Free Sticks & Scones by Diane Mott Davidson Page A

pristine trail of snowy pavement. Soon the minibus was out of sight.
    When I came through the front gate and crossed the bridge onto the state highway, I remembered the rental tables that were supposed to be at Hyde Chapel. I pressed the accelerator, determined to see what was going on. Or
not
going on, as the case might be.
    As I drove up the road, I punched the cell phone buttons for Tom’s Atlantic City motel, on the remote chance he was still there. The man who answered said Tom had left several hours ago. I then tried the main number for Furman County government and entered the buttons for Pat Gerber’s extension at the district attorney’s office. Of course, since it was not quite seven, all I reached was her voice mail. I left a message: My ex-husband got an early release from prison, and a bullet shattered one of our windows at four this morning. With a temporary restraining order in place, what was our next step for visits with our son?
    I disconnected as the chapel bridge across Cotton-wood Creek came into sight. Beyond the bridge, thechapel’s delicate gray spires and arched stained-glass windows looked ethereal in the soft morning light. After auctioning off the Henry VIII letter, Eliot had given the Gothic chapel to the church, to offset his tax burden. In order to make Hyde Chapel a tourist attraction clients would associate with the castle conference center, Sukie had directed an extensive cleanup, and paid Chardé Lauderdale handsomely to decorate the place. The labyrinth had been the crowning centerpiece of the renovation. Saint Luke’s had been thrilled.
    This day’s lunch event had been covered in a fluff piece in the
Mountain Journal
and in the Saint Luke’s newsletter. Although the church had received lunch confirmations for twenty, the Episcopal Church Women had begged me to make enough food for up to ten more folks, for those donors untroubled by RSVP’s. The ECW was handling the loan of church plates, silverware, and crystal for the lunch. I’d merely replied to the ECW that lunch for thirty or even thirty-five would be no problem.
    I swung the van across the chapel bridge, intent on finding the tables. With the bad publicity generated by the Lauderdale incident impacting my business, it was imperative that the lunch event go without a hitch. If the tables had not been delivered, I would call Party Rental at nine and deliver a blistering harangue. In the catering biz, sometimes you had to get rough.
    No spotlights illuminated the chapel. I pulled into the gravel parking lot and swung around to park facing the creek, as close to the building’s carved front doors as I could get. Across the highway in Cottonwood Park, the sun lit the top of the thick cluster of pine trees.
    As I sat with the van running, I tried to recollect the combination on the lockbox that held the chapel key. The chapel had been designed as a miniature of Chartres, and boasted some features of that enormous cathedral, including a rose window and, now, a labyrinth. I tapped thesteering wheel and finally recalled that the letters on the lockbox combination were C, H, A, R, T, R, E, S.
    There was a Gothic-lettered sign to my right, at the top of the creek bank.
Set your brake!
it warned.
Management cannot pull your car out of the creek!
    I smiled at the vision of Eliot and Sukie towing a vehicle out of the water. I pulled up on the brake, then leaned forward in my seat to check how far I was from the creek. Fifteen feet below, the narrow chute of black, gurgling water raced between the icy banks.
    I squeezed my eyes shut, heart pounding. I hadn’t just seen what I’d just seen. Or had I? Surely it had been an illusion, my sleep-deprived mind playing tricks with ice, water, stone, sunlight. You think you see something flesh-colored, something bobbing eerily in the water, and it turns out to be a rock.
    I took a deep breath, jumped out of the van, and walked carefully to the edge of the creek bank. No, it wasn’t quartz,