Lucille that after that supper, Tom Schulz and I had undergone our last premarital counseling session with Father Olson. The session had not gone well, which I put down to nerves. But telling anyone in our church a tidbit of personal information was tantamount to publishing it in the local newspaper. This was especially true if you prefaced your comments with, This is confidential.

Lucille groaned at my lack of information and told me to put on my beige wedding shoes. I did; they were even more uncomfortable than I remembered. Then, dutifully, I followed Lucille’s dumpling-shaped body as it swiftly marched back across the ice-and mud-crusted walkway between the old office and the contemporary-style St. Luke’s building. The air was cold; thin sheets of cloud filmed the sky overhead. Rising haze from melting snow formed a pale curtain between the soaring A-shape of the roof and the ridge of distant mountains. I dodged across the flagstones to avoid the mud. Flickers fitted between the lodgepole pines and the construction trenches of the incomplete St. Luke’s columbarium near the parking lot. Farther down, chickadees twittered and dove between bare-branched aspens and the banks of icy swollen Cottonwood Creek.

The high, dramatic strains of the trumpet voluntary reached my ears. This is it; everything’s going to be okay. At that moment, in spite of the awful shoes, the locked Hymnal House, and the too-typical lateness of both priest and groom, excitement zinged up my spine. I’m getting married. Our wedding was going to happen despite the threat of April snow here at eight thousand feet above sea level. Despite the fact that it was a Saturday in Lent, when Father Olson said weddings were not traditionally performed. On that subject, Olson had laughingly informed me, the Altar Guild was having a fit about the luxuriant flower arrangements I’d ordered for the altar during this traditionally penitential season. Unfortunately for church procedure, the last Saturday in Lent was the only time Tom and I could fit getting married into our zany work schedules. We both had to be back in Aspen Meadow by Tuesday so Tom could testify in court and I could cater a three-day meeting of the diocesan Board of Theological Examiners, a church committee to which I’d recently been .appointed. Our three-day honeymoon at the Beaver Creek Lodge would be short, sweet and unencumbered by telephones and food processors.

I hopped gracelessly across the last mud puddle and onto the sidewalk. Actually, the most astonishing fact was that I was getting married at all. In spite of everything. For seven years I had been the wife of an abusive doctor. I’d left the disastrous marriage with a wonderful son, Arch, now twelve; the ability to cook and an emotional scar the size off Pike’s Peak. I had thrown myself into developing a catering business and sworn off marriage forever and ever. But then investigator Tom Schulz had appeared and refused to leave. Tom had convinced me of his kindness and durability, even if we had argued last night. About the afterlife, of all things. Facing marriage for a lifetime, I’d asked at our last premarital counseling session, who cared about Pie in the Sky By-and-By? At the mention of the hereafter, Father Olson had rolled his eyes and murmured, “Ah, eschatology,” as if it were a truffle. My stint as a third-grade Sunday School teacher hadn’t covered it “ ‘til death do us part’.’ Father Olson had said we would have a very long time to discuss it.

“Hurry along now,” chided Lucille as she pulled open the side door to St. Luke’s. From inside the church, the high peals of organ music mingled with the buzz and shuffling of arriving guests. She shooed me into the sacristy, the tiny room adjoining the sanctuary where the priest and acolytes put on their vestments before each service. On the counter next to the parish register lay two bouquets of the same type as the disputed altar flowers: luscious spills of creamy white stock and fragrant freesia, tiny pink carnations and white and pink sweetheart roses. There wad one for me and one for Marla, who in addition to best friend and matron of honor, was the other ex-wife of my first husband. Lucille informed me Marla was out in the narthex, “giggling wildly with that jewelry raffle committee, but what else would you expect?” She would send her back. Lucille’s tone signaled her opinion of both the raffle committee and Marla, its chairwoman. Giving me another of her razor-edged glances, she commanded me to stay put.

Arch craned his neck around the door to the sacristy. He pushed his glasses up his freckled nose and said, “I know. You’re nervous, right?”

“Remember your just day of seventh grade?”

“I’d rather not.” He scooted through the door closed it softly behind him. “Hate to tell you, Mom, but your hat’s on crooked”.

I smiled. Thin-shouldered and narrow-chested, Arch had clearly taken great pains with his own scrubbed and buttoned-up appearance. But the kid-size tuxedo only emphasized the growing up he’d had to do in the last five years. First he had escaped into fantasy role-playing games. Then he’d endured harassment at a new school. Only in the last few months had Arch found a sense of family support from two people – Julian Teller, our nineteen-year-old live-in boarder, and of course, Tom Schulz. For the first time my son seemed genuinely, if precariously, happy.

I turned to look at the crooked headgear in the long mirror behind the sacristy door. As I feared, the glass reflected a short, thirty-one-year-old female with blond corkscrews of hair protruding from a cockeyed hat that looked too sophisticated for her slightly rounded, slightly freckled face. I removed the odious beige silk thing, reseated it, and stabbed ferociously with the hat pin. I loathe hats. Even when catering the most elegant dinners, I never wear a chef’s cap. But Father Olson had suggested my wearing a hat would appease the Altar Guild, whose many rules I was shattering by getting married in Lent, for the second time, with lots of flowers. Arch, on tiptoe behind me, frowned as he adjusted his black-and-silver-striped cravat. The tuxedo was a little big. Nevertheless he looked absolutely dashing. I turned and gave him an impulsive hug.

“You know, Mom, it’s not as if you haven’t done this before.” He pulled away from me and reddened to the roots of his straw-brown hair. “I mean, not just when you married Dad. But all those wedding receptions you’ve catered. They came out okay, even when things went wrong.”

“I know, I know,” I glanced at the empty ring finger of my left hand. Fifteen minutes. “Arch. You don’t know if they got into Hymnal House, do you?”

He grinned gleefully, “Julian broke a window.”

“Oh, Please.”

“It doesn’t look that bad! Julian and the helpers swept up the glass. Now they’re setting up the tables and chafing dishes and everything. He said to tell you.”

“They haven’t started transporting the vegetable terrines, have they?” I asked desperately. “Did Julian drive over the with cake or is he going to try to wheel it across the parking lot? He’ll have to avoid the construction

and did the oven in Hymnal House work?” Under my barrage of questions, Arch shrugged and fiddled with matches for the candle lighters. “Arch,” I pleaded, “could you go ask Marla to come back? I’m sorry, I’m just nervous about getting started.” I strained to hear. “How’re the musicians holding up?”

“Handle’s Water Music is next,” he announced. “I have the whole program memorized. I like the Jeremiah Clarke, because they play it before that TV show, Stories of the Weird.” When I sighed, he touched his cravat and added hastily, ‘You know that lady who dresses like an Indian? Agatha Preston? Anyway, she got out the terrines. The other women haven’t moved them yet. I don’t know about the cake or the construction or the oven. I’ll get Marla, but then one of the church ladies or Father Olson is supposed to tell me when to bring Grandma down the aisle.” He opened the door of the sacristy and peered out. “Man, it looks like a priest convention out there. Did you invite that whole committee you’re on?”

“Honey, I had to. And all the parishioners, too. I’ve been in this church since before you were born. I had to invite everybody or risk offending someone. But I can’t look, it’s bad luck. Is he here yet?”

Arch torqued his head back. “Who?”

“Tom Schulz, silly. Please come back in here.” I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror. My hat was undeniably still crooked.

“All I can se is some guys Tom introduced me to from the SWAT team,” Arch answered. “And back in the open area where you first come into the church? What did you say that was, the columbarium? I think it’s going to be on my confirmation test.”

“Arch, please. A columbarium is a place where they put the ashes of cremated dead people. We’re building one next to St. Luke’s now. The open area in the back of the church is called the narthex. Confuse them and you will have a mess on your hand, not to mention probably flunk the confirmation test.”

Yeah, okay, well, back in the narthex, Marla and her friends are yakking away. And there are thousands of guests, it looks like. Uh-oh, here comes that mean lady from that committee that takes care of the altar linens and money and bread and wine and stuff.”

“The Altar Guild? Who is it?”

He quickly slunk out the door without answering. I wanted tot ell him that someone should load the cake in the van and drive it over to Hymnal House. Filled with resolve to check on doings in the kitchen, I reseated the hat, stalked after Arch, and promptly collided with Lucille Boatwright.

She glared up at me, “Goldy! Where do you think you’re going? Your hat isn’t even on straight. And your hair is a disaster.”

“I’m going to check on the cake and – “

“You are doing nothing of the sort – “ The pealing of the church phone cut short her scolding. “Oh, why hasn’t someone turned on that fool answering machine? Contraption! Father Pinckney never even would have allowed … “ Lucille stormed off, muttering.

I nipped down the hall, past the Sunday School rooms and the oil portrait of the greatly missed former rector, and finally slipped into the kitchen. Any haven in a storm. Besides, if the churchwomen dropped the hotel pans of pasta or scorched the beef, they’d have to wait until the Apocalypse before I catered another of their luncheon meetings.

Happily, the volunteer servers were doing a superb job. Two women pushed carefully out the kitchen’s side door carrying bacon-wrapped, brown sugar-crusted artichoke hearts. Another team picked up the pans of creamy Parmesan-sauced fusilli and flaky phyllo-wrapped spinach turnovers. Crystal bowls brimming with jewellike slices of kiwi, fat strawberries, and thick bunches of black grapes would be next. The smooth, layered terrines, all six of them, were snuggled into coolers and set on wheeled tables next to the juicy tenderloin and sherry-soaked Portobello mushrooms.

Come to think of it, I was kind of hungry. No time for breakfast, so much to do, and … where was the cake? It was supposed to be set up on a special wheeled table already …

“What are you doing here?” gasped a shocked voice. Arch was right: Agatha Preston did look like an Episcopal Pocahontas. Her beaded, sheath-style salmon-colored dress boasted a foot of knotted fringe at the hem, and she wore a needlepointed blue-and-coral headband horizontally across her forehead. Her long braided hair had been dyed into unattractive streaks. At the moment, Agatha’s pretty face had the hidden, sour look of someone who had been passed over for a prize. Perhaps she didn’t enjoy being one of Lucille’s henchwomen. The volunteers whisked platters around us out the kitchen door and gave our little confrontation sidelong glances. Stuttering, I backed up into the refrigerator.

“Checking on the cake,” I said lamely, then whirled to open the refrigerator door before Agatha could question me further. And there it was – the shimmering four-layer creation of ultra-cool, ultra-talented Julian Teller. Julian, in addition to boarding with us and helping with Arch, was an apprentice caterer and ace pastry chef, despite the fact that he was still a senior in high school. When I had told him the traditional wedding cake was white on white, but confessed I was partial to chocolate with mint, he’d run his hands through his bleached, rooster-style haircut and said, “Hey man, it’s your wedding,” then proceeded to concoct a dark fudge cake with white peppermint frosting. When I’d vetoed the traditional topping of bride and groom plastic statuettes – my first wedding cake had had them, and what good had they done me? – Julian had smilingly flourished his frosting gun and created row upon row of abstract curlicues, swaying rosettes, stiff leaves, and curling swags. The flower-mobbed cake resembled a frenzied rock concert.

“Excuse me, Goldy,” said Agatha, less timid this time.

I turned. Agatha’s dress barely concealed a scarecrow figure. She dispelled her unhappy look with a faint smile, and I remembered the last time we’d talked, at a barbecue I’d catered for her husband’s hunting buddies. She’d been wearing a beaded sundress of the same fish-flesh hue, and given me the identical wan smile. Now she made an uncertain shake of the streaked braids.

“Goldy, if you don’t go back to the sacristy, Lucille is going to be extremely upset.”

“Yes, but the cake should be out by now – “

“Please. Hymnal House is almost set up. It’s all going to be fine. You don’t know Lucille when she gets upset.”

Lucky me. I started back down the hall. Unfortunately, that narrow space was filling up with people depositing their it’s-April0in-Colorado-and-might-snow coats in the Sunday School rooms. When they spotted me, Old Home Week officially began. The first to leap in my direction was Father Doug Ramsey, Olson’s tall, gangly new assistant, who was also a member of the diocesan Board of Theological Examiners.

“The star of the show!” he cried, causing heads to turn. Doug Ramsey had a delicate, triangular face and long, loopy ringlets of black hair that made his look closer to eighteen than twenty-eight. His compensation for looking too young was talking too much. “The whole committee’s here,” he gushed,” which is quite a compliment to you. Of course, I don’t suppose the candidates are here, but then again, they’re probably studying for the tests we mean old examiners are dreaming up for them next week … You know, I’ll don a stern expression and ask about the Archbishops of Canterbury, and then canon Montgomery will ask about the history of the Eucharist.” He stopped talking briefly to flutter his knobby fingers dramatically on his chest. “And no matter what the question is, that awful Mitchell Harley will probably flunk again – “

I said desperately, “Doug, please. Have you seen father Olson? He seems to have forgotten today’s the day. In a pinch, could you do a wedding?”

Father Doug Ramsey’s face turned floury-white above his spotless clerical collar. A long, greased comma of black hair quivered over his forehead. Arrested in midspeech, his mouth remained open.

I felt a pang of regret. “I’m kidding, Doug. I just don’t want to be delayed.”

“Oh, no,” he said tersely, then added with characteristic self-absorption, “then you’d never be back in time to do the candidates’ examinations. But … a wedding … I don’t’ know what I’d preach on. Love, I suppose, or maybe the trinity … “

This uneasy speculation was interrupted by a series of unearthly groans. I peered through the crowd in the hall and saw Lucille Boatwright sagging against one of the priests. She was moaning loudly. Remembering Agatha’s warning, I guessed I was seeing Lucille Boatwright very upset.

“I’m coming!’ I cried. “Just wait a sec!”

I shouldered my way through the folks in the hall, all of whom wanted to touch me or ask questions. Where’s Schulz? asked one of the policemen, whose face I vaguely recognized. Where’s Arch? asked a Sunday School teacher. I was in traction and haven’t seen him since I was healed . . A long-ago church friend’s voice: Goldy, what a stunning suit! So much better than that froufrou gown you wore last time, dear. As politely as possible, I brushed the well-intentioned questions and fingers aside. Now my hair, my suit, everything was going to be a mess, I thought uncharitably. Why weren’t these people out in the pews listening to the organist make approved music? Reaching the end of the hall, I saw a priest and a female parishioner ministering to Lucille Boatwright, who had slumped to the floor. Clearly she took the customary procedures more seriously than I ever imagined.

I said, “I was only in the kitchen – “

“We’re going to have to call an ambulance,” said the woman. “I think she’s having a heart attack.”

“But I just stepped down the hall for a moment – “

The cleric looked up at me. His face was very flushed. “I think your fiancé is on the phone,” he said. “There’s some kind of problem – “

I rushed past them into the choir room. The white telephone wire lay coiled on the floor. Bewildered and slightly panicked, I snatched up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” said Tom Schulz. His voice sounded flat, infinitely dejected. In the background I could hear a faint tinkling like windchimes.

“Sorry about what? Where are you?”

“Just a sec.” The phone clacked down on something hard. He came back to the line after a moment. “Miss G.” He sighed deeply. “Tell everybody to go home.”

“What?” This wasn’t happening. “Why? Tom, what’s wrong?”

“I’m out at Olson’s house. He called with car trouble, asked me to come get him. And I found him.”

“You –?”

My fiancé’s voice cracked. “Goldy, he’s dead.”

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 I 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 tot ell 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 … “

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 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 form 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 me 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 ph9otographs 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, n avalanches, by cancer or of heart attacks, was unfortunately commonplace.

He asked in a low voice, “Do they know hot 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 Tome 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 his 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 my 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 streetclothes 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 saves 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 form 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 mid-section, 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.

Body 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.

Body 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.” Body 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? I

Boyd took another deep breath. “It appears somebody go 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.

3

“No.” My legs felt as if they were disintegrating. “No, no.” The walls seemed to sway. Get a grip, I ordered myself. Boyd’s face was a study in misery I could not bear to contemplate. Armstrong shrugged and looked away. Helen Keene eased between the two men. She grasped my elbow firmly, then guided me toward the small striped couch in the secretary’s office.

I could not assimilate Boyd’s words. Got the drop on him. Fell . . pushed down the creek bank. Schulz missing.

It was simply not believable.

“I don’t understand. Where did this happen?” My voice came out like a croak.

Wordlessly, Helen Keene, victim advocate, advocate for me, I realized dully, drew a quilt out of the Hefty bag she was carrying. Gently she pulled it around my shoulders. I was shivering uncontrollably. There was a painful buzzing in my ears. Hold it together, girl, I commanded my inner self. Hold it together now. For Tom.

Boyd and Armstrong exchanged a look. Boyd’s carrot-like fingers caressed his worn notebook. “Sorry. You weren’t even a cop’s wife yet. They get used to this kind of crisis. Or at least used to the idea of this kind of crisis. Well. We’re not sure about the actual events. We believe that’s what happened.” His face was fierce; he held his rotund body in a tight, aggressive stance. “It looks as if Schulz was hurt. But we’re going to find him. We’ll work around the clock.” This was not the matter-of-fact Officer Boyd I had met the previous spring, the Boyd who had proudly announced n January that he’d given up smoking. This wasn’t business-as-usual. This suddenly ferocious Boyd took Tom Schulz’s disappearance as a personal affront.

“What do you mean about his being hurt?” I demanded. Helen Keene put a hand on the quilt that covered my shoulders She sighed softly, regretfully. I refused to look at her.

“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 q 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, it speaks 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 thing 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 …

Helens’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-Air 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 smile faded to seriousness. “Goldy, we need to talk. You’re going to have to decide what people you’re going to tell to 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, overtalkative 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 visit 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: Te 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 toward 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 took 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 – “

“Yes,” I interrupted. “He would have had that box with him.” I did not need to be reminded of the box’s contents, the thin gold band Tom and I had picked out. His ring was still in Father Olson’s office at the church. I said, ‘He was so big, strong… I still don’t understand how someone could have, that is, could have been more than one person – “

Calloway held up one finger. She shook her head. “Besides Schulz’s, there’s only one set of footprints.”

There was a fresh rustle of activity from the group by the creek bank. Investigator Calloway motioned us back toward the voices.

“Yeah, it’s his.”

“I think so.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me … “

Calloway lifted one bushy white eyebrow. “Looks like we might have one more thing for you, Miss Bear.”

Together we walked to a group of police officers by the thick stand of cottonwoods. My eyes were drawn to the corpse-sized lump covered with dark material. It was hard to believe I would never see Father Olson again. The crowd fell silent, then parted abruptly in front of us.

“Schulz might have tossed it over here. Have her take a look at it.” The speaker was an angular man with shaggy red hair and a gravelly voice. He pointed to a small soggy spiral notebook under the cottonwoods. Someone threw a poncho on the wet grass and mud in front of the notebook. Awkwardly, I knelt as directed, feeling all eyes on me. Investigator Calloway crouched beside me and spoke gently.

“Don’t touch it. Again, you’re more familiar with him, you can tell us if it’s Schulz’s.”

The top page of the notebook was wet. The writing on it was slightly smeared. I barely noticed Boyd as he squatted beside Calloway and me. Slashing strokes written with a blue ballpoint indicated the notes had been hurriedly taken, undoubtedly scribbled in an awkward position. Timidly, I read aloud:

w Nissan van

1049 v alv gswx2chst

d d

B. – Read – Judas?

vm p.r.a.y.

1133 vdd

My head throbbed. I reread the scribbles.

“Well?” demanded Inspector Calloway.

I said nothing.

Boyd grunted.

Frustrated, Investigator Calloway asked, “Is there anything you can tell us?”

I pulled back and looked into Calloway’s shred hazel eyes. Her look and her questions were urgent. I knew she needed my help to find Tom and solve this horrific murder. Pain squeezed my voice. I told her, “The handwriting is Tom Schulz’s. I don’t know what he was trying to say.”

4

Boyd pressed his thin lips together, scowling down at the sodden spiral notebook. “Schulz and his notes. Memory enhancer, he called it.” He flung his match into the snow and craned his stubby neck to reread the scribbles. “GSW times two. Two gunshot wounds, we knew that. DD. Looks like he might have gotten a dying declaration.”

Investigator Calloway sighed. “Now, if we cold just figure out what the victim said. And we’ll need to read up about Judas.” She concentrated her gaze on me. “Know anybody with a white van? People with names, initials VM or B?”

I felt dizzy. His handwriting. I could hear my teeth chattering. A vision of a shotgun welled up. Where was the gun now? How much ammunition did it have?

“Please, Miss Bear. A van. A white Nissan van. Sound familiar?”

“Ah, I have a white van. It says … “ I roped for words. “Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! On the side. But it’s a Volkswagen, not a Nissan.”

“is your van missing? Where was it this morning?”

With difficulty, I though back. My van had spent the morning being filled with platters of food for our wedding reception. I told her so. Investigator Calloway nodded. She assured me her investigative team would check with Olsons’ neighbors as well as with people who lived along Upper Cottonwood Creek Road, to see if anybody else saw a van.

I stared at the wilted notebook that Tom had, presumably, somehow managed to toss into the bushes. The paper in front of me must hold some clue to what had happened out here. Impenetrable hieroglyphics stared back.

“Don’t you cops use some kind of standard shorthand? That’s what it looks like to me.”

Boyd pulled out his pad and began writing on it. “Nothing standard,” he said gruffly. “GSW and DD I already told you. Gunshot wounds. Dying Declaration. The victim was alive. The victim was dead. Somebody drove a van. A reference to praying and the Bible. We’ll get you a copy of this. If you can puzzle over it some more, that would sure help.”

“Wait, though,” said Calloway. “Wait. Look at it again, Miss Bear. VM P.R.A.Y? Could all those periods in there have some significance for Schulz? Or something from your church, maybe? Is P.R.AY. an acronym for some church organization? Schulz use V for victim on the first line, so could VM refer to that? We’ll check through his files, see what we can come up with. Maybe you have something else he’s written, some notes to you, something with abbreviations?”

I said no and did not mention that Tom Schulz had written me few notes in the time we’d known each other. Our courtship had emerged from crisis. When the attempted poisoning of my ex-father-in-law had led to the temporary closing of my catering business, I had responded reluctantly to Tom’s interest in me. As our relationship developed over the last eighteen months, we’d had phone conversations, barbecues, outings in the mountains or in Denver. These outings invariably concluded with meals I fixed in my professional cooking area or dinners Tom prepared in the fabulously equipped kitchen of his cabin. And only very recently, when we were alone, those meals were followed by lovemaking.

We had not written.

Calloway persisted. “But you must have something of his, a notebook, journal, calendar, anything that might contain some of these abbreviations. If you did, or if such written material existed, would it be at your house? Or his?”

I knew she was doing her job. Trying to find their premier homicide investigator, the police would ruthlessly unearth every scrap of information. But I wasn’t up to discussing our complex domestic arrangements, especially when it involved so much stuff in boxes that had just been moved to my house from Tom’s cabin. In fact, I wasn’t up to discussing much of anything. I said, “I’m not sure. But I’ll look, I promise.”

“Who has keys to his place?” she wanted to know. “And his car? I mean, besides that set in the creek.”

My eyes were burning, my hands were numb with cold. I muttered that I had a set of keys to his home but not with me. Anyway, I added, his place was empty. At that moment, another officer summoned Calloway. She promised that Boyd or Armstrong would stay in touch, and directed that I keep the phone line to my house open. I asked Boyd when I could have the articles Tom Schulz dropped at the crime scene. He clomped off, then reported back that when the lab was done with them, someone would come by my place with Tom’s things.

“Was there any blood?” I asked Boyd. I cleared my throat. “Tom’s blood? You said he was hurt.”

Boyd winced sympathetically. One of his rough hands reached out impulsively for mine. Quietly, he answered, his ankle or broke a leg bone coming down the bank. I’m not going to lie to you: He could be hurt bad.” I couldn’t listen, couldn’t look at Boyd, couldn’t bear to have him touching me. I turned my gaze to the snowy ground and pulled my hands away. Boyd went on. “That’s the only way the perp could have overpowered him, we think. If that’s what happened. You know, Schulz is muscular, he’s a touch guy. Street smart and regular smart. We’re going to bring you a copy of the note,” he added, changing the subject, “for you to study.”

A cold, wet breeze swept the frigid meadow. The end of the snow and advent of watery afternoon sunshine had not materialized into anything warm and springlike. I clasped my upper arms but couldn’t stop trembling. Helen Keene shambled over to me and again threw the victim-advocate quilt around my shoulders. Slowly we walked down the muddy driveway to Boyd’s squad car. She asked me for directions and then drove us home. We passed the ranches, the custom homes, the preparatory school entrance. The time spent in Olson’s meadow had been hard on my wedding suit; cold, wet silk clung to my legs. In my mind’s eye, I kept seeing Boyd, Armstrong, and Helen Keen walking across the flagstones to the St. Luke’s office with their terrible news. I couldn’t control a guttural groan. I needed to get home, to be with Arch and Julian.

“Please keep your phone line open,” Helen said after I’d turned down her offer to come into my house and stay for a while. She handed me her card. “And keep the quilt,” she added softly. “A group of women from your church donates them to the Sheriff’s Department and to Aspen Meadow Outreach just for situations like yours.” The questions bubbled up in my brain: Situations like mine? What exactly was my situation? But Helen held me in her steady gaze. “Goldy – please call me if you need me.”

I thanked her and extricated myself from the police car. On the sidewalk across from my house, a trio of neighbors watched, apparently oblivious to the cold. How bad news traveled so quickly in this town I did not know. Stumbling dizzily toward my front door, it was all I could do to keep the quilt awkwardly clutched around my muddied wedding suit.

Once I had come through our security system, I called for Arch, then Julian. The silent house felt deserted without the customary rich smell of cooking. My suitcase, packed for our honeymoon, sat forlornly in the front hall. I turned away from it.

“Oh, Mom, you’re here!” cried Arch as he galloped down the stairs. He had changed from the tux to a gray sweatsuit. “Julian took Grandma and Grandpa to the airport. He’s taking our tuxes back, too. I was just about to start putting the food in the walk-in, the way Julian told me. Where’s Tom? How come your clothes are so messy? Where’d you get that blanket thing?”

“Oh, hon. It’s a long story.” I begged off immediate explanations by announcing I would take a shower while he put the platters away. Wearily, I climbed the stairs. Every muscle in my body ached. In the bedroom that Tom had begun only recently to share with me, I stood in front of the mirror and gazed at the ruined beige silk outfit. A middle-aged Miss Haversham, my reflection mocked back. A flood of anger sent my fingers ripping at the tiny pearl buttons. Two flew off and pinged on the wooden floor. A half-formed sob squawked out of my throat. I carefully removed the churchwomen’s necklace. I don’t deserve this, I reflected bitterly. Selfish to worry about what I didn’t deserve, but I didn’t care. Tears leaked out of my eyes as I groped around on my knees until I found the buttons. I have suffered enough already. Hey, God? Did you hear me? If you’re really there. After placing the buttons on my bureau, I reached for Tom’s pillow on the bed, then buried my face in it. I sobbed and gasped, then inhaled deeply. Even though he’d spent the last few nights at his cabin, the pillowcase had the wonderful smell of him.

In the shower the spray went to scalding as I rocked back and forth, back and forth. Eventually I wrapped myself in a thick terrycloth towel and sat on the bed, dizzy and exhausted. I rose and pulled on a sweatsuit. Again I caught a glimpse of my wan reflection. What to say to Arch? To Julian? I didn’t even know what I was going to say to myself.

In the kitchen the counters were empty except for a tray of marzipan-covered petit fours and chocolate truffles that had been meant to be take-home presents for our wedding guests. I asked Arch if anybody had called. He said no and went back to methodically pulling off the wrapping and then eating truffles one small bite at a time. I hugged myself and began to rock again. Arch stopped in midbite his eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

“What’s going on, Mom?”

“Oh, Arch … I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“Father Olson, I heard.”

“No. This is about Tom.” Arch was one of the people who had to know. I braced myself, then flatly recounted the bare outlines of the story: Tom finding the mortally injured priest and then apparently being hurt and forcefully taken.

As I spoke, My son’s freckled face went numb with shock. When I’d finished, he sat motionless for a longtime, then carefully, he put the half-eaten truffle back on the paper napkin embossed with Tom and Goldy, April 11. He pushed his glasses up his nose and clasped his hands under his armpits.

“Tom Schulz was kidnapped?”

“They think so.”

“They’re going to find him, aren’t they?”

There was no point in equivocating. I hope so, or The police are working on it would only lead to a tangle of unanswerable questions and a flood of worries. There was no reason to voice the unwanted fears that chilled my spirit the way winter winds howl down the mountains. I saw myself picking out a plain coffin for Tom Schulz. In a few short years, Arch would go off to college. I would live out my days alone.

“Yes,” I told my son firmly, with more conviction than I felt. “They will find him.”

Arch started to sweep the kitchen floor, an order-restoring chore he often undertook when his outer life was in chaos. My stomach said I should eat, but one glance inside the walk-in refrigerator at the platters of beautifully decorated reception food made me turn away. Would whoever abducted Tom feed him? I paced around the kitchen, felt the gnawing in my stomach develop into spasms, willed the pains away. Arch finished the floor, took out his drawing materials, and sat at the kitchen table. He knew I would want him within sight.

My business line rang. The sudden noise made me cry out as if I’d been struck. I dived for it.

“What?” I shouted. If it was a client, I thought belatedly, I could kiss this booking good-bye.

“Goldy?” came the tentative, frightened voice of Zelda Preston. “Are you all right? I mean, I know you aren’t all right … you can’t be after what’s happened … “

Zelda Preston, motherin-law to scarecrow Agatha in the church kitchen, was a current Altar Guild member and, until very recently, the organist at St. Luke’s. Zelda and Lucille Boatwright had both been widowed about a decade ago. The two women were almost constantly in each other’s company now, except when Zelda met with the master swimmers and did her weekly three miles’ worth of laps. With her attenuated face that always reminded me of a camel’s, her wiry muscles, and her long braid of gray hair wound on top of her head, Zelda Preston seemed the tall, rod-thin counterpart to Lucille’s stodgy, solid self.

I said, “Are you calling about Lucille?”

“Oh, my dear Goldy. No. I’m calling about you. I want to do something for you, poor dear … “ Her voice faltered.

Zelda carried a painful past, but we’d never had any sisterly soul-baring talks. An older female Episcopalian would rather die impoverished than discuss psychic wounds, a conversation she would put in the same category as comparing bra sizes. Nevertheless, Zelda’s attempt to offer sympathy touched me, and awakened guilt. I hadn’t called her this past month, when the many disagreements she and Father Olson had had about ecclesiastical music had ended up with his firing her. Still, what would I have said? You want to have lunch and talk about how getting fired is like getting divorced? I didn’t think so.

“Zelda. You are thoughtful to call. I don’t need anything, thanks.” I cleared my throat, keenly aware that I needed to keep both phone lines clear in case the police needed to reach me. I didn’t know which number they had. Since I had no call-waiting, I couldn’t risk giving the police a busy signal. But explaining all this, plus Tom’s disappearance, were more than I cold handle at the moment. “I need to go.”

“Oh, all right. But Goldy,” she went on meekly, “I am so terribly sorry to bother you about this, but I’m just trying to see what you want done with your wedding flowers. Lucille isn’t available, as you probably know, so I need to step in for her to help plan the Holy Week services and the funeral for Father Olson.” She paused. “Have you heard anything? I mean, about what happened to him?”

“Not yet.”

“Well … If you wish, we could try to use these flowers for Father Olson … I know it sounds petty, but someone must start to make the decisions, and Doug Ramsey is impossible… If you donated the flowers, it would certainly save the parish money, goodness knows. However, I do not know what our new priest will want. Not our new priest,” she corrected herself, “whoever those people down at the diocese send to us.” Zelda’s voice dropped on the word diocese in a way that left no doubt as to her opinion of that ecclesiastical body.

“Tell you what,” I said placatingly, desperate to clear the phone line. “Why don’t you donate them to the Catholic church? Their parish is bigger; they’re sure to have a wedding coming up soon.”

“The Catholics!” Having a wedding during Holy Week? For heaven’s sake, the least you could do is donate them to someone from our parish who is ill. Honestly, Goldy. The Catholics.”

“Fine, Zelda. Really. Who’s in the hospital at the moment/ Whatever will make you happy.” This whole conversation was absurd. But however much we might disagree or be upset, Episcopalians did not hang up on each other.

She trilled, “Roger Bampton is home from the hospital although …” She broke off and announced, “Victor Mancuso has shingles, but I don’t know which hospital he’s in, and of course it would be difficult to track down the church secretary, since she took her Easter vacation early.” She paused again. “And its you I want to have happy, my dear.”

“Victor Mancuso?” I said, incredulous. VM. I demanded, “Who’s Victor Mancuso?”

“No one really, he’s the secretary’s uncle. She just put him on the prayer list before she left. Nobody else knows anything about him, I already asked.”

On the prayer list, on the prayer list. P.R.A.Y. I struggled to think: The prayer list contained names of all those for whom the parish offered intercessory requests. Or, as Arch maintained, it was the list of people and things we wanted God to fix. The charismatic segment of the congregation, those parishioners who put ultra-enthusiastic emphasis on spiritual gifts and a personal relationship with Jesus, offered intercessions on a much more regular and serious basis than most of the rest of us. There was also a small noncharismatic women’s prayer group that met weekly. Zelda, I remembered, was a member of this group. Maybe she could help decipher the acronyms in Tom’s note.

I asked sharply, “is there an ecumenical or parish organization with the initials P.R.A.Y.? Maybe something like, Protestant-Roman Catholic Association of Youth?”

Zelda drew in her breath, confused. “Goldy? What in the world are you talking about? Are they the ones you want to donate the flowers to? Because I can’t be calling all around – “

“Zelda, is there such an organization? P.R.A.Y.? I’m sure I’ve heard of it somewhere.”

“Well, I’m sure I haven’t, and I’ve been in this parish for twenty years, ever since Father Pinckney – “

“Okay, thanks, Zelda. Please. Use the flowers in any way you wish. I’m sorry, I have to go.” We both stuttered good-byes and gently hung up.

Arch glanced at me, frowned, and left the room to look for some colored pencils. I stared at my catering calendar. The days were blank. Of course, I had cleared it in anticipation of our three-day honeymoon. Now there was not even work I could do to take my mind off this spiral of events.

Worry for Tom exploded in my chest. Should I have asked Helen Keene to stay with me? When would Julian be back from the airport? What could Tom’s cryptic notes mean? I lay down on my kitchen floor, pulled my knees to my chest, and felt tears slide down my cheeks unchecked. I’m losing it.

The doorbell rang; again, my heart jumped. Leaping to my feet, I raced down the hall, then stared disbelievingly through the peekhole. Marla. She made a face at me and held up plastic bags of food. Just what we needed: more to eat. Arch, who had trotted down the hall behind me at the sound of the bell, moaned in disappointment and muttered that he was going to watch television.

“What are you doing here alone?” Marla demanded as soon as she had heaved herself and her bags into the kitchen. “I swear.” Still wearing her dark matron of honor suit, she took in my sweatsuit and my face, then shook her head. “Somehow I knew you wouldn’t want me to take you out to dinner tonight.”

“I’m not alone; Arch is here.” To my horror, it all spilled out. “Marla – Father Olson’s killer took Tom. I had to go out to Olson’s place, and it was awful … “

She pulled me in for a long hug. “I know,” she murmured in my ear. “I was down at the church looking for you. Father Doug told me. Do you need to cry?”

I thought about the weeping I’d already done, solitary and helpless on the floor. “Thanks, but no. Not at the moment, anyway.”

“Need to talk?”

I pulled away from her, picked up a bag, and set it on the counter. “How did Doug Ramsey know Tom was missing?”

“From the cops.” Marla heaved the other bag onto one of the kitchen counters. “Some of them are still at the church. They wanted to see if Schulz’s phone call to the church office might have been taped.”

“Oh, Lord.” I stumbled morosely into a kitchen chair.

Marla eased down beside me. She put a hand over mine. I stared unhappily at the black front of Tom’s range, unable to rid myself of the vision of him flipping pieces of chicken on the grill. He’d had friends from the Sheriff’s Department haul the Jenn-Air grill-with-convection-oven over from his cabin and install the ventilation pipe a week ago. He had said he couldn’t live without his oven. With a wink, he’d added, “Sort of like you, Goldy.”

After a few moments, Marla rose and began to unload her stash. Individually wrapped Beef Wellington. Frozen Scampi. We’d often joked that our ex-husband had found two women who loved food more than they loved him. My passion was working in the kitchen, and Marla was the queen of packaged gourmet.

She looked at me. “Where’s your choker?”

“Upstairs. Why? It’s a miracle I didn’t lose it out at Olson’s place, tramping around in the mud.”

“Goldy, don’t say it’s a miracle to me.” She flopped back down next to me. “We’ve got a problem. Actually, more than one.”

“What? With the pearls?”

“Before your wedding was supposed to begin, I was out in the narthex with the jewelry raffle committee. I told them both of us were wearing the chokers that were going to be sold, and they ooh’d and aah’ed.”

Oh boy, I thought here we go. Some left-wing group had threatened a pearl boycott.

“I’ll get to the pearl problem in a minute.” She sighed. “Apparently,” Marla continued glumly, “some of the goings-on in our parish have started rumors floating around in the diocese.”

I sniffed. “Goings-on in our parish? Rumors? Wait until they hear our priest has been murdered. “ I shook my head, seeing the flash of Father Theodore Olson’s warm smile behind his dark beard when he appointed me to the Board of Theological Examiners.

Marla nodded. “Right. ‘Show me a parish in the diocese without some wild stories,’ I say. And so they say, ‘Hoho, word’s out Roger Bampton claims his healing was miraculous.’ As in feeding-of-the-five-thousand miraculous.”

“Oh, please,” I said, in no mood to discuss disease. “Roger’s sick. I heard he was a little better Miraculous? That’s what our ex-husband is going to say when he hears Tom Schulz didn’t show up for the wedding.” I felt a sudden chill, thought about making tea, then dismissed it. Too much effort. “Anyway,” I added, “Roger has leukemia.”

“He’s out of the hospital.” Marla grimaced. “Get this. He’s not just a little better, he had a normal blood test. To me, it was a miracle old Scotch-swilling Rog didn’t die of liver disease before they diagnosed him with leukemia. And they’re saying there’ve been other miracles, too.”

“Come on, Marla. I’ve heard some of those stories, the bad knees healed and all that. Who listens? They’re like the stock market. You have a wave of good luck and then a wave of bad. How is this a problem?”

“Goldy, we’ve been busy with other stuff, we haven’t been tuned into all the latest. I mean, you’ve been getting ready for the wedding, and I’ve been planning a jewelry raffle and sale with dozens of orders for tickets and chokers. But Agatha Preston enlightened me. Three weeks ago, sick-to-death Roger was suddenly pronounced well. Last week, a Sunday School teacher swore she’d been cured of chronic back pain. An infant born blind got his sight somehow. So I told these folks that I need to lose twenty pounds where do I sign up?”

I said, “I need Tom Schulz back.”

“Just thought you’d like to know.”

“Father Olson wouldn’t have approved.”

“Listen,” she protested, “Agatha and these women swear Olson was the one whose actions got the rumors started in the first place. It’s Father Pinckney who wouldn’t have approved.” Getting up abruptly, Marla hauled out three bags of Chinese-style vegetables and two frozen Sara Lee cakes. I wondered briefly what had happened to the wedding cake. Marla emerged from my walk-in refrigerator and put her hands on her ample hips “But remember I said I had more than one problem? Here’s the other: Father Olson kept the rest of the pearls Out at his place. Twenty chokers, two thousand dollars each. The cops didn’t find them at his house.”

“They’ve already search the whole place?” I could not remember ever being so confused. Another wave of weariness swept over me. I ran a hand over the black enamel of Tom’s stove. “That’s hard to believe. Why did you … why did Olson have the pearls in the first place?”

“He always kept the stuff for the jewelry raffle and sale.” Marla sounded disgusted. “He kept the gold chains last year and the jade the year before that. He said a jewelry thief would never scope out Upper Cottonwood Creek. I told the police to keep looking for them, but they said his house wasn’t burgled, so it’s not as if they searched every nook and cranny. It’s just that the motive doesn’t look like robbery at this point. Of course Olson didn’t have a safe. And they won’t let me or anyone else go into his house to poke around. That Olson. He was such a squirrelly packrat, he probably hid them somewhere we’ll never find.” She groaned.

“Squirrelly packrat?”

“Sorry, I’m mixing my rodent metaphors. You going to eat these truffles?”

“Go ahead. Marla – is there a church organization with the acronym P.R.A.Y.?”

She took a bite of chocolate and munched thoughtfully. “Pray? Not hat I know of, and you know if anyone would know about church organizations, it’s me.”

“Well, when was the last time you read the story about Judas?”

Marla finished her first truffle, looked over the tray, and chose a second, this one a plump dark mound dusted with cocoa. She popped it into her mouth, put a hand on her large chest, and frowned. “I certainly don’t know. Why?”

“Tom wrote something down before Olson died,” I murmured. “He mentioned this P.R.A.Y. and Judas, but nobody knows what he was talking about.”

“Judas? He wrote something about Judas? Why?” I shrugged. Marla licked her fingertips. “Let’s see, what’s today? Still Lent. I always wait for somebody to read the story to me. You know, in church. The Last Supper, Maundy Thursday, then the betrayal by Judas. No, no, it’s the other way around. Wait a minute. You’re the Sunday School teacher, you tell me. Is that all he wrote? What was it, some kind of ransom note?”

“No.” I’d probably already said too much. I gritted my teeth in preparation for further interrogation, but Marla pushed away the truffle tray and gazed in my direction, concerned. Clearly, she was more worried about me as a friend than she was about the details of the homicide/kidnapping investigation.

“Goldy, want to come and stay at my place? I can take care of you. Honestly, it’s the least I can do. Matron of honor and all that.”

“No, thanks. I have to stay by the phone. Until they find him,” I said uncertainly.

“They’ll find him,” Marla said firmly. She inched her chair over and put her hand on my arm. “Goldy, you cannot stay here alone.”

“You’re great, but honest. I’m not alone – Arch and Julian are with me. Talk to me about the church. Tell me how this could happen.”

“I swear, I don’t know. Olson was just – “ She gestured extravagantly, like an Italian looking for a word. “ – a cute charismatic who had a good grounding in theology? I don’t know. Does that sound prejudiced? I mean, when I told him we cleared twenty thousand on the gold chains last year, he didn’t say ‘Praise the Lord.’ “

“That doesn’t help.” Twenty thousand dollars on gold chains? I felt hysteria rising in my throat and pushed it down. “With these jewelry raffles – you sell some and raffle some, right?” She nodded. “Who ordered the pearls for the fund-raiser? Do you know how many people knew they were out at Olson’s house? And what do the churchwomen use all that money for, anyway?”

“Hey whoa, Goldy, slow down.” She pressed her lips together. “Bob Preston ordered the pearls this year. You remember, the oil guy, husband of Agatha, son of Zelda. I guess I should say, former oil guy. He got some kind of deal from a friend of his in the Far East. As to what the churchwomen use the money for, there’s usually a big argument. Lucille and the Art and Architecture Committee want to build the columbarium before they redo the kitchen. I’m running the raffle, and I want to give the money to Aspen Meadow Outreach. So Lucille Boatwright and I ware at odds, which, believe me, is nothing new. Speaking of the crotchety angel, are you up to hearing about what happened after she collapsed t the church? Or do you want me to fix you some tea first?”

I really couldn’t focus on Lucille Boatwright and her autocratic ways. But decision making was beyond me. When I said nothing. Marla rummaged through cupboards, extracted a teapot and cups, opened a box of Scottish shortbread she had brought, and put a pan of water on to boil. The gestures reminded me of Tom. He loved tea. Loves. Stop it.

“Anyway, Lucille Boatwright,” Marla persisted. “The Old Guard is still guarding. Old Lucy’s fine; she informed the doctors not to let Mitchell Hartley and the rest of the charismatics touch her precious columbarium construction in her absence. She had some arrhythmia, and Zelda Preston is down at the hospital with her.”

“Well, Zelda’s back, because she just called me from the church. Trying to plan Holy Week and Ted Olson’s funeral and wondering what to do with Tom’s and my wedding flowers.” Marla sipped her tea and rolled her eyes. ”I told her to give the altar arrangements to the Roman Catholics.”

Marla choked. “Treading a bit close to the edge, aren’t we? I’m surprised Zelda’s involved. You know, she was just so irate about the music, spent all last month screaming about going to see the bishop. OH, wait. Speaking of the bishop. Guess who he’s appointed to pastor the church through this crisis?”

“Marla. I really don’t care. All I can think about is Tom. A priest appointed to get us through this crisis? Could the bishop really move that fast?”

“He has to. I mean, a murdered priest, a halted wedding, not to mention a funeral/ Our flock needs emergency pasturing.” “Doug Ramsey, I guess.”

“Wrong. He’s too junior.” She dunked a shortbread cookie into her tea and carefully bit into it. “The bishop is sending in the poet.”

“The … oh, no. Not George Montgomery. He’s the canon theologian. He’s on the Board of Theological Examiners with me and always asks about the history of the eucharist.”

“Montgomery may examine about the sacrament of holy communion,” Marla said, “but he’s going to versify about everything else.” She finished her shortbread cookie and reached for another. “Be prepared for sermons that ask, ‘Where were you, God/when I laid sod/and found it crass/to ask for grass?’ “ She chuckled sourly.

I stared at Tom’s oven. The phone rang. I jumped for it.

“Yes!”

“Hello, is this Goldy?” A female voice, hesitant, raw from crying.

“Who is this?”

“Agatha,” gulped the voice, “Agatha … :”

I put my hand over the receiver and mouthed to Marla, “Agatha Preston.”

Marla stage-whispered, “I saw her in the church kitchen. She looked like a WASP auditioning for Song of Hiawatha.”

“Agatha,” I said into the receiver, “what is it? Do you have some news? What’s wrong?’

Marla’s eyes bulged. I shook my head firmly when she mouthed, “What? What?”

“I can’t, I can’t take it … “ Agatha gagged, coughed, and let out a single sob. With great effort, she said, “Did you … I need to know if you … saw him.” She burst into a fit of crying.”

“Saw him?” I was bewildered.

“What happened?” she sobbed. “Oh, God, I’m not going to make it. Oh, where is he?” She cried harder, and then her voice became distant when the phone thudded against a hard surface.

“Hello, who’s this?” A male voice.

“This is Goldy the caterer. I was trying to talk to somebody.”

“This is Bob Preston. My wife coordinates the prayer list. As you can see, she is extremely upset. She’ll have to call you later.”

“But, Agatha asked me if I saw somebody. Who was she talking about?”

Bob Preston said: “I certainly don’t know. My wife’s beside herself. It would be in the best interest of the church if you cold just let her call you back.”

My frayed nerves snapped. I yelled, “Look, dammit – “

But unlike most Episcopalians, Bob Preston had hung up.

5

“What a creep!” I screeched. “Get out the phone book,” I raged at Marla. “I need to call back the Prestons. Agatha said she wasn’t going to make it, and had I seen him, and then Bob just more or less told me to forget it, she’d have to call me back! Where is my stupid phone book?”

Marla’s eyebrows climbed toward the stratosphere. Telling Marla to forget something was her idea of denial of civil liberties. I scrounged wildly for, and then through, the thin Aspen Meadow phone book. No Preston. What about the church directory? I looked for it, but then remembered I had cleared that shelf to make way for Tom’s cookbooks, which now lay in a disorganized pile above the counter. I had no clue to the directory’s whereabouts.

Marla clattered out teacups into the sink and turned on the faucet. I gave up looking for the Prestons’ number and announced I was out of physical and emotional fuel. I had Tom Schulz to worry about. Had he ever mentioned Agatha Preston to me?

“What is Bob doing now?” I demanded of Marla. I summoned up a mental image of Bob Preston, oilman extraordinaire: With his puffed-out chest and thinning red hair, Preston always reminded me of an aging rooster, although he probably wasn’t much past thirty. Over six feet, maybe six-feet-four, he had prominent cheekbones, a receding chin, and narrow lips. I said, “What happened to his oil business?”

She began rinsing Tom’s cups with their tiny stylized roses. “:Bob was riding high until the price of oil crashed in the mid-eighties. The price of natural gas hasn’t gone anywhere either, so it was too expensive to explore. His company went belly-up year before last. They haven’t called for you to cater lately, have they?”

I put my hand on Tom’s stove. “Caterers are always vulnerable to the vagaries of wider economic movements.” MY voice sounded so morose it was clear that financial vulnerability was not the problem.

“Come on, I’m going to cheer you up,” said Marla decisively. “You have to get your mind off these things. I’ll tell you all the gossip about Bob and the Bob-projects. Not only do they include Habitat for Humanity right here in your neighborhood, he’s also heading this Sportsmen Against Hunger group. They go out into the woods with six-packs and rifles with scopes and shoot elk, then donate the – shall we call them ‘proceeds’? – to Aspen Meadow Outreach. Now if you were a poor, hungry person, how would you feel about eating an elkburger? Do you have a recipe for such a thing? How about venison chili?”

I shuddered. “I know about that group and the Habitat project. Just tell me who Agatha wanted to see.”

She gave me a look of determination. “Agatha is involved in everything down at the church. I don’t know who she was referring to.” She turned the last teacup over to drain on a towel and ran her fingers through her frizzled hair. “But you can bet I’m going to find out.”

Outside, the gears of the van ground as the tires crunched up the driveway. Julian had returned.

“Marla, I can’t stand being out of it. I can’t stand to just sit here by the telephone waiting for the police to call. I’ve got to do something.”

She sat down and squeezed my fingers, which were finally beginning to get warm. “Goldy, what you need to do is rest. Let Arch and Julian pamper you, if you’re not going to come to my place.”

Julian, dressed in a secondhand wool overcoat that was much too big for his compact, muscled body, clomped inside and threw himself into a kitchen chair. Marla, who is happiest when people are eating, asked him if he wanted some tea and shortbread.

“No, thanks.” The corners of his mouth quivered downward. His bleached Mohawk haircut was wildly askew, and the five o’clock shadow on his jaw made him look older than nineteen. He’d exchanged the rented tux for patched jeans and an oversized T-shirt distributed by a local roofing company that had gone out of business. The logo shrieked: The roof is the hairdo on a house! Think about it.

Julian snorted. “I went by the church to see if there was anything else. I needed to pick up.” He gestured with his thumb. “The wedding cake’s in the van. I gotta freeze it. The people at the church told me what happened to Schulz. I can’t believe it, man. Schulz is so fast, so smart, I’m like, you’re kidding. Have you heard anything?”

I said no and tried to appear pulled-together. Julian had suffered his own share of upheavals, starting when the boarding department at Elk Par Preparatory School, where he was a scholarship student, closed. We had both been live-in employees for a few illfated months at a wealthy couple’s mansion, and when things fell apart there, Julian came to live with Arch and me. Less than two months away from graduating from Elk Park Prep, he was an excellent student, star swimmer, and ferociously good cook. He was desperate to get into Cornell so he could study food science. Eventually, he wanted to become the first vegetarian caterer from Bluff, Utah, to be written up in Gourmet. I thought he had a good chance to get into Cornell, although I had my doubts about his aspirations for Gourmet. That, however, could wait, as it was the coming week that would bring the college acceptance and rejection news. Adding this to the wedding preparations had put Julian’s anxiety into high gear. Still, Arch and I loved having him around, high anxiety or no. But now, with Tom gone, the teenager would be impossible. I knew from sad experience that the emotionally volatile Julian became volcanic in the face of danger to those he loved.

“So what are the police doing about Schulz?” he demanded when I didn’t answer immediately. He glowered at me as if this were somehow my fault. “I mean, do they, like, know who snatched him, or what?”

I patiently explained that a concentration of law-enforcement types were prowling about at Olson’s house the way they were searching the church, that they had found some things of Tom’s and a note containing abbreviations nobody could decipher. Julian chewed on his knuckles when I said Tom’s note seemed to be his catalogue of events up to the moment he was abducted by somebody whose identity we did not yet know.

My personal phone line rang; I snatched it. “What?”

“Uh, Goldy? This is Father Doug Ramsey, and I need to talk to you about … some church matters. First, of course, I am concerned about you. How are you doing?”

“Terribly, Doug. Sorry, I can’t talk now. I’m trying to keep my phone lines open for the police.”

“Well. This will just take a minute. It’s about the meeting next week, and the food – “

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and hissed at Marla, “Get rid of Father Doug for me, will you? Quickly?”

Marla puckered her lips, then took the receiver. “This is Goldilocks’ Catering and we can’t talk now.” But instead of hanging up – she was, after all, a cradle Episcopalian – she listened to Doug Ramsey launch into one of his long strings of words: explanations, queries, thoughts. I whispered a prayer that the police would do an operator interrupt if there was news.

“What do you mean, abbreviations? What kind of notes are you talking about?” Julian asked me in a conspiratorial tone.

“Just his notes on what was happening when he arrived out at Olson’s place. They think it was to help him remember.” I looked questioningly at Marla, who still held the phone to her ear.

Marla shook her head and told Doug Ramsey to hold on. To me she said, “He’s saying Bob Preston called him after Agatha phoned here. He wants to know if you want Schulz put on the prayer list.”

“Of course,” I said. “Please tell him I have to leave this line open for the cops, so don’t let him go on and on with exaggerated descriptions and hyperbolic worries.” Which was precisely Father Doug Ramsey’s style, unfortunately.

Marla returned to the phone. After a minute, she said, “no, no, no, I’m sure she won’t … She’s under too much stress, that’s why.” Again she put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Did this guy flunk pastoral theology or what?” she whispered. Doug’s voice still droned through the receiver; Marla smiled widely. “Doug,” she told him loudly, “you can find another caterer.” More muffled protests were followed by “All right, I’ll ask.” She turned to me. “Father Insensitive wants to know if you’re still going to cater the Board of Theological Examiners’ meetings starting Tuesday night. And attend, too, since you’re a member, that’s what he says he’s upset about, can’t get another qualified laywoman on such short notice, and especially with Olson gone, they just won’t have enough people to do the examining. Or so he claims. He says it’ll help you get your mind off your other crises. Although I think he’s more worried about food, if you want to know the truth.”

“Goldy, you can’t,” Julian began fervently, “not when you’re going through this other mess. Tell them I’ll do it.”

‘I agree,” said Marla, her hand still clasped over the mouthpiece. “The police will want to talk to you – “

“Tell him I don’t know yet,” I interrupted firmly. “The meeting’s in three days – he can wait until tomorrow for a decision.” Besides, I added mentally, Father Olson had been head of the Board of Theological Examiners I owed doing this catering to him, and perhaps cooking for the board would keep me from obsessing about Schulz.

Resigned, Marla spoke quietly into the phone, then hung up. When Julian asked if I wanted him to fix dinner, Marla replied with a snicker that Father Doug had said the Altar Guild was sending in meals. Starting tonight.

“Oh, wow,” Julian muttered as he raked his mown blond hair with his short fingers. “Tuna fish and cream of mushroom soup.”

“Don’t be ungrateful,” Marla chided. “I’ve brought you frozen zucchini quiche, your own mini-wheel of Camembert, and spinach tortellini. And there’s Beef Wellington for the carnivores. Not to mention that you still have plenty of wedding goodies tucked away in your refrigerator. You can munch on those for as long as – “

Wedding goodies. I put my head into my hands. I know he loved you Loves. Julian and Marla simultaneously lunged forward to hug me, which only made matters worse.

“I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t.” Marla’s voice choked with guilt near my ear. “At least let me take you out tonight, Goldy. There’s no point staying around here.”

“I need to be near the phones,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time. “But thanks, Marla. Please. Julian, if it’ll make you feel better to cook, go ahead.”

With a wild and angry energy, Julian began to bang around the kitchen. Arch appeared from the TV room and asked for an update. When we told him there was none, he assessed the two glum adults and one manic teenager, then announced he was going back to finish watching his show. After a while, Marla said she would go home and make some calls for me, to let people know what was going on so that they wouldn’t tie up my line with their dumb questions. But she would stay if we needed her, she offered hopefully. I assured her we would be fine. When she left, I went to find Arch.

In the spare bedroom that we used as a recreation space, Arch had the television on but was lying face-up on the tartan plaid couch. When he turned to me, I knew he was assessing my mood, the way he had as a child. He seemed to be wondering: How should I react to this crisis? If Mom is upset, I should be upset.

“I’m going to be all right,” I said to his unspoken question. ”Are you?”

He groaned. His gray sweatsuit was pleated in a rumpled mass that he didn’t bother to straighten. He avoided my eyes. “Mom, how soon do you think the police will call?”

I turned the television off and sat in the matching plaid chair. “Very soon. They’re going to bring me a copy of the note, and some things of Tom’s.”

Arch paused, mulling something over. Finally he heaved himself up.

“What is it, Arch?”

His thin chest and shoulders collapsed with a loud, disgusted sigh. Lying on the couch had flattened his hair straight up at the cowlick. “You really don’t think he could have decided to, like, run away, do you? Maybe he just didn’t want to … you know, I’m not saying it’s you, Mom … maybe he just was afraid of all of us being together. In a family. Maybe he just didn’t want to get married,” he concluded fiercely.

I waited until Arch looked at me, then I took one of his cool hands. “This is what I believe: that they’ll find him. That he wants to be a family with us more than anything.”

Arch’s eyes had gone from narrow to vacant; clearly, he was doubtful.

“Please, hon, won’t you come eat? You haven’t had a regular meal all day.”

Arch shook his head and pulled his hand away. “I don’t’ think I should eat until they find Tom Schulz.”

“Please. Don’t do this. Julian’s working like crazy out there to make a nice meal for you. And you know Tom would want you to take care of yourself.” He didn’t move. “Please, Arch.”

He got up. With bleary eyes, he pushed past me down the hall to the kitchen.

Our dinner consisted of Julian’s idea of comfort food: a spicy frittata served wit his own heated sourdough rolls, a fruit cup, and a complex salad of tomatoes, scallions, lettuce, crushed corn chips, and grated cheddar and Jack cheeses, all coated with a thick, smooth avocado dressing. I recognized this guacamole concoction as a specialty of Tom’s. Julian had retrieved the recipe from the overstuffed square plastic file that I’d forgotten was on a shelf where Tom’s cookbooks were piled on top of mine. I wondered if the card file had any abbreviations in it VM? B. – Read – Judas? P.R.A.Y.? Not likely.

The boys exchanged a worried look when I stopped moving food around on my plate and brought Tom’s recipe box up to my nose, inhaled deeply, then dumped the whole mass of handprinted recipes out onto the table. The spattered, yellowed cards smelled faintly of Tom’s kitchen. It was an inviting, high-ceilinged room in the log home he had been about to vacate, after much discussion, to live in town with us. I reached for a card: Monster Cinnamon Rolls. His handwriting. And then a note in another, more recent pen: Try for G. I couldn’t bear it; I turned it over and left the cards in an untidy pile.

The frittata and salad, unfortunately, merely assuaged hunger, which was by this time severe. Worse, I was unable to offer comfort in the area Arch and Julian most needed it: answers to their questions. First they wanted to be told – again – every detail of Tom’s disappearance. I hesitated discussing my time in the meadow by Olson’s house, with its memories of the shrouded corpse and the police tramping dutifully about, looking for clues. But Arch, who had eaten only a forkful o frittata, and Julian, who was digging into his third helping, would tolerate no avoidance on my part. They wanted to hear it all, as if such knowledge could give order to the sudden loss of the big-bodied, bog-hearted police officer whom they had both come to love. I did not mention that it looked as if Tom had been injured on the stony bank of the creek. Julian pushed his plate away and looked at me quizzically.

“What about before the church?” he persisted. “Didn’t Schulz, you know, call you this morning? And what about Father Olson? Is stuff missing from his house? I mean, if there is, why would some guy rob him, then shoot him down by the creek instead of just knocking him out and taking off?”

“Tom Schulz did not call before we left for the church this morning,” I said, remembering the hassle of getting my garment bag, the ring, and all the food platters into the van. “And as to the why with Father Olson, I don’t know. That’s what the investigative team is supposed to be working on.” Some kind of resolve was forming. And what I’m going to find out, I added mentally.

Arch put down his fork. I was not up to telling him to finish what was on his plate. He said, “I want to see the note from him. I have some books of codes. Maybe I could look the abbreviations up.”

Exasperated, Julian got up and began to clear the table. “Arch,” he said as he clanked dishes into the sink, “if he’d known somebody was watching him, he would have pulled out his gun, not written a message to us in stupid code.” He threw open the door to the commercial dishwasher that had just cost me over a thousand dollars. The heavy door made a cracking sound as it bounced in place.

“Oh, yeah?” hollered Arch. His face flushed with anger. “Where d’you suppose he packed his piece? Inside his tuxedo with the ring he was going to give to Mom?” Arch glowered at Julian, who rudely ignored him as he dumped plates and cutlery into the dishwasher. “If I want to look up codes, I will! I’m allowed!”

“Guys,” I begged, “please. Not now.” I made a sudden decision. Pushing my chair out from the table, I snatched the van keys. “I’m going back to the church.” To the two pairs of suddenly fearful eyes, I said, “Don’t sweat it. I’m just going to pick up his wedding ring.”

It was bitterly cold outside. The wind had picked up and was whirling snow off the ground like fanned smoke. The van growled in protest when I gunned it toward Main Street. The church parking lot was empty, which is what you’d expect at 6:30 on a Saturday evening. I hopped out of the van, walked carefully across the slippery frozen gravel, and pulled on one of the two main doors to St. Luke’s. It was unlocked – so much for ecclesiastical security. On the shadowed altar, the pallid petal of my bridal flowers glimmered like leftover funeral arrangements. Gritting my teeth, I allowed the door to swing shut and trotted around the long way, up past the columbarium construction. I was panting by the time I arrived at the church office building.

That office door wasn’t just unlocked: it was partially open. Tom, be with me, I prayed silently as I tried to catch my breath. I whacked the door open with my foot.

“Hello?” I called as I stepped boldly over the threshold. “What the hell – ?”

At first, I was so shocked I could not register what I saw. Within seconds, however, dismay replaced surprise. The office had been vandalized.

The sawhorses leading to the renovation area lay in pieces on the desk. On the floor, papers from the secretary’s files had been dumped every which way. Her phone had been pulled from the wall and smashed. Hymnals and prayer books were spewed on top of the disorder of pipes, and the couch on which I had sat with Helen Keene that afternoon had been slashed. Gouts of foam rubber lay everywhere.

“I can’t believe this,” I muttered. The old floor creaked as I tiptoed through the devastation to Ted Olson’s office. If whoever had done this had stolen Tom’s wedding ring … My skin prickled with rage. I knew I was a little crazed. But no one was going to take that away from me, too.

Olson’s office was – if possible – even more of a mess. Not only had the phone been broken to smithereens, but the contents of upended file drawers had been spilled over the floor. So much for the police searching through them for the meaning of VM, B., and P.R.A.Y. The bookshelves were empty – all the volumes were on the floor. The vandal had spared the Leonardo reproduction, although it now hung at a grotesque tilt. The bulletin board had crashed to the floor. The ring, I thought. What did you do with the ring, you bastard?

There was a sudden shuffling. I screamed and grabbed a heavy book. Something – a trash can lid? – banged. Out the office window, I could dimly see a raccoon shambling away from the building. I collapsed onto a chair, certain I was about to have a heart attack.

“Dammit! Where is the ring?” I said aloud.

And then I remembered that I had brought it in the pocket of my streetclothes. They had fallen from their hook when I’d heaved a hymnal at the wall. I stepped over the debris until I came to the plain brown cotton dress that still lay in a rumpled heap. Kneeling, I fumbled in the pocket and experienced a cold wave of relief when my fingers closed around the velvet-covered box from Aspen Meadow Jewelers.

I pulled it out and opened it. The thick gold band that was to have been Tom’s glistened in the fading light. I popped the box shut, stood, and stepped quickly over the chaos. Clutching the precious ring box, I ran back to my van.

6

The van wheezed against the cold as I raced home. Back in my kitchen, I ignored Julian’s vociferous inquiries and called the Sheriff’s Department. Yes, I insisted to Dispatch’s toneless question, it was an emergency. Dispatch put me through to Calloway; I told her about the ransacked church office. She thanked me, said Boyd was on his way up to my house anyway, and that she’d send a team over to the church. I hung up.

“Man, Goldy, I can’t believe, you went inside when you saw the place was trashed.” Julian slapped one of his schoolbooks open on the table and glared at me. “Don’t you think that was, you know, dangerous?” I mean, you really ought to think about taking care of yourself, don’t you think? And no offense, but you look terrible.” Upstairs, water gushed into Arch’s bathtub. I looked around the spotlessly clean kitchen. In his usual methodical way, Julian had finished the dishes, set Arch on his evening routine, and now sat leaning back in one of the kitchen chairs. Even though it was Saturday night, he’d brought out some work to do. Julian despised inactivity – for himself, anyway. “I think you should stay home,” he advised. “You know, just wait for the cops to call.” He shifted the chair to balance at a precarious angle and crossed his arms impatiently. “So. Did you get the ring or what?”

“Yes, I got the ring. And I don’t normally think of the church office building in the early evening being a dangerous spot,” I replied stiffly. But in light of the day’s event, Julian was right. I was about to show him the ring box when something under the shelf of Tom’s cookbooks caught my eye. In the spot where Julian usually upended drying pots and pans, he had cleared the counter and spread one of his bandanas. On to of the bandana was Tom’s recipe box; on to of the box was a small pile of what looked like potting soil.

“Julian? Is that dirt on my counter?”

His face turned sheepish. Well, yeah. Kinda.”

“Are we into voodoo here or what?”

“I figure you need to cover all the bases.”

“Julian? What base is this? The one under home plate?”

He slammed the chair down onto the floor, sprang over to where I stood, and pointed at the mound. “This is dirt from Chimayó,” he announced, as if that would explain everything.

I know Chimayó is in New Mexico,” I said. MY patience was wearing thin. “And I know it’s famous for its chili powder. But you’re going to have to enlighten me on the dirt.”

Julian rubbed two fingers across his sparse hedgerow of bleached hair. “It’s, you know … like magic. People make pilgrimages to the sanctuary at Chimayó because the dirt has this … . special healing power. The Indians thought so, and they were in that spot first, you know. Then the Spanish Christians said it was miraculous too, so they built this sanctuary place. So when the swim team went to Santa Fe for a meet, I went over with some of the guys. You just scoop the dirt out of this big hole. I figured if the Indians and the Christians thought it was powerful stuff, then I should get some too, in case I ever needed it. So now I want to use it.” Avoiding my eyes, he reached out to press his fingers lightly into the earth. “For Tom.”

I was touched. Before I could think of something appropriately grateful to say, Arch joined us. He was wearing an enormous white terrycloth bathrobe Tom had given him. His wet brown hair stuck out like pine needles. He said, “Was the ring at the church?”

“Yes, hon. But somebody had broken into the church office. It was a mess.”

“Oh, gosh.” Arch stood beside me, bleakly silent. “Mom?” he said finally, his voice serious. “I’ve been thinking. The next time you go out investigating, I’m coming with you.” I exhaled thoughtfully; it was nice to know I had both a twelve-year-old and a nineteen-year-old intent on mothering me. “What in the world is that?” He was looking at the pile of dirt.

“Something of Julian’s. He can tell you all about it.”

Julian began, “It’s from Chimayó – “

“Oh, yes,” said Arch knowledgeably, “I know all about Chimayó from Stories of the Weird. But Mom? If the Health Inspector pays a surprise visit and sees that? You are going to get into so much trouble.”

Before I could protest, the front doorbell rang. We all bolted for it. It was Boyd. Behind him stood Helen Keene, carrying another overstuffed Hefty bag. Their bleak faces said they had not found Tom. I ushered them into my living room, where Boyd handed me a photocopy of Tom’s note and a plastic bag containing his wallet and the other wedding ring box, sodden from being in the creek. With soft-spoken composure, Helen asked if she could meet with Arch and Julian one-on- one, to see if the needed someone to talk to. She’d brought them quilts, too. Julian replied by asking her if she was hungry. Without waiting for a reply, he led her out to the kitchen. Arch muttered that he didn’t want a quilt if it looked as if it belonged to a girl, and traipsed along behind.

Boyd declined food, although he looked longingly in the direction of the kitchen. I told him about the mess at the church office and that I’d called the Sheriff’s Department.

“Damn it to hell,” he said angrily as he sat on the living room couch. He had changed into a bright green down parka that did not go with his uniform pants. From his uniform shirt pocket that had at least four ballpoints hooked on it, he drew out a pen and his battered spiral notebook. It was similar to the one Tom Schulz had tossed into the bushes. With his free hand, Boyd surreptitiously slid a wooden match into the side of his mouth. “You want to tell me what was in the church office? I mean, do you know anything someone would want to rip off? Or conceal, maybe?’

I told him that the tickets and chokers were supposed to be at Olson’s house, not in the church office. Boyd had already heard plenty, he said, about the necklaces from both Marla (“that big, bunny woman”) and Lucille Boatwright (“hysterical battle-ax”). I showed him the wedding ring I had retrieved. The church office contained an appointment book, notes, and files, too, I added, but Olson was such a packrat, only someone who knew exactly where to look for something would be able to find it. And that was before someone broke in and trashed the place.

Boyd stopped scribbling in his notebook and picked up the ring box. “I wanted to come to your wedding,” he said with a remote sadness. He handed me back the box. “But I pulled weekend duty.”

With the other crises hanging over us, neither Boyd nor I wanted to talk about the possibility of rescheduling. Instead, assuming a crisp tone, he rant through the names of Olson’s neighbors. None had seen anything this morning but nondescript cars coming down Upper Cottonwood Creek Road. Hard to believe that this was all the same day, that it was only this morning that Olson had been killed. Yes, Boyd was saying, the neighbors had heard two shots, but in rural Colorado, you heard shots all the time.

Boyd’s tired brown eyes gave me a level, detached gaze beneath black eyebrows that stood up like magnetic filings. “I’m telling you this, Goldy, because it’s our policy to keep the next-of-kin informed of every detail when there’s a kidnapping. And something I tell you might jog your memory or make you remember some detail that could help. Try to concentrate, and then let me know.”

I rubbed my temples and wondered how many times in his career Boyd had asked distracted and grieving folks to concentrate. The neighbors had heard shots. The common experience of hearing gunfire was true even in my own neighborhood off Aspen Meadow’s Main Street. Coloradans waste no time blowing away anything bothersome, from garden snakes to woodpeckers to bears; ecologists be damned.

Helen reappeared with her customary silence and sat down next to the cold fireplace. Boyd snapped his ballpoint open and closed several times, then asked if he could run a few things by me. I murmured that I wanted to be helpful.

He flipped through several crumpled pages of his notebook. “There doesn’t seem to be anything missing from Olson’s place. At least, nothing that we can tell, like a stereo ripped out of the wall, or pearls gone from a jewelry box. But you’re right, the guy was a packrat. Looks as if he kept every piece of mail since the time he moved there. But the audio equipment, computer, church supplies – plates and goblets and stuff made out of gold, silver, brass – all look untouched. We’re not sure what the guy had in the first place. But I’ll tell you this,” he said as he chewed furiously on the match, “I don’t want a bunch of churchwomen traipsing around in there looking for jewelry while we’re conducting an investigation.”

I thought of Olson’s living room with its shelves of thick books, its ornate sacramental vessels – called paten and chalices, not plates and goblets – and his mantelpiece with its beautifully carved crčche from Santa Fe. I wondered if Olson ever made a pilgrimage to Chimayó. Boyd shifted his bulk, tapped his notebook, and said thoughtfully, “Anyway, especially after this church breakin, we can’t completely rule out burglary as a motive. Or somebody trying to destroy something. Here’s one thing that’s puzzling us: Olson’s Mercedes started right up. He didn’t have car trouble. So why d’you think he’d call Schulz to pick him up?”

Involuntarily, I thought back to the silly disagreement Tom and I had in last night’s counseling session with Olson. Did any other couples argue about whether marriage lasted into the afterlife? Did they argue about it the night before their wedding? Probably not.

“Maybe,” I said, then hesitated, imagining Olson’s desire to deal with conflict. He tried to bring about reconciliation no matter what. That was his way. Had been. “Maybe Olson wanted to talk to Tom before the wedding,” I ventured, “To reassure him that everything was going to be all right.” I sighed. “I blew a gasket in front of both of them after our supper last night. Maybe Olson felt the only way Tom would accept some pasturing before the wedding was by pretending to have car trouble.” I knew better than Boyd how reluctant Tom Schulz had been to see Father Ted Olson for counseling. Shrinks, he’d muttered, they can drive you crazy in court. I’d told him Father Olson wasn’t a shrink, he was a priest. A religious shrink, Tom had grumbled. But in the course of our sessions together, Father Olson had insinuated himself into Tom’s affections. Olson had genuinely admired Tom’s powers of observation; he even professed envy of Tom’s ability to bring about justice. All he ever go tot do, Olson complained, was forgive people.

Boyd interrupted my thoughts. “Blew a gasket about what?”

“Oh … just some dumb thing about marriage vows lasting forever. I was stressed out.”

Boyd puckered his lips and shrugged. “Olson could have just talked to him at the wedding.”

“No, there wouldn’t have been time. Do you think Tom’s disappearance has anything to do with needing to be in court next week? Someone involved in the case who needed him to conveniently disappear?”

Boyd shook his head. “Nah, it’s a forger. The guy’s still in jail, I checked. And no known accomplices. About your theory of the reverend wanting to talk to Schulz before the wedding Maybe Olson was afraid of something. Didn’t want to tell Schulz his fear over the phone. So he got Schulz out there with a fairy tale about car trouble. Maybe he wanted Schulz for protection from somebody. Was Father Olson having problems?”

“:What kind of problems?”

“Woman problems. Money problems. Church problems. You tell me.”

My fingers brushed over the moist crushed velvet of the box that held my wedding band. I felt my heart compress, the way that air become more dense when the temperature suddenly drops.

Boyd scowled. “Goldy. He was your priest, he’d been at your parish for three years You must have known how he was doing.”

I held the velvet ring box tightly. “There are a number of different groups within our church. One is the Old Guard. That would include priests like our former rector, Father Pinckney, and people like Lucille Boatwright, head of the Altar Guild and Art and Architecture Committee, and Zelda Preston, who was our organist. Emphasis on the was. Olson had just fired Zelda, and knowing how much he hated conflict, that must have been painful.”

“Oh yeah? Zelda Preston?” Boyd wrote in his notebook. “What’d he ax her for?”

“They fought continually over the music. He would pick the hymns and she would change them without telling him.” I stopped, uncertain of how to elaborate. “Father Olson was a charismatic, which means he wanted people to have a personal relationship with the lord. The kind of music he favored was sort of, ‘Jesus Loves Me’ set to folk music. The Old Guard, on the other hand, prefers, say, ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.’ “

Boyd stopped writing and raised his eyebrows. The match drooped from the side of his mouth. “That’s it? Changed hymns? The Old Guard guards the hymns?”

“Well … not exactly. When it comes to Zelda, I mean.”

There was a silence in which Boyd drummed his knee with his free hand.

“Okay, look,” I went on. “I know what I know about Zelda because we were in a Lenten discussion group together when we were both going through some difficult times.” Privacy was a precious thing, and little of it survived exposure, especially at church meetings. In a small town, gossip was the weapon of choice in destroying your enemies. And Zelda had been my friend.

Boyd grunted. “I’m trying to find Schulz, not write an article for the local paper.”

“Don’t even mention that local paper to me.”

“Goldy!” interjected Helen Keene. They were her first words since she’d rejoined us from the kitchen. “For heaven’s sake!”

All right, all right.” I pause. “It was five years ago. We were discussing something very innocuous, a book called In the Wilderness, and Father Pinckney was the leader. I went because I was depressed about the awful state of my marriage, and had to get out of the house. I figured a daytime church discussion group would be kind of nice.” I held out my hands in a helpless gesture. “one day Zelda very unexpectedly broke down. You see, she had two sons. One is Bob Preston, who is a parishioner at the church. His wife’s name is Agatha.”

“Yeah, I want to talk to you about her,” Boyd said. “But go ahead.”

“Zelda’s other son, Mark, had leukemia. Mark was the swimming coach at Elk Park Prep, and he was married to Sarah Preston, who lives in Elk Park with their son Ian, who was twelve at the time.” I looked out my front window. But instead of seeing the cold night, I pictured Zelda’s gray braid wobbling on top of her head as her body shook with sobs. “On Ash Wednesday of that year, Mark, who was in his mid-twenties and had had the leukemia for about six months, went into a coma in a hospital in Denver. What kept him alive while he was comatose were the daily blood transfusions Sarah had to okay. After a couple of weeks of this, I guess Sarah just decided she’d had enough. So she refused the daily transfusion.”

I fell silent. Boyd and Helen were staring at me.

“Mark Preston died within hours.” I brushed unseen lint off my sweatsuit, feeling my eyes fill with tears. “Zelda wasn’t at the hospital. No one consulted her about stopping the transfusions. She didn’t get to say good-bye to Mark.”

“My Lord,” murmured Helen.

“That wasn’t the end of it,” I said softly “At our book discussion group, Zelda blurted out that Sarah had killed her son. She would never forgive her for that. She said she wanted Sarah out of her life forever.”

Boyd and Helen Keene were silent. “And the grandson?” Helen finally asked. “Ian?”

“Zelda wrote off the grandson, too. She was just so angry .l . . “ I sighed. “Anyway, Sarah eventually remarried. I heard her new husband is a Catholic, and the three of them go to the catholic church. From all the accounts around town, Zelda hasn’t seen or spoke to Sarah or Ian in, well, five years.”

Boyd tapped his notebook. “So how does this relate to Olson?”

“I’m getting to that. At the discussion group,” I sand reluctantly, “no one knew how to react o Zelda’s outburst. Father Pinckney just shriveled up. I mean, the old fellow looked as if he could have crawled under a rock. And of course, the rest of the women were aghast. You have to understand, members of the Old Episcopal Guard never, ever, ever spill their guts in front of a group.”

“But you were there,” Helen prompted.

“Yes. I was there.” Indeed. “I almost didn’t go to the meeting that day. My head was throbbing from the whack John Richard – my ex-husband – had given me after he broke my thumb in three places the previous week. My hand was in a cast. When Zelda told her story and began to weep, I felt so bad, I cried with her. Despite the stupid cast, I put my arms around her and held her.” I took a deep breath and thought back. “I guess everyone else was embarrassed. They left. No one even said a word. Hours later, it was just Zelda and me, sitting next to each other in our folding chairs, sniffling. When it was almost time for Arch to come home on the schoolbus, I insisted she drink a cup of instant coffee that I fixed in the church kitchen. After Zelda took a few sips, Lucille Boatwright suddenly appeared to drive her back home.”

Boyd asked, “So did you and Zelda become friends?”

“Zelda spent the next two weeks sending me casseroles and discount swim coupons for Arch. But she and I never talked about what had happened again.”

“Not meaning to be rude, Goldy,” Boyd continued patiently, “but I’m still wondering what this has to do with Olson, since this happened during the time of the other priest.”

“Zelda was the organist. After Mark died, playing the music, and doting on her other son, Bob, and his wife, Agatha, became Zelda’s whole life, even though Bob and Agatha are charismatics and supported having Olson as the new rector after Pinckney retired. Anyway, in Father Pinckney’s time, Zelda picked the hymns. She also ran the choir and every aspect of the church’s music. Then Olson came. He appealed to a whole different group in the church. He wanted the music changed, and technically, according to the church law, he was the one in charge of the services. So he and Zelda fought. And fought and fought and fought.” I shook my head, remembering some of the acrimonious exchanges.

“Did they talk about this … . problem with the son who died?” Boyd asked.

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “Remember, Olson hated conflict. He said he wanted everybody to have a personal relationship with Jesus and be reconciled to each other. According to Marla, who hears everything, Zelda and Olson weren’t having any reconciliation in their weekly shouting matches. Supposedly it was over the hymns. Bu the rumor was that their conflict went much deeper, that he wanted to force her to make up with her widowed daughter-in-law. Zelda told him to mind his own beeswax. She had the Old Guard on her side though,” I added, ”when it came to the music.”

“Why’s that?”

“Look. The Old Guard just doesn’t want anything changed from the way the Episcopal church was when they were little. As long a there are fund-raising luncheons, gold courses, and the 1928 prayer book, they’re happy.”

Boyd chewed on his match and wrote some notes. The inviting smell of popcorn wafted out of the kitchen. “Besides Zelda Preston, did these Old Guard people dislike Olson?”

“They did. Lucille is building a columbarium she intends to dedicate to Father Pinckney. I think she believes when it’s done, he’ll come out of retirement and be our rector again.”

Boyd muttered sarcastically, “I don’t know if I’d want to return to a church with an ash cemetery dedicated to me. What a place. I thought this was where everybody loved each other. You know, sing songs and give money to the poor?”

I said quietly, “You haven’t been to church for a while.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll go, and you can take me. All right, just a couple more questions. Did Olson get along with his assistant, this Doug Ramsey?’

Julian appeared with huge bowls heaped with hot buttered popcorn. The fragrance filled the living room, and I gestured to Helen and Boyd to help themselves.

“I guess they got along,” I said after I thanked Julian and he disappeared. “Doug’s on the Board of Theological Examiners.” I cast around to remember in what other contexts I had seen Doug Ramsey work. He was involved in diocesan work and was Olson’s liaison with the Aspen Meadow Habitat for Humanity. I told this to Boyd.

“Yeah, we know that. We also heard Ramsey was the bishop’s spy.”

‘What?” I was nonplussed. Father Insensitive, with his overtalkative, exaggerating way and his lists of things to do, a spy? Spying on what? Or whom?

Somehow, Boyd had rid himself of the match. He took a handful of popcorn, ate quickly, and said, “We heard that the bishop thought Olson was out in left field and moving toward the wall. As in going, going, gone, bye-bye Episcopal Church, hello new denomination.” He scooped up more popcorn, ate it, and reflected. “So tell me. Is moving out of your sedate church’s ballpark the kind of thing people would kill for? I know, you say, you have to look at the different groups.” There was still and edge of sarcasm in his voice.

“Look,” I said with more ferocity than I intended, “let me give you an example of the kind of thing that can happen in our oh-so-sedate church. On the national level, we had a prolonged and very public fight over the ordination of women to the priesthood. After that was approved, there was an incident at an Episcopal church. A man came up to the altar and tried to strangle a female priest administering communion. He didn’t protest, he didn’t go to another church, he tried to strangle a woman he did not know. He screamed, ‘You bitch, I hate you, what do you think you’re trying to do?’ “

Unmoved, Boyd said, “But Olson wasn’t a woman. This is different. Or is it? Which group did the strangler belong to?”

My face was hot after my outburst. I grasped the ring box and tried to summon up Tom Schulz’s calm. “I don’t know whether it’s different, that’s the whole problem. I’d say the would-be strangler was part of the Old Guard. Did Doug Ramsey tell you he was a spy?”

Boyd grinned. “Of course not. You know anything about the financial status of your parish?’

I said that as far as I knew, the parish had typical financial problems. Typical in what way, Boyd wanted to know. Different church groups wanted money for their projects; there was never enough to go around. There was some squabbling over funds. But Marla had said giving was up.

Boyd’s eyes narrowed. ‘Year before last, your parish had a gross income of a hundred thousand. Last year it was a hundred-twenty thou, pretty good growth rate in a recession, but a couple of invalids left money to the parish when they died. Year to date – we’re talking a little over four months – the church’s income was three hundred thousand dollars. This isn’t Olson’s dough, mind you, it belongs to the parish. Could that be something the bishop would be interested in?”

A dry laugh crackled in my throat. “If the parish was doing that well, and the diocesan office knew about it, I’m surprised they didn’t send up a dozen priests to spy.”

Boyd said, “one of the women told me that all the money was coming in because there was some magical healing stuff going on here. That Olson was the founder or perpetrator, and people were paying to get a piece of that magic.”

“Miraculous claims aren’t typical of our church.” Unlike Chimayó, I wanted to add, but didn’t. “Then again, neither are today’s events.”

“So you don’t know anything about the money coming from some miracle agenda?’ When I shrugged, Boyd continued. “Okay, two more questions. I need to know what you know about this” – he flipped a page in his notebook and scanned it – “candidate for holy order.” He said the unfamiliar words slowly. “Named Mitchell Hartley. Guy wants to be a priest,” he summarized. “Flunked the oral exam for the priesthood last year. We hear Olson was behind the flunking.”

I told them what I knew of Harley, whose chief distinction as one of the charismatic parishioners was his vehement opposition to Lucille’s columbarium project. Idolatry, Hartley had fumed at the parish meeting, his face flushed, his mass of red hair quivering. Do you think the Lord would have wanted a columbarium? I knew Father Olson had urged the Board of Theological Examiners to flunk Hartley last year. I did not know why. “Mitchell Hartley goes to the second service at our church,” I said. “I don’t really know him very well.”

Boyd pulled in his stomach with a noisy breath. “Well, we’re looking into that. Lots of money, miraculous healings, a candidate who was flunked. Now about this Agatha Preston – “

But before he could elaborate, his beeper went off, and he asked to use the kitchen phone. When he trundled back into the living room two minutes later, he had put his notebook and pen away. “We’ll have to talk more about this tomorrow, Goldy. The team is done over at the church, and they want to go out to Schulz’s place tonight, to see if he left any notes by his phone, or anything else that could help us out. We still have his keys from the creek.”

Trancelike, I mumbled an okay. Boyd and Helen Keene moved awkwardly toward my front door. Helen dropped down on one knee and retrieved the victim-assistance quilt I’d once again inadvertently dropped on the floor. It was splotched with mud. Helen asked if I wanted her to wash it. I thanked her and said please give it to someone else; I had plenty of blankets. She folded the quilt, draped it over her arm, and gave me an affectionate, unexpectedly lovely smile. They would both be in touch, she assured me, and I should call if I needed anything. The front door closed quietly behind them.

I sat there in my silent living room and thought back to the cold March afternoon I’d spent with Zelda Preston and her pain. Lucille Boatwright had led Zelda slowly through the church doors, her arm around her slumped shoulders. I’d taken Zelda’s untouched cup of coffee back to the parish kitchen. The powdered creamer was still lumpy and floated on top. Because of my cast, I hadn’t been able to stir it in.

7

Still gripping the jewelry box, I moved over to a chair next to unopened boxes transported from Tom’s place along with his oven. I put my hand on the cardboard and stared at the cold ashes in the fireplace. Remember, o man, that dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return, Olson had solemnly proclaimed over each of us at the Ash Wednesday service, just as he dipped his finger into ashes and made the sign of the cross on our foreheads. He’d been more than Marla’s assessment: a cute charismatic. He had been knowledgeable and kind; his faith was heartfelt. Olson had even charmed his way into Tom Schulz’s heart. And now Father Ted Olson was dead. My chest ached. I forced myself to get up and stow the two ring boxes and Tom’s wallet in my china buffet. I allowed myself only a moment of what-could-have-been: In my mind’s eye, I saw Olson smiling over us as Tom slid the ring on my finger. This was supposed to have been our wedding night. A terrible emptiness descended on me.

Julian and Arch, their torsos wrapped in blue diamond-patterned victim-assistance quilts, were finishing up a bowl of popcorn in the kitchen. Giving me a guilty look, Julian untangled himself and used the business line to make his overdue call to Beaver Creek, canceling Tom’s and my hotel reservations. Arch asked politely to see the page of Tom’s notes. I quickly penned a copy for myself, then gave the photocopied sheet to him.

The moon had risen, the boys had gone to bed, and it was past midnight by the time I had worked my way through all of Tom Schulz’s boxes looking for letters, files or journals – anything with abbreviations, Feeling a pang of guilt for invading his privacy, I checked Tom’s wallet, which had my business card and Julian’s and Arch’s school photos in it. In the boxes, I was rewarded only with bank statements, tax returns, and old bills. Maybe the police would find something out at Tom’s cabin or in the trashed church office that offered a clue, for I surely hadn’t.

Outside, the air was still fiercely cold and windy. Wearily, I backtracked to the kitchen, where Scout the cat meowed insistently to be fed. In all the confusion, I had forgotten the poor feline, whom I now moved carefully from the food prep area. While Scout tilted his head appraisingly, I ripped open a packet of cat food and dumped it into his dish. But it was not enough. After a few dainty mouthfuls, Scout sought affection by throwing himself on his furry spine on the kitchen floor. I rubbed his stomach and told him that we both should get some sleep. My eyes burned and my head throbbed. Waiting had never been my long suit.

I longed to get out my electric blanket, turn it to high, and sleep. But sleeping in a warm bed? I couldn’t do it, it would be betraying Tom, who probably was neither warm nor comfortable. I thought of his handsome face with its penetrating green eyes, of his body with its warm folds of flesh that I had come to love. When I tried to rest on the living room couch, the wind whistled down the chimney flue and through the moulding around the picture window. Propelling myself off the cushions at three o’clock. I returned to the kitchen to do the one thing that had ever helped me cope with anxiety: cook.

I was glad I’d dumped out all of Tom’s recipes before Julian made a dirt-covered shrine out of the box that had held them. The directions for Monster Cinnamon Rolls beckoned. Try for ,. Tom written. Scout, happy to see me again, and ever hopeful for a snack, twined between my legs as I melted butter in milk, proofed yeast, and beat eggs. The recipe made a large batch, which would do for the first church service, that was now only a few hours away. Would the person who kidnapped Tom come to church? Could it really be someone from the church? I hoped not. So much for Thou Shalt Not Kill.

I kneaded the sweet dough vigorously. Because of Boyd’s questions about St. Luke’s, I found my mind wandering back to the Episcopal parishes of my childhood. My father’s business ventures brought us to town after town with the same sign, The Episcopal Church Welcomes You. No matter where our family lived, there was the same church built of stone, with the same stony people inside. The priest had always been a faraway man with his back to a congregation that recited the same prayers and sang the same hymns no matter where you went. Those priests were a far cry from the smiling, disheveled, folk music-loving and sympathetic-to-everybody Father Theodore Olson. In the old days, Sunday School walls boasted pictures of a Jesus who looked more like a blond fellow in a nightgown than a rabble-rousing first-century Palestinian. In those days, the women’s church groups held fund-raising events; the men’s groups went on retreats’ the youth groups caroled upper-class neighborhoods at Christmas.

You never had a murder.

I pounded out the air bubbles from the risen dough, rolled it into a long, thin rectangle, then slathered on softened butter mixed with brown sugar and cinnamon. The wind whistled around the back doorjamb; I recalled a particular windy moving day from my childhood, when I’d tearfully said good-bye to neighborhood and Sunday School friends before our family settled in New Jersey. I often suspected the reason I’d fallen in love at twenty with John Richard Korman was that he had the baby-faced features, blond-brown hair, and affecting smile of a Sunday School friend whose name I had forgotten.

I quickly rolled the dough into a fat log and measured where to slice. After my life fell apart and I[‘d pretty much managed to put it back together, Tom Schulz had appeared, with his large, handsome, self-confident body and spirit.

Monster Cinnamon Rolls

Dough:

ž cup ( 1 ˝ sticks) unsalted butter

1 cup milk

ž cup plus teaspoon sugar

1 ź teaspoons salt

3 ź - ounce envelopes (7 ˝ teaspoons) active dry yeast

˝ cup warm water

5 large eggs

8 ˝ to 9 ˝ cups all-purpose flour

Filling:

5 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 ź cups (2 ˝ sticks) unsalted butter

3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

Frosting:

˝ pound cream cheese, softened

ź cup whipping cream, approximately

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 to 4 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

For the dough, heat the butter with the milk, ž cup of the sugar, and the salt in a small saucepan until the butter is melted. Set aside to cool. In a large mixing bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, add the remaining teaspoon sugar, stir, and set aside for 10 minutes, until the mixture is bubbly. Add the lukewarm milk mixture and the eggs and beat until well combined. Add the flour a cup at a time, stirring and using enough flour to form a stiff dough. Turn out on a floured board and knead until smooth and satiny, approximately 10 minutes. (Or place in the bowl of an electric mixer and knead with a dough hook until the dough cleans the sides of the bowl, approximately 5 minutes.) Place the dough in a very large buttered bowl, turn to butter the top, and allow to rise, covered loosely with a kitchen towel, in a warm place until doubled in bulk, approximately1 hour. Punch the dough down and roll out to a large rectangle, 24 inches by 36 inches.

Butter two 9-by 13 – inch glass baking dishes. For the filling, beat together the brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon until well combined. Spread evenly over the surface of the dough. Roll up lengthwise and cut at 2-inch intervals to make 12 rolls. Place 6 rolls in each buttered dish. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 . Bake the rolls for about 20 to 30 minutes or until puffed and browned. Cool to room temperature on racks.

For the frosting, beat the cream cheese, cream, and vanilla until well combined. Add the confectioners’ sugar and beat until smooth and soft, not stiff. Frost the rolls and serve immediately.

Makes 12 large rolls.

Tom Schulz, who loved Arch and Julian and me with a frightening intensity, who had awakened vulnerability and affection that I had presumed dead, who was willing to do anything to keep us happy. Who had said to Father Olson last night that he and I would not be parted by death, no matter what the wedding vows claimed. And now he was held captive by God-knew-whom for God-knew-what reason. If he was still alive.

I cut the dough carefully at the evenly spaced intervals and placed the thick sugary spirals in a buttered pan. I needed to sleep; I needed to pull myself together and find out as much as I could about Father Olson, for surely the murderer’s path led through our parish, or through a committee, or through the diocese … .

My eye fell on the pile of exams from the candidates I was to help examine in three days.

Olson had told me that in the third and final year of their seminary training, candidates for the priesthood took the General Ordination Exams that now graced my counter. The battery of tests covered the seven canonical areas: Church History, Liturgics, Pastoral Theology, Ethics, Theology, Issues of Contemporary Society, and Scripture. The tests were graded by the General Board of Examining Chaplains on the national level, which then sent the exams on to the dioceses. In the diocese of Colorado, the Board of Theological Examiners read them, determined areas of weakness, and then gave oral exams to the candidates. A candidate had to show oral proficiency in all seven areas before he or she could be ordained That sounded like a lot, I’d said to Father Olson. Maybe I wasn’t really up to it Just read the exams and ask yourself whether you’d want to have this person as your priest, he’s solemnly replied.

Mitchell Hartley’s exam was in my pile, although I didn’t know which was his. Numbers at the top of each candidate’s test sheets kept the examiners from knowing who was who, to eliminate prejudice. I had my list identifying candidates by number somewhere. Unfortunately, there had been a mix-up at the diocesan office, and I had not received my photocopied set of papers to read until yesterday, when I was deep into páte doughs, bridal bouquets, and Portobello mushrooms. I hadn’t read any of the exams, and the last thing I wanted to do was get academic on what was supposed to have been my wedding night.

Still. When I looked at the sheaf of papers, I could see the indulgent grin on Father Olson’s face when he’d appointed me to the twelve-person committee, saying that not only did he treasure my culinary abilities, he also valued what I had to offer the Board intellectually. Sure, the way people read Playboy for the interviews. But the diocese had paid the discounted rate I’d given them to bring Gorgonzola quiche, asparagus rolls, cauliflower salad, and chocolate cake to my first Board meeting, when the discussion centered on the ethics of breaking the seal of confession if a person’s life was in danger. After years of casseroles and Jell-O, and without waiting to hear my opinions on confession, the Board immediately proclaimed their faith in me.

Before the meeting, Father Olson had said there were “a few rumblings” over the appointment of a laywoman who was a caterer to this powerful board that had the final say on whether persons were ordained. “Better tell them about your theological training,” Olson had warned me. “so they, too, will value your mind as well as your mousse.” So at my introduction, I’d dutifully told of the sixteen-week course for Sunday School teachers I’d taken two years before from Canon Montgomery, a member of their board, at the Aspen Meadow Episcopal Conference Center. Canon Montgomery, now soon to be our emergency pastor at St. Luke’s, looked like a ruddy toad. He’d beamed and lapped up my flattery along with his piece of cake. I didn’t mention his aggravating tendency to pat his white hair along its middle part as he put spiritual experience into rhymed couplets.

Now the clock said almost four a.m. Soon it would be dawn. No time to start reading theology, that was for sure. I lifted the towel to check on the rolls, and fatigue struck with such ferocity that my knees buckled. I grabbed the side of Tom’s convection oven for balance. I turned away from the unread papers, left the rolls to rise at room temperature, and flopped back on the living room couch.

The wind had died down, as it often did near sunrise. Still, the house felt cold. l burrowed into the hard cushions and regretted giving back my victim-assistance quilt.

Tom. Be all right.

Holding that thought, I tried to relax. Frightful nightmares of falling into mud accompanied fitful sleep. I awoke abruptly, feeling stiff and chilled, and realizing unhappily that the canceled wedding, the murder of Father Olson, and the unexplained disappearance of Tom Schulz had not been bad dreams, but odiously real.

I opened one eye to see what time it was. Something was wrong. Above Tom’s boxes, my mantelpiece clock was just visible: half past six. Had a noise startled me out of sleep? Now, as I listened for Arch and Julian, the house was silent. What was wrong? What had awakened me with that sensation of something odd, out of place/ I inhaled deeply and blearily scanned the room.

It was the light. The living room was suffused with a tangerine-colored glow. A red sky in the morning promised snow. Big deal. My neck screamed with pain; I stretched carefully. My body insisted I would regret attempting the usual yoga routine. I felt confused. Even with a red sunrise, the light in the living room was too orange. It was not the sunlight that was colored; something was coloring the sunlight.

With effort, I extracted myself from the cushions. I tiptoed to the window and looked through the knots of the lace curtains. I stared at, but could no compr3ehend, what I saw. Hanging from the roof of my front porch was a hand-made knitted blanket. It was bright orange, and had a red heart at the center.

8

When you’ve slept in your clothes, forty degree feels frigid. Ignoring the cold, I hopped gracelessly onto the porch swing and wobbled perilously there for a comment. Sunlight was brightening thin smears of cloud that shone like mother-of-pearl. Very gently, I pulled the orange blanket into the light and tried not to slip on the frosted swing seat while examining the tiny stitches. The coverlet was not knitted, as I had thought, but double-crocheted with a small hook and thin, expensive wool yarn. A chill wind blew through my sweatsuit and threatened my precarious balance. I snatched down the afghan, then looked around to see if any of my neighbors were about. But the cold weather, especially on a Sunday morning, meant people were still snuggling deep under their coverlets and blankets. Not to mention afghans that didn’t come from a source unknown.

I scanned the crocheted rectangle for a note of some kind and saw none. From victim assistance? A thoughtful neighbor? The previous night’s fierce wind might have blown off any attached notes. I bunched the afghan over my shoulder and jumped down from the porch swing. While my joints reminded me I was no longer a limber teenager, I noticed a foil-covered oblong dish sitting primly to the left of the front door. Casserole, courtesy of the Altar Guild. And this time there was a note in a firmly lettered hand on top of that: Please take care of yourself. Our women’s group is praying for you. Zelda. With my free hand, I picked up the icy glass dish and scuttled into the house.

Her note hadn’t mentioned the afghan. Imagining wiry Zelda Preston, or even stolid victim advocate Helen Keene, scaling the wall of my porch to make a dramatic visual statement by hanging a Valentine-type afghan made me smile. I made espresso and watched it spurt merrily into a cobalt-trimmed cup. It was Hutschenreuther, a gift from Tom Schulz. Pain seared through me. The phone rang and I grabbed it.

It was my mother calling from New Jersey, so concerned that she and my father hadn’t been able to say good-bye, and was I all right? Remembering Helen’s advice, I did not mention To Schulz’s disappearance. They would only worry and call me incessantly. Yes, I assured my mother, we were fine. The two of them had just come back from the early church service, she said, and when was the wedding going to be? I stalled. Ah, well, we were working on rescheduling. Did they find out what happened to your priest.? No. But will you get married when things are back in order at the parish? Of course, I promised. When we have a new priest.

And a groom, I thought grimly after replacing the receiver. Dread, worry, and stinging guilt made a simultaneous assault. If only I hadn’t insisted Tom and I get married in the church. Tom Schulz never would have known Ted Olson. He never would have gone out there yesterday morning. He would be sitting here right now having coffee with me, instead of being in peril. Or worse. Or worse …

Stop this.

My espresso had turned cold. I slugged it down anyway, stared at Julian’s pile of Chimayó dirt, and waited for my brain to click into gear. Not much happened; there’s only so much caffeine can do on two hours of sleep. I slammed the risen cinnamon rolls into Tom’s oven. With great reluctance, I showered and dressed in a dark blue suit, then put in a call to the Sheriff’s Department. Without Tom there to tell me what was going on, the center for county law enforcement felt like a foreign outpost. Boyd was not at his desk. I left a message asking for an update, and gave the number to my personal line.

In a great rush, I repunched buttons on my business phone and got Tom’s own voice mail. The sound of his rich, deep, vocal recording was nectar. I listened to it while Scout rubbed against my leg to remind me it was feeding time. I listened to it while writing a note to Julian and Arch and inhaling the deep, rich, mouth-watering smell of the just-baked cinnamon rolls. I listened to it again while assembling ingredients for the poppy seed muffins that I would make between the services in the church kitchen, since the cinnamon rolls would just be enough for the first service. At last, the clock said 7:30. As I was slathering cream cheese frosting on the warm cinnamon rolls, my business line rang. I snagged it.

Oddly, this is Frances Markasian of the Mountain Journal – “

“Don’t.” I could just imagine stringy-haired Frances Markasian perched aggressively at her desk, smoking a cigarette with a great length of ash and swigging Diet Pepsi spiked with Vivarin. The woman never slept.

“Goldy, please, I’m sorry about this – “

“The heck you are.” I cursed myself for not taking Helen Keene’s advice. I should have disconnected as soon as I heard Frances’s voice.

“We know about Olson and we know about Schulz,” Frances continued as if I had not spoken. “We know Mitchell Hartley’s a suspect. But I saw some big heart thing hanging on your porch when I drove by this morning, and I took a picture – “

In spite of my upbringing, I hung up. The doorbell rang; it was Boyd. His black crewcut glistened in the morning sun; a battered leather flight jacket did not quite cover his pear-shaped belly. He was chewing vigorously on his match, and he didn’t look happy.

“We don’t have him,” he said abruptly when I opened the door, without waiting for me to ask. The uniform shirt he wore underneath the flight jacket was so wrinkled I was certain he’d been up all night. “But you and I need to talk.”

“I was just about to go to church – “

“I’m coming with you. Think I look okay?”

“You look fine. But go to church with me? You’ve got to be joking. Why?” I looked at him sympathetically. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m okay. And I don’t joke.”

Boyd wanted to take my van so we could talk on the way. I asked him to hold the rolls in his lap. He obliged and we took off.

“Go the long way,” he ordered, “whatever that is. I need to know a few things before we get there. What do you know about Olson being the protégé of a priest named Canon George Montgomery?”

I obligingly swung the van right instead of left on Main Street. Our trip to church would take ten minutes instead of five. “Montgomery is the canon theologian and one of the staunchest conservatives in the diocese. He’s not the kind of fellow who would fall on his sword over the old hymns. I mean, this fellow’s dream is to go to sleep wrapped in the Shroud of Turin. He used to be the rector of a big church in Pine Creek, but now he’s semiretired. Montgomery’s on the Board – “

“Yeah,” said Boyd, “Theological Examiners, we know. Served with Olson at the cathedral some years back, when Montgomery was dean. They were real thick until they had a big spiritual disagreement, sort of like the ones you’re telling me about in your parish. They get along on the committee?”

I remembered Montgomery complaining bitterly in one of our meetings about a candidate’s explanation of prayer. “Well, the only disagreement I can recall was when Montgomery insisted that prayer was about relationship and not about making coconuts grow. He really worked himself up into a dither. The next meeting, Olson brought in a giant coconut. Montgomery didn’t think it was funny That’s the only conflict I can remember they had.”

“Late last night,” Boyd drawled, “Mitchell Hartley told us Canon Montgomery and Father Olson had another argument. This one was last week in some other meeting. About whether miracles were happening at your church. Sounds as if there was a lot of yelling. Harley said they could hear it through the doors of the meeting room at the diocesan center.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I said. I didn’t add, But nothing would surprise me, arguments are the church’s way of life. I’d made that pretty clear to Boyd yesterday. “Are you thinking their animosity was really bad? Bad enough to kill for? Because if you are, Father Doug Ramsey mentioned Montgomery was at St. Luke’s yesterday waiting for our wedding to start.”

“Ramsey. The guy with the windy explanation for everything. He said Montgomery was at the church?”

I nodded and swerved around a corner. Maybe I was driving too fast. I eased my foot off the pedal. “I invited all the parishioners, as well as the board. Twenty minutes before our wedding was supposed to begin, Ramsey said, ‘The whole committee’s here.’ Nobody in the church could have gotten out to Olson’s and back in that amount of time.”

“Well, that’s really not what we’re thinking about. This guy Hartley says – “

“Hartley was at the diocesan center when he heard this argument between Father Olson and Montgomery? Doing what?”

“He says he works in the office of Congregational Services there, and he hear things. Was there resentment or anger over this miracles thing? From anybody in the church? Maybe somebody wanted to get healed and didn’t?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, I haven’t heard anything about that. But my friend Marla might. She’s a lot more involved with the various groups than I am. And by the way, a reporter called me this morning and said Hartley was a suspect. Is that true?”

“Everybody’s a suspect at this point, Goldy. That’s just our policy until we know differently.”

Boyd shifted the rolls around in his lap and seemed to be formulating a new question. Poor Boyd, I thought. This wasn’t the greatest way to introduce somebody to church life. I slowed down behind an exhaust-spewing truck.

“All right. You’ve told me about some of the people. What you didn’t tell me was why the Old Guard hated Olson. I mean, besides the fact that they had different tastes in music.”

I pulled the van onto a muddy shoulder one block away from the church. I cut the engine and looked over at Boyd. “It’s what he represents. Represented. A lot of things have changed in our church over the last two decades. The Old Guard hates the liturgical innovations of the last twenty years, especially the passing of the peace, a point in the service when people embrace each other.”

Boyd chuckled. “People in their sixties and seventies not liking body contact with strangers? Not surprising. Now give me the two-minute drill on what they hate about the music.”

“Zelda and the traditionalists dislike the new hymnal. Intensely.” I explained to Boyd that when the Episcopal hymnal had been revised in 1982, we’d lost “The Son of God Goes Forth to War” because it was deemed too militaristic, “Once to Every Man and Nation” because it supposedly undermined traditional theology, and “We Thank You, Lord of Heaven” because one of the things the hymn was thankful for was “dogs with smiling faces.” This last never did bother me. Why not also be thankful for “cats with inscrutable faces”?

Body glanced at his watch. “Get to the point, Goldy. The service starts in fifteen minutes.”

“Well, what the older crowd is most allergic to is the folk music booklets that Father Olson had tucked in every pew. The Old Guard wanted no part of the new songs. The way they settled the issue at St. Luke’s was to have the earlier service traditional, the later service the one for the charismatics. To the traditionalists, the guitar-and-tambourine tunes are a flood of disrespectful noise that sounds an awful lot like ‘Jesus, the Magic Dragon.’ “

“Huh,” muttered Boy. “I can see we’re getting into some important issues here.” He fingered something in his breast pocket that looked suspiciously like a pack of cigarettes. Then he cast a longing look at the plump cinnamon rolls in his lap. Wordlessly, I reached into my supply bag for a knife, paper plate, and napkin.

“Please have one,” I urged as I sliced through the thickened brown sugar syrup that clung to the rolls’ sides. I lifted out a dark, dripping spiral, maneuvered it onto the plate, and handed it to him. He groaned with delight.

“Go on about the music.”

“Okay. Even though the first service the Old Guard attends has traditional music, and the second service has the renewal music, they didn’t want it at St. Luke’s at all,” I explained as I pulled the van back on the road. “To them it was like creeping communism, remember that? Anyway. The Old Guard had finally gotten a petition going. They called it Halt the Hootenanny and they had a bunch of signatures. Lucille Boatwright had just begun her rotation onto the chairmanship of the Altar Guild, and she was going to present the petition to Olson. They thought that might force him to drop the new music. That was the last I heard.” I pulled into the church parking lot.

Boyd chewed thoughtfully. Finally he said, “I still need to talk to you about the Prestons.”

“If you want to be at the service from the beginning, we need to go in now. Or if you want to talk – ?” Boyd shook his head, folded the empty paper plate, and started to open his door. I took his plate to put in my van trash bag and said, “Wait. Don’t come in with me. Don’t sit with me or act like you know me. Please.”

“You care to tell me why not?”

I took the rolls from him and carefully rearranged the plastic over them. “Two reasons. If people see you and your Sheriff’s Department uniform, they won’t tell me a thing. On the other hand, they might tell you something they wouldn’t share with me.”

“Yeah? What’s reason number two?”

“People will talk,” I said simply. I gave him a steady look. “They’ll say Tom Schulz left me because I was having an affair with you. And I don’t even know your first name.”

“It’s Horace. And now you know why I prefer Boyd. And there’s not even a shred of truth – “

“So what? Horace. Boyd. Please. I’ll go in first, you lock my van and follow.”

He grunted. “I thought this was gonna be a place where people would be happy to see me.”

“Welcome to the church, Horace.”

When I came through the heavy wooden door into the narthex, I immediately realized it was Palm Sunday, a liturgical fact that had slipped my mind with all the disasters of the past twenty-four hours. My wedding flowers had disappeared. They had been replaced with the elaborate fans and sprays of the palms that symbolized Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and in the church, the beginning of Holy Week. We were only seven days away from Easter, the most sacred festival of the church year, despite all the hype about gunnies and baskets. Whether Boyd knew all this or even cared I did not know.

In any event, Palm Sunday always brought out more folks than was customary during Lent. The activity in the church kitchen was at a fever pitch. I intended merely to leave my pan of cinnamon rolls for someone to dole out after the service along with the other baked goods. However, when I appeared by the oven, all activity ceased. Six women, including a remarkably stalwart Lucille Boatwright, eyed me with a combination of surprise, pity, and unnervingly intense silence.

“For after the service,” I said lamely. I put down the pans.

A chorus of “We’re so sorry” and “Isn’t this just so awful” and “My poor dear, you shouldn’t have gone to the trouble” sent me reeling back into the narthex. There I was greeted by a frantic Father Ramsey.

“Doug,” I interrupted matter-of-factly before he could rattle on, “we need to talk. It’s about Father Olson. And the bishop.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Boyd, looking extremely uncomfortable, leafing through the pamphlets at the back of the narthex.

Doug Ramsey raised startled dark eyes. “Oh, Goldy, how are you? I’ve been so worried, but with everything going on, a funeral to plan, the meetings … honestly! Are you managing all right? Did the food arrive?” His black clerical suit was wrinkled and covered with dandruff, as if he too had slept in his clothes. I wondered why he wasn’t wearing his vestments. His eyes darted past me to see who was coming through the parish door. “Sorry, I can’t talk now,” he said. “We’ve had the most extraordinary mix-up. Have you decided to do the food for the board meeting?” When I did not immediately respond, he again assumed a sympathetic expression and made his voice low an serious. “Have you heard anything about the … .you … ?” I shook my head. Doug Ramsey strained his neck inside his white clerical collar and shook his head of floppy dark curls. “Well, ah, I must go tend to some last-minute problems. The money the churchwomen are raising selling raffle tickets for pearl chokers? I thought they had their spending plans all set. Now it turns out that a third of them want to give it to African famine relief, a third want to use it for the columbarium stones, and another third want to invest in more pearls for next year. They want me to arbitrate, which means two-thirds of them are going to hate me … .Then Zelda came back in this morning wanting her old job back, and Canon Montgomery was trying to be pastoral, so he said yes – “

“Montgomery? Here already? I thought you were going to fill in for a while, at least.”

“Yes, well so did I.” Ramsey cleared his throat noisily and rant the fingers of one hand through his hair, disarranging his curls. “Anyway, ah, then Zelda said she always picked the Palm Sunday hymns, and Montgomery had already chosen the music, and then the new organist showed up! And all this plus what happened to Olson … Oh, dear. So the new organist stomped out of the sacristy, and one of the churchwomen though he was the fellow coming to give an estimate on the columbarium stones, and that he’d been driven away by the investin-pearls faction. Then, if you can imagine – “

I couldn’t. And I thought catering was bad.

“ – just as I am straightening out the organist fiasco, Mitchell Hartley shows up and starts asking about the oral exams for the candidates for ordination! The exams don’t even begin until Tuesday! Now Canon Montgomery needs me to find a King James version of the Bible while he deals with the, er, music. Not to mention that of course, some time in the next five, I have to vest.”

“Doug, please. I need to talk to you about my fiancé. It would help me if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Well, can’t it wait until the coffee hour? Please?” He torqued around and went flying after the new organist, who had banged open the rear door of the church to make a dramatic exit. I turned in desperation to look for Boyd and saw the short, fully robed body and ruddy face of George Montgomery as he entered the narthex. Lucille Boatwright marched up behind him and snagged him by the robe. Canon Montgomery tripped and barely prevented himself from falling over.

“Father Montgomery, I must talk to you about the drainage from our columbarium project after the service!” Lucille rasped. Montgomery, recovering, did not immediately reply. He got Lucille’ acid test: “Canon Montgomery, did you know Father Tyler Pinckney?” When Montgomery was mumbling that he had not known Father Pinckney very well, I sidled up and gave him a welcoming smile. Lucille briskly turned on her spectator pump hells and stalked away.

“Thank you, oh, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” said Montgomery. His voice caught, as if he had been crying. His mottled face had aged much in the two years since my Sunday School course. His hair seemed whiter and thinner than I remembered, and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Are you all right?” I asked impulsively.

He tilted his head and raised his bushy white eyebrows. “I’ve had a hard time. Olson was my right-hand man at the cathedral. He was very dear to me. I talk to grieving people all the time, but here I am – “ His voice faltered.

“Yes. I … I’m sorry.” I did not know what to say. You did not hug the canon theologian, even if you were on the same committee. Montgomery’s duty was to articulate the theology of, for, and by the diocese, which in our case was all the Episcopal churched in Colorado. It was not his duty to be affectionate. Embarrassed to be staring at his sagging face, I looked at his robes. Montgomery was wearing an elaborately needlepointed red stole.

“That’s Father Olson’s … you’re wearing his … “

“I know.” Montgomery’s haggard features crumpled. He lifted the thick, perfectly stitched edges of the stole. “I was called in somewhat late, and all my stoles are packed away. Actually, I’m still in shock – “ He gave me the benefit of his close-set, kindly brown eyes, his warm, tentative smile that slanted sideways. He patted his white hair, parted exactly in the middle. “Father Ramsey told me you, too, have been suffering.”

The formal address of Ramsey did not surprise me. “Yes, well, as Doug … Father Ramsey knows, the police are scouring the county. They’re keeping me informed.”

Montgomery nodded and reached out to brush my arm with his fingers, then drew back hastily as Doug Ramsey himself approached with a freckle-faced, red-haired young man taking long, aggressive steps beside him.

“Do you know Mitchell Hartley?” Montgomery said to me under his breath.

“Not very well,” I replied, equally conspiratorial.

“The reality is much worse than anything you could have heard,” Montgomery told me in a pleasant tone. He turned to Hartley and added stiffly, “I didn’t know you were a parishioner.”

“I’m not surprised you forgot,” growled Mitchell Hartley, who was probably in his late twenties and had a head of thick orange-red hair that he combed up in an exaggerated pompadour. Holy Elvis. He had eyes the vivid color of blueberries and a wide jaw that jutted out defiantly. Doug Ramsey mumbled something about vesting and scuttled away. Hartley and his red tidal wave of hair leaned in toward me. He assumed a condescending, pastoral tone. “I am sorry to hear your sad news, Goldy. I am praying for you.”

“Ah,” I said, embarrassed. “Thank you.”

Canon Montgomery pulled in his chine and leaned away from Mitchell Hartley, as if he had suddenly come upon some especially noxious form of poison plant. Mitchell Hartley quirked one orange-red eyebrow at me.

“I know you know,” I said uncomfortably. “But I don’t believe we’ve met. You see, I usually go to this service rather than … “

“Yes,” he said impatiently. “I know that.”

“Well,” I faltered, “how nice. I guess I’ll be off then – “

“You’re the woman, the caterer,” Mitchell Hartley said with a bitter smile, “that Theodore Olson appointed to the board. And you’ve just had this tragic loss … “

“Ah, well, yes.”

Canon Montgomery cleared his throat and puffed out his chest. “Miss Bear is a very highly respected member of this parish. She represents, shall we say, the Woman in the Pew. I trained her in one of my Sunday School seminars. But she probably won’t be attending our meetings next week, as she’s in the middle of another crisis.”

Mitchell Hartley snorted, lifted his wide jaw, and narrowed his bright blue eyes at me. “That’s too bad. We don’t usually get such a good-looking examiner.”

Since we were in church, I avoided making a scurrilous remark. I began to see why Father Olson would have flunked Mitchell Hartley last year. A dawning realization told me being an examiner might not be that much fun.

While we were talking, parishioners had been streaming through the doors and looking around expectantly. When their glances caught on a robed priest engaged in conversation, they seemed to be reassured and wended into the pews. Doug Ramsey made a flustered, but vested, appearance while the teenaged crucifer twirled around the poled Victorian cross. As if on cue, the first few notes of organ music pealed out – the familiar strains of “Once to Every Man and Nation.”

“What happened to the prelude?” squeaked Doug Ramsey.

“What happened to ‘All Glory, Laud, and Honor’?” asked Canon Montgomery His white eyebrows furrowed in sudden anger. “What seems to be the problem with St. Luke’s?”

“Guess you two don’t have much control of this parish,” muttered Mitchell Hartley. His eyes glittered.

I slithered away.

Once in a pew, I looked around for Boyd. He was sitting in the back, eyes fixed on the altar. Canon Montgomery assumed the celebrant’s role in a dignified manner, although his distress over his lack of control appeared to quiver below his passive exterior. Whenever he wanted music, he nodded sternly in the direction of Zelda at the organ. Clearly, he didn’t’ want to risk announcing what could be a disputed hymn. The newly hired organist never made a reappearance.

As the service continued, I fought rising worries about Tom. I imagined him in pain; I saw him in his coffin. I shook my head, cleared my throat, and tried to sing. That proved impossible. I flipped aimlessly through the hymnal. People turned to frown at the slapping noise of the pages. I reached forward quickly to put the hymnal back in its rack. It fell on the stone floor with a decisive bang, which brought me more disapproving glances, including a glowering look from Montgomery.

Montgomery retrieved my attention with a short, theatrical silence before the sermon. “I know some of you have come to enjoy the … lines that I occasionally compose, so I will take the liberty to share some with you now.” He cleared his throat patted on his middle-parted hair, and puffed up his chest again. I pressed my lips together.

“Ah, Lord!” Montgomery intoned. “How we wax lyrical/when speaking your work in miracle!” He paused, then raised his voice to a shout. “But truly! What is most divine/is seeing you in bread and wine!/And what we seek from you the most/is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!”

It must have been the stress. An irrepressible gurgle of laughter came out of me. Montgomery charged down the nave, his shoulders stiff with rage.

“Are you always so disrespectful?” he roared. His mottled face was now an unhealthy crimson as it shuddered close to mine. His breath smelled like a very old person’s.

I said in a low voice, “No. Sorry.”

Montgomery’s face withdrew slowly from mine. I was irresistibly reminded of a large, angry turtle who had abruptly decided to go back to the dignified encasement of its shell. The shell at that moment was the canon’s – actually Father Olson’s – imposingly voluminous red robe. Montgomery pivoted, and seemed to will control of himself. In the long, ensuing silence, he walked majestically, crimson robe flowing and shoulders stiff, back to the pulpit. Hey! I wanted to yell after him. I thought you liked me!

I wondered what Boyd was thinking about his introduction to the Episcopal Church. The graying heads in the congregation turned to each other, confused by the lack of direction. A few shot me sidelong glances. I ignored them Canon Montgomery stood stolidly facing the altar, his back to us. Doug Ramsey cleared his throat desperately, looked to Montgomery for direction, got none, and reluctantly started on the prayers of intercession. My mind was elsewhere. I had never been yelled at by a priest, only by my abusive ex-husband.

And we most humbly beseech thee, of thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succor all those who, in this transitory life, are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity.

Tom Schulz had made me a lovely chocolate-raspberry cake the first night we had made love.

“Tom!” I said with a low groan, then blushed as more disapproving eyes studied me. Again I regretted coming to this service.

For servants departed this life in thy faith and fear, especially our beloved priest, Theodore Olson. Parishioners sniffed and coughed. George Montgomery slowly crossed himself. Lucille Boatwright knelt, stiff and stony-faced.

Then the intercessions were complete and the acolytes bustled with the offertory plates. Zelda Preston peeked out from behind the wall next to the organ and announced the anthem. Finally jolted back to reality, Montgomery declared the offertory sentences at the same time that Zelda took off on her organ solo and Marla slid in next to me in the next-to-last pew. A waft of rose-scented perfume enveloped her.

“Good God! Did the canon go off or what?” she hissed under her breath. “Anyway, I think what Episcopalians seek the most/is tea and marmalade and toast. Agree?”