Gwen drove over and picked me up. On the ride north, she was absorbed in her own thoughts. Still silent, she parked and put her hands on the steering wheel. They were shaking again, but not as badly as last time. “Ready?” she asked.
I nodded.
We walked in together. I sat down in one of the chairs in the reception area while Gwen went up to the front desk to speak to Debbie, the current receptionist. To my surprise, I heard no argument. After a few minutes, Gwen came and sat down next to me.
We sat there for about thirty minutes without anyone speaking to us. I was trying to make a list of Christmas gifts on my phone, but Gwen was fidgety and went up every few minutes to nudge Debbie.
Debbie seemed unfazed, telling Gwen each time that someone was coming to answer her questions, then asking her to sit and wait again. Finally, a tall blond man in a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie came out, spoke briefly to Debbie, and looked toward us. Of course, I knew immediately who he was. He looked exactly as he had in the heavily posed photos on the Celestial Security website. It hadn’t occurred to me I’d never met him before, despite the fact that he seemed to be the key figure in this whole case.
“Sister Ferris, how are you?” he said to Gwen. Then he turned to me. “And you must be Sister Wallheim. So good to meet you,” he said, smiling. “I’m Greg Hope.” He held out his hand. He was handsome and gracious and said nothing about the last time we’d been here.
Gwen stood as I returned his handshake. I could smell a faint musky cologne on him, but it wasn’t overpowering. He stood at least a few inches above six feet, with broad shoulders, but wasn’t so muscular that it interfered with the fine lines of his suit, which had to be more expensive than anything Kurt had ever tried on, let alone purchased.
But it was his relaxed manner of speaking and extreme attentiveness that impressed me. I had been determined not to like him from the moment he walked toward us, but even so, I felt unable to turn away from his attention. When his eyes met mine, I couldn’t detect a note of falseness.
“I understand you have some questions about poor Gabriela,” he said, spreading his hands in a welcoming gesture. “You must know I was devastated to hear about her passing. We at Celestial Security will truly miss her impeccable work ethic and sunny nature. I can only take solace at the thought that our justice system has found the criminal responsible for the gap left in the world by her absence.”
It was a pretty speech, and one that seemed to flow so genuinely from his lips. I glanced at Gwen and saw that while her own lips were pursed, she wasn’t reacting negatively to this. Good.
“We want to know what her role was here on your workforce,” I said bluntly.
Hope added, “Ah. I have nothing to hide, here or anywhere else.”
Gwen rolled her eyes at me, but there were no signs she was about to retort.
“I’ll show you around. Come, walk with me,” Hope continued. He waved a hand at Debbie, who pushed a button beneath her desk to open the glass doors behind her.
He led us through them, narrating as he went. “This is the call center. We have people here twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, to make sure that any breaches in security are dealt with.” There were some twenty desks here, all close together with cubicle walls between them. Two or three women were on calls, but the rest were typing or simply waiting. All of the women there were Hispanic.
“Did Gabriela work here?” Gwen asked.
“No, but as I said, I wanted to show you everything.”
Gwen looked at me and made a face. I couldn’t argue with her. This felt like no more than a distraction.
“And back here,” said Greg Hope as he kept walking through another set of doors, “is our packaging center.”
This looked far more industrial. The lighting was bright, and there were massive long tables lined with men and a few women—again, all Hispanic—dressed in white jumpsuits and sporting huge goggles that covered their faces.
“Gabriela worked here in the packaging center twenty hours a week—or as many as she could manage with her daycare schedule. Of course, sometimes she had to stay home with sick children, but we understand that here. The pay is the same, no matter how many hours you work. As long as you’re making the effort, we reward you for it,” said Bishop Hope warmly.
So that answered our questions about why Gabriela had the same salary every month, $1,000. Or did it? I did a quick math calculation in my head. If she worked twenty hours a week, she was getting decidedly more than minimum wage in Utah. Those terms were very generous—suspiciously generous, in fact, if she often worked fewer than twenty hours. What was going on here?
“You can really afford to pay people who don’t work?” Gwen asked.
I tensed, but Hope didn’t seem offended.
“I like to think of it as paying for them holding a space for work in their lives,” said Hope easily.
Gwen looked at me, and I could see her jawline tighten at his tone. Uh oh. Now was the time to watch her more carefully, in case I had to stop her from saying something that would get us kicked out again.
“How many hours a week did Gabriela work here, on average?” Gwen asked.
“Well, I’d have to look that up, but I’m sure she did what she could, when she could,” said Hope.
Gwen looked at me again, murmuring sourly, “Yes, I’m sure.”
I wondered if we’d have found out more about the business if we’d simply gone around Gabriela and Carlos’s apartment building and asked Hope’s employees about their work. Or were they all too loyal to him? Maybe too afraid of losing their jobs?
“There is one thing that I feel bad about with regard to Gabriela,” said Hope as he walked us back through the building to the front.
“What’s that?” Gwen said, her tone disbelieving.
“I introduced her to Carlos Santos. I never thought that they would begin a relationship. When I realized that they’d begun to see each other socially, I should have done something. I knew Gabriela was married. It was part of her church membership record, and I should have called her in to talk to her. But I felt sorry for her as a lonely single mother with three young children.”
He gave a look of sympathy so perfect I couldn’t believe it.
“Did you try to stop them?” Gwen asked.
She seemed to be keeping it just under control. I hoped we’d end this tour soon, but didn’t know how to hurry it along. Hope seemed happy to keep drawing it out at this point, loving the spotlight.
We took a detour from the call center and ended up in a small room with a single desk off to the side of the building. Why had he brought us here? “I also wanted to show you the space where we offer help with the paperwork for our workers to get proper citizenship in the United States. Or the necessary visa, if they prefer.”
Had he just admitted he knew that most of his workers were undocumented immigrants? Didn’t that have serious legal consequences? There had to be hefty fines, at the very least. I wondered why was he telling us this when we could so easily report him.
But he probably had people so high up politically on his side that he felt he had nothing to worry about. I felt a banked fury at this. I’d seen the same thing too many times before—favors or offers to look the other way because someone was a “good Mormon.”
I reminded myself that I was here for Gwen, and I couldn’t get pulled into her anger at Hope right now. I needed to keep her out of trouble.
“If you were helping Gabriela with her citizenship papers, why did she come to the class I offered at the church?” Gwen asked.
More to the point, why hadn’t Bishop Hope simply told Gwen why the class was unnecessary instead of letting her go ahead, when he’d known few people would come? It seemed cruel in retrospect.
“I could tell you needed to feel useful,” said Hope. He didn’t pat Gwen patronizingly on th
e head, but the effect of his words was exactly the same. He was done telling his seamless story. We were supposed to believe it and walk away.
I wondered briefly what Detective Gore had thought of the man. I didn’t believe she’d have bought into any of this.
To my relief, Hope then escorted us to a side door that led to the outside. “Anything else I can answer for you?” he asked as he opened the door for us.
I realized that now was my chance to ask about the embezzlement accusation. Maybe it wasn’t related to the murder case, but I wanted to see how Hope would react. “If you don’t mind, I do have a question,” I said.
Gwen glared at me. She had her own questions, I knew.
“Gabriela told us that you were going to call the police about money from the church that you’d given her. She said you were accusing her of embezzling the funds—that you were asking for receipts she didn’t have?” I asked.
For the first time since we arrived, Hope seemed caught off guard. It was just a fraction of a second of real surprise and anger, which he quickly covered with bland neutrality, but I’d seen it even so. “I don’t know why she would have said that. I’ve never accused her of anything like that.”
“No? We noticed that you gave her a monthly sum that was quite substantial from the ward, in addition to her income from your business,” I said, still watching him closely.
But he didn’t show any sign of discomfort this time. “She was struggling to pay bills. Of course I was helping. Temporarily, as any sympathetic bishop would.”
“You never threatened to call the police?” I pressed again.
He shook his head emphatically. “Why would I do that? It was a church matter. She didn’t have access to funds other than the ones I’d given her. If I’d been upset with the way she was using that, I’d simply have refused to give her the next month’s payment.”
This actually made a good deal of sense to me, but there was no way Gabriela had misinterpreted to the point that the accusation had been made up. “Did President Frost call you about it?” I asked, because Kurt had gotten involved in that, even though I hadn’t expected him to, and I’d never heard about what happened next.
Now Hope twitched, then went very, very still. “I don’t recall if he did or didn’t,” he said.
“But you must remember,” I said before I realized what this meant. This was important. He was denying that anything had happened. Which made no sense if he had really been unafraid of what Gabriela had said about him calling the police.
A realization struck me. Gabriela had wanted this to get back to him. She’d involved me and Gwen not because she’d wanted us to help her, but because she’d been threatening Hope in some way I didn’t yet understand. She’d been saying to him that she could get the police involved, and that wasn’t what he wanted.
Had this been what had gotten her killed?
My mind whirled, unable to put all the pieces together. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to get out of here. I could hear Kurt’s voice in my mind, telling me that coming to Celestial Security had been dangerous. There was a rush of sound around me, and I felt cold, unable to move. This had not been a smart thing to do.
I glanced at Greg Hope’s face, glittering with malice that he was no longer trying to disguise. I wanted Kurt to come save me, but I couldn’t call him. He’d told me not to do this. He’d warned me more than once, and I’d ignored him. I moved to leave.
“You ladies should really get back to your homes. I’m sure your husbands are waiting for you,” Hope said.
It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Gwen bristled. “Gabriela called me the night she died. She told me that she was meeting you at the Pro-Stop, and that she was afraid for her life.”
But she hadn’t said that. “Gwen, I don’t think—” I tried to say. I hadn’t liked the way he’d dismissed us, but we had the information now that he hadn’t wanted to give us. Surely it was time for us to take the win and leave.
“Be quiet, Linda,” Gwen said sharply. “Let’s give Bishop Hope a chance to respond. He said we could ask any questions we wanted and he’d answer them.”
Hope looked angry, but more sure of himself now. “I don’t meet with employees outside of work hours,” he said firmly. “And I was at a late business meeting that night. The police have already checked my alibi, I assure you. A dozen witnesses could place me miles away from where Gabriela was killed.”
His voice was smooth, but all I could hear was his own sense of importance. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that if he’d had to give an alibi, Gore must have thought of him as a suspect, at least at some point. But if she’d arrested Carlos, she must have cleared Hope.
“Then why did Gabriela think you were going to meet her?” Gwen pressed. She seemed inclined to push angry men to a breaking point lately.
“I think you must have misunderstood the message she left you that night,” he said. Then he looked at me and added, “Maybe you misunderstood her about the accusation of embezzling, as well.”
Gwen gritted her teeth. “I don’t think she misunderstood at all. Gabriela knew something incriminating about you or your business. Didn’t she?”
At last, Hope seemed to realize he shouldn’t give us any more information to work with. Without looking at me, he turned back to the building and said, “Please tell your husband I said hello, Sister Wallheim. And excuse me. I need to finish a few things up before I head home.” And he closed the door on us.
I kept quiet as we walked back to her car.
Gwen yanked her own door closed, frowning in frustration. “If only I’d called her back that night, I could have asked her what was wrong. She might have told me what—who—she was so afraid of. She might still be alive.”
“We should go home,” I said. And call Gore, I thought, but I didn’t say that to Gwen. I wasn’t sure how she’d react.
Gwen shook her head. “I still don’t believe Carlos killed Gabriela. He had no reason to hurt her. There has to be more to this. Something bigger is at stake than a love triangle.”
“Maybe you should let this go, Gwen. Focus on getting through the holidays and starting the Police Academy,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said.
When we got home, I sent a quick text to Gore about the phone message Gwen had from the night Gabriela was murdered. I expected to hear back from her immediately, but there was nothing that evening, or during the night. Maybe it didn’t matter as much as I thought it had? I tried to let it go, just like I’d told Gwen to.
Chapter 31
The next day I was working through my frustrations via pie crust dough when I got a text from Gwen. She wanted me to come with her to visit Carlos in jail.
I want to ask him point-blank if he did it. If he says yes, then I’ll let this go. If he doesn’t, we have to find out who did and get the police to listen to us.
At least she wasn’t talking about confronting Greg Hope again. Even if I’d promised Kurt I’d stay away, a prison seemed like a relatively safe place to meet one of the murder suspects. Maybe this would give me some closure, too, since Gore still hadn’t gotten back to me.
I cleaned up the counter and put the rest of the crust dough in the fridge, covered. Then Gwen arrived and I hopped into her car. The central county jail was a twenty-minute drive from Draper. On the way over, I asked Gwen how things were with Brad.
“He’s still putting up with me,” she said. Brutal honesty.
“That seems good,” I said tentatively.
“Does it? I don’t know if it’s enough.” She sounded breathless, almost like a parody of someone who’d just fallen deeply in love, since it seemed the opposite here. “I want him to admire me, not just tolerate me. I want him to think about getting home to me every minute of the day that we’re apart. It was the way things were between us when we were first married. But maybe I’m just
stupid to think it will ever be that way again.”
Her words shamed me. I’d been accepting a lot less than this from my marriage, too. But I wanted all the things she’d said from Kurt. I didn’t want to be the reason he made excuses at church, or for him to shake his head when he thought of me.
“It’s not stupid,” I said softly. I’d been thinking about her situation as a church problem, not a marriage problem, but maybe I’d confused things.
“I used to spend time trying to figure out what Heavenly Father’s marriage to Heavenly Mother was like, and how I could make my marriage like that. It’s so messed up, though, because we never talk about her, and we accept that it’s because Heavenly Father is protecting her. She’s basically invisible. As far as we know, she does nothing that’s divine except herd all those spirit children around somehow. We don’t pray to her or ask her to do anything, because she’s not the one with power.”
I felt sick at this. I was always telling people that I loved the doctrine of Heavenly Mother, that it was one of the reasons I stayed in the church, but now I wasn’t so sure. Gwen was right. It didn’t make things any better for women to talk about a divine mother who was voiceless and powerless.
“I guess I keep waiting to hear more about her. Further light and knowledge,” I said.
Gwen let out her raspberry sound again. “It doesn’t seem to me like the men in charge have any interest in further light and knowledge about her. Anyone who asks is told they need to settle down and stay in their place.”
I couldn’t argue with her point. Since Ordain Women had begun agitating for change, women had more visibility in the church now, allowed to say prayers in General Conference and speaking more often in church, but that was as far as it went. They could be on committees, but not in charge of them. They could speak in meetings, but not preside. The church talked a lot about marriage as a partnership, but they also maintained the idea that men had a special role as leaders in their homes.
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