THIRTY-TWO

Abbie walked through the unlocked front door to the sound of fingers madly clicking away at a keyboard. She walked down the hall to her dad’s study.

“Hi Dad!”

“Abish. So nice to see you.” He stood up, walked around his desk, and hugged her. An uncommon gesture for him, but nice.

“Everything back to normal in terms of the disciplinary council?”

“Yes, I was fully reinstated yesterday evening. The whole thing happened so quickly that I didn’t even miss any classes.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Thank you.”

Abbie felt relief. The Church meant everything to her dad. She couldn’t imagine what his life would be without it.

“I can’t take any credit,” she half-lied. “Brittany was adamant that she wanted to go back. I still have my reservations, but she’s an adult woman capable of making her own decisions.”

“Do you know if she’s returning to Mexico?” he asked.

“I don’t. I know she wants to, but I have a feeling it isn’t entirely her decision to make.”

Her dad was quiet for a moment; then, in a voice just louder than a whisper, he said, “You’re going to keep this Mexico information to yourself, aren’t you?”

“We’re staying focused on the facts of the case.”

“Who is ‘we’?” The lightness in his voice was replaced by suspicion.

Abbie explained the CD and Clarke. Her dad peppered her with questions about the recording. At first he didn’t believe it. Then he wondered if it could have been doctored. Finally, when she mentioned Brother McConkie and Dr. Steiner, he accepted that the CD was exactly what Abbie said it was. He rubbed his temples.

“I’m going to try my best not to cause any trouble. I really am.” A promise she would try to keep.

Her dad was struggling to process the facts. He was a critical thinker, a man who liked to analyze. Here the facts pointed in a direction he didn’t want to look. It was easier, at that moment at least, to doubt the facts rather than accept them.

“Dad,” Abbie said, “you need to be prepared for the possibility that Heber may have been killed by someone at that meeting.”

Her dad clenched his jaw and straightened his spine.

“The idea that someone murdered an Apostle—let alone the idea that an Apostle was murdered by someone in the Church—is preposterous.”

“Okay, Dad.” There was no sense in arguing. “May I take your notebook then? The one you kept for Heber? You won’t be needing it.”

“I don’t know what use it can possibly be.” But that wasn’t a no.

Abbie opened the top drawer of a small chest in the corner of the cluttered study. Recently graded papers were stacked, rather precariously, on top. The notebook wasn’t there.

“It would be here, wouldn’t it?”

Her dad came over to cabinet. “That’s odd. I’m sure I put it back.” He opened all the drawers and lifted the stack of papers.

“I must’ve misplaced it,” he said, sitting back down at his desk.

Abbie didn’t think so. Her dad’s office certainly looked like a disaster, piled high with stacks of paper that rose from the floor like stalagmites, but he always knew exactly where everything was.

He stared at his computer screen. Then started typing.

“Dad? You okay?”

“I’m fine, Abish. I have a lot of work to do. I’m sorry that I’ve misplaced that notebook, but it seems I have.”

Abbie saw irritation in his face.

“Do you want to talk about it?

“Not really.” Her dad leaned forward in his chair. “Abish Taylor, I know this Church is true. I believe our Prophet guides with revelations from our Heavenly Father. Our leaders have chosen a path—thus far—that does not include the practice of plural marriage. In 1978, President Kimball restored the priesthood to black men. Could our current president or some president in the future restore the practice of plural marriage? Yes. Absolutely.”

He was telling her the truth, his truth, anyway.

“I know you think this meeting the night Heber passed away is some kind of smoking gun. I don’t think so at all. What it sounds like is thoughtful deliberation about a sensitive subject. The fact that Port and Heber disagreed can hardly surprise you. They had very different approaches to most things in life. This was certainly not the first time they’d been at loggerheads.”

“But it was the last,” Abbie pointed out.

Her dad flashed her a look that could slice through frozen meat, but she went on.

“If Heber suspected plural marriage was already being practiced …”

“Abbie, I listened to Brittany Thompson. I saw her children and I saw her pregnant belly. I have no reason to suspect her of lying, but I haven’t spoken to President Bragg. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation—”

“A perfectly reasonable explanation?” Her voice was rising, in volume and register. Breathe in. Breathe out.

“Dad, I’ll let you get back to work.” Abbie walked around the desk, leaned over, and kissed her dad’s cheek. “I’m glad you’re doing well.”

“Thank you, Abish. Promise me you won’t jump to hasty conclusions.”

“I promise.”

*   *   *

By the time Abbie got back to Pleasant View, Clarke had settled in the conference room with all the evidence from both crime scenes.

He looked up from the table, holding Heber’s cell phone, when Abbie walked in. “I’ve got confirmed alibis for everyone except Port, Bowen, and Caleb Monson. The way I see it, if we can figure out which one of these men could have been at the top of the cliff when Bryce Strong was killed, we’ll have our man.” Clarke’s productive morning had sparked some much-needed optimism.

“That’s if we think the same person killed both Heber and Bryce Strong.” Abbie hated to be a wet blanket.

“You think it may be different people?” Clarke asked.

“I don’t think we can rule it out at this point. We need an accurate timeline for what happened between when that camera in the boardroom was turned off and when Heber veered off the road. How long does it take to drive from Salt Lake that time of night? Was it possible for Port, Bowen, or Caleb to have raced ahead of Heber?”

“If you take I-15 from the Church Administration Building to Huntsville, it will take about just over fifty minutes. You take 89, it’ll take closer to an hour.”

“That’s less than a ten-minute difference,” Abbie said, pointing out the obvious. If one of the men whose names were circled in red on the whiteboard had killed Heber, he hadn’t left himself a lot of time. He would have been rushed.

Abbie’s mind drifted back to images of that horrible night, that moment when she’d realized the dead drunk driver wasn’t a drunk driver at all. She thought about the story only she had heard from Bryce Strong. She thought about the ME report and the fact that a simple rock had been used to kill a man.

“Is that phone still charged?” Abbie asked.

“It is.” Clarke handed Heber’s phone to Abbie. The last time she’d held it, she had been trying to verify what Eliza had told her. Eliza’s incoming calls still weren’t there. Abbie then scrolled through the outgoing calls. The last call Heber had made before his death was to his wife. It had lasted nearly fifteen minutes. The second-to-last call was to PORT. It had lasted twenty-four minutes.

“What do you think?” Abbie faced the phone to Clarke. He looked at the call history.

“We need to find out about those calls. Let’s talk to Sister Bentsen first. It’ll be simpler.”

Clarke was right. There was good reason to speak with Port, but Abbie had learned the hard way that in this state it was wise to play nice with Church leaders. Abbie had another reason for agreeing with Clarke’s practical approach. She didn’t want to tip her hand. The longer she could keep Port from knowing she knew about the meeting, the better.