by Gin Jones
Of course, no one had said anything about Ralph being particularly intelligent or innovative, just that he was gorgeous and well-liked. Maybe he would have done something this obviously self-incriminating if he'd killed his wife. Tate was always telling her that criminals were generally not too bright. Their lack of creativity, and his ensuing boredom, were part of why he'd been so anxious to retire.
Jack stepped into the silence. "I didn't expect you to be at home today. Shouldn't you be at the office?"
"I take off most of August every year, and let Samantha—you remember my office manager—run things without me." Ralph pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbed at the sweat on his face. "Things are slow while people are on vacation, and there's always a million things for me to do around the house. This year, I'm building the gazebo Angie's wanted ever since we moved here."
"Speaking of Angie," Jack said, "that's why we're here. Ms. Binney would like to meet her."
Helen nodded. "I'm told she's an amazing knitter. I was hoping she could give me some pointers."
Ralph looked down at his well-worn work boots, almost as coated with dried concrete as the wheelbarrow was. "She isn't home right now. I'll ask her to call you when she has some free time. She's got a busy schedule, though, so it might be a few days before she gets back to you."
He was an awful liar, Helen thought. Somewhat surprising in a salesman. The ability to skirt the truth had to be an asset when it came to selling life insurance. Not having that ability was a huge liability, both in his profession and when it came to getting away with murder. Unless, of course, Ralph's apparent inability to lie was just part of his act. Either way, she wasn't in the mood for playing games.
"You might as well tell us the truth," Helen said. "We know Angie's missing. I just don't understand why you aren't trying to find her."
"I don't know where she is. I thought she'd be back by now." This time, he definitely wasn't lying. The sad resignation in his voice was palpable. He looked down, and Helen followed his wistful gaze to the drawing in a concrete apron that spread out from the gazebo's steps: a heart surrounding the initials "RD + AD."
"You look like you could use a break from your work," Helen said. "Jack will go get you a drink from the cooler in the car while we sit on the patio, and you can tell me what happened with Angie."
Jack headed toward the street, confirming that even with the tiny sports car, he'd managed to find room for the cooler he considered a vital accessory for the proper chauffeur. Helen followed the path of abandoned tools over to the side of the house, where there was a flagstone patio with a collection of wicker chairs.
"Nothing happened," Ralph said from beside her. "Angie just left. It's what she does, you know. She doesn't have a glamorous life, can't dash off to Paris for the weekend, but she makes do with trips we can afford. Someday, I'll take her to Paris or Monte Carlo or wherever else she wants to go. For now, though, she says casino resorts are the next best thing."
So much for some deep, dark mystery. Bored homemaker chucked it all for the glitter of a casino. Betty and Josie would be relieved, even if it wasn't as good a story as the one they'd imagined. The only thing that seemed a little odd was how long Angie had been gone. "Isn't three weeks kind of long for a spur-of-the-moment trip?"
"I'm not exactly sure when she left," Ralph said. "I'm assuming she left on a Thursday, since her sister has Thursdays and most of Fridays off from work, but it could have been later. I was at a week-long continuing-education program for my insurance broker's license. It's on the Cape, too far to come home every night. I teach some of the sessions, so I stayed late the day the program ended to finish up some paperwork. I didn't get home until a little after dark on Saturday, and she wasn't here."
Jack returned with an assortment of bottled beverages. Ralph took a plain water from Jack and removed the cap but didn't drink. Helen pushed the bottle to his mouth.
After he'd swallowed she asked, "Why didn't you report her disappearance?"
"She's done this before. Once or twice a year, actually. She always comes home after a week or two, saying I'd had enough time alone to have learned my lesson."
"What lesson?"
"I don't know." Ralph took another sip of water. "I never know. I just apologize, she forgives me, and we move forward."
"Did you two have an argument before you went to the Cape?"
"We never argue." He glanced at his construction project. "Well, I did want to make the gazebo octagonal instead of round, but in the end, after a lengthy but completely rational discussion, we came around to her way of thinking."
"So why would she leave?"
"I don't know." Ralph stared at his water bottle for a moment, as if it could explain his wife's behavior. "Unless it's whatever she's been keeping secret. For the last year or two, something's been going on that she doesn't want me to know about. She made it pretty clear it was off-limits, so I didn't ask. But maybe she did want to talk about it and expected me to drag it out of her. I never get that right, knowing when 'I don't want to talk about it' really means, 'I want to talk about it in great detail.' She did seem a little worried about something the few weeks before she left, but I was busy, and I knew I'd be at home all of this month, so I thought talking it out could wait."
"I still don't understand why you haven't reported her disappearance to the police," Helen said. "Or why you tried to cover it up. You even brought fake knitting to the nursing home."
"I should have known Betty and Josie would notice," Ralph said. "It was easy enough to find some preemie caps for sale online, but even I could see they weren't as nice as Angie's. Still, Angie had promised to make more caps, and I didn't want her friends to think she'd broken her promise. She needs her charitable activities. The hospital gift shop on Wednesdays, knitting on Thursdays, animal shelter on Fridays, library book sales on Saturdays. Plus church activities on Sunday. They make her feel like she's a good person. She is a good person, of course, but she doesn't believe it, so she's always doing something to prove it to herself. I was just trying to help by donating the caps for her, so when she came back she wouldn't have to make up for the weeks she'd missed."
Ralph sounded like someone who'd frequently assumed responsibility for covering up his wife's bad behavior, rather than someone who'd covered up his wife with a concrete foundation. Still, Angie had been gone a long time without letting her husband know where she was. "Maybe Angie's gone to visit some friends, and she forgot to tell you."
"I can't imagine who she would visit," he said. "Everyone she knows lives here in Wharton."
And from what Helen had heard, the people she knew here weren't exactly friends.
"Besides," he said, "she doesn't drive. When she's left before, either I took her to the bus station, or her sister did."
"Has her sister seen her since she left?"
"I assume so. I called her after Angie'd been gone a whole week, but Charlene won't pick up my calls or respond to voicemails. She hates me. Always has."
It was hard to imagine anyone hating Ralph, but he said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that he obviously believed it, had gone through the stages of grief about it, and arrived at acceptance. "What does she have against you?"
"No idea. Angie didn't like to talk about it. I stopped asking because it upset her."
"Maybe Charlene would talk to me," Helen said. "She doesn't have to know you sent me."
"Would you do that for me?" Ralph pulled his smartphone out of the back pocket of his jeans. It had a thin smudge of dried concrete in the corner of the screen. "Her full name is Charlene Rice. She doesn't usually work until evening on Fridays, so you should be able to catch her at home now. I've got her address right here."
He turned the screen so she could read it, but she deferred to Jack. "Do you know where that is?"
"I can find it," Jack said, pulling out his own phone and keying in the address, along with Ralph's phone number.
Helen was confident Jack could, indeed
, find any address in Wharton. The only real question was whether she'd be able to get in and out of the sports car again.
CHAPTER FOUR
On the way back to the street, Helen said, "Perhaps we ought to swap the sports car for something just a wee bit larger before we go to Charlene's. I really don't think this is my style."
"You hardly gave it a chance," Jack said. "It takes time to get used to a new experience."
If she gave it much more of a chance, she'd permanently dislocate her already damaged hip.
"Charlene lives on the other end of town, so that will give you a better idea of the ride," Jack said in a cajoling tone. "If you still aren't convinced, we can go straight to the car lot from there. It's not far."
"It doesn't matter how close it is if I can't get into the car," Helen said. "As it is, you may have to tie me to the roof with a bungee cord, if I can't get into the seat."
"You'll get used to it. Until then I'll help you get in and out."
Depending on him for more than the driving wasn't a long-term solution as far as she was concerned. It wasn't worth arguing, though. After he had to lower her into the seat and pull her out of it a few more times, he'd be the one insisting it wasn't right for her. She might be small, but he wasn't terribly big himself. And if he didn't figure out what a bad idea this car was on his own, she'd find some way to steer him in a different direction. She'd done it often enough with her ex-husband and his political cronies.
Getting into the vehicle was every bit as awkward as she'd expected it to be, made worse by her awareness of the person across the street watching from behind a twitching curtain. With Jack's help, though, she managed to get tucked into the leather seat with her yarn bag on her lap.
Once they were on their way, Jack asked, "What did you think of Ralph? A nice guy, right? Everyone thinks so."
"Everyone thought Bernie Madoff was a nice guy too, until they realized he'd stolen millions from them," Helen said. "Anyone who sells things, especially intangible things like life insurance policies, has to be able to do the nice-guy act. It's part of their job description, making you think they're your best buddy all the way up to when you sign the contract and the check. After that, they can count on people wanting to believe they're nice. And honest."
"Yeah, but Ralph really is a good person," Jack said. "I mean, consider his marriage. Anyone else would have divorced Angie years ago. No one would blame him for dumping her, and even if they did, the criticism couldn't be worse than her constant nagging and all the damage she does to his business relationships."
Unless Ralph was intentionally using people's instant dislike of his wife to give him an edge with prospective clients: Poor Ralph, the long-suffering husband of a nagging shrew. Surely, someone as hen-pecked as he is wouldn't do anything underhanded. I can trust him to only sell me the insurance I really need, at the best possible price.
Helen knew she was being cynical, but she had good reason. Her own ex-husband had sometimes used her as a stage prop. He wasn't trying to make people pity him, but was using his marital status as shorthand for being trustworthy. Constituents were meant to think of him as reliable, simply because he was a stable, long-married man. It hadn't been a lie, exactly. He'd never been unfaithful to Helen, unless she considered his career in politics as her rival.
Helen's ex-husband wasn't a bad guy, but neither was he the thoroughly perfect guy his public persona suggested. Ralph couldn't be perfect either. "If Ralph is such a good guy, then why does Charlene hate him so much?"
"I've never met Charlene. From what I hear, she's always at the big box store she manages, and I'm not much of a shopper," Jack said. "It might not be about Ralph, personally. Charlene could hate everyone."
Not even Helen was that much of a misanthrope, even though she was sometimes tempted to lock herself away from all of humanity. "Charlene got along with Angie, apparently. Ralph said Charlene gave Angie rides when he wasn't available."
"Doesn't mean Charlene liked doing it," Jack said. "I've hated quite a few of my passengers over the years. Not you, of course, but all the jerks. And Angie was always a jerk. Charlene probably felt she was being taken advantage of, which can't be good for family relationships."
"You think Charlene would be happy if her sister disappeared? Temporarily or permanently?"
Jack was silent while he waited for the light to turn green. "I suppose not. But I just can't see Ralph doing anything to make Angie leave, let alone hurting her, so if she is dead, who else could have done it?"
Helen tried, but she couldn't imagine Ralph hurting anyone either, not even someone as bitchy as his wife was reported to be. The sad man building the gazebo for his missing wife could never have whacked her in the head or pushed her down some stairs or even stuffed a bunch of pills down her throat.
Of course, maybe Helen wasn't trying hard enough to imagine it. She'd been outraged when the police had dismissed her as a suspect in her nurse's murder a few months ago. Only Helen had known, somewhat to her shame, just how much potentially violent rage she'd felt when the nurse had threatened her independence. She hadn't liked thinking she was capable of murder, but she understood a little too well how susceptible an otherwise rational person could be to blind rage.
Maybe she was making the same sort of assumptions about Ralph that the police had made about her. He was, indeed, an improbable suspect, but maybe Charlene had a good reason to hate Ralph, something that would shed a different light on him, making it possible to imagine him as a killer.
* * *
Charlene lived on a busy, one-way street. Jack pulled into the driveway behind a VW beetle with a custom paint job in waves of bright primary colors.
At least this time there was no neighbor peering out a window to watch Jack awkwardly tugging Helen out of the low seat. Once on her feet, she ignored how unwelcoming the yard was, surrounded as it was by an overgrown, weed-tangled, thorny privet hedge, and made her way to the front porch.
Charlene opened the door of her little bungalow just a crack, the security chain in place, while Helen explained, with slightly stretched truth, that she was a friend of Angie's. Charlene looked past Helen at the sports car in her driveway before inviting Helen and Jack inside.
Angie's sister didn't look any more like a killer than Ralph did. She was tall and thin, with the sort of face that, like Ralph's, was both appealing and interesting. She wore trendy jewelry with a silk blouse and a raw silk pants suit, which Helen thought was a little odd for a woman at home on her day off. It was the sort of outfit Helen had worn while presiding over the governor's mansion, so she knew the name of the designer and exactly what it would have cost five years ago when she'd had a substantial budget for such things. She couldn't imagine how a retail store manager could afford it, at least not without one heck of a large employee discount.
Helen's sister-in-law had worked in retail management for many years and had frequently complained about the tendency of top managers to burn out from all the stress and long hours. Charlene was Angie's older sister, in her mid-fifties, so she was old enough to have climbed the corporate ladder and received a few concussions on the glass ceiling, but she looked remarkably resilient and cheerful, not the least bit stressed. Maybe early August was a slow time of year for her, like it was for Ralph, so she was able to reinvigorate herself with some time off.
Helen followed Charlene through the entrance into the formal living room. Jack remained standing just inside the front door where he could peer across the hallway into the living room without having to risk brushing up against any of the obviously expensive furnishings and breakable glass sculptures on display. Helen settled on the edge of an over-sized, over-stuffed, and probably over-priced sofa that looked familiar enough that if she cared enough to do some research, she could identify its famous designer. The only thing in the room that didn't have a name brand attached to it was a beat-up, clunky old laptop resting on the coffee table.
Charlene leaned against a chair next to the firepl
ace, drawing Helen's attention to the collection of wavy, abstract, glass sculptures perched on the mantel. They were pretty but muted, without enough natural light to bring them to life.
Still, it was obvious Charlene was proud of them, and that gave Helen an opening to get to know Angie's sister better. "You have a lovely collection of glass sculptures."
Charlene smiled with obvious pride. "These? They're nothing, really. Collecting them is just my little hobby."
"Everyone needs a hobby." Helen couldn't help noticing how different the two sisters' pastimes were. Angie's preemie caps were warm and functional. Charlene's glass was cold and purely decorative. Angie made things, while Charlene collected them, but it didn't look as if Angie ever made anything for Charlene to collect. Everything in the living room was either a commercial product with a designer label, or, in the case of the glass, individually made but by a professional, probably one who was well known in the arts community. "I understand Angie is an excellent knitter. Do you have any of her work? An afghan or a pillow, maybe?"
"We have different tastes," Charlene said as she slid down into her chair. "What does Angie want from me now?"