“Our family does things differently,” Mary Ann said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Then the manager of the store, Owen Clarkston, sidled up behind them. Sam had been aware of him the whole time and knew he’d been paying attention to them and the conversation. He’d been a major part of her plan. He’d been giving her lascivious glances the entire time she’d been working here, mostly when he thought she wasn’t watching. What he didn’t realize was that it was her job to watch every move everybody in the building made. So she saw him and made little accommodations to ensure his interest continued, even though it made her physically ill to have him perusing her body with his lizard eyes.
“You should have someone with you, Mary Ann,” he said. “I’m sure they won’t mind if Sam comes. I’ll talk to my father.”
“Why wouldn’t they let someone be there?” Sam had asked innocently, as though she had no idea who the Clarkstons were and what a marriage in this clan signified.
Mary Ann glanced quickly over at Owen, then back down at her feet. She knew better than to say anything, but Owen had made this overture, and Sam didn’t miss the desperation on Mary Ann’s face. She really wanted Sam to be there with her, although she knew her desire alone would never make it happen.
“They will if I say so,” Owen said, puffing up his chest a little.
Jackpot,
Sam thought.
“Great. Glad you have such important friends, Mary Ann. What should I wear? What time should I be there? Actually, uh, where should I be?”
Mary Ann turned and ran off, headed for the restroom.
“Jitters,” Owen said. “She’ll be fine. She’s not the first bride to get nervous. But getting married to one of God’s holy priesthood bearers is the only way into the Celestial Kingdom. She knows that.”
He gave Sam another once-over and then touched her chin. It took all she had not to haul off and punch him in the nose.
“Why don’t you take your cute little self in there and see if she’s okay. And tell her to hurry out, because we got customers.”
Sam smiled, trying not to gag as it felt like worms were crawling up and down her throat. She turned and walked to the bathroom. She couldn’t let this man see her distaste. She had a job to do.
“What’s the matter, Mary Ann? Why aren’t you happy?” Sam asked when she discovered the girl sobbing in the restroom. Of course, Sam understood a lot more than she had let on. Her every instinct told her to sneak this poor girl out of the store right then and there—get her the hell away from these evil people who believed God was talking to them and only them.
“I don’t want to marry him. He’s my … He’s my … I don’t want it. I don’t want to be here.”
“Then don’t,” Sam said. “You are a woman and you have rights. This is not the eighteen hundreds. You don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t know my family.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Look, I can help you. I can help you get out, if you want out,” Sam said, knowing the words were a mistake even as she said them. She had to stay in her cover and play the part. But this girl was desperate. She needed help. She needed to escape.
“How?” Mary Ann whispered. “How can you get me out of this? It’s my destiny.”
“I can find you a safe place. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”
Sam didn’t miss the dawning of hope in the girl’s eyes just as there was a sharp rap on the bathroom door.
“Hey, what are you two doing in there?” Owen yelled.
“Coming, coming,” Mary Ann called, wiping her eyes.
“We’ll talk later,” Sam told her.
But they never did.
That night Gage pulled Sam off the case. And Mary Ann disappeared. Her body was found three months later, out in the desert on property owned by the Clarkstons. They claimed she had run away. The body had been too decomposed to identify a cause of death.
* * *
Sam’s lungs finally stopped fighting for air, the ache in her side eased, and her calves only throbbed slightly. She couldn’t run from her ghosts. She wasn’t sure why she kept trying.
Because you’re damned stubborn and you always have been? Gage is here to help. Let him.
Sam shook her head.
I don’t need his help, Callie. I know the look you have on your face, I can see it like you were here by my side just yesterday, and I’m telling you, I can figure this out. I can keep more kids from dying.
The answer was a whispering breeze through the tops of the trees. For once, Callie wasn’t talking. Recalcitrant, even in Sam’s mind Callie was still the teenager she had been when she died. She never cooperated.
“I need some answers.”
“Don’t we all.”
Sam whirled around to see Gage standing three feet away, a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Speak of the devil,” she muttered.
“You wound me. I come in peace. Bringing gifts, no less.” He held the coffee cups out, and Sam couldn’t help but sniff the air. Good coffee was one of her weaknesses, a total departure from the way she was raised. While good, believing Mormons didn’t drink coffee, Sam Montgomery drank it by the pot. Perhaps another way of sticking it to her past.
And Gage remembered that weakness.
Sam glared at the ruggedly handsome man standing before her. He wore faded Levi 501s, button fly—always button fly for him—
Stop. Get your mind out of the gutter.
He had on a tan Roosters Polygamy Pale Ale T-shirt that pronounced: “I tried Polygamy in Utah.” Over the top of the T-shirt was a large, short-sleeved black shirt with an understated white print. From where she stood it looked like a Kokopelli design. Since Gage was known to take off for days in the southern Utah desert alone, it suited him. He also wore an NBA Jazz basketball cap over his dark, crisply shorn hair. Under the cap, his dark eyebrows furrowed and his blue eyes seemed to spark electricity. Nothing about his attire really went together, and yet on him was all in perfect synchronicity. The black shirt was large and open and untucked, and she knew that on his right hip, camouflaged by the shirt, he had a Smith & Wesson model 357PD in .41 Magnum—a revolver that didn’t jam like an automatic, which made it simpler and more reliable. His preferred “off-duty” gun. The department made him carry a Glock. But on his own time, he made his own choices—ones that made him both dangerous and, to her, incredibly alluring. The rough-and-tumble instability of her youth led Sam to want to always be protected. She never went anywhere without a weapon. She knew Gage was the same.
Even in his casual attire he held an appeal and charisma she could not understand. She did not want him to be attractive to her, or to anyone else for that matter. She wanted him to be ugly and stubby and … bald. Bald would be good.
How about it, Callie? Can you help me out here? Ask God to send Gage a little bald curse?
“You’re thinking bad thoughts about me, aren’t you?” Gage said drolly, folding his arms across his chest, which of course emphasized his muscular build. He had never been much of a talker—Sam had always assumed that his stint in the Army had taken care of any outgoing tendencies he might have once had. He didn’t speak much about those days, but they were in his eyes, the lines on his face. And yet, history aside, his subtle sense of humor was always there, constantly simmering beneath the surface.
“I am not,” she protested, but it lacked enthusiasm.
Who am I trying to kid? Even bald, the man would be hot.
“Why are you here?”
“To talk about the case, of course.”
“It’s Sunday. I’m off-duty.”
“A cop is never really off-duty. Especially a detective.”
“Gage, why are you doing this? Why don’t you go back to your little haven in Salt Lake, and leave me with my case. I—
we
don’t need your help.”
“You say that, but you aren’t even giving me a chance to offer my expertise.”
“I know. You’re always right, and everyone else is wrong, and you call the shots. And pull people off cases when they are making headway. That kind of expertise is one I can do without, thank you very much.”
“I don’t call all the shots, but when I’m in charge I have to make the decisions. When it’s life or death it’s my ass on the line if something goes wrong. I don’t intend to let anyone die under my watch.”
“Well, it isn’t your watch this time. It’s not your case. You made sure I failed miserably in Salt Lake, and if you’ve come here to do it again, it’s not going to work.”
“Sam…”
“No, no ‘Sam.’ No saying my name or sweet talk, or buttering me up by looking at me like that. This is my case, and I will only say it one more time. I do not need your help.”
“Why is it I don’t believe that?”
“Believe what, that it’s my case?”
“No, that you’re only going to say it one more time. Because I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well, maybe you aren’t, but I am. Good-bye, Gage.”
She turned and ran up the steps to her front door, pulling the key out of her fanny pack. She turned to see he stood watching her but didn’t follow.
Why did you turn, idiot?
“I have coffee,” he called as she slipped the key in the lock.
“No thanks. Too hot for coffee today.”
She went into her house and shut the door, leaning back against it, palms down, as though to keep out evil demons. Or one sexy detective.
He might be here to stay, but she damn sure didn’t have to make it easy for him.
When she pulled away from the door and looked out the peephole, she saw he was gone.
Good.
She waited for relief to wash over her, but instead she found herself aching, in the very core of what made her tick. He’d left a hole that she was afraid would never be filled by anyone else. And she’d be damned if it would ever be filled again, especially by him.
So why did she feel so lost?
TEN
Later that day, Sam dropped in on her parents—she always spent Sunday afternoons watching her father treat her mother like a living, breathing doll.
“Hi, Dad. How was church?”
“Oh, we didn’t go today,” her father answered as he stared across the kitchen table into her eyes. He broke the gaze and turned to the woman sitting at his side. “Ruthie just wasn’t feeling up for it, were you, dear?”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry you had to miss. Maybe next Sunday I can come over and sit with Mom while you go to your meetings. At least to Priesthood.” The truth was, Sam’s father hadn’t left the house to attend church meetings for years. Not since her mother lost her mind. But it was a game Sam and her father had been playing for quite a long time, and she didn’t know how to break the cycle. Or maybe she was just afraid that any break would be a permanent one, irreparable, like a crack that quickly fissured up and outward on a windshield until it was nothing but shattered glass. While the church sisters would come visit during the week, they wouldn’t miss their own weekly meetings and thus affect their eternal salvation. She didn’t really understand why her father wouldn’t go back to the Church he held so dear. She had offered to sit with her mother on Sundays time and time again. Why wouldn’t he go, unless he held more against God than he would ever willingly admit?
“Oh, I’m betting Ruthie will be more up for it next week. She just had a rough night last night, didn’t you, Ruthie?”
An abrupt twist of her head almost sent Sam crashing from her chair to the floor.
“Mom? Dad, did you see that? She just shook her head. She just…”
“What do you mean, Sammy?”
“She moved. She shook her—”
“Oh, Sammy, she moves all the time. I’ve been telling you kids that for years. You just don’t listen. You just don’t hear what I hear.”
“She talks?”
“In ways. You just have to learn to listen. That’s all.”
Sam continued to stare at her mother, eyebrows furrowed as she perused the lined face of the woman who now seemed so oblivious to anything around her. Had Sam imagined the reaction, the sharp twist of her mother’s head in response to Sam’s father’s comment about a rough night?
What about last night had her mother so agitated? Was she really agitated?
“Dad, you said she communicates. I have to admit I’ve never seen it. But that seemed like a real response to me.”
“Sam, of course she responds. She eats; she sleeps. I put food in her mouth and she chews. She’s still there, and you kids know it. It just takes more work to get through to her. That’s the problem with your generation, no patience. Well, I have patience.”
Sam sighed. “Yes, Dad, you do. Unending patience.” She reached across the table and put her hand over his old, weathered one. “You have the patience of a saint.”
Her father just chuckled and pulled his hand away. “Don’t be condescending, Sammy. It doesn’t suit you and it irritates me. Now I need to get your mother ready for bed.”
“It’s seven o’clock,” Sam said.
“I told you, she had a rough night, and now she needs her rest. Come on, Ruthie, time for bed.”
He stood up and walked to her chair, putting his hands on her elbows and guiding her upward out of the chair. She cooperated, shuffling away from the table with Sam’s father following behind.
“Good-bye, Sammy. Come again soon,” her father said over his shoulder.
She had been dismissed. What a strange relationship her parents shared, and yet it always seemed like everyone else was a complete outsider. Nobody else believed her mother was “still there.” Not Sam. Not Susanna. Certainly not the neighbors or ward members. They’d given up on that long ago. And yet her father never, ever gave up hope.
What would it be like to be that optimistic? That patient? Sam stood up and walked to the back door, letting herself out into the large yard where she had played as a child. The tree was still there. She’d begged her father to cut it down, remove it from their lives, but he’d refused. The tree was not at fault. Of course it wasn’t, and yet …
She wondered if she could do it herself. What would happen if she revved up a motor-driven saw and decimated the tree that had changed their lives so drastically?