Not of This Fold by Mette Ivie Harrison

Author:Mette Ivie Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2018-09-11T20:57:23+00:00

Chapter 20

I stopped the car after I’d driven about half a mile from the parking area of Celestial Security and let myself catch my breath.

“Well,” Gwen said from the passenger seat. “That was telling.”

“It was disturbing,” I said. I rubbed my free hand up and down my other shoulder to reassure myself that I was in the real world, in my own body.

“Yeah, I wish I could take a shower,” Gwen said. “There’s something very wrong with that place.”

It was true. “Why do you think people sign up for that package? All that money, and you just keep paying.”

“I don’t know,” Gwen said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean, I can see how Celestial Security is making money off selling the sales kits to their consultants, but I don’t understand why people would pay so much extra for what seems like an ordinary security system.”

“Maybe because it feels so Mormon?” I said.

Gwen shook her head. “And that makes their product worth ten times as much?”

Maybe. In my experience, Mormons could be manipulated by anyone who pretended to have a connection to the church, and the trappings of the temple would have made it that much easier.

“Are their customers just stupid?” Gwen suggested. “And don’t understand how real companies work?”

“More like people who are used to believing what they’re told and assuming that anyone in authority is looking out for their best interests,” I said tartly.

Gwen blinked at that. I guess she hadn’t heard me vent enough about my own problems with Mormonism yet.

“I’ve seen a lot of multi-level marketing stuff go through the ward. Amway, Mary Kay, Nu Skin,” I said, shaking my head. There was always a new product being sold, but the method was the same. Mormons have big circles of friends in their wards and are used to “bearing testimony.” They invite people over under the guise of throwing a dinner party, then ambush everyone about the latest product.

I’d never gotten into selling, but I’d bought a lot of things at parties from friends in the ward out of obligation or guilt.

“You missed doTerra and Nature’s Sunshine,” Gwen said. Those must have been newer ones I hadn’t heard of yet. “And Noni Juice, Jamberry, XanGo.”

“I hate the idea that con men come to Utah just to make money, but it works. We’re easy pickings,” I said. Mormons could be so gullible. I’d heard non-Mormons say that if you believed an angel came and delivered gold plates to a fourteen-year-old boy, you’d believe anything.

It wasn’t always fake miracle products, either. There were a ton of fake investment schemes that Kurt had heard of through ward members. Some complained about being robbed, and others tried to convince him to buy in.

Because he was an accountant, Kurt had training in discerning good investments from bad ones and was never taken in. But he spent hours in Sunday meetings at the church trying to explain to people why they shouldn’t invest in one cockamamie scheme or another. And

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