Free The Last Suppers by Diane Mott Davidson Page A

“Oh, God, I’m not going to make it. Oh, where is he?” She cried harder, and then her voice became distant when the phone thudded against a hard surface.
    “Hello, who’s this?” A male voice. “This is Goldy the caterer. I was trying to talk to somebody.”
    “This is Bob Preston. My wife coordinates the prayer list. As you can see, she is extremely upset. She’ll have to call you later.”
    “But, Agatha asked me if I saw somebody. Who was she talking about?”
    Bob Preston said: “I certainly don’t know. My wife’s beside herself. It would be in the best interest of the church if you could just let her call you back.”
    My frayed nerves snapped. I yelled, “Look, dammit—”
    But unlike most Episcopalians, Bob Preston had hung up.

5
    “W hat a creep!” I screeched. “Get out the phone book,” I raged at Marla. “I need to call back the Prestons. Agatha said she wasn’t going to make it, and had I
seen
him, and then Bob just more or less told me to forget it, she’d have to call me back! Where is my stupid phone book?”
    Marla’s eyebrows climbed toward the stratosphere. Telling Marla to forget something was her idea of denial of civil liberties. I scrounged wildly for, and then through, the thin Aspen Meadow phone book. No Preston. What about the church directory? I looked for it, but then remembered I had cleared that shelf to make way for Tom’s cookbooks, which now lay in a disorganized pile above the counter. I had no clue to the directory’s whereabouts.
    Marla clattered our teacups into the sink and turned on the faucet. I gave up looking for the Prestons’ number and announced I was out of physical and emotional fuel. I had Tom Schulz to worry about. Had he ever mentioned Agatha Preston to me?
    “What is Bob doing now?” I demanded of Marla. I summoned up a mental image of Bob Preston, oilman extraordinaire: With his puffed-out chest and thinning red hair, Preston always reminded me of an aging rooster, although he probably wasn’t much past thirty. Over six feet, maybe six-feet-four, he had prominent cheekbones, a recedingchin, and narrow lips. I said, “What happened to his oil business?”
    She began rinsing Tom’s cups with their tiny stylized roses. “Bob was riding high until the price of oil crashed in the mid-eighties. The price of natural gas hasn’t gone anywhere either, so it was too expensive to explore. His company went belly-up year before last. They haven’t called for you to cater lately, have they?”
    I put my hand on Tom’s stove. “Caterers are always vulnerable to the vagaries of wider economic movements.” My voice sounded so morose it was clear that financial vulnerability was not the problem.
    “Come on, I’m going to cheer you up,” said Marla decisively. “You have to get your mind off these things. I’ll tell you all the gossip about Bob and the Bob-projects. Not only do they include Habitat for Humanity right here in your neighborhood, he’s also heading this Sportsmen Against Hunger group. They go out into the woods with six-packs and rifles with scopes and shoot elk, then donate the—shall I call them ‘proceeds’?—to Aspen Meadow Outreach. Now if you were a poor, hungry person, how would you feel about eating an elkburger? Do you have a recipe for such a thing? How about venison chili?”
    I shuddered. “I know about that group and the Habitat project. Just tell me who Agatha wanted to see.”
    She gave me a look of determination. “Agatha is involved in everything down at the church. I don’t know who she was referring to.” She turned the last teacup over to drain on a towel and ran her fingers through her frizzled hair. “But you can bet I’m going to find out.”
    Outside, the gears of the van ground as the tires crunched up the driveway. Julian had returned.
    “Marla, I can’t stand being out of it. I can’t stand to just sit here by the telephone waiting for the police to call. I’ve got to do something.”
    She sat