Carl turned away from the image on my phone and stared down at Jacob’s expressionless face, then glanced over at me and sneered. “Because I wanted to, and because I knew Jacob wouldn’t mind. We did everything together,” he said. “We were closer than blood. Closer than brothers. He knew I would do anything for him. And he always backed me up. He was always there for me.”
“You two are that close?” I asked. “Tell me about what he did for you, how he backed you up.”
Carl didn’t answer, and his expression became unreadable, a mask of composure. “If you need to talk to me about this any more, I’ll have to get a lawyer,” he said. “Not because I did anything wrong, but because I don’t like your questions.”
Fifteen
The afternoon sun climbing higher, I took the road that ran west of town. On the way, I thought of Naomi’s oldest, Sadie, and how she’d loved working on the hives. Her diary was filled with illustrations of bees flying, collecting pollen, bees that looked like cartoon characters dancing. This time of year, the bees would be huddled together to keep warm. Inside each hive, the queen would be in the center, while the workers and drones gathered around, their bodies shivering to generate energy.
As I pulled in, I saw Naomi working on the first hive. She did this every winter, relocating the aging wooden crates with drawers her grandfather had made decades ago, ones that had come down through her family. In the summers, the colonies flourished in the shade, but with winter coming, the bees needed full afternoon sun and shelter from the winds. The land surrounding the bee shack was winter brown, the mountains in the background, and I felt a chill when I climbed out of the SUV. Naomi looked up as I approached, glowering at me. I wasn’t a welcome sight.
“We still need to talk,” I said. “I have questions.”
“Then you’ll have to help,” she answered. “I have eighteen hives to move. We’re expecting a freeze tonight.”
I didn’t take long to agree. Pitching in seemed like a good idea; it might put Naomi at ease. “Okay,” I said. “It’ll be like old times, Mother Naomi, like it was when I helped you as a girl. Let’s get to it.”
We carefully eased the first hive onto the hand truck, and its aging joints groaned as we slipped it onto the platform. I bent down and wrapped the orange strap around it, anchoring it in place, and then we gently tilted the hive ever so slightly, hoping not to disturb the colony.
We took our time, inching the hive forward to a warmer spot, one where the sun beat down on it. Once we had the hive in place, we jiggled it softly to dislodge it from the hand truck, and then I helped Naomi straighten it so that the hive sat facing west.
That done, we returned for the next hive. As we worked, Naomi gave me a once-over. “You’ve been out digging again,” she said. “I noticed it at the ranch, the mud on your clothes.”
“Yes, well…” I started, feeling vaguely uneasy, wondering why I needed to defend myself, but old habits die harder than I’d like. I was going on seven when my father married Naomi, and she was seventeen, just barely of age. Not much older than my oldest sister, my new mother had a hard time convincing some of us that she was in charge, and she and I butted heads often, especially the summer I’d wanted a horse. I stirred up my brothers and sisters, insisting that we could care for one. My father appeared to warm to the idea at first, but Mother Naomi objected. As hard as I tried, she convinced him to see it her way.
As if she could read my thoughts, she said, “Clara, you have too much of your father in you. Your stubbornness and determination are sometimes to a fault.”
I gave her a questioning glance. “A lot of folks consider those good traits.”
“Yes, in moderation,” she said. “But knowing you? You’ll let your life pass by while you’re looking for that girl’s bones. You may never find her, but you’ll never give up. Even as a girl, you couldn’t abandon any battle, even long after it was clear that the war was lost.”
I let it go. I hadn’t come to talk about old times. “Mother Naomi, I need to know what you saw when you arrived at the ranch,” I said. “While I help, you need to walk me through it, slowly, including all the details.”
“But I already told you—” Naomi began to protest. I shook my head to stop her.
“You will tell me everything,” I insisted. “Four people are dead. Jacob is severely injured. You owe them that, Mother Naomi. Don’t you?”
Naomi paused and then nodded.
For the next hour, Naomi talked, beginning with her encounter with Laurel and Jacob at services the day before and the promise to come first thing, early, and deliver the breast pump. From there, she described the chaos at the double-wide, the children refusing to cooperate, getting a late start, and what she saw as she pulled onto the MRJ driveway: the patch of white on the ground that hid so much tragedy. She shivered when she recounted seeing little Benjamin’s still legs extending from beneath the cloth. Inside the house, Jacob struggled for every breath. Naomi called 911 and then heard the baby.
As her account ended, Naomi and I moved the last hive in place, forming three rows of six. I thought of Jacob and wondered about Naomi’s interest in the man. She still had his blood on the front of her skirt, and I sensed that Naomi saw it as a badge of honor. The afternoon unfolded in the late fall air, the scent of dust blowing in the fields, and a chill that carried with it the promise of that night’s expected freeze.
“You were supposed to be there earlier?” I verified.
“Yes, as I said,” Naomi answered, an eyebrow arched in irritation. “I promised them that I would be at the ranch first thing, so I was maybe half an hour or so later than they expected me.”
I paused and considered that. “Why didn’t you go into Laurel’s room to check on her?”
“Why would I?” Naomi responded, her voice shrill. “I only went upstairs because the baby cried. The nursery door was open, and I went in and found him, brought him downstairs to wait for the ambulance.”
“Why didn’t you stay on the phone with the emergency dispatcher? You shouldn’t have hung up, Mother Naomi. What if—” I challenged.
“I am one of your mothers, Clara.” Naomi’s posture stiffened. “I am not to be questioned like a—”
“Like a witness?” I gave her a stern glare. “Mother Naomi, at this moment, right now, you are exactly that, a witness.”
Naomi pressed her lips tight and then asked, “What else would you have me tell you, before you leave me? I have work to do.”
The hives all relocated, I said, “Let’s get the wraps.”
Naomi grimaced but didn’t object, and we walked together to the shed. There, folded and piled on a wooden shelf against a back wall, were the eighteen quilts made from old blankets that Naomi used to insulate the hives. We each gathered armfuls and carried them back outside. I helped Naomi bundle the first around a hive and strap it in place with two thick belts. So much about all this felt familiar, comforting.
“I remember when I did this with you as a girl,” I said. “You and me, and Sadie. It was always Sadie who would help us. She was so young then, still in elementary school.” There were good times in Alber, I thought. There were good memories as well as the bad. That was something I had to work harder to remember.
“Sadie loved the hives,” Naomi said, and I heard anger in each word. “Sadie would have inherited them, if she’d lived. She would be here with me, today. If that monster hadn’t…”
Naomi’s words trailed off into an abyss of sadness, and I thought of Sadie’s grave, the loneliness of the town cemetery. Soon Laurel and Anna, Benjamin and Sybille would be buried there. I’d made Sadie’s killer pay for his crimes. He’d been held accountable. I have to do the same for the Johanssons, I thought. I made Jeremy a promise.
The questioning continued until I felt certain I understood the events as they’d unfolded at the ranch that morning. Then I turned the conversation around to her encounter with Jacob’s parents. “Mother Naomi, why did you go to the hospital?”
“Fair enough,” I said, although something about the situation still needled at me. “But what seems odd is that you didn’t tell me something that Reba mentioned.”
“And that was?” Naomi asked, her manner peeved.
“That at some point on Saturday you saw Laurel with Myles Thompkins,” I said.
Pursing her lips, Naomi appeared even more displeased. “I shouldn’t have told Jacob’s parents that. They, not so much Michael but Reba, seemed upset by it.”
“Tell me what you saw,” I ordered, as she finished buckling a belt around one of the hives. Naomi scrunched her lips tighter, visibly annoyed. “The sooner you talk, the sooner I leave.”
Naomi remained silent.
“Help me find out who murdered them,” I insisted. Her scowl hadn’t faded. “Don’t you want to help me hold the person responsible?”
Naomi took a deep breath. “Yes. Of course,” she said, but her words dripped with reluctance. “But to gossip, to spread rumor about the dead, is to violate their memory. The prophet says that to do so is a sin against—”
“Tell me,” I ordered again.
Naomi bent over, picked up another quilt and wrapped it around the next hive in the line. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but then she began talking. As she explained it, she’d been driving on the highway with her three youngest children, taking them to visit her parents on their spread in a neighboring town, when two-year-old Kyle shouted that he needed to pee.
“We’re potty-training,” Naomi explained. “He’s still at the point where it’s always an emergency.”
I nodded. “Then what happened?”
“We were near the narrow road that leads to the river, where the young people go when they sneak out to be together,” Naomi said.
I didn’t need specifics. I knew the spot well. When I was a teenager, that was where Max and I shared our first kiss, one disturbed by my father storming toward us. It was a kiss that had changed both our lives. Naomi knew that, of course, so she didn’t offer to give any more information on its location.
“Did you stop?” I asked.
“Yes,” Naomi answered. “I pulled onto that dirt road and parked. When I did, I saw a red pickup and a silver van a short distance away and two people: a man, and a woman holding a baby. I didn’t recognize them at first, but then I did, and it was Myles Thompkins and Laurel holding Jeremy.”
“What were they doing?” I asked.
Again, Naomi seemed loath to answer. She finished fastening the final belt on the hive, then gave it a tug to be sure it would hold secure when the winter winds swept down from the mountains. She went to get another quilt, and I put my hand on it, held it and looked into her eyes, stopping her. She breathed in a long sigh, then said, “Myles and Laurel were talking. I couldn’t hear what was said, but Laurel appeared upset. She kept backing away from him, and he kept walking toward her. Then Laurel turned and saw me.”
“What did she do?”
“I had Kyle at one of the trees, allowing him to do what we’d stopped for,” Naomi said. “At first Laurel looked surprised to see me and upset that we were there, but then she smiled and waved as if nothing were wrong. She said something to Myles, and then rushed to the van. I was putting Kyle back into his car seat when she sped by.”
“Did she stop and talk to you?”
“No,” Naomi said, and her lips formed the slightest knowing smile. “Laurel must have been in an incredible hurry, because she hadn’t taken the time to strap the baby into his seat. She held Jeremy up to her chest with her right hand and steered the van with her left.”
We stood motionless for a few moments, neither of us picking up the next quilt or the belts to anchor it in place. I pictured that afternoon, Laurel hurrying away, upset, after she’d been seen with Myles Thompkins. What were they discussing? What were they hiding?
“And when was this?”
“Saturday, early afternoon,” Naomi said. “Two days ago.”
“Anything else?” I asked. Naomi had a petulant look and didn’t answer. “Mother Naomi, do you know anything else?”
“No, nothing.” Naomi snipped off each word. “Laurel drove away. I never saw her again.”
Sixteen
“Do you know Myles Thompkins?” I asked Max.
“Why?” His voice on speaker filled the Suburban as I took the main road into town. Far in the distance, on the mountainside, long lines were etched where trees had been removed. A consortium of investors was in the process of building a ski lodge and constructing runs. Although it would be another year before they opened, the town was already gearing up. In the past few months, a hamburger joint had begun construction on the highway and a ski shop had leased an old storefront on Main Street. When I grew up in Alber, strangers were kept out. So much had changed. Moving vans had become common sights, as families from Salt Lake and St. George, lured by foreclosures, bought abandoned homes at rock-bottom prices. Investors picked up the biggest of the houses to turn into B&Bs that would cater to winter skiers and summer hikers.
At the farthest east section of the mountains, Samuel’s Peak jutted up, where I’d been told since childhood that the spirits of our ancestors lived and watched over our community. Elijah’s People revered that precipice and counted on it to protect us. I wondered if the faithful now questioned that legend, since the ancestors on the mountaintop remained quiet when the feds moved in and made arrests.
“How does Myles enter into the Johansson murders?” Max asked. “Did someone mention him?”
“Two days ago, Saturday afternoon, Naomi saw Myles and Laurel together near the river road,” I explained. “It appears that Myles may have been one of the last to talk to Laurel before the murders. And Reba Johansson believes he may have been angry enough to kill Laurel and the family. I’ll explain why when we get together.”
“Well, I know of him,” Max said, “but not a lot about him. I’d recognize him on the street, but we’ve never talked. Myles is a recluse. He lives in a cabin west of town.”
“Can you find his place?” I asked. “We need to interview him.”
Max said he could, and I suggested that he meet me at Heaven’s Mercy, the shelter where I rented my room. I wanted to shower, throw on a uniform, and to talk to Hannah. With a parade of women and children coming and going, moving in and out of the shelter, Hannah often heard the town gossip.
I parked near the front gate and as I walked up saw a man high on a ladder around the side of the house. The rambling mansion had once been the home of the town prophet, Emil Barstow, his dozens of wives and their more than a hundred children. Wondering what the guy on the ladder was up to, I took a short segue and found Hannah watching him. It turned out that she’d hired a painter to cover up the command old man Barstow had bricked in white on the mansion’s side: Obey and Be Redeemed.
“Finally getting rid of that?” I asked. “About time.”
The painter had already covered the first two words with a red that matched the brick and was working on the ‘E’ in ‘BE.’
Hannah turned toward me, grinning. “I should have done this as soon as the foundation bought the place,” she said. “I didn’t realize how freeing it would be to have old man Barstow wiped off the face of this building.”
“Glad to see it go, but if you’re not needed here, do you have time to talk?” I asked. “I have some questions.”
“About the Johanssons? I heard what happened out at the bison ranch.” At the mention of the murders, Hannah appeared visibly shaken. She shook her head, took a long breath as if to steady herself, and frowned. “Clara, the whole town is talking about it. How is this possible? It’s horrible. Just horrible.”
“Yes, it is. I’m not surprised you heard. It seems that the folks in Alb
er talk about everything,” I mused. “You didn’t tell me they were watching me dig.”
Hannah sighed. “I didn’t think you’d have to be told. What made you think your activities wouldn’t be noticed?”
I thought about that and shrugged. “You’re right. I should have known better,” I said. “Well, Max is on his way. We have work to do. First, I have to get these muddy clothes off, but walk me inside so we can talk.”
We headed in the door, just as a group of Hannah’s residents in their long dresses and bulky sweaters walked out. Like me, Hannah had on jeans and a T-shirt, topped by an oversize wool jacket. Unlike the women with their long tresses in elaborate twists and knots, Hannah’s graying blond hair was cut to within an inch of her head and she had it spiked straight up.
“Have you heard any speculation about who killed the Johanssons?” I whispered as the others ambled by.
“Oh, Clara, it’s…” Again, Hannah shook her head, harder, as if trying to wipe away terrible images. “It’s all so dreadful. But no. I haven’t heard anything. Which is odd. Usually rumors float, but not this time. At least, not yet. I don’t know of anyone who had a grudge against any of them.”
“What about Jacob’s friend, Carl? Do you know him?” I asked.
“Not well. Just to see around town.” She hesitated, as if considering what to say next. “I didn’t particularly care for him though, and I think others felt the same way.”
“What was it about Carl?”
“Nothing I can put my finger on,” she said. “He’s just always made me uneasy. I used to see him sometimes, watching women out on the street. He’s always seemed odd.”
“What about the women?” I asked.
“Anna and Laurel?” I nodded, and she continued. “Anna’s like the men—she just got here a year or so ago, and I don’t know much about her. I don’t know her people or anything that happened before she arrived. But she was friendly, always a smile on her face. I had the impression that she was dedicated to her family. You could tell when you saw her with Benjamin and Sybille that she loved those little ones.”
Her Final Prayer: A totally gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 2) Page 11
