The Last Suppers

She said, ”I’m taking Julian back out to get the Rover so the guys can go to school. Can I trust you?” Her eyes challenged me to protest. I wasn’t sure I had the strength.

“I’ll stay with her,” Arch piped up. “I learned CPR in Scouts.” He gave me one of his goggle-eyed looks and a full, beneficent grin. Marla laughed while Julian, mute and anxious, stared at me as if I were an apparition. He could not seem to believe I was alive. I knew better than to try to explain my motivations to him in his present emotional condition.

“What’s the deal with that knitted thing on the porch?” he demanded. “I think it’s pretty weird that someone keeps leaving stuff for you, and you don’t even know who it is.”

“Someone at church,” I said casually. I brightened. “I probably won’t get up when you get back. Hope your classes go well today.” And then I remembered again the importance of this week to Julian. Would the college admissions or rejections come this day? I’d become so preoccupied with my own crises that I hadn’t been very sympathetic. “Good luck,” I added lamely.

“Don’t worry about me,” he ordered impatiently, then hustled off with Marla. “We’ll be back fro you in forty minutes,” he warned over his shoulder to Arch.

Arch did not move from the kitchen table. “You just got one call this morning,” he announced to me, as if anticipating my first question. “They want you to set up at the church around eleven-thirty. Should I phone and say you can’t come?”

“No, I have to go. Maybe you could put some water on to boil the pasta. Then if you don’t mind, you can scoop out the cookies. I made two kinds. They are recipes of Tom’s.”

He gave me a solicitous look, then retrieved my pasta pot. “So, out at Father Olson’s,” he said conversationally, “was it really scary? I wish I knew who clobbered you. That is so gross.”

“It went too fast for me to be scared. But I was wondering if you’d hand me that pile of exams over there, please.” I readjusted the heating pad and felt the medication kick in. My head felt light, and the sharp pains in my back ebbed to a dull ache as I started flipping through the pages the diocesan office had sent me to read.

“Did the robber-guy take much?” Arch asked as water gushed into the pan. He heaved it over to the stove with a minimum of sloshing.

“Hold on.” I ripped open the envelope containing the candidates’ names coded to their exam numbers. As I suspected, candidate 92-492 was identified on the master sheet as Mitchell Hartley. I put in a call to Boyd’s voice mail; after the fiascos at Brio Barn and Zelda’s, the last thing I was going to do was have the cops go scoop Hartley up. Besides, the police already had checked the conference center, where Hartley was staying, for Tom. When I got off the phone, Arch was looking at me quizzically.

“What was your question, Arch? Oh. What did the robber steal. Some church vessels. But not a whole lot more that I could tell. For a reason I can’t figure out, the robber or somebody dug up the area around where Olson’s body had been, and put a cross there.”

“Really? Wow, I’ve heard about that kind of thing on Stories of the Weird.”

“What kind of thing?” Normally, the fact that Arch had a fascination with the Weird meant that he knew statistics on UFOs, extraterrestrial explanations of Stonehenge, and metaphysical theories on Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance that were nothing the FBI would investigate. And of course, Chimayó. I said, “You heard about robbers digging up dirt?”

“Oh, no,” he replied in his you-are-so-unsophisticated tone. “Okay, look. If the blood of a martyr falls to the ground in a certain place, people believe you have to dig up the bloody dirt … sorry, Mom,” he added when he saw my expression. He gestured broadly. “Then they pour holy water, or just plain water maybe, over the dirt, and the dirty, bloody water that comes out has magical healing properties.”

“Oh, please – “

“I’m just telling you.”

Thanks. The cookie batters are in two covered bowls in the walk-in. Next to the shrimp.”

He frowned at my incredulity and emerged from the walk-in refrigerator balancing the butcher paper-wrapped shrimp on top of one of the bowls. I bargained with myself: I would stay seated and try to work. If the back pain became unbearable, I’d send the food over to the church and go to bed.

With infinite care, I leaned over to preheat Tom’s over. An arrow of pain shot up my spine: I decided I could live with it. Arch took out measuring spoons and the two of us scooped mounds of luscious-looking dough onto the buttered cookie sheets. Working with Arch in this way reminded me of the last time we’d cooked together, when Tom, Julian, Arch, and I had laughingly patted out silky discs of focaccia with garlic and pine nuts. Don’t think about it, I ordered myself.

Arch placed the sheets in Tom’s oven and drained the pasta wheels. Soon the kitchen was wrapped in a scent as rich and sweet as any country inn. I breathed the heavenly aroma in deeply: it was another gift from Tom, his memory, his recipe. Tom’s cookies emerged as golden, moist rounds delicately fringed with brown; Arch and I each took one. As before, buttery lemon flavor melted over the crunch of almonds. They were out of this world.

“Those churchwomen are so lucky,” Arch said with undisguised envy. Outside, the whine of Marla’s and Julian’s vehicles announced their return.

“Try a Canterbury Jumble.”

He palmed one and patted me on the shoulder, then picked up his bookbag and trundled out. I glanced at the clock: 8:50. The boys wouldn’t be too late for school. When I was going through the divorce from The Jerk, a therapist had told me that during a time of crisis, staying on schedule with a child’s normal events was essential. Missing school, delaying mealtimes, getting to bed too late, would all say to Arch that his world was falling apart. The last thing I wanted was for my son to feel that chaos was taking over. Even if it seemed that way to me.

Marla traipsed in, took one look at my anguished expression, and popped a warm cookie in her mouth. I did the same, and tasted the warm chocolate oozing around the rich crunch of macadamia nuts and sweet, chewy raisins and coconut. Marla raised one eyebrow at the assembled ingredients on the counter. “Tell me how to fix this shrimp,” she said dejectedly, trying without success to conceal her distaste for cooking. It wasn’t the first time I had been reminded what a good friend she was, but tears smarted in my eyes as I set about instructing her in boiling the prawns.

An hour and a half later, and with periodic pauses in her clumsy culinary activity to massage my back, Marla had finished putting together the women’s luncheon food. The medley of succulent shrimp, sweet peas, and tender pasta lay under a blanket of wine-and-cheese sauce, awaiting only heating in one of my large chafing dishes, the kind used by caterers; a hotel pan. An inviting bowl of purple radicchio, dark green oak leaf lettuce, pale nests of chicory and baby romaine leaves glistened under plastic wrap next to a jar of freshly made balsamic vinaigrette. The cookies lay in alternating rows on a silver platter. To go with the main dish, Marla had thawed homemade Italian breadsticks taken from my freezer. When she had laboriously transported everything out to the van, she nipped over to her Jaguar and brought out a garment bag. Within ten minutes, she emerged from my bedroom, wearing a lovely wool dress the color my mother called dusty rose. With a monumental sigh, she collapsed on one of the kitchen chairs.

Shrimp on Wheels

5 ounces pasta wagon wheels (ruote)

salt to taste

1 quart water

1 tablespoon crab-and-shrimp seasoning (“crab boil”)

ź lemon

ž pound large deveined raw shrimp (“Easy-Peel”)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons minced shallot

2 tablespoons flour

1 tablespoon chicken bouillon granules, dissolved in ˝ cup water

1 cup milk

˝ cup dry white wine ( preferably vermouth)

2 tablespoons best-quality mayonnaise (such as homemade)

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

1 cup frozen baby peas

Preheat over to 350 . Butter a 2-quart casserole dish with a lid; set aside.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water for 10 to 12 minutes or until al dente. Drain; set aside.

In a large frying pan, bring the quart of water to a boil and add the lemon and the crab-and-shrimp boil seasoning. Add the shrimp, cook until just pink (about one minute), and immediately transfer with a slotted spoon (leaving the seasonings behind) to a colander to drain. Do not overcook. Drain, peel, and set aside.

In another large frying pan, melt the butter over low heat and sauté the shallot in it for several minutes, until limp but not browned. Sprinkle the flour over the shallot and cook over low heat for 1 or 2 minutes, until the mixture bubbles. Stirring constantly, slowly add the chicken bouillon, milk, and wine, stirring until thickened.

Combine the mayonnaise and mustard in a small bowl. Add a small amount of the sauce to the mustard and mayonnaise and stir until smooth, then add that mixture to the sauce. Stir until heated through. Add the cheese, stirring until melted. Add the pasta, shrimp, and peas and stir until well combined. Transfer the mixture to the buttered dish and bake, covered, for about 15 to 25 minutes or until heated through.

Makes 4 servings

“Damn! Catering’s hard work!”

I said, “Let’s get going. I’m just fine.” I leaned over and gave her an awkward hug. “This luncheon wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for you.”

“Don’t get sentimental on me,” she said as she unplugged the heating pad. I shambled into the bathroom and changed into the front-buttoning black dress Marla had picked out. The pain in my back was noticeable but not unbearable. Standing hurt more than walking. When I arrived back in the kitchen, Marla was already wearing a Goldilock’s Catering apron; she slipped one on me and tied it in the back.

“Seriously, Goldy, this work is too hard. I hope you’re putting some money away in a retirement fund. If not, I need to get you together with my investment guy.”

It hurt when I laughed. “To be perfectly honest, I haven’t thought about retirement lately. If you’re talking about a major life change, at this point, I’d rather get married.”

She had finished tying my apron and I turned around. Dear cheerful Marla, my best friend, who sashayed through difficulty with flippancy and aplomb, had a look of such sadness and disappointment on her face that I knew it could mean only one thing, a thing she would never say. She thought Tom Schulz was dead.

18

We drove to the church in silence. The air was still cold, and gray lamb’s tails of cloud wafted just above the rim of the mountains. Several older women had already arrived in the church parking lot. They watched Marla’s and my arrival with hungry interest. When I tried to help Marla unload the boxes, a razorlike pain screamed across my back. Marla saw my wince: she promptly ordered me into the church. “Besides,” she announced, “here comes Bob Preston, and I just know he’s desperate to help me unload.

Preston, who had clearly driven up in his just-waxed gold. Audi only to leave Agatha off, submitted to Marla’s orders after she rapped loudly on his car window with her ringed fingers and hollered at him through the glass. Sheepishly, he untangled himself from the gleaming car and picked up two boxes from the back of the van. I prayed that he would not have a hernia while carrying in a box and sue Goldilocks’ Catering. But for Bob, a macho display was more desirable than being embarrassed in front of a gaggle of churchwomen.

Inside the church, Zelda Preston was already at work. Her wiry body and intent face were bent over a long table covered with a floral-print tablecloth. Her strong hands expertly set each place with the church’s beautiful matched silverplate, Inlaid Rose. When I arrest the wrong guy, Schulz had told me once cheerfully, I do my best to be real nice to him the next time I see him. I hobbled over to Zelda, knew better than to give her a hug, so merely picked up forks and spoons and started putting them around the table.

“Eight,” was her laconic greeting. Well, at least she didn’t ignore me. I guess I was forgiven. On the other hand, maybe she was embarrassed that I knew she’d interviewed for the organist’s position with the Catholics, the same Catholics she’d deemed unworthy of receiving my unused wedding flowers.

Unused wedding flowers. I looked up at the altar and the diamond-shaped window. I had imagined the ceremony so many times that just being in the church again with food and women bustling around made the welt on my back throb. The pain pill was wearing off. When I finished setting the table with Zelda, I walked out to the kitchen and downed another one. Might as well pretend I was an angel and float through the prayer meeting.

By 11:35, eight women had assembled in the tiny church library that doubled as a meeting room for small groups. Marla announced it would make her nervous if I watched her fill the chafing dish with boiling water. That made two of us. I plugged in the electric heating pad I’d brought with me beside one of the library bookshelves, settled into a high-backed chair, and prepared to pray.

“Oh, my dear,” said one of the women, all of whom were older than me by at least three decades, ”What happened to you?”

“I hurt my back.”

“We’ll add it to the list,” Lucille Boatwright declared solicitously as she settled onto the library couch like a hen adjusting to her nest. “Poor Goldy. Any word yet?’ When I shook my head, she added, “Perhaps we should start with a prayer for Father Olson.”

Beginning with Lucille, the women took turns delivering halting words of supplication. This was very different from the higher-decibel, gut-spilling type of prayer I’d heard at the late Sunday service. A silence followed. I closed my eyes and conjured up an image of Father Olson. On the screen of my brain, he appeared and said urgently, “Call me.”

“What?” I said out loud.

“What/” chorused four women, their perplexed eyes suddenly open Lucille Boatwright rolled her lips against her gums and gave me a stern look that demanded: Are you on drugs?

Prescribed pain pills, thank you very much. Still, I kept my mouth firmly shut as the women began a short prayer that God would lead the police to the murderer, and that Tom Schulz’s note would be deciphered and Tom found. I had intended to ask these women questions about the parish during this meeting. But the pill I had taken was making logical thought impossible. During their prayerful silence, I allowed my eyes to slip shut. This time I’d conjure up Tom Schulz. Instead, Father Olson’s face loomed again, his mouth open in supplication.

“Ca-a-a-ll me-e-e.”

No doubt about it, I was losing it. I heard serving utensils clatter loudly to the floor out in the narthex. That was all I needed – I made a slow, clumsy retreat out to where the catering action was taking place. Unfortunately, the very person I was not in the mood to chat with was Canon Montgomery. His toadlike presence filled the narthex. Or maybe it was the poetry that invaded my mind when I saw him smile approvingly at the pan of pasta: Only a wimp/eats shrimp.

“Ah, Goldy,” he said with a large, synthetic smile. He moved toward me. “Just the person I’ve been looking for.”

Marla gave me a helpless look as the Mountain Journal – in the person of Frances Markasian – breezed through the church doors. When Frances spotted me talking with Montgomery, she grabbed the wooden door behind her and eased it closed so that it would make no noise. I felt an equal amount of discouragement and unease.

Ignorant of either woman’s presence, Montgomery confided, “Godly, I’m so very, very sorry that I was hard on you during the service yesterday.” He made a gesture of apology with his meaty hands. “I feel terrible that my grief expressed itself in an ugly outburst against you. I called and left a message with your son. But I wanted to tell you so myself.”

I muttered, “Okay.” In her duct-taped sneakers, Frances Markasian tiptoed up behind Montgomery so she could eavesdrop on our conversation. The Stealth Reporter. I said nothing. In fact, I rather enjoyed the prospect of the canon theologian getting a painful does of our local journalism.

“It’s just,” Montgomery went on, casting his eyes heavenward and warming to his topic, “that I’m still so terribly upset over losing Ted Olson. And this parish … I don’t know.” A cast of tragedy hung over every word. Frances Markasian was getting it all down. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Again. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, the stress, the pill. Or maybe it was the way Montgomery took himself so seriously that brought out the hyena in me “In any event,” he rushed on with a self-important sniff and pat of his middle-parted white hair, “we’ve decided to move up the exams by one day, since Olson’s funeral is tomorrow and the whole committee’s already here. Will this be a problem? To have dinner for fifteen at the conference center at six? Tonight? Do you have a staff that can help you? Penitential season, better have fish.” Frances scribbled madly but noiselessly; I wondered wildly if I should set an extra place for her. My mouth hung open. Dinner for fifteen a problem? Montgomery had to be kidding. “Afterwards,” he added in a rush, “we can go through the first three answers to the coffee-hour questions. If I could just figure out the fax machine in the choir room, I think I could notify the last of the candidates. I do remember we were planning on having you do the food … “

Tom Schulz’s voice in my head said, Who’s we, white man? At least it was Tom’s voice this time. Anything was better than having the dead rector insist that I phone him in the Hereafter. Maybe this was what schizophrenia felt like. I waited for Frances Markasian to introduce herself, but instead she just held her fingers up to her lips in a shushing motion. I wondered if this was legal. We were, after all, in church.

“Goldy?” Canon Montgomery raised his voice a shade. The last thing I needed was to have him holler at me again. Marla was shaking her head wildly and mouthing the words No food. But I knew I had to keep busy, even if the pain pills were playing tricks with my mind. The worst aspect of missing Schulz was the terrifying notion of having nothing to do, of being motionless at home waiting for the phone to ring. Not that I had done that much sitting around in the last forty-eight hours. But still …

“Yes, dinner will be fine. Will the place be open?”

He lifted his peaked eyebrows. “I’ve told Mitchell Hartley to leave the doors unlocked around the clock. That Bob Preston fellow protested – a little late for the person responsible for security to be upset, wouldn’t you say? I’m having a broken window fixed right now. Can you imagine?”

“Actually, I can. That’s our fault – “

He waved my protest away. “I’m assigning you and Doug Ramsey to examine Mitchell Hartley tonight, just for an hour. Go ahead and open your letter matching numbers with candidates, and concentrate on his written work. We hope Hartley’ll do better this time … “

There was that we again. How’s Father Doug doing?”

“Oh, well,” said Montgomery with a sniff. “You know he was upset with Olson over the miracle claims, and I do believe he was a trifle jealous, perhaps. Olson was so handsome and charismatic in every sense, a lady’s man, you know.” Frances Markasian wrote furiously.

“He was never a lady’s man with me,” I said, my voice as stiff as my aching back. I didn’t wish to see any undocumented insinuations about Father Olson in the Mountain Journal.

“I’m just saying,” Montgomery replied, testy and oblivious, “that I’ve been working with the clergy in this deanery to change suspicious, jealous attitudes. There have already been some meaningful changes. However, I do admit to frustration over priests’ feelings that the pie is only so big – “

“Pie!” cried Marla. “I just knew there was something I needed to talk to Goldy about. Sorry that you’re feeling frustrated, Canon Montgomery. Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you about this other canon I knew. His name was Canon Glasscock. I said, ‘Glasscock? Is that your real name? Do you have crystal balls, too?’ “ Montgomery gagged; I bit my lip; Frances Markasian wrote. But Marla was unyielding. “You know what the clergy should do?” she said, wagging a bejeweled finger at him. “Give you a jingle when they feel blue. Here tell the Mountain Journal all about it. Frances here can write, ‘When you want/to feel all summery/you can call/Canon Montgomery!’ “ With that she grabbed my arm, whirled us both around, and marched in the direction of the kitchen.

Behind us, I heard Frances say with potently false humility: “Hi, I’m from the paper, and I’d like to talk to you about your relationship with the murder victim. Father Olson? Could you talk a little bit more about those jealous attitudes?”

“Brr-auugh!” howled Canon Montgomery.

I didn’t dare look back to see how the canon theologian looked. I felt like a Filipino racing away from an erupting Mount Pinatubo. A Filipino with a bad back, no less.

Marla took the hotel pan from the church’s over. She set it in the chafer with a minimal amount of overflow splashing, from which she deftly leapt away. “Hey, Montgomery deserves it after the way he treated you on Sunday, so don’t give me a lecture,” she said defensively. She scooped up the salad bowl, swayed her body from side to side, and chanted, “I truly don’t know/which is worse/Listening to his sermons/Or listening to his verse!” The woman was on a roll. I saw Montgomery storm out of the church with Frances Markasian in hot pursuit. My bet was on the journalist.

The bakery-fresh smell of breadsticks heating filled the kitchen. I watched Marla toss the salad with the balsamic vinaigrette and wrap the warmed breadsticks in a linen napkin inside a wicker basket. When the ladies emerged from the prayer meeting, the oohed and ahed over the sumptuous array. In a fuzzy part of my brain, I registered that Agatha Preston hadn’t shown up; maybe Frances Markasian had nabbed her, too. Between refilling the salad bowl and breadstick basket, Marla remarked that she hadn’t seen Agatha either. But when I went outside to get a breath of fresh air and stretch my back, I saw Agatha on her knees digging around in the columbarium construction area. With its deep mud and frozen puddles, steep-sided ditches and erratic surface, perhaps Agatha was working in the mud and thinking about her favorite topic: hell.

The women raved about the Canterbury Jumbles more than any other dish. This bore out the truth of the caterers’ maxim that you must serve a rich and sweet dessert after a fish course. This was true even if the fish is shrimp in a wine-and-cheese sauce. After virtuous behavior, even if it is not truly virtuous, people feel they have earned their right to calories.

“Tata, dear!” one woman called gaily to me as she tied her Hermčs scarf under her chin. “I hope they find your fiancé!” Her tone was along the lines of, “I hope you buy a new car!”

I glanced at my watch as Marla cleared the plates. 1:00. Tom Schulz had been gone for fifty hours.

“You cannot cater tonight,” Marla insisted once we were back at my house, sitting in the kitchen with our feet up. “I won’t let you I’m too tired. Besides, we don’t have any food left.”

I shook my head. The only message on my machine had been from Alicia, my supplier. That afternoon, she was bringing up the Chilean sea bass and vegetables I had bee planning to prepare for the first meeting of the Board of Theological Examiners. This was fortunate, as I was indeed out of shrimp. I said, “This committee is counting on me. I can’t just show up with no food.”

“They were counting on you for tomorrow. Not tonight.”

I got up slowly and took unsweetened chocolate, vanilla, and Amaretto from my pantry. “Look, Julian will be home soon, and he won’t mind helping. Dinner will be very simple,” I said as convincingly as possible.

Marla scowled. “What kind of medication did Stodgy Hodge put you on, anyway, hallucinogenic Darvon? Was lunch your idea of simple?”

Actually, the pain pills were helping. I melted butter and whirled chocolate cookies in the blender to make a crust. If we were going to have bass, especially teamed bass, then the caterers’ postfish maxim made chocolate cheesecake a dessert necessity. Besides, I wanted to use another of Tom Schulz’s recipes. It made me feel close to him.

“I don’t believe I’m watching you do this,” Marla muttered. “At least it’s chocolate. Then we can both have some. Not to mention that your back will feel a lot better after a dose.”

Nudging me aside gently, she beat cream cheese with eggs, sugar, and melted chocolate, then doused the smooth, dark mixture with cream, vanilla, and Amaretto while I patted the crumbly crust into a springform pan. When the cheesecake was safely in the oven, Marla poured herself a generous glassful of Amaretto. She announced she was going out to rest on the living room sofa.

Chocolate Truffle Cheesecake

Crust:

9 ounces chocolate wafer cookies

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Filling:

˝ pound unsweetened chocolate

1 ˝ pounds cream cheese

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

ź cup Amaretto liqueur

1 ˝ teaspoons vanilla extract

˝ cup whipping cream

Whirl the chocolate cookies in a blender until they form crumbs. Mix with the melted butter. Press into the bottom and sides of a buttered 10-inch springform pan and refrigerate until you’re ready to fill and bake.

Preheat the oven to 350 . In the top of a double boiler over boiling water, melt the chocolate. Set aside to cool. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the eggs and sugar and beat until well incorporate. Stir a small amount of this mixture into the chocolate to loosen. Add the chocolate mixture to the cream cheese mixture and stir well. Stir in the Amaretto, vanilla, and cream. Stir until all ingredients are well mixed. Pour the filling into the prepared crust and bake for 50 to 55 minutes or until the cheesecake is puffed slightly and no longer jiggles in the center. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled, at least 2 hours. Take the cheesecake out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before serving for ease of slicing. Remove the sides of the pan and cut with a sharp knife. If the cheesecake is hard to slice, hold a long, unflavored piece of dental floss in 2 hands and carefully saw through the cake to cut even pieces.

Makes 16 servings

“If you leave this house, I’ll never speak to you again,” she mumbled once she’d downed the liqueur and slipped off her shoes. “And another thing I’ll never do again is think catering is this easy, fun, glamorous profession.”

I shook out the heart-in-the-center and cross-in-the-center afghans and gently placed them over her. “It’s nice to be appreciated,” I told her. But immediately I felt a wave of sorrow: Here I was catering a fancy meal to a bunch of examiners and examinees, when I should have been on my honeymoon.

I dutifully hobbled back out to the kitchen and pulled out the pile of exams. I leafed through to Mitchell Hartley’s first set of question. This section of the exam was constituted to replicate that most pastorally challenging part of Sunday morning, the coffee hour. Many parishioners saw the priest’s presence at coffee hour as an opportunity to get free advice. Think Ann Landers meets Dial-a-theologian. This years’ written questions reflected the kind of bizarre interrogatories that were common. At our last meeting, Father Olson had told the board that a long paragraph was acceptable as an answer to a coffee-hour question. We examiners were always to remember that the candidate was supposed to be pastoral first and theologically correct second. The Episcopal church didn’t want to make anyone feel unwelcome, no matter what. At least, that was their official line.

The first question went, “My neighbor asked me if I’d been born again. I said once was enough, thank you. She said I needed it, and I said I didn’t. Who’s right?”

Mitchell Hartley had written: “Your neighbor is right! You have to be born again, even Jesus says so. You need to get with the program.”

“uh-oh,” I groaned. On the living room couch, Marla stirred in her sleep. Not exactly pastoral, I wrote in pencil, and what happened to the long paragraph?

The second question was, “Our teenager babysat for some neighbor kids whose bedtime prayer began, ‘Our Mother and Father in Heaven …’ I though God was a man! What do you think, Father?”

Mitchell Hartley’s tall, loopy handwriting replied: “God is a man! Don’t let your teenager babysit there again.”

Candidate Hartley was beginning to tick me off. Again.

The third question. “I don’t understand, Father. Is AIDS God’s judgment against homosexuals?”

Mitchell Hartley’s reply was unequivocal. “Yes!” he‘d written.

I wrote, This guy flunks the coffee-hour section of the exam.

So much for Mitchell Hartley. My only question was why the diocese had allowed him to stay in the ordination process for all these years. Maybe he was somebody’s relative.

I carefully took the cheesecake out of the oven to cool, stowed the exams, and slapped open the files I had taken from Father Olson’s office. Readjusting my heating pad, I scanned them again, page by page. I paid particular attention to the Board of Theological Examiners’ file, which contained the correspondence between Father Olson and the bishop. The only paper of significant interest was the correspondence regarding Mitchell Hartley’s flunking last year. This coming year, the one we were in now, would be Hartley’s last chance at passing his written and oral ordination exams. In his part-time job with Congregational Resources, Hartley was at the diocesan center every day. And part of each weekday, the bishop testily reported to Ted Olson, Hartley was trying to find out from anyone in power if there was some way around taking these exams from – Hartley’s words – those liberals. After this letter was one from Aspen Meadow Outreach thanking Father Olson, Bob Preston, and the rest of the Sportsmen Against Hunger for their donation of 600 elkburgers to Outreach’s commercial freezer. Finally, there was a letter from the bishop’s office approving the parish’s support of Aspen Meadow Habitat for Humanity; the diocese said if St. Luke’s wanted to give $10,000, and could afford it, that was fine.

The mention of the Sportsmen and Habitat made me think back to the Prestons. Too bad I hadn’t had a chance to visit with Bob or Agatha before or after the prayer meeting. They probably would have the best of going and searching for anything, when I’d already had unsuccessful forays into the church office, Brio Barn, and Olson’s place, did not fill me with excitement.

Do they have other places to hide things? Schulz’s voice insisted inside my brain.

I tried to think back. I was so tired. I put my head in my crossed arms on the kitchen table. Nowhere to hide. Hmm. I sat up with another jolt. Habitat.

“Where do you think you’re going?” said Marla groggily when she opened one eye and saw me putting on my heavy jacket.

“The Habitat house. Right down the street. Want to come?”

She groaned as she creaked her way up off the sofa. “You know I have to come. The cops have told me I absolutely cannot leave you alone. Just tell me,” she mumbled as she searched for her shoes, “why are you torturing me?”

“Because of Tom Schulz. I miss him and I need some help.” I handed her one of the large garden shovels from the rear of the closet.

“Oh,” said Marla, “what are we doing, digging up graves?”

“I don’t really know what we’re doing.”

“This is getting better and better.”

We zipped up our coats against the cold and walked the block and a half to the Habitat house. Marla insisted on carrying both shovels; this bit of consideration didn’t keep her from grumbling every step of the way. At the deserted site, we stepped gingerly through frozen mud and over large empty rectangles through which an icy breeze blew. Sheets of all-purpose white vinyl floor had been partially installed over the wooden subfloor. It was this white vinyl that got my attention. I looked down across what would eventually be the kitchen, and saw what appeared to be a large spider. When I came closer and bent over, I picked up the missing keys to Hymnal House and the diocesan vehicle, EPSCMP.

19

They were even labeled, Hymnal House, Brio Barn, Nissan. I didn’t know what finding them here meant, but I knew it meant something Marla and I scoured the rest of the construction site, but came up with nothing else: no sign of pearls, or letters, or sacramental vessels. No sign of Tom Schulz.

We walked back to my house as quickly as my throbbing back would allow. I held the keys tightly in the pocket of my jacket the whole way. Habitat. Bob Preston. The Bob-projects. I couldn’t wait to tell Boyd, who still was due to report back to my about Mitchell Hartley. I called and left a breathless message with the Investigations secretary. Within minutes, Boyd called me back.

“We called Hartley and asked to meet him at his apartment. He wasn’t too pleased to have to meet with us. Anyway, his place is so small he’d have to be a magician to have somebody hidden there.” Boyd’s voice was barely audible above the static; I couldn’t’ imagine where he was calling from. “The guy doesn’t have much, that’s for sure. And he sure doesn’t have Schulz.”

I told him about the missing keys Marla and I had found at the Habitat house.

“They were just lying there on the floor,” said Boyd suspiciously. “Not hidden in any way? You just found them. The way you found those letters. Which, by the way, don’t tell us squat, except that Agatha Preston has a couple thousand stashed away in a checking account in Denver. So. The keys were on the floor?’

“Yes, they were on the floor. No, they weren’t hidden. And yes, we found them. What do you think?”

My doorbell rang: Alicia had arrived with the bass and vegetables. In the front hall, Marla welcomed her and asked if she wanted some Amaretto. They laughed boisterously and then immediately suppressed it. This incongruous humor, plus Boyd’s suspicions, plus the fact that it was now almost 4:00 on Monday, with still no sign of Tom, sent a wave of frustration surging in my voice. “Aren’t you going to come and get these keys?” I demanded. “Aren’t you going to arrest Bob Preston?”

“For what?” Boyd demanded.

I took the phone from my ear and stared at it.

Five inches away, Boyd’s voice droned: “Should I arrest him for working on some volunteer project where you found some missing keys? A volunteer project that everyone who knows him knows he’s working on? So if a suspect left the keys sitting out in full view, it sure would look like neurotically neat Bob Preston had just dropped them there?” The static distorting his words did not hide his sarcasm.

“I guess not,” I mumbled.

Boyd said he’d be by tonight to pick up the keys. I told him I’d probably be finished at Hymnal House around ten.

“Then have Marla or your other cooking helper, Julian, pick you up. I don’t want you to go around snooping after dark.”

“Who, me?”

Boyd hung up.

Alicia left. Marla, with sighs that would have embarrassed a martyr, rinsed and divided the bass. We were in the middle of washing the new potatoes, baby carrots, and thin, delicate asparagus stalks when Julian and Arch arrived home. Their faces searched mine: Any news? When I shook my head, Julian placed a foil-covered glass casserole dish on the counter.

“A cow died so that you could have hamburger-noodle casserole tonight, courtesy of the Altar Guild. How’s your back?”

“Don’t start with the vegetarian agenda, I have enough problems. My back’s doing a lot better. The examining board is starting their work early, and we’re doing Chilean Sea Bass with Garlic, Basil, and Vegetables. Feel like chopping basil?” I did not ask him about the college acceptance situation; as with Schulz’s disappearance, being asked for the latest news when there was none only served to remind you of what was missing. He would have told me if he’d heard anything.

“I’ll butter the gratin dishes,” Arch piped up as he scrubbed his hands. “I already scooped out cookies this morning. Did you bring them to the lunch?”

I told him that I had, and his work had been a hit. He beamed and measured out chilled unsalted butter. Julian washed his hands and expertly rolled layered leaves of basil, then sliced through them. Marla parboiled the new potatoes and baby carrots. I pressed pungent cloves of garlic, mixed them with the chopped basil leaves, and beat them into the butter. We formed an assembly line and artfully laid out the fish, vegetables, butter, and herbs on the buttered platters, then covered each tightly with aluminum foil. Our only interruption was a phone call from Lucille Boatwright. She wanted to know if I had donated the food from the wedding reception to Aspen Meadow Outreach yet.

Chilean Sea Bass With Garlic, Basil and Vegetables

4 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

4 teaspoons finely chopped fresh basil

2 garlic cloves, pressed

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

4 red-skinned new potatoes

8 baby carrots

1 ˝ pounds fresh (not frozen boneless Chilean sea bass fillets

8 slender asparagus spears

Preheat the oven to 425 . In a small bowl, beat the butter, basil, garlic, and lemon juice until well combined. Set aside. Parboil the potatoes and baby carrots for 5 minutes; drain. Divide the fillets into 4 equal portions.

Place the fillets in a buttered 9-by 13-inch pan (or an attractive gratin dish with the same volume). Arrange the vegetables over the fish in an appealing pattern. Top each fish portion with one-fourth of the butter-garlic mixture. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until the fish flakes easily with a fork. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings

“Yet?” I repeated.

“If you have not,” she continued airily, “I wish you would consider sending it in for the funeral tomorrow, Goldy. We’re going to have quite a few people in from out of town. I’m told. I can’t get enough volunteers to make food, and I certainly can’t let people go home hungry.”

It was the least I could do for Father Olson, no matter what I thought of Lucille. I cupped my hand over the phone and asked Julian if he would mind schlepping the reception platters down to the church for the funeral. He nodded without looking at me. Julian seemed to be thinking that not keeping all that food was another way of tacitly admitting that our hopes for Tom Schulz were dimming. I put this thought out of my mind and assured Lucille my assistant would meet her at the church in an hour.

After hanging up, I asked Marla to pour a red wine vinaigrette over thick layered slices of navel orange and purple onion. Arch washed and packed heads of butter lettuce. Julian had taken a bag of Parkerhouse rolls from the freezer. We were ready.

With a Herculean attempt to appear happy and hopeful, I said, “What would I do without my team?”

“Go out for pizza,” muttered Julian darkly.

Julian insisted on driving the van with all the boxes for the night’s meal over to the conference center. Marla chauffeured me and my pile of exams in her Jaguar, with Arch in the back. She had told the boys she would take them out for pizza if they would explain the younger generation’s fascination with video games to her. I tucked a spiral notebook into my apron pocket and realized I did not have a single question prepared to ask the candidates.

“I’ll be by to pick you up at Hymnal House at ten o’clock,” Marla pronounced ominously once we’d arrived at the conference driveway. Julian was unloading and Arch was setting three tables for five in the old conference dining room. “Don’t you dare go anywhere without me, Goldy, do you hear?”

I leaned against the Jaguar. “Since when do you tell me what to do?” I asked mildly.

“Since I helped you make lunch for the prayer group, and dinner for this pompous board, that’s when.”

“Ah-ha.” Then I added, “I promise.”

On the deck of Hymnal House, the three candidates for ordination including Mitchell Hartley, and a dozen priests including Canon Montgomery, Doug Ramsey, and other men IA knew from previous meetings, were sipping white wine and trying to look as if they all weren’t terribly nervous. They hadn’t asked for hors d’oeuvre, and they weren’t getting any. But since the last thing I needed was for them to have a layer of alcohol on empty stomachs, I quickly preheated the ancient Hymnal House oven and popped the fish platters and rolls inside, then arranged the orange and onion on top of individual beds of butter lettuce.

Thirty minutes later, the platters emerged. The delicious aroma of basil and garlic that filled the air and the visual delight provided by the squares of fish, brilliant green asparagus, orange carrots, and pink new potatoes swimming in melted butter, gave the whole dinner a Christmasy sort of air, which is one of the things a caterer has to think of. When people don’t know each other before a catered function, or have some particularly onerous interpersonal task to perform after the meal, it’s usually a good idea to give them something to do at dinner, like opening a present of food. It helps to break the ice.

The conversation at dinner – how the new bishop in another diocese was faring, how some recent mass conversions to Anglicanism in Africa were going to affect the church worldwide – was light but somewhat forced. Canon Montgomery had said some volunteers from the Altar Guild were doing the dishes, and I was relieved when we could adjourn to the Hymnal House living room for Evening Prayer. This was followed by a brief, nonpoetic explanation of the meetings’ mechanics fro Montgomery: The end of our meeting tonight would be signaled by the old bell on the deck. We would go to the funeral tomorrow, then meet all the rest of Tuesday. The board would make its decisions Wednesday morning. The nervous candidates gulped and strained to look confident.

Doug Ramsey and I were assigned to an old upstairs parlor. The room had been the subject of unfortunate redecorations, and now boasted a bright green shag rug and two donated yellow-painted wood-frame couches with screaming pink cushions. It wasn’t the best ambience to effect a reconciliation with Father Doug, to whom I hadn’t spoken since our disastrous tęte-ŕ-tęte at church on Sunday. He marched into the room in front of me, snapped open the latches on his briefcase, and took out a sheaf of papers with typewritten questions. To make things worse, he was acting inexplicably miffed.

“Hey, Doug,” I said, “don’t give me the ticked-off routine, okay? I did the dinner, didn’t I? Now let’s talk about how we’re going to examine this guy.”

“you didn’t contact those newspapers, did you? Tell them I was the bishop’s spy?”

“Of course not.”

“Some woman reporter interrogated Montgomery. She wanted to know if he was jealous of Olson because Olson was an alleged miracle worker.”

Good old Frances. “And did Montgomery agree with the allegations?”

At that moment, Mitchell Hartley entered the room. He coughed.

Doug Ramsey ignored him. He continued to me in a confidential tone, “There are many reasons why anyone would be jealous of the person in question, and not just for the monetary and … other reasons I mentioned to you on Sunday. He was attractive, he was smart. Why, I think he came through the ordination process in the quickest time on record, although I’d have to check that statistic – “

“Theodore Olson?” Mitchell Hartley’s face contorted into an ugly smirk. Four inches of waved red hair hovered over his forehead. “Yes, your statistic is correct. He came through in three years.” His eyes glittered feverishly.

“Please sit down, Mitchell,” I said.

He obeyed, keeping his mad gaze disconcertingly on me.

Father Doug began by asking questions about the Archbishops of Canterbury, then moved on to what Tillich had said about this, what Augustine had said about that, and what were the liturgical requirements for the laying on of hands. Mitchell stumbled and bumbled and most of the time said he didn’t know. Doug was just getting revved up to do the Anglican Reformation when there was a rap on the door. It was Lucille Boatwright.

“Zelda and I finished the dishes,” she said, glaring at me. How dare you come up here to examine with the men when there is women’s work to be done in the kitchen? I said nothing; I was weary of Lucille Boatwright. She turned to Doug Ramsey. “We simply must talk to you about the liturgy for the memorial service tomorrow.” It was not a request.

Doug lifted his chin: Duty called. He stood, tucked his sheaf of papers into his briefcase, snapped it shut, and marched out without another word. Guess it was up to me to finish with the candidate.

“Mitchell,” I said as I reached to a dusty table and found a stub of pencil and piece of paper. “I found a photocopied page form one of your exams.” I wrote 92-492 on the paper.

He glanced at it and raised one red eyebrow. “Where’d you find it?”

For better or worse, I decided to tell him the truth. “At Olson’s house. Were you out there?”

At that moment, the outside bell gonged. Mitchell Hartley didn’t seem to hear it, however. He had a dreamy look on his face.

“You were, weren’t you?” I said to Mitchell. My voice was very quiet.

“I was not.”

“Cut the crap, Mitchell. You know something.”

“I do indeed,” he said secretively. “Now.” The bell gonged again. “You didn’t turn the search over to the Lord, and now the Lord has revealed something to me.”

“What? Please. It could be a matter of life or death.”

He stood and sauntered to the door. “Everything,” he said ponderously, “is a matter of life or death. Tonight’s exams are over, and I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

The door closed behind him.

I looked at my watch. 9:30. Despite the darkness of the night, there was a clear view of the conference grounds and driveway from the parlor windows. From where I sat, I could barely hear the voices and traffic from the front side of the conference building. And it was just as well. Mitchell Hartley wasn’t being forthcoming, and I was in no mood to socialize with anyone else. I decided to wait right where I was and watch for Marla’s car to come down the driveway. I would be grateful to get home, to get away from the swirling antagonisms and petty jealousies of this group.

I thought about Tom Schulz. Was he cold? Was he in pain? Had he given his kidnapper the desired information?

Then I remembered Father Olson’s gentle compliment in our penultimate counseling session: “It’s rare that I work with a couple so much in love.” And yet tomorrow we were going to bury Father Olson, and no one knew if Tom Schulz was alive or dead. I let my head rest on the vibrant pink cushion. I was so tired.

I was not aware I’d fallen asleep until something jolted me awake. I felt as if I had climbed out of an avalanche, that I had heard a howl for help either in my sleep, or within the avalanche, or somewhere out on the road. I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window: Marla’s Jag was there, its tailpipe sending clouds of steam up into the night sky. I lifted my cramped body off the couch and painfully made my way down the outside steps, which had dim lights every five feet. Shouts had awakened me. They came from the other side of Hymnal House, maybe from the deck, it was hard to tell. On the other hand, perhaps it was bikers partying down on Cottonwood Creek again.

Marla had the windows closed and the engine running; the Jag purred like a small airplane.

“Did you hear something?” I demanded when I opened the passenger side door and stuck my head inside.

“Nothing juicy, at least not in the last two hours.”

I slid into the passenger seat, closed the door, and sighed. “Never mind.”

She put the car into reverse and sent gravel spewing on her way out the driveway. Marla could never learn to drive cautiously.

“Did the police call?” I could hear the plea in my voice.

“Boyd did. I asked him, ‘Boyd, do you have a first name?’ He said, ‘You can just call me Boyd.’ Where’d they get that guy, Dragnet?”

“Marla.”

“Okay, Bob Preston hasn’t been at the Habitat house since Saturday, and he doesn’t have a clue about those keys. How about you? How’d the exams go?”

We shot down the road that would lead us to Main Street and the front of the cliff by Hymnal House and Brio Barn.

“I agree with Ted Olson,” I said, “in thinking Mitchell Hartley should fail. Montgomery said he’d probably pass this time, though – “

Without warning, when we were just below the conference center deck, the car screeched to a stop. Despite my seat belt, I went catapulting forward. When I had struggled upright, Marla cried, “Oh, God. Oh, Lord.”

“What?” I said, but she didn’t reply. I followed her gaze out the front of the car, along the line of blazing light cast by the headlight beams.

Mitchell Hartley wasn’t going to fail his candidate’s exam, and Mitchell Hartley wasn’t going to pass. Mitchell Hartley was lying in the middle of Main Street.

He was dead.

20

Marla ran to pay phone. Someone from a nearby gas station set out flares on the road. Within minutes, Boyd and his team had arrived. I sat in the Jaguar in a state of shock. I couldn’t look out at the activity, although I occasionally glanced up at the conference center, perched as it was on that cliff overlooking both the road and the church. Then I gazed briefly at St. Luke’s, on the other side of Main Street. I couldn’t look at the sprawled corpse of Mitchell Hartley. Marla came back to the car. We sat silently in the front seat. After more police and the EMT had arrived, Boyd approached us. I slid down the window. “Is he – ?” I choked. Boyd didn’t need to reply. His expression said it all.

“You don’t think he’s the one who killed Olson, do you? Do you think he knew where Tom Schulz is?” I demanded. My voice sounded shrill, and I was shivering uncontrollably. “Tell me. Do you think Hartley fell, committed suicide, what? Was he hit by a car?”

Boyd regarded me. Dark disks of shadow underneath his eyes showed his exhaustion. The past two days had been hard on him, too. “It doesn’t look as if Hartley was hit by a car. I don’t know about the rest. Need you to come and see something though.” I got out of the car and followed him to where a cluster of people surrounded the body. I recognized Officer Calloway and other Furman County investigators. “Weren’t you looking for this?” said Boyd. He pointed to a broken pearl choker lying near the center line of the road. In the circus-hued flashes from the police lights, it looked a child’s bauble. But when I leaned close I could see the handwritten price tag: $2000.

“What in the … ?”

“It must have been in his pocket, or maybe he was holding it. Where do you suppose he got it?”

I repeated my theory that Olson had been keeping the chokers out at his house. There should be others, I added. Mitchell Hartley was poor, and he hated that, but he had never impressed me as a thief. Of course, I had not known him very well. Not very well at all.

“Okay,” Boyd said. He didn’t sound satisfied. “I told somebody to call your house. Julian Teller’s waiting up for you, but he’s not waking your son. Better not to upset him. You should get back into Marla’s car. Are you cold?”

I was still shaking, but not from the weather. Mitchell Hartley had been in the upstairs parlor with Doug Ramsey and me less than an hour ago. The Lord has revealed something to me. What that was, of course, I had no idea. Briefly, I told Boyd about my last conversation with Hartley. Boyd said nothing.

Marla restarted the engine.

“Just a sec, Goldy, are you listening to me?” Boyd’s face neared the open car window. I fastened my seat belt and tried to assume an attentive expression. “Don’t go anywhere, okay? Don’t try to figure this out. Somewhere along the line, whoever is doing this is going to make a mistake.”

“So you don’t think he fell from the conference deck.”

Boyd pushed away from the car. He slipped a match into the side of his mouth. “I’ll call you,” he said laconically, and turned back to the group around Mitchell Hartley’s body.

When we arrived home it was almost eleven. At my insistence, Marla left me off without coming inside and went home. All my supplies, cheesecake leftovers, platters, and bowls from the committee’s supper were still in the Hymnal House kitchen, so there was not even anything to put away. Julian fixed me a cup of hot chocolate.

“I froze the wedding cake,” he announced, apropos of nothing. “I just couldn’t take it down to the church along with the other stuff.”

I nodded and ran my hand over the gleaming enamel surface of Tom’s stove. Tell me what to do, I mentally begged him. But there was no response. Whenever I was in a muddle, I cooked. But what did Tom Schulz do when he was faced with chaos, trying to sort things out? And then I remembered.

He took notes.

I poured out the hot chocolate and filled the espresso machine with water. Scout the cat made one of his noiseless appearances by the pantry, purring and arching his back. I fed him. Then maneuvered the griddle attachment into Tom’s convection oven, pulled out some fat russet potatoes, and got out a pen and the spiral notebook from my apron pocket.

Julian ran the fingers of one hand through his short blond strip of hair. “What in the hell are you doing? It’s bedtime.”

“I’m hungry,” I answered him. “There’s been too much going on, and I didn’t have a bite of that fish. Plus I want some coffee.”

“I see. So at eleven o’clock at night, you’re going to drink some espresso, cook some potatoes, and then write about it.”

“Julian, chill. I mean. I appreciate your staying up to make sure I got in okay. After all, there’ve been many meetings going on today – “

“Yeah, the tobacco church. Hazardous to your heath.”

“I just can’t think about what happened tonight.” I vigorously peeled potatoes. “Or at least I can’t get any perspective on it.”

“Now I get it. You’re going to make Duchess Potatoes, and then serve them at the next church meeting.”

“Julian, go to bed.”

I grated the potatoes into a dishtowel and then wrung out their liquid over the sink. The chunk of butter I’d popped onto Tom’s griddle began to melt into a golden pool; I swished it through a puddle of olive oil. Working carefully – a challenge with Scout rubbing insistently against my legs – I formed the grated potatoes into four pancakes on the griddle. There was no way I’d be taking these to any church meeting, but maybe I could make my contribution to Anglican cuisine.

“What do you think, Scout? Bishop’s Potato Pancakes?”

Scout stayed still. Guess that meant no. Once again, my sanity seemed to be fraying, but I didn’t care.

“Well, how about, The First WASP Latkes?”

The First WASP Latkes

4 large of 8 small russet potatoes (approximately 2 pounds), peeled

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Grate the potatoes onto a large clean kitchen towel that can be stained. Roll the potatoes up in the towel and wring to remove moisture. (It is best to do this over the sink, since it will produce a surprising amount of liquid.)

Melt the butter with the olive oil on a large griddle. Form the grated potatoes into 4 pancakes. Cook the pancakes over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until the bottom is golden brown, then flip the pancakes. Cook on the other side for about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve plain or with sour cream and applesauce.

Makes 4 servings

Scout did one of his elaborate body rolls on the kitchen floor, ending with his stomach facing the ceiling and his paws curled. Clearly, this was a yes.

While the WASP Latkes sizzled, I picked up the pen and began to write. 1. The Reverend Theodore Olson. Smart, attractive, charismatic, “the magician.” Went through ordination process fast. Protégé of Montgomery. Fired the organist, to whom he preached reconciliation. Loved folk music and charismatic liturgies. Unloved by Pinckney crowd. Involved with miraculous healing of Roger Bampton? Involved with Agatha Preston? Dead. 2. Mitchell Hartley. Not smart, not attractive, not rich. Theologically conservative; charismatic. Worked at diocesan center. Going through ordination process slowly; flunked by Olson and Board of Theological Examiners once. Nobody’s protégé. Knew something about exam paper at Olson’s. Had pearls. Not at wedding. Dead. 3. Zelda Preston. Unreconciled about son’s death from leukemia. Fired by Olson over music disagreement. Member of Altar Guild responsible for missing/found Hymnal House keys. Best friend Lucille thinks she might have killed Olson. Looking for letter from bishop about guitar music (Could Tom S. know where it is?). Not at wedding. 4. Bob Preston. Money problems, might have wanted pearls. Jealousy problems, might want letters from Agatha to Olson (Tom would know where?). Mother Zelda expects too much of him? Ego wrapped up in volunteer work; Olson causing problems with Habitat house? Vehicle keys found at Habitat house. Rifle-toting member of Sportsmen Against Hunger. Not at wedding. 5. George Montgomery. Thinks his protégé ran amok? Bad temper, bad preacher, bad poet. Jealous of Olson because of parish giving? Because of miracles? Is he the one Agatha referred to when she said, ‘Someone demanding to see the blood tests?’ At wedding, according to Father Doug Ramsey. 6. Agatha Preston. Loathes her motherin-law, loathes her husband, loathes her life. Obsesses about hell but was deeply in love with Olson. Digging in columbarium area. At wedding.

I got up and flipped the latkes. The cooked sides were golden brown and crusty, and the delectable smell of potatoes crackling in melted butter made my mouth water.

I frowned at my notepad. What I had not written down was that Father Olson’s office and house had been trashed and his death site vandalized. Not on my list were Lucille Boatwright, whom Arch had literally stumbled upon while she was surreptitiously snooping through church files, and Doug Ramsey, who, like Lucille, had wasted no love on Ted Olson. Father Doug Ramsey, also known as Father Hyperbole, Father Insensitive, Father Overtalkative. But I had seen him at the wedding as I had Lucille. You couldn’t be kidnapping To Schulz if you were waiting for him to show up at the church.

And then there was Tom. I had felt his presence so clearly the night I had gone to Olson’s. Now he felt absent to me, as if a phone were ringing, but no one was home.

You may feel God’s presence or you may sense God’s absence, Olson had said in a sermon once, but God is still there, like the man who buys Halloween candy every year, yet no trick-or-treaters come.

I gently removed the pancakes from the griddle and put them on a plate. I searched for applesauce and sour cream Finding neither, I merely salted and peppered the potatoes and had a bite. They were hot, crunchy, and divine. God is still there. I lifted the phone from its cradle and dialed Tom Schulz’s voice mail. His deep, rich voice filled my heart with hope.

Call me, Olson’s voice said in my ear. I gasped. My mind had been working on the puzzle of Tom’s note for two and a half days, and suddenly I’d figured it out. Or perhaps I’d gotten some kind of message from Olson on The Other Side. Better not ponder that one. With a shaking hand, I dialed the church’s number.

“This is St. Luke’s Episcopal Church,” Ted Olson’s voice happily announced, “on Main Street in Aspen Meadow next to Lower Cottonwood Creek. Services are … “ And he went on to announce the two Sunday morning eucharist times. I tapped my foot. He continued, “If you would like to leave a general message, press one. If you have a confidential message for Father Ted Olson, please press two.”

I stood in my kitchen, transfixed, Churchgoers, especially those going through a hard time, desperately desired confidentiality. I had found out the hard way just how elusive please don’t tell anyone was. From as long ago as my divorce to as recently as the news about Tom Schulz, I had seen details of my personal life spread in the church like fire through a grove of dry aspens.

And it was in the note from Schulz that Olson had give a key to who his attacker had been. VM wasn’t Victor Mancuso. And it wasn’t Vestry Member. VM, I was willing to bet, was Voice Mail. But what was P.R.A.Y? I stared at my phone, trying to remember Tom Schulz retrieving messages from his own voice mail. He waited for the message, and then pressed in a code … .

Four digits. Could P.R.A.Y be a four-digit access code Olson had chosen? Unfortunately, I did not know how to use the code for the church’s voice-mail system. Think, commanded Tom Schulz’s voice inside my head.

“I am,” I said out loud. I had already gone through Olson’s files on the Board of Theological Examiners and the diocese twice. There had been no voice-mail instructions. And what if Olson had simply discarded his messages after he’d listened to them?

Are you kidding? Schulz’s voice again. That guy didn’t throw away anything.

I looked at my kitchen clock. Almost midnight. I called the Sheriff’s Department and left a message for Boyd: Please call me A.S.A.P. He was probably getting tired of the messages.

I put the phone down. There was no way I could go to bed now. Besides, Tom Schulz, if he was still alive, probably wasn’t asleep. I needed to concentrate. I covered the potato pancakes and put them in the walk-in, then scanned my kitchen.

By my own phone I had a list of numbers: Tom Schulz, Julian’s and Arch’s school, Marla, Alicia’s supply company, Arch’s friend Todd, the library. What had Olson had by his phone? The bulletin board in his office had all kinds of phone numbers on it; I remembered that from my time in there before the wedding was cancelled, and afterward, when I’d thrown the hymnal and notes had popped off the bulletin board.

And the answering machine at Olson’s house had been destroyed. Could that have been the motivation for the mayhem out there: to destroy evidence, rather than steal anything? But why hit me and take the solitary exam paper from my hand? And what did B. – Read – Judas mean? I did not know. But I had no doubt that the phone messaging was key, and that was where I had to concentrate. Perhaps whoever had done the vandalism out at Olson’s had not realized just how voice mail was stored. Maybe someone from a generation that did not like or understand developments in communications technology.

I looked out my kitchen window: A powdery, soft snow had begun to fall. I wanted to rush to the trashed church office, study the remains of Olson’s bulletin board, and come up with an accessing phone number that would provide the answers to so many questions. As if in protest, my back contracted with pain – not enough for a pill. I told myself. I needed to stay sharp. On the other hand, I dared not go back to the church alone. Boyd would never forgive me. I hugged myself, angry with my own indecision.

Snow tends to muffle noise. That was why I waited to hear the faint stomping noise again. When it came, the fur on the back of Scout’s neck ruffled. Someone was on my front porch.

I moved stealthily through the dining room and into the darkened living room. I heard more shuffling and stepping, even a small grunt. By the light from a street lamp, I could see yet another afghan hanging from my porch-swing hooks. The figure that hopped off the swing was Agatha Preston.

“Don’t leave!” I shouted as I flung open my front door.

“Agh!” Agatha screamed as she reeled backward. “This was supposed to be a surprise! I’ve been so worried … and I just wanted you to have something … !”

On the deck railing was a mayonnaise jar filled with coffee. Or at least it looked like coffee.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Please, Agatha, come in.”

She tossed her braids over her shoulders, reverently picked up the jar, and tiptoes inside my house. She was wearing a pink-and-white warm-up suit with matching pink boots. Pocahontas s a candy cane.

“Ooh, please don’t get mad at me, Godly. I told you I don’t have a job, so I just crochet all the time, and I had these on hand, so I thought maybe … “

“Thanks, Agatha, I should have known they were from you. I saw one at Olson’s house.” She blushed the color of her suit. I wondered what color she was going to turn when I told her about the letters I’d found. I said, “What’s in the jar?”

”Oh. Well you know, Ted really had the Power.” Her eyes brightened. “Miraculous powers. And so I heard on television that if you dig up the dirt where the blood – “

“Don’t’ go on, I know all about it. My son saw the same program. Come on out to the kitchen.”

“But … I already poured some of this water around over at the church, because we have so much unhealing there – “ She moved hesitantly into the kitchen, put her jar on the table, and sat down.

“At the columbarium site? I saw you – “

“ – and I just thought,” she turned to me breathlessly, “that since you’d had so many things going wrong in your life, you really needed healing, a supernatural kind that was sure to work – “

“Please. That is not miracle, Agatha. That is superstition.”

She looked at me, her mouth open. “What’s the difference? Did you pray for things? Don’t you think we need a childlike faith?” She stood and sidled over to Julian’s mound of dirt. “what’s this? Is it from Chimayó?”

“It belongs to somebody who works for me.”

“Oh.” She regarded me earnestly. “Didn’t you ever in your life pray for something specific?”

“Of course.” Agatha was, as I’d told Arch, part of the church family. I wanted to relate to her, I just didn’t know how. I searched my memory for the kind of kindred experience she meant. “Let’s see,” I faltered. “Oh, yes. My parents sent me to a Roman Catholic school for first grade. I loved it because we made butter in the classroom.”

“That’s what you were praying fro?” asked Agatha, confused. “Butter?’

“No, no. My mother had an unusually bad case of appendicitis. She was in the hospital for weeks. So I … “ Suddenly I felt terribly foolish, but Agatha was leaning forward, expectantly. “So I wrote, ‘Please make my Mommy well’ on a piece of paper, rolled it up, and placed it between the stone fingers of a statue of the Virgin Mary in the school courtyard.” I let out a tiny laugh of embarrassment.

“Wow. And was your mother healed?”

“Well … yes, but,” I aid, groping for words, “I think you have to test what you would call the Weird against church doctrine and tradition, maybe.” My own words gave me pause. I sounded like a member of the Old Guard! I ought to believe in the Weird anyway. I certainly had experienced enough of it lately.

She pouted. “Your attitude is a cop-out. Ted had the Power.”

She colored brilliantly. “I … I … was getting the dirt from the place where he fell. Is that a crime? What paper?”

“I’m sorry, Agatha,” I blurted out. “I found the letters you sent to Ted Olson, I gave them to the police.”

The color drained from her face. “Oh, God,” she said softly. “Oh, God … Well, at least Bob doesn’t have them.” She stared straight ahead, no longer wishing to discuss miracles, apparently.

And then I had an absolutely wonderful idea. It filled me with more lightness and excitement than I felt since Tom’s disappearance. “Agatha. Do you know how Ted accessed his voice mail?”

“Yeah, I think, I mean I don’t know the code, but he had one. You see, first he had to call this number at U.S. West, and then he’d dial in the church number – “

Hallelujah. “Is there anybody at the church now, do you know?”

She looked at the kitchen clock, puzzled by my question. 12:30 a.m. “Now? I think they’re having some kind of vigil until the funeral. The people at the ten o’clock Sunday service set it up.”

Great. If Agatha accompanied me, then Boyd couldn’t possible get upset with me for wandering out. If there were people at the church, then it wasn’t as if we were going into an empty place at night.

I could hear my heart beating. I whispered, “Do you know where Ted kept the number for U.S. West accessing?”

“Sure, somewhere on the bulletin board of his office. But why?”

“I’ll tell you on the way to church,” I promised her.

21

There were only two automobiles in the parking lot, not exactly a crowd for a vigil. I did not recognize either car, but then again, I didn’t usually go to the later Sunday-morning service, and was unfamiliar with the charismatics and their vehicles. “Does Bob have any idea where you are?” I asked when we disembarked from my van. “He thinks I’m here. At the vigil.” “Ah. Do you know how to get into the office?” Around us, snowflakes continued to fall.

“The keys are on top of one of those log panels beside the office door,” she replied promptly. “Lucille always teaches all of us how to get into the priest’s office.”

“Who’s ‘all of us’ ?”

“It’s supposed to be just the Altar Guild, who are supposed to keep it confidential, but – “

“Never mind.”

The lights were dim in the parish itself. Flickering light from the vigil candles played against the windows. I couldn’t remember if it was liturgically advisable to have vigil, much less a funeral, before Good Friday during Holy Week. But the charismatics in our parish loved vigils more than they cared about liturgical appropriateness. And people couldn’t time their dying.

We stepped carefully over the yellow police ribbon. At the office entrance, Agatha reached up and snatched the key, then fumbled momentarily with it before unlocking the door. She pushed it open and reached in for the light, then wove her way over the illuminated mess. When we came into Olson’s office, she pointed to the bulletin board on the floor, with its disheveled array of notes. Slowly, we pulled out thumbtacks and gathered up the notes with numbers that had landed on the floor. Diocesan Center. Altar Guild. Organist.

“Here’s one,” said Agatha. “Roger Bampton.”

“I wonder why Ted would need to call him.”

“Oh, you know, Roger was having copies of his blood tests framed for Ted. Roger called it ‘his first miracle.’ Ted was pretty excited about it. He told everybody. I don’t know what happened to them, though. I know they were calling back and forth – “

“Eureka!” I read, “Alexander Graham, 555-6363.”

Agatha wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound like anyone in our parish.”

I said, “You don’t have a son who loves codes. That’s for Alexander Graham Bell, honey.” I thought for a moment. Go to a pay phone, or try to plug in the phones here? Out at Olson’s house, the vandal hadn’t realized that just whacking a phone and pulling it out of the wall was not enough to destroy it. “Would you go see if you can plug in the secretary’s extension? Then if you’ll take notes on his messages, I’d appreciate it. I might miss something.”

“But it’s supposed to be confident – “

“Too late for now.”

Agatha clamped her mouth shut and minced into the outer office. She fussed with the secretary’s extension while I plugged in Olson’s smashed phone and got a dial tone. I sat down at the desk, whacked my foot on a pile of plumbing pipe, and cursed. I dialed first the 555 number, which was indeed the right US West messaging service, then dialed the church number, then pressed the buttons for P,R, A, and Y.

The first message came on. It was Agatha.

“Hi, it’s me calling Thursday night. Sorry you have that society meeting tomorrow during the day. I’ll miss you! Let’s talk after the wedding on Saturday, plan something else. Love you.”

In the outer room, I heard Agatha stifle a sob. I couldn’t stop the electronic message and didn’t want to. The voice mail beeped with another message.

“This is the diocesan office. Please pick up your photocopies of the General Ordination Examinations by Friday afternoon so that your committee can begin its work next week. Call if there’s a problem.”

Another beep. Lucille Boatwright said, “I just think it’s terrible what you’ve done to Zelda. This never would have happened in Father Pinckney’s time. In Father Pinckney’s time, I never would have had to speak into one of these infernal machines, either!”

There was a long beep, as if Lucille had somehow messed up even while disconnecting from the infernal machine. The next voice was Bob Preston’s.

“I know what you’re doing.” In the outer office, Agatha gasped. Her husband’s voice was low and threatening. “I’m gong to spill the beans on you to the bishop. You think they want to face another lawsuit in this diocese? You’re dead in the Episcopal church, Olson. You’re finished.”

Good God. There was another beep. “Sorry about the blowup at the meeting, old friend, especially after you’d brought that coconut last time, which was such fun. You are part of the communion, I didn’t mean what I said, guess I just got carried away, you know how I do. Listen, you forgot to pick up your exams. I’ll bring them out to your house to read Saturday morning before the wedding you’re doing for that Goldy woman on the committee. Tomorrow then, nine o’clock?” Canon Montgomery disconnected.

In the outer office, Agatha shrieked. Then there was a dull thud.

“Agatha?” I said. There was no response. In my hand, the phone beeped again and another message, this one from Doug Ramsey, began playing back. I pressed the dial-tone button desperately. “Agatha?” I called. There was still silence from the outer office. I jiggled the button and prayed for a dial tone so I could call 911. Still the message for Ramsey droned on.

“Help!” I called. My voice sounded feeble.

“No one will hear you,” said Canon Montgomery as he stepped into Olson’s office. His white hair was askew. His face was scarlet. In his hand he was holding a collapsible baton, the kind available at police-supply stores. Only this one, I was fairly sure, was the one that had whacked me in the back by Olson’s house, when I had discovered the one thing Olson’s killer had left out there: a photocopied paper that was his excuse for being there in the first place. The one who would Bring the tests to Read was the Judas.

“They’ll catch you,” I said angrily. “You will never – “

“Shut up.” He was dressed all in black, except for his snowy-white clerical collar, which didn’t go with his flushed toadlike face and his hand gripping the weapon. “Where are the blood tests? You must know. I know he told someone – “

“What?”

“I know Olson was lying,” he growled. “I – “

“Where’s Tom Schulz, you son of a bitch?” I screeched. “Olson called Tom before the wedding because he was afraid of you. And well he should have been.”

He laughed. It was a horrible gritty laugh that made my stomach turn. I glanced quickly around the ransacked office. From grimy windows to the shelves of books to the floor, where the tangle of pipes from the renovation lay in an unattractive heap, there was no way out.

“Where is Tom Schulz?” I demanded again.

Canon Montgomery shook his head. “You know, I could have destroyed Olson. I mean, fix it so he’d be defrocked. He had money business with that woman out there, he had questionable money transactions with the pearls and all this sudden giving. Driving a Mercedes. Pah!”

“But you killed him.” Stall, I thought frantically. Do anything to keep him talking. So that someone will have a chance to see you or hear you. “And Mitchell Hartley, too. He must have found out something.”

“No great loss, Hartley. He didn’t even want to turn me in1 He just wanted to tell me he knew I’d picked up Olson’s exams, and that they’d found one page out at Olson’s house. Hartley wanted to pass the exams in exchange for his information. We had a meeting last Friday. Olson and I fought over his idiotic miracle claims. He stomped out, and unfortunately I was seen by Mitchell Hartley picking up Olson’s set of exams and the diocesan vehicle keys. Saturday, when I was out at Olson’s, your cop friend was listening to Olson spill his guts. I know he told him where the blood tests are. Too bad.”

He was insane. There was no doubt about it. I said, “You just couldn’t stand him having that kind of power, could you? After he’d been your protégé?”

“People were worshiping him,” Montgomery snapped fiercely. “I was trying to protect the church. And how fortunate he didn’t give my name in that note. Then when the police find the bodies of you and that other woman, they’ll suspect me even less. It’ll just look like another burglary – “

I eased my hand under the desk, where one broken pipe was resting against the side of the file cabinet. “You’ll never disprove the miracle, you know.” I told him with as much aggression as I could muster.

“Oh?” He lifted his peaked white eyebrows and smiled sourly, as if we were discussing disputed theological points. “Why is that?”

“Because the blood tests are in the computer, you beast. Down at the pathology lab. Even if you destroy one set, there will be endless documentation. It’s like the message you left. You can’t get rid of it by axing the phone machine. The information is stores.” I had a sudden vision of Lucille Boatwright complaining about the phone machine. “You couldn’t operate the fax machine, and you couldn’t destroy messages by breaking an answering machine. You and your generation just don’t understand technology!”

With that I jumped up, pipe in hand, and slammed it into the window next to Olson’s desk. Panes broke, but the frame held.

“Help!” I shrieked. “Help!”

Montgomery turned quickly and sprinted for the front door of the office.

“Hey!” I yelled after him. “Where’s Tom Schulz?”

The office door banged closed. I leapt up and charged out to the secretary’s office. My back shrieked with pain. Agatha was slumped over the desk, moaning. At least she was alive. I had to go after Montgomery.

By the time my eyes adjusted to the darkness and the swirling snow, Montgomery was on the flagstones. He was running toward the columbarium site. The parking lot and the road were just beyond it.

“Don’t!” I yelled. Then I ran, faster than I had ever run before, damn my back. I was desperate to catch Montgomery. He could not get away. He could not disappear without telling me where Tom was.

Montgomery halted at the edge of the columbarium ditch. He couldn’t seem to decide whether to go around the site or through it.

“Stop, stop, please stop,” I howled, breathless from pain and exertion. I was twenty feet away from him.

He dropped to his knees and peered into the pit. I thought he was trying to figure out how deep the excavation was.

I gasped for breath and called out, “No matter what happens to the blood tests, some people are going to believe.” I was at the bottom of the excavation. Montgomery jumped back up; his white hair looked eerily fluorescent. I yelled, “You can’t stop people from wanting to think God was … working through Olson. Please. Please stop.”

“You want a miracle?” he shrieked. “You’re going to need one to find Schulz.”

“Please don’t, please wait,” I pleaded as I started to scramble up the side of the hillock of dirt. Montgomery, watching me, backed away. “Wait!” I yelled. He spun around and looked again into the ditch, as if trying to judge if he could jump across. “This is an unstable spot,” I begged. “Please don’t … “ He whirled back and stared at me, or at least in my direction. Snow fell softly all around him. His thin white hair and his clerical collar glinted in the light form passing cars.

“I’ll never, I’ll never … “ his voice boomed before he fell backward, into the deep, ark pit.

“No!” I screamed. My feet sank into mud as I clambered to the top of the embankment. Below, I could see a blur of clothing, Montgomery jerking, off-balance in the frigid water of the ditch.

“Wait for me to help you,” I yelled, already feeling helpless. I slid down the side of the bank. Damn Lucille Boatwright and her damn unapproved, uninspected columbarium project. I took a deep breath and waded into the water. It was like ice. I felt my legs for an instant, and then they were numb. I tugged at Montgomery’s clothing, at his heavy body. He had gone limp. How was that possible? Above us, on the other side of the bank, a car stopped. Someone had come in from the road. People who had seen us fall from the top of the embankment were yelling down at us.

I rolled Montgomery over and cried at the sight of his face, which had gone from red to an ominous white. “Where’s Schulz? Where is he?”

His eyes bulged, but there was no response. I shook him and tried to drag the water-logged body over to the side of the ditch, but he was too heavy. His hands gripped his chest. They were locked there. Damn it. I knew he’d had a heart attack. He needed CPR, and fast.

“Hey, lady, get out of that water. You’re gonna die of hypothermia!” A fat man in a plaid wool jacket grabbed my shoulder and pulled me up. His friend tugged on Montgomery.

“Aaugh,” I cried. I was so cold. Montgomery wasn’t going to make it. And no clue as to where Tom Schulz was. My love, my Tom, would die, wherever he was. The police would never find him. I would never see him again.

“Gotta get you into some dry clothes, gotta get you a blanket!” the man who had rescued me insisted. “Hey, girl! What possessed you? I hate to tell you, but I think that religious guy is dead. At least he went fast.”

When we came through the church doors, only Doug Ramsey and Roger Bampton were praying in the back pew. I hadn’t seen Roger since the whole brouhaha over him had erupted. Now three people died – Olson, Hartley, and Montgomery, because no one could accept what appeared to be unexplained.

“My heavens, what in the world, did you fall into the creek?” cried Doug Ramsey as he scrambled out of the pew. “On your way to the vigil? Did you get lost?”

“Just get her some dry clothes from the Outreach box,” ordered Roger Bampton, taking charge of me. He was a short bald man, with a wrinkled face and age spots on his hands. He seemed awfully ordinary looking to be the center of so much controversy. “Take those clothes off right away,” he ordered, then handed me one of Agatha’s afghans from the library couch. As he walked out of the library, he said, “They’ll chill you to the bone.”

I did as directed. I was shaking violently, too cold to cry. Doug Ramsey, whose inclination to exaggerate had thrown me off base (“The whole committee’s here!” when Montgomery had not been and “Women waited for Olson,” when it was only Agatha), thrust his long, thin arm through the door of the library and dropped a man’s sweatshirt and some bell-bottom jeans. When I’d put them on, I came out, and Roger Bampton offered me a cup of tea. My rescuer had just been informed by his friend that Montgomery was dead. Roger Bampton had called the police.

“Somebody needs to go check on Agatha Preston,” I stammered. “She’s hurt. In the St. Luke’ office in back of the church.” The man who had brought me into St. Luke’ shook his head and took off in that direction.

“We were just here at the vigil, which I wanted to be sure was conducted in orthodox fashion,” said Ramsey, who was incapable of keeping quiet in moments of crisis, “and we heard the racket in the parking lot, and then you came in, and then this news about Montgomery! Lord! I just don’t know what to say, don’t know what to do … In a way, you now, it’s like the original Easter vigils, when the catechumens were kept underground, naked, until they could come up on Easter morning and be baptized and get their new clothes, although this is hardly the right time of year to be baptized in a ditch, much less the ditch beside a columbarium site, and of course you were christened long ago, I’m just saying – “

“What?” I yelled. I grabbed Father Doug Ramsey by the lapels of his black suit. Kept underground. Father Doug would know this, he was an expert on the liturgy, as was Canon Montgomery, who always asked about the history of the Eucharist. Montgomery, who’d just happened to be close by Agatha and me when we were dialing on the church office phone. The church office, where there was a whole underground space being dug out for new plumbing. “Quick!” I cried. “Help me.”

Father Doug Ramsey pulled his chin into his neck. “Now what?”

“We have to go look at the church office, where they’ve been doing that renovation. Underground!” But I was already moving quickly, running to the hallway by the Sunday School rooms.

Doug Ramsey yelled after me, “Do we have to do it right now?”

Roger trotted along beside me as I dashed, barefoot, down the hallway past the choir room, through the side door, and up the icy steps to the bunkerlike office building. The man from the creek was helping Agatha up. She seemed to be stunned, but I didn’t stop to determine her condition. Instead of turning left to go into the office, I darted right and flipped the switch of the dim bulb hanging in the area that was being renovated.

I swallowed. The large space was dark, stripped to the walls. I walked across a board that had been put down across the subfloor to the far side of the room, then turned on another dim bulb in a room that was torn out to its framing. Beyond that was only a small tunnellike space where the pipes had all been ripped out.

“Here,” said a panting Roger Bampton behind me. Bless him, he seemed to be reading my mind. “You’ll need this. I’ll be right behind you.”

I switched on the flashlight he thrust at me. My light flickered over a sleeping bag, and some provisions. I eased myself down to the entrance of the dirt tunnel. Earth fell on my face and got in my eyes. My clenched hands banged against the remaining shafts of pipe. I had heard that same noise when I was looking around Olson’s trashed office. I flashed my light ahead. I rounded a turn and sent the beam as far in as it would go.

It was another tunnel. My beam reflected off of something. Coming closer, I saw that it was the missing chalice, paten, and ambry from Olson’s house. I reached out to touch the cold metal, then lifted the lid on the ambry. But I already knew what I would see when I shone the light inside: the pearl chokers, glistening and lustrous in the narrow shaft of light. Only Montgomery would be able to figure out that Olson had kept the pearls of great value in something he valued equally: the sacramental vessels.

I slogged ahead into the blackness. There was another turn in the tunnel. I remembered placing my scrolled intercession in the hand of a statue. I prayed now, hard. I believe; help thou my unbelief. My flashlight beamed through the shadows.

There. At the end of the dark dirt cylinder, tied to a chair, was a motionless figure. Tom Schulz. Slowly, he lifted his head at the light and squinted. He was gagged.

I ran toward him and tugged the gag off.

“Goldy?” His voice was hoarse from disuse, and I could not see his eyes in the dim light. “Is it really you?”

“You bet,” I told him, and then I grasped him in a wordless hug.

22

We were married the next afternoon, after the church emptied from Father Olson’s funeral service. My parents flew in, joyful; Boyd and Armstrong met them at the airport. A small group from St. Luke’s came, including a fussy Lucille Boatwright. I called Zelda and said I needed her to play the organ, would she? She said that of course she would, I didn’t want that trash charismatic music, did I? No, just whatever she wanted; but I apologetically added that there was one condition to her playing. She had to let me invite her daughter-in-law, Sarah Preston Black, and her grandson, Ian Preston. “Just use me as an excuse,” I told her. “I can’t get married, and be happy, knowing you still have all that old pain.”

Zelda gasped and then started to cry. “I guess I’ve been wanting to … in my heart. It’s all felt so heavy there, like a dead weight. I think that’s why I auditioned to play the organ at the Catholic church. Somehow, I really did want to see them… .” She stopped, then said weakly, “All right. If you’ll call them …”

Which I did. They would be happy to come. With much fussing and worry, Father Doug Ramsey agreed to perform the nuptials. I gave Marla the recipe for Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms, and she made them. Arch hauled the wedding cake out of the freezer.

Tom Schulz was weak, but he refused a wheelchair. His left ankle was broken; Boyd had driven us down to the hospital the night before and questioned him while Julian, Arch, and I had waited for Tom’s cast to be applied. In nearly three days of captivity, Tom had only had some water. He hadn’t known what Montgomery wanted with blood tests. But he’d bluffed him right along, though.

“Blood tests?” Tom protested. “Why would I know about them? But I pretended to know something, so the guy would keep me alive.” I shook my head in disbelief.

Boyd swore none of it had made sense. The keys at the Habitat house seemed to implicate Preston; the pearls with Mitchell Hartley made it look as if robbery was the motive. All planted by Montgomery. Now that made sense. At Agatha’s request, Boyd shredded her letters to Olson. Bob Preston would never see them. Agatha told me that she and Bob had decided to go into counseling; it was easier than divorce.

Back once more in their rented tuxedos, Arch and Julian beamed. With the morning mail, Julian had received his acceptance to Cornell. Marla added a wobbly Congratulations in frosting on the side of the thawed wedding cake.

The Presons: Agatha, Bob, a wary Sarah, looking somewhat like a short Nefertiti in a silk pantsuit, and Ian, a compact swimmer like his deceased father, all came in to the church together. Ian brought an orchid corsage for his grandmother, whom he had not seen for five years. While Zelda and Ian were tearfully embracing, a triumphant Bob Preston told anyone who would listen, “Now that’s a miracle.”

At the part of the wedding where you say the vows, I said, “ … for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish. We will not be parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”

Father Doug Ramsey, who was flustered, seemed to be rethinking the sermon he’d given on the trinity. He didn’t notice. Tom Schulz squeezed my hand. Then, carefully and distinctly he repeated my vow. We exchanged the rings I’d been saving in my china cupboard.

“Now, finally, I’m Goldy Schulz,” I declared happily as I hugged Tom’s wide, wonderful body during our jovial reception in the narthex. “I’m so glad I finally was able to get rid of that last name Bear, you can’t imagine.”

Tom Schulz’s large, beautiful green eyes seemed to be looking into my soul.

“God,” he said softly. “Goldy, I missed you.”

I kissed him. “You’re not going to believe this,” I told my husband truthfully, “but you were with me all the time.”

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

4 large Portobello mushrooms (approximately 1 pound)

Marinade for Mushrooms:

5 tablespoons best-quality olive oil

5 tablespoons best-quality dry sherry

Marinade for Chicken:

˝ cup best-quality olive oil

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 garlic clove, pressed

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, each cut in half

ź cup pesto

2 tablespoons finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, drained and patted with paper towels if packed in olive oil

Carefully clean the mushrooms with a damp paper towel and trim. Remove and chop the stems. Place the mushroom caps, tops down, and the chopped stems in a 9-by 13-inch glass baking dish. Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon sherry over the underside of each mushroom cap; pour the remaining olive oil and sherry over the stems. Cover and set aside to marinate at room temperature for 1 hour. Mix together the marinade for the chicken and pour over the chicken slices. Cover and set aside to marinate at room temperature for 1 hour.

Preheat a grill. Grill the chicken quickly, about 1 to 2 minutes per side (they will be cooked further).

Preheat the oven to 400 . Carefully spread 1 tablespoon pesto over the underside of each mushroom cap. Sprinkle 1 ˝ teaspoons sun-dried tomatoes on top of each pesto-covered mushroom. Evenly distribute the marinated mushroom stems on top of the tomatoes. Place 2 slices of chicken on top. Place the stuffed mushrooms in a greased 9-by 13-inch pan. Bake for approximately 20 to 25 minutes or until heated through. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings