Then based in Mesa, OHS was a family affair. Two of Faylene's siblings, a sister-in-law, and her parents continued to work there, even after she and Doug split up.
The Eaves family knew that Doug had started to date Hilary sometime after she hired on there.
Brian Stauffer
Faylene and Doug Grant on the day of their remarriage, July 27, 2001.
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But Doug also continued to play the field. He paid a fee to the Web site LDSSingles.com for months after asking Hilary out.
Yet the relationship with Hilary blossomed over time. She spoke of marrying Doug, which baffled some of her friends and relatives, including Kari Handley, the woman who later repeated the alleged "hips" and "wait for me" comments to police.
Handley told attorney Mel McDonald, in an interview last year, that she'd told Hilary, "He's like a little man. He's old. He's bald. Why? You're beautiful."
Handley said Hilary had replied, "He's sexy and powerful."
Hilary was crushed when Doug abruptly remarried Faylene in July 2001. She punched him in the chest when he broke the news to her, quit her job at OHS, and returned to her parents' home in northern Arizona.
The Eaves family wouldn't learn until after Faylene's death that she'd urged Doug and Hilary to unite as an "earthly" couple after she died.
But they didn't buy it for a second.
Faylene's stepfather, Doug Eaves, told Detective Ray in 2002, "There's no way that any dead woman is gonna make a man feel guilty enough to make a commitment like that in the first place unless he wants to . . . I mean, on this Earth, she could never make him do anything."
The Eaves family also started to wonder about the money Grant stood to collect as a result of his wife's demise. They came to believe that he could collect $860,000 in life insurance money and another $100,000 from Faylene's share of a court settlement in a case involving Doug's company.
Those numbers were exaggerated. The couple had sought to boost Faylene's life insurance from $300,000 to $860,000 shortly before she died (Faylene, not Doug, was pushing the increase, according to their insurance agent, Doug Grant's brother Vaughn).
But Faylene hadn't taken the mandatory medical exam, and the new policy hadn't gone into effect before she died.
Faylene's share from the civil suit was about $12,500 after attorney fees, not $100,000.
A few months after Faylene died, her sister Cherlene Patterson spoke with the Gilbert detective then heading the investigation.
She said Chad White, the physician assistant and an old high school friend, had told her that Doug had been "adamant" about getting a prescription for sleeping pills for Faylene just before she died.
White denied that and has repeatedly told police that he wrote the Ambien prescription after consulting with Doug and Faylene.
But he also said he told Doug not to fill the Ambien scrip without first informing him, which Doug failed to do.
Cherlene became increasingly vocal about her brother-in-law's alleged criminal complicity in her sister's death. She told Gilbert authorities in early 2002 that she had been having dreams related to Faylene's death.
"It was very, very real to me, almost like a revelation and a vision and just knowing that she was murdered," Patterson said in early 2002. "He's sick. He's evil.
Patterson had worked as a bookkeeper for Doug at OHS for years. But she and the other Eaves family members quit in February 2002, as the investigation into Faylene's death was gaining momentum.
By then, the family had won over an invaluable ally at the Gilbert Police Department, Detective Sy Ray, who had assumed control of the case.
Both Doug Grant and Faylene Eaves were born into close-knit and devout LDS families.
Doug was the youngest of four children born to Lyle and Ione Grant in tiny Pima, in Graham County about three hours southeast of Phoenix.
Lyle Grant, who died earlier this year at the age of 92, was one of that area's most revered citizens, a World War II hero and longtime county recorder.
Faylene was the eldest of Glenna Eaves' two daughters with her first husband. Glenna got divorced when the two girls were young and remarried Mesa's Doug Eaves, with whom she had two children, Douger and Jody.
Doug Grant spent his early years in Pima, where the three C's — copper, cotton, and convicts (the latter referring to prison facilities in nearby Safford) — dominate.
He moved to Mesa in his senior year to attend Westwood High, where he took note of Faylene Eaves, a slim, dark-haired beauty with an omnipresent smile and bubbly demeanor.
The two never dated and went their separate ways after graduation in 1983, Faylene to BYU-Hawaii for a year and Doug to Montana on a two-year LDS mission.
Doug hardly was about to follow the spiritual path of his brother Vaughn, who is now an LDS bishop. Doug always had a hankering for earthly pleasures, especially women and more women.
To the contrary, Faylene's powerful faith in God had dominated her life since childhood.
"Growing up, my Mom worried so much about me, thinking I was too deep and a fanatic," Faylene wrote to Hilary shortly before she died. "She was concerned out of love. She didn't know how sincere and deep my desire was to do the things the prophets and scriptures ask us to do."
