Chapter 15
Downstairs, I found Rebecca and Naomi on the couch in the front room. Rebecca’s hair was stuck to her face, but at least any spatters of blood on her skin had been cleaned off and she had put on a new dress. She had a wet towel in her hands that she kept wiping them on. She wasn’t talking nonsense about being to blame for Stephen’s death, though, and that seemed an improvement from my perspective.
At this point, several children were awake and wandering in and out of the kitchen, staring at their mother, but not asking questions. I debated a moment about whether I should stay with Rebecca, but ultimately decided that she would be calmer if the children were calmer, so I went into the kitchen and rescued what I could of the hash browns and pancakes she had been preparing before Naomi and Kenneth arrived and the body was found.
Little Madeleine came in and showed me where the syrup was, never making a sound. She just stood there like a tiny ghost, dressed already for the day in long pants and a white shirt that seemed a little large for her, but was perfectly—even unnaturally—clean.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said, and my voice seemed to break the spell and make her disappear.
I brought out the food and set it on the table, but instead of ringing the cowbell as Sarah had for dinner last night, I just set some plates out in a stack and some silverware in a pile. I watched as Lehi and Nephi filled plates and headed downstairs with them, looking back guiltily. I guessed they weren’t normally allowed to take food from the dining room. They were murmuring to each other; they knew something was off.
I took a plateful of food for myself, feeling strange feeding myself at a time like this, but also aware after having helped with many funerals that the bodies of the living continue to need nourishment, and they collapse if they get nothing. I wrapped some hash browns into a couple of pancakes and ate wolfishly, thinking about how I had scolded my sons when I saw them eat like this, years ago.
I brought out a plate of food for Kenneth and Naomi, but they both refused it. I turned to offer it to Rebecca, but she put a hand to her stomach and looked genuinely close to vomiting, so I put it aside.
“We really need to call the police,” Kenneth said.
I tensed, and looked at Rebecca. Her coloring had improved considerably in the twenty minutes I’d been gone. “No police,” she said definitively. “They’ll take away the children and send us all to jail.”
This was an exaggeration of my own fear, but not that far off. I wondered if Stephen had planted this fear in her about the authorities in order to protect himself from ever being called to accountability. But then I reminded myself that polygamists had real reason to be afraid of prosecution.
“We don’t have to call the police until you’re ready, Mom,” said Naomi, though she didn’t sound absolutely sure of herself.
“What about the body?” Kenneth said. “We can’t just leave it there. It will, well . . .” He trailed off without saying that it was going to start smelling.
“We can think about all that later,” I said. I needed to buy just a little more time to talk to the wives and check their alibis and motives.
Rebecca shook her head, her expression hardening. “Not later. No police. Stephen wouldn’t have wanted it.” Her eyes, I saw, were dry now.
Suddenly I began to consider the possibility that Rebecca had killed Stephen, after all.
“It won’t look good if we seem to be hiding something,” Kenneth warned.
“No one will know if it looks good or not,” Naomi said, now more firm in her decision to back her mother. “Not if they don’t know what happened.”
“We’ll bury him with his brother and his parents,” Rebecca said solemnly. “With the babies.”
I felt a chill crawl up my back. Babies? What was it I had thought about Stephen at least not having a baby graveyard, unlike the FLDS?
Kenneth threw up his hands. “Hasn’t anyone wondered whether this is all illegal?”
“You can bury a body within forty-eight hours in Utah, as long as you bury it in a legal cemetery,” Rebecca replied, answering the spoken but not unspoken part of the question—about the legality of covering up a murder. “And part of this property has been designated as that.”
How did she know all that? My mind was swirling. I had been so sure Rebecca, the devoted wife, hadn’t killed her husband, but now she was insisting on no police involvement at all, and a fast burial, as well. Wouldn’t an innocent wife want to see the killer brought to justice? Didn’t she worry the rest of the family was in danger until that happened?
“What about life insurance?” Kenneth said, going back to the practical. “You can’t collect that without a death certificate.”