For Time and All Eternities Page 17

  “Why was Stephen planning to change his will? I saw his letter to his lawyer, never sent, down in his office. From Sunday night.”

  Rebecca stiffened. “What letter?”

  Did she really not know about it? “All it says is to go ahead with the changes, as they’d discussed. But it doesn’t say what they are. You didn’t talk to Stephen about it?”

  She seemed stunned. “No. He never told me. Years ago, he promised me that I would get everything in the will, that he would never change that. I was supposed to help the other wives stay here, so the children could grow up together. Not that we ever thought something like this would happen.”

  I wanted to believe her. “It can’t be a coincidence that he was murdered just before changing his will.”

  “Probably not,” said Rebecca. “But he didn’t talk to me about it.” She stared at me for a long moment. “Naomi told me that you’ve investigated murders before, that you’ve solved crimes the police couldn’t.”

  I put up my hands. “I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I said.

  “I want you to help us here. We need to know the truth about what happened. The police would ruin everything, but if I know who it is, I can act swiftly to provide closure.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. She’d throw the killer and her children out of the compound? Or let her stay and blackmail her into good behavior?

  This was a dangerous suggestion, and I knew it. But I went along with it anyway because this was a mother talking, who didn’t think about anything but her children’s well-being. As a mother, I understood Rebecca. I thought she was right, and we would understand the nuances better than anyone outside the compound could.

  But I had to make one caveat. “Rebecca, you should know that if I find out it was you, I have to call the police.” Even if that meant I had to face legal consequences myself.

  She looked at me squarely, as if she’d prepared for this moment. Her face was blank, no love nor hate in it, just earnestness. “I didn’t kill my husband. I loved him dearly.”

  I believed her. “Then I will do my best to find out who did it.”

  She gave me a tremulous half-smile, and reached to hold my hand between both of hers. “Thank you. I will never forget this. I know that you had misgivings when you came here. I know that Kenneth must have warned you about us.”

  “Kenneth loves Naomi,” I said diplomatically.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know he does. And I know you love him. A mother’s love for her child never ends, no matter what difficulty it leads to.”

  On that rather mysterious note, we were interrupted by a knock at the door.

  Rebecca stood and walked across the room to open it. I followed her and she introduced me to Dr. Allyson Benallie, who had a wide, flat face, long gray hair pulled back into a bun, and light brown skin. It took me a moment to realize that she was Native American. The name Benallie was vaguely familiar—Navajo? The Mormon church had done some extensive school-year fostering with Navajo children to white families in Utah during the 1970s, though it had stopped now. Dr. Benallie was the right age to have been part of the Indian Placement Program.

  “So, the man has died,” was the first thing Dr. Benallie said.

  “Good to see you, Allyson,” Rebecca said coolly. Her tone made me wonder what in the world their relationship was like.

  “And you, Rebecca,” said Dr. Benallie, as Rebecca directed us up the stairs to Stephen’s body.

  On the third floor, Rebecca led us down the hallway to the locked bedroom and opened the door. She glanced around, probably to make sure there were no children nearby, then quickly ushered the two of us inside and closed the door behind her.

  The rank smell of death was stronger now, and the body looked grayer, though it still seemed quite large. Dr. Benallie leaned over the body and without any squeamishness, simply pulled out the knife that had been stuck in his chest. The sucking sound as she did so was something I would prefer never to hear again. A little more blood leaked out of the chest wound, but not much.

  I felt again the sense of loss and the confusion of emotions. Was I genuinely grieved he was dead, or was there a little relief in there? Was that why I was helping Rebecca move forward with this strange plan of trying to cover up the murder, because I was glad Stephen Carter was gone?

  Dr. Benallie handed the knife to Rebecca. “Best clean that and return it to where it belongs. I assume it’s yours.”

  Rebecca stared at the bloodied knife and nodded after a moment.

  “Will you ever be able to use it again?” asked Dr. Benallie, which seemed a strange question to me while standing over a corpse.

  “It would be a waste not to,” Rebecca said, which was perhaps just as strange. She moved into the bathroom and I could hear the water in the sink turn on.

  I thought of all the evidence she was destroying. But at this point it seemed likely the police would never know.

  “Who are you?” asked Dr. Benallie abruptly, staring at me. She had closed Stephen’s eyes and stood up. “You said your name was Linda? You’re too old to be one of his new wives.”

  “No, my husband is . . .” I trailed off because it was too complicated. I stuck with, “Stephen’s daughter Naomi is engaged to my son Kenneth.”

  “Ah, family, then,” said Dr. Benallie, and that seemed the end of her interest in the conversation.

  Rebecca came back with the clean knife. “It’s nicked,” she commented, “but I’ll sharpen it with a stone and it will be nearly good as new.”

  Dr. Benallie wasted no time in issuing a matter-of-fact list of next steps Rebecca needed to undertake to cover up this crime. It made me wonder if she had done all this before, she was so specific and insistent.

  “Roll the body up in the rug to carry it out. Then burn the rug once the body is buried, and clean in here with bleach and replace it with another area rug, so you don’t have any curious carpet delivery people asking questions about why you’re only replacing one room’s carpet. What about the grave?”

  “It’s been prepared,” I said, not mentioning Kenneth specifically. “I think it’s deep enough.”

  Dr. Benallie tilted her head to the side, considering my admission to participating in the cover-up. “I always wondered how Stephen would end up. I can’t say I’m surprised about this.” She turned to Rebecca. “Though I’m sorry for you, Rebecca, if you’re grieving.”

  “I am,” she said. “Of course I am.”

  “If you say so,” said Dr. Benallie. She stared at the body again.

  The woman was practical to the point of coldness. While she and I agreed generally on our opinion of Stephen, I disliked her manner toward Rebecca. I also wondered why it was that she knew so well exactly what Rebecca should do to cover up the murder. Could she have been involved? It seemed from her appearance at the door that she had a key to the compound gate, unless I was missing something.

  “You’ll write up the death certificate, then?” I asked, probing her to see how far she would really go.

  “Yes. I’ll simply say he died of heart failure,” Dr. Benallie said. “So long as no one has reason to question it, I’ll keep my license and you can keep your secrets.” She looked at Rebecca and something passed between them that I did not understand.

  “Thank you.” Rebecca was tearful again. “You’ll never know how grateful I am for this.”

  At that point, I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out, “Why are you doing this? What was Stephen to you besides a colleague?”

  Dr. Benallie smiled wistfully. “Stephen and I were engaged to be married eleven or twelve years ago.” She shifted and I caught a glimpse of a large turquoise necklace tucked in her blouse.

  “But you never married?” I asked. Surely someone would have mentioned a sixth wife, even if she didn’t live at the compound.

  “No. We br
oke up rather acrimoniously, at least on my side,” she said. “I realized that he would have told me anything to get me to marry him. He had a way of seeing what a woman most needed to hear to keep her coming back for more. He could see weaknesses and he manipulated them.”

  I glanced at Rebecca to see if she would contradict this, but she was impassively listening.

  “He kept telling me that our marriage would be the fulfillment of the promises in The Book of Mormon to the descendants of the Lamanites. He said that he had had a dream and he saw Samuel the Lamanite speaking to him, telling him I was his granddaughter, and that he had permission to marry me from the prophet himself, if only he promised to treat me like a princess. An Indian princess.” She spat out the last words, her hatred clear.

  “So you’re doing this to get back at him?” I asked. She was willing to risk her medical license to get back at a man already dead?

  “I owe Rebecca,” said Dr. Benallie.

  I glanced at Rebecca.

  “It wasn’t much,” she said.

  “It was enough,” said Dr. Benallie. She looked at me and admitted, “Stephen nearly separated me from the practice back then. It would have been the end of my career, and at a time in my life that I would have had to declare bankruptcy with all of my medical school debts.”

  I was a little surprised at this, but more that Dr. Benallie was grateful enough to Rebecca’s intervention to help her now. After all, remaining with the practice meant that Dr. Benallie had had to continue to deal with Stephen every day of her life since the broken engagement. Had her financial solvency really been worth that?

  “You have a key to the gate,” I pointed out, easing into my next question. “You came in without having to wait for someone to open it.”

  It took a moment for her to parse what I was saying. Then she gave me a strange rictus grin, all her teeth showing. “You think I killed him?”

  It would have been an easy answer, sparing the wives any more fuss. The scorned woman, no threat to anyone anymore, and we could all move on.

  But Dr. Benallie shook her head. “I didn’t do it. But I can’t say I wouldn’t shake the hand of whoever did. In this case, murder is only justice for an evil man.”

  She looked at Rebecca and I found it difficult to understand the relationship between one woman who had loved Stephen and the other, who had hated him. Rebecca didn’t defend Stephen, at least not now.

  “And now we’re all free,” Dr. Benallie said, walking out of the room.

  “Some of us more than others,” Rebecca said, with a hint of bitterness I had never heard from her before. She sounded so much like Sarah in that moment.

  I followed the two women into the hallway. Rebecca carefully closed and locked the door behind us. In silence, the three of us went down the stairs. Dr. Benallie left without another word. In a few minutes, I heard her driving away on the gravel road.

  Chapter 20

  I had just begun to wonder where Kenneth and Naomi were when the back door slammed and Sarah came in, looking wild and flushed. She smelled of paint. “Did you do it?” she shouted at Rebecca.

  At first I thought she was accusing Rebecca of murdering Stephen.

  “Do what?” Rebecca asked.

  “My paintings,” Sarah rasped, then burst into tears.

  “Something happened to your paintings? Sarah, I’m so sorry.” Rebecca’s whole body had changed, had become attuned to her sister’s distress. There could be no doubt that Rebecca loved her younger sister, even if the feeling was not entirely returned.

  Sarah bit her lower lip. “It must have happened in the night. They were fine yesterday, but just now I went in and saw they’d been torn to shreds. Stephen must have done it himself before he died. Bastard,” she swore.

  If Stephen had done it, was it punishment for some misdeed of Sarah’s? Could the paintings have something to do with Stephen’s death? Or was it a coincidence that the two events had happened on the same day?

  “I don’t think Stephen would have done that,” said Rebecca. “He—”

  “It’s exactly what he would have done and you know it!” Sarah declared, shaking her fist. “He knew exactly how much my paintings meant to me and how to hurt me through them.”

  “How many were destroyed? Were they torn or—” I stopped myself from asking if they’d been cut with a knife.

  I was trying to think of a timeline. Joanna had been here at the main house that night around midnight. She had seemed to go back to her own house, but she could have gone to the shed. And Joanna hadn’t prophesied about a dark shadow over Stephen only. Joanna’s prophecy about Sarah and black and red—was that supposed to be paint? Could Joanna have been the vandal? Sarah hadn’t leaped to the conclusion, though, so I kept quiet.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Sarah spat. “The only thing that matters now is getting out of here. I’m taking the paintings that he didn’t destroy with me. And Talitha, since I brought her here with me. She doesn’t belong to him, either—she belongs to me.”

  Talitha, bright and sensitive girl that she was, with Sarah, the bitter, callous mother? I shuddered at the thought.

  “Sarah, please,” said Rebecca, looking at me.

  Did she think I could help?

  It only turned Sarah’s attention to me. “Do you know that Stephen took each of the other children away from me, nearly from the moment of their birth? He gave them to Rebecca because he said I was unfit to be their mother. He said I was too emotional.”

  I’d been so curious about this lifestyle and now I began to wish that I didn’t know any of this, that I’d never become involved at all. It was too horrible.

  “It wasn’t like that. He wanted me to help you, to watch over you,” said Rebecca. She had one hand outstretched to her sister, but she had not moved close enough to touch her. She feared being rebuffed, clearly.

  “He told me over and over again that I was a terrible mother. And maybe I was. Maybe I still am. So you can have them. All the others. I’m only taking Talitha,” Sarah said furiously.

  I wanted to say something, to do something, to end this terrible quarrel, but I couldn’t help but think about the possibility of Sarah’s guilt. She hadn’t known about the paintings, but she could have killed Stephen for other reasons, couldn’t she?

  “I’m going to have my own life at last. And you can’t stop me!” Sarah declared, then stormed off upstairs in the direction of Talitha’s room.

  Rebecca gave me a pleading look before she also disappeared upstairs, and I was left standing alone in the living room, my mind turning, unsure of any next step I should take.

  Eventually I heard raised voices, including Naomi’s. Kenneth came downstairs. “Mom, do you know what’s going on? Talitha’s distraught. Her mother says she is taking her away. Naomi is refusing to let her go. She told Sarah she would take Talitha over her dead body.”

  “There was an argument between Sarah and Rebecca,” I summed up for Kenneth.

  “But Sarah can’t just make Talitha leave with her, can she? We have to stop her,” Kenneth insisted.

  If the police were here, what would they say? But the police weren’t here. And Sarah was Talitha’s mother, biologically at least.

  I sighed. “Does Talitha want to go with her?” Maybe she would be better off away from here. Though with volatile Sarah—I doubted it. What other choices did she have?

  Kenneth grimaced. “She’s upstairs right now begging Naomi to let her stay here. She wants to be where her cat Lucy is buried.”

  I hoped that didn’t mean that Sarah was going to disinter the cat’s body to take with them. “Sarah is Talitha’s mother. I’m not sure we can stop her,” I said. All Sarah had to do was threaten to call the police and Rebecca might well be willing to sacrifice one child to save the rest of the family. I hated to think about it that way, but she was the one who had put h
erself in this situation, even if I had helped her move forward with it.

  “Don’t you think everyone should take some time to calm down and think this over?” Kenneth said.

  That was a sensible suggestion. For a moment, I thought about offering to take Talitha home with me for a cooling-off period. Then she could have some space to make a decision about where she wanted to live without pressure from either side. And if only for a little while, I could be a mother again, which had always been my best skill. But Kurt and I had fought so terribly. It wasn’t a good time to bring a child into that.

  “I’m going to ask Naomi if she thinks we should take Talitha in, at least for a while,” Kenneth said, his voice deep and gravelly. “What do you think?”

  I was stunned, and then very proud of him. He’d had a few doubts about Naomi and her family just a few hours ago, but he had moved past them. Talitha would be much better off with her favorite sister.

  “I think that is very noble of you, Kenneth,” I said, struggling against tears.

  He rolled his eyes. “Not noble, Mom. I love Naomi, and I love Talitha, too. Naomi has practically been Talitha’s mother ever since she was born. Sarah doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body.”

  No, I thought. Sarah wasn’t a mother in spirit. She was still a child herself, whatever her age.

  “Are you going to stay for the funeral?” asked Kenneth.

  “I’m staying until I find out who murdered Stephen.” For the mothers, and for me. As for Kurt, he would have to wait for me to come home and figure out things with him.

  Chapter 21

  Rebecca dispatched Lehi and Brigham to help Kenneth take the body to the grave. The two boys looked pale but determined. I didn’t think Rebecca had told them anything about the murder, and the knife wound wasn’t visible, since Rebecca had already wrapped Stephen in the rope braid rug and tied it with bungee cords herself. But still, this was their father who was dead, and they had to handle the body.

  Kenneth looked at me and I nodded. This was it, the moment that we both decided we were in this for the long haul, that we were going to face whatever consequences there were for helping to cover up this murder.