Gore waited for something else, but I had no intention of making excuses. “If I’d known about Carrie Helm being in this ward, well—maybe I would have treated this case differently from the first.”
“Oh? How?” I asked.
But she shook her head, refusing to elaborate. “I shouldn’t have said that. What I meant to say was that I came to you because I’ve seen how the women in your ward look up to you, how you’re the behind-the-scenes leader while your husband is the public one.”
I blushed a little at this. “I don’t know about that,” I said. There were plenty of women in the ward who probably thought of me as the last person they would reveal their problems to. But I’d made a little headway. With Sheri Tate and Emma Ashby, for instance. And Anna, of course.
“I was hoping that you might have a deeper perspective on the inner workings of the minds of the women in the ward.” She took in a breath and smiled at me. She had a wide, winning smile. She had certainly never shown it to me before.
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions about the Ashbys?” she said.
I tensed. “I can tell you what I know,” I said, “though I admit that I am surprised to realize how little that seems to be, in retrospect.”
“You didn’t know that Carl Ashby was masquerading as a man?” she asked bluntly.
“I never guessed he was transgender, no,” I said, annoyed at her phrasing. It sounded all too much like Kurt.
“But he—she—”
“He,” I said.
“He, then.” I felt like the butterfly again, the way she scrutinized my discomfort so scientifically. “He didn’t officially change his gender on court documents,” she added.
Official government documents didn’t matter much to me. “He’d been living as a man for twenty years. You can hardly call it masquerading. It was his real life,” I said.
“Then you accept him as a man?” I was amazed at how stoic she could make her expression. She was waiting for my reaction, not at all giving me hers.
“Of course I accept that he was a man,” I said. “I didn’t know he was transgender, but it isn’t for me to tell other people who they are or aren’t.”
“And what about his wife? She never had any doubts about his identity that you know of?”
“Not that I know of,” I said after careful hesitation. What was she trying to get at here? “But I don’t know that I can say absolutely what Emma knew or didn’t know.”
“Are you not friends with her?” asked Detective Gore.
“Of course we are friends. But that doesn’t mean I know everything about her.”
“Do you know if Carl and Emma Ashby were struggling in their marriage?” she asked, as if it were a completely innocuous question.
I still didn’t know what the argument at the bishopric dinner was about, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell Detective Gore anything that she might see as a motive for Emma to kill her husband. “They seemed fine, from my perspective. But as I said, it was a limited perspective.”
Nor did I bring up the letters. Emma hadn’t found those until after Carl’s death. I was sure about that. Though I wondered again why the police hadn’t found them when they’d searched the house. Maybe they hadn’t been looking for them?
“And what is your impression of Emma Ashby’s relationship to others in the neighborhood?”
“Everyone admires her,” I said, perhaps kindly more than honestly. “She is a devoted mother, a loving wife, and a good member of the church. She gives much of her time to her family, but what time there is left, she gives to her service. She quilts as a hobby, but she gives away many of her finished products to the Church Humanitarian Service to send abroad or to use in disaster relief efforts locally.’” I’d heard Emma talk about how it comforted her to imagine that people who had lost everything had at least one of her beautiful handmade quilts to cling to while they waited in shelters as a storm passed.
Detective Gore wasn’t writing anything down now; she was simply watching me. I wondered what my body language was communicating. My hands were in my lap and I knew I was fidgeting. I was uncomfortable.
“And does she have any more intimate friends we could speak with?” asked Detective Gore.
I realized I couldn’t think of any good friends of Emma’s. But that is simply what frequently happens in Mormondom—people focus on their own forever families, not on others’.
“She was in the Primary Presidency a couple of years ago,” I said. “I think she worked with Grace Wong and Carolyn Lieber.”
Detective Gore nodded. “Thanks. I will talk to them.” But she didn’t log the names into her phone or ask for numbers, which made me wonder if she really cared.
Why was she really here?
“And does Emma Ashby have any close relationships with any men in the neighborhood?”
What was Gore getting at now? “No,” I said flatly.
“I’m talking about platonic friendships, nothing untoward,” said the detective, giving me half of that winning smile.
But I saw she was playing a game now, and I didn’t like it. “Emma would never cheat on her husband. She wouldn’t even do anything that appeared to be cheating,” I said.
“But you said that you two aren’t close. How can you be sure?” asked the detective.
“Because—well, I suppose I can’t be sure. But she doesn’t seem the sort of woman who would have an affair.” That sounded lame, I knew. I was trying too hard not to talk about the letters. Or the very personal information Emma had shared with me about the lack of sex in her marriage.
“And what sort of woman is that?”
“A woman who is looking for more. Adventurous, maybe. Rebellious.” I answered too quickly, and I knew it. I was the subject of this interview, far more than Emma was, it seemed.
“You don’t think that Emma Ashby has ever wanted more from her husband, who was pretending to be a man?”
I was tired of talking about the difference between being transgender and pretending. I let it go. “I think that she was happily married, and that she honored her marriage covenants.” The Ashbys’ marriage hadn’t been anything like mine. But who was I to judge?
“You don’t think that a woman who is sexually frustrated might ever be tempted to stray?” asked Detective Gore. That same stoic look.
“I don’t think Emma was sexually frustrated,” I said.
If she only knew the truth here, Detective Gore would be amused at the idea of Emma Ashby going to someone else for sexual satisfaction. Emma might very well be sexually frustrated, but I didn’t think she would have looked for relief in the way that Detective Gore was suggesting.
Detective Gore raised her eyebrows. “Did she tell you that she was satisfied, then?”
How much of the truth was I giving away? I kept my hands folded together in my lap and answered her with eyes firmly focused on her face. No obvious prevarications. “No. But she said that Carl was the perfect husband.”
“Is it possible that one of the women in the ward might have had . . . more than a close friendship with Emma Ashby?” asked Detective Gore next.
I clenched my teeth, took a deep breath, and tried to fight the flush I knew was on my cheeks.
“Emma Ashby has not been engaged in a lesbian love affair behind her husband’s back, if that is what you mean,” I said tartly.
“Do you find lesbians disgusting?”
I realized I might have stepped into something here. “No, not at all,” I said, glancing at her briefly. I’d always told the boys they couldn’t tell someone’s sexual orientation just by looking at him or her, and now here I was doing it myself. It didn’t matter if she was lesbian, anyway.
“But you aren’t a lesbian?” she asked.
“No. And I don’t believe Emma Ashby is, either.”
Detective Gore sile
ntly stared at me for a long moment. It was unnerving. I wondered if I could duplicate that stare.
“Can you think of anyone in the neighborhood who might have had a reason to wish Carl Ashby ill?” asked the detective.
“No,” I said honestly. “I really can’t.” I was afraid to feel too relieved that she’d moved on to another topic of questioning. She could move back at any time. “He was a good man, a good neighbor, a good friend,” I added.
“It’s likely the murderer was someone he knew, given the circumstances of his death and the staging of the body,” said Detective Gore, her eyes narrowing.
“You’re sure it wasn’t a break-in?” I asked, although I knew the answer.
“There’s no sign of any door being forced open, or any window,” she said. “We didn’t find any DNA samples or fingerprints from anyone outside the ward in the room or anywhere else in the building we checked. And nothing was taken.”
“Do you have any leads?” I asked. Was there any way I could convince her to think of someone other than Emma without throwing out suggestions of suspects in the ward myself?
Gore gave me a long, guarded look. “What about you, Mrs. Wallheim? Is there anyone you suspect?”
I forced myself to look at her, no matter how much I wanted to evade her gaze. “It has been more than two weeks, and it would be good to know when there will be closure. That’s all. Our ward has been very disturbed by all of this.” This was her problem, not mine. Her failure, not mine.
“Closure is difficult to offer when people want something other than the truth,” Gore said, though she didn’t elaborate.
Leaving me with her card and the instructions to call her if I had any “sudden inspiration,” as she put it, Gore very briefly examined what she could see of the rest of my house, and walked out the door. I looked at what I could see of the kitchen and the living room and wondered what the homey look had revealed to her.
One thing I was sure of was that Detective Gore knew more than she was letting on. I was beginning to wonder if we, in our ward, really wanted to know the truth about what happened to Carl. But I had never been one to hide behind palatable lies, and I wasn’t going to start now.
Chapter 21
Wednesday morning, the police picked up Grant Rhodes for questioning. The news spread quickly through the ward, and as soon as it reached me, I called Kurt.
“If this is about Grant Rhodes, I’ve already heard,” he said.
“Do you think he might be guilty?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I thought they believed it was a woman,” said Kurt.
We had both thought the police had Emma Ashby in their sights. But why bring Grant in if they thought that? Had Detective Gore changed her mind after talking to me on Monday?
I tried to restrain myself for a couple of hours, but eventually called Emma and asked her if I could come over. I didn’t tell her why. She sounded too tired to say no to anything, and I decided to take advantage of that.
“How are you doing today?” I asked politely when I got there.
She looked terrible. I wondered if she had eaten a full meal since Carl had died. She was thinner than ever, and she had dark shadows under her eyes. Her nose was red and raw, and every movement she made seemed startled, like that of a wild animal.
“I got a call from the life insurance company,” she said as she let me inside.
“Oh.” I said noncommittaly, hoping desperately they weren’t calling to tell her that her marriage with Carl had never been legal and that they were arguing fraud to deny her the money. I followed her to the kitchen, where she sat holding a cup of water I never saw her drink from.
“They said that their internal reporting structure requires an investigation on any suspicious death unless there is a finished police investigation that clearly identifies the perpetrator of the crime.” She didn’t look at me, as if doing so would make her more likely to burst into tears.
I was suspicious of this explanation. It sounded like a delaying tactic. Clearly, there was a political battle being waged here, and I could only see part of it. Kurt said President Frost was friends with the chief of police and had asked him to keep certain things from the media. Was he also keeping them from arresting Emma? Was that why I’d had that bizarre conversation with Detective Gore on Monday?
“I’m so sorry,” I said, still unable to see Emma as a murderer. Those tiny arms, those small hands, choking Carl with a pink scarf? And then calling me and Kurt not long after, with innocence and terror in her voice? It made no sense.
“I want to know what you think of me calling a lawyer. Someone who can defend me against the terrible things that are being implied.” Her voice wavered, and I felt protective of her again.
“A lawyer sounds like a good idea to me at this point,” I said. I wondered if a lawyer would instantly see all the legal problems here, and get to work on them without telling Emma. I hoped so.
“You don’t think it will make me look bad to the insurance company?” She was back to her pleading uncertainty.
What would be worse, looking bad or being arrested? But she didn’t seem capable of seeing the big picture right now. “Emma, you need to make sure your children have what Carl would have wanted them to have,” I said.
“The insurance company said that I could refuse the investigation and forfeit the claim to begin with,” she said. Her voice was all over the place: scratchy, high-pitched, and then a hoarse whisper. I had to listen carefully to catch what she was saying.
“Why would you do that?” I was appalled.
“They said that in my financial situation, I’m not desperate for money, and so it might be easier for me to avoid the scrutiny.”
“That sounds like a threat,” I said. I hated big corporations who seemed to care nothing about honoring their contracts and everything about the bottom line. A man had died. His family was suffering, whatever the legalities were. Didn’t that matter more than a profit statement to shareholders? Apparently not. “What do you want to do?” I asked.
Emma was shaking again. “I just want to bury Carl. I want the police to release his body and let us get on with the funeral so that we can start healing. I feel like we’re stuck in this place and we’ll never get out of it.”
“Full healing will take a long time, Emma,” I said as honestly as I could. I remembered people telling me when Georgia had died that I would never get over it. I’d hated that. I had wanted to believe that I just had to hang on for a few more weeks, maybe a few months, and I would be fine again.
“William needs there to be a funeral. He needs to see his father’s body resting in a coffin,” Emma said. “He needs to hear people talk about Carl’s life. He’s so confused right now, I think he might explode.”
Did she think that I could do something to make the funeral happen more quickly? Kurt was my husband, not my puppet. I had no control over his actions as bishop, and even if I had, President Frost was the one who had stopped the release of the body, not Kurt. But I suppose Emma didn’t know that.
“Do you think a lawyer could make the police release his body?” she asked.
“Emma, you need to be careful here,” I said. “I think you should just be patient for now.” What she didn’t seem to see was that the longer the police spent investigating this, the more likely they were to find the right person. And stop looking at the easy solution of the wife murdering her husband.
“Thank you,” said Emma, her voice very faint. She looked up at me, wide-eyed and hopeful. “Linda, I’ve always felt that you and I—that we had nothing in common. I’ve been afraid to talk to you for fear that you would look down on me. You’re so smart and articulate, and I’ve never felt up to your level.”
“But I—that’s—” I tried to protest, but she kept going.
“You have been a dear friend through all this, better than I could have hoped
for. I guess you don’t really find out who your friends are until you are in trouble. So, thank you.” She put her hands in mine, and I could feel how small and cold they were.
“You’re welcome,” I said, because there was no other way I could respond.
After a light lunch, I headed over to Anna’s for one of our walks. At her doorstep, I paused to look at the valley below us—so many houses, so many different cities that had grown out of the one original settlement. The pioneers in the 1800s had only seen the mountains and the desertscape, and must have had no idea how much the buildings would spread. I could see the different sections of Draper city, the older parts with the larger acreages, and houses added onto again and again, and then the smaller homes of the 1950s and ’60s made of brick, and up the hill to where we lived, amidst the tall homes on small pieces of land that looked like unending rows.
It was a brilliant, hot day, not a cloud in the sky. As usual in June, we hadn’t had a drop of rain, and if there was any wind at all, I’d be seeing dirt being blown around the lower sections of the valley. Brigham Young had said that Mormons as a people would make the desert “blossom like a rose,” and I suppose we had. Looking out over the whole of it, I was able to let go of all my pressing concerns for just a moment, and feel amazed that I was part of this enormous project. I might struggle with parts of Mormonism, but I was proud of the grand, historical sweep of our church history.
“What happened?” asked Anna.
“Does something have to happen for me to want to go on a walk?” I asked.
“Generally, yes,” said Anna. “But you have the kind of life with all your boys where there’s always something exciting going on.”
I told her what Emma had said. “Am I intimidating? I want you to tell me honestly.”
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