Gone to Glory Page 15

  Traveler looked around him, at the faces of the Flock of Zion. “I’d say they were loose already.”

  Eldredge came at him like a placekicker. His toe caught Traveler in the groin. Traveler’s body spasmed face-forward into the tainted snow. Slush filled his mouth. The bile in his throat turned gritty.

  He fell onto his side, and Eldredge kicked him again, this time in the mouth. The others joined in.

  Traveler didn’t realize the kicking had stopped until Eldredge said, “By spilling your blood here today, we’ve helped you atone for your sins.”

  Hands grabbed hold of Traveler and dragged him to the Jeep.

  “If you come back, you’ll atone with your life. Now get out.”

  Somehow Traveler selected the four-wheel drive and started the engine. He didn’t pass out until he parked by the wall that sheltered the graves of Aunt Libby’s beloved dogs.

  25

  The drive down from the plateau took hours. Traveler didn’t remember much of it. By the time he parked in front of Kate Ferguson’s house it was close to midnight. The windows were dark. The thought crossed his mind that he ought to drive on to a motel, that he wouldn’t be welcome at such an hour.

  He was about to restart the engine when his vision blurred. That had been happening off and on since leaving Glory. Each time, he’d pulled over to the side of the road to wait for his eyes to clear. Concussion was his diagnosis. He’d suffered them before while playing football.

  After a moment, he opened the door and swung his legs out of the Jeep. It was the first time he’d moved in some time. Sudden dizziness toppled him against the fender. Pain blossomed from his battered ribcage. His eyes watered. A worm of nausea twisted in his gut, then came crawling up his throat bent on escape.

  He swallowed convulsively and eased onto what passed for a running board. His head sank down between his knees. Air whistled through his swollen nose.

  By the time he was ready to move again, memory told him he’d made a mistake. Kate had said she was driving to Salt Lake to see Pepper. That meant he’d have to go to a motel after all.

  He raised his head. Her car was still parked in the driveway. Come to think of it, that made sense. There would have been plenty of time for her to complete a round-trip.

  His own trip to the front door reminded him of just how battered and stiff he was. Knocking on the door jarred his head enough to make him wince.

  Traveler leaned against the jamb and closed his eyes, waiting for the sound of footsteps, for the porch light to come on. He imagined Kate in a bathrobe, something soft. She’d take him in her arms and comfort him. She’d open the robe and …

  He jerked himself upright and knocked again, harder. The sound shattered the night. When nothing happened he tried the door and found it locked.

  That could be her second car parked there in the driveway, he decided, left behind whenever she went away. The thought made him dizzy again, because it meant no rest for the moment, no comfort. Certainly no bathrobe.

  If he could only lie down for a few minutes. That would make all the difference. He thought of the perfectly good couch inside that was going to waste. Surely she wouldn’t begrudge him that. Of course not, he told himself, and applied pressure to the door. But it was one of those solid pioneer models, without any give to it at all.

  He left the porch, moving slowly in the darkness, and made his way around to the back of the house. There, the screen door was unlatched. The inner door stood open.

  “Anybody home?” He crossed the threshold and groped for a light switch. Hairs prickled on the back of his neck a moment before his fingers found the switch.

  Kate was hanging upside down from one of the ceiling timbers. For an instant her waxen face appeared to have two mouths. Then Traveler realized that her throat had been cut. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming his anger.

  The cross-beam, head high for him, was low enough to allow Kate’s arms to dangle in a puddle of her own blood. Some of it had been used to draw an A on her forehead.

  He knew that mark for what it was. A for atonement. Blood atonement as preached by Brigham Young and his followers, handed down through the years to the likes of Zeke Eldredge.

  Shaking, Traveler backed out of the kitchen and headed for Kate’s only neighbor there at the edge of town. The blue aura of color television was glowing through lace curtains next door. When he knocked, white light washed it away.

  The curtains fluttered .

  “Who are you?” a woman called from behind them.

  “A detective.”

  “You can’t fool me. Fillmore’s not big enough to have detectives. All we’ve got’s a sheriff.”

  “I’m a private detective.” Traveler held his ID up against the window glass.

  The curtains parted enough to produce a peephole. “What’s your name?” she said. “I can’t read small print like that.”

  “Moroni Traveler.”

  “Just a minute.”

  The gray-haired woman who opened the door wore a knitted afghan over her shoulders. She was elderly, well into her seventies, but not the least bit frail. She nudged spectacles along the ridge of her nose to get a better look at him through the screen door.

  “I wouldn’t normally open up this time of night, young man. But seeing as how you’re named Moroni … Besides, I saw you go into Katie’s place yesterday. Not that I’m a busybody, you understand. It’s just that we look out for each other.”

  “Did you see anybody there today?”

  “Katie’s business is her own. Besides, when a man comes around in the middle of the night looking like you do, a woman doesn’t know what to think. Were you in some kind of accident?”

  “More or less.”

  “Coming from a man your size, that means a fight. Is Katie involved?”

  When he didn’t answer, her eyes widened. “Something’s happened to her. I should have realized that the first time I saw your face. There’s more than bruises showing there.”

  “I’d better call the sheriff,” Traveler said.

  She unlatched the screen door and started out onto the porch. “Kate will be needing me.”

  He gently barred her way. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Her spectacles fogged.

  “Could I have a glass of water?” he said. “Mrs. …?”

  “Edna. Everybody calls me Aunt Edna.” She brushed her glasses onto her forehead and wiped her eyes with her fingers. “Come in. The phone’s there by the TV.”

  As soon as he was inside the house, the woman

  disappeared through the nearest doorway. After a moment he heard water running. He sank into a chair imprinted with the old woman’s body. The smell of toilet water roses engulfed him.

  He picked up the phone, dialed the operator and asked for Sheriff Emmett Culverwell. When the man came on the line Traveler told him where he was and what had happened.

  “Two minutes,” Culverwell said. “No more. Don’t move until I get there.”

  Edna returned the moment Traveler hung up. She was carrying two glasses of wine. Her eyes were as red as the liquid.

  “I brought something stronger than water,” she said.

  “It’s elderberry. Some folks say it’s not against the Word of Wisdom for medicinal purposes.”

  He sipped tentatively.

  “I hope it’s not too sweet.”

  It was, but warmed his stomach just the same.

  A siren wailed in the distance.

  “The damn fools will wake the whole town,” she said.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions,” Traveler said.

  “I know what’s going on. You being here with the sheriff on his way means someone killed my Katie. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  �
��What do you want to know?”

  “Did you see anyone next door today? Anyone suspicious?”

  “One of those damned muttonheads, by the look of her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The polygamists who live up in the mountains. They

  call themselves the Lambs of God or some such nonsense. Muttonheads, I call them. Dressing like pioneers.

  This one here today was like all the others, wearing gingham and trying to look like one of Brigham Young’s wives.”

  “What time was that?”

  “It was just getting dark but I saw her clearly enough.”

  “Are you certain it was a woman?” Traveler asked, thinking of Zeke Eldredge, wanting him.

  “I’m not blind, young man.”

  “Was there anyone with her?”

  “There could have been a dozen of them in that van,” she said. “But if there was I didn’t see them.”

  Traveler thought of the battered minivans in Glory. “What kind of van was it?”

  “Like I said, it was getting dark. But I could see that it was banged up some. It was covered with mud, too.”

  The sheriffs car shrieked to a stop next door.

  Traveler made a quick collect call to his father, explaining the situation.

  “When will I see you?” Martin asked.

  “I’m in no condition to drive at the moment,” Traveler said, so his condition wouldn’t come as a complete shock. “I ran into Zeke Eldredge and his friends. A few bruises, that’s all. At the worst a mild concussion.”

  “I knew it. You can’t mess with religion, not in this state.”

  “God had nothing to do with what happened.”

  26

  Traveler spent the next hour or so waiting in the Jeep. He had an armed, nervous-looking volunteer deputy for company.

  “We wouldn’t want a guest like yourself getting lonely,” Sheriff Culverwell had declared when he’d arrived. “So Jimmy here has agreed to hold your hand until I can devote more time to you personally.”

  But Jimmy was sitting in the back seat with his hands holding on to a .357.

  “Is there any chance of coffee?” Traveler asked the deputy when boredom finally got the better of him.

  “Not until I’m relieved.”

  Traveler leaned back against the plastic headrest, closed his eyes, and thought about Kate Ferguson, trying to remember how she’d looked alive. But the image that came to him was of her hanging upside down.

  He switched to Zeke Eldredge, imagining an A etched on the man’s forehead. They still had the firing squad for executions in Utah, Traveler reminded himself. A holdover from the days of blood atonement, if historians were to be believed. The thought failed to cheer him.

  His eyes snapped open. Body heat had fogged the Jeep’s windows. Traveler wiped a hole in the windshield and peered out. Kate’s house blazed with light. The only movement came from shadows against the curtains.

  He rolled down the window an inch or so, savoring the fresh, cool air. Breathe deeply, he told himself, relax. He leaned back once more and closed his eyes.

  Seemingly without transition, he was asleep and dreaming that he was a boy again. It was the night of Pepper Dalton’s home run. The three of them—Traveler, his father, and Willis Tanner—were waiting outside Derks Field, hoping to get Pepper’s autograph. It was late, nearly midnight, when the shortstop came out of the clubhouse. By then all the other fans had gone home.

  “You’re my favorite Bee,” Traveler said shyly.

  “Mine too,” Willis put in.

  “They want your autograph,” Martin explained.

  Pepper signed Willis’ program first. But while he was doing that, Traveler panicked. He’d thrown his program away.

  He tugged on his father’s arm and whispered, “Do you have any paper?”

  Martin searched his pockets and wallet, but without success.

  In desperation Traveler took off his baseball cap and handed it to the shortstop. Pepper signed on the light blue brim.

  Someone rapped on the window. Traveler woke up wondering whatever happened to that cap.

  “The rule of thumb,” Sheriff Culverwell said when Traveler had lowered the glass, “is the husband or boyfriend did it.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, Pepper Dalton is still in jail in Salt Lake.”

  “Could be you fall into the latter category.” He shook a finger at Traveler’s face. “Could be she gave you that black eye and those bruises.”

  Traveler stretched. It was a mistake. Jimmy jabbed a pistol barrel in the back of his neck.

  “You’d better step out,” the sheriff said, though it wasn’t certain whether he meant Traveler or the deputy.

  They both got out of the car. The area was illuminated by headlights from three vehicles, one an ambulance that had been angled to face the front of the house. All had engines running to keep their batteries charged.

  “It’s all right, Jimmy,” the sheriff said. “I’ll handle him now. In the meantime you see if the doctor needs a hand inside with the body bag.”

  Jimmy nodded, trying to look like an old hand at murder. But his face gave him away. He reminded Traveler of a boy on his first date.

  As soon as the deputy disappeared around the side of the house, Culverwell took Traveler by the arm and led him up the front walk. The stark light had bleached all color from the concrete underfoot.

  Culverwell said, “There’s something I want you to look at up here on the porch. Be careful where you step.”

  The porch consisted of a low concrete slab, no more than three feet wide and six feet long. Half a dozen dark blotches, like Rorschachs, stained it. A partial footprint showed in one of the stains.

  “I didn’t notice them when I walked up here in the dark,” Traveler said.

  He raised one foot and then the other. The same dark material was wedged into the tread of one sole. Traveler slipped off the shoe and took a whiff.

  “Tobacco,” Culverwell said for him. “You wouldn’t happen to chew, would you?”

  Traveler grimaced to show stain-free teeth. “It’s like I said before, Sheriff. Zeke Eldredge. Or one of his followers. They all chew the damn stuff. They say God has given them a new revelation on the subject.”

  “So I’ve heard.” The sheriff made a show of cringing.

  “It’s even been used to justify all the chewing that goes on among members of Pepper’s baseball team.”

  “Eldredge is a violent man. I have the bruises to prove it.”

  “Someone’s bringing him in for questioning right now.”

  “I’d like to be there when you talk to him.”

  “That I can’t allow. It would violate his rights, and my conscience.”

  “You say that like a bishop, not a sheriff.”

  “I used to think I could keep one job separate from the other. But the older I get the less able I am to cope. Even on one level.”

  Culverwell knelt down to touch a spot of tobacco. “It’s still wet.”

  “Have you taken samples?”

  “Even in Fillmore we know enough to do that. They tell me you can get blood type from spit these days. Of course there’s no guarantee that this tobacco has anything to do with Kate’s murder.”

  “I’ve never met a cop who liked coincidences,” Traveler said.

  The sheriff studied his dirty finger for a moment before rubbing it in the grass. “You’d be locked up right now if we’d found chewing tobacco on you.”

  “Somehow I don’t think I’m one of your suspects.”

  “Aren’t you?” The sheriff’s knees popped when he got to his feet. “Kate asked me to perform her wedding ceremony. Did you know that? It couldn’t have been a temple wedding, not until they were both accepted into the church in good standing, but I was s
till happy for her.”

  A long sigh deflated him. He gulped air in order to continue speaking. “She should have married a long time ago. I told her that, too, when I agreed to perform the service. Passion is for the young, I told her. Do you know what she said to that?”

  He paused, shaking his head to forestall an answer. “She said, ‘I didn’t meet Pepper when I was young.’”

  His head continued its protesting movement. “I sometimes think that when we get older we just go through the motions. Even when it comes to marriage and sex. By middle age we’re running on automatic pilot. The memories we’ve stored in our youth are what see us through. That’s what life is all about, you know. Memories. They hold you together when everything else fails. I told Kate just that, that she and Pepper wouldn’t have any memories to share.”

  A door slammed at the rear of the house. A moment later two men came out of the side yard bearing the bagged body on an old-fashioned stretcher, one without wheels.

  “If I ever find out that you had anything to do with this—” The sheriff broke off to blow his nose.

  “I know,” Traveler said. “I feel the same way.”

  27

  A dawn wake-up call got Traveler out of the Paradise Motel in time to reach Salt Lake for a late breakfast. But by then his father had already left the house.

  A letter-length note, unusual for Martin, was propped against the cornflakes box on the kitchen table.

  Mo,

  When the phone rings in the middle of the night like that, an old man like me thinks the worst.

  You get up figuring someone’s dead. Or hurt maybe. Your heart pounds all the way to the damned phone. You can hardly breathe when you get there.

  Of course, I was worried about you, so hearing from you was fine. Only a mild concussion, you said, as if I was to go back to bed and forget all about it. But that’s easier said than done, especially at my age when a man needs all the sleep he can get. The curse of being a parent is never hearing from your children when you want to. Only when they find the time to think about you. Or need money or bail.

  Anyway, I waited around here as long as I could this morning to see that concussion for myself, but someone has to keep Moroni Traveler & Son open. Or should I say Moroni Traveler & Son and Son?