“Just one more question,” I said, “Is your husband by any chance a bishop?”
“He is,” she said, tilting her hand in surprise. “How did you know?”
It had just been a guess on my part. I didn’t think it really mattered, but it made sense that the other people in her ward might want to follow her lead in particular as the bishop’s wife. I’d never considered that I might have a similar ability to set trends in my own ward. I’d always complained about not having power, but clearly, I did. It just wasn’t a power I cared about. If I started wearing my hair one way, would other women in the ward start doing the same thing? Heaven forbid.
I walked around the rest of the neighborhood, knocking on doors and using the name “Sylvia Loveland” as my key. At the mere mention of her, a couple of women not only offered to talk to me, but invited me inside and gave me milk and cookies. I wasn’t one to refuse cookies, even if they weren’t my own well-tested recipes.
One thing was certain—there was a lot of tithing being paid by the people who owned these homes. They were all wealthy, and all good members of the Mormon church.
At the last house on the block, a tall, slender woman with hazel eyes and caramel-colored hair, Candice Stevens, invited me in after I used Sylvia’s name. She looked a bit embarrassed, and I didn’t understand why until she said, “We went off the monthly plan for just a few weeks, but then there was a break-in and we had a whole bunch of things stolen.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “That must have been terrifying.” Certainly an interesting coincidence.
“It was very scary. I wasn’t sure we could stay here after it happened. For the first night, we went to a hotel so the police could look through the house and take fingerprints. But after that, I wanted to come home. Only I discovered this didn’t feel like home anymore.” She shuddered and I thought it a little odd that she was telling me so much until I realized that she felt so vulnerable about the break-in that all her normal boundaries must have been ripped from her.
She went on, wrapping an arm around herself, “It felt like someone had turned the house I loved into a place I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and I had to set up monitors so I could hear the children in the next room.”
“How awful,” I murmured.
Her eyes were haunted and her voice was thready as she said, “We prayed about it and eventually realized that the solution was simple. We’d taken our safety for granted, just like the Nephites in the Book of Mormon before Captain Moroni came along and taught them to build up their fortifications.”
I felt a cold tingling sensation down my back as she mentioned that story from the scriptures. I suspected she hadn’t come up with it on her own, but she might not remember that it had been fed to her.
Captain Moroni had led the Nephites to victory against the Lamanites under the “title of liberty” flag, on which he had written:
In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children.
It had been a purely defensive war against an aggressor, and was thus considered “righteous.” And of course, as Gwen had reminded me, the light-skinned Nephites were almost always the good guys in the Book of Mormon, while the dark-skinned Lamanites were the aggressors in all the wars.
“Did they ever catch the criminals?” I asked, coming back to the present.
Candice tightened her lips. “They eventually recovered some of our items at a local pawn shop, but I didn’t want them back at that point. We ended up selling them on KSL.” The local classifieds, owned by the Mormon church.
“Did you have insurance, at least?” I asked. I wanted to somehow feel better about all of this. She was a rich woman. Surely this didn’t matter to her, did it?
“Oh, of course. But that didn’t make me feel safe. I’m glad that the children, at least, never had nightmares. We tried to keep as much information from them as possible so they wouldn’t worry.” It could have sounded privileged, but instead it just struck me as sad.
“Thank you for talking to me about this,” I said, and stood up. I felt I had no right to intrude further on her privacy.
“You absolutely must get Celestial Security,” she urged. “I promise you it’s worth every penny and more. It’s like paying tithing, but the blessings you get are right now, in this world.”
Again, her echo of church language bothered me, but was certainly in line with my other dealings with people connected to Celestial Security. All in all, it had been a very productive outing, and I felt only a little guilty at the pride I had for undertaking it on my own. Walking back to my car, I debated whether to share anything with Gwen. I didn’t want her to go off half-cocked on some scheme to get at Greg Hope, but maybe I wanted her to give me a little praise, too, so I drove straight to her house and sketched out what had happened.
She started bouncing even before I’d finished telling her about the “title of liberty,” which I wasn’t sure was a good thing.
“Wow, Linda! This is fantastic! It’s just the break we needed. There has to be some connection between those thieves and Celestial Security.”
“But how? Why would Hope want to rob his own customers?” I asked, thinking that here she was, making a big leap again without much logic behind it other than her hatred of Greg Hope.
“Former customers. And that woman went right back to the company, didn’t she?” Gwen asked.
“Yes, but just because she was scared.” It hadn’t been a rational decision. Surely a business couldn’t rely on that kind of strategy.
“He can’t have people backing out once they realize the monthly fees aren’t worth it. It’s a bad look. Like people leaving a cult—others follow suit. You have to stop the first ones to go.” Gwen’s lips were pursed, and I couldn’t help but think that she was talking about Mormonism as she said this.
I’d heard lots of people refer to Mormonism as a cult, but that seemed unfair to me. We lived in the real world and while there was encouragement to pay tithing, there were no fees to join and no real threats beyond heavenly ones if you left. The way the leadership worked also didn’t seem like a cult-like reverence for a single man.
“Even if it is someone in the company, it doesn’t have to be Hope,” I said, attempting to dissuade her.
“You don’t know him like I do,” Gwen said. She was almost glowing with energy now.
“I don’t think we should confront him again.” I was afraid of him, I realized.
“Oh, I’m just going to see what I can find out online first,” she promised.
I was nervous about what she might do next, but she did have me wondering if Celestial Security might have something to do with the robberies, after all.
Chapter 35
The day before Thanksgiving, Gwen called me to tell me she had found a definitive Celestial Security connection to Candice Stevens’s robbery.
“I looked up the news articles about it. The man arrested was Jesus Gonzalez.” She sounded excited.
“And? I asked.
“He’s a member of the Spanish ward. I know him. I didn’t hear about him being arrested or serving time or anything. I guess everyone kept that quiet for him. But I’ve met him. And I know he works at Celestial Security.”
“Wow,” I said. Did Detective Gore know about any of this? I couldn’t see how it had to do with the murder, but it signaled that there was something deeply wrong at Celestial Security, as we’d suspected.
“It gets worse, Linda. A lot worse,” Gwen went on, still sounding excited as a kid on Christmas Day.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I started looking up any mentions of ward members in newspapers online. It took hours. I was up all last night.” She yawned. “I didn’t want Brad to know what I was doing, so I pretended I was asleep and got up after he was snoring, then snuck back into bed
when I was finished, but even then, I couldn’t sleep.”
This was the Gwen who would one day make a good police officer, then detective. “What did you find out?”
“Like I said, I had to sift through a lot of unrelated information. But there was another ward member who was arrested for a series of robberies last year. Bertran Lopez.”
“A series of robberies?” Could this lead back to Greg Hope?
“Fifteen,” Gwen said.
“And he’s still working at Celestial Security?” I asked in amazement.
There was a hesitation. “No, not anymore,” Gwen said. “He was fired when he was arrested, but Hope paid for his lawyer and he’s still in the ward, so that has to mean something.”
Hope was paying for Carlos’s lawyer, too. Had everyone interpreted this as sheer goodwill?
“I’ve tracked down Jesus and Bertan’s addresses. I want to talk to them. Would you be willing to come with me?”
I couldn’t say no. It was too exciting; it felt like we were so close to wrapping things up. How could I let go of this case now? “Can you give me a half hour?” I asked, thinking about the family’s visit tomorrow.
“Sure. I guess I should shower and put on some clean clothes. Linda, do you know what this means?”
“I have an idea,” I said, but clearly Gwen wanted to put it out there in words. Maybe she was still working through the consequences herself.
“I haven’t been able to track all of the fifteen homes that Bertran Lopez robbed, but of the three I can find direct mention of, all were former Celestial Security clients, and all three are back on the website with photos. It could be all fifteen. And there could be homes that didn’t ever call the police to report break-ins, or homes that did call but no one’s been caught yet. This could be huge.”
Yes, it could. Or it could be nothing more than the coincidence I’d first assumed.
I mixed up the brine for the turkey and decided everything else could wait until tonight or tomorrow. We were on a late dinner schedule so that the married couples—Joseph and Willow, Adam and Marie, and Kenneth and Naomi—could see both of their families on the same day. Zachary was bringing a young woman with him, and although he hadn’t told me her name yet, I was very excited to meet her.
Gwen picked me up and drove back to Gabriela’s building, which seemed to be where most of the Spanish ward lived. We walked briefly by her apartment, and the door was wide open; overall-clad workers moved in and out, performing loud renovations.
“Gwen, let’s just make sure we don’t throw any wild accusations out there, all right?” I attempted.
“But we’ve practically got them!” she said with the fervor that worried me.
“You have to remember that these men are victims, too. They’ve been used, and they’re probably frightened about what might happen to them and their families. Let’s tread lightly, all right?” I didn’t want anyone punching the wall—or Gwen.
“I know that, Linda,” Gwen said, but from her expression, I didn’t think she did.
We went up a floor and she pointed at the door at the end of the hallway, number 56. “Jesus Gonzalez,” she said cautiously. “He lives with his mother.” She knocked on the door and a woman opened it.
“Hermana Ferris,” she said, without much warmth.
“Hermana Gonzalez,” Gwen said soothingly. “May we speak to Jesus, por favor?”
Sister Gonzalez looked at us suspiciously. “What is this about? He is very busy and has to get to work soon. I don’t want him to be late.”
Considering that he was technically a convicted felon, I could see why she was nervous about that.
Despite my reservations, Gwen was indeed gentler this time around. “We just have a few questions.”
“Questions about what?” asked Sister Gonzalez.
“Well,” Gwen glanced at me. “I’ve been asking people about Gabriela Suarez. Her children are all alone now, maybe not even in the same household. We’re trying to get justice for their mother. They deserve that much, don’t you think?” I might not have put it so directly, but at least she hadn’t mentioned anything about robberies or jail.
Still, Sister Gonzalez stiffened. “You’re not one of us. Pretending to be—” She launched into Spanish then. It didn’t sound nice.
But Jesus himself came out from behind her. “Mama, what’s . . . Oh, Hermana Ferris?” he said.
His mother said something about Hermana Gabriela and waved in our direction.
Was that an expression of guilt I saw chase across his face?
He was over six feet and walked with a humble hunch, as if he thought being tall was some kind of sin. His hair was thick and curly, just beginning to grow wings around his ears.
“Please, Jesus, for Gabriela. And the children,” Gwen said.
Jesus sighed, then nodded and stepped forward.
His mother licked her fingers and tucked his hair back behind his ears, then said something in Spanish that I suspected was remarkably similar to what I’d have said to one of my sons: Time to get a haircut, or you’ll start to look like a shaggy dog.
He nudged his mother out of the living room, insisting loudly in Spanish that the three of us needed privacy. “What about Gabriela?” he asked. “She’s gone now.”
“We wanted to ask you about Celestial Security and why she was so afraid of Bishop Hope in the days before she died,” Gwen said.
Jesus’s face fell, and he seemed to collapse on the worn lime-green sofa. He held his head in his hands. “I warned her. She wouldn’t listen to me,” he muttered.
“Jesus, what do you know about Gabriela’s death?”
His eye twitched, and I thought of what Kurt had said—that people had tells when they didn’t lie often. Finally, Jesus seemed to make a decision. He shook his head and stared Gwen in the eyes. “Nothing. Carlos killed her. They were having an affair. Everyone knows that. The police have made an official statement. He confessed. There can be no question about it.”
But obviously, there was a question. Or an answer. He knew something here, if we could just get him to say it.
“Jesus, you work at Celestial Security. What was your job there before the arrest?” Gwen asked. Her tone was getting harder, though I wasn’t complaining. I agreed that it was time to apply a little more pressure where kindness hadn’t worked.
He hesitated, then answered, “I helped with installations. Equipment and electronics.”
“But you robbed one of the homes a few months ago,” Gwen said.
He bowed his head. “I did.” This was all on the public record, no reason for him to deny it.
“Why did you do it?”
He glanced up for a moment, incredulity on his face. “For money. Of course. Why else would I do it?”
Gwen looked at me, and I nodded for her to continue. “I think there was another reason, Jesus. Were you asked to rob them? Since they’d gone off the monthly monitoring system?”
He just stared at Gwen without answering. I couldn’t tell if it was in anger or resignation.
“Did someone in the company ask you to do it? Greg Hope, for instance?”
“No,” he said emphatically. “No, of course not. I did it on my own.”
Did he protest too much?
“But when you got out of jail, Greg Hope rehired you at Celestial Security. Why was that? Why trust you after what you’d done? You’d used company information to hurt their customers. Wouldn’t you be the last person they’d want to take back?” I asked, unable to stop myself from stepping in now.
“I told him I was sorry. I promised him I would never do it again.” There was something behind Jesus’s eyes that resembled satisfaction, or even pleasure. Maybe he’d had some kind of leverage against Hope?
“I’m not sure I believe that, Jesus. Are you sure you don’t want to tell the tr
uth?” I said in my best motherly tone.
A faint smile now. “What would I get out of that?” he asked.
“Knowing that the truth about Gabriela comes out,” Gwen said.
That shut Jesus down immediately. “Gabriela had nothing to do with any of this,” he insisted, standing up. The whole tone of the conversation had just changed, and I knew we’d lost him.
“Wait,” Gwen said. “What about your case? Did you have a court-appointed lawyer?”
“No,” said Jesus.
“Bishop Hope paid for your lawyer, didn’t he?” she pressed.
“He is a good man. He cares for the people in the ward,” Jesus said, and moved to the door.
“Did he have you plead guilty?” Gwen insisted. “Did you ever think about whether that was in your best interest or Hope’s?”
“It was a good deal,” he said, more slowly now. His hand was on the doorknob, but he hadn’t turned it. “They said it was a good deal.”
“Can’t you see that he used you? Just like he used Bertran. And Gabriela. And Carlos. It’s all for his own sake. He’s letting you take the fall for his crimes. All of you.”
This was all guesswork, but I didn’t try to cut her off. Maybe it would make Jesus think twice about his position, even if I doubted he’d call us back later.
“Please leave now,” said Jesus, and opened the door.
“Jesus, tell us what was going on. How was Gabriela involved?” Gwen asked too loudly as we walked through.
Jesus’s only answer was to shut the door firmly in our faces.
“This is it, I can feel it,” Gwen said, her fists tightening at her sides. “That told me everything I needed to know. Hope’s going down for this.”
For what? She’d gone too far, and even if I wanted to believe her theory, I wasn’t sure I could.
“Gabriela must have found out what was going on and threatened to expose him,” Gwen went on.
“We can’t assume that,” I said.
Gwen nodded to Jesus’s door. “He said that Gabriela was involved.”
Not of This Fold Page 24
