Desert Wives (9781615952267) (6 page)

I suddenly understood. “Holy shit! That's a lot of money!”

Leo's frown reminded me that I was in the presence of good Mormons.

“Excuse my French,” I muttered. “But, Leo, that's got to be a small fortune!”

Virginia stared at her husband, and for a moment, I thought she might say something, but she didn't. For such a loquacious woman, she remained oddly silent.

Leo continued. “The women never see a penny of it, either. All the compound's welfare money, all the profits from their cattle, mining and gaming interests—yes, they own a couple of casinos—is funneled through the Purity Fellowship Foundation, supposedly a charitable trust. Even the homes at Purity, they're all owned by the Foundation. It's been estimated that the Foundation controls anywhere from $150 million to $300 million, but nobody knows for sure. Not that it makes any difference, because as the financial arm of a religious organization, it's tax-exempt.”

My jaw dropped so low I was surprised it didn't fall off my face. Any decent detective knew that the two primary motives for murder were love and money. So my next question was a no-brainer. “Who manages the Foundation?”

“Prophet Solomon Royal used to manage everything, but the job's been passed to the new Prophet of Purity.” Leo paused and looked at me in anticipation.

I dutifully asked the next no-brainer. “And the new prophet is…?”

“Davis Royal, Solomon's favorite son.” Leo sat back against the sofa cushions with a satisfied smile, having made clear his own suspicions about the murderer's identity.

Virginia looked up from the floor, her face tense with irritation. “Money, money, money, all the time you talk about the money. What about those poor girls?”

I sympathized, but I saw Leo's point. Sons had killed their fathers for a lot less money than the Purity Fellowship Foundation controlled. It would be interesting to find out exactly how well Solomon and his son had gotten along, but in the end, I doubted it made any difference. One of my recent cases had shown me how little love mattered when big bucks entered the picture.

Virginia wouldn't drop it. “The girls, Leo. Tell her about the girls. She needs to know before Saul gets here.”

“Saul?”

Leo smiled again. “Oh, just an old friend. He's joining us for dinner tonight, and he has a very interesting proposition for you. But Virginia's right, you do need to know more about the women.”

I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with this. “Look, I'm just here to catch a murderer so I can get my client out of jail. I'm sorry life is so hard for those women, but I don't have time to get involved.”

Leo grunted. “Trust me. You're going to need to know exactly how the women in Purity are treated and how they behave. But we'll hold off on that until Saul arrives. For now, there's something you might find more directly useful about the political situation.”

I leaned forward and listened.

“We're beginning to suspect that the polygamists are in collusion with certain government officials.”

I frowned. “Name names.”

“For starters, Jepsom Smith, the governor himself, is descended from polygamists. He issued a press statement once to the effect that polygamy, because it's a religious belief, is protected under the First Amendment. Good thing nobody's sacrificing babies to the great god Baal, right? Given Smith's weird interpretation of the First Amendment, we'd sure have a lot of dead babies around Utah. But he's not the only nut. Some of our legislators are even trying to get the anti-polygamy laws repealed.”

Utah sounded goofier than Arizona, with its flying saucer landing pads and New Age vortices. I told him so.

“You don't know the half of it,” he said. “There are anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand people still practicing polygamy, mainly in Utah, but some in Arizona. Maybe even more. At least ten thousand of them live right here in Beehive County and we can't get anybody to do anything about it. Now tell me, Lena, let's say you dismiss Jepson Smith's drivel about freedom of religion. Think you can come up with the real reason government officials are playing the hands-off game with the polygamists?”

I remembered Sheriff Benson's excuse. “Polygamy is considered a victimless crime, is that it?”

Leo laughed, but the sound wasn't pretty. He was a man with a mission, all right. “Oh, that's the official excuse, but remember the money, Lena, always remember the money. Those polygamy prophets are rich men and we suspect they've spread a few dollars around to avoid prosecution.”

I frowned. “Do you have any proof?”

He shook her head. “Nope. Getting the proof is
your
job. You're the detective.”

I threw up my hands. “Whoa! I'm not the U.S. Attorney General. What you're describing here could range anywhere from graft to organized crime.”

Leo's face was grim. “Exactly.”

Chapter 6

Virginia disappeared into the kitchen and directed the cook to serve us an early dinner on the back patio, that secluded little spot so dear to the randy Frenchman. In the distance, the red pillars of Zion National Park flamed with the late afternoon light. I heard the chi-ci-go-go of quail as they scurried through the underbrush, the cooing of doves from the nearby grove of sycamore. The chatter of tourists gathered around the big fireplace only now and then penetrated the pine-scented air.

“Boy, I sure don't get cornbread like this at home,” said Saul Berkhauser, the Lawlers' dinner guest. A retired contractor, Saul appeared to be in his seventies and sported a weathered face so deeply lined it could have served as a plat map for the Grand Canyon. Yet his voice contained the energy of a much younger man.

“I've been living at Purity for eight years now, and believe me, that's eight years too long,” he said, waving away an inquisitive fly. “Still, I'm staying until they run me off.”

He shoveled another wedge of crumbly cornbread into his mouth with the fervor of a man who hadn't been cooked for in a long time. I was amused until I looked down at my plate and realized I had done exactly the same thing. The high desert did wonders for the appetite.

Although the sun was still a good two hours away from setting, the day had already begun to cool. Fortunately, the glowing outdoor fireplace on the patio kept us warm as Saul related the series of events that led to his involvement with the polygamists. He explained that the death of his wife several years earlier had left him feeling adrift. Seeking a cure for the empty place inside, he embarked upon a religious pilgrimage.

“I tried Buddhism, the New Age stuff, and once I even showed up at a Catholic mass,” he said, waving his fork like a schoolroom pointer. “Nothing rang my chimes.

“Then one night I went down to the local senior center where Prophet Solomon was giving a talk. He started off by talking about the skyrocketing crime rates, the escalation of drugs, disintegrating families, and children who didn't honor their elders. Since my kids couldn't be bothered visiting me as much as I thought they should, he pushed all my buttons.”

Saul crammed more cornbread into his mouth, then followed it with a huge bite of honey-baked ham. His eyes closed momentarily in pleasure. Before speaking again, he helped himself to another slab of ham and placed it carefully in the center of his plate, where he gazed at it lovingly.

“I didn't move to Purity to marry some little teenager, if that's what you're thinking,” he finally continued. “I just wanted to find a community I could be a part of, and yes, maybe a willing woman who'd help me start a new family to replace the one I'd lost. No fool like an old fool, right?”

“And a common story,” Leo agreed. “But you eventually redeemed yourself, didn't you?”

“How?” I asked.

Now it was Virginia's turn to speak. “Saul showed up here once in the middle of the night, bringing these two little scared things wrapped in blankets. Just kids! Maybe fourteen, fifteen at the most. They was about to be married to Solomon's brother, and they didn't want any part of it.”

Saul nodded. “Yeah, that was a wild night. If those guys at the compound ever find out it was me that helped those girls get away, my ass'll be grass and they'll be the lawnmower.”

Which was why his continued residence at Purity didn't make any sense to me, and I told him so. “Why don't you leave?”

Saul remained silent for so long that I was relieved when the fly returned and he had to swat it away again. At least the irritation made him look less, well, foolish.

“Go on, tell her,” Virginia urged. “She's a detective. I bet she's heard dumber stuff.”

Saul sighed. “All right. Here it is. The reason that I don't leave Purity is because they've got my money.”

I frowned. “What do you mean they've got your money?”

Saul sighed again. “Solomon told me that in order to become eligible to receive Purity's benefits, I'd have to turn over my assets to the Purity Fellowship Foundation. So when I moved to the compound, I sold my business, my house, I even cashed in my stocks, bonds, and IRAs. Then I signed over my Social Security checks.”

I almost choked on my cornbread. “You mean you gave Prophet Solomon everything you owned?”

“Solomon let me keep enough to build a simple house, but the house itself and the land it stands on belong to the Foundation.”

Seeing the expression on my face, he nodded. “Yeah, I know. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But that kind of setup isn't unusual on the Arizona Strip. For some folks, it's not that bad because the prophets take care of all the legal fees everybody's always racking up for one reason or another, and let me tell you, some of those legal bills can look like the national debt. So anyway, I rationalized my stupidity by telling myself that giving my money away was a fair enough price to get rid of my loneliness.”

Loneliness.
Now there was a buzz word for you.

Of all human emotions, loneliness ranked third only to hatred and love as the most powerful. The fear of loneliness kept battered women with abusive men, and cuckolded husbands with wives who didn't give a damn about them. For some of us, the prospect of loneliness was so terrifying that it kept us
alone
, which was not the same thing. It's my theory that you can only suffer the worst forms of loneliness if you've experienced its opposite—love. I hadn't.

Like many children raised in foster homes, I had always resisted forming attachments. Becoming attached to any foster family could bring a whole truckload of pain, because any day you could be wrenched away. Foster families, by their very nature, were temporary. Jobs changed, necessitating the family's move from the state, leaving their foster children—wards of the state of Arizona—to find new homes. In some cases, foster mothers developed breast cancer.

I wondered how Madeline was doing now. If the cancer that had separated us had recurred.

Loneliness? Oh, yeah. I understood Saul better than he realized. “I get the picture,” I told him.

His craggy old face showed relief. “Once I finished building my house Solomon told me I'd have to wait for a while to get a wife. He said that I had not yet been ‘tested in the Faith,' whatever that meant. The real reason, I soon found out, was that all the unmarried women in the compound had been promised to other men, mostly Solomon's relatives and cronies. Eventually, though, Solomon kept his word and gave me a wife.”

Now his eyes looked as sad as Virginia's. “That didn't work out, either. Let's just say Ruby and I never hit it off.”

At this point, a Hispanic man wearing an apron emerged from the ranch house, carrying an immense steaming cobbler. The smell wafting from the deep dish had me nearly swooning with delight.

Setting the cobbler down, the man said to Virginia, “This is the last of the peaches. Tomorrow we will start on the blackberries, and after that, the apples.”

“Thanks, Juan,” she said. “Hey, how's Consuelo doing? She any better?”

“Consuelo will be able to help you tomorrow, she thinks. She is very sorry she has caused so much trouble for you.”

“Phooey. She didn't do any such thing. You just tell her to take care of herself. If she needs somethin', juice or tea, you let me know and I'll take it up to her.”

Juan nodded. “I will do that. The guests in the other room are drinking now. Is that all right?”

Leo chuckled. “Just as long as they don't start rehashing World War II.”

“Please?”

Virginia smiled. “Just one of Leo's jokes, Juan. Once you finish up in there, you go on upstairs and help Consuelo out. Take the evening off. I'll go make nice with the guests.”

Juan's face broke into a big smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Lawler. I will do that.”

He went back into the house, a happy man.

The conversation, minor as it had been, reminded me of something that had puzzled me earlier. Mormons liked large families, but nowhere throughout the ranch house had I seen any evidence of children or grandchildren. Could their absence have anything to do with the sadness in Virginia's eyes?

I eased into the question. “I have a friend, Slim Papadopolus, who runs a dude ranch back in Arizona. He tells me it's a lot of work.”

“Sure is,” Leo said. “Hiring ranch hands is easy, because young people always want to work with the horses, but when it comes to house help, it's another story. We were very lucky to find Juan and Consuelo. And before you ask, yes, they're legal. We have enough problems running this place without INS breathing down our necks.”

Since an illegal alien had once saved my life, I didn't care if Juan and Consuelo were legal or not. I kept the conversation on track. “Slim has it a little easier than you guys. He has five children and they all help out.”

An uncomfortable silence greeted this information, but I burrowed on. “Virginia, why don't any of your children help run the ranch?”

She didn't answer. Instead, she made a big show of fussing with the peach cobbler. Leo wouldn't look at me.

I felt a hand on my arm. Saul's. “Lena, Virginia's only child died some years ago.”

“I'm so sorry. I didn't know.”

Without asking, Virginia ladled a big scoop of peach cobbler into my dessert dish. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled. “I don't like to talk about it, okay?”

To ease us over the awkward moment, Saul left his own helping of cobbler cooling on his plate and resumed his story. “Anyway, Solomon had already taken my money and there wasn't really anything else I could do for him. He figured I was even too old to help the other men add extra bedrooms onto their houses every time they got a new wife. So eventually I figured out that the ‘new family' Solomon promised me was never going to happen. That's when I started making a stink and the Purity Fellowship Foundation filed eviction proceedings with a Beehive County judge.”

To hide my expression, I turned and looked through the lengthening shadows toward the corral, where a stable hand was dumping flakes of hay into the feed bins. The horses crowded around him, nipping at each other. Their squeals, mingled with the harsh tat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, drifted toward us on the freshening breeze.

When I was confident that my face would give nothing away, I looked back over at Saul, who'd just revealed an excellent motive of his own for killing Prophet Solomon. Something else bothered me, too. Saul had referred to the dead child as “Virginia's,” not “the Lawlers'.” Had the child not been Leo's?

Keeping my tone neutral, I said, “Maybe the Foundation will drop the eviction proceedings now that Solomon is dead.”

“Naw. Davis Royal's hell-bent on throwing me out of the compound, too, especially since I've stopped turning over my Social Security check to those thieves.”

Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe not. “If they do succeed in evicting you, is there a chance you'll be able to recoup any of your money?”

He snorted. “As Prophet Solomon once explained to me, that money was a gift to God, and God isn't into Indian giving.”

I thought about what he'd told me. Saul Berkhauser would not be the first sheep to be fleeced by some flock's phony shepherd, or the last. Still, men had killed for weaker reasons.

Virginia rejoined the conversation, but with less joviality than she'd shown earlier in the day.

“Solomon ripped Saul off, just like one of them con men you see on TV,” she said, her voice rising in anger. “But there's a bigger shame goin' on in Purity. You heard him tell how Solomon was out there giving talks at libraries? Guess where those guys been showin' up for the last couple of years. Homeless shelters! The welfare office! Even the court house! It ain't always too hard to convince some woman that if she moves to Purity her nutty ex-boyfriend won't find her and beat her up again. And it ain't hard to convince others they'll find true love at Purity, either. By the time they find out it's all a big lie, they've been cut off from everybody they know and they've got new babies they can't bear leavin' behind.”

Leo put a restraining hand on her arm. “Hon, we can talk about this until Doomsday, but I doubt if it's going to make any difference to Lena. She's seems pretty focused on her own assignment, not donning a suit of armor to join our little crusade.”

Aptly put. So aptly, in fact, that I found myself wondering how the rough-cut Virginia had wound up with the much smoother Leo. But when I studied her face more closely, I saw the remnants of considerable beauty. That explained everything. Educated men like Leo had married uneducated beauties before, and would again.

“I'm no Joan of Arc, that's for sure.” I offered an apologetic smile.

Saul looked at me. “Don't say that yet.” Then he transferred his glance to Virginia. “Seems like a good time to ask her, don't you think?”

Virginia nodded. “I'd say so.”

Saul chuckled with the rusty sound of someone who hadn't laughed in a long time, then astounded me by leaving his chair and getting down on his knees. “Well, Miss Private Detective, seeing as how you look to be of child-bearing age, how'd you like to come and live with me in my little honeymoon cottage at Purity?”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out.

“Of course, we'll have to get married before we get there, otherwise our new Prophet Davis might want to snatch you up for himself. He likes tall, skinny blonds. In fact, all six of his wives are blonds! So how about it, Lena? If you're worried about Ruby, well, she won't mind me dragging home another wife. She was born in Purity and knows that sharing a husband is her God-ordained duty.”

My voice faltered. “I don't think, I don't think…” I looked at Virginia for help, but she'd hidden her mouth behind her hands. Those sad eyes were laughing, though.