by R. R. Irvine
Traveler started the engine. “I think Mrs. Joe was holding something back. I had to walk out of there to keep from wringing it out of her.”
“ ‘You can bring Sy with a glass eye, but don’t bring Lulu. I’ll bring her myself.’ ”
“Goddammit. I keep hearing Claire begging for help. It makes me want to kill somebody.”
Martin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She made you feel guilty when she was alive, and she’s still doing it now. Your mother had the same effect on me.”
“I remember her telling me once that she didn’t trust men who were fathers. She said they didn’t take care of their children properly. When I asked about her own father, she said he was dead. She said her whole family was dead as far as she was concerned.”
Without warning, Traveler let go of the steering wheel and hugged his father so hard he couldn’t squirm. “That makes me realize how lucky I am.”
“Let me go, for Christ’s sake. I can’t breathe.”
Traveler released his grip. “I just wanted to say it for once.”
“I taught you better than that. Keep your mind on your work and don’t get emotional. Where to now?”
“Back to Shirley Colton. Maybe now, with Claire dead, she’ll tell me what the hell is going on with the State Medical Board.”
“Don’t count on Saints telling a Gentile anything.”
Traveler tapped himself on the head with a knuckle. “You’re right. I’m not thinking. Since the Saints don’t trust us, we’ll talk to the town Gentile.”
Two minutes later he parked in front of the library, a converted single-story brick house old enough to have been built before Main Street was strictly commercial. A sign on the glass storm door said the library was open three days a week, and today wasn’t one of them.
“I’ll wait for you out here,” Martin said. “If you take too long, I’ll be up the street at the dinette getting a cup of coffee.”
Traveler walked to the door and pressed his face against the glass. Hope Leary, whom he’d met at the Relief Society, was sitting at a desk on the far side of the room. At the sound of his knock, she lurched out of her chair. One hand went to her throat. For a moment, she looked too frightened to move.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said as soon as she came to the door. He stepped back to give her room.
“I’m not used to having people arrive on off days,” she said. “They’re not great readers here in Wasatch, so it’s slim pickings even when we’re open. But I don’t think you’re here to check out a book.”
She was a small-boned woman with black hair, blue eyes, and a skim-milk complexion. Black Irish came to mind.
“I need an ally,” he said.
“I have to live here after you’re gone, Mr. Traveler.”
“One Gentile to another.”
“I’m too old to go looking for another job.”
“A woman’s been killed.”
She studied him closely. “Wasatch being what it is, I’m sure your presence here is no longer a secret, so you might as well come inside.”
The room smelled of book mold and lilac perfume. She led him to one of two oak reading tables. When he sat down, lemon furniture polish overwhelmed the other scents.
She folded her hands on the tabletop and stared at them, waiting for him to begin.
“I’m sure you know what’s happened. Someone I knew has been murdered.”
She spoke without looking up. “Did you love her?”
“Once.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Her death brings the count to three here in Wasatch.”
“Surely the first two were suicides?”
“Then why kill Claire Bennion when I show up?”
She raised her head to examine him again. “I didn’t know Melba Nibley well. Or Doctor Joe either for that matter. I was his patient only once, when I had the flu. Neither one of them were great readers.”
“What do you know about an investigation by the State Medical Board?”
Her hands jumped from the table to her breast. “Me?”
“The first woman I talked to in Wasatch thought I’d been sent here by the board.”
“Who was that?”
“Shirley Colton. She also told me there were others in town who had written to the board. Were you among them?”
“I’m almost as much an outsider as you are.”
“You must know what’s going on.”
“I know a lot of things, Mr. Traveler. Mostly it’s gossip that ought to be ignored. When it comes to something really important, people don’t confide in me, not directly anyway.”
“Does that mean you won’t help me, or can’t?”
“Let me tell you something about Wasatch.” She paused, tilting her head as if gathering her thoughts. “If you walked up Main Street right now, what would you see? Women. They’re running this town right now. Even Sheriff Hickman would be on the fire line if it hadn’t been for you and your Claire. You know what that says, don’t you? Except in times of emergency, the women of Wasatch are invisible. They’re at home tending children, cooking, doing housework, or anything else too menial for their husbands to bother with.”
“Not everybody is a Black Bishop like McConkie,” Traveler said.
“Don’t make that mistake. His wives are no different from any other woman in this town. Like all of us, they don’t exist without their husbands. If their husband is important, be he a bishop or sheriff or mayor, they’re important too.”
“And you?”
“I’m not married and I’m a Catholic to boot. I dispense books, that’s all. Like a Coke machine. The whole state’s like that, a men’s club run by the church.”
“That doesn’t help me.”
“Given such a situation, what would it mean for a woman, or a group of women, to take action on their own? What would be important enough to make them do such a thing?”
“Like writing to the medical board?”
“I’m afraid that’s all I know, Mr. Traveler. If what you say is true, then something made them so desperate they went against their husbands and acted on their own.”
“But you don’t know what it could have been?”
She sighed. “I’ve known Shirley Colton a long time. Most of the others too. Well enough to read the suffering on their faces.”
“What others?”
“You’re the detective. I’m only a librarian. If I had a husband, I wouldn’t even be that. I’d be his wife.”
30
IT WAS late afternoon by the time Traveler found Shirley Colton in the basement of the Co-op, where she and a dozen other women were taking inventory of the ward’s stockpile of food, clothing, and fuel. He knew the same thing was probably being done in storm cellars all over town. Church doctrine requires that each family have its own cache of supplies, enough to last the year of Armageddon, which only the Latter-day Saints would survive.
“I’d like to speak to you alone,” he told her.
The other women left their tasks to form a loose circle around her. Some carried clipboards, others mops and brooms.
“You had no business coming here, opening old wounds,” she said.
Whatever they were, they couldn’t be as bad as Claire’s wounds. He was about to say as much when the women tightened their circle around her. Their movements were as precise as some childhood game set to rhyming chants. He lost sight of her.
“I need your help,” he said.
As a group, the women edged forward, forcing him back toward the door through which he’d come.
“A woman has been murdered,” he said.
They kept coming.
“Mutilated in the Mormon way.”
They hesitated.
“I loved her once.”
“There are worse things than death,” one of the women said.
“Hellfire,” another said.
“Hell here on earth,” Shirley Colton added.
“Please.”
Traveler went up on tiptoe to make eye contact with her. “Tell me why you wrote to the State Medical Board.”
Her head shook. Others picked up the movement.
“Was it about Doctor Joe?”
“I’m sorry you’ve lost someone close. I know how you feel. But I can’t talk about it anymore.”
They began moving toward him again, brandishing their mops and brooms.
Backing up, he said, “I’m not leaving Wasatch until I find her killer.”
“This is our town.” A woman emerged from the group and signaled for a halt. “I’m Vera McConkie, the bishop’s wife. I think I can speak for everyone here.”
She paused, waiting for confirmation. Silence gave it to her. “If the men were here, they’d run you out of town. For once, we’ll have to do their work.”
With that, she signaled a charge. He turned and fled, taking the cellar stairs three at a time. They weren’t more than ten feet behind him when he reached the Co-op’s main room. There, he had space enough to sprint.
Martin saw him coming and reached across the front seat to open the car door. Traveler threw himself inside, with barely time enough to lock the door before the women surrounded the Jeep. They began pounding on the windows.
“They say they’re the weaker sex,” Martin said, starting the engine and revving it.
“Be careful for God’s sake.”
“Maybe you’d like to drive?”
“Just get us out of here.”
Slowly Martin backed away from the curb. Despite the Jeep’s movement, the women continued to attack from all sides.
Martin braked, straightened the wheels, and shifted into drive. “And to think you wanted me out of the way in Salt Lake. Who would have come to your rescue if I hadn’t been here?”
Space cleared around the Jeep. Immediately, a rock cracked the windshield.
“We certainly have a way with women, you and I,” Martin said.
More rocks pelted the car.
Traveler found Shirley Colton in the crowd. She had a rock in her hand and tears in her eyes. “Get us out of here before one of them gets hurt,” he said.
“Sometimes I think you’re too innocent to be a detective.” Martin eased ahead, one foot on the accelerator, one on the brake in case he had to stop quickly. After half a block, the women broke off their attack.
“Where to?” Martin said.
Feeling exhausted, Traveler slumped in the seat. “Head out of town. We’ll find someplace to eat along the highway. By the time it’s dark, it ought to be safe enough to come back to the motel.”
“I think we’d better take turns sleeping tonight in case those women decide to set their husbands on us.”
31
TRAVELER WAS already awake when someone knocked on the bungalow door shortly after sunrise the next morning. He waved his father into the bathroom before answering it, keeping the night chain in place. Only one woman greeted him. Mrs. Beasley was standing on the doorstep with her baby in one arm, a folded newspaper in the other.
“They just delivered the Ephraim Enterprise,” she said.
The sun was striking her and the child in the face, making her black hair look darker than ever while turning the boy’s red hair into a fiery halo.
“I thought you’d want to see it.” She thrust it through the opening. As soon as he took hold of it, she turned and walked away.
He retreated inside, suddenly aware that he was wearing only his shorts, and closed the door. The paper was folded open to an inside page. An obituary notice had been circled in ink.
CLAIRE SUE BENNION
Our beloved daughter, Claire Sue Bennion, 32, has been called home.
Born September 23, 1958, in Moroni, Utah, to Duane and Naomi Bennion, she attended Moroni High School and was an active member of the local ward of the LDS church. She was president of her Sunday school class.
She is survived by her parents and by her brothers and sisters, Lamar, Harold, Stanley, Virginia, Joyce, and Martha.
Traveler sat heavily on the bed. He tried to reread the obit but his eyes wouldn’t focus.
Martin, still in his pajamas, took the paper and read it for himself. When he finished he rolled it tightly and started chasing mosquitoes, leaving swat marks of newsprint on the wall whenever he missed.
“Got ya,” he said finally. “Look at that. The sucker was full of blood. Our blood.”
“I never thought of Claire going to Sunday school,” Traveler said.
“They say female mosquitoes are the worst,” Martin said. “They bite with a vengeance.”
“All those brothers and sisters and yet she always gave me the feeling she was alone in the world.”
Breathing hard, Martin collapsed onto the other twin bed. “What gets me worst,” he panted, “is when they whine in your ear.”
“I wonder how the newspaper got the information. From the sheriff, do you think? Or her parents?”
“It could have been Dora Neff,” Martin said.
Traveler rubbed his eyes until they stung. “I’m willing to bet that woman knows more about Claire than she’s told us.” He blinked away the tears he’d created.
“Women always keep back something. That’s the only way they can be sure you stay interested.”
“Come on. We can get breakfast on the way to Moroni.”
******
Overgrown weeds on either side of Highway 116 had kept Traveler from spotting the signs on his first trip to Moroni. But as a passenger he didn’t have to watch the road.
WHISKERS LONG
MADE SAMSON STRONG
BUT SAMSON’S GAL
SHE DONE
Traveler read it out to his father.
“Well?” Martin said. “What’s the rest of it?”
“The last part’s missing.”
Martin snorted. “Samson’s not in The Book of Mormon, you know.” He took one hand off the wheel to scratch at the day-old growth on his chin. “If you ask me, the Mormon prophets took a page out of Samson’s book. Especially Brigham Young. No Burma-Shave for him. He kept his hair, wore a beard, and got himself twenty-seven wives.”
“You forgot to shave,” Traveler said.
“Maybe Dora Neff will do it for me.”
When they arrived, Dora Neff took one look at them and said, “You men don’t look like you’ve eaten in days.”
“We had coffee and a doughnut down the road,” Martin said.
“That’s no way to keep your health. You two come into my kitchen this very minute and I’ll fix you something decent. You’re in for a treat if you like eggs. I keep my own chickens out back. They came through with half a dozen this morning. We’ll add a little fresh cream from my neighbor’s cow and whip up some scrambled eggs. I’ll toast some of my homemade bread, too. How does that sound?”
Traveler decided not to ask questions until after they’d eaten, in case she took their prying personally and threw them out. But he needn’t have worried. She immediately brought up the subject of Claire herself.
“I did my crying for that child years ago.” Her red eyes said otherwise. “I did my best for her, too, Lord knows. But in my bones I knew she’d come to a bad end. Though I never imagined anything as bad as this.”
She turned away from them to stir eggs on a Kelvinator range not much younger than she was.
Traveler started to speak but his father beat him to it. “We’re going after Claire’s killer, you know that, don’t you, Dora?”
Her shoulders rose and fell. “I know a missionary look when I see one. I knew you didn’t come all this way just to see me.” She brushed at her hair. “What is it you want?”
“Anything you can think of that might help us.”
“I don’t know who killed her. That’s for sure. It couldn’t have been one of the Saints, though. I feel that in my bones. Certainly not anybody from around these parts.”
“You said Claire got a call when she was here. Was it from a man or a woman?”
She half
-turned and waved a spatula at them. “I didn’t answer the phone. But I had the impression that it was a man. In high school, the boys were always calling Claire. Sometimes they’d camp out on my front porch waiting for her to come home. Boy crazy, she was. But nothing went on in my house. I always saw to that. I chaperoned her properly. Now let me get these eggs on the table before they get cold.”
Martin didn’t speak again until he was on his second helping. “What was Claire like when she first came to live with you?”
Dora didn’t answer immediately, but concentrated instead on her coffee-flavored Postum. When she finished the cup she made another for herself. Neither Traveler nor his father had touched theirs.
“I’m sorry you don’t like it,” she said, eyeing their cups. “Claire wouldn’t drink Postum either. She preferred Ovaltine. Even that was a sin, or so her father said. He wasn’t the brightest man, that’s for sure. Not when it came to religion. Or raising children either, for that matter.”
She fussed with her apron. The cloth, which had a handstitched beehive on the front, looked stiff and unused. “Do you remember your Word of Wisdom? ‘Strong drinks are not for the belly, but for the washing of your bodies. And again, tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly. And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.’ Poor old Duane Bennion. He thought that meant hot from the fire and nobody could tell him otherwise. So there wasn’t so much as Mormon tea served in his house. I tell you this to show you what kind of background Claire came from. What she was fighting by the time she moved in with me. Mind you, I consider myself a religious woman. But there are limits to what God expects of us. At least, that’s the way I see it. In any case, I wasn’t the only one who thought Duane was an extremist. Nobody would hire the man, because he kept getting into arguments. Finally, he decided to go looking for work in Salt Lake. At least, that was the story his wife gave out.”
Martin nodded encouragement. Traveler closed his eyes and tried to remember Claire as he’d first met her. But all he could see were the terrible wounds.
“Claire didn’t come to me straight off. She went to stay with her Grandma Frieda first. Frieda Bennion on her father’s side, rest her soul. After a month Frieda came to me and said she couldn’t keep her. She said she was too old to have her life turned upside down by a fifteen-year-old. There was more to it than that, naturally, but I didn’t find out about it until Claire moved in with me. She was a handful, I can tell you. Boy crazy like I said before.”
