Utah: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 7)

by J. J. Henderson

  "I thought you wanted to take some of your things to Seattle, honey," said her mother, emerging with a pitcher of tea and glasses on a tray. "Why'd you take everything out if..."

  "Oh, I have to get the truck back by this afternoon. Took a little longer coming across than I'd figured. So..."

  "What did they give you, seven days to do New York/Seattle?" Loretta asked.

  "Yeah, I guess that was it."

  "But didn't you say you left on Saturday? It's only Thursday," Loretta said. "You sure you have to have the truck back today, Lucy?"

  "Sure I'm sure. I guess they only gave me five days, I don't know. But I looked at the contract and..."

  "Could I see it?" said Loretta.

  "See the contract?" said Lucy.

  "Yes. I'm a lawyer, I know how to read these things. I..."

  "Loretta, I know how to read a truck rental contract. Besides, with all this junk everywhere I don't even know where it is at the moment." Actually it was in the glove compartment but Loretta didn't need to know that.

  Loretta looked at her. "OK, sis. Just trying to be helpful. You want a ride back from the truck return? I'll be happy to..."

  "No, I mean, yeah, sure. I guess." She'd planned to swing by the clinic with Ellen. Now that would have to wait. "You wanna come along, Ellen?" she said.

  "Yeah, OK, Lucy." Ten minutes later they were on their way, Loretta following in her black Beamer.

  "I thought we would have a chance to go by the clinic but I don't want her to know what's up, OK?" Lucy said, glancing at the side mirror. "She's..."

  "Yeah, I understand," Ellen said. "She's different than you. She might not like what you want me to...”

  "What she likes doesn't matter. It's none of her business. She might be my sister but I don't know her well enough to trust her. Do you want her to know what's going on?"

  "No."

  "That makes two of us." It took ten minutes to find the truck return office, and another five to do the paperwork. While Lucy stood at the counter signing documents she could see Ellen, in the back seat of the black car, conversing with sister Loretta in the driver's seat.

  "Well, that takes care of that," Lucy said as she climbed into the plush front seat next to Loretta. A song played, some guy crooning about the Lord. "And you know what? You were right. I could have kept the truck two more days. No big deal. I'll just rent a mini-van and..."

  "No need to do that, Lucy," Loretta said, pulling out of the truck lot onto the street. Lucy observed a little dashboard stick-on that read CHOOSE LIFE. She knew what that meant. This situation was getting tricky. "I can chauffeur you around. After today I don't have any more business up here anyways, so..."

  "Nah, that's OK. I gotta drive my stuff to Seattle in a couple of days. In fact if you wouldn't mind I'd like to go get that car right now. Coming down here I noticed a rental place. I think it's up ahead on the right."

  "Whatever you say, Lucy. Just trying to be of help."

  "I appreciate it, Loretta."

  "Ellen was telling me she's going to spend the summer with her father, Jack, up in Seattle."

  "That's the plan. Right, Ellen?"

  "Um...yeah."

  "Only she doesn't know where her father—where Jack—lives, and says she thinks he's a doctor but isn't sure."

  "I didn't say I didn't know," Ellen said. "I said I couldn't remember. But the way she asked me I was..."

  "I'm sorry, Ellen...I was just making conversation," Loretta said blithely. "I suppose my lawyerly ways got the better of me."

  Lucy started lying. "Her dad lives on Queen Anne Hill. And what he is is a therapist...not an MD but a mental health practitioner with an MA in psych. Which is kind of a doctor, but maybe Ellen didn't want to say because...anyway, there's no need to be embarrassed at having a shrink for a dad, Ellen. It's..."

  "Here's the car place. You sure you don't want to wait till you're ready to go? To Seattle I mean. I'd love to drive around town with you, Lucy. We could get to know each other, and..."

  "Nah, that's OK," said Lucy. "We can talk back at Mom's house. But after all those years in New York—nobody I know even owned a car in Manhattan—driving around is kind of fun."

  "You could drive mine if..."

  "I'd hate to bang up this high rent baby."

  "Whatever you want, Lucy. Would you like to ride back with me, Ellen?" said Loretta.

  "No thank you, Ma'am," she said quickly. "Lucy and me need to..."

  "We have some errands to run," Lucy said.

  "But I can take you. I..."

  "No, that's quite all right...sis," Lucy said. "We'll see you back at my mom's house. OK?"

  "You know, I feel like she's a second mother to me, too. She's a wonderful lady. I only wish I'd gotten to know my real dad. Well...Bye, Ellen." She fluttered her fingers at them. "You remember what I told you now."

  "Yes, Ma'am," she said. She and Lucy got out of the car and waved as Loretta drove off.

  "What is it she told you?" Lucy asked.

  "To open my heart to Jesus," Ellen said. "I said I would. That seemed to make her happy."

  "Good girl," Lucy said. "She's a bit...dogmatic."

  "Everybody in Utah's like that," Ellen said. "Different words but it's like the same brain's behind it. I got used to it."

  "Aside from the Jesus talk, how much did she get out of you?"

  "I'm sorry Lucy. She was so...she asked me like innocently like what my Dad did, and I forgot and started to tell her stuff about my dad in Utah, only I didn't...couldn't tell her anything real because of... because...and then I got mixed up and...by the time I figured out what to say she was already askin' me something else."

  "She's probably a really good lawyer," Lucy said. "But she had no goddamn business talking to you like that, I don't care if she does have God on her side. Well, let's go in here and get some wheels, eh?"

  "OK. I just got the feeling that...she didn't believe me, Lucy."

  "Me too. But what can we do, other than keep bullshitting and head north ASAP? We're in too deep to change our story now." They stopped at the door of the car rental place. "It's just too bad I'm meeting her for the first time like this."

  "I'm sorry, Lucy, I didn't mean to mess things up for you."

  "Don't worry. If it wasn't you it would have been something else. I'm sure of that. We may be sisters but we've been living on different planets."

  Ten minutes later they left in a rented mini-van, drove to the nearest coffee shop, and sat down with sodas and a yellow pages phone book borrowed from behind the counter. Over a dozen places listed under "Pregnancy" offered counseling and other services, including abortion. They picked one not far away, with no religious overtones to its name, and headed out.

  On rounding the corner onto Providence Street, where the Women's Center clinic was located, Lucy pulled up short, and could have kicked herself for not calling ahead. For thinking it somehow would be safer just to show up. Fat chance. She should have known these people might be out here. And they were, dozens of them, waving placards, and milling around on the sidewalk in front of the clinic: right-to-lifers, the most fanatic picketeers in the world, capable, some of them, of gunning down a doctor. Others simply terrorized doctors and their patients, and their children, and anyone else who might come into their orbit. In Lucy's world these people were the bogeymen, and the bogeywomen. Mostly men: though there were some women and children and people of color among them, this crowd—this movement—was run by white men with rage in their hearts, angry at a world over which they no longer had dominion. Lucy understood that there were persuasive moral arguments on the other side of the issue, but these days it was not a discussion but a battle and you had to take sides. She had chosen the side in opposition to pro-life. It was not called pro-death but pro-choice. Reproductive freedom was not a subject she liked to dwell on, but these placard-waving goons had forced everybody to bare their souls on this most private and painful of personal choices—the one facing Ellen at this very mom
ent. What Ellen did not need was some fanatic screaming bloody murder at her.

  And yet, to leave would be to back down, to capitulate to the scary energy of this viciously self-righteous little mob. Lucy edged the van closer. The clinic occupied a nondescript one-story brown brick building with a storefront on the sidewalk in a row of small commercial buildings. The placard-bearers mobbed the sidewalk, but there was a clear space in the middle—and two cops in place to keep it that way. "What are these people doing?" Ellen whined. "I don't want to go through there," she added as they approached the front of the building, and the bloody fetus photos and the Wanted Dead or Alive posters with doctors' faces printed on them became evident. As she wheeled the van closer the protestors' screams grew louder, for she and Ellen, possible clinic users, were fair game. Other protesters stood utterly still and silent, solemnly holding empty baby carriers, snugglies, carriages before them. From the street to the front door, between the two swarms of protestors, the police had created a passage—a gauntlet of rage for pregnant, confused, and frightened women—girls—to run through.

  "You can't let these people stop you from getting some advice, Ellen!" Lucy snapped. She jerked to a halt directly in front of the clinic, and turned off the engine.

  The protestors howled wrathfully, biblically, waving their placards. The silent ones bore silent witness. Ellen said, "Lucy, you said you wouldn't make me..."

  "Ellen, this is not only about you. I'm sorry, but...we have to go through with this. It's about...making these people realize they can't push women around." She looked over the crowd. "Oh my God," she said, and started the engine again. "We've got to get out of here. Loretta's over there." Her sister stood still in the midst of the crowd, holding up a placard on a stick. It read "Abortion is Murder." As Lucy pulled away she glanced back, and saw Loretta gazing at her. Loretta flipped her placard over, and smiled radiantly, all love and forgiveness. The other side of her placard read, "Jesus loves you."

  "I can't believe it," Lucy said as they rounded the corner. "The one place in the city we didn't want to see her, and there she was. Damn!"

  "Oh my God Lucy, what are we going to...those people were...did you see those pictures? I can't get an abortion, Lucy, not if there's going to be..."

  "Forget the abortion for now, honey. We got other troubles. This changes everything. God, what a fool I am, why didn't I think...I should have known, all that Jesus talk, and the thing on her dashboard. Choose Life! Like she...like they have a stinking monopoly on morality. Damn! You can bet our story isn't going to hold up now. Even if she believed us, she's going to figure we were there because you wanted an abortion and your parents didn't want you to or didn't know you were pregnant, and that I was helping you. At best she'll probably call Janey in Bend and Janey will not know what she's talking about or who she is or...I don't even know if Janey still lives in Bend, for God's sake! I haven't talked to her in five years. Loretta's probably gonna try to sic some kind of authorities on us, to try and stop you from getting an abortion you weren't even sure you were going to get. If she finds out the real story...Ellen, we have got to get out of here."

  "I guess you're right, Lucy." Her voice was small and worried. The poor kid, Lucy thought. What she's already been through, and now this.

  Lucy pulled in the driveway, jumped out, and threw open the back doors of the mini-van, ready to load up. Out came mom. "Hi, girls," she said. "Lucy, I thought you weren't going to Seattle for a few days. What's the rush?"

  "I've got to get this stuff loaded some time, Mom," she said. "And I've got the car now, so..." she shrugged. "Let's start with those boxes, honey," she said to Ellen. The black BMW came around the corner. Loretta pulled in behind the van. "Hello, Loretta," Lucy said to her sister getting out of the car.

  "Let's not beat around the bush, Lucy...Ellen. I saw you there at the clinic, and you saw me. So you know where I stand. But where do you stand?" She turned to Ellen. "What were you doing there, young lady?"

  "That's none of your business, Loretta," Lucy said calmly.

  "You're taking a girl to an abortion mill and it's none of my business! Oh yes it is, Lucy Ripken. It is very much my business!"

  "Ellen was going to get some counseling. Do you think there's something wrong with..."

  "Young lady, do your parents know you're pregnant? Do they know you are visiting abortionists? Lucy, how dare you take responsibility for this girl away from her parents! How dare you!"

  "Loretta, I'm not here to judge your ethics, and you can lay off mine. But I can tell you that this "young lady" is doing what she has to. Ellen has chosen to confide in me and I'm helping her. And like I said before, it is none of your business."

  "Well, I'm afraid it isn't that simple. Ellen, I need to talk to Lucy in private. Why don't you go inside and..."

  "There's nothing you can say to me that she shouldn't hear," Lucy said. "You want to talk about her, she should hear it. Stick around, hon," she added.

  "No, I don't mind going inside. I can..."

  "Please, Ellen, stay here," Lucy said. "She's got no right to tell you what to do. Loretta, why do you have to be so...God, this is the last thing I wanted...to find a sister, and then to find that she's..."

  "Don't judge me, Lucy. Only the Lord judges me!"

  "Who's judging who here? Get real, Loretta," Lucy said. "You're the one who's telling everybody what to do."

  "I have a moral obligation to stop abortion. That is all there is to it. Everything else is secondary. Ellen, you can either give me your number so I can call your mother, or...I will get it from information. But she has a right to know what you are up to, young lady, and..."

  "This girl...this woman...has a right to privacy," Lucy said. "And you can't trample on..."

  "Lucy, you don't even have children. Children need rules, not rights! You don't know what you're talking about. Ellen is a child."

  "And you think this child should have a child of her own?" Lucy cried out. Ignoring her, Loretta went in the house.

  "Damn," Lucy said. "Now what?"

  "Lucy, you should apologize to your sister," her mother said. "She's only trying to do what's right."

  "What the hell do you think I'm doing, Mom? You stand there talking like she's your daughter, not me!" Lucy fought back tears of her own. "You think I like this situation? You think I want to see this girl get an abortion? But what is she supposed to do? She's fifteen years old and she's got nobody to...What am I supposed to do!" She shouted. Her mother shook her head and went in the house. "Fuck it," Lucy said. She'd said too much and she knew it. "Let's load the van, Ellen. We're getting out of here."

  They put a few boxes in the van. Then Loretta came back out. "There's no Jane Robbins or Jane Morris listed anywhere in eastern Oregon," she said. "And Jack Morris in Seattle is not answering and doesn't have a machine. I don't know what you're up to, but..."

  "Our number's unlisted," Ellen said. "There's..."

  "Don't lie to me, young lady. The operator will tell you if a number's unlisted. I asked, it wasn't."

  "That may be true in California but it isn't up here," said Lucy, improvising. "So..."

  "For God's sake just give me the number, Lucy. I don't want to call the police but somebody needs to..."

  "Shutup, Loretta," she said, and threw a box in the van. "Let's go inside and get the rest of our stuff," she said to Ellen. "Here's what's up," she addressed Loretta. "You're right: Ellen is pregnant. And I was going to take her to the clinic to get some advice. As to the possibility of abortion: I told her from the start that it was an option—one that I thought was best for her—but only that, and she was free to make her own choice. That’s what pro-choice means, Loretta, in case you might be interested in hearing another point of view. More importantly, I pointed out to her that she was young and broke and uneducated in a world where money and education count for a hell of a lot, and her parents don't have the time or energy to raise another kid, and..." Lucy stopped, realizing she was getting carried away, and t
hat even though she believed in the morality of what she was saying, it was still a raft of lies..."But you and your...friends...made that impossible so we are going to get in the car and drive to Seattle where Ellen and her father can talk, and talk on the phone with her mother, and figure out what they want to do. OK? You've convinced me of that much—that the parents should know what's up. So why don't you just cool your jets a while, and let's see if we can end our first meeting as sisters in a friendly kind of way. What do you say?" Lucy smiled at her sister, who did not smile back.

  "I wish I could believe you but I don't, so...I don't know," said Loretta.

  Their eyes locked for a few seconds. Lucy felt her heart crack. Loretta was right, she lied through her teeth. She shrugged. "Let's go inside, Ellen."

  They found Althea seated at the kitchen table, looking for answers in Dear Abby. "Hey Mom, I'm sorry," said Lucy. "I didn't mean to yell at you out there, it's just that..."

  "It's all right, Lucy. I can see that this is a...difficult situation."

  "Yeah, well...we're going to take off, head up to Seattle."

  "Now? Today?"

  "Yes. I don't think I can...Loretta's just...hey, where's the front page? I haven't had my fix of bad news yet today..."

  "I don't know, it's there somewhere," her mother said absently, waving at a stack of papers on the table.. "I never read it so..."

  Lucy found it, and had a look. She bit her lip to keep from gasping, and quickly left the room, Ellen following. In the living room they stood side by side and read. The story occupied a big chunk of the bottom left hand side of the front page.

  Utah Homicide and Kidnapping

  Prominent engineer and civic leader slain; daugher missing, believed kidnapped. Investigators have no suspects, no motive.

  Arthur Longford, a lifelong resident of Tremonton, Utah, was found slain in his own home on Tuesday morning. Mr. Longford's body was discovered by his wife in the room of his daughter, Ellen Longford, who is missing and presumed to have been kidnapped by the person or persons who murdered her father.