Dear Wife

by Kimberly Belle

  I leave the question dangling, and he doesn’t pick it up. It’s something he’s probably wondered a million times since finding out about the doctor, but what is it they say? Never ask a question you don’t want the answer to.

  “According to Ingrid, Sabine had consulted an attorney,” I say, consulting my notepad. “She was going to ask you—”

  “For a divorce, I know. This past weekend, apparently.” He leans back in his chair. “Ingrid and Trevor told me that, too.”

  I scratch at a cheek, watching him. Waiting. For the span of a good three breaths, maybe four.

  Jeffrey is the first to lose patience. “What?”

  “I’m just wondering what would happen. If she’d gotten the chance to ask you for a divorce, I mean. Who would get the house? How would you split up your assets?”

  “Come on, Detective. We both know I’d get the shitty end of the stick. But okay, I’ll play this game. If Sabine and I got a divorce, I’d probably move away. This is a dead-end job in a dead-end town. I’d have better opportunities elsewhere.”

  I nod, satisfied for now. “Let’s go back to the fight. After Sabine shoved you and you punched her—”

  “Slapped,” he says, his voice clipped. “I slapped her. Not punched. There’s a big difference.”

  “After you slapped her, then what did you do?”

  “I apologized, of course. So did she. We put it behind us and moved on.”

  “But not before you had another heated exchange via text.”

  He pales, his body twitching before he can stop it.

  “What happened, did she lock herself in a bathroom and refuse to let you in? My wife does that sometimes, drives me up a tree. I can see how that might make you do things you might not otherwise do. Say things you might not otherwise say. A smart guy wouldn’t have put it in writing, though.” I pause, two seconds of silence that add weight to my next words. Give them extra meaning. “Unless, of course, you meant what you said.”

  A smart guy wouldn’t have put it in writing, but hey, maybe he’s that much of an idiot. I take in his expression, all slack chin and wide, wild eyes, and I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s that much of an idiot, too.

  I flip through my notepad until I find the single sheet of paper I tucked there, and then I slide it out and slap it to the desk. A printout of a text exchange, his and Sabine’s. I flip it around so he can see, but he doesn’t glance down. He doesn’t need to. He already knows what it says. He’s the chump who wrote the damn thing.

  Come out of there or I will fucking kill you.

  “Mr. Hardison, do you own a weapon?”

  Jeffrey owns a .357 Magnum, licensed and registered in his name. If he lies now, I’ll have a warrant by the end of the day.

  He looks sick, like he might actually throw up, and my chest goes tingly and hot.

  Victory.

  “I think it’s time I get an attorney.”

  BETH

  Like the rest of the church, the administrative offices were designed to impress—solid and thick walls, generous molding, banks of ornate windows hung with gleaming, double glass—but they were furnished with the donors in mind. The decor is straight out of an IKEA catalog: functional, minimalist, Scandinavian sleek. As out of place in this neo-Gothic house of worship as a prostitute, which I’m pretty sure Ayana is. Or at the very least, was. Despite the bucket of cleaning supplies dangling from her finger and the vacuum strapped to her back, her hips wag in invitation, her head swinging back and forth like she’s scrounging up clients on Fulton Industrial Boulevard.

  A hooker, a thief and a fugitive walk into a church—except this is a joke without a punch line.

  “Would you stop?” Martina hisses.

  Ayana’s spine straightens, and she frowns over her shoulder. “Stop what? I’m not doing nothing.”

  “The hell you’re not. Show some respect for this place. You’re not going to find any customers here.”

  Ayana snorts. “Right. ’Cause church people ain’t freaks.”

  Martina rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t argue, and neither do I. With the exception of the Reverend, the people I’ve met in this place might be freaks. As far as I can tell, he’s the only normal one here, the leader of the Land of Misfit Toys.

  The hallway dead-ends into a spare but bright kitchen, and Martina starts doling out orders. “Every single inch in this place needs to be either dusted, wiped down or vacuumed. Give extra care to the things people touch most—the telephone, computer mouse, keyboard, drawer pulls—and don’t be stingy with the cleaning products. If one person gets the stomach flu, we all get the stomach flu.” She nudges Ayana into an open doorway. “You start in the kitchen.”

  Ayana tries to strike a contrary, hands-on-hips pose, but the vacuum hose gets in the way. She settles for a scowl and a jutted hip. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but Beth and I are gonna start in the Reverend’s offices.”

  “How come y’all get to work together and I have to do everything on my own?” Ayana says it in a way that makes me subtract a couple of years from the age I’d originally guessed. If this girl is legal, it’s barely.

  “Stop bitching and get to work, will you?” Martina says. “Work your way down the hallway, and we’ll meet where we meet.”

  We leave Ayana pouting in the hallway and backtrack to the Reverend’s offices at the opposite end, which is a mini complex unto itself. A private work space overlooking an English-inspired garden, a conference room with a projection screen and a table that seats fourteen, a living area with kitchenette and twin three-seater sofas arranged on either side of a low table. The flat-screen television on the wall is tuned to Fox News on mute, bronzed and powdered journalists lined up on a couch in bright ties and floral dresses, their lips moving without sound.

  “I call dibs on the living room,” Martina says, plunking her bucket onto the coffee table.

  “Really? You’re not even going to explain?”

  “Explain what?” She leans down to pull a spray bottle from the bucket, and the gold discs swing on their chain around her neck. Bought with Ayana’s money, if I’m to believe it—and I just might. I try to make out the letters on the engraving, but the charms won’t stop dancing around.

  “What’s up with you and Ayana, of course. You clearly hate each other. Why?”

  Martina lurches upright, her eyes flashing with anger, with accusation. “I didn’t steal her money, okay? I didn’t know anything about it, and who tapes money to their toilet tank, anyway? Like, isn’t that the first place a thief would think to look? If anyone’s a thief here, it’s her. She just admitted to taking that other hooker’s money. You heard that part, right?”

  I nod. “Right, but that’s not what—”

  “And excuse me for trying to help a bitch.” She slings an arm through the air. “I mean, who wouldn’t feel sorry for a girl her age, out there all on her own? I met her when she was fourteen. I fed her, I found her a place to stay. I thought I was some kind of mentor to her, though silly, stupid me, all that time she was taking my money, and she was also taking money from all those men she was spreading her legs for. And never once did she say thanks.” She whirls around and douses a side table with cleaning solution. “Not that I needed a thank-you card, but it woulda been a hell of a lot better than accusing me of being a thief, because I’m not. I’m not a thief.”

  I watch her wipe down the table with sharp, angry strokes and wonder what to say. The thing is, I’m pretty sure Martina is a thief. Ayana never said that the money was taped to the toilet tank. How else would Martina have known that little fact, unless she was the one who found it?

  And what does this mean for our newly formed truce? Was I wrong to believe she wouldn’t steal my money, too?

  A rapping on the door frame saves me from my thoughts, and the table from Martina’s overeager scrubbing.

  The man standing in the doorway is a stranger, and yet I know exactly who he is. S
ame runner’s build as the Reverend, same hazel eyes that seem to be smiling even when he’s not, same clipped beard, though his is a rusty brown instead of white. He is dressed like his father, too, in jeans and a pressed shirt, but his clothes are more modern, more youthful, cut in a way that make me think they might be designer. He even has his father’s haircut, clipped closely on the sides with a longer hank on top, swept off his forehead with an identical cowlick.

  “What do you want?” Martina says, emphasis on the you. She stands like a statue in the middle of the carpet, the spray bottle and rag hanging from a hand.

  “Hi,” I say, smiling to soften her snub.

  He takes it as an invitation, moving farther into the room, his cologne mixing with the other smells: bleach, lemon polish and spicy sandalwood. He extends a hand in my direction. “Erwin Jackson Andrews IV, otherwise known around this place as Erwin Four. The esteemed Reverend’s firstborn and only son and last living carrier of the family name. The pressure is enormous.”

  I laugh and shake his hand. “Beth Murphy, and this is—”

  “Martina and I have met, many times. Haven’t we, Martina?” He gives her a good-natured smile she doesn’t return. She doesn’t answer, either. He turns to me with a shrug. “Have you s—”

  “Your dad’s not here,” Martina says.

  He looks at her, goading. “What if I was about to say Oscar?”

  “Oscar’s in Florida,” I offer, at the same time Martina asks, “Were you?”

  Erwin aims his smile at me, then Martina. No, he was not. It’s a lighthearted teasing, but Martina isn’t having it.

  She gives him her back, attacking the console on the far wall. “I don’t know where the Reverend is. Last I saw him, he was onstage in the church, but that was a half hour ago. He could be anywhere by now.” On the other side of her body, the television flickers a Cialis commercial, an older couple holding hands before a setting sun.

  Erwin drops his hands in his jeans pockets, and a platinum watchband gleams on his wrist. “If you see him, tell him I fixed his email issue. The last update messed up the syncing between his computer and his phone, but it’s working now. I run the IT in this place.” That last sentence he delivers to me, though I can’t decide whether it’s meant to inform or impress.

  His gaze bounces between us, waiting for one of us to respond. He doesn’t seem eager to leave.

  I don’t know what to say to this guy, the son of a holy man. The clothes, the watch, the impish half grin on his face. The result is anything but holy. The silence stretches, long and uncomfortable. Martina ignores us both.

  “Okay, well...” Erwin takes the hint, backing out of the room. “Nice to meet you, Beth. Martina, you have a nice day. See y’all around.” And with that, he saunters back into the hall.

  “What is wrong with you?” I say as soon as we’re alone. “Why were you being so rude to him?”

  “Because Erwin Four is a creep, that’s why.” She sprays down the television screen with Windex, and I don’t tell her she shouldn’t. Something about how the chemicals eat away at the delicate film and distort the pixels. You told me so, right before you backhanded me in the temple for doing it to yours.

  “He’s your boss’s son. It wouldn’t hurt you to be nice.”

  She exchanges the Windex for a fresh rag, begins wiping down the screen. “I tried that once. It didn’t work out that great. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay far, far away from him. I mean it, Beth. He’s bad news.”

  Whatever she says next fades into a pounding in my head, blood rushing in my ears because a national news alert is flashing across the television on the other side of her body. A face fills the screen, and dread, like warm bile, bubbles up my throat. I step to the side, bobbing my head to see around Martina’s feverish scrubbing. A banner crawls across the bottom, white text shining on a bright red background.

  MISSING: SABINE STANFIELD HARDISON.

  A chill skitters up my spine, hollowing out my stomach and my lungs. I stare at the screen as the photograph grows smaller, shifting to a lopsided square in the upper right-hand corner. A journalist’s face takes her place, and I focus on her brows like twin commas squeezed together in concern. Her shiny pink lips are moving, exaggerated, like a silent movie star. I want to search for the remote, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the screen.

  All this time I’ve been hunkered down, hiding and watching the news for reports of a missing Pine Bluff woman, and now here it is, and I can’t breathe. The room spins, the words dancing in spots across my vision.

  Martina steps away from the screen, pausing at the look on my face. She frowns at the TV over her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Who is that?”

  “Her name’s Sabine Hardison.” My voice is high and wild. It echoes in my ears like a scream.

  Martina turns to face the television, shifting so we’re side by side. She tilts her head and studies the screen. “She’s so pretty. Do you know her?”

  Do I know her. I try to cough up an answer, but my lungs are hardened concrete. It’s all I can do to shake my head.

  “Then why are you looking at her picture like that?”

  My thoughts careen and slide around, searching for purchase, for an acceptable excuse for the silence that I’ve already let stretch far too long. “Like how?”

  “Like you want to throw up or something.”

  New words flash across the bottom banner: Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Martina doesn’t read them out loud, but she sees them and turns to study me. Her gaze crawls across my profile, over my wide eyes and cheeks that are burning like I’ve been in the sun too long. Martina is neither blind nor stupid, and I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she’s trying to solve a puzzle.

  And now my breath is coming too hard, too fast. I need Martina to forget she ever saw Sabine’s face, ever saw her name and those awful words that crawled across the bottom of the screen, and the only way to do that is to keep moving and stuff my feelings down. I peel myself away from the screen, pick up my bucket and carry it into the next room, casting one last glance back at the TV. The reporter has moved on to the next subject, and Sabine’s picture has been replaced with that of a politician, some old guy with beady eyes and a smarmy smile.

  Still. Just because the image of Sabine’s face has been erased from the screen doesn’t mean it’s not still burned across my vision. I won’t forget, and I’m not naive enough to think Martina will, either. One false move, one dubious answer, and she’ll start up with the questions again. Already her questions are circling the outer rings of a bull’s-eye. It’s only a matter of time before she flings one that hits dead center.

  People don’t just fall off the face of the planet. They run, they hide or they are taken.

  I should know, because I am one of them.

  MARCUS

  “Uncle Marcus!” The voice comes from somewhere behind me, a couple octaves higher than the racket of the other ten people crammed into Ma’s tiny brick house. From my niece, Annabelle, the birthday girl. She’s the reason for this get-together, and why we’ve all gathered here when normal people are supposed to be working. If Annabelle wants her birthday supper at three in the afternoon, Annabelle gets her birthday supper at three.

  I scoop her up right before she tackles me at the knees. “Happy birthday, Anna-banana-Belle. How does it feel to be eight today?”

  Her eyes go comically big. “I’m nine.”

  “You are?” I smack myself on the forehead with a palm. “Silly me.”

  Annabelle giggles. My niece may be nine, but she weighs practically nothing, the aftereffects of a scary bout with leukemia that left my sister traumatized and dropped Annabelle off the bottom of the growth charts.

  I grab her by the waist, flip her upside down and carry her by her skinny ankles to the kitchen. We pass my mother on the way, and I drop a kiss on her cheek.

  “Stop flinging her around like that,” Ma calls out after us. “You’re going to pop something out of its s
ocket.”

  I swing Annabelle around in the air and deposit her feetfirst onto the kitchen linoleum. Her eyes are shining, her cheeks pink with happiness, and maybe the blood rush that comes with being flipped ass over heels. She’s smiling with her mouth closed, which is a shame because that hole where her two front teeth used to be is the cutest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.

  “Did I pop something out of its socket?”

  She shakes her head, bouncing her pigtails around on either side of her ears. Annabelle’s hair used to be brown and straight as a pin. After the chemo it grew back in spiral curls the color of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. She plants her sneakers and holds up her arms. “Again.”

  I grab her by the wrists and she climbs me like a monkey, popping me in the chin as she executes a flailing back flip. I catch her before she can hit the ground and carry her under my arm like a giggling sack of potatoes.

  “She has you wrapped around her little finger. You know that, right?” my sister, Camille, says watching from the other side of the breakfast bar. She’s leaning on the kitchen counter, with an ever-present glass of chardonnay in a hand—another holdover from Annabelle’s illness—even though it’s the middle of the afternoon.

  “I’m the only one in this family who doesn’t treat her like a piece of glass.” I put Annabelle down and point her in the direction of the other kids, her two older brothers and their cousins, currently tearing up the den. “Kids are supposed to roughhouse, Cam. Let her be a kid.”

  Camille makes a sound in the back of her throat, examining me over the rim of her glass. “You look tired.”

  I am tired. Fucking exhausted, actually. A week of nonstop work on the Sabine Hardison case will do that to you. I step to the fridge and pull out a beer.

  “That bad, huh?” She digs through a drawer for the bottle opener, passes it to me. “Still no leads?”

  “Nothing I can tell you about.” Nothing I can tell anybody about.

  Like every other person in this town, Camille knows what she’s seen on the news—that there has been no trace of Sabine since she walked out the Super1 door and disappeared into thin air. No bank transactions, no check-ins on Sabine’s Facebook or Instagram, no emails or texts. By now the media has poked enough holes in Jeffrey’s story to turn it to Swiss cheese, turning the tide of public opinion about him from sympathetic husband to primary suspect, and it doesn’t help that the guy’s an ass. Plenty of people are coming forward with tales of times he ran over their dog or reneged on a handshake deal, and together their stories have swirled into something bigger, something dark and nefarious.