The Killing of Bobbi Lomax (8 page)

He guessed she’d had the same hairstyle for a good twenty years, since back when they were fashionable. It nested on top of her head, like the beehive it was named after. But this one must have been sprayed with an entire can of lacquer to fix it in place. Marty thought when her hair ran loose, it must fall all the way down to her knees.

She hadn’t seemed surprised to find them on her doorstep when she’d come back from shopping, and had made them lemonade from one of those frozen packets.

After some small talk, they began. She told them she’d married Arnold when she was eighteen, same age as Bobbi Lomax as it turned out. Although, that time, Arnold was also eighteen, not fifty-six. They’d met at a Bible evening organized by the Faith. ‘If it wasn’t for my kids, Detectives, I’d wish I’d never gone that wretched night.’

‘What makes you say that, ma’am?’ said Al.

‘Well, I’m pretty much homeless and knocking sixty. My house, you been there, I guess?’

The men nodded.

‘The house was owned by a corporation, or in some corporate name. Turned out Arnold was renting it off the corporation, we never actually owned it. I wasn’t even a tenant listed on the rental agreement. He threatened to have me evicted if I didn’t leave of my own free will.’

‘Evicted?’ said Al.

‘Yes. It wasn’t either of our property, you see. Although I know it was Arnold’s company, it’s impossible to prove if it’s offshore.’

As she spoke, Marty realized that it was likely Mrs Lomax was the one who had tipped off the Feds about Arnold and his financials.

‘Mrs Lomax . . .’

‘You boys can call me Linda, I’m trying to forget I was ever a Lomax. Toying with the idea of going back to my maiden name. Deed poll if I can ever afford it.’

Marty spoke quietly now, hoped it would make him her confidant. ‘Did you contact the Federal authorities about your husband, Linda?’

‘They say I’ll get a reward. Five or ten thousand, something like that. I can’t say I don’t need it. He cleaned out all the savings accounts and everything. And they said on TV that even all the company money has vanished into thin air. I think Peter Gudsen must have found out about the missing money somehow, raised his concerns with someone over at the Church.’

‘Why do you say that, Linda?’

She looked down at her feet. ‘I know it was wrong, I just couldn’t help myself: most nights, I followed Arnold from work. One night, I thought he was going to meet Bobbi someplace, he drove right across town. Instead, he met with Peter Gudsen, over at Shaker’s Diner out near the freeway, and right after the meeting, Peter went over to the Mission offices. Perhaps he had another meeting. I just thought it was odd, that late.’

‘Did you follow him, ma’am? Peter?’

‘No. Peter was a wonderful man. Kind. His daddy, Derek, got him that job with Arnold. I was at high school with Derek. Guess Peter felt obliged to keep the job for as long as possible.’

‘Except perhaps when scandal might threaten his career with the Faith?’

‘Except. It was ten pm, Peter’s meeting over at the Mission offices. Who has a business meeting at that time?’

‘How do you know that?’ said Al.

‘I’d come to my senses outside the diner and headed back here. I was going to my son’s for a long weekend in Palm Springs. He’d sent me a plane ticket. I needed to pick up my prescriptions – ever since Arnold kicked me to the curb I’m on all kind of meds. Arnold and Bobbi deserved one another. A home-wrecker and a grade-A asshole. Excuse my French, Detectives. I stopped at the drugstore, picked up the tablets and as I’m driving by the Mission offices on the way back here I see Peter Gudsen getting out of his car. There’s a man loitering outside the entrance. He’s waiting for him.’

‘Did you see who it was?’

‘I was stopped at the lights for a little bit, but I didn’t recognize him. But Peter had his full Faith uniform on, I guessed he’d been to a meeting or Mission before he met Arnold. But maybe it was for that meeting. Ten pm meetings. I just thought it was odd.’

‘That’s the kind of time you don’t want anyone to see who you’re meeting,’ said Marty.

‘Especially downtown, it’s like a ghost town that time of night,’ said Al.

‘Maybe having lived with Arnold’s “meetings” at all hours of the day and night makes me over-suspicious. Maybe it was nothing to do with Arnold’s sinking business, but one thing I do know is, the man and Peter, their handshake was kind of abrupt. You know, not friendly, kind of forced.’

‘An errant member of the flock, perhaps? He was of stature in the Faith, wasn’t he? Peter Gudsen?’ said Marty.

‘Yes he was. And I don’t know what Peter would be doing with another errant sheep. Unless the Faith had tasked him with someone in need of a shepherd. Arnold was probably enough trouble, I’d have thought.’

‘Are you saying that you think Peter knew in advance that Arnold’s business was fraudulent in some way?’ said Al.

‘No, but I’m thinking that if he had suspicions he would confront Arnold and then inform the Faith. He was devoted and I think Arnold and the Faith had many dealings over the years. Maybe in this latest venture also.’

‘So you think that the Faith had investments in Arnold’s business?’

‘Businesses, don’t you mean? Arnold had so many businesses spread all over that it cost me twenty thousand dollars in accountants’ fees just to try and make sense of it. And by the time I had, all the money had disappeared somewhere else. From the records my accountant found Arnold had been doing business in this way for over thirty-five years, straight out of business school. Knowing Peter, it was probably more a case of him wanting to try and stop any small investors, people who had staked their entire futures on this investment, from losing it all, not the Faith’s investment. The Faith has plenty of money. Over ten billion a year, if you believe what you read in the
LA Times
and all the rest of them. Saying that, the Faith would not be happy for the bad publicity and bringing inquisitors to their door. Not happy at all.’

‘Enough to try and silence Arnold?’

‘You think Arnold was the target, not Bobbi?’

‘What makes you think Bobbi was the target?’ said Marty.

‘Because she’s the one who’s dead.’

‘It was a bomb, left – we think – right outside the front door, Linda. Anyone could have picked it up,’ said Al.

‘Well, who would want to kill Peter Gudsen?’

‘What if you’re right, Linda?’ said Marty.

‘About what?’

‘That Peter Gudsen told the Faith something was awry with Arnold Lomax’s property deals? But if he did, and assuming the Faith was invested heavily in those deals, then word may have got back to Arnold. How do you think Arnold would have reacted to being betrayed in that way by his business partner, even an ex-partner?’

‘Oh, he would have been livid. Look what he did to me and I was the one who was betrayed, not the other way around. You think Arnold killed Peter? Oh my . . . what about Bobbi, do you think he killed her?’

‘We’re not saying he killed anyone, Linda. We’re just putting the alternatives out there,’ said Al.

‘Arnold’s a sneaky, cheating son of a bitch, but a killer? No way.’

‘Have you heard the name Hartman? Heard your husband mention it?’ said Marty.

‘No. Why?’

‘It’s just a name came up, that’s all. When you were married to Mr Lomax do you know if he had a life-insurance policy out on you?’

‘No, I can’t imagine so. I was a home-maker, I didn’t bring in any income, what would be the point of insuring me?’

‘To help pay for the funeral? Put the kids through college, that kind of thing,’ said Al.

‘We never discussed it. I hate talking about death.’

‘Would it surprise you to know, Linda, that a policy was taken out on your life in 1954 by Mr Arnold Lomax with the Northwestern Insurance Company?’ said Marty.

‘What?’ She spun around in her seat towards Marty. ‘Arnold never said anything about that. How come my accountants didn’t find it?’

‘Maybe they weren’t looking properly.’

‘How much was it for?’

‘One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. That policy continues to this day.’

‘Today? But we’re divorced!’

‘Insurance is like gambling. You can bet on anything as long as you can pay the wager,’ said Marty.

She sat still now, silent. Trying to take in this information. Then, realizing: ‘Did he take one out on Bobbi?’

‘Yes, ma’am. With the Golden Gate Insurance Company in the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’

Linda Lomax burst out crying. Marty and Al looked at one another. Was it because Arnold had insured Bobbi for twice as much as her? Or was it more a fear–shock thing because, worth way more dead than alive, Bobbi Lomax had ended up very, very dead, while the less-valued Mrs Lomax was still alive – but still worth $125K to a man with a rapidly disappearing portfolio.

Marty nodded to Al to move over to the couch to comfort her, while he made towards the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water. But he would hold back a few minutes until he couldn’t hear that sobbing any more.

After some soothing chat from Al and a few drenched Kleenex she seemed recovered. Marty had forgone the water – instead, he’d made her some hot sweet tea. It was a small kitchen, everything had been to hand and relatively easy to find in the lightly stocked cupboards. He guessed it must have been a release to cry. But if he started he didn’t know if he would ever stop.

He closed the door of the den, as quietly as he could, and turned the key slowly in the lock so it made only the tiniest murmur as it slid into place. Along the darkened corridor he could see the flickering lights of the television. He could hear the sounds of cops chasing bad guys. He knew that she would be sat in there, just like every Thursday night at this time.

He stood in the doorway now, watching her, the empty bassinet on the floor beside her, the baby suckling and Edie’s eyes closed, asleep. Edie’s favourite, that new cop show
Hill Street Blues
, played on regardless. He thought she must have a thing for Captain Frank, she wouldn’t even go to her sister’s if it was on. Sis was far too devoted a Follower to have a TV, especially one with cable. Clark had registered it under his Cliff Hartman alias. He didn’t put it past the Faith to have one of the Followers inside the local TV company running checks on anyone starting a new account, getting the heads up if any of the flock were straying from the righteous path. The Faith had spent years trying to prevent the cable companies from doing business in Canyon County and beyond, figuring people might replace worshipping in Mission to worshipping the box 24/7 from their armchairs and give up Mission altogether. The Faith certainly didn’t want their ten per cent of the flock’s income getting diverted en route to their coffers, and especially not by things they’d banned. To avoid snoopers Clark got the TV guide, and the cable bills, sent to the post office box in Arizona he’d set up in Hartman’s name with a driver’s license he’d spent an afternoon crafting up at the university, using their colour Xerox machine.

Edie insisted on Clark hiding their TV every time her sister was due to visit. The TV had been hefted in and out of the yard store and replaced with a large vase of dusty plastic flowers more times than he cared to remember. Clark watched as the actress playing the bad guy’s lawyer, cheekbones you could slice Parmesan on, pushed her glasses back onto her nose and gave the DA a verbal slap-down in front of a vexed-looking judge. As things escalated in court, Clark turned the sound down, so as not to wake Edie. When Captain Frank reappeared onscreen Clark turned the sound back up, then made his way slowly and quietly over to the small table underneath the window. He put the neatly wrapped package down and clicked on the table lamp. The light, the click of the switch or Captain Frank’s voice had woken Edie and she was pulling herself upright again now, balancing the baby on her lap as she wrestled her shirt closed with her other hand.

‘Clark, I didn’t hear you, how long have you been standing there?’

‘I just came in.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Quarter of ten.’

‘Oh, I must have dropped off.’ She looked around him to the TV. ‘I’ve missed most of it. I could have slept for a week.’ She beckoned over to the table. ‘What’s that?’

She sounded groggy, that was good.

‘What?’ Clark said.

‘That package. On the table.’

‘Oh, this?’

He picked it up and gave it to her. This was it, the start of it.

He gestured for her to hand him the baby. Little Lorina, Lori for short. He had told Edie that he thought the name was pretty, delicate. He hadn’t told her that the little girl who had inspired his favourite story,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, had a sister called Lorina, named after their mother. He couldn’t tell her that, because her very next question would be how he knew such an odd bit of trivia and he could never reveal that to her. Not ever. He could say that the Prophet’s work is in the minutiae, the painstaking minutiae of creation. She would like that, invoking the Prophet, but he feared using the word ‘creation’, feared it would draw her attention and show his hand.

Lori gurgled. He put her over his shoulder. He didn’t want her to gripe too much and ruin everything, so he bounced around a little on the spot, patting her on the back, to allow Edie to keep her eyes firmly on the book. Pretending to be engrossed in the TV, Clark watched out of the corner of his eye as Edie unwrapped the Bible from all the layers of protective wrapping he’d used, intent on adding a little suspense into the proceedings, and smiled to himself as she began to flick slowly through its pages.

‘Oh, Clark, it’s beautiful. How old is it?’

‘Three hundred and fifty years. Give or take. 1638 – it’s from England.’

‘England? I wonder how it got here.’

‘Maybe on the
Mayflower
. One sailed in ’39.’

‘Shame it can’t talk.’

Clark was glad it couldn’t.

‘I’m taking it to Rooks Books tomorrow. I should get a good price for it.’

‘Do you really have to sell it?’

‘Do you really want to eat this week?’

‘But haven’t you got something else, one of your coins?’ Edie said, silently reading all the pencilled names in the back page, names that he’d spent two weeks researching from microfiche archives at the smaller of the state’s two universities, over two hundred miles from home. They had copies of many of the original manuscripts and records held in the Faith’s Historical Records Office at their own university, less than three miles away from his house, but he couldn’t be seen there, or anywhere local, researching this. Not yet. Edie hadn’t liked him being away, but he told her it was one of his multi-state buying trips. She didn’t care for coins, so he knew she wouldn’t ask to see anything and, even if she did, he had a stash in the basement, so he could show her those.

‘I already told you. The recession’s really biting, the coin market’s not doing so good. I’m trying to diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember?’ She’d liked the idea. She didn’t much understand why anyone would buy coins and old Faith bank notes as they weren’t much to look at. Couldn’t hang them on the walls or anything. Well, you could if you liked ugly things. Edie liked pretty things, pretty people, and she really liked babies.

‘Oh, Clark, look, how sad.’ She held out the Bible to him, pointing to the inside back page with her finger.

‘Edie, support it with both hands.’

‘Sorry.’ She righted the book. ‘You see here, this little one, Anna-Beth Bright, she died aged six. And this one. Little William Bright, “died this day April 15th 1832”. Just two months.’

‘They lost a lot of kids back then, Edie,’ he said.

‘It must have been awful.’ Edie looked closer now. ‘It makes me sad, I could just weep thinking about it.’

Please don’t. His mother had cried a lifetime of tears.

‘All these children and, oh, three wives. They’re all listed here. Marriage dates and all.’

‘And none of them died before the husband wed the others?’

‘No, doesn’t read like that.’ She looked again. ‘Not as far as I can see . . . 1826 was the first marriage, 1834 the second, and the third one just a year later. He was a bigamist. He could have divorced.’

‘Obviously didn’t want to.’

Clark thought back to his own mother and how it was rumoured her granddaddy in the tail end of the 1890s had denied the Faith’s rules and also taken several wives, all at the same time. It had made his mother an outcast, even though the granddaddy was long dead before she had even been born. Defying the Faith’s edicts was the very worst of sins. And its Followers would punish subsequent generations for it, for as long as your father
’
s sins lived in their memories.

‘Clark, did you see – one of them was thirteen, another fourteen?’

‘The kids?’

‘No, the wives. The second and third wives. That’s . . .’

‘Terrible?’

‘It just doesn’t seem right.’

‘The world was a different place back then.’

‘You’re right.’ She looked skyward. ‘Lord, forgive me, who are we to judge?’

‘Judge not, lest you be judged,’ said Clark.

‘Amen,’ said Edie. ‘Where did you say you got it, Clark?’

He hadn’t.

‘A collector.’ It was a lie. It couldn’t take her much longer to notice now, surely, and then she would remember everything that happened.

‘Robert Bright married Elizabeth, Rebecca and Ellen.’

She looked up at him. The penny was dropping. He smiled at her. ‘Robert Bright?’ She looked back down at the Bible. At the names. ‘Elizabeth Earnshaw . . . Rebecca Hardy . . . Ellen Mays. It can’t be?’

She looked up at Clark again.

‘Robert Bright, born Tallahassee, Florida, sometime between Christmas and New Year 1801. No records exist for the precise date.’

‘Robert Bright? 1801? Oh my goodness, Clark.’ She was trying to whisper on account of baby Lori but her voice rose anyhow. ‘Clark. This is
his
Bible?’

‘Not his, I don’t think. But the immediate family. One of the wives, I’d reckon. And it looks like two very different hands. Both kind of girlish. All the dates match up. As far as I could find, anyhow.’

‘Robert Bright? Our Prophet? Clark, when were you going to tell me?’

‘I didn’t want you to get your hopes up.’

Clark moved to swap the baby for the Bible, but Edie ignored him, started reading the page, pointing out the various passages where in the same pencil – and one of the same hands – Clark, fuelled by Kenny’s home-brewed beer and seized by Mesmer, had marked passages in the hand of Rebecca Hardy, second, polygamous wife of the Prophet Robert Bright. Rebecca had
accompanied her husband on a calling to the Crystal Arch, where on a searing hot desert day she transcribed the lucid dreams and waking visions of her bigamous husband Robert Bright, twenty years her senior, a former snake oil salesman lately of Kansas City. Rebecca’s notations of his dreams and visions, in a language no one could decipher except her and her husband, became commonly known as the Testament of Faith and came to form the cornerstone of the Faith’s beliefs.

‘Could it be, really?’ Edie looked inside its cover pages, scoured the penciled writing for something that might disprove her theory. He could tell, she couldn’t see his hand in any of this. His creation. Gently, she closed the cover, her hands clasped together on it as if waiting for morning service to begin. ‘You can’t sell this, Clark. It would be wrong. You have to donate it to the Church.’ He could tell that she was disturbed to see in print the very thing the Faith had spent over 150 years trying to erase from the collective unconscious. Their founder had three wives. All at the same time. For Robert Bright’s lifetime and that of his son and successor Robert Jnr, every male member of the Faith had enjoyed the delights of at least several wives at once. Women, however, were allowed just one husband.

‘Edie, for all I know this might not even be anything to do with the Prophet. Perhaps some family members filled all this stuff in later. Y’know, like an In Memoriam.’

‘It looks pretty old.’

‘It is. Sure. It’s worth something, even on its own. Without the inscriptions, or any connection to the Prophet.’

‘But, if it is the Prophet . . . or his family . . . what will you do?’

‘I’ll ask the Rooks tomorrow. See what they say. They’ll know better than me.’

‘You can’t sell it, Clark.’

‘I’ll have to see what they say about it. It could be a fake.’

‘A fake?’

‘Sure. It could be.’

‘Why would anyone fake a Bible?’

‘I mean the writing. Not the actual Bible itself, that’s real enough.’

‘But why?’

Clark shrugged. ‘People fake stuff all the time, make it worth something.’

‘Shouldn’t you take it direct to the Faith? This should be in a museum, Clark. The Mission’s museum.’

He knew that she would tell the world. Tell her world. And when she told her sister, she would tell her world and so on and so forth until a ripple of news became a tsunami, one which would reach the Faith maybe before the Bible did. At least, that’s what he hoped. He wanted the buzz about it to precede him, to herald his arrival in their orbit.

He took it back off her now. Swapped the baby for it. He watched as, cradling Lori, Edie picked up the bassinet and headed towards the door and up the stairs.

Clark wrapped the book back up in its protective packaging, clicked off the table lamp and followed her.