The Bishop's Wife (15 page)

“I'm sorry, but I don't know where she is buried,” said Tomas. “Dad would never talk about her death or her gravesite.”

I said carefully, “So you don't know how she died?”

“He told us she died suddenly of a heart condition, but we never saw her body at a funeral that I recall.” Tomas spoke evenly, no hint of fear or nervousness in his voice. “And when I had my own heart trouble, and wanted to see if there was a genetic link, Dad said there weren't any records for her.”

“I didn't know you had heart problems. I'm sorry,” I said.

“Oh, I've had surgery for it since to correct it. Just a little hole in the heart. But why there were no records of her heart condition, I never knew. It made me wonder if—” He cut himself off.

“If what?” I asked.

“If she hadn't died of a heart condition, after all.” His tone was musing, not suspicious.

“You think he lied to you? But why?” I asked. I should have dropped this, but no one could blame me when Tomas Torstensen brought it up himself, could they?

“I don't know. Maybe she had a drunken accident. Something he was embarrassed about,” said Tomas. “But to answer your question, I don't know where the grave is. We never visited it as children and as far as I know, Dad never went to visit it on his own, either.”

“Then you don't think Liam might know anything more?” I asked.

“No. He and I have talked about it. Numerous times.” He sounded annoyed now, and why shouldn't he? I was asking him irrelevant details about the past when his father was dying. Finally, he added, “Liam says he thinks she was cremated. But I don't know where her ashes would be.”

Cremation wasn't forbidden by the church, but it seemed—odd. Especially for a young wife. “But then, why would your father be asking to see her grave if she wasn't buried?” I asked. I wasn't just being nosy. Anna had asked me to help her with this so Tobias could die in peace, knowing how his wife's grave would be cared for when he was gone.

“Maybe his mind is going. Maybe he can't remember what he did
with her remains,” said Tomas. “I can ask him about it when I get there tomorrow afternoon, if you'd like.” Now he was ready to go. I had kept him too long.

“I wouldn't want to upset him,” I said. But wasn't it Tobias who said he wanted to see his wife's grave? Why was he talking about it now after so many years of staying silent on the subject? It wasn't until after we'd hung up that I thought to tell Tomas about the pink dress I still had in the garage, rescued that morning from the plastic garbage bag and placed neatly folded on a shelf with our garden gloves, which were woefully unused of late.

I tried to call Liam multiple times that day, and only got his answering machine. I left two urgent messages on it for him to return my call, and hoped that he was on an airplane even then. I wished I had thought to ask Tomas about his brother's plans. It sounded as if the two of them talked to each other a great deal more than either of them talked to their parents.

Breaking news Friday at noon on KSL was once more about Carrie Helm. A convenience store camera had footage of Jared Helm and Kelly stopping to get gas at 3:00
A
.
M
., just hours before he had come to my house to tell Kurt that Carrie was missing. What was he doing outside at that time with his young daughter in the car? And why had he not told the police or me and Kurt anything about it?

I had told Kurt I wasn't going to involve myself with the Helms anymore. But as soon as the news was over, I turned off the television and began to work on another pan of brownies. Kelly hadn't gotten to eat the ones she had made before.

While I was waiting impatiently for the brownies to cook, Adam called me. “I heard about the new information in that case in your neighborhood,” he said. “Is Dad going to have to talk to the news people, too?”

“So far, he hasn't had to,” I said.

“He sounds … different when I talk to him. I'm worried. Somehow it sounds like he thinks it's all his fault.”

Did he? And here Kurt had been telling me to stop thinking that everything was my fault. “We should have seen more,” I said simply.

“Mom, you can't do everything, you know. You're trying to make sure Samuel gets through school and you've got other people in the ward to worry about.”

“Being busy is never an excuse for not helping,” I said. It was an old mantra of mine, whenever the boys complained about a service project while they had homework to do.

“Our grades suffered because of that rule sometimes, you know,” said Adam. He was the oldest, and we had made him do countless service projects for the youth organizations, Eagle Scout projects, not to mention the canning, apple picking at the church farm, visiting the nearby retirement home to do sacrament meetings and weekday services, shoveling snow during the winter and weekly church cleanup. He had been a good sport about it. He never complained, just did the work. A good example to the younger boys, for whom he always tried to make it fun.

Adam was the kind of kid you never worried about when he was older, but it had been a wrench when he left home. I'd felt keenly the loss of his help in mobilizing the troops. Even simple things like dinnertime conversation had seemed more chaotic and less kind when he was gone. But of course, he needed to make the leap and start his own family.

Marie was good for him, energetic and intelligent. I didn't know why they hadn't started a family yet. It was likely something they felt pressure about from within the church. They'd been married for four years now, and I knew it was none of my business to ask about grandchildren. But after listening to Gwen Ferris, I wondered if there was more going on than just the two of them trying to finish school before they took on another financial responsibility like kids.

“Well, you still got into BYU,” I said, “so I can't say I'm too sorry for you.”

“Luckily, BYU cares as much about service to the church as they do about grades,” said Adam.

He was being a little disingenuous there. He might not have had straight As, but he had a lot of them, and he had tested superbly well. He could have taken a full-ride scholarship offer to the University of Utah. He'd also been accepted to Stanford, but we couldn't
afford it and BYU had always been Kurt's first choice for his sons, so Adam eventually accepted their offer.

“How is Marie?” I asked.

“Fine.” The conversation devolved from there into a discussion of classes they were both taking. Adam was hoping to be an engineer, which meant most of his explanations of what he was studying were hard for me to follow. Marie's nursing course kept her studying until the wee hours. Maybe that was the real reason they hadn't had any children yet. No time to make them. But it wasn't my place to say that, either.

Finally, Adam ended the conversation with, “Mom, take care. Of yourself and Dad, all right? Not just Samuel.”

“I'll do my best,” I promised him, and hung up.

Then I cut up the brownies and wrapped them in plastic to take over to the Helms. I didn't need Kurt's permission. It was just something that needed to be done.

I was self-consciously aware of the fact that the news vans were filming me as I walked up to the door and rang the bell. That meant that not only Kurt but everyone else in the ward might know what I had done by evening. Not that I was trying to hide anything. Or that I really knew that anything I did would end up making any difference at all.

Jared Helm opened the door eventually and hurried me inside. Cameras caught it all on tape, but I was hopeful that I wasn't about to become part of the nightly news segment. There was nothing interesting about a neighbor bringing some brownies over, surely.

“Is there something wrong, Sister Wallheim?” said Jared.

It was a ridiculous question, since there were so many things wrong. “I brought these for Kelly,” I said instead. “She said she loves brownies.”

“Carrie used to make them with her,” Jared said. His face was tense and grey with exhaustion. Before he could call for the
little girl, however, she came rushing down the stairs and threw herself at me. I had to take a step backward to keep from falling over.

“Mommy called!” she said. “She said she is bringing me some brownies.”

I stared at Jared. “Did Carrie really call?” I asked. Because if she had, surely this was something the police should know about.

Could it be true—was she alive? Or was it just a delusion on Kelly's part? Children sometimes had such vivid imaginary lives. When Zachary was little, he had such difficulty telling the difference between dreams and reality.

“Can I have one? Can I? Can I?” Kelly asked, hopping up and down and looking at my plate of brownies.

“One,” said Jared. “I don't want you to spoil your lunch.” He took the brownies into the kitchen, where he gave Kelly a plate with one brownie on it. Then he rewrapped the plastic and put the plate on top of the refrigerator.

Kelly ate happily while I changed my focus to Jared. I tried my question again. “When did Carrie call?”

“This morning,” said Jared shortly.

“Did you speak to her yourself?” I asked.

Jared nodded. “I wouldn't let Kelly answer the phone in these circumstances.”

Of course. He must get a lot of calls from reporters.

“But I thought that her cell phone was still here, at home.”

“It is,” said Jared.

“Then how did you know it was her?”

“I didn't until I heard her voice,” said Jared. “It wasn't a number that I recognized.”

I stared at him in astonishment. “And so you answered it anyway? It could have been a reporter.”

“It was out of state,” he said with a shrug. “I thought it was worth taking a chance, anyway. And I was right.” He nodded to Kelly. “She
heard her mother's voice and knows she's all right. That's all that matters to me.”

“But—surely the police need to know this,” I said. Whatever the phone number was, they could trace it and find Carrie.

Unless—a part of me felt cold and wondered how difficult it would be to convince a five-year-old girl that her mother was on the phone. How many details would someone have to get right? Not many, I thought. Kelly would be primed to want to hear her mother's voice, especially if her father told her who it was.

“I don't think the police would believe me,” said Jared flatly. “They've already made up their minds about what happened and any evidence they get all points the same way.” He hesitated and then met my eyes. “But if you called them for me, Sister Wallheim—”

Why me? Because I was the bishop's wife and therefore more likely to be believed? Because he didn't think he could carry the lie that far?

“Can I see the number?” I asked. I wanted some proof of my own before I delved into this.

Kelly hopped off her seat, brownie crumbs all over her face, and grabbed the phone. She knew exactly how to get the number to show up on the screen. I didn't recognize the area code, which meant it was probably a mobile number. “Have you tried calling it back?” I asked.

Jared shook his head.

“I'll call it back,” said Kelly eagerly. And that is just what she did, before Jared or I had a chance to react and stop her.

Then she handed the phone to me.

I looked at Jared, who didn't seem alarmed. I listened to the sound of ringing in the background. After five rings, someone picked up on the other end. It was not a woman's voice.

“Hello?”

“Hello. My name is Linda Wallheim,” I said, using the telephone
etiquette my mother had taught me. “I'm calling because a woman called recently from this number and I wanted to talk to her.”

“Oh, you mean Carrie.”

I felt a jolt of electricity and nearly dropped the phone. My hand was shaking visibly, and I switched the receiver to the other ear, as if keeping the sight of it from Jared made the conversation more private.

“Carrie Helm?” I said. Was this yet another person involved in Jared Helm's conspiracy to cover up his wife's disappearance? That seemed less and less likely.

“Yes, but she's not available right now. Can I have her call you back?”

“If she would, I would appreciate it. Can you ask her to call Linda Wallheim?” I rattled off my own cell phone number. “I desperately need to speak to her.”

“I'll tell her.”

Now came the difficult part. I didn't want to hang up yet. “Do you mind if I ask who you are and why she called on this phone?”

“She doesn't have her own cell phone, so she borrowed mine,” the voice explained, his tone annoyed at the obvious.

“And who are you?” I asked.

He sighed. “My name is Will. I'm a friend of Carrie's.”

“A friend of Carrie's? Where did you meet her? She's from Utah, isn't she? Where are you calling from?”

“Las Vegas. Carrie and I met when I was in Utah a few months ago. Why do you ask? Who are you?”

Who was I indeed? “A friend of Carrie's from her ward in Utah.”

He hung up immediately.

I tried calling back as Jared asked, “What happened? Did he hang up? Why did he hang up?”

I shook my head and moved away from him so he couldn't take the phone. But Will, if that was really who the man on the other end of the line was, did not answer.

After three tries, I gave up trying to keep the phone from Jared and let him call the number back. He had no more luck than I did.

Jared slammed the phone down and cursed.

I expected Kelly to startle at the coarse word, but she didn't.

“What's wrong, Daddy?” asked Kelly.

“Nothing,” said Jared.

“Can I have another brownie?” asked Kelly.

Little manipulator. She knew Jared had told her one brownie, and now that he was distracted, she was asking again. Where had she learned that trick?