Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

over in Bangkok with Dad trying to facilitate some adoptions. She said to tell you she’s sorry she let you down, and that she feels awful for putting you into this kind of position.”
    I waved the problem away, then remembered he couldn’t see me over the phone. “Tell her I’m a big girl and can take care of myself. But you said there were rumors about Saul. What kind of rumors?”
    “Saul’s wife Karen was fooling around with Micah Browning. I ran a search on her and found out that just before the guy turned up dead, she moved in with him and took out an order of protection against Saul.”
    It was hard to square the man who smuggled good books to knowledge-desperate girls with a man whose behavior merited an order of protection. “Are you sure?”
    “I’m sure. The copy of the complaint I was able to get my hands on states that Saul threatened to kill both her and Browning. When Browning was murdered, shot in the head, by the way, Saul became the number one suspect for a while. The case was eventually dropped for lack of evidence, and Saul’s wife went back to him.”
    “If Saul’s wife went back to him it probably means she didn’t seriously think he murdered Browning. Maybe she decided she was just overreacting.”
    “That, coming from you? Come on, Lena. You of all people should know that women can be battered half to death and still go back to their abusers. Have you forgotten the Clarice Kobe case already? But whatever was going on in Karen Berkhauser’s mind, whatever she suspected, it became irrelevant pretty soon. She was dead within the year.”
    My stomach started doing the herkey-jerkey. “What did she die from?”
    “Death certificate says heart attack. At home. Saul was the only one there when it happened.”
    People die from heart attacks all the time, nothing suspicious in that. What made me uncomfortable, though, was that many different modes of death—not all of them natural—could mimic a heart attack. Poisoning, for instance. Smothering.
    “Was there an autopsy?”
    “I didn’t find any record of one. But listen, that’s not all I’ve found, Lena. Virginia Lawler? Not that I think you’re in any danger from her, but it seems that she once had a fourteen-year-old daughter who married a guy in the compound. Guess who?”
    I felt overwhelmed by the onslaught of bad news. “You’re going to tell me Virginia’s daughter married Prophet Solomon, aren’t you?”
    “Right on, Sister Lena.”
    I remembered the dinner conversation at West Wind Ranch, when Saul had mentioned that the Lawlers had a “dead child.” At the time, I’d thought he meant a
little
child, not a marriage-age woman. Although come to think of it, those words were frequently synonymous in Purity.
    “What happened?”
    “Her name was Alice and she died ten years ago. Her death certificate says she died due to a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.”
    Ectopic pregnancy, when the egg became fertilized while still in the Fallopian tube. The only way to save a woman who’d developed such a condition was immediate surgery, but as I’d seen, Prophet Solomon didn’t believe in doctors.
    “Lena, that’s not all I have to tell you about Virginia.”
    “It can’t get any worse.”
    “Wanna bet? When Solomon Royal married Alice, he was already married to Virginia! Solomon was Virginia’s second husband, Lena. Her first husband, Alice’s father, died in an accident.”
    If the situation hadn’t been so sick, it would have been funny. Not only had Virginia been Solomon’s wife, she’d been his mother-in-law at the same time! What was that old country song, “I’m My Own Grandpa?” No wonder Virginia didn’t like discussing her dead child.
    “Oh, crap, Jimmy.”
    He began listing the Purity men with child molest convictions in other states, and I recognized several names from the community meeting. None surprised me. Raise a boy believing a thirteen-year-old girl is a viable sexual partner and what could anybody expect? With such child molestation supposedly sanctioned by God, over the years Purity had become a virtual sanctuary for child molesters. No wonder the men turned over all their money to the prophet without a whimper. It was
protection
money.
    “Any more?” I asked, after I’d taken down the final name.
    “One piece of good news. You asked me to hunt around and see if any of my folks down here on the Pima Reservation knows any Paiutes up there. My great-uncle Arnold used to be good buddies