They crossed back over the Mississippi into Illinois, and Georgia drove a few miles to a motel south of Nauvoo. A smaller version of a Motel 6, it had two floors with twelve rooms on each floor. The parking lot was almost full. Its rating was only two stars, but it was clean and free of bedbugs. JoBeth told them she had made sure of that before she made reservations.
Georgia was tired from driving all day so after they checked in, she took a nap, too. So did Vanna and Charlie. At seven, they headed out to a restaurant in Nauvoo’s Woodruff Hotel, the only hotel in Nauvoo with a four-star rating from Yelp. A red brick three-story Victorian building with white trim, the hotel sat on the main street of the town. A statue of a man with a hatchet in his hand stood on the grounds.
Directly across the street was a large freshly painted white building with Gothic arches over most of the windows and a tower looming above. Clearly some kind of church or monument, Georgia thought.
“What is that?” Georgia said, “It sure looks out of place in this small town.”
“I’ll tell you when we sit down,” JoBeth said.
“You know it?”
She nodded. “In a way. I read up on the history.”
Inside, the hotel had been carefully refurbished in an early American style, but the restaurant was simply a huge buffet serving traditional food. Something for everyone. They started with a glass of wine.
After a sip, JoBeth leaned toward Vanna and Georgia. “This entire town was once home for the Latter-Day Saints.”
“The Mormons?” Georgia asked.
JoBeth nodded. “Back in the 1840s, I believe, Nauvoo was as big as Chicago, and the Mormons had plans for it to become the largest city in Illinois.”
“Really?” Vanna asked. Although she’d never done well in social studies, she’d confessed to Georgia one night, she was mature enough now to take an interest in history.
“Well,” Georgia said, “at that point Chicago wasn’t much more than a swamp. No Loop. No Gold Coast. Fort Dearborn was the center of town.”
“But why did they pick this place, Mom?” Vanna said.
JoBeth spoke softly, as if she didn’t want to be overheard. “In the 1830s—remember that’s thirty years before the Civil War—The Latter-Day Saints lived mostly in Missouri. But non-Mormons hated them and their strange religion. Eventually the hatred became violent, and the governor of Missouri expelled them from the state and threatened that any Mormon who didn’t leave would be killed.”
“Wow,” Vanna said. “Why did people hate them so much?”
“The Mormons claimed their church was divinely inspired—you know, by God. Which Christians said was BS. In fact, most non-Mormons thought the entire thing was a fraud. Created by a few con men and charlatans, in fact, who became their leaders.”
Georgia took a long sip of wine. “Hmmmm. Con men playing God?”
“Worse.”
“Criminals? Murderers? Now you’re getting into my turf.”
JoBeth acknowledged Georgia with a nod. “So, after Missouri, Joseph Smith, their leader, bought this town and all the Mormons moved here. It used to be called Commerce, but he renamed it Nauvoo, which means “beautiful place” in Hebrew. That’s when he started building that temple. Unfortunately, he was eventually killed by a mob of non-Mormons.”
“What did he do?”
“Long story. But a newspaper in Nauvoo attacked him for polygamy and claimed he was setting himself up as a king. So he destroyed the newspaper’s press. He and his brother were thrown into jail and were waiting to go on trial when a mob attacked the jail and shot both of them. Oh, he was running for president at the same time, too.”
“So he was assassinated,” Georgia said.
“I guess you could say that. Of course, to Mormons, he became a martyr.”
“Man, that is some story,” Vanna said. “It would make a great movie.”
“There’s a statue of him and his brother on horseback in front of the temple.”
“Is that when they moved out to Utah?” Georgia asked.
Jobeth nodded again. “Brigham Young led them out there. Over ten thousand of them. But some didn’t go.”
“What do you mean?”
“A few Mormon families stayed in this area. There’s a book that came out about their leader, William Strang. He was a shiftless bum before he proclaimed himself their new leader.” JoBeth sighed. “The sad part is that a lot of Mormons here believed him. Even when he declared he was a god.”
“So the religion really is based on lies and fraud,” Vanna said.
“Of course it is,” Georgia replied. “But so are most religions. Take the Catho—”
“Careful, Georgia.” Her mother cut in. “I know you don’t mean that.” JoBeth had been a practicing Catholic. Once upon a time.
Georgia, who had no use for any religion now, shut up but flashed her mother an irritated glance. “It’s still happening.” She paused and shook her head. “People believe in saviors who turn out to be fakes.”
JoBeth looked like she wanted to say something when their waitress, a round young girl with a braid that stretched to the middle of her back, interrupted them with plates for the buffet. “Do you want a butter plate for the baby?” she asked.
“No,” Vanna said. I’ll feed him from mine.”
“Okay.” The waitress looked at JoBeth, then Georgia. Her eyes widened and she gasped.
“Something wrong?” Georgia said.
“You’re back? What happened?” The waitress kept her eyes on Georgia, who gave her a strange look.
“Back from where? What are you talking about?”
The waitress’s expression turned to incredulity, and her mouth fell open. She looked down. “I’m sorry. I…I thought you were someone else.”
Georgia tipped her head to the side. “Who?”
The waitress looked Georgia up and down. “It’s crazy,” she said. “You look just like her.”
“Who? Does she live here?”
The waitress bit her tongue. “Um. I…I don’t know.”
Georgia’s PI instincts took over. “You know someone well enough to think I look just like her, but you don’t know where she lives?”
“It…It’s not like that,” the girl stammered. Her cheeks colored. “It’s nothing. Sorry I interrupted your dinner.” Her tone became artificially cheerful. “By the way, you can go through the buffet as many times as you like.” She turned and hurried away.
At the table no one spoke for a moment. Then JoBeth said, “Well, they say everyone has a double. Looks like you do, too.”
Georgia shrugged. “I wonder who she is.”