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

by J. J. Henderson

  “He wants me back in San Diego. The kids are driving him crazy. He thinks I’m way out of line, taking this on.” She looked out over the water. “Truth is, if I wasn’t so concerned about Ellen’s baby, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

  “I thought we agreed that we weren’t going there.”

  “I know, I know, but listen, Lucy, I’ve been thinking about this whole thing, and I think—” she turned towards Lucy—”that you should stop trying to talk Ellen out of having the baby, and that when the baby’s born you should adopt.”

  “Adopt! Are you crazy?”

  “I’ve seen you with Ellen. You’re a frustrated wannabe mom if I ever saw one, Lucy. I know its—look, I can do the paperwork for you. I can—”

  “Ellen’s going to keep the baby, Loretta. You’ve heard her.”

  “I know she wants to, but I’m the one who’s been pushing her to have the baby. I don’t know much about her real mother— but you’re obviously very important to her—and she doesn’t want to abort, Lucy, you know that. I’m sure that if I told her that you were going to be the mother to her baby, and she could have contact with you, I just know she’d let it happen. I just know it.”

  “Jesus, Loretta.” Lucy felt herself losing control; her reaction came out of nowhere. She burst into tears. The last exam she’d had, the doctor told her endometriosis had rendered her almost certainly infertile. “I dreamed she had a baby and gave it to me, L. I didn’t want to say anything because I—God, I don’t know, it seems so manipulative.” She seized control of herself. “Do you really think she’d want to—God, I hate to even say it—give the baby up?”

  “I think I can present her with all the arguments you used in another context, and go from there. Your arguments were pretty convincing, Lucy. I mean, aside from the moral absolutes, which I feel you are wrong about, your humane concerns were well thought out. I found myself getting angry at my husband when I talked with him, because he was unable to even see the slightest possibility that some of what you said was right.”

  “But how can I adopt a baby in a state I can’t even go in to? The state of Utah’s not going to let me near that baby.”

  “We’ll work it out, don’t you worry. Lucy, can’t you see what’s happening here? This is what grace is all about. You can’t turn your back on this. I just know the Lord intended for all this happen so that you could be a mother.”

  “Loretta, I wish it was that simple.”

  “Don’t say simple, Lucy. It isn’t about simple. I struggle every day to re-affirm my faith.”

  “I’m sure you do, honey. God, a baby,” Lucy said, looking out over the water as she ran the movie of the rest of her life. She’d live with Jack on the island. Would he be willing to be a new dad again? How would Alex be with a baby? How would she, Lucy be? God, stop it, girl, this is a fantasy, Loretta’s meddlesome Christian problem-solving, there’s no way it could possibly work out. “Well, you’ve certain given me some things to think about,” Lucy said. “But at the moment I need to go up to Robin’s and get the rest of my stuff. The owner of the cabin’s coming home tomorrow and I’m moving in with Jack. Temporarily.” She stood.

  “I’m sure Jack is a good father.” Loretta smiled. “More of God’s grace.” She looked at her watch. “I’m flying to Utah in three hours. I’ve booked a room at a place called the Tremonton Inn, I think. You can reach me there.”

  “The Tremonton Inn, eh? Well, be sure and give my regards to the desk clerks there. We’re old pals.”

  “You know the place?”

  “There’s a Denny’s across the parking lot. It was God’s grace that put me there, the night Ellen Longford came in with her father and mother and brothers to have dinner.”

  “That’s where you met her?”

  “In the bathroom. Out of nowhere, one minute I’m washing up the next minute she’s in my face. She told me her father was fucking her,” Lucy spit the words out to shock Loretta. “Then she asked me to take her away. I said no. That night she killed her father.”

  “Lord, Lucy, I didn’t realize you—”

  “Could have stopped it by helping her run away? Could have called the cops? Could have what?” Lucy demanded. “Shit, I’m sorry, Loretta, this is all too much. Look, call me from Tremonton. Tell me what’s happening. Please. And if things work out, well, maybe what you suggested—maybe I could do it, I guess. If I can just figure out what I’m doing with the rest of my own life it would help.”

  “This baby is what you’re doing for the rest of your life, Lucy,” Loretta said. “Start thinking that way it’ll all be clear.”

  “Just save Ellen’s rear end, L. That’s enough for now. Then we can talk about the other stuff.” They stood, awkwardly for a few seconds, then Lucy moved to hug her. They parted after a moment and went their separate ways.

  She spotted Jack sitting in the ferryboat coffee shop across from a diminutive woman with an enormous mane of golden hair sweeping back from a high forehead over luminous green eyes. Her face had the delicate bones of a bird, glowing through translucent skin. A black turtleneck counterpointed the lunar sheen of her skin. Botticelli on low-cal. Actually, she was riveting. Next to her, the girlfriend was a more obvious lesbian type, with short, somewhat shapeless graying black hair and a man’s shirt. Even from behind Lucy could see the tension in Jack’s slouching back. Lucy took her time getting a coffee and then headed over. “Hey,” she said to Jack. “How’d your—”

  “Lucy,” he jumped up. “I’d like you to meet—”

  “Gloria,” Lucy said. “Hey. I’ve heard lots of good things about you.”

  “Hi,” Gloria said. “Likewise. Alex approves, and that’s not easy. Lucy, this is Rana.”

  “Rana?”

  “That’s right. Rana. R A N A. It means manslayer in Sanskrit,” Rana said, and laughed. “Just kidding.”

  “Sit down,” said Gloria. Lucy did. “Can I get you anything?” Jack asked, quickly rising, clearly uncomfortable. “I’m gonna get a coffee.”

  “Double tall, Jack,” said Rana.

  “I’m fine, Jack,” Gloria said. He left. They all looked each other over.

  “So Jack’s told me a little about your situation,” Gloria said. “Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

  “Well, I did until today, sort of. Now I don’t know. Jesus, I just don’t know if I did the right thing, talking Ellen into going back there.”

  “She’s pregnant, huh?” said Rana.

  “Yeah. And starting to show.”

  “Why didn’t you get her to abort while you had a chance, Lucy?” Gloria said. “It seems like the obvious choice.”

  “I was working on it but she didn’t want to. Then when—Jack told you about my sister, right?—when she got involved it was a lot more complicated.”

  “God if ever I heard of a situation where an abortion was called for this was it.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” said Lucy.

  “The farther she gets into this pregnancy the harder it will be to end it, Lucy. You ought to know that,” said Gloria. “What were you thinking?”

  “Who’s gonna raise this kid if she has it, her mother?” said Rana.

  Jack showed, coffees in hand. “Looks like you ladies are getting to know one another.” He smiled awkwardly. “Listen, Gloria, Lucy and I have some stuff to talk over that—” Lucy quickly stood.

  “Just be there at seven-thirty. I’ll feed him. Nice to meet you, Lucy.” Gloria squeezed out an unenthusiastic smile. Rana didn’t even try.

  “Likewise, Gloria. Rana.” Lucy nodded. She and Jack walked off. “Man,” she said. “Those women are tough.”

  “No shit, Lucy. I feel lucky to be in one piece sometimes.”

  “Sometime you’ll have to tell me what came first, the end of Jack and Gloria or the beginning of Rana and Gloria.”

  “I still don’t have a clue, Lucy,” said Jack. “All I know is one day I came home early from work one day, and the two of them were,
you know—naturally I thought it was a guy, like, a rapist, when I first heard them, and I was ready to get out my gun, only I didn’t have one. So instead I stormed into the bedroom with enough adrenalin pumping to turn me into the Terminator, only to find Gloria with her head between the legs of—Rana. I’ll be damned if I knew what to do.”

  “I guess you couldn’t exactly punch her out, could you?” said Lucy.

  “No. Not that I haven’t felt like it now and then.”

  “So what was it you wanted to talk about?”

  “Them. What else?” He smiled. “It is a gossip-worthy thing, isn’t it, losing your wife to another woman? I mean, I’m a tabloid TV show waiting to happen, right?”

  “That makes two of us, doesn’t it, Jack?”

  They didn’t undo the cuffs until they were seated, with her between them in a row of three seats. “Fasten your safety belt, young lady,” said the man sitting to her right. “We want to make sure you get home in one piece, heh heh heh. There’s some people back home really hurting because of what you’ve done, young lady. You think about your momma, and your baby brothers? You ever think about them, when you were runnin’ around the streets takin’ dope and acting like some punk.” She didn’t answer or look at him. He smelled of sour sweat. He and the other man talked past her, about what a fool that tall goddamn liberal lawyer was in Seattle, and how they’d like to have dragged that Ripken woman back with them. And then what the hell, one outta two ain’t bad, specially when it’s this one. As she pulled the belt tight Ellen imagined that she could just tighten and tighten till she grew so small she’d simply disappear into the seat and come out somewhere else where no one would know her; she’d have her baby and a small house in the forest like the cabin on Bainbridge. She fished some headphones out of the seatback in front of her, put them on and found the nearest thing to a rock channel. They played pop love songs.

  She hadn’t looked either of the men in the eye, not once all day. They had her out of jail airport-bound so fast she’d barely had time to see one visitor: Loretta, who promised she’d come as quick as she could to help her; and told her not to say anything to anyone. That was easy enough so far. From the jail to the car and on the ride to the airport; in the airport; and now on the plane, she’d put up a kind of screen in front of her face. She saw everything she was looking at, but nothing registered. Nothing entered. Like when she was making the movie. Starring Daddy! And her. And the knife. Loretta had the knife, and the movie. Now behind this screen she wondered why she’d done it—not killed him, for that was something that had happened in that other place, that other movie, the one that she had to make. But why had she let Lucy talk her into turning herself in? Why hadn’t she just kept running, to Canada, to Alaska, to the North Pole, anywhere to not have to go back and what that would mean. She just wanted to have her baby and live somewhere secret. She was sorry for her mom and brothers, but—momma knew and she didn’t do a thing. What she knew about daddy her brothers would be better off without him. She knew she would be. Was that selfish? Maybe. But it was done now.

  Lucy could help her with the baby, she knew Lucy would do that even if she had been wrong about going back to Utah. She turned the music off, sick of songs about unbelievable love. Why does everybody pretend that’s the way it is, when it isn’t ever that way? The captain came on and talked about the flight to Salt Lake City. They taxied into position, waited their turn, then raced down the runway and took off. She sat quietly between the two marshals, headed back to Utah. As they banked into a turn to level off high in the air, miles above the world, she watched the mountains passing by below. She imagined herself jumping off the plane and not falling down to crash on the earth but flying, soaring until she landed safely in another world.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A CONFESSION

  Loretta caught a plane about three hours behind Ellen, Salt Lake City-bound, on the airline she could ride with frequent flyer miles. She’d done enough flying around the country on behalf of anti-abortion organizations over the years to have run up those miles; and now here she was spending them on a girl who might be guilty eventually of not one but two kinds of murder: father and child. Or so Jeffrey had put it, when she’d called him just before leaving her room to check out of the hotel, airport-bound. He had insisted that she hand the case over to an associate in the movement who lived in Salt Lake City, and come home to her family immediately. She had quietly but firmly refused. Then he reminded her of his rights as the head of the family, and her wifely duty to obey his judgement. She found herself enraged at the sound of his voice. She hung up on him, went downstairs with her workbag and her suitcase, and checked out. On the way out the door a book-lined bar to one side caught her eye. She went in, sat at the bar, and ordered a tequila sunrise, the only mixed drink she knew. She knocked it back quickly, then got her car delivered to the front door and headed south.

  Now on the plane she was nursing another cocktail, and feeling half-drunkenly remorseful at having hung up on her husband. She eyed the phone on the back of the seat, and considered calling him. But she knew what he would say. Sighing, she reached down under the seat and pulled up her bag to get at the file she’d begun on Ellen. Maybe now with a hint of alcohol in her blood she’d be able to parse a little certainty out of the tangled web of this tale. Generally the law did that for her: in her many negotiations through the uncertainties of the justice system, she usually discovered a path towards the truth, or at least an acceptable version of it. Once she’d chosen that path, she followed it with absolute certainty. The method till now had provided her with a moral and intellectual foundation for the work at hand.

  Of course the work at hand did not usually have the complications that had grown up around this case. For instance, stowed somewhere in the flight attendants’ area, or the cockpit, or wherever such things were stashed, there gleamed the knife that Ellen Longford had allegedly used to kill her own father, taken from Loretta in airport security. As if she, Loretta, represented a security threat. No matter: she would get it back after deplaning.

  And then what was she to do with it? Or with the videotape that lay in the bottom of her bag? With the tape allowed as evidence—and how could it not be?—it would be manslaughter at the very worst, if they chose—if they dared!—to bring it to trial at all. The flight attendant made arrival announcements. Loretta put her file away and prepared to land in Utah.

  By the time Loretta deplaned, collected her evidence, rented a car and headed out of the airport towards Tremonton it was pushing midnight. She drove straight to the Tremonton Inn, parked, and checked in, her mind filled with images of Lucy and Ellen. The thin-lipped, rotund desk clerk handed her a message slip soon as he saw her name. Jeffrey had called. For a second she regretted having told him where she planned to stay. She found her room, looked at the phone, and decided not to call him. She turned on the television while unpacking, and watched Ellen’s earlier arrival, getting big play on the local news. Flanked by the marshals, Ellen walked through the terminal looking dazed, bewildered, and a little bit defiant. Outside at the curb a small clutch of pro-lifers stood quietly with their dead fetus signs. Her dead fetus signs. Loretta wondered if they were Jeffrey’s work. On TV Ellen slid into the back of a government issue sedan and drove off. Loretta, used to being among the protestors or thrilling with righteous pride when she saw them, instead cringed a little, thinking of Ellen and how they made her feel. She put on a sweater and went over to Denny’s to get a bite to eat. Several vans with TV news logos were parked nearby. Otherwise it was a quiet night in quaint Tremonton, its main arteries lined with the familiar neon of franchises selling gas, food, lodging, and the other essentials.

  She surveyed the warm plastic glow of Denny’s interior, and was headed to a quiet booth in the corner when she noticed a good-looking black man in a suit watching her. “Excuse me...Mrs....Graves. I was...”

  “Hello.”she approached him. “You’re...the FBI person.”

  “John La
rsen.” He stood. “I guess you must be here for...with Ellen Longford. You got here quickly.”

  “I just drove in from the airport. I gather from the TV she came in a few hours ahead of me.”

  “Yeah. I only wish I could have brought her back instead of the state marshals. But that’s jurisdictional, outta my hands. You care to sit? I’m just having...” he indicated apple pie and coffee...”a little snack. My last remaining vice,” he added. “Sweets.”

  “Looks good. But don’t let me...”

  “No, please. I wanted to talk to you about...”

  “I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea, Mr. Larsen, since we’re on opposing sides in this...”

  “Don’t be so sure about that.” He said. “Besides, dining alone in Denny’s is a grim prospect, let me tell you.”

  “I can imagine.” She sat. The waitress approached. “Hi, I’ll have a...um...” she looked at the pie and coffee. “The same as him, only make it decaf, OK?”

  “Sanka’s all we got,” she said.

  “That’ll do just fine.” They watched the waitress go. “It’s been a long time since I spent this much time away from my family,” she said.

  “That must be hard.”

  “It is...but its interesting. Especially finding my...finding Lucy. You know she and I are half-sisters, but we never met until last week. I didn’t even know she existed until a couple of months ago.”

  “Wow. That must have been a...revelation.”

  “Well, yes, but...what’s even more of a revelation...My goodness, I can’t believe I’m actually here, doing this!”

  “Ellen Longford, you mean?”

  “Yes. The whole thing. Lucy, Ellen, her baby, the...”

  “This is where they met, you know. I was just pondering that when you walked in.”

  “That’s why I came here, too. Lucy told me the whole story. She walked right into it.”

  They were quiet for a moment. “You do need to talk to her mother, Loretta,” he said.