“All right, then. I’ll sit here with Kelly and we’ll wait for the cookies.” He reached around me and pulled Kelly toward him. She was limp, sleepy, and I hoped to keep her that way. Arguing with Alex Helm wouldn’t help her, so I let go of my antagonism, for the moment, and left the kitchen.
I hurriedly picked up Kelly’s bedroom, and then went into the bathroom. I cleaned out the tub, and then returned the thick towel to the upstairs master bath. Only then did I dare go back down the stairs to the main level. “Hello?” I called as respectfully as I could. The timer was still going off, and I hoped the cookies hadn’t burned.
“Come on in and have some cookies,” said Alex Helm’s voice.
I saw that the cookies had been taken out of the oven and were cooling on the stove top. It was strange that Alex Helm hadn’t turned off the timer. Did he not know how?
I touched the off button on the stove, then found a spatula and put the cookies on a plate.
That was when I saw that Kelly was snoring away on Alex Helm’s shoulder.
I wanted to snatch her away from him and take her home with me. But that wouldn’t help. Despite my anger at Kurt, he had been right. I had to be logical about this. I had to do what I could for Kelly, in the circumstances she was in. “Can I help you get her to bed?” I asked.
“No, I think I can manage it,” Alex Helm said, lifting her up and putting an arm under her bottom.
“Well, maybe I can come back and help again tomorrow? I’m sure there will be a lot to do with Jared—and lawyers.” I was trying to avoid saying the words “jail” and “murder.” For my own sanity as much as for Alex Helm’s. “I could come by in the morning as early as you want and just stay here until you come back.”
Alex Helm thought a moment, jiggled Kelly as she stirred a bit and then settled. That one moment told me a lot about him as a grandparent, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see him this way. Indulgent, loving, and well attuned to her patterns. “Thank you, that would be a great help,” he said.
I went home and Kurt asked me what had happened. He nodded when I told him I’d be going back tomorrow. “And you think that you are going to find something over there that will help the police? Or are you just there for Kelly’s sake?”
I didn’t know the answer anymore, and I think Kurt could see I was conflicted.
“Just be careful, all right?” he said, and sighed.
“Be careful? Does that mean you think the Helm men are actually dangerous?” I asked. I guess I was still in an argumentative mood, despite the hour and how tired I was.
Kurt put up his hands. “I don’t know what it means except that I think you have been finding yourself in more and more dangerous situations lately. I thought you had grown out of that phase when I married you, but apparently not.”
WE WENT TO bed and kept mostly to our own sides. I woke up several times during the night and found myself snuggled up next to him, and pulled away.
SATURDAY MORNING, I woke before him and hurried over to the Helms’ a little before seven.
Alex opened the door. He was already dressed, though he looked bleary-eyed. He was buttoning the top button on a dress shirt and I leaned forward to help him cinch up his tie, surprising myself with the domestic reflex.
He told me Kelly was in the kitchen, and he went upstairs to get his suit coat.
In fact, Kelly had decided that the butter cookies we’d made last night would make an excellent breakfast. I didn’t argue with her, but I did get out a glass of milk to try to counter the effects of the sugar.
Alex Helm came back downstairs and told me he didn’t know when he would be back. He said he would call me when he knew more about Jared, but I didn’t press him.
After her late night, Kelly fell asleep on the couch next to me while I was reading her another book. I gently slipped out from under her and began to go through the house methodically—again. Here was the answer to the question Kurt had asked, I suppose. I couldn’t stop myself from trying to find out more. And Kelly was fine, safe and secure on the couch.
In the master bedroom, I found that Alex Helm had left his cell phone behind in his hurry to leave, and I thumbed through the phone history. I was getting used to doing things like this.
He had called the Las Vegas number I had seen on Carrie Helm’s phone, the one belonging to Will, several times over the last few days. Had he talked to Carrie directly? Maybe he was the reason Carrie had left Will. Or was he part of the whole scam about Carrie being in Las Vegas? I still didn’t know when exactly she had died. It was when I checked Alex Helm’s messages that I had to sit down in shock. He had been texting Carrie right up until a few days ago, and she had been texting back. There was no reason for Alex Helm to fake these.
KELLY NEEDS HER MOTHER. I EXPECT YOU HOME IN THE NEXT DAY, Alex had written imperiously.
I AM NOT READY TO COME HOME. AND I SUSPECT JARED DOESN’T WANT ME THERE, ANYWAY, Carrie had written back.
Alex had texted in reply, JARED WANTS HIS WIFE HOME WITH HIM, WHERE SHE BELONGS. YOU ARE CAUSING A TERRIBLE SCENE, EXPOSING YOUR FAMILY TO CONSTANT NEWS COVERAGE.
Then, HOW DO YOU THINK THAT WILL AFFECT YOUR DAUGHTER?
Carrie responded, SHE’S TOO LITTLE TO REMEMBER ANY OF THIS. Then, almost immediately afterward, she followed up with, SHE’LL BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT ME. ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU TOLD ME?
My neck prickled at this.
IF YOU DON’T COME HOME RIGHT NOW, I WILL COME AND GET YOU.
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY THAT.
YOU WILL REGRET HUMILIATING ME AND JARED. YOU CAN BE SURE THAT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. WHEN YOU GET BACK, THINGS ARE GOING TO CHANGE.
WHEN I GET BACK? I’M ALREADY MOVING ON.
YOU ARE A MOTHER. YOU CAN’T MOVE ON FROM YOUR DAUGHTER. SHE IS YOURS FOREVER. AND YOU ARE JARED’S FOREVER. YOU MARRIED HIM IN THE TEMPLE.
YOU WON’T EVER SEE ME AGAIN. I’M DUMPING THIS PHONE. I’LL MISS KELLY, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS I WILL BE GLAD TO BE AWAY FROM YOU AND YOUR SON, Carrie returned.
Alex continued to text her, but got no response.
YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME. I WILL FIND YOU.
DO YOU WANT YOUR PARENTS TO KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE? I CAN TELL THEM EVERYTHING.
And the last one, GOD WILL TAKE HIS VENGEANCE ON YOU IF I CAN’T. WICKEDNESS NEVER WAS HAPPINESS. WHEN YOU ARE DEAD, YOU WILL SEE THE ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES.
When she was dead?
I realized that my breathing was heavy. I tried to calm down but was overcome with panic when I heard the door open downstairs. Alex Helm had come back—now of all moments.
“I forgot my phone!” he called out.
And I had no reason to be in the master bedroom.
I put the phone down shakily, and then called out, “I’m up here, just doing some cleaning,” I said. I tried to step out of the room, but Alex Helm caught me.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
I put up my hands in an attempt to prove my innocent intentions. “My husband and sons are terrible at cleaning the bathroom. I just thought I would help.”
“I don’t need your help with cleaning in here,” he said roughly.
“Oh, are you sure? Usually when I come in and help with children, I try to clean up, as well.” Meek, subservient, keeping my head down.
“Well, that isn’t necessary here.”
“Kelly fell asleep and I wanted something to do,” I added with a shrug.
“You could go watch a soap opera on television,” said Alex Helm. “Or read one of those romance novels women like.”
“I didn’t bring any,” I said, trying to act cowed. “Next time I’ll think of that.”
Alex Helm simply nodded, and turned back to the phone, as if I was no longer important. “If you can stay for a few more hours, until I can get Jared out on bail, that would be useful,” he said, not bothering to look me in the eye.
“Sure. Whatever you need,” I said.
He took the phone, and I swallowed hard as the door s
huddered closed behind him.
The rest of the day, I stayed close to Kelly and let my mind run over the messages Alex Helm had sent Carrie. What did they mean? What had Alex Helm done?
I had to leave Kelly with Alex when he came home, and it was one of the hardest things I have ever done.
CHAPTER 24
For the next several days, the whole ward had to deal with the reality of the Helm situation. Jared Helm was in jail on charges of spouse abuse, presumably to be followed by murder charges. In the meantime, Kurt was dealing with Jared’s father. Alex Helm was demanding that the ward send character witnesses to Jared’s bail hearing. He also wanted the names of all the lawyers in the ward so he could ask them to donate their services to help the lawyer he had hired.
Meanwhile, I stewed over thoughts of Kelly alone with her grandfather. I’d seen a good moment between them, but that was no guarantee that there were many such moments. And just because Kelly Helm was physically cared for did not mean her grandfather’s misogyny wouldn’t have far-reaching effects.
On Wednesday God sent me a distraction from my worries about Kelly. Anna Torstensen called to tell me that the woman in the photos had been found.
“Her name is Ellie Vasquez. She claims that Tobias offered her a thousand dollars all those years ago to pretend to correspond with him as his wife and to dress up in some clothes that he sent her and have photographs taken. She thought it was a little creepy, but she needed the money.”
So, I had guessed right—or had been guided in that leap of intuition. “So how did Tobias find her, did she say?”
“Apparently it was on a business trip to California. He happened to see her and told her that she looked like his wife. He asked for her name and address and wrote to her when he returned home. She felt sorry for him at first, she said.”
“And why did Tobias do it? Did she have any guesses?”
“She said that she thought it was because he was lonely. He wanted to imagine his wife was still alive, that she might come home. Ellie Vasquez took advantage of that, tried to get more money from him. But at some point, she worried that the fantasy had become too real. She moved to a different location and never had contact with him again.”
Somehow, this sounded more like the Tobias I had known. Emotionally unstable, perhaps, but not a bigamist. “Well, you must be so relieved.” But if his wife was dead, then I had to go back to the question of whether or not Tobias had killed her.
“I feel guilty, too,” said Anna. “I should have known that Tobias would never have done any of those things to me. I lived with the man for thirty years. I should have known him better.”
“You are still in shock over losing him,” I said to Anna.
“Maybe,” she said.
At that, I decided it was time to change the subject. “What about the house? Have you made any decisions on that?”
“The boys are very upset, and I feel terrible about selling it, so we’ve reached a compromise. Liam wants me to rent it out for a year instead of selling it outright. That way, I can go on my cruise and still have some money from rental, but I can also come back to it if I want to. I even got a promise of more time off from my job, if I want it.”
It sounded like a sensible solution. “Do you have enough money otherwise?”
“Liam agreed to give me a loan against the value of the house at no interest. He’s not even making me sign a contract.” Anna chuckled at that. “If you knew Liam, you’d see why that seems so out of character.”
“He loves you,” I said.
She let out a long breath. “And I do love him and Liam. So much. I wondered when I first married Tobias if I could love them as much as they needed to be loved. I still wonder that sometimes.”
“Anna, you gave those boys more love than most women give to their blood children,” I said. We say that mothering is “natural,” but it isn’t really. Animals in the wild feed their children and carry them around—most of the time. They also sometimes eat them. That is just as natural, as far as I could see.
“Do you really think so?” asked Anna. “I always worry I was too strict with them. And that I was too much of a marshmallow.”
“Which is exactly what any mother who had given birth to children would wonder, Anna. It’s the way I feel about my own boys.”
“You seem so sure of yourself. I always thought I had missed that sense of certainty. That if they were born to me, I would somehow know what I was doing was right,” said Anna.
I let out a laugh at that. “I’m glad I fooled you, Anna, but no, I am never sure of myself as a mother. Well, only of one thing. I love them, and I want what is best for them. But it is always a struggle, figuring out who they are now and what is best.”
“I thought that God granted mothers some special power.”
“Well, all I think he granted me was the gift of loving them. And on some days, not even that.” There had been times when I wanted to throw all of the boys out of the house. Come to think of it, I had done that once. Sent them to sit out in the snow to wait for Kurt to come home, because I had had enough of them all.
“But your boys are at least like you,” said Anna. “I look at Tomas and Liam and think that there is nothing of me in them.” Her laugh was breathy. “I can’t even see anything of their mother in them. They’re all Tobias.”
“It’s the testosterone. It kills anything female in them,” I suggested, thinking about my own grown sons. They had been such sweethearts until they hit the age of about fourteen. And then there were all those years when the hormones were going wild. It was almost as if they needed to beat their chests to get the testosterone out or to find out what their place in the pecking order was. Kurt had had to step in so often to parent them then.
Anna said, “Thank you, Linda. You have made me feel so much better.”
“And don’t you feel a bit guilty about going off on this cruise of yours. You deserve it. Those last few weeks with Tobias were difficult.”
“You don’t think it makes me, well, weak?” asked Anna.
“Because you want some time to yourself after giving and giving to a dying man? Anna, it makes you smart and independent, which is the opposite of weak.”
“It feels a bit like I am running away.”
“You’re running toward something, Anna. A new life. I think that takes a lot of courage.” I was a little jealous of her, in fact, and wondered what new life I should be running after. I felt as if I had been running in circles around my old life instead. I needed to go back to school or get a job or do something other than poke around in other people’s problems. Being the bishop’s wife wasn’t an excuse for having no life of my own.
Anna asked if there had been anything new with Jared Helm.
“He’s in limbo, I think. He’s been arrested for abuse. Apparently, Carrie Helm went to the hospital just days before she disappeared and was treated for bruises and cuts—all carefully placed so they were hidden by her clothes.” The hospital had taken pictures and documented the injuries and the police were able to subpoena those records now that she was dead. “But a trial date hasn’t been set yet because the police want to charge him with murder as soon as they can prove he strangled Carrie and dumped her body on the road where she was found.”
“But she did leave him,” said Anna. “And her daughter. Maybe she was killed by someone she connected with after she left. A new boyfriend or a man she thought she was safe with.”
“It could be that,” I said. But from my conversation with Will, I couldn’t suspect him. Even if Jared had paid him to lie about Carrie, he hadn’t seemed smart or determined enough to do something like murder her. He hadn’t sounded like he cared about her at all, and I didn’t think he was that good of an actor. “In any case, the funeral is tomorrow. They’ve released the body to her parents for burial, and I assume that means they’ve gathered all the evidence from it they could.” I hoped it meant they had found something they could use against Jared Helm. If he was the
one who killed her.
“How terrible for her parents,” said Anna sincerely. “I’m going to be gone tomorrow morning to take some time sightseeing in California before my cruise, but give her family my best wishes, will you?”
“Of course,” I said. I was supposed to go over to babysit Kelly in a couple of hours, so that Jared, out on bail for now, and Alex Helm could go shopping for appropriate funeral attire for themselves and Kelly. I had offered to take her shopping myself, but Alex Helm had said he and Jared felt it was their responsibility. I translated this as Alex Helm’s not wanting to relinquish even that tiniest bit of control over Kelly.
The doorbell rang and I guessed it would be Alex Helm come to tell me he didn’t need me this afternoon, after all.
But it wasn’t Alex Helm at all. It was the Westons.
“Hello. Come in, come in,” I said, and folded Judy into an awkward embrace. “I am so sorry for your loss.” I turned to Aaron, and he put out his hand for me to shake instead. I was happy enough with the compromise, and shook his cold, surprisingly dry hands. My eye caught a splash of color behind the Westons, and I realized the tulips in Tobias Torstensen’s garden were already blooming beautifully across the way. They would make it that much easier for Anna to find a renter.
I ushered the Westons into the front room and then sat down on the couch across from them. “What can I do to help? Tell me anything and I will gladly do it.” I knew the Relief Society had the funeral luncheon already in hand. They had chosen to do it in our ward rather than in the Westons’ home ward, where Carrie had grown up. I felt it was the right choice, but it must have been a hard decision. There were plenty of people in the ward who did not think well of Carrie now. The truth might reveal her to be a victim, but the rumors were still pretty damning.
“I’m glad you asked that,” said Aaron Weston. “Actually, I was hoping that you would speak at the funeral.” He was standing very upright, his eyes steely and unavoidable.
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