Black Widows

by Cate Quinn

  “You sure about that? Or did she let you think it was?”

  There’s a pause as I remember it kinda was Rachel who went all out, changing her hair an’ all. I was just planning on buying her some clothes that weren’t from a ’90s bargain rack.

  “I think somethin’ could have happened that caused someone to kill Blake,” I say stubbornly. “We were the only ones out in the desert. But if someone really cared enough, they coulda, I dunno, followed Blake home or somethin’.”

  “No, they couldn’t.” I can almost hear Carlson shaking his head. “That’s impossible. It’s a stretch of empty desert road running for at least forty miles. You think he wouldn’t notice a car behind him?”

  “His GPS then,” I say. “He’s got a mapping system for work. Tracks his movements. What if someone read his output? Followed the trail?”

  Carlson pauses. “GPS systems don’t share journeys with a central system. Let’s just say your husband had some super version fitted by some crazy control-freak boss. Well then, that would point the finger toward someone at his workplace, I guess. Would a canning-machine salesman make life-or-death enemies?”

  “Could be someone powerful enough to get access to the system from outside,” I counter. “Someone high up in the Mafia or even the Church. If there’s something on this land that’s a big deal, that’s possible.”

  “All this sounds pretty unlikely. Why would they have strangled him with a belt? Isn’t that kind of coincidental?”

  “Maybe they had access to his phone.” My arguments are sounding weaker and weaker. “Wanted to make it look like one of us did it.”

  Carlson sighs. “I want to help you. I do. But the best thing you can do for yourself is come in. Let us protect you. Rachel too.”

  I imagine the police station. The bland halfway house we’ve been living in. My husband’s coffin There’s no way on earth I’m coming in.

  I make a last-ditch attempt.

  “Look, we knew Blake. We know he wouldn’t just meet up with some woman. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t have casual female friends who he’d grab a bite with. Kirker’s Diner was his special date restaurant.”

  There’s a long pause. For a moment, I think Carlson has hung up.

  “I’ll talk to Kirker’s Diner,” he says. “Okay? If they have security footage, I’ll pull it. Take a look.”

  “Thanks.” I swallow, deciding to push my luck. “What about the list of names your buddy found at the Homestead?”

  “I didn’t file that paperwork.”

  “You couldn’t take a look?”

  Carlson sighs. “I can’t…”

  “Pretty please.”

  There’s another pause. “Alright. Alright. I can’t go digging out a million files, but I’ll give my buddy a call, ’kay? See if he remembers anything else. Only because it’s you askin’.”

  I smile at that. “You’re one of the good ones,” I tell him. “You know that?”

  “I know it. Just don’t tell the others.”

  “Cross my heart.” I hesitate. “What happens next. To Emily?”

  “I’m afraid to say she’s been talkin’ about requesting a fast trial. I don’t hold up much hope for the verdict.”

  “But…I mean, she’s crazy, right? Anyone can see that.”

  “This isn’t Nevada, Miss Keidis. People don’t really believe in crazy. An’ they don’t take too kindly to husband killers around here.”

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Emily, Sister-Wife

  I really like Google. The one good thing my therapist lady did was allow me some time on the internet right before I get driven to actual prison. Since I’m not convicted, I have more rights apparently, and one whole hour on social media is one of them.

  Of course, I don’t have any social media pages or things like that. All that stuff actually gives me a lot of bad memories, mostly about high school. Before I grew into my looks, some of the mean girls said things like stick insect and bug-eye.

  I had an idea in my head that I might start a blog about being in prison or something. When I started looking at how to do that, though, it made my head hurt. So I mostly look up cake recipes. There’s one called a piñata cake, with a candy center and rainbow layers, which is just for cute. I really want to make that one someday. I just need to get faster at reading recipes. I’m so caught up in making the letters join up that I don’t notice Detective Carlson slide in next to me.

  “Hey,” he says. “You wanna take a walk? Not much time for that in prison.”

  I’m about to say no when he reaches in his pocket. “Gotcha some candy,” he adds, waving two chocolate bars.

  I get to my feet.

  “Hey!” A lady police officer is frowning at us. “She’s not allowed out. You know that. I’m due to drive her over to the state penitentiary at five.”

  Carlson glances at the clock. “Ten minutes and I’ll have her back,” he promises. “I’ll cuff her if you like.”

  The police lady just shakes her head and nods he can take me out. As soon as we’re in the corridor, he hands me the candy bars.

  “I was working on a theory you were covering for Rachel,” he tells me as our feet make clicking sounds on the rubber floor. “At a stretch, Tina.” He tosses me a grin. “You got what we call mommy issues, right? And since Rachel is like a mother figure… Well, you get my thinking.”

  His hand dances to his pocket like he’s thinking of pulling out a cigarette, then away again.

  “But then I got Tina on the phone,” he continues, frowning. “And I dunno. I just can’t shake the idea maybe there is something in this Aunt Meg business after all. Like maybe she was supplying your husband with a wife or blackmailing him for something Rachel did.” He stares hard at me for this last part. “Anyway,” he concludes, “I promised Tina I’d look into it a little.”

  I keep my breathing very steady. We’ve reached the end of a corridor. Carlson stops at a reinforced glass window with a view of crimson mountains and cobalt-blue sky.

  Between miles of desert and the flat vertical stop of the rock face in the distance, there’s a little group of rock spires, all jagged and burnt orange. Blake used to say they were nature’s cathedral, but I always thought they looked plain mean. Dangerous. All sticking up and pointy like don’t touch us. Even the low-down misshapen ones are squat and glowery like trolls.

  I decide I like them better now. They can’t help how they were made.

  “Sure is a pretty view,” says Carlson.

  We stand there for a minute.

  “Problem was, ‘Aunt Meg’ is no name to go on, less you wanna find a bunch of cupcake companies,” says Carlson, looking out. “Brewer and I couldn’t find any criminal proceedings and wound up finding a bunch of things relating to the Prophet’s trial. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say, there were wedding-night tape recordings that made grown jurors cry.”

  He taps his head. “Then Brewer had a clever idea. What if Aunt Meg had Rachel’s surname? Like they were relations. So we look for Meg Ambrosine. And whaddya know?”

  “What?” I’m intrigued.

  “Nothing on our system, but when I put the name into Google, we find a hit on an acknowledgments page of a book. Written around the time the Prophet was convicted. The book is by Moroni Brown and is titled The Truth: A Father’s Honest Account. In his acknowledgments, he thanks Margaret ‘Aunt Meg’ Ambrosine for her truth.”

  “What was the book about?” I’m real curious now.

  “Ah, basically saying that all the women who testified against the Prophet are liars. Author condemns his own daughter as a fantasist. It wasn’t well received,” Carlson adds with a little smile. “Bunch of one-star reviews and nothing more to go on. However”—he clears his throat—“now we had a full name. And when we put that into the system, Margaret Ambrosine has a record.”
>
  He pauses for effect.

  “Margaret Ambrosine was arrested for witness intimidation when the Prophet stood trial. Nothing was brought to charge, but wives cooperating with police found dead crows hung outside their homes. One even had their windows shot out.” He puts his hands in his pockets. “Margaret ‘Aunt Meg’ Ambrosine also testified against a lot of the wives who gave testimony at the Prophet’s trial. Said they were born liars. I know, right?” Carlson looks at me again.

  “So I talk to my buddy, who filed all the Homestead death certificates and what have you. Back at the time, he found a list of names that he never did get to match, but we dismissed that with all the other weirdness.”

  He waits for this to sink in.

  “I asked him where this list was found. He can’t remember much, but he thinks it was in some kind of medical facility. Like a clinic. And it was in paperwork belonging to a woman, which was very unusual. He didn’t remember much else, but when I sent him the photograph of Aunt Meg your sister-wives are running around with, he was fairly certain the documents had been in her possession.”

  I wait for him to say more. I can feel my heart beating.

  “Problem is, Aunt Meg vanished.” He clicks his fingers. “Poof. Disappeared.”

  My mouth feels dry.

  “Do you have anything you want to tell me?” asks Carlson. “’Cause if you do, now’s the time. Could be the person you think you’re protecting didn’t do it after all.”

  “Miss Martinelli?” The police lady from the computer room has come out. “Time’s up.”

  My mind is racing, like I can’t catch a thought, as Carlson walks me back to the room. I can’t be sure if he’s trying to trick me. He gives me one last sorry look before handing me over to the lady police officer, who looks up from texting on her phone and motions me to wait in a bored way. It’s only when Carlson is out of sight that the police lady clicks her cell off.

  Her screen saver is a shot of her with her arm around two girls who are maybe eleven and fifteen. Daughters, I guess. They are all beaming, huddled in close. The police lady sees me looking and pockets the phone with a weird expression.

  I make a decision. I need to tell Carlson the truth. Rachel and Tina could be in danger.

  “Wait!” I turn to the police lady, catch myself. Arrange my features in a smile. “I mean, may I please speak with Detective Carlson for just a few more minutes? It’s important.”

  “I think you’ve already had enough rules bent for you,” she replies. “Those pretty eyes don’t work on me, sugar pie. You’re allowed your last twenty minutes of internet time if you want it. Take it, don’t take, it, all the same to me. Not a minute over. Then you go to the big-girl prison.”

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Tina, Sister-Wife

  Salt Lake City is kinda surreal on the best of days. You know those models architects make for new building projects? All straight and boxy, fresh cut out of white foam board, with perfectly circular green trees and wide roads holding a tiny scattering of cars. It looks like that.

  So it feels even stranger to be here dressed as a resident.

  “I think you look lovely,” says Rachel. “You know, they always say, ‘Dress modest, and people will take more notice of your figure than if you’re putting it all out there.’ I never found that to be true,” she adds, “but for someone who looks like you, it works. You were hiding that little waist with all the chest going on.” She nods approvingly. “And your eyes look real pretty.” I’ve caught a glance at myself in the mirror. I feel washed out, pale. Like a layer of me has been stripped back.

  “I look like I’m sick.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’m dressed like a fifth-grader.”

  “Well then, so am I. But people aren’t looking at us, right?”

  Rachel has stipulated the obligatory Utah uniform of spaghetti-strap tank worn on top of a cap-sleeve T-shirt. She brushed all my hair up into a loose bun and held it back with a skinny black headband. I don’t look like myself at all. But I take Rachel’s point—no one is looking my way. Not one. It makes me feel a special sorta worthless.

  “You changing your mind?” asks Rachel. She kinda pulls at her shirt as she says it. Rachel’s real nervous, I realize. I’m not sure she quite bought the theory that Blake might have added a fingerprint lock to his locker at work. “That wouldn’t be allowed,” she pointed out, not really accounting for Blake, who did a lot of things he wasn’t allowed to do.

  “I’m not changing my mind,” I say. But it isn’t true.

  “Do you even know why you’re doing this?” she asks softly.

  Because I don’t want to believe you killed him, Rachel. Because the only thing to keep me from going insane is to keep moving.

  To Rachel, I say, “I just have to know, okay?” I lift my eyes to the great spire. Ahead of me are the large gold doors of the entrance. At either side are set stained-glass windows. The modern kind. In front are square pillars, rectangular brick. Above is written in sharp metal letters: “Holiness to the Lord. House of God.”

  A whole bunch of people are milling around the entrance, walking through, waiting for family outside, taking pictures.

  We walk forward.

  “I can’t do it,” says Rachel. “I can’t go into the temple and…creep about where I’m not allowed. If anyone finds out, I’ll be excommunicated. I could lose everything.”

  “You promised,” I remind her.

  Rachel nods, swallows.

  “Okay,” she says.

  We step through the glass doors, and right away, the cool air hits us. Streams of people are pouring past, their temple recommends at the ready. A security guard stands by the entrance, trying to look holy, with a red tabard over his beefy shoulders. He steps forward as we enter, checking we’re not tourists confused over where we’re allowed to go.

  Rachel and I flash our temple recommends, and he nods us inside.

  The lobby is bigger than a cathedral, white, serene, with a lotta gold bling inching the whole thing toward gaudy. There are marble floors, a matching marble desk, and a long mural of Jesus meeting prophets on the mount in muted colors. It reminds me of some of the themed casino interiors in Vegas made of stucco and paint. This would be Heaven Casino. No high rollers and the buffet is one day old.

  I glance about. Pockets of people are preparing themselves. There are brides and their families waiting for the sealing ceremony on one side of the broad lobby. Excited-looking grooms on the other. Young men and women are awaiting baptisms and endowments.

  Now that I’m here in my own right, without a ceremony to trouble my nerves, I think it’s so beautiful. All these faithful people, coming together ’cause they believe in somethin’ bigger than themselves.

  I dig my temple recommend out of my purse and motion for Rachel to do the same. Since she seems to be struggling to walk, I fish it out for her and half drag her to the desk.

  I wave our pieces of paper—holy documents penned by Bishop Young, entitling us to lifelong temple access. Women get them on their wedding day. Men get them when they complete their mission or right before they start college. Guess that says a lot.

  A familiar thrill is rushing through me. I feel the way I used to as a younger woman, pullin’ hustles in Vegas. There’s somethin’ else too. The distraction. I’m not thinking of Blake. The big, sad pull way back behind my eyes is covered over.

  “We’re here for the Smith wedding,” I say.

  The orderly barely looks up, just waves us through.

  “You lied to an orderly,” whispers Rachel.

  “It’s a white lie,” I say. “Else they might be looking to check we go into the personal reflection rooms. This way, there’ll be less heat. Nothing in the Bible that says you can’t lie,” I add. “Only near-false testimony, right?”

  “Bearing false t
estimony is lying,” hisses Rachel as I sweep her past several serious-looking men in suits. “That’s what it means.”

  “Oh well, you say potato, I say po-tah-to,” I say, emphasizing the Utah burr. “We all read scripture different.” I grip her arm. “Bible also says God helps those who helps themselves,” I say. “Come on.”

  We’re halfway along the corridor when Rachel stops.

  “Tina, have you noticed?” she says, pointing to the ceiling. “No cameras. Not anywhere. Remember Blake talking on and on about cameras?”

  I pause, because I do remember that. Blake came home almost hoppin’ on the spot, talkin’ about how the government had infiltrated the temple, and there were cameras in all the staff areas, filming their every movement. He’d told us it wouldn’t be long until they’d figured a way to get inside our minds.

  I turn this over, wondering how much of Blake’s way of looking at the world has rubbed off on me.

  I look across at Rachel. It’s impossible to know what she’s thinking.

  Which kinda brings me back around to what Carlson’s been telling me all along. That this is all a wild-goose chase. What if Blake’s death just comes down to an angry wife mad enough to kill her husband?

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Rachel, First Wife

  No cameras. Blake lied to us. I am just plain stunned by it. All this time, I’d relied on him to tell me the truth about the outside world. He was supposed to keep us safe. Instead, he’d come back with these wild stories about cameras and government conspiracies. I just can’t get it right in my mind.

  “Come on,” says Tina. “Let’s see what’s inside Blake’s locker.”

  I let her lead me, still burning with my husband’s mistruth. Maybe he made a mistake. The cameras were scheduled but not yet in place. But that isn’t what he told us.

  My knees sorta buckle beneath me. I’m glad to have Tina here. She frog-marches me along. She seems lit up by the whole thing, like there’s a wild energy about her.

  I’m seized with apprehension as we enter the inner sanctum. When I was a little girl, my mother showed me pictures of the temple in Salt Lake City. For a long time, I was convinced it was heaven. The great, grand white spires looked exactly as I pictured the Celestial Kingdom. I was a little unclear on where this left the other, lesser heavens. The ones for Mormons who don’t practice polygamy. Nice places for sure—I always imagined them as homey, with a lot of comfortable rugs and couches—but without the white and gold opulence of the holiest of holies.