by Gin Jones
"Of course." Apparently Barry's charitable impulses only went so far. Helen dug her wallet out of her yarn bag and handed over two twenty-dollar bills.
Jack jumped out of the mini-van. "Do you want to try out the rear sliding doors, or do you prefer the front seat? There's a video screen and game console in the back."
That extra feature explained Jack's enthusiasm. "The front, please." The air conditioning was likely to be stronger there. "I'll leave the console testing to you."
"Anything you say, Ms. Binney."
She climbed into the passenger seat, finding it a little awkward to get into but more manageable than either the huge SUV or the tiny sports car. "I know we planned to decide on a car today, but I'd like to make a quick stop at the nursing home first. While I'm there could you swing by Charlene's house and see if she's come home? Maybe check the store where she works too. I'd really like to know she's safe." And available for Helen to question about Angie's argument with Ralph.
"Sure," Jack said, politely hiding what she assumed was his disappointment that he wouldn't get to check out the game console while he waited outside the nursing home.
"I wouldn't ask you to go to Charlene's house if anyone else could do it," Helen said. "I'm afraid the police might be staking it out, so watch out for them, and don't take any unnecessary risks."
"If they're outside her house, we'll know they're still waiting for her to return," Jack said. "I bet they want to talk to her as much as you do, now that Angie's body has been found."
"You're probably right." Helen stared unseeing out the side window. With Charlene missing, and Peterson leaping to the wild conclusion that there was a serial killer on the loose, Barry had been her only real lead, and instead he'd turned out to be the most unlikely suspect of all, if what he said about his monastic retreat was true. "How long have you known Barry? Is he really so holy he'd spend several days in prayer to atone for a perfectly understandable and harmless display of temper?"
"He is," Jack said without hesitation. "He didn't leave his monastic calling out of a lack faith. It was more because of an over-abundance of faith. He felt he needed to be out in the world, fighting temptation and modeling a virtuous life. Like it was too easy in the cloister."
Helen went back to contemplating the road in front of her without seeing it. If Barry was no longer a credible suspect, and Tate didn't see much potential for reasonable doubt with either the insurance agency's manager or Martha Waddell, then Ralph was in serious trouble.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"You don't really believe Ralph killed Angie, do you?" Betty said as soon as she saw Helen approaching. She and Josie were in their usual spots in the far corner of the nursing home's activity room, surrounded by their yarn.
"I wasn't sure if you'd heard about it." Helen pulled up a chair and tucked her yarn bag in beside her. "Was there something in the local paper?"
Josie waved her crochet hook dismissively. "We never wait for the Wharton Times' version of events."
"Detective Peterson's uncle told us about it," Betty confided. "Took credit for the arrest too, forgetting we were the ones who convinced him to pressure his nephew to do something."
"We should have known the police would get it wrong," Josie said in disgust. "No sane person could possibly think they've arrested the right person."
"I don't know what to believe." Helen was inclined to automatically believe the exact opposite of whatever Detective Peterson did, but she wasn't having any luck finding a better suspect. "I was so sure they wouldn't find anything except rocks and sand and perhaps a few lost tools under the gazebo. Much as it galls me to admit it, I was wrong, and Detective Peterson was right."
"It still doesn't mean Ralph offed Angie." Josie reached over and snagged Helen's yarn bag to remove her latest project. Josie blinked, obviously surprised to see a cap that might fit a human head.
Helen refrained from admitting it was her friend at the casino who'd done the work. "You two blamed Ralph in the beginning, when you asked me to look for Angie."
"We never really thought he'd done it," Betty said. "We just knew something was wrong, and no one would listen to us, not even Ralph, so it sort of made sense that he was involved somehow. We wouldn't have said anything if we'd thought Ralph would get into trouble."
"I'm working on convincing Tate to represent Ralph," Helen said. "If anyone can help now, Tate can."
"It would be better if you could figure out who really killed Angie," Betty said. "Then Ralph wouldn't need a lawyer, and no one would get away with murder."
"I'd love to figure out the real killer," Helen said, "but I've run out of suspects, and I'm afraid I'm just going to make things worse for Ralph. I've talked to every possible suspect I could think of, no matter how unlikely, and Tate says none of them would provide a jury with reasonable doubt. Angie was definitely annoying, but no one had any serious grudge against her, and no one would benefit from her death, except for Ralph."
"What about Samantha, the agency's office manager?" Josie suggested. "Now that Angie's gone, Ralph might notice she's in love with him."
"I'm not entirely sure, but it’s likely that she's over him," Helen said. "She's got a boyfriend now."
"Isn't that nice?" Josie said dreamily. "I love a happy ending."
"It's not such a happy ending for Ralph." Helen took back the cap that had passed Josie's inspection, along with the hook. "It means Samantha didn't have a motive to kill Angie."
"Are you sure?" Betty said. "Did you meet the boyfriend? People sometimes claim to have a relationship in order to hide an unrequited crush."
"It's a long shot, but I can double-check." Helen picked up her yarn and made the first few stitches of the next row. The surface of the cap already refused to lie flat. Maybe it would work itself out if she just kept going. Or perhaps blocking would fix it.
Josie glanced at Helen's stitches, and flinched. "There has to be something more you can do for Ralph."
"I'd love to talk to Angie's sister again, but she seems to have disappeared too. Charlene called me on her way home from Connecticut, after looking for her sister, but as of yesterday afternoon, she still wasn't back. Jack is checking now to see if she's come home yet."
"You think she's dead too?" Josie said. "I bet they'll find her body in the trash compactor at the big box store where she works."
"Or she could be on the run, hiding out from the police," Betty said in her no-nonsense tone. "Charlene was the last person to see Angie alive, right? Maybe she killed her sister and then lied about taking her to the casino."
"Angie definitely made it to the casino," Helen said. "I've seen the bank records. She paid for a week's stay, starting the day she disappeared. Besides, why would Charlene kill Angie? As far as I can tell, they were very close. Charlene gave Angie rides whenever she asked, and they even went on vacations together."
"Except when they were fighting about money," Betty said.
"Money changes everything," Josie said darkly as she plucked the chemo cap out of Helen's hands and unraveled all the new stitches.
"Charlene doesn't inherit anything from Angie. If the motive was money, then the police got it right when they arrested Ralph."
"Ralph's never been all that interested in money," Betty said. "He never would have started his own agency if it hadn't been for Angie pushing him."
"Even so, he's the only one who benefits financially from her death," Helen said. "Ralph will get the house and the bank accounts and everything else they owned together. Plus, Ralph admitted to being the sole beneficiary of a substantial life insurance policy."
"Angie might have left Charlene something in her will," Betty said.
Josie shook her head. "Angie would never give her sister any money. She didn't approve of Charlene's spendthrift ways."
"No matter how you look at it, Charlene doesn't have a motive to kill Angie." Then again, no one else Helen had talked to had a particularly persuasive motive either. Barry had vented his brief anger b
y tossing Angie's suitcase; Francesca seemed too depressed to summon up the anger necessary to commit murder; and Martha Waddell was too secure in her job to care about Angie's meaningless threats. Terri Greene might have the potential for violence if the library were threatened, but now that Helen knew Angie's money had come from a legitimate source and hadn't been embezzled from the library, Terri didn't have any reason to feel anything more than mild irritation with her least favorite volunteer. "Lots of people were annoyed with Angie, but not to the point of murderous rage. Unless you can think of anyone with a real reason to kill her, there's nothing more I can do."
Josie handed back the chemo cap, which had had the few bad stitches removed and three new rows added. "I still can't believe Ralph did it. We should never have gotten you involved, and the police would never have started looking for the body, and Ralph wouldn’t be in trouble."
"It's not your fault." Helen stuffed the cap and crochet hook into her yarn bag, so as not to make more work for Josie.
"What about a random killing at the casino?" Betty said. "Angie could have been killed there and brought back here to be buried."
"I don't think so," Helen said. "If she'd been killed in some random act at the casino, why would he go to all the trouble of looking up her address and then bringing her body back to her house, when he could have just dumped the body somewhere closer to the casino? He wouldn't have had any way of knowing there'd be a convenient hole waiting for him at her house, about to be covered with concrete."
Josie was looking past Helen, at the entrance to the activity room. Helen glanced over her shoulder and caught the arrival of the elderly sweethearts who'd been feuding the last time she was here, up until the moment when the woman had needed medical intervention. Today, they were holding hands and leaning into each other, possibly for physical support, but mostly for the emotional closeness.
"They're so sweet," Josie said dreamily.
Betty laughed wryly. "What impresses a girl definitely changes with age. Used to be the guy would have to be doing something extraordinary to get our attention, but at our age we're impressed by any small thoughtfulness."
"In that case," Josie said thoughtfully, "you could say whoever buried Angie was being sweet too. Not the killing her part, but the part where she's buried under the gazebo she's always wanted, on the property she's always taken meticulous care of. I mean, if you're going to be dumped somewhere, a beautiful, quiet spot has to be better than the bottom of a swamp or underneath a parking lot or something."
Helen had been so shocked by the police finding the body that she hadn't thought of it as anything but horrific. Josie was right, though. Everyone had been viewing the gazebo as a convenient place to hide a body where it was unlikely to be found, but it was also a place with sentimental meaning for Angie. In other circumstances, like if Ralph had chosen to sprinkle her ashes near the gazebo, everyone would have thought it was a loving gesture.
Unfortunately, there was no way to know what the person burying Angie had been thinking at the time. Had he coldly calculated a place where the body would remain hidden, or had he been considerate of his victim, seeking a spot where she would have wanted to be buried? Only someone who had cared for Angie would have thought about her wishes. Only someone like Ralph.
Looking at the situation objectively, as Tate would insist she do, Helen didn't really have any evidence to justify believing in Ralph's innocence. If only Charlene would come home, she might be able to tell Helen more about Ralph's relationship with his wife. Had he really been that blind to Angie's faults and as uninterested in their finances as he claimed? And what had they argued about the morning she disappeared?
Helen stood to leave. "Maybe we should keep quiet about how thoughtful it was to bury Angie under the gazebo, at least for now. The police don't need any more incriminating evidence against Ralph. Tate's good, but we don't want to cause him more work than necessary. He deserves to enjoy at least some of his retirement days."
* * *
Halfway across the activity room Helen noticed Geoff Loring in the corner, chatting with the no-longer-feuding romantic couple, and she detoured over to talk to him. Maybe he knew something he hadn't included in his newspaper story.
Geoff looked up warily as she approached. "I don't know anything about any murders," he said before she could speak. "I wrote up what the police told me, and I gave it to my editor, and that was the end of my involvement. I'm back on the beat where I belong, doing the types of stories I'm good at."
Helen glanced at the elderly couple, so wrapped up in each other they didn't seem to notice either her or Geoff, so she didn't feel bad about interrupting the interview. "Is there really that much interest in the love affairs of senior citizens?"
He shrugged. "I may not win any awards, but I'm good at what I do. Home-town papers need to fill a lot of column-inches with local stories. There aren't enough murders or other crimes to do that, but there are thousands of personal interest stories. Everyone likes to read about happy endings like Janie and Doug here are enjoying. I cover all those uplifting stories, from grade school to the nursing home."
"You cover school activities too?" Helen said. "You must know Terri Greene, then. I think she's a coach."
"Sure," Geoff said. "I did a piece on her last week. She'd just come back from a state-wide tournament in Springfield, and they'd taken the top prize."
"When was that?"
"Must have been two-three weeks ago."
That was right around when Angie had disappeared. "Which was it? Two or three?" Helen said, a little more sharply than she intended, and Geoff shrank back. She softened her tone. "I'm sorry, but it's important. Do you have the exact dates for the tournament?"
"Sure." Geoff pulled out his smartphone and began scrolling through the files. "I keep all my stories in cloud storage. Here it is. The event was the beginning of the month, and the team was gone for the better part of two weeks. They left on a Monday and returned two Sundays later."
"Did they leave the week Angie disappeared, or the week after?"
He frowned at his phone for a moment. "It started the Monday before Angie disappeared, but what's that got to do with anything?"
"Nothing, apparently." If Terri had been in Springfield until ten days after Angie disappeared, then Terri couldn't have followed Angie to the casino to kill her there and wouldn't have been able to dump the body in the foundation hole beneath the gazebo before the concrete was poured. The options for establishing reasonable doubt in Ralph's defense were shrinking by the minute, and they hadn't been that big to start with.
"You're poking into Angie's murder, aren't you?" Geoff pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet. His voice rose, loud enough that even the elderly and largely deaf sweethearts could hear him easily, as could everyone else in the room. "I don't have anything else to say to you. I don't know anything about anything. I'm not working on any big stories. Leave me alone."
"It's okay. I'm leaving." Helen backed away from Geoff before he could work himself up into needing more medical intervention than the actual residents of the nursing home. She obviously wasn't going to get any useful leads out of him.
Poor Ralph. It was starting to look more and more like he wasn't going to get the sort of happy ending Geoff liked to write about.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Helen expected to find Jack waiting for her in front of the nursing home's front steps, but for once he hadn't timed his arrival perfectly. The mini-van wasn't in the guests' parking lot either. Maybe he'd found Charlene. Or the mini-van hadn't been as reliable as Ed had claimed it was, and it had broken down while Jack was out looking for Charlene. He would call her as soon as he had anything to report.
There was one other thing she could do as long as she had a few spare minutes here. She still found it odd the sensible, budget-minded Martha Waddell supposedly drove a Bentley.
Helen went back inside, signed the guest log again, this time indicating she was visiting the assistant admin
istrator. Martha's secretary waved Helen toward an open office door, saying, "The front desk called. Martha's expecting you."
The office was once a sun room added to the back of the mansion, with stone floors and small panes of glass forming three of the walls. The sunlight poured inside, raising the temperature despite the best efforts of the air conditioning, but otherwise making the office a pleasant place for Martha to spend her long work hours. The light seemed drawn to an art glass sculpture about four feet high on a credenza to one side of the office door. The remainder of the furnishings faded into the background, much like Martha's professional but bland suits.
Martha looked up from the sleek laptop computer on her desk. "What can I do for you today?"
"I wanted to ask you about cars," Helen said. "I can't seem to find one that fits me."
Martha waved a hand dismissively. "That's easy. A Subaru Forester is what you want."
"Not a Bentley like yours?"
"Oh, no." Martha turned her chair to point out the window toward where a pale gray convertible was parked in a space at the far end of the parking lot where no other vehicles were likely to get too close to it. "You don't need that kind of reminder of your aspirations to a higher office. I assume you don't go on long drives like I do for relaxation, either, so it would be a waste of time and money for you to get a luxury car. I couldn't have afforded it if I hadn't spent a year hunting down one that needed some work. It cost me a lot more than its current value, even factoring in what I paid Ed Clary to bring the engine up to its current mint condition. I had to spend a good chunk of the money I inherited from my parents, but it was worth it. I just adore driving it. But that's me, not you. You want something reliable and basic."
Helen looked from the fancy car in the parking lot to the colorful glass sculpture that likely cost close to the sticker price on the mini-van she was testing today, although not as much as Martha's Bentley. "Is that another reminder of your aspirations?"