by R. R. Irvine
Traveler recognized Mormon doctrine word for word. “I can’t do you any good, Mr. Nibley. The one person who knows the truth is gone. Chances are you’d be wasting your money hiring me.”
Nibley nodded, but the gesture didn’t seem meant for Traveler.
“My wife cleaned the house before she killed herself, probably so the neighbors wouldn’t see it messy. Then she put on her face—that’s what she said every time she put on lipstick and mascara—before taking an entire bottle of pills.”
“What kind?”
Nibley stood up and stepped around the desk to get closer to the window. He bowed his head as if he were listening to the angel. For a moment his lips moved in silent prayer. “They told me it was tranquilizers. I guess she got them from Doctor Joe, though I don’t know why Melba needed such things.”
“You didn’t know about her medication?”
“Not a word. I don’t believe in taking anything stronger than aspirin.”
“Who’s this Doctor Joe?”
“He’s been our family physician for years.” Nibley reached out slowly until his fingertips touched the glass. “Her suicide nearly killed my daughter. My sons blame me for what happened. They don’t say so out loud, but I can see it in their faces.”
“I still don’t see how I can help,” Traveler said.
Nibley twitched. His anguished eyes came away from the angel. “I came to you because I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got to know why she did it.”
“A happily married woman doesn’t kill herself,” Traveler said. “So chances are the only thing I’m going to find out is bad news.”
“I don’t care. I must know if I failed her.”
Traveler shook his head slowly. Suicide was a no-win situation. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to say no just yet. “When did she kill herself?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Why wait until now to come to me?”
“When someone else I know died recently, I suddenly began feeling as if all my ties were being cut. As if I no longer belonged anyplace. Can you understand that?”
Traveler had felt the same way a year or so back when he thought his father was dying of cancer.
“An investigation can be expensive,” he said, since Nibley looked far from prosperous despite his new suit. Even the average Salt Lake salary—kept down by the church’s constant importing of cheap laborers, also known as converts—would seem like a fortune to someone from a town as small as Wasatch. “My fee is three hundred dollars a day.”
Calmly, his expression never changing, Nibley extracted a well-worn leather wallet from his back pocket. He held it out toward Traveler to show off the hand-tooled beehive, a traditional Mormon emblem. “Mel, my youngest son, made this for me in junior high shop.”
He turned the wallet over. Another sacred Mormon symbol, the sea gull, had been etched on the other side. Once Traveler had nodded his appreciation of the workmanship, Nibley began counting out hundred-dollar bills. He didn’t stop till he’d reached fifteen.
“That’s five days, Mr. Traveler, a working week in advance.”
Traveler made no move toward the bills now sitting on the edge of his desk.
“Mother and I saved all our lives,” Nibley went on, keeping his eyes on the money. “We were planning on taking a late-life mission together. Now there’s nothing worth saving for.”
“You have children,” Traveler reminded him.
“They’ve been taken care of, don’t you worry. The house and the business go to them. This was our money, Mother’s and mine. Mad money, she called it. Our getaway fund.”
Traveler felt like getting away, too. But investigating a suicide in Wasatch was not what he had in mind. Still, he knew he was stuck. Martin had already committed him, signed and sealed. So he might as well start gathering the facts.
“What about your children, Mr. Nibley? Do they still live in Wasatch?”
“I know what they say about people like us living out in the sticks. How can you keep them down in Sanpete after they’ve seen Salt Lake?” He looked up from the money long enough to force a smile. “I brought up my kids right. They’ve stayed put. My daughter is Louise Dority.”
His tone of voice said that ought to mean something, so Traveler nodded obligingly.
“Her husband, Clement Dority, owns one of the biggest turkey farms around. Big enough to hire on both my boys, Mel and Ellis Junior, as hands.”
Turkeys, Traveler seemed to recall, were a Sanpete staple.
“Take the money,” Nibley said, pushing the bills at Traveler. “I don’t want to look at it anymore. It reminds me that we waited too long to go on our mission, Mother and me.”
Wishing his father had taken the case instead, Traveler opened a desk drawer and swept the money inside.
He was about to ask for details of the woman’s death—time, place, who found her— when Nibley continued. “I feel better already, knowing you’re going to help. Maybe now I can sleep without seeing Mother’s face in that casket.”
“I need some names,” Traveler said, changing tactics, deciding not to rehash details that could be checked easily enough once he arrived in Wasatch. “Somewhere to start. Your wife’s close friends, for instance.”
“There’s our neighbor, Shirley Colton. She and Melba were always together, swapping recipes and volunteering in the Relief Society.”
Traveler wrote that down. “Anyone else?”
“Since you’re here in Salt Lake, you might want to talk to my wife’s cousin. Her name’s Ann Ireson. She and Melba were very close growing up together in Wasatch. But we . . . I haven’t seen the woman in years.”
“Is there any special reason for that?” Traveler asked, suspecting the usual reason for such a separation, loss of faith in the church.
“She’s one of those who don’t like men, if you ask me.” He looked away, but not before Traveler saw his uneasiness.
“Do you have an address?”
“She’s in the phone book under her husband’s name, Thomas Ireson.”
Nothing ever changes, Traveler thought. The woman had probably married outside the church, condemning herself to hell as a Gentile to Nibley’s way of thinking.
Traveler got up and came around the desk. “I’ll contact you in Wasatch if I need anything else.”
“How soon will I hear from you?”
“I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”
Nibley nodded and stood up. He offered a leathery hand for shaking. “Thank you again, Mr. Traveler.”
“Don’t expect miracles.”
“From a man named for an angel?” He smiled and went to the door. “About that woman you mentioned. Now that I think about it, I believe the youngest Bennion girl was named Claire. Kit was only her nickname.”
4
MOMENTS AFTER Nibley left the office, Martin returned.
“Well, are you taking the case?” he asked as soon as the door closed behind him.
“Have you forgotten what you told me about suicides?”
“Never quote me to my face.”
“ ‘They’re no-win situations,’ you said, ‘like working for the church. Stay away from both of them like the plague.’ ”
“My God. How could you turn that man down?”
“ ‘Don’t get personally involved.’ I believe that’s another of your ten commandments for survival. It comes right after ‘Don’t be ruled by emotion.’ ”
“Did you look into that man’s eyes?” Martin asked.
Traveler nodded. “Did we see the same thing?”
“Losing his wife was like losing his faith,” Martin said, sagging into his desk chair. “That’s what I saw.” He let out a deep, weary breath. “Look at me. What do you see?”
Exhaustion, Traveler thought. Wrinkles that hadn’t been there before the trial. “Relax, Dad. You know me. I’m leaving for Wasatch first thing in the morning.”
Martin swiveled away to hide his emotions just as Traveler had done with
Nibley.
“The pigeons are after him today,” Martin said with a nod toward the street.
Traveler knew he was referring to the statue of Brigham Young that stood at the head of Main where it ran into South Temple Street.
“Piss-poor prior planning,” Martin said. “The man’s still got his back to the temple and his hand out to the bank.”
“The bank wasn’t there when they put up the statue.”
Martin swung around wearing a smile that added new wrinkles while erasing others. “How much did you charge Ellis Nibley?”
“The usual. Three hundred a day.”
Martin held out his hand. Traveler shrugged, retrieved Nibley’s money from the desk, and surrendered it.
“I’ll send him a refund tomorrow,” Martin said.
“How much?”
“Going to Sanpete County’s as good as a vacation. I told you that before.”
“Maybe I should pay him.”
“A hundred per diem ought to do it if you don’t make a federal case out of this.”
“And expenses?”
“You’re no businessman, Moroni. If it weren’t for my missing persons cases”—Martin paused, his smile broader than ever, to tap the stack of file folders on his desk—“we wouldn’t make the rent.”
“Speaking of which, Dad, I want you to find the boy for me while I’m away in Wasatch.”
The smile faded. “That’s a lost cause. Claire never meant us to have him.”
“All I’m asking is that you find him. I’ll do the rest.”
“Let it go, Moroni.”
“Either you do it while I’m gone or I’ll have to do it myself when I get back.”
“We don’t know for sure if she ever had the child. The whole thing could have been a scam. Maybe she was never pregnant.”
“She disappeared long enough to have a child.”
“Claire has been disappearing ever since you’ve known her.”
“Not for nine months.”
“Sometimes I think it would be better if gestation time varied depending on the woman.”
Traveler held his breath, wondering if the subject of his own birth was about to come up. A birth that had taken place more than a year after Martin went away to war.
“Have you thought this through?” Martin said.
“I have to know about the boy.”
“We may never know for sure. Sometimes they can’t be found.”
“There can’t be that many Moroni Traveler the Thirds around.”
“I used to say the same thing about Kary, your mother. That there couldn’t be too many women like her around. But you found Claire, didn’t you?”
“You make it sound like it was deliberate,” Traveler said.
“Let me tell you about your mother. She always had a new set of friends, from the time I met her until the day she died. Women friends, not men. Invariably she’d introduce each one to me as her best and dearest friend. But if I happened to mention her a week later, it was as if your mother had never heard the name before. She changed friends like the rest of us change clothes.”
“Maybe she was jealous that you remembered another woman’s name.”
“You were at the funeral. She had no friends. Nobody came but us.”
Did you love her? Traveler wanted to ask, but knew he never would. Probably Martin wanted to ask the same kind of question of him.
“Will you look for the boy?” Traveler asked.
“Tell me one thing. Do you still want to adopt him or is it Claire you’re after?”
“You know me better than that.”
“Do I?”
5
ANN IRESON, the dead woman’s cousin and childhood friend, lived in Holladay, a rural suburb south of town. It was the second place settled by the Mormons after their arrival and was part of Brigham Young’s master plan to expand his empire by securing his borders with armies of the faithful. Before he died, those borders extended all the way into Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, and California.
The Ireson house was one of those grim Tudor cottages that sprung up during the Depression. It had all the right ingredients—an exposed chimney, clipped gables, and a rolled asphalt roof doing its best to imitate thatch. But everything had been built on too small a scale, as if diminished by hard times.
The woman who opened the door had been constructed on a far grander scale. The Valkyries came to mind.
She smiled at his wandering eyes. “Mr. Traveler?”
He nodded, wondering what it would be like to have her carry him off to Valhalla. “I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice, Mrs. Ireson.”
“My husband was against it. He thinks Melba broke faith by killing herself.”
“And you?”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I? Now please come in.”
He followed her into a ransacked living room.
“The grandchildren were here yesterday,” she explained.
Surprise must have shown on his face. “I married when I was very young, Mr. Traveler.”
Mathematics and a dozen framed family photographs on a baby grand told him that her daughters must have followed in their mother’s child-bride footsteps.
“Too young, I think sometimes,” she added while restoring a cushion to an overstuffed chair so that he could sit down. “Now what is it you want to know about my cousin?”
“I need to start somewhere, so whatever you can tell me will be very helpful.”
She fussed with a matching chair but remained standing behind it, seeming to use the chair’s back as a barrier against him. “You have to understand. We were more than cousins. She was my first real friend. We shared everything, our childhood, our secrets, our hopes. And that damned town, too. We shared that.”
She left the chair for the sofa, clearing away enough toys so that she had room to curl up facing him. Behind her, a picture window framed the Wasatch Mountains. “I’m only sorry that she didn’t have the chance to escape from that town when I did.”
“Why was that?”
“Ellis Nibley, of course.”
When Traveler phoned earlier, he hadn’t mentioned Nibley’s name, only that he was concerned with the circumstances of Melba’s death.
“Mr. Nibley is my client.”
“That’s what I thought. No doubt he hired you to soothe his conscience.”
“About what?”
“My husband is an older man, Mr. Traveler. He was already in business for himself when I married him. Perhaps you’ve heard of Howard’s Heavenly Pizza?”
Traveler nodded that he had.
“There was only the one small stand to start with. In Sugarhouse. I worked there myself until I got pregnant.” The glint in her eye said that hadn’t been long. “As soon as Howard expanded, I pestered him until he finally offered Ellis a job. It could have turned into a partnership. Ellis knew that, but he said Wasatch was where he was born and that’s where he would die. The truth was, he inherited the general store from his father and didn’t have the guts to try anything else. In any case, his decision condemned Melba. So as far as I’m concerned, he’s more to blame for her suicide than she is.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Let me tell you something about the town of Wasatch. Getting out of there saved my sanity.”
She leaned back, gaining as much distance from him as the sofa allowed.
“When I was growing up,” she said, “there were two thousand people in Wasatch. Now there’s only fourteen hundred and it’s still shrinking. That says something about the place, don’t you think? That anybody who can gets out of there. The trouble is, too many have to die to do it.”
She paused. Her eyes began to moisten. “Have you ever been there, Mr. Traveler? To Wasatch?”
“Only driving through.”
“You had the right idea. It’s not a place you’d want to stop. It’s . . . oh, God.”
She bent over at the waist as if suddenly stricken by a cramp. He started to get u
p to help but she waved him back. Sobs shook her shoulders.
Before he could offer his handkerchief, she pulled a wadded tissue from the sleeve of her blouse and blew her nose.
“Damn,” she said, sitting up. “I thought I’d finished crying.”
“Could I get you a glass of water or something?”
She didn’t seem to hear. “The people in Wasatch are living in the past. They think their religion is all the protection they need against evil. But God has turned his back on women in that town.”
He assumed she was referring to the usual church dogma, that this was a man’s world and so was heaven, that it was a husband’s prerogative to raise his wife to kingdom come when the time came.
“Look,” she said, struggling to her feet to point toward the picture window behind her. “I live in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. Their name is a constant reminder of the town where I was born. Of what it was like for me, a woman, growing up there. For what it was like for Melba.”
Traveler got up to stand beside her, to stare at the ten-thousand-foot barrier that had protected Brigham Young from his eastern enemies and given him the time to create a theocracy.
She hugged herself. “I assume you’re going to Wasatch, Mr. Traveler?”
“As soon as I leave here.”
“It’s a man’s world down there. Remember that and thank God you’re not a woman.”
6
HENRY THE EIGHTH
PRINCE OF FRISKERS
LOST FIVE WIVES
BUT KEPT
HIS WHISKERS
BURMA-SHAVE
TRAVELER WAS a hundred and ten miles out of Salt Lake City on U.S. 89, well into Sanpete County, when the last of the signs flashed by. All six of them, as bleached and threadbare as old bone, were still readable.
The marker for the Moroni turnoff hadn’t fared as well. It was full of holes and hanging precariously on posts eaten away by deer hunters getting a jump on the season.
He pulled onto the shoulder to study his road map, running his finger along 89’s narrow red line. Apparently he was already within the city limits of Mount Pleasant, though the only sign of habitation was an abandoned service station that looked like it had been left over from the Depression. After Mount Pleasant came Spring City, Wasatch, Ephraim, and Manti.
