Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

yours. How’s the lawsuit going?”
    “The hearing is tomorrow, Lena, and my attorney says there’s not much hope. There’s a good chance I’ll need to pack up and leave Purity by the time you get married, if that’s what you’re really going to do.”
    Now my glum face matched his. “Aren’t we the happy couple?”
    Jimmy had done his part by giving me the backgrounds of the Purity men, including Solomon himself, and now it was up to me to put it all together. Who had most benefited from the Prophet’s death?
    The answer wasn’t long in coming.
    Davis Royal. The new prophet of Purity.

Chapter 17
    Since Prophet Solomon’s death, Davis Royal had assumed total command of the compound’s vast financial resources. And while Davis might be not quite as rapacious in his attitude toward the compound’s young women, it was obvious he enjoyed the standard perks that came with leadership.
    Who better to wear the mantle of murderer?
    I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care if Davis turned out to be the murderer, but I’m not sure I succeeded. Sure, he was as seductive as the Devil himself, but at the end of the day, what true value lay in good looks and a gentle touch?
    Then again…
    “Sister Lena, aren’t you going to make lunch?” Ruby’s voice interrupted my thoughts. She stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her long, faded dress almost trailing the floor. I recognized it as the same dress she’d worn yesterday. But now I also understood why. Many of the women in the compound had learned to make themselves look as undesirable as possible.
    “Sister Lena?” Ruby tapped her toe impatiently.
    But I had some serious thinking to do and couldn’t be bothered with all that cooking nonsense. A good, long walk might help me collect my thoughts.
    “You’ll have to make lunch yourself, Sister Ruby,” I said. “I told our husband that I’d run a little errand for him.”
    Saul looked up from the recorder, where he was taping another letter to his sailor son. “Yes. Yes, you did, Sister Lena.”
    Ruby’s face tightened, but she headed for the kitchen as I headed for the door.
    In mere minutes I had reached the silence of the canyon. I kept walking until I came to the small grove where Rebecca and I had found Solomon’s body. Hoping that the site of the murder would give me more insight, I perched on a rock and stared at the small depression that remained in the sand. Solomon had been shot at close range, probably by someone he trusted.
    Perhaps that was the key: trust. Solomon would have trusted his son Davis. Then again, with the naiveté of the truly self-centered, the old man probably trusted just about everyone at the compound: his wives, his other children, even the Circle of Elders. In fact, just about the only person Solomon deemed untrustworthy had been Saul, the compound’s rebel. Try as I would, I couldn’t imagine Saul finding Solomon in the canyon, asking to borrow his shotgun for a moment, then turning around and firing both barrels.
    I could discount the compound’s children, of course, but that still left me with dozens of men and their various and sundry wives. If I couldn’t pin the murder on Davis, Esther and Rebecca would be in a world of hurt. I could theorize about Davis’s guilt all I wanted, but theories didn’t count in court. Only proof did. Not that any accusation I might make would even get to a jury in the state of Utah, where Prophet Solomon’s body had been found. I’d already seen firsthand Sheriff Benson’s collusion with the Circle of Elders. The sheriff would cut off his own right arm before he’d drag the polygamists into court just on the word of some out-of-state detective.
    No, I couldn’t go to Benson with a bag full of theories. I’d need to present irrefutable proof that Davis killed his father. But how?
    As the breeze freshened, blowing down from the north with warnings of cool autumn winds to follow, I thought I heard voices. I held my breath and listened carefully, blocking out the sounds of the cactus wrens and hawks. Two men. As the voices came closer and I began to make them out, I could tell that one of the men was old, the other young. Unless I was mistaken, the older man was Jacob Waldman, Rebecca’s grandfather. The younger one was Meade Royal. Hunting for rabbits again?
    While I doubted that I had anything to fear from those two, Jacob being too far gone in dementia, and Meade being too young to entertain the requisite motives, my