Blessed be the Wicked
Page 25
Sariah sat down on the couch. “Steve had been a good man once, but he had fallen. He needed to return to his Father in Heaven. I was the only one who understood what needed to be done.” Sariah’s voice was soft and kind, almost like a favorite kindergarten teacher’s.
“Steve had started down the wrong path the way most who fall away do, with small things. Sins that can seem so trivial they’re either forgotten or easily justified. Then he began to break more important covenants. Temple covenants, the Law of Chastity. He had taken my sister down that path with him more than once. But there were consequences. I couldn’t let him bring one of our Heavenly Father’s children into this world that way. That soul can wait for another mother and father who are properly sealed in the temple. I had to help them atone for what they’d done before it was too late.”
“Like your great-great-grandfather Jedidiah Grant?” Abbie asked.
“Yes.”
“Did Steve understand?”
Sariah smiled, “Yes, he did. I knew Steve was leaving for Costa Rica, and he wasn’t planning to return. He’d stolen money from the Church. He’d stolen my darling Jess’s chastity. He needed to be punished. He needed to atone for what he’d done.”
“You gave him a special muffin, didn’t you, one with some Xanax in it?” Abbie asked. Abbie’s brain had taunted her about the detail she had overlooked. The ME had assumed, as they all had, that Smith had eaten chocolate-chip cookies, but it wasn’t cookies in his system; it was a chocolate-chip muffin. The same muffins Sariah had brought to her grieving friend Melinda, the same muffins she’d brought to her own sister’s funeral.
“Yes. Yes, I did. I’m famous for my chocolate-chip muffins. I baked a special one for Steve. I’ve had a Xanax prescription for years. Everyone does. It was easy to put a few aside. I run early in the morning, so my family and the neighbors are used to seeing me at that hour. It was so simple to accidentally run into Steve on his way to the airport. He ate the whole muffin in three bites.”
“What happened after he ate the muffin?” Abbie asked.
“He let me help him into his hideous yellow Hummer. He always thought I was pretty. He’d made inappropriate comments more times than I can count. I guess that’s why he liked Jess so much. We’re sisters and we do look a bit alike. He was happy to go to the empty house on Lake View. I think he was having unclean thoughts about why we were going there. He seemed very satisfied with himself; he kept mumbling about having both sisters.”
“You drove his Hummer to the back entrance of the house. You knew he had his temple clothes in his garment bag, didn’t you?”
Sariah nodded. “I carried his garment bag and helped him out of the car. He took my hand. The door to the basement was open. I took him to the closet. I told him that he was going to have to take off his sinful clothes of this earth and become clean. He was happy to. He undressed so fast. At first he was angry when I told him to put on his temple clothes, but by then he was getting very slow. It took me some time to get him dressed because he was so heavy, but I was able to prepare him. He kept nodding off. When I asked him if he wanted to atone for breaking his covenants with our Heavenly Father, he said yes. I took his hand and helped him. His blood was spilt. I could see him smile. He knew he could now return to the presence of our Father in Heaven.”
“What happened then?” Sariah must have driven the car to the airport, but Abbie wasn’t sure how she had managed to pull it off without anyone else knowing.
“I folded Steve’s clothes. I closed the closet door and left. I drove to the airport because I knew Melinda was going to pick up the car that afternoon. I threw Steve’s bags in a big trash can near a construction site in Ogden on the way to the airport. I didn’t want Melinda to know. She might know eventually, but she didn’t need to know now. I didn’t know the house had been sold. I thought it would be months before anyone found Smith’s body,” Sariah explained.
“How did you get home?” Abbie asked.
“I took the free bus from the airport to Temple Square and then a cab back home. I’m training for the marathon and do a lot of long runs. Nobody thought anything about me being gone for the morning. I was at church a little late, but no one noticed.”
“And what about Jessica?” Abbie asked.
“I wish there’d been another way.” Abbie watched Sariah’s expression change. For a brief moment the older sister looked sad, but then she regained her countenance of certainty. “She forced me into this position. I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t let an innocent soul be brought forth from such a sinful union. She was going to start showing soon.”
“She didn’t know what was happening, did she?” Abbie asked.
“No. Jess never was the smartest girl in the room—the prettiest, maybe—but not the smartest. It was easy for me to stop by my parents’ house after Jake left. Don’t worry. She wasn’t in any pain. I made sure of that. I dressed her in white for meeting our Savior. She needed her blood to spill to the earth, but no prophet has ever said she had to be awake for that. Now she is waiting for me on the other side of the veil. I will miss her until I see her again, but if she hadn’t atoned, she’d never have had a chance to be with us all in the Celestial Kingdom. A few years of missing her in this life is nothing compared to eternity.”
“You wrote the suicide note and left it the day after we found her?” Abbie added.
“Yes, I thought it would be nice if everything could be dealt with together. I guess I didn’t think that through very well.”
“Sariah Morris. You’re under arrest for the murder of Steve Smith and your sister Jessica Grant,” Abbie said.
Sariah smiled. “May I ask a favor? I need to get out of these workout clothes. May I have a minute to change?”
Abbie debated the idea of letting her murder suspect change her clothes. It was something she never would have considered in New York, but here in Pleasant View there didn’t seem to be any harm. Abbie didn’t think Sariah was going to try to escape. If she did, she wouldn’t get very far.
Before Abbie could say anything, Sariah then asked, “Also, would you please let my husband know he’ll need to pick up the little ones from school? I’m assuming I won’t be able to make it.”
“Sure, go ahead and change,” Abbie said. “We’ll make sure the kids get picked up from school.”
Sariah wrote her husband’s telephone number on the back of an old envelope and handed it to Abbie; then she walked upstairs.
Clarke broke his silence. “I can’t believe it. It’s so, so … I don’t know what it is. She seems so at peace with it. She thinks what she did was good, that it was the right thing to do.”
“Yes,” Abbie agreed, “she did think it was the right thing to do. She still does.”
“How did you know?” Clarke asked.
“When I saw the fourth volume of The Journal of Discourses the first time we were here, I wondered about Sariah’s obvious pride in her genealogy. The Reformation period is a harsh time in LDS history. Jedidiah Grant was not a forgiving man. There are plenty of his descendants who would never dream of crossing this line, but Sariah found comfort in her version of atonement and forgiveness. It’s not that hard to step over the line when you have no doubts about your own version of the truth.”
Abbie looked at her watch. It had been more than a few minutes since Sariah had gone up to change. In a flash, Abbie was on her feet. She had miscalculated. She ran up the stairs before Clarke could even stand up. Abbie opened the door to the master bedroom. There, lying on a king-sized bed under a framed picture of the Salt Lake Temple, was Sariah Morris. She was dressed in her temple clothes with a veil over her face and a green satin apron across her lap. There was a bowie knife in her right hand.
The deep red gash under her chin looked like a smile.
THIRTY-NINE
Abbie stood outside the Morris house looking at the outline of Ben Lomond Mountain against the bright blue sky. Henderson and a few other officers had come to process the sc
ene. Clarke gave Henderson all the details. Abbie overheard him say, “Detective Taylor was brilliant. I mean, we all should have seen it, but we didn’t.” Abbie didn’t wait to hear Henderson’s response to the praise, if indeed he responded at all. She had the sense that as long as Celestial Time Shares and Steve Smith’s role in that enterprise weren’t front and center, Henderson didn’t much care how the case got resolved.
“We got the right person. That feels good, even if the whole thing is really twisted,” Clarke said when he joined Abbie. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled.
“If you’ll give me back the keys,” Clarke said. “I’ll drive us to the station. The other guys can finish up here.”
Clarke and Abbie were both exhausted. Henderson had begrudgingly told Clarke they could file all the paperwork the next day. He’d told them to go home and get some rest.
“I finished up your security system last night,” Clarke said as he drove them both back to the station. “I couldn’t sleep. No system is perfect, but this one comes close.”
“Thank you,” Abbie said.
“Do you want to follow up on Bowen?” Clarke asked. “I’ll talk to Henderson if you want.”
“No,” Abbie said. “We have a full confession, and we have the rings. We can write up the report tomorrow. Whatever Bowen was doing at my place isn’t relevant to closing this case.”
Clarke looked doubtful. “If you change your mind, you’ll let me know. I think we should look into it.”
“I’ll let you know if I change my mind.” Abbie appreciated Clarke’s support, but whatever Bowen and his friend were checking on wasn’t an incident they needed to include in their report. Abbie hoped it wasn’t something she’d ever have to think about again.
Clarke dropped her in the parking lot at the police station and immediately headed home. Abbie sat alone in the Karmann Ghia for a few moments. She took her phone out of her bag and pressed a name from her contacts list.
“Dad, good morning. I thought you’d like to know it’s over.” Abbie explained what had happened and why.
“Darling, Abish. I’m happy for you. I have to give you credit where credit is due. I’ve been told there’s been absolutely no media coverage—social or otherwise. It’s like nothing ever happened.”
“Yeah, Dad, it’s like nothing ever happened.” Abbie didn’t take the same comfort her father did in the fact that someone had managed to keep two grisly murders in the quiet hamlet of Pleasant View entirely off the news cycle in Utah. Her father found solace in secrecy. Abbie didn’t. She preferred the discomfort of transparency.
“You know, this means you have a professional future here,” her dad added. Abbie thought he sounded hopeful.
“I guess it does, Dad.”
She turned the key and started the drive back toward Flynn’s place. She stopped at the State Liquor Store first and bought the most expensive bottle of Scotch she could find. Next door at a craft shop, she picked up a pair of scissors and a roll of thick satin ribbon and the closest thing to good writing paper she could find. She wrote: Flynn, thank you for being such a generous host. I’ll never be able to repay you. ~ Abs.
With her bread-and-butter note in hand along with a token of her appreciation, she turned onto the private driveway off Ritter Drive. As she pulled in front of the garage, she saw a classic 1960s gunmetal-gray Porsche. Margene didn’t drive a Porsche, did she?
Abbie climbed out of the car with the bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan Single Malt. As she pulled her keys out of her pocket, the door opened. It wasn’t Margene. It was Flynn.
“You thought you could stay here and just sneak away before I got back?” He raised his left eyebrow. “I see your bags are packed and ready to go.”
Abbie hoped she wasn’t blushing. Flynn was barefoot, wearing a pair of well-worn jeans that fit him better than they should. The gray Henley he was wearing made it clear he spent some time at the gym, or was extraordinarily genetically gifted.
“I don’t want to overstay my welcome. You know what they say about houseguests and fish.”
“You’re not a fish.” Flynn’s eye caught sight of the Scotch with the satin ribbon wrapped around the neck of the bottle and tied in a bow. “That for me?”
“Here you go, kind sir.” Abbie handed him the bottle and the note. He read the card.
“If you join me for a glass, I’ll consider it partial repayment.”
“You know I don’t like to be in debt.”
Abbie followed Flynn into the library. He walked over to an antique silver butler tray in the corner of the room. Abbie was quite certain the heavy crystal bottles on top contained brown liquid far more precious than what she’d managed to find at the liquor store on Pacific Avenue in Ogden. Flynn, ever the gentleman, gave no hint if that was the case. He poured two fingers into heavy cut-crystal old-fashioned glasses. He handed one to Abbie and raised his own.
“To debt.”
Abbie touched her glass to Flynn’s. “To debt.”
Author Biography
D. A. Bartley is a member of Daughters of Utah Pioneers. She traces her family history back to the earliest days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After studying international relations, politics and law, she worked both as an attorney and an academic in Manhattan. In the end, though, she could not escape her life-long love of mysteries. She lives in New York City with her husband, daughter and son.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Alison von Rosenvinge.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-720-3
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-721-0
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-722-7
Cover design by Melanie Sun.
Book design by Jennifer Canzone.
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
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First Edition: August 2018
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