In the back of my mind, I admitted that this also gave Rebecca a strong financial motive to kill Stephen. If the police were here, this document surely would have clinched their case against her. I put it back where I’d found it.
I looked through the remaining drawers in the final cabinet, and found a file with Naomi’s name on it. I pulled it out, aware that I might well be invading the privacy of my future daughter-in-law, but I felt the circumstances demanded the breach. I had expected to find childish pictures she’d drawn or letters she’d written to her father. I wasn’t prepared to see a careful accounting of the money she’d been receiving from him since her second year of college. Nearly a hundred thousand dollars in total, and the last payment had been made only last month. I saw a list of hours spent at home during the weekends which seemed to offset her debt in a small amount. Was that really why Naomi kept coming home? She’d have to keep doing it until her nineties at this rate to pay Stephen back.
From the way she spoke of her father, I’d assumed that Naomi had severed ties, especially financial ones. I hadn’t thought much about where she got the money for med school. Loans or scholarships, I’d assumed. But no. Despite the fact that she had resigned from the Mormon church and that she had told me that she had also rejected her father’s lifestyle, she was still taking money from him. Did Kenneth know about this? Was it my place to tell him? I didn’t know.
The one worry of mine it eased was that Naomi might have had something to do with her father’s death. This file seemed to make it clear that she had no motive. Financially, she would be much worse off without Stephen around.
After that, I looked through some more files and found one labeled investments. I took it out and tried to make sense of it. It looked to me like there was something like two million dollars scattered through various stocks, including tobacco companies, companies known for selling alcohol and spirits, several large media corporations that were known for pornography, and a number of oil companies.
On one level, it bothered me that any Mormon would invest in such things, but it seemed just another layer of Stephen’s hypocrisy. And they had certainly brought Stephen significant returns over the years. His return was more than ten times his investment. Was that Jennifer’s work? Did it mean she had the least reason of any of them to want Stephen dead? All those investments would be under Rebecca’s purview now. She might be able to talk Rebecca into letting her have the same control as before, or she might not.
I poked around on the desk and in one of the envelopes on the top, I found a letter to a lawyer that was dated Sunday, the day before we’d come over. It was a request for a change of will, “as they had discussed,” and it was signed. But I had no idea what the requested change had been and I felt a burning frustration over that. All my snooping, and it had only led to more questions than ever.
Had Rebecca been about to be disinherited in favor of one of the other wives? If so, why? Or perhaps Stephen had simply decided to leave the other wives their own houses. But that didn’t seem to jibe with what I had known of him. He would have wanted to manipulate them somehow. But then who would get control? Perhaps Jennifer, since she was the one who knew the most about money.
I remembered then the hushed conversation Stephen and Jennifer had had when he took me and Kurt over to meet her at her house. The argument with Joanna she’d mentioned. It had happened the same day as this letter was dated, but it wasn’t necessarily related. I definitely needed to talk to Jennifer alone.
As I went back upstairs, I realized the afternoon was wearing away. I thought about texting Kurt, at least, to tell him I wouldn’t be home tonight. Was he expecting me? Would he be worried about me if I didn’t show up? Would he come back here to help me? I wished he would, but I couldn’t find it in myself to beg him for anything. My pride wouldn’t permit me to accept blame for everything just to make peace.
Chapter 19
The other wives were gone by the time I went back upstairs to the living room, but Rebecca was still on the couch, alone. I sat down beside her. She seemed older and sadder than she had been before, though not as helpless and lost as when she’d first found Stephen’s body.
After a long period of silence, I said, “I saw the will. You inherit everything.” I watched for her reaction.
She didn’t flinch. “I didn’t kill him,” she said, staring at her hands.
“Why was Stephen planning to change his will? I saw his letter to his lawyer, never sent, down in his office. From Sunday night.”
Rebecca stiffened. “What letter?”