Gone to Glory Read online

  “Curiosity, that’s all.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question, Mo. Are you working for us or not?”

  The answer had been inevitable from the moment he heard Hap Kilgore’s voice on the phone.

  “I charge twenty-five dollars a day, Hap.”

  When the old man’s eyes widened, Traveler added, “That includes mileage of course.”

  “It’s Pepper’s money we’re trying to save. Just remember that. In the meantime, I’ll try to come up with something for you.”

  “If I can’t do you any good in the next couple of days, I’ll take a walk. No charge.”

  What Traveler didn’t say was that he might be off the case long before that. The police weren’t about to invite his help on a murder case, not with the likes of Zeke Eldredge in the background. And if the church decided to clamp down, then twenty-five dollars a day would be overcharging for all the good Traveler could do.

  “We’re not asking for charity,” Kilgore said.

  “I know that.”

  “Just so you do.” Kilgore patted his wallet pocket. “I know a retainer is customary, but all I’ve got on me at the moment is bus fare.”

  “Where were you planning to go?”

  “Ever since the wife died, I’ve had a room at the Phoebe Clinton out on Twelfth East.”

  “Come on,” Traveler said, suddenly unable to look the old man in the eye. “I’ll drive you.”

  Its full name was the Phoebe Clinton Home for the Aged. It had been a landmark since before Traveler was born.

  5

  The Phoebe Clinton Home took up an entire city block. It sat back far enough from the street to allow a circular driveway, one that had been patched so many times over the years that it resembled a jigsaw puzzle. The freshly painted house, three stories in the center with two-story wings on either side, had been built in the 1880s by one of Utah’s silver kings. It was said to be a replica of a stately home he’d seen while vacationing in England. He’d added his own Utah touches, of course, like the Gothic columns out front that held up an elaborately corniced, gargoyle-friezed porte cochere.

  When Traveler’s Ford pulled under the overhang, Kilgore made a clucking sound with his tongue and turned his baseball cap around like a catcher. “I’ve never come in this way before. Usually it’s reserved for important guests. Sometimes ambulances, depending on who’s riding inside. There’s a side door for hired help like me. Residents are asked to use it, too, to keep from tracking dirt into the entrance hall. Hearses come and go by the back door.”

  “Where do private detectives fit in?”

  The old man snorted. “Mother Mary will have a conniption fit if she sees either one of us out here.”

  “I figured the place to be Mormon, not Catholic.”

  “It’s neither one.” Kilgore opened the gym bag on his lap, feeling around inside until he found a pouch of Redman tobacco. He loaded one cheek to abscess proportions before continuing. “Her name’s really Mary Cook. Some of the old-timers around here call her Mother Mary because she treats them like children.”

  He got out of the car, keeping his back to the house. One side of his face contorted into a conspirator’s wink just before he fired a blob of tobacco juice onto the patchwork driveway.

  “Don’t call me here,” he said. “There’s no damned privacy on the phone.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Kilgore turned and walked toward the side of the house. Halfway there, his shoulders slumped, as if his gym bag had suddenly become an intolerable burden. His walk had slowed to a shuffle by the time he turned the corner and disappeared. On impulse Traveler followed him. He sprinted to the side of the building. From that vantage point, he watched the old man pass by a side door and continue along a crumbling concrete walkway that closely paralleled the house. The side of the house, unlike the front, looked like it hadn’t been painted in decades. A toolshed stood at the rear of the structure. Beyond that was a half-acre garden dominated by weeds and scraggly rosebushes that had yet to flower.

  Kilgore entered the toolshed and closed the door behind him without once looking back.

  Traveler stood there for a moment, captured by the view of the Wasatch Mountains beyond the garden. Clouds had broken free of the peaks at last. Plumes of moisture trailed from the leading thunderhead.

  He took a deep breath, wondering what the hell he was doing there, then hurried along the pavement to the side entrance. A glass storm door, one of those models that converted to a screen door in warm weather, blocked his way with rusty security bars camouflaged as scrollwork. A button was mounted on the door frame, along with a sign that read ring for deliveries. He did. The bell echoed a long time. He was about to ring again when a heavyset woman came lumbering down a linoleumed corridor toward him. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform white enough to dazzle his eyes. When she reached the door, sunlight reflecting off the material forced him to squint.

  She squinted back and said, “Is that your car out front?”

  “I left it there when I dropped off Mr. Kilgore.”

  Her grim squint dissolved into a smile. The expression

  made her cheeks look like puckered bread dough. “That was kind of you, Mr.…”

  “Traveler,” he supplied.

  She opened the door and joined him on the cement stoop outside. The plastic name tag over her heart said she was Mrs. Cook. Mother Mary. “We appreciate any help given to our residents here, Mr. Traveler. You see, most of them are not allowed to drive.”

  “Because of their age?”

  “For one thing. But we really don’t have the parking. We’re located in a residential area, as you can see for yourself. As it is, we’ve already had complaints about staff members taking up all the available spaces in the neighborhood.”

  “I’ll move my car.”

  “There’s no hurry now that I know who it belongs to.”

  “I wanted to ask you about Mr. Kilgore.”

  “He still drives,” she said, misunderstanding the intent of his question. “Hap is one of our younger residents, you know. He even drives our seniors’ van on occasion. There for a while he used to get extra free tickets to the Saints baseball games. Whenever he did, he’d make it a regular outing for some of our more sports-minded residents. Naturally, there was always a staff member on hand to supervise. I—”

  Her lips pressed together as she bit off the word. “What am I thinking of? I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to me rattle on about our problems. Now, if there’s anything else?”

  “Actually, I’m here because Mr. Kilgore has asked me to help him.” One hand went to her heart, like someone about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

  “I hope there isn’t any trouble,” she said.

  Traveler would have preferred not to identify himself at the moment, since that might embarrass his client. On the other hand, word of his talk with Mother Mary would probably get back to Hap anyway.

  He handed her a business card.

  “My God, why would he need a detective?”

  “It’s nothing to do with the home here, Mrs. Cook, I assure you. It’s an old friend that Hap’s worried about.”

  She sighed with relief and handed back the card. “And I suppose you want to know if Mr. Kilgore can pay?”

  He nodded, though that wasn’t what he’d had in mind. “Mr. Kilgore does a little janitorial work and gardening for us. It’s make-work really. He likes to keep busy and we oblige him. He often tells people that he’s an employee of the home. Actually he’s our youngest fulltime resident. Whatever work he does is strictly voluntary, with no pay attached.”

  ‘“I—”

  She overrode him. “We’ve found from experience, Mr. Traveler, that it’s best if our residents don’t carry money. You see, people tend to take advantage of the elderly. Naturally, Mr. Kilgore gets sp
ending money for bus fare and the like. That being the case, you’ll probably be leaving now.”

  “Would you happen to know Pepper Dalton?”

  The woman tilted her head to one side and then the other. “What is it you really want, Mr. Traveler?”

  “To help Hap.”

  At that moment, the sunshine disappeared, erased by the thunderhead racing west toward the Great Salt Lake.

  The temperature dropped dramatically.

  Mrs. Cook hugged herself. Gooseflesh pimpled her heavy arms.

  “Now about Pepper Dalton,” he prompted.

  “That’s Mr. Kilgore’s baseball friend. I met him once. I don’t know anything else about him.”

  “Did you ever see Hap Kilgore play ball?”

  “Why is it that men fantasize about their youth when they grow old? Every day Mr. Kilgore goes off to that baseball park of his. He takes the bus and even has to transfer. And why?”

  Traveler shrugged.

  “So he can pretend to be young again.”

  He closed his eyes and saw Hap taking the mound, red-faced and reeking of Sloan’s Liniment, windmilling his arm to get the fastball ready.

  “Women are too realistic to waste their time on such things, Mr. Traveler. Now, if you’ll excuse me. It’s getting cold out here.”

  He opened his eyes in time to see the first rain fall. She blinked at him and retreated inside, locking the storm door behind her.

  He ran for the Ford.

  6

  By the time Traveler drove downtown the spring storm had turned into a cloudburst. Gutters were overflowing onto the sidewalks. Pedestrians were huddled under awnings and in doorways. His Ford was one of the few cars on South Temple Street.

  When he reached the Chester Building—three stories of granite and sandstone that mixed Victorian, Art Deco, and fervor into a kind of Utah Gothic—there wasn’t a soul in sight. Even the temple tourists across the street had taken shelter, presumably in the Tabernacle, where, on a weekday, the best they could hope for was canned choir music.

  The ten-yard dash to the building’s bronze revolving doors left him soaked. He dripped all the way across the marble floor to the cigar counter where Barney Chester, the building’s owner, was lighting a cheroot in his eternal flame. As soon as he had his cigar going, he pointed it at the WPA fresco of Brigham Young on the ceiling and said, “If you’re heading up to your office, you’ll have to walk.”

  “Where’s Nephi?”

  “Eighty miles south of Salt Lake where it’s always been,” Chester wisecracked. He was a short, wiry man with dark, curly hair who looked vaguely like Edward G. Robinson. The resemblance, he contended, had left him almost as scarred as seeing Bambi as a child.

  “Nephi Bates,” Traveler said, refusing to acknowledge the town of that name. “Your elevator operator. Named for the son of Lehi in The Book of Mormon.”

  “Oh, him.” Chester rolled the cigar along his lips, wetting it down. “He’s across the street attending a baptism for the dead.”

  Traveler grimaced. That made twice in the last week.

  “I know how you feel,” Chester said. “A delegation from the church was in here trying to convince me that the ceremony qualified as a legitimate religious holiday. You know me. I threw them out.”

  Traveler knew him all right. Chester loved playing iconoclast, but he’d never say or do anything to hurt a true believer.

  “I told them I’d dock Nephi’s pay. Otherwise, he’d be taking time off to baptize every one of his ancestors into heaven, all the way back to Adam.”

  Traveler held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not up to it today, Barney.”

  Chester dismissed the capitulation by leaning nonchalantly against one of two Doric columns that sandwiched the cigar counter. “The poor bastard has to stand in the baptismal font once for each and every relative. On a day like this, you’d think he’d have sense enough to stand out in the rain and get his baptisms straight from heaven.”

  “Rain’s polluted.”

  Chewing on his cigar, Chester screwed up one side of his face. Instead of looking like a gangster, he reminded Traveler of Bambi’s pal, Thumper.

  “Mo,” he said at last, “you look properly baptized yourself.”

  Traveler’s wet Levis were chafing his thighs. His shirt was stuck to his back, and his Reeboks made squishing noises when he walked. “How about running me up to my office?”

  “The elevator’s in the basement with Bill and Charlie.”

  “It’s not like you to trust them with it.”

  “Charlie’s making a few adjustments to the phone lines.” He led Traveler around the column to point at the shelf that usually held the coffee urn. In its place stood a compact computer, complete with printer and phone hookup. “He says he knows a way to save me line charges.”

  “You ought to know better.”

  Chester poked himself in the chest with his thumb. “Hey, it’s the computer that makes the calls. Not me. Besides which, Charlie tells me I can depreciate the whole thing if I use the computer for inventory control.” Traveler glanced at the glass display case. The Bull Durham, Sen-Sen, and Chiclets were as faded and dusty as ever.

  “Charlie said that?”

  “Not exactly. Bill was paraphrasing him.”

  Traveler shook his head. “Are you telling me that the computer is Charlie’s idea?”

  “I’ve been thinking about getting one for a long time,” Chester said, though his tone lacked conviction. “He and Bill helped me make up my mind, that’s all.”

  Charlie Redwine, a full-blooded Navajo, was the one and only disciple of Boyd “Mad Bill” Williams, known as Salt Lake’s Sandwich Prophet.

  “What happened to the coffeepot?” Traveler asked.

  “It’s around the comer in the men’s room. Charlie said we couldn’t plug it in to the same outlet or we’d blow the circuit.”

  Without another word, Traveler stepped into the public restroom. The coffee, though perking, couldn’t compete with the smell of deodorant coming from the urinals. Holding his breath, he carried a cup back into the lobby and tried smelling it there. But by then his nose had ceased to function properly. He was about to complain when he heard the elevator cables start to sing. He and Barney walked over to greet the rising elevator.

  The lift’s bronze grillwork was Art Deco from the 1920s like much of the Chester Building. Even before the door opened Mad Bill was touching thumb and forefinger together in a signal of success. Charlie raised one palm, like a movie Indian. Today, he was wearing a fringed serape that looked more K Mart than Navajo. Bill wore one of his sandwich boards. It bore his own brand of scripture: tithing accepted here.

  “We’re all set for a demonstration,” he announced the moment he stepped out of the elevator. Without waiting for a response, he led the way back to the cigar counter, his prophet’s robes flapping around his ankles.

  Traveler followed out of curiosity. As soon as he joined Bill and Chester on the spectators’ side of the display case, Charlie rolled a rickety chair up to the computer and sat down.

  “He’s testing the phone setup,” Bill explained, ducking out from under his sandwich board and storing it to one side. “It’s called a modem. It lets us talk to other computers.”

  Barney rolled his cigar between his fingers and looked thoughtful. “What’s important here, Mo, is that Charlie says we can tap into the church computer.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?”

  “To see if Nephi Bates is a church spy, of course.”

  “Amen,” Bill said. “Though it’s really not necessary, because I can feel it in my soul. The man has been sent among us for one purpose only: to keep track of me and my emerging religion.”

  Traveler silenced a groan by sipping his coffee. The taste set his teeth on edge. “A spy wouldn’t slip church literat
ure under my door every day.”

  “That’s just what a spy would want you to think.” “Barney hired him, not the church,” Traveler reminded them before abandoning his cup on the countertop.

  “He was willing to work cheap,” Bill said. “That’s suspicious right there.”

  The Indian grunted for attention. His fingers flew over the keyboard. Data appeared on the amber screen.

  “Where did he learn that?” Traveler asked no one in particular. He knew better than to direct questions at Charlie, who seldom said anything other than “How,” and then with derision. As for the Navajo’s education, all Traveler knew was that it had ended at Brigham Young University when the worship of peyote got him expelled. After that, he’d been a typical, bottle-a-day West Temple Indian before taking up with Mad Bill.

  “When God sent Charles to me,” the Sandwich Prophet answered, “he came filled with the knowledge necessary to be first disciple of the Church of the True Prophet.”

  Traveler rolled his eyes and thought about the change of clothes he had upstairs. His shoulders twitched in a vain attempt to escape the damp workshirt clinging to his back. “The Mormon Church has the tightest security in the world.”

  When Traveler started for the elevator, Barney caught hold of his arm and dragged him back. “Charlie’s been working on this all morning. We’re damn near in.”

  “Have faith, Mo,” Bill said. “Hackers broke into the computers at Los Alamos.”

  “Atomic secrets are one thing, church security quite another.”

  “Charlie’s already been into the university’s computer.”

  “He gave Bill a PhD in comparative religion,” Barney added.

  The Sandwich Prophet took a deep breath, expanding his chest to almost the size of his stomach. “How about it, Mo? Would you like a college degree at last?”

  Inside, Traveler winced. Four years playing football at USC had earned him two years’ worth of credits.