Desert Wives (9781615952267) (25 page)

But I didn't say that. “What about the other people in the compound? What would they think of such an incestuous marriage?”

Jean sighed. “It's been done before. Martha Royal was herself the granddaughter of such a marriage. And if you want to know the truth, my own father was Prophet Solomon's brother. My husband was my uncle.”

When I left the house a few minutes later, my mouth tasted sour and not from the unsweetened orange juice. Not for the first time did I rejoice that someone killed the perverted old prophet. I just needed to prove the killer wasn't my client.

All I wanted to do when I got back to Saul's was take a bath and wash the sins of Purity away from me, but such comfort wasn't to be. Davis Royal had dropped by and told Saul to send me over to the school. He wanted me to sit in on a couple of seventh grade classes, see where the curriculum stood, and suggest improvement.

“Davis came here himself?” I asked Saul, who couldn't seem to stop rolling his eyes at the prospect of me as a schoolteacher.

“Yep, his own royal self. I must say, Lena, he really seems to be hot about this upcoming marriage of yours.”

“And me not even related to him. Just goes to show you, some acorns do fall far from the tree.”

Saul looked baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Ruby entered the room lugging a laundry basket, so I waved his question away. “I'll talk to you later. Right now I'd better go over to the school. Don't want to disappoint my fiancé, do I?”

I didn't want to lose my temper further, so I avoided the class being taught by the evil old harridan who I'd heard conducting the frightening lesson on “seed.” I wandered the halls until I found the seventh graders, but this class, taught from battered, forty-year-old textbooks, appeared little better. These teens would never learn about Vietnam, Panama, the fall of Communism, or the rise of terrorism. In fact, the only new books in the room were amateurishly bound copies of Solomon Royal's own religious ramblings. The teacher, a prim, elderly old woman with a skirt that literally dragged the floor, appeared dispirited. She'd apparently abandoned world history and opted for religious history instead.

As I dutifully took my notes, the teacher called on Meade. She asked him if he remembered the name of Hagar's son.

Meade remembered. “Ishmael,” he said, standing up.

Could have fooled me. I'd always thought Ishmael was the narrator in
Moby Dick.

Surprisingly, Cora sat near Meade, although it was obvious she understood nothing being said. Maybe the teachers just allowed her to wander the school at will, like Mary's little lamb. Once again I admired her beauty. On her, the compound's pale looks seemed transformed. Her skin was tinged with pink, her eyes deepened to a cerulean blue. Her glossy blond hair cascaded down to her waist in a white river. Her beauty wasn't lost on her classmates, either. The boys gazed at her with rapt faces while the girls sulked. Watching this display, Meade scowled.

What a little prig.

Rebecca, sitting next to Meade, winked. Like me, she had been less than impressed by the history lesson.

After class, I returned to Saul's to find him preparing to leave for his attorney's office.

“Court case comes up tomorrow.” His face was stiff, but I could tell from the tone in his voice that he was depressed. “The whole thing's probably going to be a slam dunk, but I might as well go down fighting. Do you need anything from Zion City?”

I wanted to talk to Jimmy, and I couldn't do it here. “I need a ton of stuff, husband,” I brayed, loud enough for Ruby to hear, wherever she lurked. “Can I ride along with you?”

He took his own turn at yelling. “Sister Ruby? You need anything from Zion? Laundry detergent? Bleach?”

A door opened, closed. I heard footsteps in the hall. Finally Ruby appeared, looking disheveled. She'd probably been listening in the hall in the first place, then scuttled back to her room to make it sound like she'd just emerged.

“No, nothing,” she said.

Saul hooked his arm around mine. “Come along, wife.”

Ruby grimaced with poorly concealed jealousy as we exited the house.

Neither Saul nor I said much on the trip to Virginia's, and the expression on his face when he dropped me off at West Wind Ranch was glum. As I stood watching him drive off, I felt the same way.

I climbed the steps into the ranch house to find Virginia and Ray holding court with a room full of Germans dressed in leather chaps and expensive cowboy boots. Yahoo, mein herr. Virginia jerked her head toward the stairs, and taking the hint, I hurried up to Number Eight.

Making the easiest call first, I punched in Tony Lomahguahu's number. No luck. The Paiute's daughter told me he was out hunting in the canyon, so I left a message for him to meet me at the graveyard at noon the next day. She assured me she'd tell him so I hung up and made the next call. Jimmy picked up on the first ring.

“It's me,” I said. “Guess who just showed up at the compound?”

“Rebecca.” Jimmy's concern was obvious. “My cousin tried to talk her out of calling her father but in the end, there was nothing he could do. The kid was convinced she was doing the right thing. I didn't tell Esther, though. She's got enough to worry about.”

So Jimmy had visited her again. I wondered how long it would be before he proposed marriage to yet another damsel in distress.

“And Lena, we have an even worse problem,” he continued. “Captain Kryzinski called this morning and told me the court's cleared Esther's extradition back to Utah. Sheriff Benson's deputy is on his way down here as we speak. You have to wrap this case.”

He added that he had tried the online investigative services again, but couldn't find additional information on anyone at the compound. “I've done everything I can, and now it's up to you.”

“Gee, thanks.” I gave a bitter laugh, then told him about my latest misadventures with Earl Graff. “So you can see that I'm not at the top of the Polygamy Pop Charts right now. Except for Davis and a few women, hardly anyone is talking to me, let alone telling me their deepest secrets.”

Jimmy moaned. “Maybe you should come back. We might be able to figure out some other way to help Esther.” His voice carried no conviction.

“No can do. I'm here for the duration.” I was just about to hang up, when he stopped me.

“Lena, there's something…There's something…”

More bad news, I was sure. “What?”

“Remember you told me to keep an eye on that South Mountain Citizens for Clean Air case?”

“Yeah, I remember. So how's my favorite firebug? Still in business?” In my concern over Rebecca, I'd almost forgotten about that case, but now Miles Alder's face rose up before me like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“No, he's not still in business.”

I didn't like Jimmy's tone. “What do you mean? Did he get picked up again?”

“Lena.”

Then I knew. “Miles is dead, isn't he?”

A pause, then, “Yeah.”

“Oh.” The room blurred momentarily. How strange. I'd thought I hated the spoiled creep. But for all the grief he caused the world, he'd been little more than a kid.

While I collected myself, Jimmy filled me in. “From what the Phoenix P.D. could tell me, Miles tried to start another fire in the storage yard. He got a pretty good one going, but then something happened. By the time the firefighters got there, the kid had third degree burns over eighty percent of his body. He lasted two days.”

With great effort, I held my voice steady. “How's his father doing?”

“That's the really weird part, Lena. Dwayne Alder acts like it's all the police department's fault, that if they'd done their job, none of this would have happened.”

I wasn't surprised. Like most parents, Dwayne Alder couldn't admit the role he'd played in creating such a troubled child. And Miles himself, with the usual teen's belief that he would live forever, had been incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his own actions. As Jimmy gave me details I didn't want to hear, I thought back over my own troubled teenage years. The shoplifting, the promiscuity, the anger. It was a miracle I'd survived.

“Poor Dwayne,” I said, breaking into Jimmy's description of Miles's melted face.

“Poor Dwayne? That man could see a chicken and say ‘cat.'”

“Denial. After all, it's probably rough realizing your kid might still be alive if you hadn't stuck your head in the sand.”

“I guess.”

We chatted a little more about other doomed kids we'd known, and finally hung up, each as depressed as the other. I needed to make another phone call, but I didn't like my luck so far. So I sat there just staring at the phone for a few minutes, part of me nagging to make the next call, the other part holding back. The nagger won. I punched in one more number.

“Happy Trails Dude Ranch,” Slim Papadopolus answered.

I forced cheer into my voice. “Hi, you sexy thing. It's Lena. Dusty back from his little sojourn in Vegas yet?”

The long pause should have told me everything I needed to know, but like someone with a hangnail, I couldn't stop picking at it. “Spit it out, Slim.”

“Lena, you know Dusty.”

“Yes, I do. And that's why I'm asking you straight out. What's going on?”

“I promised I wouldn't tell.”

“Sure you did. Give it up?”

A sigh. “If you make a promise under duress, is it still a promise?”

“Of course not. Where is he?”

Another sigh. “Hell. I hate to be put in the middle of these things, but this just isn't right. You've been awful decent to me in the past. Too decent for me to let this go on.”

By “the past,” Slim was referring to the time I'd proved his son had been innocent of the hit-and-run that killed a toddler. He'd been foolish enough to loan his car to a drug-addicted friend, but his foolishness didn't add up to manslaughter. “I can take it, Slim. Tell me.”

Another pause. “Well, I told you he was in Vegas.”

“Yeah, but I noticed you didn't say he was alone, either. Who's he with?”

“Some hottie from New York he met here on the ranch.”

“A redhead, right?”

“Lena, you know Dusty's got a thing about redheads. Anyway, they flew to Vegas a couple weeks ago and nobody's seen him since. He hasn't even called. If I don't hear from him within the next week, I'll have to give his job to someone else.”

That wouldn't bother Dusty. With his good looks and easy charm, he snap up another dude ranch job in a heartbeat. “Slim, do you think they got married?”

“That's what the rumors say. Nothing Dusty does surprises me anymore.”

Or me. I thanked Slim for his honesty and hung up the phone with as much dignity as I could muster.

But hey, what difference did it make, right? I'd never loved the man. Never.

So why was I crying?

The sun was setting as Saul and I arrived back at Purity, and as soon as I lit from the truck, I ran into the house, grabbed the notes I'd taken at the school, and headed for Davis's house.

It was Prayer Time. Davis, surrounded by his wives and a sea of his blond-haired children, sat in the chair in the living room, a big black book in his hand. Relieved, I identified the book as a standard-issue Bible, not Solomon's screed, and took this as further proof of Davis's reforms.

“Sister Lena!” His handsome face beamed in delight as I joined Sissy on the sofa. She appeared less happy than he. Maybe she really loved him.

“I'm finishing up here,” he said, leaning over to pat one child's head.

“I just dropped by to share my notes on the school with you,” I said.

He stood up, tucked the Bible under his arm, and told me to follow him to his den, leaving Sissy looking more miserable than before.

As soon as Davis and I settled onto his big leather sofa, I started in. “You need new textbooks. Those things the teachers are using are not only outdated, they're falling apart. Not that it matters at this point, anyway. There's so much religion being taught over there that there's hardly any time left over for the supposed subject. It's not history they're teaching, Brother Davis, it's Religion 101. Speaking as a future teacher of Purity's children, I'd like to pull all the religious teachings out of the schoolroom and confine it to Prayer Time.”

He crinkled his blue eyes and leaned toward me. “Actually, they're teaching something more like Prophet Solomon 404. But I understand what you're saying, and I agree with you.”

“You do?” My entire body began to tingle. I tried to convince myself it had nothing to do with the warm hand he'd placed on my knee.

Davis leaned even closer. “Oh, yes, Sister Lena. An uneducated compound is an unready compound, don't you agree?” The hand began sliding up my thigh.

“I agree.” My voice sounded choked. Soon the hand would enter forbidden territory.

His voice purred. “Still, Sister Lena, Purity
is
a devout community so I can't entertain the idea of erasing all religious instruction from the curriculum. But I've been reading up on the Catholic system, and I've begun to think we here at Purity might emulate some of their techniques. Have an entire class devoted solely to religious principles, but keep it out of the other classrooms.”

“It sounds fine.” I could barely talk, I was so intent on what his hand was doing. I wished Dusty knew how much this gorgeous man wanted me.

As Davis's lips approached my ear, his voice grew huskier. Never had I felt so all a-quiver over educational reforms.

“Sister Lena, I'm going to need your help if my plan is going to work. I want you to go back to the school tomorrow, take some more notes, then report back to me. I'd do it myself, but, well, I'm in the middle of this big mess with the Circle of Elders. What happened to Sister Cynthia can't be allowed to happen again. Marrying children is not only illegal, it's grotesque. I have to prove to the Circle that even they are subservient to the Prophet of Purity.” In contrast to his soft, busy hand, his voice took on a harder edge. “And
I'm
the Prophet of Purity now, not my father.”