Magdalene (29 page)

I didn’t think I could hate anyone more than
I hated my ex-father-in-law, but today was a day for surprises.

“He doesn’t know you were a call girl, does
he?” Greg said. “I can’t see him risking his position in the
Church, and he’s a bit naïve when it comes to women. It probably
didn’t even occur to him to have you investigated. I, on the other
hand, approve of your career choice and cannot wait to sample your
wares.”

“I thought you liked blondes.”

“I like beautiful women.”

“And men?”

“Of course. It’s not about gay or straight.
You know that.”

Power is its own orientation, Cassie.
Nigel’s mantra.

“I simply want to know what it feels like to
fuck an equal for once, that’s all.”

Trust a sociopath to assume he was
my
equal.

“Greg—”

We both turned at the voice coming from the
threshold to see a man leaning into the room.

“Waiting on you, bud.”

“Yeah, be there in a minute.” The room had
begun to fill with women as Sitkaris and I negotiated like the two
sexually experienced people we were. He turned back to me,
tightened his grip on my shoulder, pulled me to him. He pressed his
mouth to my ear. “Let me know when you get tired of waiting for
Mitch to figure out he has a dick, and I’ll be happy to do what he
won’t. Or can’t. Or hasn’t occurred to him. I guarantee you won’t
regret it.”

He left in a swirl of suit coat and a whiff
of expensive, rich cologne before I could say anything.

“You know Greg?” said my shepherdess when
she reseated herself next to me.

Oh, yes. I knew Greg.

“Business,” I said airily.

“Isn’t he wonderful?” she gushed. “He’s
such
a good listener. The kids love him. Well, almost
everybody does.” Pause. “Except Prissy,” she muttered.

I could think of no suitable reply.

Relief Society started out harmlessly
enough, I supposed. Louise, the “Relief Society president,” Mitch’s
nearest counterpart in this church’s flowchart if I remembered
correctly, asked me to stand and introduce myself. There were
murmurs of welcome all around as I sat.

I blew off the listing of announcements for
upcoming activities in favor of looking at the people around
me.

A gathering of women with a common thread
tying them together was something I had never been part of. Now, I
knew from experience that in a roomful of thirty or so women, there
were bound to be four or five factions and I could almost delineate
and label them as I watched how they interacted. However, once
Louise spoke of a sister in need, no one hesitated to offer
something.

Then came the lesson and it was taught by a
woman I thought must be an anomaly in this collection of pretty
women: Morbidly obese, she was swathed in a voluminous dark green
dress to accommodate her girth. She had to be somewhere between
three or four hundred pounds, but she had a charisma I had seen
only a few times in women anywhere. She had the kind of charisma
that commanded respect and/or fear without saying a word—and it had
nothing to do with her weight.

“Today’s lesson,” she said in a no-nonsense
manner, “is about bearing false witness.”

A ripple ran through the room and thirty
heads looked down at what seemed to be small textbooks.

My shepherdess stiffened. She turned to the
woman behind her. “I cannot
believe
her,” she hissed.

“Sally—” she said. “It’s Prissy.” The woman
who didn’t like Sitkaris. “What do you expect? Are
you
going
to get up and tell her to teach the right lesson?”

I hate women.

“I’m going to go get the bishop.”

“He won’t do anything. He never does.”

Sally turned toward the front again, then
cast me a glance. “I apologize for her,” she whispered. “She never
follows the lesson. Drives everybody up a wall. This isn’t... I’m
sorry. You’re not having a good experience right now, are you?”

“I had no expectations,” I assured her.
“Part of my job. Diplomacy. Good corporate partnership.”

She nodded sagely and patted my arm.

This large woman, Prissy—

I marveled at the incongruity of her name
and her appearance, then promptly forgot about it because she
hooked me with her opening salvo.

“I’m not going to ask what everyone thinks
bearing false witness is. I’m going to tell you what
I
think
it is, and then we’re going to talk about that.” She turned to the
freestanding blackboard and wrote, in enormous letters:

MURDER

Well.

I’d been involved in far too many business
deals not to know when someone had just declared war.

“Why would I say such an outrageous thing?”
she said smoothly, a benign smile on her face. One woman timidly
raised her hand. Prissy pointed to her.

The woman gave some wishy-washy answer that
really didn’t seem to apply, but Prissy acknowledged it gracefully
and headed into “what would Jesus do?” territory—with a twist.

“Let’s talk about the pharisaical politics
of Christ’s time and what underlay his crucifixion, because it’s
directly related to the points I want to make today, and how we in
Zion—who profess to be followers of Christ—can learn to live more
peacefully with each other.”

Then she began to walk slowly across the
front of the room, completely uninhibited about her lecturing. She
used no books but pulled references from the Bible and contemporary
accounts, scholarly works, Roman and Jewish law. She created
metaphors as easily as she breathed; she applied them to the core
principle of
her
lesson—not the canned one—with a facility
borne of clean, linear thinking. Her vocabulary was impressive and
she spoke quickly, packing ideas and concepts into each minute the
way I would pack for a month’s vacation in a carry-on.

She would have left at least half the class
behind intellectually within the first five minutes, but she had a
point to make, and I could tell she was struggling to keep her
discussion from heading off into the intellectual stratosphere. I
looked around and saw that most of the women were completely
wrapped up in her lesson while she paced.

Obesity or not, she moved with the grace of
a dancer. I had never seen such a large woman move with that much
fluidity and I might have had a harder time reconciling it but for
Mitch’s assertion that Mormons danced. I would have loved to spend
time with her, picking her brain, learning what she knew and how
she knew it, wishing
she
had been my comparative religions
professor.

“The end result, then,” Prissy said, still
pacing, her fingertips steepled in front of her, “is that one
deliberate lie was the final piece the Pharisees needed to attain
their goal, which was to get rid of their political enemy number
one. Let’s think about that a minute. In what ways does that happen
today?”

Someone’s hand shot up, and Prissy called on
her. “False accusations of molestation.”

“Very good.” She called on someone else.

“It could be as simple as a child tattling
on a sibling and exaggerating what really happened so they’ll get
in more trouble.”

I could relate to that, and I found myself
nodding.

“Uh huh. Starts young, doesn’t it? Almost an
instinctive power struggle, wouldn’t you say?”

Clarissa had done it from the moment she
could talk.

“Prissy?” said the Relief Society
president.

“Yes, Louise?”

“I think,” said Louise, “there must be a lot
of that that goes on when spouses are in the middle of divorcing or
even when they’re just going through a bad patch.”

“Indeed,” Prissy purred, a wicked little
smile on her face. “Usually it’s best not to bring those things to
church, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes,” Louise said definitely. “Keep it at
home and/or take it to counseling so other people don’t start
taking sides and meddling.”

Sally made a little gurgle-like noise and I
glanced at her.

She was seething.

I ceased to pay attention to the teacher and
looked around, studied the faces of the women here. This room was
about to explode and I wondered what the hell was going on.

Another woman’s hand inched up, and Prissy
pointed at her, eager, as if she were hoping that woman would offer
something even more telling. “Amelia?”

How’s Amelia?

Sitkaris. She, too, was beautiful.
Blonde.

...politically delicate.

The mystery was so juicy I could taste it,
like the most exquisite wine, precisely chilled, its flavors
bursting on my tongue and awaiting my analysis.

“I think, uh, maybe when...” She spoke in
the manner of a woman who thought she should not speak at all, but
was compelled in spite of whatever consequences she feared. “When,
uh, people present themselves to be...ah, you know, something in
public and then in private they’re totally different.”

Prissy’s smirk melted. She was somber as she
watched Amelia, ignored other hands waving in the air for
attention. Amelia squirmed and looked down. “That too,” Prissy said
softly, and moved on from there.

Then it was over.

I gathered my purse after the closing
prayer, bid my shepherdess adieu, and headed for the door. I saw
the teacher packing up her things alone and I thought to go to her
and tell her how much I had enjoyed her lesson—no one else
would—but hesitated. I shouldn’t have; by the time I’d made up my
mind, two small children barreled into the room to clutch at her
dress and babble with great excitement, followed by a man who
looked at her as if she’d hung the moon. Not only had I lost my
chance, I began to wonder if I would ever know a man who looked at
me like that.

If Mitch could ever have looked at me like
that if I hadn’t destroyed the pride of one of his
parishioners.

But for right now I had to set about getting
the hell out of this place without running into Mitch, because
after having shown up on his turf and embarrassed Brittany’s
mother, he wouldn’t want to see me again.

“Ms. St. James,” said a low male voice
behind me. I turned and saw a tall, handsome young man whose gray
suit was as finely tailored as Mitch’s. He had dark brown hair, but
eyes the same blue as Mitch’s. “I’m Trevor Hollander. My dad wanted
me to catch you before you left and ask you if you’d come to the
foundry tonight around eleven. He’d like you to have a tour, but
he’s got a time crunch and can’t come get you.”

I stared up at the boy and I knew my
surprise showed, but if he noticed it, he said nothing while he
waited for my answer. “Um, sure,” I murmured. “I thought—” He stood
patient, silent, then I shook my head. He didn’t need to know how
his father’s, uh,
woman
had misstepped. “Okay.”

“Would you like me to walk you to your
car?”

“Sure.”

I wondered if Mitch had told his son what I
used to do for a living and I realized I didn’t want him to
know.

Odd. I usually didn’t care who knew.

“He also wanted me to tell you he was sorry
he couldn’t see you out himself,” said Trevor conversationally as
he skillfully navigated me down the gauntlet of a hallway where
people gathered to chat. “He’s got people stacked down the hall all
the way to Primary to see him.”

I didn’t know what the hell Primary was and
most certainly did not care. “I knew he’d be busy, so no worries.”
I paused a moment. “Do you know the woman in the green dress? The
one who teaches in the women’s meeting? Prissy?”

“Sister Seaton? Sure. What about her?”

“She’s a good teacher. I was impressed.”

“Yeah, Dad really likes her.”

That didn’t surprise me.

I didn’t have much more of a chance to
converse with the boy (shit, he was a head taller than I, taller
than his father, even) as he led me through the congested hallway.
Half a dozen conversation clusters blocked the path and I found it
incredibly rude that they didn’t find another place to chat.

Then again, this wasn’t Blackwood Securities
and these people had no reason to part like the Red Sea when an
officer of the company walked through.

“Trevor, wait up!”

I heard the voice, young and female. Felt
Trevor tense. “Fuck, not now,” he whispered. That might have
shocked me if I didn’t know the kid had had King Midas for a role
model and already had one foot out the door of his father’s
religion.

“Trevor...”

The girl was gorgeous, I had to give her
that, with a familiar face and auburn hair precisely coifed in
innocent-looking curls.

Sitkaris made pretty babies, but then, I
would have expected nothing less.

“Hi, Hayleigh,” Trevor said with a patient
kindness that perfectly mimicked Mitch’s. “What’s up?”

She glanced at me briefly, but instead of
excusing himself to speak with Hayleigh in private, Trevor directed
both of us to a small, quiet alcove, making it clear that I was the
chaperone. She went with it, apparently trusting Trevor to know the
chaperone wouldn’t blab.

“Are you— Um... I didn’t see you at the
Valentine’s Day dance last night.”

Trevor’s face pinkened, and I almost
laughed. I could just guess what he’d been doing last night. “Uh,
well,” he murmured, “I have a girlfriend.”

She flushed and looked away. Her acute
embarrassment was uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. I— I didn’t know.
Someone from school?”

“No. You wouldn’t know her.” Trevor
brightened. “Hey, though— Josh told me he had a good time with you
last night.”

Hayleigh stiffened. “He said that?”

“Yeah.” He lowered his voice. “You know he
really likes you, right?”

She gulped.

More mysteries. This wasn’t a girl accosting
a boy she had a crush on. She needed Trevor for something, but it
wasn’t love, attention, or romantic mediation. My fingers itched to
untangle all these little knots and find out where the strings
led.