Her phone rang. She located it under a folder on the desk, and said, “Whitaker.”
“It’s Lance. You doing okay?”
“Yeah.” She hugged herself with her free arm. “But it’s hard. Everything holds a memory. If it doesn’t, it’s got question marks all over it. Who would’ve thought that I’d laugh and cry just finding a Christmas party flyer, an old photo, a recipe, all with memories or questions?”
“It’s how we grieve, Martha. It’s perfectly normal. Give yourself that.” He paused. “Listen, I found something I thought you should hear. It’s from one of the letters that Lolich brought. It’s from one Nancy Pace to ‘Mama E,’ dated February 26, 1870 . . . blah, blah blah, here it is: ‘Do not believe rumors about my Eli. He been as willing as the next to meet his God. Only for Eli this blessed meeting come sooner and not by his own hand. He was sacrificed for doing as he was told by that scoundrel who sits on the throne of our beloved Prophet. Sacrificed for the ungodly deeds of the Elders. B. Young come all the way out to our ward and told Eli to be the Hammer with God as his Anvil, and together they could beat back the Gentiles from grabbing Deseret country. The Howland boys and that vagrant Dunne sneeked up from the canyon like spies of Satan, only they smacked up against the righteous hammer, my Eli. But the generals of the Army of Israel have agin forsook their foot soldiers, and Eli was laid upon the altar of the Lord so their hands looked clean.’”
“That’s almost word for word what Piter deVries was shouting when he came out of the car,” Martha whispered. “And this goes back as far as 1870?”
“Yeah. And here’s another thing. When Joseph Smith and Avard Samson first created his private security force, it was called the Army of Israel, aka, the Danites. Now, at the time of this letter, some thirty years later, Brigham Young has replaced the martyred Smith, the Mormons have moved from Missouri to Utah, and yet there’s still a reference to the ‘Army of Israel.’ Coincidence? I don’t think so. This Nancy Pace seems certain that Brigham Young is involved in the plot and had her husband killed to keep it quiet.”
“So who’s Nancy Pace?”
“Mac tracked her down this morning through the church’s genealogy records. The nineteenth wife—don’t say it, Martha—the nineteenth wife of John D. Lee, the man behind the Mountain Meadow Massacre, was a woman named Emma. That was her diary account that Lolich brought to the hotel. So, one of John D. Lee’s other wives was a woman named Rachel Woolsey, and Nancy was their daughter. Then Nancy married this guy Eli Pace.”
“Nineteen wives? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Martha, now’s not the time.”
“That’d keep him busier than Secretariat at stud.”
“Maybe that was the point. But it didn’t prevent him from having time to plan a raid against a wagon train of settlers passing through the area. Before he disappeared, Hewitt suggested I research John D. Lee. When Lee came under federal scrutiny for the Mountain Meadow Massacre and was excommunicated from the church, both Rachel and Emma remained faithful to him. They both thought he’d been set up by church Elders to take the fall. Lee was still alive when this letter was written, living in exile in southern Utah, but in a few years—’74, I think—he’ll be turned over to the feds and executed, calling out Brigham Young with his dying words. Literally.”
“But that wasn’t enough to implicate Young, I take it?”
“It’s easy to discredit anything a man says who’s facing a firing squad.”
“But it doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.”
“Which is what Hewitt suspected. He was building a case of circumstantial evidence. If enough of it adds up, it may point to the truth. Another incident he discovered involved Lee’s son-in-law, Eli Pace. In 1869, it’s believed that Eli Pace, husband of Nancy, killed three non-Mormons. He mistook them for federal agents looking for Lee. But they weren’t feds. They were three men from the John Wesley Powell expedition down the Grand Canyon! Two brothers named Howland and a guy named Dunne."
He paused, as if consulting his notes, and continued. "In January 1870, Eli Pace died under suspicious circumstances. It was eventually ruled a suicide. Now a month later, in February 1870, Nancy Pace is writing Mama E, telling her not to believe what she’s heard, that, in truth, Brigham Young, or B. Young, as she calls him, had ordered Eli killed so as to deflect another federal investigation.”
“So, one more piece of circumstantial evidence implicating Brigham Young with the Mormon Death Squads,” Martha said. “Something that somebody would like to keep very hush-hush.”
Silence hung between them until, finally, Trammell asked, “Anything new on your end?”
“Nothing as juicy as what you’ve got,” Martha said. “It just some oddity that I can’t quite pin down. There’re no records of Hewitt doing any business on the rare manuscripts, no files, no notes, no records of any kind on any historical documents. There’re just personal accounts and information. Ralph was living in the back office at the bookstore, so Hewitt wasn’t working there. He left eight documents—the letters and the diary pages—so he was obviously still working. But where was he working?”
Martha glanced about the houseboat. “I’ve still got a lot to sort through.” She paused. “You doing okay?”
“I’m fine here, though everyone’s getting tired of Molly insisting all the doors be kept locked.”
“Yeah, well, they didn’t get tied up in the bathroom at gunpoint. Don’t get careless just because it’s inconvenient.”
“Backatcha. Gotta run, but I wanted to let you know one other thing.” The pause was heavy, as if Trammell couldn’t find the right words.
Martha was sure he was about to say Hewitt’s body had been discovered.
“Mac found something else during his genealogy search: Eric Metcalf is a practicing Mormon.”
She sat back, stunned. Finally, she nodded her head. So many things began to fall into place.
TWENTY-TWO
Togaard had left the bank records with his administrative assistant and disappeared. Martha wrote out an authorization to suspend all activity on Hewitt’s checking account, signed in triplicate for each stack of copies, and ignored the middle-aged woman rolling her eyes over the top of her reading glasses. “Will there be anything else today, Ms. Whitaker?” she sighed. Martha understood who had been assigned the tedious task of compiling all the paperwork. She smiled and thanked her.
Back at the houseboat again, she stopped at the sight of a Pete’s Supermarket grocery bag beside the front door, tucked out of the rain under the eaves. Inside, she discovered a hot dish of homemade macaroni and cheese, a Caesar’s salad and a loaf of hard-crust bread. Surely, it had to be from Karen and Brownie, but there was no one on the docks, no one waved from a window to take credit for this hospitality. But Hewitt had a whole community of friends and neighbors here who had been touched by his disappearance. The aroma of the mac and cheese triggered memories of Gran, who always believed comfort food was the surest way to help you find your way when your faith in God wavered.
In the kitchen, Martha found an unbroken plate and some cutlery, washed them and dished herself a scoop of mac and cheese, a little salad and the heel of the Pugliese bread. In the far corner, she saw Dante’s food remained untouched. The cat door was working properly, but still no sign of the damn cat.
The houseboat still lay in shambles—except the desk. She had placed files back in the drawers, righted the chair. It wouldn’t be the first time she ate lunch at a desk. Between bites, she examined the bank documents. First, she focused on the business account. Ralph’s handwritten ledger matched line for line with the account for University Rare Books and Manuscripts. Ralph had reconciled to the dollar, if not quite the penny, every month. Deposit records from the bank corresponded to deposit lines from the ledger. Ralph had made daily deposits. The smallest one was for $17.34—the Saturday after Christmas, Martha noted—and the largest for $2,822.19—the Saturday before Christmas. The best revenue days coincided with a notatio
n on a rare book being sold: a signed first edition of Dune, a first edition of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Skimming the totals, Martha figured the store was bringing in an average of about $400 a day with periodic spikes that coincided with a rare book sale.
Outgoing expenses appeared straightforward: utilities, electricity, and phones. The check duplicates were all in Ralph’s handwriting. To The Richard Hugo House, $500, with the memo saying “poetry slam sponsorship,” and $1,000 to 826 Seattle, with the note “donation.” Dozens of small checks were made out to individuals, all with the same memo, “Books.” One check for $115 had the note “Bradbury—Wicked—1st” written on it. Checks to Costco, an office supply store, and a mailing service all seemed in line with doing business. Every two weeks, Ralph paid himself $1,500 by check. He wrote himself a check for $1,000 right before Christmas, with the note “Bonus per HW.” Each month, Ralph transferred everything over the six months operating expenses into Hewitt’s checking account.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Martha’s five-month stint as Hewitt’s bookkeeper had familiarized her with his personal finances. She quickly identified that four deposits were still made each month directly into his account—Social Security, a small retirement check from the University of Washington, and rent payments from the two tenants who shared the building with the bookstore. All direct deposits, just like she had set it up. Ralph’s deposit of the bookstore funds was the fifth deposit each month, regular as clockwork.
Through two years’ worth of statements, only eight other deposits were made. All were for under $100 except for two, and both of those had come in during the past six months. In May of last year, Hewitt had deposited a check for $1,734, and in October a check for $1,254.89. Martha searched through the copied transactions from the bank. The first one was a personal check from Mitch Adair. The memo line had the word “reimbursements” scribbled on it. The second check was from a bank, drawn from the account of the Estate of Margaret Cunningham. Again the memo just indicated “Reimbursements.” Martha had no idea who either Mitch Adair or Margaret Cunningham was.
She found a second check from Mitch Adair for $89 with the memo “Symphony Ticket.”
The houseboat rolled and Martha tensed. She slid her chair back, ready to move. The houseboat surged and dropped again. The distant sound of a floatplane idling back its engine drifted in from across the lake. She waited another minute to be sure no one was using the floatplane’s wake to camouflage their arrival, before returning to the checkbook ledgers.
His moorage payment and the mortgage payment for the bookstore property occurred on the first and fifteenth of each month, automatic payments, just like she had set it up. The rest of Hewitt’s personal expenditures turned out to be a chaotic mess. Monthly statements didn’t balance with the checkbook ledger, check numbers were out of sequence, a couple were missing altogether. Martha flipped through the check copies: drugstore, phone bill, Pete’s Supermarket. Checks for as little as $6.82 and as large as $213.52. She paused at a check written to Mitch Adair for $73. She pulled it out and set it aside.
It didn’t take her long to find what she was after: a check to the Institute of Forensic Anthropology for $3,892, with a memo noting “Dr. June Povich,” and a second to the University of Washington’s Quaternary Research Center for an even $5,000, with a memo designating it a “donation.” The two checks had depleted all the extra money in his checking account, resulting in an overdraft charge for his moorage payment. Thank god she had set up overdraft protection for his accounts or his houseboat might have been cut adrift in Lake Union given the demand for the prime end spot on the dock. Martha pulled the check copies, placed them on the desk, and glanced around the floor. All the files had been reordered and placed back in the desk. None included any business invoices. Strange that Hewitt would pay $3,892 without an invoice. Reflecting on that for a moment, she decided it wasn’t strange—for Hewitt.
Flipping through the check duplicates, she found a second check from eighteen months prior to the Institute for Forensic Pathology, with the memo “Dr. June Povich.” Around the same time, there was a record of another donation to the UDub’s Quaternary Research Center.
Martha ran a hand through her curls in frustration. She pushed back her chair and searched the houseboat for remaining files. She found none. No invoices, either. For that matter, the houseboat offered up no direct sign of Hewitt’s work on the old manuscripts. He had hidden eight rare documents on the bottom of Puget Sound, and yet, here at home and at the bookstore, there was no evidence the documents existed.
After killing Hewitt, had his enemies swept up all evidence of his involvement in authenticating the rare letters? Martha doubted they could have been that thorough. The wreckage looked more like a quick and dirty search for the package Lolich had found in the water under the pier.
Did Hewitt have an office someplace else?
Then another thought occurred to her. A quick reexamination of the three bank accounts confirmed her suspicion: thousands of dollars paid out and not a penny of income recorded for Hewitt’s work on the rare manuscripts. Was Hewitt researching and documenting old manuscripts for the LDS as an altruistic gesture? A gift to the Morons, as he called them? It made no sense. Did he have another bank account someplace else? Was he hiding money in the mattress? Unlikely, if he was writing $6 checks to Pete’s. A missing office, missing income, a missing safe, a missing Hewitt. They couldn’t all have been washed away with the outgoing tide.
The best way to deal with all the uncertainty, Martha decided, was to have a second helping of mac and cheese. Someone had used a nice four- or five-cheese recipe, and given it some tang with a liberal sprinkling of cayenne pepper. Toasted breadcrumbs on top made a satisfying crunch. She paced amid the debris while eating. The first edition of Cotton Mather’s book lay near the bottom of one pile. She righted a bookcase and set the leather-bound edition on the shelf. Black spots of mold appeared along the bottom edge of the three-hundred-year-old book.
Sorting through the rubble of the living room, she found an upside-down frame under a pile of books, its glass and gilded frame broken. Two letters were displayed in the frame, both copies: a Letter of Authenticity and a letter containing the once-familiar scrawl of “A. Lincoln” in a short, congratulatory letter to Stephen Douglas for defeating him in 1858 for the Illinois senate seat. Hewitt had sold the original letter to the same Chicago collector who had screwed Ralph over the H. G. Wells first edition.
“Why that asshole?” Martha had asked.
“Let’s say he paid a little more than it was worth," Hewitt said. “Caveat emptor.”
With a pile of unpaid medical bills—even after Medicare—and a meager income, Hewitt had welcomed the unexpected windfall. A miser when he had no money, Hewitt was generous to a fault when he did. Ralph had received a bonus for finding the letter tucked in between the pages of an old Sandberg biography of Lincoln recently dropped off at the bookstore. Hewitt then tried to give the last of it to her to help with the down payment on the house. She had argued for him to put the money in a low-risk investment CD.
“You’re the best savings account I have,” he laughed. “You’re high interest, my dear. I know who’s going to take care of me when I’m old.”
“You’re old now,” she said.
“And who takes care of me? You! But I plan to get older and when I do, I need you to be there, not a pile of money.”
They settled on a five-year, low-interest loan. She paid it back in two.
Martha looked at the broken frame and dropped it back to the floor. The Letter of Authenticity had vindicated him and helped her buy the house, but she still wondered if it had been worth the price—Dr. Obbert’s friendship. It also reminded her that the Mormon documents were meaningless without those Letters of Authenticity, something Hewitt well knew. He had told Trammell the documents were ready to be published. Hewitt would have included the letters unless he couldn’t ge
t to them on short notice. So where were they? In the missing safe?
She added LOAs to her growing list of missing items. From her briefcase, she pulled out her laptop and booted it up. Within seconds the air card found a satellite signal. She googled “Institute of Forensic Anthropology” and “Povich.”
A recent conference in Phoenix, Arizona, at which Povich had presented a paper on “Analyzing Inks in Forgery Cases” to the Criminal Forensics Association of America, popped up. The second link was for the anthropology staff at Arizona State University. She was surprised to discover the name “Dr. June Povich” under a man’s photo. At least it wasn’t Shirley, Martha thought, and returned to her search. The third link was for the Institute of Forensic Anthropology’s homepage. Two clicks and she had a phone number. Three rings and she had a person asking, “How may I direct your call?”
“Dr. June Povich, please,” Martha said.
A prolonged silence told Martha this conversation was not going to unfold the way she had expected.
“Who’s calling, please?” came the disembodied female voice.
“Martha Whitaker in Seattle, Washington. It’s regarding a payment to Dr. Povich and the Institute from a couple of months ago.”
“I will transfer you, please hold.”
Canned music droned on and on, until Martha thought she might have been forgotten. Finally, another woman’s voice said, “Dr. Lewis. How may I help you?”
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