Baptism for the Dead

by R. R. Irvine

  BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD

  A Moroni Traveler Novel

  By R. R. Irvine

  To Annie K. Irvine, my second mother

  And to the memory of my father, Garner D. “Jack” Irvine

  BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD

  Copyright © 1988 by R.R. Irvine.

  All Rights Reserved.

  First eBook copyright © 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  978-1-4821-0208-6 Trade

  978-1-62460-671-7 Library

  Cover photograph © iStock.com.

  Other eBooks by R.R. Irvine:

  Robert Christopher Series

  Jump Cut

  Freeze Frame

  The Face Out Front

  Ratings are Murder

  Moroni Traveler Mysteries

  Baptism for the Dead

  The Angels' Share

  Gone to Glory

  Called Home

  The Spoken Word

  The Great Reminder

  The Hosanna Shout

  Pillar of Fire

  Nicolette Scott Mysteries

  Track of the Scorpion

  Flight of the Serpent

  Wake of the Hornet

  The Return of the Spanish Lady

  Thread of the Spider

  Novels

  Horizontal Hold

  The Devil’s Breath

  Footsteps

  Barking Dogs

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  1

  STORM CLOUDS, the leading edge of what forecasters were calling the Yukon Express, abruptly snuffed out the sun, darkening Traveler’s office. At the same moment the door opened. The woman who stood there, backlit from the hallway, wore a golden halo.

  “Moroni Traveler?” she said as if she didn’t believe the name on the door.

  “That’s right.” He left his desk to switch on the overhead light, a pair of fluorescent tubes that blinked reluctantly before flaring to life.

  Her halo became blond hair, real as far as he could tell.

  “I called for an appointment,” she said before closing the door behind her. “Penny Snow.”

  “I was expecting you, Miss Snow. Please have a seat.”

  She waited until he moved back behind his desk before sitting down. At first glance she looked very young, just out of high school perhaps, certainly no more than twenty. But her eyes belonged to someone older, blue and cold, with innocence long gone.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. She shivered. Her light spring suit, a two-piece tan seersucker with a frilly white blouse underneath, would be no match for the Yukon Express.

  His deliberate stare caused her to fidget.

  “I saw your ad in the phone book,” she began quickly. “Your name caught my eye.”

  As a child growing up he’d caught hell because of that name.

  She wrinkled her nose. “It smells funny in here.”

  “Gun oil. They’re a hobby of mine.” He indicated a small table near the window where pieces of a rifle lay on a drop cloth.

  “I don’t need that kind of help.”

  “On the phone,” he prompted, “you said something about a missing person.”

  “My mother.” She dug into a purse that didn’t quite match her suit and slid a color snapshot across the dusty desktop. In it, a man and a woman stood side by side, though not quite touching each other. Both squinted at the camera, their faces distorted without revealing emotion.

  “Your parents?”

  “Yes. That was taken about six years ago, shortly before Mother went away.”

  Mother and daughter looked nothing alike. The older woman had dark hair, brown eyes, and no waist at all, just a straight line from shoulder to hips. It was a matter of genetics, not fat. The smile wrinkles around her mouth and eyes made him want to find her.

  He smiled, impelling Penny to answer in kind. But her face didn’t crease in the same places as her mother’s.

  “Tell me about her,” he said.

  “She left when I was fifteen. My father drove her away.”

  When she didn’t continue immediately Traveler turned away to watch her reflection in the window directly behind his desk. The sky beyond the glass, filled with writhing thunderheads, threatened the stability of her image.

  “My father is an official of the church,” she said.

  In Utah that meant the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. LDS for short, but more popularly known as Mormons.

  “He’s a member of the Council of Seventy,” she added, a revelation that straightened his spine. A council member was only one step removed from the apostles who advised God’s living prophet on earth.

  “And he drove your mother away?” Traveler nudged gently.

  “He and his holier-than-thou attitude.”

  “Does your father know you’re here?”

  “Does that make a difference?”

  Traveler abandoned his chair to stand directly in front of the window.

  “Look out there.” He indicated the other window.

  His was a corner office, northeast side, on the top floor of the Chester Building, directly across the street from the temple.

  “What do you see?” he said.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Brigham Young’s city. Salt Lake. His dream. His creation.”

  “I know the history. I was born here.”

  Traveler glanced from one window to the other. Beyond the glass he could hear the wind picking up. To the east, still cloud-free and sunlit, stood the Wasatch Mountains, a ten-thousand-foot wall of gray granite peaks that looked as deadly as the jaws of some ancient carnivore.

  Brigham Young had crossed those heights in 1847 to reach this, his promised land. He’d sought a place no one else wanted, a valley that would provide natural protection for his new religion.

  “In case it’s escaped your attention,” he said, “we’re living in a theocracy.”

  “Are you saying that you’re afraid of my father and won’t help me?”

  He returned to his chair. Penny remained standing, her back to the window.

  “I can’t help anyone without more information.”

  “Of course. I’m being foolish.” She sat down again, crossed one nyloned leg and then the other. Her mouth opened. She wet her lips. Instead of speaking she reached into her purse and came out with a box of menthol cigarettes. She lit one and then looked around for an ashtray. Seeing none she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were LDS.”

  “I’m not.” He didn’t equate smoking with hellfire the way Mormons did. On the other hand he didn’t like breathing cancer by proxy either. But he kept the thought to himself, dumping pencils from a marmalade jar before handing it over as an ashtray.

>   She tapped her cigarette nervously against the jar and said, “My mother’s name is Martha Varney.”

  The name Varney rang a bell. There’d been a Varney with Joseph Smith from the beginning, from Palmyra, New York, when he founded the faith, to Missouri, and onto Nauvoo, Illinois, near where the first prophet of Mormonism was murdered. Since then Varneys had held any number of sacred points, including the rank of apostle.

  “Her maiden name was Snow,” Penny continued. “When she left, I wanted to go with her. But she wouldn’t let me. I think she knew my father would never allow such a thing. He wouldn’t even divorce her, you know. „A man who speaks for the church,’ he told me, „cannot be tarnished.’ Do you believe that, in this day and age?”

  She stopped talking to draw smoke into her lungs. Only a trace came out when she continued. “Divorce wouldn’t prevent a man from remarrying in the temple. But the rules are different for women. One temple marriage is the limit for us second-class citizens.”

  She lit a new cigarette from the old. “I did this in front of my father once. I thought he was going to have a heart attack right there on the spot.”

  “You’re getting off the track.”

  She blew smoke at him and shook her head. “My father is the point. None of this would have happened without him.”

  “When did you start calling yourself Snow?”

  “When I left home.”

  Traveler reached back to open the window behind him. The sudden rush of air was unexpectedly cold but at least made breathing easier.

  “How long since you’ve seen your mother?”

  “I didn’t see her after she left. „Once you walk out of this house,’ he told her, „I don’t want you crawling back.’ I don’t know if my mother was afraid of him then, but I was. She promised to write to me every week, though. She did, too, until about six months ago.”

  “What happened then?”

  “You have to understand. My father always opens my letters. For all I know she’s still writing but he won’t let me see them.”

  “Have you asked him about it?”

  A smoky sigh escaped her. “He says no. That’s what’s got me so worried. My father is a lot of things, but not a liar.”

  “Where did your mother’s letters come from?”

  “The last few years the postmarks were Lydel Springs, Arizona.”

  “Have you checked there?”

  “I called the sheriff. He was nice enough but couldn’t tell me anything. You see, Mother joined one of those fundamentalist groups that think the church has strayed from its true path. I think she did it to spite my father.”

  Penny’s fingers trembled as she lit another menthol. “It’s all a sham, you know. The church. Everything. If there was a God, He wouldn’t put up with all this crap.” She waved toward the window, a defiant gesture condemning Brigham Young’s legacy. But tears were running down her cheeks.

  “Something must have happened to my mother. Otherwise she would never have stopped writing.” Penny stabbed out her cigarette. “I dream about her every night. It’s always the same. She’s burning in hell because she never joined the church, another reason my father refused to get a divorce. People always said his marrying outside the faith would be his undoing. So he’s not about to give them the satisfaction of divorce. Whenever anybody asks him about my mother, he looks contrite and says, „I’m praying for her to come back to God.’ ”

  She clenched her fists until they shook. “There was a time when I begged him to have her baptized in absentia. You know about that, don’t you?”

  He nodded. Mormons were obsessed with genealogy, with ancestors burning in hell because they’d failed to accept the one true religion. If possible, they’d research their forefathers back to Adam so those ancestors could then be raised to heaven during a baptism for the dead.

  “My father refused. He said there had to be proof that she had passed on. „Do it for me,’ I begged him. „Just in case.’ But he wouldn’t listen.”

  “Did you keep any of your mother’s letters?”

  “Only the last few.” She dug into her purse again, this time coming up with several envelopes held together by a paper clip. She handed them to Traveler. They smelled of tobacco. All the postmarks were the same, Lydel Springs, Arizona.

  “That seems like the logical place to start,” he said. “Do you know the name of the group she joined?”

  “They call themselves the Church of Zion Reborn.”

  He quickly read through the letters, finding nothing of interest except a reference to a new husband.

  “If she remarried,” he said, handing back the stack of correspondence, “she must have divorced your father.”

  “I think she wrote that just to make Daddy mad. Oh, she was living with a man, all right. My father went on and on about that. Even if she went through some kind of ceremony, my father says it would be illegal.”

  “Do you know the name of the man she was living with?”

  “Oh, yes. It was in one of her letters. His name was Jordan. I remember because it reminded me of the River Jordan right here in Salt Lake, the one named for the original one in the Holy Land.”

  He emptied the marmalade jar, which no longer smelled fit for pencils.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “Before taking a case like this, I like knowing a little more about my subject.”

  “Talk to my father if you’d like.”

  “I ought to warn you, sometimes I uncover more than people want to know.”

  Her head shook as though to deny any such possibility.

  “My fee is two hundred and fifty dollars a day, plus expenses.”

  “How long does it usually take?”

  “I’ve found missing persons in a few hours. Sometimes I never find them.”

  “A week would take all my savings.”

  “I’ll get back to you before that. Where can I contact you?”

  She took five hundred dollars in cash from her wallet along with a business card. “This is my work number. You can reach me here during office hours. I’m on my lunch break right now.”

  The card advertised the downtown office of Dr. Jake Ruland, Salt Lake’s credit dentist. Medicare accepted. Dentures in a day.

  Penny smiled, showing her teeth. “My smile got me the job. I don’t have any fillings.”

  2

  BY THE time she left, snowflakes were spilling from the sky like feathers from some great molting bird. Traveler, his forehead pressed against the cold windowpane, watched her until she turned the next corner at Main Street. Three floors below him on South Temple Street, slush was already beginning to accumulate. Traffic, normally heavy at this time of afternoon, was thinning quickly, as if automobiles knew better than to stay out in one of Utah’s April snowstorms.

  On the battered wooden table beside him an ancient Philco radio he’d rescued from a garage sale hissed static. Without turning from the window he pounded its green plastic case. The blow produced a spurt of sound; part of a weather forecast calling for continued snow over the next two days, followed by the report of a cult-killing in Bountiful. As soon as static reasserted itself, he pulled the plug.

  Laid out on the table adjacent to the radio were the pieces of a fieldstripped M1 rifle from World War II. Each component had been carefully cleaned and oiled. Even the telescopic sight’s metal housing gleamed with lubricant.

  He was reaching for the sniper-scope when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver and said, “This is Moroni Traveler.”

  “Will you please hold for Mr. Willis Tanner,” a woman said, her voice curt enough to grate.

  “No.”

  “But . . .”

  “If he wants to talk to me, tell him to dial the phone himself.”

  “Maybe you don’t realize who Mr. Tanner is?”

  “I do indeed,” Traveler said and hung up.

  Across the street Mad Bill was circling the temple grounds, his sandwich board a doomed protest in
a town dominated by one religion. His placard read REPENT BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. It was one of several that he rotated on a regular basis.

  As always, Mad Bill did his best to look like an Old Testament prophet. His beard was as flowing as his robe, which at the moment was so wet it clung tenaciously to him, turning his gait into a kind of shuffle.

  Using the scope, Traveler sighted on his friend, catching him in the cross hairs. Bill chose that moment to peer up at Traveler’s window and wave.

  “Come inside and dry out,” Traveler mouthed, at the same gesturing dramatically to transmit the message. But Bill shook his head and kept moving, holding on to the hem of his garment and the sandwich board at the same time. Finally he stopped to lean against the massive granite wall that surrounded the temple. The stone barrier, like so many aspects of the church, reminded Traveler of a Trojan mentality. But when it came to scaling the walls of Mormonism, Mad Bill was no Agamemnon.

  The phone sounded again. Traveler counted half a dozen rings before he picked it up.

  “You’ll never change,” Willis Tanner said immediately.

  “Then don’t keep trying.”

  “Will you be there for a while?”

  Tanner worked out of the LDS office building two blocks to the east. The structure, a skyscraper by Salt Lake standards, overshadowed even the temple; it also went down into the earth nearly as far as it did into the sky, providing underground storage for church records against the day of Armageddon.

  “Look out your window, Willis. It’s snowing. Reasonable men would be home sitting in front of a fire.”

  “That lets us both out then, doesn’t it? I’ll be in your office in fifteen minutes.”

  “The last time I worked for you I damn near got killed.”

  “It’s time you joined the church, Moroni. Once you do, you’ll realize there are worse things than death.”

  “I ended up in jail, for God’s sake.”

  “We bailed you out, didn’t we?”

  “Hire a Mormon in good standing, not a gentile like me.”

  “You know it’s important or I wouldn’t be calling.”

  “Willis, I don’t like mixing religion and business. I . . .”

  The dial tone cut off further protest.

  With a groan Traveler turned his telescopic sight on the temple’s highest spire. At the top, a statue of the Angel Moroni flickered in and out like a figure in a paperweight snowstorm.