Jennifer had no motive that I could see. She could have left Stephen any time she wanted without losing children or money. I tried to imagine her involved in a violent crime of passion or premeditation, and could only picture the affectless, almost bored expression behind her cat-eye glasses.
Carolyn was pregnant and dependent both financially and emotionally on Stephen and her place here with the other wives. She had seemed so weak and ineffectual to me. Could I imagine her wielding a kitchen knife, or overpowering the physically intimidating Stephen?
Joanna was barely older than a teenager. Last night, she had come to the house to deliver a second message of danger to Stephen, and I couldn’t tell what that meant. That she had some advance knowledge of something? Or was this proof that her gift for seeing the future was real?
I tried to consider if any of the children might be suspects. The grown children I hadn’t met, Joseph, Aaron, and Ruth, were the most likely to be physically strong enough to overwhelm their father with a kitchen knife, but they weren’t at home. Maybe they could have snuck back onto the compound without being noticed. The only boys living here were surely too young, however. And Talitha, who had been furious at her father about her dead cat, wasn’t tall enough to even reach his chest, I didn’t think.
Trying to be methodical, I took another careful survey of the room, looking for anything unusual or out of place. Of course, I had never seen the room before, so I had no idea if this was what it usually looked like. The bedcovers were rumpled, unmade, and there were a few items on the carpet by what seemed to be Stephen’s side of the bed: a newspaper, books, a copy of the Ensign, the official church magazine, though it didn’t look like the most recent one. I saw nothing broken and no sign of anything missing, no notable crushed carpet marks.
I turned the lock on the doorknob behind me as I left, thinking that at least I’d leave the scene as undisturbed as possible for when the police eventually arrived. It wouldn’t get me out of a stern lecture, I was sure, about tampering with evidence and getting involved in an investigation that should have been left to law enforcement. But if I figured out who was the most likely suspect by then, well, the proof would be in the pudding.
Chapter 15
Downstairs, I found Rebecca and Naomi on the couch in the front room. Rebecca’s hair was stuck to her face, but at least any spatters of blood on her skin had been cleaned off and she had put on a new dress. She had a wet towel in her hands that she kept wiping them on. She wasn’t talking nonsense about being to blame for Stephen’s death, though, and that seemed an improvement from my perspective.
At this point, several children were awake and wandering in and out of the kitchen, staring at their mother, but not asking questions. I debated a moment about whether I should stay with Rebecca, but ultimately decided that she would be calmer if the children were calmer, so I went into the kitchen and rescued what I could of the hash browns and pancakes she had been preparing before Naomi and Kenneth arrived and the body was found.
Little Madeleine came in and showed me where the syrup was, never making a sound. She just stood there like a tiny ghost, dressed already for the day in long pants and a white shirt that seemed a little large for her, but was perfectly—even unnaturally—clean.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said, and my voice seemed to break the spell and make her disappear.
I brought out the food and set it on the table, but instead of ringing the cowbell as Sarah had for dinner last night, I just set some plates out in a stack and some silverware in a pile. I watched as Lehi and Nephi filled plates and headed downstairs with them, looking back guiltily. I guessed they weren’t normally allowed to take food from the dining room. They were murmuring to each other; they knew something was off.
I took a plateful of food for myself, feeling strange feeding myself at a time like this, but also aware after having helped with many funerals that the bodies of the living continue to need nourishment, and they collapse if they get nothing. I wrapped some hash browns into a couple of pancakes and ate wolfishly, thinking about how I had scolded my sons when I saw them eat like this, years ago.
I brought out a plate of food for Kenneth and Naomi, but they both refused it. I turned to offer it to Rebecca, but she put a hand to her stomach and looked genuinely close to vomiting, so I put it aside.
“We really need to call the police,” Kenneth said.
I tensed, and looked at Rebecca. Her coloring had improved considerably in the twenty minutes I’d been gone. “No police,” she said definitively. “They’ll take away the children and send us all to jail.”
This was an exaggeration of my own fear, but not that far off. I wondered if Stephen had planted this fear in her about the authorities in order to protect himself from ever being called to accountability. But then I reminded myself that polygamists had real reason to be afraid of prosecution.
“We don’t have to call the police until you’re ready, Mom,” said Naomi, though she didn’t sound absolutely sure of herself.
“What about the body?” Kenneth said. “We can’t just leave it there. It will, well . . .” He trailed off without saying that it was going to start smelling.
“We can think about all that later,” I said. I needed to buy just a little more time to talk to the wives and check their alibis and motives.
Rebecca shook her head, her expression hardening. “Not later. No police. Stephen wouldn’t have wanted it.” Her eyes, I saw, were dry now.
Suddenly I began to consider the possibility that Rebecca had killed Stephen, after all.
“It won’t look good if we seem to be hiding something,” Kenneth warned.
“No one will know if it looks good or not,” Naomi said, now more firm in her decision to back her mother. “Not if they don’t know what happened.”
“We’ll bury him with his brother and his parents,” Rebecca said solemnly. “With the babies.”
I felt a chill crawl up my back. Babies? What was it I had thought about Stephen at least not having a baby graveyard, unlike the FLDS?
Kenneth threw up his hands. “Hasn’t anyone wondered whether this is all illegal?”
“You can bury a body within forty-eight hours in Utah, as long as you bury it in a legal cemetery,” Rebecca replied, answering the spoken but not unspoken part of the question—about the legality of covering up a murder. “And part of this property has been designated as that.”
How did she know all that? My mind was swirling. I had been so sure Rebecca, the devoted wife, hadn’t killed her husband, but now she was insisting on no police involvement at all, and a fast burial, as well. Wouldn’t an innocent wife want to see the killer brought to justice? Didn’t she worry the rest of the family was in danger until that happened?
“What about life insurance?” Kenneth said, going back to the practical. “You can’t collect that without a death certificate.”
“We don’t need money now,” Rebecca said, but she didn’t sound as sure as she had before.
“Of course you need the life insurance, Mom,” said Naomi. “But maybe there’s another way around this.” She looked at me for help.
“We can call the police this evening,” I suggested, stalling. “After Rebecca has had a chance to tell the other wives and the children.”
“No police. At all,” Rebecca insisted. “Nephi and Lehi can do the digging. Brigham can help. I’ll call them.” She tried to stand up, but Naomi held her down.
“Kenneth can take care of the grave digging,” she said, looking up at him. “He’s bigger and older. ”
Kenneth hesitated for a long moment and looked at me.
Would it be a crime if he buried the body? Probably. And if he did, the police could charge us all as accessories. Was I willing to face that? Yes, I was. But my son’s facing it was another question.
“Go on,” I said, encouraging Kenneth.
He closed his eyes for a moment, his straight back sagging as if I’d taken all the breath out of him. When he opened his eyes again, I couldn’t help but think of Kurt when he’d driven off in the truck, looking years older.
“All right,” he said. He couldn’t have known when he fell in love with Naomi that it would come to this, but he wasn’t willing to walk away from her, either, and I had to admire that about my son. Whatever Kurt had said about Kenneth not having commitment, he was wrong.
Naomi stood up. “Then I’ll send Nephi to call the wives to a meeting. Mom, you’ll be there with me. Linda, can you help Kenneth with . . . the grave?”
“All right,” I said reluctantly. I wasn’t sure I would add much to the grave digging, considering how badly I’d managed to fill in the cat’s grave when Kurt was here. I wished I could be there for the meeting with the wives.
“You’re going to have to have a death certificate to probate the will,” Kenneth pointed out. I hadn’t thought about this problem, but then again, I’d always intended to call the police eventually. It felt like that one decision early on, while Rebecca was still in shock, was making it more and more difficult to go back.
Naomi turned to Rebecca. “Is there anyone who would sign a death certificate for natural causes?” she asked desperately. “One of Dad’s colleagues, maybe?”
It would have to be someone who was blind and not very inquisitive, I thought.
“Dr. Benallie,” Rebecca said.
“Who is Dr. Benallie?” I asked. And why in the world did Rebecca think she would do something like this?
“She works with Stephen in his practice,” Rebecca said, which didn’t fully answer my question.
The fact that Rebecca thought she had in hand someone who would write a false death certificate made me go back to the question of whether or not Rebecca had planned this all out. For a moment, I considered calling the police myself. I had my own phone. I could even call Kurt and ask him to come and help deal with things.
But I didn’t, because of the reality of how I felt about Stephen Carter.
What if Rebecca really had killed her polygamous husband? What if she had gotten tired of him marrying younger and younger wives? What if she had snapped after the way he had manipulated her and everyone else on the compound? Maybe watching him mistreat Talitha after her cat’s death had been too much for her.
Did I really think she deserved to go to jail for that? I had come to like her and feel sympathy for her. Maybe if she had killed Stephen, she was justified in it.
I had never taken the law into my own hands like this before. But I’d never been in a situation like this before. Kurt had left and it seemed that God had kept me here. I didn’t feel any sense of divine encouragement, but neither did I feel that sinking sense of darkness that had always told me in the past that I was wrong.
So I exchanged looks with Naomi and Kenneth. Somehow, tacitly, all three of us agreed that we were going to go along with this. God help us all.
“What’s Dr. Benallie’s number?” asked Naomi.
“Just call the main number for Stephen’s office and ask for her. Tell her it’s Rebecca Carter calling. She’ll speak to you immediately.”
Kenneth and I waited as Naomi asked for Dr. Benallie using her mother’s name. Then she muted the phone for a moment. “What do I tell her?” she asked. “That he’s dead?”
“Just give me the phone,” Rebecca said. To my surprise, she very calmly explained that there had been a death “in the family” and asked Dr. Benallie to come see to the “legal details.”
“She should be here in a half hour,” Rebecca said, handing the phone back to Naomi.
I was astonished and tried to parse what this might mean. Was Dr. Benallie in on the murder somehow?
Sarah came into the living room, scowling at her sister. “It was your day to do breakfast and there are dishes all over the house now. What’s the matter this time? Feeling under the weather again?” She sneered. “Looks to me like you’re well enough to get out of bed and sit talking with your daughter and her new family.”
I was horrified at the rudeness under the circumstances, but before I could say anything, Rebecca said bluntly, “Stephen is dead. In our bedroom.”
Sarah’s reaction was very slight. She seemed to deflate for a moment, then raised her head so that her chin poked out. “So you left him there?” She didn’t ask how he’d died. What did that mean?
“Yes, I did,” Rebecca said. “Dr. Benallie is coming to certify his death before we bury him. Will you criticize me for that, too?”
The antagonism between the two sisters had never been more painful to watch. I wished they could have come together in this moment of sorrow, but it wasn’t to be.
“I criticize you when you do something wrong. It is not my fault that it happens so often,” Sarah said sharply.
“How nice it must be never to do anything wrong,” Rebecca said, but her voice was faint. She wasn’t really arguing back. It was as if she was accepting that she had done things wrong, even if not this thing.
“Nice is not a word I would have used to describe any part of my life for a very long time,” Sarah said. She turned on her heel, but I caught her before she could leave.
“Rebecca is calling the other wives here to tell them the news,” I said. “I’m sure you want to be there.”
“I’m sure I don’t,” Sarah said mulishly.
I knew her marriage to Stephen had been miserable, but I still didn’t understand her hostility to her sister. I didn’t have a sister myself, so maybe I didn’t know what it was like. I kept thinking they should be more natural allies.
“Can’t you sit with your sister for a little while and offer her some comfort?” I said, pulling Sarah aside and making no effort to temper my critical tone.
“For what? For the death of the man I hated?” Sarah said.
“Hated?” I echoed, and saw Naomi wince
“Yes, I hated him. I think I’ve hated him since the day I married him and found out who he truly was. And she—helped him keep the secret,” Sarah pointed an accusing finger at her older sister. “She colluded with him to lie to me.”
I began to see Sarah’s side of the story. I don’t know why I hadn’t before. She must have been quite young when she married, and trusting in her sister’s judgment perhaps more than she should have. And this was where it had gotten her. No wonder she was bitter.
“I never lied to you,” Rebecca said tiredly.
“You lied to me and you lied to yourself. You lie to everyone every minute of your life!” Sarah shouted.
Naomi had looked away, unable to bear this. Kenneth was stroking her shoulder gently.
“Well, he’s gone now,” Rebecca said, flinging up her hands in disgust. “Lucky you. You’re free.”
Sarah’s eyed flared with anger. “Free? You call this free? With the children he’s chained to me? I’ll never be free. But at least I won’t have to hear his voice or think about him breathing next to me in bed ever again. I can be happy about that.” Sarah jerked her arm out of my grip, crossed the living room, and went out the front door, letting it slam closed. Through the front window I could see her walking angrily down the gravel drive.
Even if I understood her anger a little better now, that didn’t mean she hadn’t done it. In fact, it might mean she was more likely than ever, both to have killed Stephen with a kitchen knife and to have left him in her sister’s bedroom, for her sister to find.
Chapter 16
“If we’re going to do the funeral tonight,” Rebecca said to Kenneth, “you need to get out there and start digging.”
I swallowed hard. It was time to face the reality. I was colluding in this now, whether I’d intended for it to go this far or not. Kenneth looked at me, and I nodded to him. This was his family now, and by extension it was mine, too. We were bound fo
rever, even if Kenneth and Naomi didn’t plan on marrying in the temple.
Kenneth let go of Naomi and straightened. “All right. Tell me where,” he said to Rebecca.
“The graveyard is past the shed, a couple hundred yards down the hill,” Rebecca said. “Just follow the stream.”
“And a shovel?”
“In the garage,” I said, touching his arm. “I’ll show you.” I led him back through the kitchen and out the garage door.
It was shadowy and cool inside the garage, despite the rising summer sun, and I found myself not wanting to leave and go back out. Or maybe I just didn’t want to think about what I was going to tell Kurt. How was he going to feel when he found out I was helping cover up a murder? I’d done things that skirted the law before this, for the sake of someone I thought needed my help, but everything else paled in comparison to this. What had happened to me? Was Kurt right about me being so angry about the policy that I was trying to hurt him back? Or somehow all authority in general?
“Mom, are you really okay with this?” said Kenneth softly.
“You knew Stephen Carter,” I said, trying to sound more sure than I was as I stared at the row of rakes, shovels, and picks. “Did you think he was a good person?”
“Not a good person, no. But that doesn’t mean I thought he deserved to die with a kitchen knife in his chest.” He was pulling at his hair again, that familiar gesture that made my heart ache.
“Do you think Rebecca deserves to end up in prison after living so many years with him and dealing with all of his—machinations?” It seemed the best word to describe what their lives had been like together.
“So you’re saying you think she did it?” asked Kenneth, turning around and staring at the door we’d come through.
“No, I’m saying she’s the one the police would probably arrest. And then what would happen to everyone else here? You know how attached Naomi is to them. It’s not just Talitha she wants to protect, I don’t think.” I wished right then that I could go back in time and change my choice, that moment when I walked in and found Stephen’s dead body. If I’d called the police then, everything would have turned out different. Kenneth and I wouldn’t be up to our necks in this and unable to make a better choice. But there was no going back now.
For Time and All Eternities Page 14
