Then again, the Word of Wisdom had been considered just that—advice, not a law, until the 1900s. Maybe Stephen was just going back to the old days of Mormonism, when you could smoke and drink all week, go to the temple for your endowments on Saturday, and then be at church on Sunday, repenting of your wrongs.
I left the cigarettes and whiskey where they were, then moved onto the next cabinet. I went to the bottom drawer first this time, and found several large manila envelopes with cardboard protectors. I opened them and saw a letter addressed to Stephen Carter by a previous president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I read through it, then stared at the name and the signature for a long time.
The letter hadn’t been printed. It was on official letterhead, but handwritten. If the police wanted to, they could probably get a handwriting analyst to say if it was authentic or not. Not that it seemed to have anything to do with the murder. This president was dead now, so maybe it shouldn’t matter to me, but it did. I did not want to believe the letter was real.
It began with a personal note of thanks to Stephen for continuing to live “the celestial law of marriage,” “the true Principle of heaven,” despite the “arrows of the adversary” that were slung against him, and “the fear of the law.” I was shocked and nauseated at this. Could this prophet, whom I’d admired as a child, really have approved of Stephen’s way of life?
What a scandal, if this was released to the press! Of course, the church would disavow the letter. And they might be right to do so. I let go of my anger as I acknowledged I had no reason to trust Stephen Carter; this was just the sort of thing he might have invented to convince his wives—or people like me and Kurt—that he was doing what was righteous.
I looked in the other envelope and found a priesthood line of authority, which for Mormon men is kind of like a divine right of kings. Since we believe that John the Baptist and the apostle Peter came down from heaven—literally as resurrected beings—to put their hands on the heads of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and restore the proper priesthood power that had been lost to all other Christian churches, a priesthood line of authority was an important document for many Mormon men. Kurt had a priesthood line of authority in his office at the church building, going back to his father, and his grandfather, and from there, to Heber J. Grant, who eventually went back to Joseph Smith, the apostle Peter, and then Jesus Christ.
But for Stephen Carter’s line of authority, only two names were listed: Stephen Carter’s and Jesus Christ’s. Somehow, it was actually a relief to me to see this ridiculously self-aggrandizing document in the same file as that letter. This must be the reason he believed he had authority above the leaders of the church. But who would believe it was real? How hard could it be to fake a priesthood line of authority? You could probably fill in a template online and print them off in the thousands if you wanted.
I looked in the upper drawers of the same cabinet and found a marriage certificate—an official, legal one to Rebecca. Since there were no others, it seemed Stephen hadn’t bothered with extralegal ones for the other “spiritual” wives, despite the ceremony he’d said he’d had Rebecca officiate. I wondered why, briefly, until I found a copy of a will that had been signed and dated on January 2, 2016. Just a few months ago, but maybe it was something that Stephen did regularly.
As I read the will, I wished desperately that Kurt were there to decipher it for me, or someone else who knew legalese better than I did. But as far as I could tell, it left the compound, the main house, and all the other houses, to Rebecca alone. It also left all his investment accounts, his retirement benefits, and any money in his current savings or checking accounts to Rebecca, with some language about sharing fairly with all other remaining dependents, presumably meaning wives as well as children.
In one sense, this will seemed only fair to Rebecca. She was the one who had borne so much with him. She was his legal wife, and if Stephen had tried to leave something to any of his other wives, the will could have been challenged in court for all I knew. Stephen must have thought he could rely on Rebecca to be fair when it came to keeping the wives in their houses and helping with funds to raise the children.
Actually, now that I thought about it, this was the obvious choice. If Stephen had bequeathed money or houses to each wife separately, they would have had the freedom to sell and move away. This way, Stephen maintained control of the whole family through Rebecca, beyond the grave.