by Betty Webb
“Mother Eve. Good for the deaths of Megan Unruh, and Ford and Doreen Laumenthal?”
Sylvie put a finger up to her lips. “Shh. Baby’s trying to sleep.”
Mother Eve muttered something, but it was unclear because she’d obviously been given twice the amount of painkillers I had. Once she drifted back to sleep, Sylvie answered, “Well, we’re still working on that. But I’m hoping she is.”
I also wanted to believe that Mother Eve—a.k.a. Priscilla Marie Heywood Stahl—was our killer. After all, she had a long criminal background and tonight had attempted to kill me. But something about it didn’t feel right.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jimmy said when he caught me heading for the corral the next morning, my left arm swathed in bandages.
One of Jimmy’s faults—although they weren’t many—was that he tended to hover. In the past, whenever I’d been hospitalized with a workplace injury, gunshot or stabbing, he’d stayed by my hospital bed until the nurses threw him out. And that was when we were just friends and business partners. Since we’d moved beyond mere friendship, I foresaw a life of being hovered over, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. Comforted? Suffocated?
“Exercise is good for me,” I told him, grabbing the saddle horn. “Besides, Adila looks lonely.”
He put his hand on top of mine. “How much blood did you lose last night?”
“I bled worse when I got my ears pierced.”
“I’m not going to let you lift that saddle.”
“I can always ride bareback.”
“Not on that horse, you won’t.”
After comparing the value of total independence to sensible health precautions, I slipped my hand out from under his. “Then saddle ’er up, Pardner.”
He was still grinning when we rode toward the rising sun.
As October in the desert tends to be, the morning was flawless. The summer heat had long disappeared, and the winter rains lay months in the future. The only thing lacking was color, which we wouldn’t see until spring, when the various species of cacti blossomed—red, pink, orange, and on the stately saguaros, startling snow-white with bright yellow centers. But you can’t have everything, can you? I contented myself with the muted greens of sage and the soft golden glow of the caliche soil, relishing the fact that the desert’s subtle beauty helped me ignore the ache in my stitched forearm.
“…and so I told him there was nothing we could do about it.” Jimmy’s voice intruded upon my sylvan reverie.
“Huh?”
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you, Lena?”
“I, ah, caught the part about there being nothing we could do about it.”
“You agree, don’t you?”
Ahead of us, a covey of top-knotted Gambel’s quail scattered out of the horses’ way, seeking shelter under a creosote bush.
“I always do, don’t I?”
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of the horses’ hooves, the singing of a cactus wren. Then Jimmy rode up beside me, a rare expression of irritation on his face. “Did you hear the part about him wanting you to call him?”
Time for the truth. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t paying attention. What am I supposed to agree with and who wants me to call him, and why?”
The irritation softened into concern. “Is your arm hurting? Do you need to go back to the Emergency Room?”
“I’m fine, but I repeat, who am I supposed to call?”
Jimmy studied me carefully, then seeing no evidence of pain on my features—I’m careful about that sort of thing—he relaxed. “Harold Slow Horse. He’s not taking the news about Chelsea very well.”
I frowned. “What news?”
“About her marriage.”
“Her what!?”
He reined Big Boy in front of Adila, bringing her to a halt. “How long have you not been listening to me?”
In the ensuing silence, Adila took the opportunity to nip Big Boy on the neck. He squealed and nipped back. Adila responded in kind, and next thing you know, we were in the middle of a horse brawl, not the kind of fight you want to get involved in on a nice October morning. At least bringing the horses’ back under control gave me time to collect my thoughts.
When the two animals finally settled down, I said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening, but I was, ah, thinking about something else.” Like how much my arm hurt. “So tell me. What’s all this about Chelsea getting married?”
“In a candlelight service last night, apparently. Right afterwards, she called Harold to give him the news, told him he should be happy for her, and to top it off, emailed him a picture of her arm in arm with New Hubby.”
“I bet that went over well.”
“Like the sinking of the Titanic.”
“So what does Harold want from me now?”
“The name of a good lawyer.”
“Why?”
“He wants to sue New Hubby for alienation of affection.”
Wincing, and not from physical pain, I asked, “What’s New Hubby’s name? And where the hell did she meet him? She’s been up at Kanati for over a month, so…” I stopped. “Oh, hell. She married someone from there, didn’t she? Please tell me it wasn’t Roger Gorsky!”
“His name is Adam, and here’s his picture. Somewhere in his forties, it looks like. Kind of handsome in a way, if you go for skinny blond men.” With a wicked grin, he leaned over and handed me his cell phone so I could see.
Chelsea in a bridal veil.
And then it all came back.
I was four years old and it was my wedding day.
Of all the little girls among The Children of Abraham, Golden Boy had chosen me for his bride. Everyone said it was a great honor, but if it was, why was Mom crying? And why was Daddy so angry it took two men to hold him back?
As Mom ran to Abraham’s tent to tell him that I was too young, two of the older women, one fat, one skinny, dressed me in a white dress—so much lace!—and covered my face with a white veil that made everything look foggy.
“Beautiful clothes for a beautiful bride,” the fat one said.
“But I can’t see the world anymore!”
“From now on Adam will do the seeing for you.”
“Nobody can see the world for someone else. We’ve each gotta see it for ourselfs.”
She frowned. “Who told you that?”
“My mom.”
The two women looked at each other. “Helen, again,” Sister Skinny said. “She’s nothing but trouble. I told Abraham he was making a mistake with her.”
Sister Fat made an ugly sound. “Abraham never makes mistakes.”
Sister Skinny blushed. “Oh, that’s not what I meant. Of course he doesn’t. It’s just that his ways are like God’s, sometimes difficult to understand.” Then she turned to me, lifted my veil so she could look me in the face, and said, “Your mother was wrong.”
I wanted to say my mom was never wrong, but I remembered her last night, crying and crying, and saying she’d been so wrong, so wrong.
Deciding I didn’t want to get married, I grabbed the veil away from Sister Skinny and threw it to the ground. Then I started to take off the white dress. It didn’t feel pretty anymore. But when I tried to walk out of the tent, Sister Fat grabbed me and slapped me in the face. “You’ll do as you’re told, Little Miss Snot.”
They dressed me again. I wanted to cry because my face hurt, but I didn’t want them to know anything about me, how I was feeling, how scared I was of the way Golden Boy looked at me, how everything was getting so awful that Mom cried all the time, how Daddy wanted us to leave, how…
“She’s ready,” Sister Skinny said.
“About time, too,” Sister Fat muttered.
I tried to escape again, but it didn’t work. They just grabbed me and dragged me out of the tent
to the clearing where Abraham and Golden Boy and the others were waiting. My mom was there, too. A couple of big men stood next to her, almost as if they were guarding her, which was silly. Mom didn’t need to be guarded. She could take care of herself. At least that’s what she always told Daddy.
I looked around for Daddy, but he wasn’t there, just Mom, who kept yelling, “No, no! No, no!” until Sister Fat leaned over and slapped her like she’d slapped me.
“That was mean!” I yelled, running over and slapping Sister Fat on her big fat butt with both of my hands. She reared around and raised her hand to me and…
“Stop it!” Golden Boy commanded. “If you touch her I will have you killed.”
Sister Fat put her hand down.
“That’s stupid,” I told him. “You can’t go around killing people even if they are slappers.”
He gave me a startled look, then began to laugh.
An hour later, after Abraham said some fancy words about a whole lot of things, Golden Boy and me were married.
Looking back, I don’t think I had a wedding night. At least, I can’t remember one, because after that day, everything changed.
Everything.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Lena, what’s wrong?” Jimmy’s voice broke through the memory of gunshots and screams.
It took me a minute to catch my breath, but once I did, I turned to my partner with a quickly formed lie. “Oh, nothing. I thought I recognized Chelsea’s new husband, but after a closer look, realized I was wrong.”
He frowned. “You sure?”
“Absolutely.” It would be a long time, if ever, that I’d be able to share that pain with anyone, even Jimmy. And to a certain extent, I hadn’t really lied, just told a partial truth. I didn’t know the man pictured on Jimmy’s cell phone. How could I? The last time I had seen Adam Arneault, not counting that quick glimpse at Kanati, was thirty-five years ago, when he’d been my own “husband” in a cult known as The Children of Abraham.
When my name had been Christina.
It had all come back. The wedding. The sacrifice of the firstborns. Taking another little girl by the hand and running with my parents and the other children through the woods.
The chasing voices. The gunshots. The deaths.
My father and baby brother on the ground, bleeding into the earth.
Small bodies tossed into a mineshaft.
Sitting next to my mother on the old school bus until our ride ended with another gunshot.
Then darkness, awakening weeks later in a desert city where I knew no one, not even myself.
After taking a few seconds to calm down, to make certain I wouldn’t begin screaming, I said, “You know, after thinking about it, I’ve realized Harold has a point.”
“What point? Suing Chelsea’s husband for alienation of affection?” When he laughed, the tribal tattoo on his forehead appeared to wink. “This isn’t Victorian England, and alienation of affection isn’t going to fly in any twenty-first-century courtroom. Arizona doesn’t even have an alienation law.”
I waved my good hand in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, I don’t mean the lawsuit, because of course that’s nonsense. But in his own way, Harold’s as addicted to Chelsea as she was to drugs. Maybe if we got a little more information about this…this Adam person, we could use it to break through Harold’s denial and wean him away from her.” Sometimes psychobabble comes in handy, for instance, when you’re trying to keep someone from noticing that you’re lying your head off.
“Lena, please tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
“So how do you plan to do this? Through one of those terrible interventions?” Not being a fan of the method, he made a face. “Look, I’m not saying you’re wrong, because, yeah, to a certain extent you’re right. Harold is somewhat addicted to the drama Chelsea brings into his life—he’s an artist, remember, and they’re all prone to drama—but you can’t force enlightenment on someone. Especially not someone like Harold, who loves that silly woman so much he can’t see straight.”
If the science of neurolinguistics is correct, when a person looks up and to the left, he or she is remembering something. I couldn’t be certain, but it was even money that Jimmy’s own leftward eye movements were caused by remembering the years I had chased after shadows while ignoring the light in front of me.
And now it was too late.
I reached across my horse and took Jimmy’s hand. “People grow. It just takes some of us longer than others.”
He smiled.
Tender moment over, I pointed Adila’s nose toward home. Big Boy duly followed. “There’s something I need to take care of,” I told Jimmy. “But after that, I’m driving out to Kanati again.”
“To talk to Chelsea?”
“Yep.” And to someone else.
“Well, since I’ve probably used up my allotment of bossiness for the day, I won’t forbid you to go—not that you’d obey—but please drive carefully. Morning rush hour is rough on I-10, and you’re still not as rough and tough as usual. That arm of yours…”
“No problemo, Kemosabe. And don’t worry about my arm; it’s fine. I have to take care of some stuff at the office first, so by the time I make it onto the I-10, the traffic will have eased up. But maybe you could feed the horses and help Wolf and his apprentices get started on the house before you come in?” I was proud of how steady my voice sounded.
”Will do.”
When we dismounted back at the trailer, I gave him the kind of kiss that should have made him suspicious, but given his pure Pima heart, it didn’t.
The drive to Desert Investigations only takes fifteen minutes from the Rez, but due to the shock of recognizing Chelsea’s new husband as my own childhood “husband,” I almost didn’t make it.
After running straight into the bathroom, I held my hair back and knelt in front of the commode and lost breakfast, heaving and heaving, until nothing but bile came up. It took a while. Finally staggering to my feet, I scrubbed the commode and tile surround to within an inch of their lives. Then I sprayed the bathroom down with Lysol Fresh Linen disinfectant, adding a few spritzes to the outer office, just to be safe. I didn’t want Jimmy to suspect anything was wrong, because if he did, he would do something to keep me from doing what I had to do.
Now that Desert Investigations smelled like clean laundry instead of sick PI, I sat at my desk, turned my computer on, and did some more research on Arneault, Pichard, and Theron, Kanati’s parent company. By the time Jimmy walked in, all I’d come up with was the same old superficial hype along the lines of “Kanati changed my life.”
“Smells nice in here,” Jimmy said, when he arrived and was grinding up Jamaican Blue Mountain beans for the morning brew.
“Coffee beans always smell nice.”
“I meant that new air spray you bought. Clean Sheets, is it called?”
“Fresh Linen. It, ah, smelled a little stuffy in here when I arrived, so I thought I’d try it out.”
“Good choice.”
With coffee on the way, Jimmy went back to his desk, while I poked around the Internet, this time trying individual names. I had no luck, because the clumsily translated versions of the Frenchmen’s bios contained little of importance. Maurice Abraham Arneault, deceased, was described as an American-born dentist with an interest in Edgar Cayce. René Alain Pichard, also listed as deceased, had been a clothing designer who wrote a weekly astrology column for Le Figaro. Gaston Baptiste Theron, another dead guy—not a long-lived lot, apparently—had at one time been a Franciscan monk. A decade before his death, Theron left the Franciscan order, spending his remaining years as a “seeker of Truth,” or at least that’s the way his official bio described it, capital “T” and all. There had to be a backstory connecting all this to what was going down at Kanati, but my own computer skills were l
ess sophisticated than Jimmy’s.
“How you coming along on that research into Adam Arneault?” I called across the room.
“Slowly,” Jimmy said. “I got derailed onto the Sanders Brothers investigation. Remember them?”
In my rush to find out more about Adam, I had forgotten one of Desert Investigations’ newest clients. Not used to being rich, brothers Derek and Brian Sanders had cashed out their start-up and invested everything into a fund run by Dobbs & Calhoun Financial Services, a shell company that had taken their money and vanished. The police hadn’t been able to help, and neither had the FBI, once it was discovered that “Shane Dobbs” and “Carl Calhoun” were pseudonyms for Vasily Minkorski and Shasha Grivanov, and that the two were now safely ensconced on Russian soil. Appeals to Vladimir Putin had gone unanswered.
“You can’t even give me a few minutes?” I asked.
“Not at this point. Ever try to hack a holding company with an address in the Cayman Islands? They say it can’t be done, but I’ll blast through if it’s the last thing I do, so if you don’t mind…” With that he ducked behind his computer and continued typing.
When Jimmy was like this, nagging at him was fruitless. I was on my own. The problem was, with my computer skills being less than a tenth of his, I felt hopeless. Then I remembered Jimmy once explaining how to access the Dark Web.
It took three tries, but I was eventually able to log onto one of the Dark Web’s most nimble search engines. Once there I found a forty-year-old article that had originally been microfiched and translated from Chercheurs, a magazine that specialized in the occult. In it was an interview with Adam’s father, Maurice Abraham Arneault, wherein he discussed his reasons for returning to the States after having lived in France for ten years. I had to endure a page and a half of Arneault’s quasi-religious gobbledygook before the interviewer pared him down to then-recent events.
CHERCHEURS: “But let us now address the fact that you are leaving France. People are saying…”
ARNEAULT: “People say a lot of things. They are also saying that after the tragedy in Quaydon, the reorganization of The Divine Temple of the Holy Cross widened the breach between its two factions, and that is absolutely untrue. I remain a loyal member of The Divine Temple of the Holy Cross, which I assure you has been unfairly smeared by lies in the press. Yes, there was a schism. Considering our differences there had to be, but those responsible for the tragedy are no longer with us to explain how it happened. Let me assure you that the current members of The Divine Temple of the Holy Cross were not responsible for the personnel failures that led to those deaths. But that is water under the bridge, is it not? Yet the outcry has been such that I must resign from my partnership here. So I am moving to the United States, where freedom of religion remains a sacred right of all its citizens. Although my father was a French citizen, I was born in Oklahoma, and thus enjoy dual citizenship. Do not you, as a natural-born Frenchman, who himself has lived abroad in Morocco and Spain, find it natural to wish to return to one’s homeland? And in my case, I also find it natural to desire to elevate the souls of my countrymen and bring them back to the most holy teachings of God.”