A Denial of Death (29 page)

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.

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 administrator. 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?"

Martha came out from behind her desk to stand beside the sculpture. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"I'm no expert, but it reminds me of the pieces in Angie's sister's collection. Hers were a lot smaller, though."

"It's from her collection, actually," Martha said. "She offered it to me for a fraction of its value because she needed the cash. In its own way, it's as lovely as my Bentley, and unlike the car, I can keep it right here in my office where I can see it all the time."

Helen could almost understand the appeal of the sculpture, seeing it here instead of in Charlene's gloomy home. "A sunroom is the perfect place to display it."

"It really does seem to belong here, doesn't it? Like it wants to be in the sunlight," Martha said. "You probably think I'm crazy, believing a chunk of glass cares where it is. Angie certainly didn't think it belonged here. She got it into her head that I'd stolen it from her sister and demanded I return it or she'd report my supposed theft to my boss. She wouldn't listen to my explanations, and she was being so disruptive I had to have her escorted off the premises."

"Did you talk to Charlene about it?"

"I tried to call her when Angie was here, but I couldn't reach her. I'm sure Charlene sorted it all out later. At least I never heard from Angie about it again, and my boss never mentioned it."

Unlike Angie's complaint about the sign-in policy, which wouldn't have left any sort of black mark, or even a pale gray one, on Martha's employment record, an accusation of theft could have had serious consequences. "If that was the same day as your argument over the sign-in policy, Angie might not have had time to go over your head. She disappeared the next day."

"I didn't know that." Martha returned to her desk. "I just assumed she'd gotten over her snit. Most people do. One of the first things I learned in this job is that you can't make everyone happy. You need to prioritize. I try to look out for the patients first, their families second, and the staff third. Angie wasn't any of those, so I really didn't pay her much attention."

Her explanation sounded plausible enough, but so did everyone else's reasons for not hating Angie enough to kill her. If only Charlene hadn't gone missing, Helen could ask her to confirm Martha's story about how she'd acquired the glass sculpture.

"Charlene is missing now too," Helen said. "Jack's trying to find her, but no one's seen her since I talked to her on Sunday."

Martha appeared genuinely surprised. "That's not like her at all. I'm assuming you've checked where she works. She practically lives at the store."

"They haven't heard from her either."

"Do the police think Ralph killed Charlene too?" Martha said. "I always heard there was some sort of feud going on between them."

A feud Angie had manufactured and neither Ralph nor Charlene actually engaged in. "It wasn't anything more serious than Angie's complaints about the sign-in ledger here. Nothing worth killing over."

"Ralph could have killed Charlene because she figured out he'd killed his wife. Charlene was always very close to Angie, so if she suspected Ralph she would have confronted him, trying to protect Angie, regardless of the risk to herself." Martha nodded at the sculpture. "When she sold me that piece, it was because she needed money, apparently quite desperately, but she didn't want to upset Angie by telling her about the debts."

"We don't know that Charlene is dead. Or that Ralph killed anyone."

"Don't you think he's guilty?"

"I don't know what to believe anymore."

"Subaru Foresters," Martha said, turning her attention back to her sleek laptop. "That's what you can believe in. Cars are much simpler than people."

"You're probably right."

As Helen made her way to the main entrance to see if Jack had returned, she tried not to let it bother her that, in all likelihood, she'd never know exactly what had happened to Angie. Just when she thought she'd found a sense of serene acceptance, it dawned on her that if Ralph was convicted of murder, Detective Peterson was never going to let her forget she'd been on the wrong side of this case. A condescending Hank Peterson was bad enough; a gloating one was bound to be much, much worse.

*  *  *

This time when Helen started down the front steps of the nursing home, she could see the mini-van approaching, with Jack at the wheel.

While she was getting into the passenger seat, Jack said, "I'm sorry, Ms. Binney. I still can't find Charlene. Her house looks abandoned, and I swung by her store, and they said she hasn't shown up the last three days, and they're getting worried."

Helen was convinced Charlene knew about Angie's secret career and also why Angie kept her writing a secret from Ralph. Had he found out the morning she'd disappeared, and that was what they'd argued about? Would he have been upset about the subject matter of her books, or possibly just about the way she'd kept secrets from him, hiding her work and money from him? Would it have made him angry enough to kill? Charlene was the missing link in the case against Ralph, and her disappearance only made his situation look worse.

"Did someone from the store call the police?"

He nodded. "The cops weren't staking out her house, though. Maybe they know where she is."

"I hope so." Whether Charlene incriminated Ralph or not, she needed to be found. She might even know something that would help him. If so, and the real killer knew Charlene could exonerate Ralph, it would have made her a target.

What could Charlene have known about that would help Ralph, but that he didn't know about?

The secret bank account.

That was the answer. Those bank records could exonerate Ralph.

"Charlene has access to a bank account Angie kept secret from Ralph, and there were withdrawals from that account after the check-out time at the casino. They couldn't have been made by Angie, though, because she was underneath the gazebo's foundation before then. Tate can use the bank records to prove Ralph wasn't anywhere near the ATMs at the relevant times. That would mean someone else must have made those withdrawals to make it look like Angie was still alive. It might be enough for reasonable doubt."

"Has Tate agreed to represent Ralph?"

"Not yet," Helen said.

"The exotic wood warehouse is next on your itinerary then, I assume."

Helen shook her head. "He'll just have to trust me to get whatever he wants as his retainer."