Gone to Glory Page 20

“Who are you speaking for now, Willis?” Traveler asked, reaching into his pocket to reassure himself that he still had the document.

  “You’re forgetting something, Mo. Deseret Coal, which is buying Glory from Dalton, belongs to us now.”

  Now was not the time to use the document, Traveler decided. Not out here where he was outnumbered. His hand came out of his pocket empty. “I seem to remember you telling me that the church wasn’t involved.”

  Tanner bowed his head. “I think it’s time we all prayed for the dead.”

  38

  By late afternoon Traveler and his father were back at the Salt Lake Airport. The weather had turned sullen once again, as had Willis Tanner, who’d hitched a ride in their plane. As head of public relations for the church, he warned them to keep their mouths shut until an official press release could be issued from the Hotel Utah. Then he retrieved his car from the executive parking area, leaving them to walk half a mile to where they’d left the Jeep.

  Rain-soaked and suffering from lack of sleep, father and son drove to the Chester Building.

  “I know you need rest,” Traveler said as they left the car in the loading zone. “I’ll take you home after I check the answering machine.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I understand how you feel about Hap. You do what you have to.”

  For once the lobby was empty. Even Nephi Bates had abandoned his post. His portable cassette player was hanging from the starter’s handle. Out of it poured hymns from the Tabernacle Choir.

  Traveler ran the elevator himself. When they reached the third floor, he smelled the pot smoke before he saw it. It was seeping beneath their office door.

  Inside, Mad Bill and Charlie Redwine were reclining in the clients’ chairs, their bare feet gripping the lip of Traveler’s desk. An empty jug of Martin’s red wine stood nearby.

  “Barney let us in out of the rain,” Bill said as soon as he saw the look on Martin’s face. “He didn’t know when you were going to be back, and we didn’t have any place else to go.”

  “We were wet,” Charlie added.

  The smell coming from Bill’s ankle-length robe was a cross between mildewed carpet nap and wet dog fur. “We’ve earned our keep,” Bill said, his big toe moving across the desk top to nudge a notepad. “We’ve been taking messages just like secretaries.”

  “Who called?” Traveler asked,

  Bill retracted his feet and stood up. “Home Run Cecil, he called himself. If you ask me, he was drunk.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Bill pointed at the window to indicate the temple beyond.

  “Do you mean Willis Tanner?” Traveler asked.

  “Who else?”

  Sighing, Martin eased behind his desk and sat down. Hr spun his chair until he was pointing toward the Hotel Utah, which was directly across the street from the temple. “I’d give a lot to be a fly on the wall in the prophet’s penthouse.”

  Traveler picked up the phone. His father lifted his extension to listen in.

  When Traveler got through to the Stratford Hotel in Baltimore, he was tempted to ask for Home Run Cecil. But that had been the man’s nickname in the old Pioneer League. In the big leagues, he’d had to settle for plain Chuck.

  “Mr. Cecil, this is Moroni Traveler in Salt Lake City. I’m a friend of Hap Kilgore’s.”

  “Goddamn. Salt Lake brings back memories, let me tell you. I had a hell of a year in that town of yours. I hit three-twenty-eight with thirty-one homers. Hap’s cleanup hitter, that was me. How the hell is the old boy anyway? He’s getting along in years, but then aren’t we all.”

  “I’m a private detective, Mr. Cecil. Hap hired me to look into a problem for him.”

  “If Hap’s in trouble, I’m your man. Call me Chuck, by the way.”

  “Did you know that Pepper Dalton is about to buy the baseball team here in Salt Lake?”

  “I’ll be goddamned. He always said he would. But I figured it was just bullshit.”

  “He’s going to name them the Bees again.”

  “Let me tell you something, Moroni. I trade and sell baseball cards for a living. Some say, my wife included, that it’s not fit work for a grown man. But I do okay. Good enough, in fact, to tell you right now, I’ll be there sitting in the box seats on the first base line when they throw out the first ball. You can tell Hap I’ll pay for his seat too, and a dinner on the town to boot.”

  “Pepper’s been talking about naming Hap his new manager.”

  “By God, he must have changed, because that doesn’t sound like the Pepper Dalton I remember. A bunch of us used to sit around the clubhouse and talk about what we wanted to do with our lives. Me, I wanted the big leagues. I made it, too. For a year. But Pepper couldn’t hit. So he wanted a team of his own. ‘When I get one,’ he used to say, ‘I’m going to manage it myself.’”

  “What else can you tell me about him?” Traveler asked.

  “I always thought not being able to hit did something to him. You know, soured him. He never laughed unless the laugh was on somebody else. And he was a troublemaker.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It’s been a long time, you’ve got to understand that. Offhand I don’t remember anything specific. But he liked to spread rumors. That I do recall. Rumors about trades, big league scouts being in the stands, things like that. He got a kick out of stirring up the other players. To my way of thinking, it was his way of getting back at those of us who could hit.

  “Thinking back on it, Pepper was what you’d call an operator. Manipulating people, that was his specialty. One of his rumors, I remember now, got a couple of guys so nervous they went into slumps. But maybe that’s what it takes to be a good manager. I don’t know. Me, I’ll vote for the Hap Kilgores of this world. There, by God, is a man with a real sense of humor.”

  Cecil’s laughter was so loud it created static. “Let me tell you what he used to do. He had this woman’s wig he’d put on that bald head of his. The first time he did it, he wore a dress too and walked right into our shower room. You should have seen the guys run for cover. But then that red-faced complexion of his made him one hell of a convincing-looking woman.”

  Martin snapped his fingers for attention and mouthed, “It’s true, then. Hap must have killed them.”

  Traveler, suffering a flash of better-late-than-never enlightenment, shook his head and held up one finger.

  ‘“If Hap tried that these days,” Cecil continued, “they’d call him a pervert.”

  39

  Traveler dropped his father off at the house and changed his clothes before driving on to the Phoebe Clinton Home. By the time he parked under the porte cochere, the eastern half of the valley, including the home, was in bright sunlight. Cloud covered the west side of town.

  Traveler turned his back on the cold wind blowing off the lake and rang the bell. Golly Simpson answered, wearing a white uniform and a forced smile. His head started shaking before Traveler could open his mouth.

  “Sorry,” Simpson said through a grim smile. “Visiting hours have been cut short today. In fact, we’re no longer accepting residents, since the home will be closing soon. Permanently as far as we know.”

  “I’d like to see your sister,” Traveler said.

  “Were you the one who called her about Hap?”

  Traveler shook his head. “That was the sheriff in Fillmore.”

  “Mary’s ill. She has been ever since the call. The fact is, she should be in a hospital if I’m any judge.”

  “I can’t leave without seeing her,” Traveler said, crossing the threshold and forcing Simpson to retreat.

  “Sure, a big man like you enjoys shoving little people around.”

  Traveler started down the hall leading to the solarium where he’d talked to Mary once before.

  “She’s in her room,” Simpson said. “She told me
you’d be coming here sooner or later and that you should be shown in to see her when you did. If it were up to me, I’d call the police.”

  Mary’s room was on the second floor front. Her brother knocked and opened the door in one motion.“Mr. Traveler is here,” he announced gently before stepping to one side to allow Traveler to enter by himself.

  “I’ll be right out here in the hall if you need me, Mary.”

  Soft light came from a small shaded lamp on the nightstand next to the narrow hospital-style bed where the woman lay. Heavy velvet drapes, the same deep blue as the worn carpet, were drawn across the two west-facing windows. Judging by the size of the room, it had been designed as a master suite when the mansion was first built.

  Mary pressed a button on the small control unit she was holding. A motor whirred and the head of the bed began to rise. She didn’t stop it until she was sitting up. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “Please, come sit by me.”

  A straight-backed metal chair was already positioned beside the bed. As soon as he was seated near her, Traveler saw just how much she’d changed. Her face, round and fleshy only yesterday, now looked tight and drawn. Her skin had taken on that translucent quality that comes after a long illness. Her eyes, red-rimmed and swollen, looked too large for her head.

  “I’ve been lying here waiting for you ever since I heard about Hap,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know that.”

  He took a deep breath. The room smelled vaguely medicinal. “Why don’t you save us both a lot of time and trouble and tell me what really happened?”

  The tendons in her neck pulled tight as she raised her head away from the pillows stacked behind her back. “We have dreams, Mr. Traveler. That’s the trouble. We dream things that aren’t to be.” She sighed. Her head sagged back.

  When he reached out to comfort her she drew away from him. “Thank you just the same, but we both know that won’t do any good.”

  “I could come back later, when you’re feeling better.”

  She dismissed that suggestion with a wave of her hand. “We were doomed when Pepper Dalton came to us. With that smile of his, that charm, he told us about Glory and about his sister’s involvement with that man, Zeke Eldredge. He said it was Zeke’s influence that made his Priscilla tum against her own brother. Made her refuse to sell Glory. He asked us to help change her mind.”

  “Why would he come to you?”

  Mary’s head moved in jerks and starts as she looked around the room. “Because that way, Pepper said, we could all realize our dreams. Hap could return to his old Bees. I would be able to save my nursing home. ‘We’ll share and share alike,’ he said. ‘There will be money enough for everybody.’”

  She paused to wipe the tears from her eyes. “He said he’d finally convinced Priscilla to come to Salt Lake and talk things over. ‘She’s coming around. I know it,’ he kept saying. ‘All we’ve got to do now is nail her down.’ That was our job, me and Hap, to convince her that we deserved her trust. That we’d use our share of the money to help the elderly here at the home. ‘Make her love you,’ Pepper kept saying. ‘I know Prissy. You do that and she’ll be a pushover.’”

  “And was she?”

  “We did our best. We went to see her at the Semloh Hotel just like Pepper asked. Do you know what she did when we told her our plans? Laughed in our face, that’s what. She said it was her joke on Pepper, because she’d come to Salt Lake only pretending to waver, to taunt him.”

  “How did Pepper react to that?”

  “That wasn’t all Prissy had to say. She told us she was going to see an attorney while she was here in town. Once that was done, she said, her brother would never get his hands on Glory.”

  Traveler touched the document that he’d transferred to his shirt pocket when he changed clothes. “Did she say why?”

  “She laughed about it. She said she’d found the one way to keep a polygamist faithful. When I asked her what that meant, she said it was none of my business. In fact, that’s when she asked Hap and me to leave.”

  “But you came back.”

  “The sheriff told me that Hap confessed to both murders. That you were a witness to what he said.”

  “I heard what he said, all right. But I didn’t believe all of it. You know that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  Her head twitched, a single nod. “Hap said you were smart, that he shouldn’t have hired you.”

  “Why did he, then?”

  “He didn’t realize it was me he was protecting at first. He thought it was Pepper.”

  “I spoke with one of the old Bees. He told me about Hap and his woman’s wig. It was then I knew he might have been able to get away with a masquerade like that at dusk but never in a hotel in broad daylight.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Traveler. Do you think they have a use for qualified nurses in prison?”

  “I’m certain you’ll be needed there.”

  She was staring straight at him, though her eyes

  appeared to be focused somewhere else in time. One comer of her mouth twitched as she tried to smile.

  “I thought I could change Priscilla’s mind, one woman to another, so I went back to her room. That’s when Kate Ferguson got a good look at me. I was wearing my nurse’s uniform at the time, so there was always the chance that I’d be mistaken for one of the maids. But when I finally told Hap what I’d done, he said we couldn’t risk it.”

  “So his confession was half true. He killed Kate to protect you.”

  “Neither one of us meant to kill anybody. You’ve got to understand that. When I went back, Prissy told me why she was doing it. I didn’t believe her at the time. I thought she was only being vindictive. I should have known better.”

  “About what?”

  “That her brother is a user of people. That he took us in, me and Hap, just like he does everybody. I should have listened to her. She said Pepper had ruined her life and that now she was going to ruin his in return. ‘We women have to stick together,’ she said, ‘against men like him.’ Then she laughed so hard she got hiccups and couldn’t talk for a while. I should have walked out then, but l didn’t. I got her a glass of water and waited for her to calm down. ‘Go back and tell Pepper I’m on his side,’ she told me. ‘Tell him we’ll sell Glory and get rich. Then when the papers are ready to sign I’ll laugh in his face.’ That’s when she started laughing again and showed me a bottle of champagne that Pepper had sent over by messenger in anticipation of a celebration.”

  Mary’s right hand, the one nearest Traveler, raised from the bed. She brought her fingers up close to her face and studied them.

  “He’d sent her a ceremonial ball and bat, too, that were to be used on opening day when the new Salt Lake City Bees were his. She was laughing again, trying to open the bottle, when I picked up that bat and hit her. I didn’t want to kill her. I wasn’t even aiming for her head. It just happened. But when I saw her lying there, I wasn’t sorry. All I could think about was Hap getting back into baseball. Maybe I intended to kill her all along for Hap’s sake. I don’t know. But Pepper’s the one I should have killed. He never intended to keep his promises to us.”

  “I wish we could prove that,” Traveler said, and stood up. “You’re going to need a lawyer. In this town, Sam Howe has the most juice.”

  Mary shook her head and closed her eyes. The sigh that escaped her made Traveler wince. He left the room and went looking for Golly Simpson, who’d abandoned his post in the hallway and taken shelter in his sister’s office.

  “I need some more answers,” Traveler told him.

  From behind the safety of Mary’s desk Simpson said, “You’d better leave. I called the police. They’re on their way.”

  “That’s fine. Your sister has something to tell them.” Simpson twitched and started to push back from the desk. Traveler st
epped around it, cutting off the man’s only route of escape.

  “As you said before,” Traveler reminded him, “guys like me love shoving people around. So just give me an excuse.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why were you following me that first day at Derks Field?”

  “It was Hap I was following.”

  “Why?”

  “Pepper came to me with a proposition. He said he was coming into money and could soon offer me a full-time job. In the meantime, he wanted to know what my future brother-in-law was up to.”

  “The owner of the Saints, Jessie Gilchrist, told me you were working for him.”

  “Not really. All he wanted was a buyer. That made him Pepper’s man too.”

  “Like we all were,” Traveler said.

  40

  Traveler stopped at the Brigham Street Pharmacy and had one of their double-thick malts. Its slick consistency, that of motor oil, reminded him of Willis Tanner. The reminiscence sent Traveler to the old-fashioned phone booth in the back.

  The church’s all-purpose telephone number got him through to an operator who, as Willis liked to say, could get in touch with him day or night. As usual, there was a lag time in running Willis to earth. Traveler waited with LDS Musak: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s version of the Hallelujah Chorus.

  When Tanner came on the line he said, “Do you know where I am?”

  “Do you want me to guess?”

  “No.”

  “There’s something I have to know, Willis.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “Why does the church want the Glory mine?”

  “You called me here to ask that?”

  “Something’s come up.”

  “Mo, I … wait a minute. I don’t trust you when you sound like that. Has something come unstuck?”

  Traveler coughed to give himself time to think over his reply. “They don’t make glue like they used to, Willis.”

  “No you don’t, Mo. You won’t get me this time. The deal’s done. There’s no going back.”