Blessed be the Wicked
Page 6
She curled up on a pale-gray velvet chair that faced the fireplace in the living room with a large glass of a Napa cabernet in her hand and thought about Steve Smith. Her stomach growled. She took the glass with her to the kitchen and opened the fridge. She stared at the bright white shelves. There were a few different types of cheeses in the cheese drawer and some leftover saucisson sec. She was pretty sure there was a jar of cornichons somewhere. That would be fine. She started slicing the sausage when she heard the door open. Abbie gripped the knife.
“Abs?”
“John! What the hell?”
Her older brother stepped through the door and gave his little sister a bear hug. “Mind putting the knife down? You look like you’re ready to do battle.”
“I was.”
Then Abbie saw Flynn Paulsen. Flynn’s family had lived next door to the Taylors in Provo. He and John had become best friends in Cub Scouts. They still were each other’s closest friend. In high school, when John hadn’t been around to look out for Abbie, Flynn had. They were both six years older than she was. Until she’d been a teenager, she’d thought of Flynn as a brother. Then, she distinctly had not thought of him that way.
Flynn flashed Abbie a dimpled grin and raised his eyebrow. He was as handsome as ever. He had cropped hair with a little salt and pepper, broad shoulders, and well-defined biceps that stretched, just a little, the short sleeves of his gray T-shirt. He was wearing dark jeans and dark-blue suede sneakers. He’d always been a good dresser.
“John thought you might need some food.” Flynn raised his right hand, holding a white bag from the local barbacoa. The smell of spicy pulled pork wafted through the kitchen. Abbie looked at her slices of sausage and returned Flynn’s smile.
“Yeah, still getting used to this whole can’t-order-sushi-at-midnight lifestyle. What are you guys doing up here?”
“Flynn has a place in Riverdale,” John said. Then Abbie remembered that Flynn’s grandparents had had a house up here. John had mentioned that when they passed away, Flynn’s parents and siblings had wanted to sell it and split the money. According to John, Flynn had had cash on hand to buy it at above-market value. He’d kept the house and everyone else had gotten the money. Apparently, everyone was happy.
John had pulled out plates and set the contents of the bag on the counter. “I got you the chicken with salsa verde and rice and beans.” That’s exactly what Abbie would have ordered.
“Nice little sommarstuga you have here.” Of course Flynn would know the Swedish word for summer cottage, she thought. “Kind of tight, though. I guess you got used to living in small apartments in New York. It’s lucky it’s just you. However else could you fit all your things in a place with five bedrooms?” Abbie couldn’t help but smile at Flynn’s friendly sarcasm. He was right; the place was much too big for one person.
Abbie looked at her wine glass. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Water’s fine for me,” John said.
She looked at Flynn. “You wouldn’t happen to have any Modelo or Tecate?”
She opened her fridge and peered inside, then held up a bottle and shrugged. “I have some Polygamy Porter.”
“Polygamy Porter sounds great.” Flynn took the bottle.
Abbie grabbed a second bottle for herself. Flynn was drinking beer? John didn’t seem the least bit surprised. Abbie hoped she didn’t look surprised either.
After they’d finished eating, John stood up and cleared the plates. He put his water glass and the plates in the dishwasher and crumpled the remnants from dinner into the plastic bag it had come in.
“You think you can find time in your busy detective schedule to make the drive down to Provo sometime soon? I can meet you at Dad’s. It would be good. For both of you.” John put his arms around his sister and gave her another hug. He understood that Abbie’s feelings were still raw when it came to her dad.
“I’ll think about it,” Abbie said. She would. She did want things to improve, but she wasn’t sure how to move forward. Doing nothing was not making things better.
John headed to the door.
“It’s so good to see you again, Abs,” Flynn said. “It’s been too long.”
“Yeah, it has been.”
Flynn reached his arms around Abbie the way he had hundreds of times before. They hugged and Flynn closed the door behind him.
Abbie finished what was left of her beer and went upstairs. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. For the first time since she’d been back in Utah, she felt like she might be starting to belong. John was there for her, and maybe she did have at least one old friend. Sleep came quickly.
TEN
The next morning, Abbie sat at the sleek polished cement counter in her kitchen. She nursed her first cup of coffee as she scanned her computer screen, clicking on links to the Ogden Standard-Examiner, or what locals called The Standard; The Trib, as The Salt Lake Tribune was known; and the Deseret News, the official newspaper of the Church. She skimmed the headlines. No mention of Smith anywhere. There was bound to be an obituary soon. Obits weren’t cheap, so most families in Utah ran them for only one or two days before the viewing when friends and family came to see the casket, usually at the funeral home the night before and at the church the morning of the funeral.
Abbie, skeptical of her own thinking, considered whether it was possible that the temple clothes and throat slitting were an elaborate misdirection, but she couldn’t shake the sense it wasn’t theater. It was odd, though. So far, it looked as if Smith had been just a good, old-fashioned greedy contractor who intended to leave the country with millions of dollars of other people’s money. Abbie wondered about the blood atonement angle. Was her imaginary conversation with Phillip on to something? Did the question of sin depend on who was swindled?
The crime scene struck Abbie as earnest, not dramatic. Henderson didn’t want to discuss it, but she couldn’t entirely ignore it. Suicide would be a nice solution for Henderson. Even though he hadn’t discussed the possibility with Abbie directly, she knew her boss wanted to close the case quickly and quietly. A suicide would let him do that without having to deal with the implications of the ritual, but they still hadn’t heard from the ME.
Abbie poured a second cup of coffee, black with no sugar, and opened a small purple notebook. She’d kept a version of this notebook for as long as she could remember. Whenever she filled it with her indecipherable handwriting, she replaced it with another one—always purple. The one she was writing in now was about two years old. She opened it near the middle with a thin satin ribbon that served as a bookmark. On the top line of the page, she had already written the date they found Smith, a brief description of the body, and the question “Blood Atonement?” She looked at those words and underlined them with her black Waterman fountain pen.
She didn’t know what to add to the blank page beneath the question she had posed herself. She just couldn’t make a connection between the financial issues Clarke was looking into and blood atonement. Stealing was a sin. That was true. There was also something else. The Law of Consecration? Abbie had a distant memory of this law requiring members of the Church to dedicate time and material wealth to the establishment of the Kingdom of God. Would stealing constitute breaking this covenant?
Abbie looked back at the page. She had the Bishop’s number. He was as good a place to start as any. She dialed.
“Hello?” A man’s voice answered the phone.
“Hello, Bishop Norton? This is Detective Abbie Taylor of the Pleasant View City Police Department. I’d like to set up a time to speak with you about Brother Smith.” Abbie surprised herself by how easily she fell into calling Steve Smith “Brother Smith.” It had been over a decade since she’d lived in Utah—and she certainly hadn’t been calling anyone “Bishop” or “Brother” in New York—but she found herself using these honorifics before her brain caught up with the words already spoken.
“Of course. Whatever I can do to help.”
Abbie
heard the smooth voice of an experienced salesman on the other end of the line. LDS leaders were generally not men lacking in self-confidence. Even when she was little, Abbie had chafed at the undoubting conviction that radiated from so many of the men who sat at her family’s dining room table. Her dad enjoyed rubbing elbows with the higher echelons of the Church hierarchy. Her father was not only the direct descendent of the third President of the Church, but he was a respected LDS academic in his own right. Professor William Taylor nurtured friendships with many of the men who filled the ranks of General Authorities, Members of the First Quorum of the Seventy, and Apostles. He liked being close to the powerful men in the Church.
The Bishop offered a time to meet, and out of habit, Abbie arrived early. She parked behind the church and walked to a side door where she knew the Bishop’s office would be. The glass door was open. Abbie hadn’t been in a church for years. It felt both oddly familiar and foreign at the same time. She knew things had changed since she’d left. There was more diversity among the membership. More LDS live outside Utah than inside the state. Utah itself was more diverse, too. There were Thai restaurants in Provo and sushi restaurants in Bountiful. Even the Greenery Restaurant at Rainbow Gardens now served wine and Uinta beer alongside its famous Mormon muffins.
Abbie walked down the industrial gray carpeting in the hallway to a partly open door. She could hear both a man’s and a woman’s voice inside. She didn’t want to eavesdrop on what could very well be a private conversation, so she knocked softly on the door.
“Oh hello, Detective Taylor,” the Bishop said, “I’ll only be a few minutes. Do you mind waiting?”
“Not at all,” Abbie replied. A blonde woman, probably in her early forties, was sitting in the chair across from the Bishop. Just from her quick glance, Abbie sized up the woman as one of the fighters. In Utah, where most women in their forties had given birth to anywhere between four and six children, there were the moms who were acceptant of what multiple pregnancies and lack of time did to the female body. Their self-care was usually limited to ingesting carbohydrates, either sweet or savory, in less-than-virtuous forms and amounts. Then there were the moms who fought, and they fought hard. Diet and exercise were just the tip of the iceberg. For these moms, routines included maintaining long hair with regular highlights, manicures, pedicures, veneers, eyelash extensions and, not that it would ever be mentioned, plastic surgery. Utah women had plastic surgery at among the highest rates in the country. Mommy makeovers—breast augmentation, tummy tucking, and liposuction all done at the same time—were extraordinarily popular. Abbie couldn’t guess about plastic surgery, but the woman talking to the Bishop was definitely a fighter.
Abbie shut the door, but she could still hear the voices on the other side. For a moment, she debated walking down the hallway to give the Bishop and the woman some privacy, but her curiosity won out. She stood where she was and listened. First, she heard the woman’s voice.
“Thank you so much for seeing me on such short notice. I don’t know how I wasn’t on top of this. Normally I could live for a week without my temple recommend, but next week is my niece’s wedding in the Bountiful temple and—”
“No need to apologize, Sister Morris. With all you’ve been doing with the Relief Society and Brother Smith’s unexpected passing, well, I know you have your hands full.” Abbie then heard the Bishop say, “This won’t take too long.”
So this was a temple recommend interview. Abbie remembered her first time. She was almost twenty-one and planning to go on a mission. Some of the questions had changed over time, but the purpose remained the same: to determine whether a member was worthy to enter the House of the Lord. Without a temple recommend, not only could you not go to the temple for yourself or do genealogical work like marriage or sealings for the dead, but you also couldn’t attend a temple wedding, even for your own child.
Abbie listened as the Bishop went through the more routine questions, such as whether the woman sustained the President of the Church as the only living prophet, seer, and revelator authorized to exercise all the keys of the priesthood—whatever that meant. Abbie’s mom and grandma had often talked in hushed tones about their own struggles with sustaining the Prophet. Abbie hadn’t been meant to hear, but she knew the quiet conversations had something to do with the man who had once been the Prophet of the Church. He was an outspoken proponent of the John Birch Society, a political group so reactionary even Ayn Rand and William F. Buckley Jr. had denounced it. Abbie’s mother and grandmother were closet democrats.
After the question about sustaining the Prophet, Abbie heard the questions about chastity, paying tithing, following the Word of Wisdom, and wearing your garments. Then there was the inquiry about “supporting, affiliating with or agreeing with any person or group whose teachings or practices are contrary to the Church.” This particular query infuriated Abbie. She knew it was meant, historically, to prevent polygamists from getting into the temple, but she had friends who were active members, friends who cared about going to the temple, who’d been denied recommends on the basis of this question because their political or social beliefs were at odds with their own bishop’s or stake president’s views. One of Abbie’s closest friends from high school had been denied her recommend from the moment her son had come out and she had supported him without apology. That position made her persona non grata in her small ward in St. George.
A few more pleasantries were exchanged. Abbie couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, but it was clear the interview was coming to a close.
“So sorry you had to wait,” the woman told Abbie when she exited the Bishop’s office, shrugging her shoulders and smiling. “You know how it is. My niece is getting married next week, and I let my recommend expire.”
“No problem,” Abbie replied.
“Please come in,” the Bishop called from inside his office.
Abbie hadn’t noticed how athletic or handsome he was when they’d met at the Smith house. He had a strong jawline and the look of a man who in another life could have been a Ralph Lauren model. He was wearing tan corduroys and a trimly fit navy sweater with the collar of a green golf shirt peeking out. He was not dressed for official Church business, which would have required a suit, tie, and white shirt.
Bishop Norton motioned to one of two chairs set at an angle in front of his heavy wooden desk. Behind him were the standard framed pictures of Jesus, Joseph Smith, and the current Prophet. Abbie knew the present-day Prophet from dinners when she was a kid. The smile lines around his eyes belied his harsh nature. The current Prophet was a man who was certain of his own rightness; doubt was a moral failing. He and her father didn’t agree on some of the more obscure points of doctrine. Her father was more willing to see nuances than was generally considered acceptable. Despite their differences, and there were many, Abbie had to give her dad some credit for his intellectual honesty.
“Hello, Abish.” The Bishop smiled the perfect smile that came from veneers and spending two years on a mission having doors slammed in his face. Returned missionaries could smile through anything.
Bishop Norton leaned back in his chair and started reciting scripture. “‘And it came to pass that they did call on the name of the Lord, in their might, even until they had all fallen to the earth, save it were one of the Lamanitish women, whose name was Abish, she having been converted unto the Lord for many years, on account of a remarkable vision of her father—’ Alma 19:16, if I’m not mistaken.”
The Bishop wasn’t mistaken. Abbie was impressed both because he could quote the Book of Alma and because he remembered that she’d introduced herself as Abish when they first met. The tale of Abish was not the most common Book of Mormon story. It was the account of King Lamoni’s servant girl, who believed in Jesus Christ and helped convert an entire kingdom to the “true gospel.” Every Latter-day Saint was supposed to read the Book of Mormon regularly, preferably daily, but not too many people really did. Even fewer read the odd bits that were rarely
talked about at church. Bishop Norton knew his scriptures better than most.
“Not many people recognize my name. I’m impressed,” Abbie said.
The Bishop smiled.
“I noticed in the ward directory that Steve was your Second Counselor,” Abbie said, quickly changing the subject. She didn’t want the Bishop to control the conversation, which he was probably used to doing. “What can you tell me about him?”
Abbie was walking a thin line between pushing for information and not being pushy. In Utah, politeness and friendliness were valued as much as competence and efficiency were in New York.
“Brother Smith was a good man. My understanding is he helped develop and build the entire Ben Lomond Circle neighborhood. His house was one of the first ones built. A number of members of the ward were involved in various aspects of constructing the houses, even this church.”
Abbie felt her stomach tighten, which was the way her body signaled that the conversation had shifted into the realm of something less honest. When the Bishop said, “My understanding is,” Abbie knew what he really meant was “I will technically cooperate with you, but I’m not really going to be helpful with your investigation.”
“Can you tell me who in the ward worked with Mr. Smith?” Abbie asked.
The Bishop smiled again, showing off those perfect teeth. “Since my family just moved here a few years ago, I couldn’t say for sure.”
“Really?” Abbie let her incredulity linger in the air.
“Hmmm, let me think.” The Bishop pretended to be racking his brain for details. Abbie knew he wasn’t trying to remember anything.
“Brother Egan has a successful plumbing business. He may have worked with Brother Smith. Brother Zimmerman runs his family’s cabinetry company. I don’t know if he ever worked on any of Brother Smith’s houses, but it wouldn’t surprise me because they were friends. Brother Morris has his own masonry and ironwork business. I don’t know if he ever worked with Brother Smith, but the Morris family has lived in the neighborhood for quite a while. I think they’re family friends of the Smiths.”