Dear Wife

by Kimberly Belle

  Inside the glass door, Florence is parked behind the receptionist’s desk, slurping from a foam jug of Diet Coke she refills at the doughnut shop across the lot a couple of times a day. I have no idea what she does here. Up until a few years ago, she was more than happy being a housewife, and then her husband died and she “needed something to keep her busy.” She actually used those words on her application; I know, because I’ve seen it. Eric is such a slouch that he hired her anyway.

  She sees me and her eyes go wide. “Oh, Jeffrey, you poor, poor dear. I heard about Sabine on the evening news.” She rushes around her desk to pull me into a hug.

  What is the proper amount of time to stand here while a colleague holds you in her wrinkly arms? I count to three, then extricate myself.

  “Thank you, Florence.” She smells like cigarettes and Oil of Olay, and now so do I. “I appreciate your concern.”

  “I just can’t believe it. She’s really gone? Do the police have any leads at all?”

  It’s the question I tried to ignore all weekend—from the reporters swarming outside my windows, from friends and neighbors who blew up my phone, from my boss who texted me late last night suggesting I take the week off. Every time, the questions hit me like a brick. Are there any leads? I have no fucking idea.

  The search for Sabine has fizzled, the volunteers have washed the mud off their shoes and returned home to their families and their lives. For police, the investigation has morphed from find her to solve the case, though they’re holding developments tight against their Kevlar chests. If there are any leads, if Detective Durand has found so much as a hair from Sabine’s head, he’s not shared the information with me. I haven’t spoken to him since Saturday afternoon, when he stopped by the house to pick up Sabine’s computer.

  Part of me wonders if he’s keeping me in the dark because I am a suspect, and the other part already knows the answer.

  And so I spent the weekend on the couch, monitoring news of the search on my laptop while a constant stream of Netflix blared on the TV. Most of what I found was a rehashing of old facts or tabloid hacks spinning rumors into conjecture, into motive. That Sabine was taken. That she was killed, by a stranger or her lover or me, in a fit of jealous rage. That she made a break for it, sneaked out of town on purpose.

  That last rumor was the result of my calling Amanda, of parking her on my sofa for an uncensored airing of Sabine’s dirty laundry. The reality of last year’s disappearing act was only a little less dramatic than I made it sound. Sabine really did board a bus—headed west, I later learned—but she didn’t make it very far. Halfway to the Oklahoma border, she received a call from the nursing home that her mother had suffered a fall. She was home before any of us noticed she was gone.

  But the point is, she intended to leave. She tried to sneak off, and for once without telling her sister. If her mother hadn’t tripped over her own two feet, who knows how long she would have stayed gone.

  So now the seed has been planted. Sabine is unstable. She has a history of running off. The husband is innocent. All I can do now is sit back and watch it grow.

  I sneak a quick glance at my watch. Mandy in the Morning starts in less than an hour.

  “I’m starting to think the police are not very competent,” I say to Florence, shaking my head.

  She makes a face, and she swats my bicep with a crepey hand. “Well, of course they’re not. My house was broken into last year, and they did nothing. They didn’t even come by to see the busted-up door or dust for prints. I had to go all the way over to the station just to file a police report. Their excuse was that the gangs on the east side were keeping them too busy for common house thieves, but I was like, ‘well, who the hell do you think did this?’ Of course it was the gangs.”

  I make a sympathetic sound, even though she’s spouting nonsense. The gangs are a problem, yes, but they’re slinging dope, not breaking into old ladies’ houses to steal their tchotchkes. But Florence has always been brilliant at this, at flipping any conversation back to her and her own piddling problems.

  I mumble some excuse about a conference call and head down the hall.

  The office is quiet for a Monday morning, a few minutes before opening time. No phones ringing, no clacking keyboards, no voices muffled behind cubbies and walls. Eric must not be here yet, otherwise he’d be shouting out orders from his office at the end of the hall. “Make some calls!” he’ll yell whenever the office gets too quiet, “Send out some emails!” As if selling his crappy software is as easy as making first contact, but I guess he’s right to complain. A silent sales office is not a productive one.

  I slip into my office and shut the door, going through my normal morning routine. Power up the computer, plow through my email inbox. Delete, delete, delete, ignore.

  A knuckle raps against wood, and a second later, the door pops open. Eric’s head pokes around the corner. “What are you doing here?”

  I lean back in my chair, eyeing him over the top of the computer screen. Eric is dressed in his usual gear—pastel button-down, lightly rumpled khakis, suede saddle bucks. He looks like a frat boy playing boss man.

  “Working.”

  His brows slide into a frown. “I thought I told you not to come in.”

  “No, you told me to take however much time I need, but I don’t need time. I need to work. That mailing I did last month is finally starting to bear fruit, and I have a million things to do.”

  This place is set up for a roving sales department, with company-issued laptops and a VPN that can be accessed from the road. Both of us know I could just as easily work from home as from here. Easier, probably, because I could do it without ever leaving my bed.

  He glances into the hallway, and I catch a flash of something in his expression—surprise? annoyance?—before he looks back at me and steps inside.

  He shuts the door behind him. “Jeffrey, people are starting to talk...”

  “What people?”

  He makes an are-you-kidding-me face, a minuscule lifting of his shoulders. “The point is—”

  “Who, Eric? What are they saying?”

  I know what they’re saying. Sabine cheated. She was in love with another man. Jeffrey Hardison is a fool. A stooge. A sucker.

  My desk phone buzzes, and I tap the Do Not Disturb button. The system flips the call through to voice mail.

  “People are worried about your wife, Jeffrey,” Eric says evenly. “They’re worried about you.” His words toss yet another coal onto my belly-fire.

  I slam both fists onto my desk and lean in. “They’re worried? How do you think I feel? Today is day six. Six days since Sabine went wherever she went, and there’s still no sign of her. The police think—” I stop myself just in time. I inhale long and slow, trying to put a damper on my tone, on my temper. “This whole situation is crazy intense. I’ve barely slept. I’ve lost my appetite. You can’t even imagine the stress I’m under.”

  “I can imagine. Which is why I suggested you take some time off. Nobody expects you to be here, least of all me.”

  I choke up a chuckle, an attempt to laugh it off. “I gotta tell you, Eric, I never thought I’d hear you tell me I’d done enough work. I thought your motto was ‘more is more.’ I barely know what to do with this laid-back version of you.”

  He doesn’t share my joviality, not even a little bit. The silence stretches, long and painful. He leans a shoulder against the door. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

  I cross my arms, lean back in my chair. Wait.

  He sighs, stepping to the edge of my desk. “Look, if it was just the staff talking, that’d be one thing, but the clients are starting to ask questions, and not just of me. They’re talking to each other, and already the gossip is swirling out of control. I can’t have potential customers getting wind of this. Business is already bad enough.”

  I clear my throat. “So this suggestion of yours for me to take some time off. It wasn’t a suggestion, really? More like an order?”


  “Both.”

  “Are you firing me?”

  He lifts both hands into the air, frustrated. “Come on, you know I can’t do that. We work in HR, for crap’s sake.” There’s a knock at the door, which we both ignore. “I’m placing you on paid leave so you can go home and worry about your wife in private. Just until this thing blows over.”

  I take a deep breath. Sit here calmly, at my desk across from him, while his words boil under my skin. Until this blows over. Meaning what, until Sabine is found safe and sound, and I’m proven innocent? Or that I’m carted out of here in handcuffs and he has reasonable grounds to fire me? Which one?

  There’s another knock, this time louder. More forceful. Florence’s voice works its way through the wood. “Jeffrey? I tried to call but your phone is on DND.”

  I roll my eyes, but Eric’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Are we agreed?” he says, his voice low and filled with meaning. I give him a brisk nod: fine. In fact, fuck this place. A paid vacation sounds like just what the doctor—Nope, not going there. Fuck Trevor, and fuck Eric, too.

  Eric steps back and opens the door, and Florence swipes the air with a knobby fist. She sees him, and her arm falls to her side. “Oh.” Her gaze bounces from Eric to mine. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Sorry.”

  My jaw aches from the pressure creeping up my neck and shoulders, from keeping my molars clamped together. Of course she meant to interrupt, every time she banged on my door as well as however many times she tried to call. The Do Not Disturb button exists for a reason.

  “It’s fine, Florence,” Eric says. “Jeffrey and I were done.”

  Florence’s gaze cuts me like a knife fresh from the freezer. “There’s a detective here to see you.”

  MARCUS

  Jeffrey’s office smells like coffee and expensive cologne, but it can’t disguise the stink of his panic when I step through his door. I thank the receptionist and his boss, close the door in their faces. I picture them standing on the other side, pressing their ears to the wood. A detective dropping by an office for an unexpected visit is always a showstopper. They were equal parts captivated and horrified.

  He watches me sink into one of the chairs across from his desk, trying to read my expression, but I don’t give anything away. Let him sweat. I toss my bag and keys on the chair next to me, settling in like I’m planning to stay awhile.

  “Thanks for squeezing me in. I’m sure you must be very busy...” I take in the PDK poster on the wall, his whiteboard messy with sales numbers and scribbled reminders, the Every day I’m hustlin’ desk plaque on the edge of his desk. “What is it you do here exactly?”

  “PDK Workforce Solutions provides an interactive human resources management software that helps grow your business. Recruitment, performance management, workflow, things like that. Honestly?” He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “Don’t buy it, it’s a little buggy.”

  I watch him without even a shadow of amusement.

  “Do I need a lawyer?” he blurts out before he can stop himself. His nerves are making him restless and blunt.

  “Do you want one?” Now I’m amused. A smile sneaks out before I can stop it.

  “That depends on what you’re here to ask me.”

  “You want to see my list of questions?” I point to the pad balanced on a thigh. “Not sure you can read my handwriting, though. My wife seems to be about the only one on the planet who can.” He doesn’t respond, and I drop my hand. “How about I just read ’em off to you one by one, and you tell me when I hit the magic button.”

  Whatever remnants of the smile from his mocking of PDK’s buggy software disappears. “Why don’t you just tell me what I can do for you, Detective.”

  I flip through the pages of my notebook. “As you know, we’ve been combing through the files on Sabine’s laptop, and we found a couple of things I’m hoping you can clear up for us. Like her bank accounts, for example.”

  His shoulders drop a good inch in relief. This is a question he thinks he knows the answer to.

  “I assume you’re not asking about our joint accounts.”

  I dip my chin in a nod. “Correct.”

  “Which one? She has three in her name only. The mortgage account, a checking and a debit Mastercard. Those last two are business accounts, by the way. I don’t really have much knowledge of them, other than to help her file her taxes.”

  “I’m referring to her savings accounts, actually. The two money markets, and the investment account.”

  Jeffrey goes completely still. He gave me Sabine’s computer, but not before combing through it. He would have been a fool not to. But these accounts weren’t on that Excel file she maintained. They weren’t anywhere. I only know of their existence because Ingrid told me.

  “You look surprised,” I say, trying not to sound satisfied.

  His answer comes through gritted teeth. “Since when?”

  I consult the papers on my lap. “Well, let’s see. The money markets are from early January and end of March, 2013. The investment account is more recent, December of last year. Together the accounts add up to a grand total of $379,385.29, give or take, but you know how those investment portfolios go. The value changes faster than you can add up the numbers.”

  He doesn’t respond, but I see the thoughts rolling through his mind as clearly as if they were written in the air. Sabine has almost $400K squirreled away in accounts she never told him about. In accounts she hid from him. For years.

  “I can see you need a minute to process this, so let’s come back to it in a little bit. In February of last year, you transferred your share of ownership at 4538 Belmont Drive to your wife, and over the course of the next sixteen months, the monthly mortgage payment has been coming from her salary, not yours.”

  He shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “Sabine makes a lot more money than I do. If you’ve been through the accounts, you know how much more. It only seemed fair.”

  “Was this her idea or yours?”

  “I don’t remember who suggested it, but Sabine was picking up the slack most months anyway. I didn’t want it to become an issue between us.”

  “Was it ever?”

  “Was it ever, what?”

  “An issue. Because my wife and I, we just throw everything into one pot. But believe me, I get how money can become an issue, because she used to draw a salary. When she stopped working, she felt guilty spending the money in our account since I was the one who put it there. It took me a while to convince her that what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is mine. She contributes in other ways, you know? But to each his own, I guess.”

  This is me playing good cop. The witty and let’s-be-buddies cop. Judging from the way his eyes go dark and squinty, Jeffrey doesn’t believe it for a second.

  “Sabine and I went in another direction, but believe me when I say there are no hard feelings between us. I may live in our house rent free, but I pay the utilities and buy most of the groceries, as I’m sure you’ve seen on the joint household account. That’s my contribution.”

  “Sounds like a good deal.”

  “Yes,” he says, nodding. “A good deal for both of us.”

  I scribble some bullshit on the pad, then flip to the next page. “Since Sabine’s disappearance, you’ve discovered she was having an affair. That must have been rough.”

  He barks a sarcastic laugh. “Rough is one way of putting it, I guess. Finding out about the affair was difficult, yes, it was hurtful, but was it surprising? Maybe not so much. The truth is, Sabine and I have been moving further and further apart for some time now. I’m sure her sister, Ingrid, has told you as much.”

  “According to Dr. McAdams, it wasn’t just an affair. He says the two are very much in love. That they’ve been making plans to reorganize their lives so that they can be together.”

  “By planning to ditch their spouses, you mean. Yes, I know about that, too. Ingrid and Dr. McAdams both told me.”

  “According to the doctor, Sabine was also
pregnant.”

  “Yeah, he told me the joyful news.” He says it through curled lips, and with a tone like he’d just stepped in dog shit.

  “How’d that go over?”

  “I punched him, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’d also caution him, before he gets too excited, to take a look at Sabine’s medical records.”

  “You think she’s lying?”

  “I think he should take a look at her medical records. Out of respect for Sabine’s privacy, I don’t want to say more.”

  “You weren’t respecting her all that much when you punched her in the face.”

  His face goes white, then beet red, fury firing through his veins. He knows that little tidbit came from Ingrid. It’s the same expression he used with her in my office.

  He stabs a finger on his desk. “Okay, first of all, I did not punch her. Not even close. It was a light slap with the back of my hand, one I regretted as soon as it happened. That’s all it was.”

  “That must have been one hell of a slap.”

  “We were arguing. Things got heated. She shoved me. I slapped her. Afterward, we apologized, and that was that. We moved on.”

  “What were you arguing about?”

  He lifts both hands in the air. “I don’t know, Detective. What does any married couple argue about? Taking out the trash, dirty clothes on the floor, using the last of the shampoo. Take your pick.”

  “Would you say you’re a jealous man?”

  He narrows his eyes. “My wife is cheating on me, Detective. I think I’m allowed to be jealous. But again, I didn’t find this out until after she went missing.”

  I shrug. “Still. Your wife certainly had her secrets. Secret bank accounts, secret lover. I wonder what else she was keeping from you.”