for polygamists. Since polygamy was illegal, all but the first wife were legally single mothers on welfare, no matter how much money their husbands made. And given the closed nature of the communities, it was easy to do business under the table, cheat on taxes. Easy, that is, until the IRS or the FBI investigated. And then it wasn’t.
If Father was tempted to go that route, all he had to do was visit his former friends and relatives in prison, ask their opinion.
“Keep your eyes open,” Jacob said. “You see anyone suspicious or talk to anyone, give me a call.”
“I would have done that anyway. There’s no one else I trust. You’re the reason I’m here.”
“I’m the reason you’re a missionary?” he said with a half-smile. “Glad to hear it.”
“The reason I’m a woman with a chance to figure out who she is,” Eliza said firmly. “And not just another wife with her whole life mapped out. I love you, I’d do anything for you.”
“With any luck, you won’t have to.”
#
Jacob called his wife as soon as he left Temple Square, to let her know he’d be home in a few minutes.
“Oh, good,” she said. “Daniel has been asking about you every ten minutes.”
He could hear the boy clamoring in the background, asking when Daddy was coming home. “Five minutes, honey,” Fernie said to the side. “Go wait at the window, you can watch for him. Leah, Daddy’s coming.”
Jacob was thinking his advice to Eliza to keep her eyes open was good, and not just for his sister. A black SUV swung in behind him as he pulled out of his parking space. He took South Temple toward home. The SUV seemed to be following, so he made a loop around the University of Utah area and then through the Harvard Yale neighborhood to the south. The SUV didn’t follow.
Jacob and Fernie rented a small house in the Avenues, a cozy urban neighborhood of gridded streets that stretched up the hill from the capitol building toward the Salt Lake City Cemetery, north of the University. The Avenues were a walkable oasis in the wasteland of strip malls and subdivisions that sprawled along the Wasatch Front. You could walk downtown or to the U, or even to a corner bakery.
But the best thing was the neighborhood’s diversity. The east side of Salt Lake was the least Mormon part of the state. There were a few chapels, but also non-Mormon churches, and his neighbors included university students, ex-Mormons, minorities, gay couples, and visiting professors. A good place to blend in.
He pulled into the driveway and then spotted the SUV parked in front of his house. It hadn’t followed because the driver had already known where he lived. Jacob stopped the car and waited behind the wheel. His engine ticked as it cooled.
Impossible to see through the SUV’s tinted windows, but Jacob imagined them watching, waiting for him to get out. Who was it, and why had they parked in plain view? To intimidate him?
Time to deal with this now, before Fernie or the kids saw he was home. He got out of the car and approached the SUV. Jacob kept his gait smooth, confident. But he kept his right hand in his pocket, clenched his keys in his fist. With his left, he knocked on the window. No answer.
He rapped the window again, harder, then tried the door handle. It was locked. “Open the door.”
Jacob was so caught up imagining who might be watching from inside that it took a second before the obvious occurred to him. He leaned down to the window and cupped his hands against his face to block the glare. There was nobody inside.
Jacob shot a glance to the house. It was quiet. No Daniel and Leah looking out the window, waving furiously. Whoever had driven the SUV was now inside his house.
He broke into a run, his mouth dry, heart pounding.
Chapter Five:
There was nothing Senator Jim McKay hated more than kissing the asses of born-again Christians. Back stabbers and self-righteous pricks, the lot of them.
He and his brother, the Attorney General of the
Heidi Hunter, Bad Boy Team