The Widow's Son (5 page)

“That sounds fine for a curriculum vitae, but not a life partner.”

Her face flushed at my bluntness.

“Because he's not vulgar, nor a snob. He's not commanding or powerful or masterful. Because he's not…”

“All negatives. Do you love him or not? When you're alone with him, does he take off his face to reveal his mask?”

“How
very
droll, Michael. Certainly, he's not like any man I've ever known. He's quiet, but he likes to laugh with me. He's smart, but not arrogant. He's protective, but not smothering. And he's open. He's willing to grow and change; causing me to improve, too. I like that. I love him because he makes me think.”

She might have been describing quantum theory; this was utterly inexplicable to me as I had no idea there was anything remotely interesting in Emery. All I saw was a boring guy who didn't respond to my attempts at bonhomie. He didn't find me charming and the feeling was mutual, so I assumed that everyone saw him as I did. How could he have such appeal to a firebrand like Natalie?

“Makes you think? What on earth do you mean by that?”

“His perspectives are different,” she said with a shrug. “I can't really explain, but I find myself reliving our conversations and thinking about things in new ways. I don't know, but it feels healthy. And we have fun exploring things together.”

“Things?” I tilted my head, squinted one eye and gave her a look pretending I conjured them making love. “How
veerrry
interesting.”

“Oh, for Pete's sake, grow up, Mike! He's a loner, and he hasn't plugged in much to the world—movies, TV, books, music, and so on. I get to introduce him to the things l like, and he does the same for me, explaining his engineering and some of the odd things he thinks about.”

She shook her head and grinned at me. “Now, mind you, he's wrong as often as any man. But he's willing to admit when he's wrong. That's not something you often see among members of your gender.”

I wasn't sure how to answer that.

“Ummm, okay,” I said. “I'm just surprised you'd go for a…” I almost said”milquetoast,” “er, fella like him. After all, he's not like your ex-husband, right?”

Whomp!

Natalie Phelan slapped me about as hard as I've ever been smacked by a woman—with the possible exception of Sister Mary Agnes Aquinas.

Have I mentioned that the redhead had a temper?

“Don't you
ever
mention that bastard again, Bevan!”

“What bastard?” I managed to utter while my tongue fished for loose teeth. “I never met the guy.”

The emerald charcoals in her eye sockets dimmed, but continued to smolder. Her mouth spouted an apology that, when it finally came out, almost sounded sincere.

“I met Sean Phelan when I worked at a bar in Boston,” she quickly added. “He was a charmer off the boat from Donegal with a quick wit and raucous laugh. But ‘Take what you can, when you can' was Sean's motto. The bastard married me for a green card. In return, he gave me Claire, a broken cheekbone, and damn little else when he left us for New York.”

She paused to take a breath. “And you're right, damn it. The first thing that appealed to me about Emery was that he seemed as far off the charts from Sean as I could find in a man.”

The fire in her eyes dimmed. She placed a hand under my chin, lowered her face, and kissed me, lightly, on the lips.

“I'm sorry, Michael.” This time it seemed genuine.

“No harm done,” I said, and then risked getting smacked again. “Aside from Emery Stagg not being like your thuggish Hibernian, what else do you see in him?”

“He's not only extremely smart, but also considerate. I felt sorry for him at first. His painful shyness, the halting way he spoke, was pitiful. A cloak of sadness fit him far better than his clothes. But it meant he was an introvert. Being an engineer, he tends to see everything in absolutes. Ask him if a glass is half full or half empty and he'll say it's too large by a factor of two.”

“I know the type. Either something needs to be fixed or it will need fixing after it's been used a while.”

“That's him for sure,” she said with a laugh. “I'd encountered boys like him through my math classes at Avila. I'm not one to be ignored and it amused me to find that they barely noticed me at first. So I worked to befriend a few of the shyer ones. They sure came in handy when I needed help with calculus.”

I looked at her without saying anything. She was going to have to do better than suggesting that Emery was a great math tutor to convince me why she was so smitten by the guy. And, soon enough, she did.

“Emery is different from men like you,” she continued, “but I knew early on that he wasn't simply a tech dweeb. I sensed something hiding within him, a secret that he kept buried but would reexamine at times; kind of like Frodo and his ring. And that smile! It contains the whisper of a laugh that, when upon appearing, transforms him into a handsome prince. Maybe because it was so rare, I found myself figuring out ways to coax it out more often.”

“Well, I, for one, have yet to see it. How'd you manage to nab the first grin?”

“Quite by accident, really. After serving him the Provence salad, with its soft-boiled egg on top of the greens and frisée, I reached across his plate to fill the water glass when his hand shot up to grab my wrist.” She shivered at the memory. “I'll never forget the surprisingly electric sensation I felt at his touch. He dropped his arm as soon as it became apparent why he had done it—to prevent the outlandishly fancy lace of my cuff from being drenched in the dressing—and then he showed that elusive, enigmatic smile.

“He apologized, explaining that he didn't want me to ruin my costume. Costume! I'd spent an hour trying to decide on that outfit. But on reflection I realized he understood me completely; more than any man—or woman, for that matter—ever had. Yes, it
was
a costume, fit for a pirate queen. And I laughed out loud.”

Natalie lapsed into silence after that, but I knew there was something else she needed to say.

“Your outburst against me a few minutes ago wasn't because I mentioned your ex, was it?”

She stood, tilted back her head, and swept back a long auburn tendril that had drooped over an eyebrow.

“Not entirely,” she answered. “I've a lot on my mind these days what with Claire, finances, preparing for the Bloomsday celebration…”

“And something else?”

She nodded.

“When Emery first came to Kansas City, Mike, it was with the sole intent to murder me.”

Now, if you know anything about my earlier travails, you'd understand that my first thought upon hearing that was to scurry out the side door muttering excuses about a suddenly remembered dental appointment. But I'm a sucker for a woman's tears. And Natalie Phelan, who, despite her occasional black moods, I'd never so much as seen snivel, had just become a gushing Niagara of woe.

“Jesus, when did you learn that?” I asked, once my saliva ducts unjammed.

“Last week.” She sobbed. “We'd just finished preparing our wedding announcement. Emery wanted no secrets between us. He said it involved something my ancestor did to Joseph Smith.”

The significance of the name didn't register at first. After all, there were ten Joe Smiths in the Kansas City phone book alone. Then it struck. “The Mormon?”

“Yes,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “I knew that I was a descendant of Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois, but I had no idea some Mormons held him accountable for their founder's death.”

“But that was nearly two hundred years ago! What does that have to do with you now?”

“It's complicated.”

“No kidding. Have you gone to the police?”

“Why would I, since it was him who admitted it? Despite my initial shock, I never felt threatened. You've met Emery. He's not capable of violence.”

“Jeffrey Dahmer's mother surely felt the same about him.”

She looked at me levelly; there were no tears now. “I trust him, Michael.”

I didn't know what else to say. But Natalie did.

“Would you talk to him? He doesn't have any friends other than a few colleagues at work. Perhaps you can bring him out of his shell.”

When I hesitated, she urged, “He trusts you.”

“But I barely know him.”

Not about to let me off the hook, Natalie Phelan appealed to what we both knew I couldn't resist. “If it helps,” she said, “he also has a remarkable book he's prepared to sell. Please, Michael. Say you'll see him at your shop in the morning.”

And, like an idiot, I looked into those luminous green eyes and said, “Sure, why not?”

The Emery Stagg who entered my store the next morning gripping a battered briefcase had changed slightly from two years earlier. For one thing, he'd added a little paunch at his belly, no doubt from the beer and wine I'd seen him imbibe on occasion with Natalie in the bistro. I suspect he was testing the teachings that had been drummed into him by the Church of Latter-day Saints, but he sought to lessen the heresy by treating his experimentation with alcohol as if it were a science project. He'd let his hair grow longer, too, combing the strands straight back from his high forehead.

Despite these changes, however, Emery retained the look of one slightly adrift in public, like a letter delivered to the wrong address. And for all of Natalie's attempts to liberate his conservative fashion sense, he hid the tortoiseshell glasses she bought him in a sock drawer and remained steadfast to the old white shirt/black trouser uniform of the day, as if it was one less decision to make every morning. In short, Emery Stagg still looked and acted like what he was when I first met him: a civil engineer specializing in water and sewage treatment systems who felt far more comfortable among flocculation filters than people.

Approaching the counter that morning he looked concerned to find Josie standing next to me.

“Hiya, Em,” she called out cheerfully, instantly attuned to his unease. She tucked a pencil behind her ear and made a show of gathering up a bundle of papers to clear space next to the computer. “Why don't you two get comfortable in the alcove. Mind if I join you after I finish these accounts?”

He drummed his fingers on the counter, considering.

“Okay, I guess,” he finally answered.

Emery followed me to a quiet section of the shop between the philosophy and poetry sections where we settled into green leather wingback chairs.

“You must think me nuts,” he began softly, setting his briefcase on the coffee table between us.

I was tempted to respond sarcastically with something like: “Because you intended to murder Natalie? Or that you confessed it to her after changing your mind?”

But I didn't. The introvert was trying his best to be forthcoming about a matter obviously painful to him and I didn't want the conversation to end before it began.

Instead, I smiled diplomatically while my left index finger explored an ear.

“One can't hide a secret as dark as that forever,” he continued, looking at me with bleak, tired eyes. “She needed to know before deciding to accept me.”

“Given what she told me last night,” I said, “you don't have to worry on that score. She loves you very much.”

Emery rubbed his nose between his thumb and forefinger, stifling a sniff.

“Becker Systems lost its contract with the county,” he said, drawing a handkerchief from his back pocket. “I may lose my job. At best, my billable hours will be cut. We are going to need money. It's the only reason I agreed to see you.”

So much for Natalie's claim that he sought a friend.

He pressed the brass latch to open the briefcase.

At first glance, the book seemed like nothing special. It was bound in what looked to be original brown calfskin, but it had been rebacked with a new leather spine featuring a gold embossed title that said
Book of Mormon
. An early edition of that was not uncommon in Jackson County, Missouri, where Joseph Smith had first settled and which remained home to thousands of Saints and a magnificent RLDS temple. True firsts, however, were another matter. Of the five thousand original copies, only a few hundred remained in circulation.

Without lifting the book from the case, I carefully opened it to the first end sheet. The page was blank except for an inscription:
Presented by Sidney Rigdon
,
June 28, 1844, to Alonzo Stagg, a faithful Danite who will hath Trampled the traitors into the earth.

You get to know something about Mormon history if you live in this part of the country, which Joseph Smith declared to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. The local population in Western Missouri had initially welcomed the industrious and clean-living people who had been forced to flee Kirtland, Ohio, in the 1830s. But the Saints' close-knit ways of buying up land and garnering blocs of votes soon upset the welcome wagon. Furthermore, their dismissive attitude toward other faiths soon turned them into enemies of the hard-heeled settlers who had wrested the land from savage Indians, cleared the forests, and tamed the prairie. Eventually, both sides committed atrocities.

Sidney Rigdon, self-proclaimed Protector of the Church, used the Danites not only to protect his people from the “gentiles” but also to force dissenters—those who didn't offer blind obedience to the teachings of the Prophet—to leave the Mormon-held counties under threat of death.

I looked up at Emery. “Was Alonzo Stagg a relative?”

He smiled wryly. “My great-great-great-grandfather.”

I turned my attention to the cover page. It was heavily toned and foxed with rustlike spots on paper considered inferior for the time:

THE

BOOK OF MORMON

AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON,

UPON PLATES TAKEN FROM

THE PLATES OF NEPHI

Beneath the two paragraphs of the prologue were the all-important words

BY JOSEPH SMITH, JUNIOR,

AUTHOR AND PROPRIETOR.

PALMYRA:

PRINTED BY E.B. GRANDIN FOR THE AUTHOR.

1830.

This was a true first edition, published in Palmyra, New York. I knew this because subsequent printings had eliminated the words identifying Smith as author once he'd proclaimed God's words had been dictated directly to him through the angel Moroni.

In addition to its rarity, this book was incredibly important to religion scholars because of changes Smith made to the text in later editions.

Seeing my reaction, Emery's eyes sharpened. “What can I get for it?”

I had no qualms this time suggesting a price, knowing that prices for original Mormon works had skyrocketed in the past five years. A Palmyra first edition inscribed by an early LDS apostle went for more than double the estimate at a recent Swann Galleries auction.

“Because of its historic association,” I said, gently closing the book, “I figure two hundred grand. Perhaps a quarter million.”

Emery leaned back, clasped his hands behind his neck, and closed his eyes. “How soon can you find a buyer?”

Thoughts of Eulalia Darp and the ABAA suddenly ricocheted inside my frontal lobe.

“That depends,” I answered. “Leave the book with me. I'll call some dealers and get back to you in a couple of days.”

Emery opened his eyes. They were a little wet.

“Must be tough giving up such an heirloom,” I said.

“You don't know the half of it. For most of my life, that book represented my entire being. The inscription that you find so valuable is what, until I came to realize that Natalie truly loved me, bound me to a murderous legacy.”

Then he proceeded to tell me why.