Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

her.
    Sister Pearl wasn’t quite so delicate. She leaned over the girl and said, “Put your arms around me, Sister Cynthia, and I’ll help you up.”
    I rushed forward to help, and between the two of us, we managed to get the girl to her feet and wrap her in a flimsy robe we found in the closet.
    “I’m going to close my eyes, though,” Cynthia whispered, as we helped her walk to the door. “I don’t want to see them…I don’t want to see them see me.”
    Pearl gave her the hug I’d feared to. “You’re very brave, dear. Don’t worry. Sister Lena and I will make sure that you’ll be okay.”
    Pearl threw me a pleading look and I nodded. Yes, I’d make sure Cynthia would be okay, even if it meant escorting her out of the compound with a gun. But hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Royal was the wild card in the equation.
    We shuffled Cynthia down the hall and into the living room, where the men waited with their backs to us as they spoke in low tones to Earl Graff.
    I broke up their little party. “Do you see?” I shouted to them, opening Cynthia’s robe so that her bitten, bruised body was visible. “Do you see what that bastard did to her?”
    When they turned, their faces paled.
    “My God. My God.”
Davis breathed. “I never thought…”
    The other men gaped as if they’d never seen a battered girl before, although if I were a betting woman, I’d have bet they had: their own child-brides.
    “Brother Earl?” one of them gasped, looking toward the little man. “Why did you do that to her?”
    “She fell down!”
    Before I could call him a liar myself, Davis moved swiftly across the room and punched Graff in his nose, felling him. But where I had smacked Graff just the once, Royal hauled him up by the shirt front and punched him again. And again. He kept punching him until the other members of the Circle of Elders pulled him off the bleeding, moaning man.
    “Brother Davis, don’t kill him!” one of them begged. “We can’t have the sheriff called out again, it looks bad! Let the Circle take care of this problem.”
    I wanted to stay and find out what “take care of” meant, but Pearl whispered in my ear, “We’ve done what we needed to do. Now let’s get the poor child cleaned up and dressed.” To Cynthia, she said, “You’ve been a good, brave girl, dear. I’m proud of you.”
    Undone by Pearl’s gentle voice, Cynthia finally allowed herself to cry.
    Back at the house, Saul listened to the story in horror.
    “I always suspected Brother Earl was rough on his wives, but damn, Lena! That’s disgusting!”
    “You’ll notice that nobody said anything about taking Graff’s other wives away from him,” I pointed out. “Not even Davis.”
    “Lena, something has to be done about this!” Saul paced back and forth in the living room, his arms swinging in a jerky manner like a marionette’s. “It can’t be allowed to continue!”
    I shook my head wearily. “It’ll continue as long as the law allows it, you know that. As for me, Saul, I have a job to do and that job isn’t to lead a revolution in Purity. It’s to find Solomon’s killer and get Rebecca’s mother out of jail. Afterward, well, it may sound cold, but I’ve got a detective agency to run.”
    He stopped pacing and spun back around toward me. “So what about this marriage deal you’ve got going with Davis Royal? You really going to do it?”
    I grimaced. “Who knows? I’ll do whatever’s necessary to help Rebecca. Anyway, my intended fiancé says I can stay here until he divorces Sissy, since my virtue’s so obviously safe with you. Then the Circle of Elders will perform the marriage ceremony. Davis says that by this time next week, we’ll be man and wife. Make that man and wives.”
    It didn’t bother me that Royal would divorce Sissy, because the divorce meant nothing. The Purity system was about concubinage, not marriage. She’d still belong to him.
    Saul interrupted my thoughts. “So you’ve got a week now to figure out who killed Prophet Solomon. That’s not much.”
    “It’s a week longer than I had this morning.”
    He dropped to the sofa beside me and gave me a bleak grin. “Sure wish you’d come up with a better reason to explain our lack of sex. You just put a major crimp in my social life.”
    I smiled back. “I don’t think the story of your so-called impotence will leave Purity with you. Which reminds me. I’ve been so worried about my own situation that I’ve neglected