Dear Wife

by Kimberly Belle

  “Have you checked his finances?” Jade says, blowing back a chunk of bang. “Could have used a hired gun.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. I’ll take another look, but the accounts are mostly hers. Her salary is more than double his, and she’s squirreled a lot of it away. With her out of the picture, he’ll be a very wealthy man. Even the house is in her name.”

  Jade raises an eyebrow. “Want me to keep digging? I could track his movements since Sabine went missing, see if there’s anything out of the ordinary.”

  “There won’t be. He’s been careful, stuck close to home.”

  “What about his emails, texts, things like that?”

  “I’m going to forget you even suggested it, since we don’t have a warrant. Not yet anyway.” I drum my fingers on the desk, considering my next move. “Actually, I do have something I’d like you to do, and that’s keep a watch on the police department sites for me. The website, Facebook and Twitter pages, log-ins on the scanner and whatever else we’ve got out there. I want to know about any strange hits.”

  “Define strange.”

  “Clusters of IPs coming from somewhere outside of Pine Bluff, most likely a city in the South.”

  She gives me a skeptical look. “You think Sabine is on the run?”

  “Maybe. Jeffrey said some things that made her seem like she might be unstable, and—”

  “Oh, come on. You don’t believe that bullshit story he fed to Mandy in the Morning, do you?”

  “Not necessarily. But the sister confirmed Sabine has tried to leave before, and I have reason to believe she had some medical issues that may have been in play here, as well.”

  I don’t mention that last little tip came from Jeffrey, and his carefully placed suggestion that Sabine might not have been pregnant. I found some old medical records on her laptop that indicate a string of failed pregnancies, along with correspondence with a local pharmacy about some prescriptions. All leads I’m still chasing down.

  I push up out of the chair. “Just keep a watch on the sites, will you? Let me know if you see a bunch of hits coming from the same location. Call me the second you find something.”

  “You got it.” Jade scribbles something on a sticky note, then turns back to the monitors. “Now, get out of here, will you? I got shit to do.”

  I slide the map from her desk and duck into the hall, my cell phone buzzing with a message from Charlie. I swipe and read the text, which is terse and to the point: Bingo. Charlie is a man of few words, but it’s one I want to hear. I step into the stairwell and give him a call.

  “I found a bank account,” he says by way of hello. “Wells Fargo, opened a little over three weeks ago at a branch in Texarkana. Her first deposit was a thousand dollars, which it looks like she made in cash. Since then, no more money flowing in.”

  My throat clenches in excitement, followed by a surge of something a lot less pleasant. A thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of cash. An amount that doesn’t just go missing overnight, not without raising some red flags. An amount she would have to have been squirreling away for months in order to not get noticed.

  “And the withdrawals?” I say from between clenched teeth, because for fucking sure there are withdrawals.

  “A five hundred withdrawal last week, followed by withdrawals of twenty or thirty bucks a pop, and they’re all over the place. North Platte, Nebraska. Lexington, Kentucky. Amarillo, Texas. Boise, Phoenix, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Colum—”

  “She’s trying to throw us off.”

  “Sure looks that way,” Charlie confirms. “At this pace, she’s got another three and a half weeks before the account runs dry. You want me to keep following the transactions?”

  I drop my head and stare at the stairwell floor, grimy linoleum that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the last century, and try not to scream. My pulse jumps, ticking away in my temples. Charlie can follow the transactions, but no way in hell it’s her at the ATM machines. This is a ploy to throw me off, to send me scurrying down an opposite road, in an opposite direction.

  Good thing I’m not that stupid.

  “Keep an eye on the account,” I tell Charlie, “but don’t get excited until there’s a deposit, and then I want eyes on that camera footage. In the meantime, focus on what else she’s got up her sleeve. Because there’s more coming, that’s for damn sure. Call me when you find it.”

  “Roger that,” he says, and the line goes dead.

  * * *

  I spend the rest of the day chasing leads.

  From a search of the prescription drug database, which the Arkansas Department of Health tells me I don’t need a warrant for as long as I have a case number and probable cause. From Sabine’s doctors, her general practitioner and ob-gyn, neither of whom were as forthcoming. Both demanded a warrant before saying the first word. And from Dr. Lee, the urologist from Suite 203, where Jeffrey was pissing in a cup when fifty-one miles away, his wife walked out of a Super1 and disappeared. Dr. Lee wouldn’t tell me anything, either.

  Which leaves me with Jeffrey. I pull to a stop at the curb and take in the stone and cedar siding, the neatly manicured lawn, the decorative woodwork around the dormers on the upstairs windows. What is this place—four thousand square feet? Five? Even before Sabine went missing, it was more house than two people could ever need. Soon, this big fancy house and everything in it will be all his.

  I ring the bell, and his pleasant expression clouds over when he sees it’s me.

  “Good thing the reporters have packed up and gone.” I hike a thumb over my shoulder, in the general direction of the trampled grass at the edge of his lawn. “Pine Bluff Detective questions Jeffrey Hardison in broad daylight, news at nine.”

  “Talk to my attorney.”

  He moves to shut the door, but he doesn’t get far. I put out a foot, stop it with my boot.

  “Riddle me this,” I say, leaning against the door frame with a shoulder. “Why would a guy give the detective investigating his wife’s disappearance a bogus alibi, when he already has an alibi—a real one that’s easily verified. I just can’t figure it out. Not unless he has something to hide.”

  I catch a flash of oh shit pass over his face before he blinks it away. “Are you always this cryptic, Detective?” he says, but his sarcasm falls a little flat. “This would go a lot faster if you just say what you came here to say.”

  “Dr. Lee.” Jeffrey pales at the name, and I know I hit the bull’s-eye. “I know you were at his office in Little Rock on the afternoon Sabine disappeared. How come? Got problems with the plumbing?”

  A red flush rises up his face like a rash. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”

  “I can get a warrant, you know. Take a little look-see at your medical chart.”

  “A warrant is the only way you’re going to get your hands on my records. And unless you happen to have one in your back pocket for this address, I suggest you move your foot from my doorway and back the hell off my porch. In fact, get the hell off my property.”

  The or else hangs in the air between us like a bad smell. I inhale it long and slow, letting the silence stretch. The truth is, I don’t care what his medical issue is, other than its ability to get him good and riled up. A cornered rat makes mistakes.

  “There are lots of ways to skin a cat.” I step back, planting my soles at the edge of the porch. “Just because you weren’t there to wrap your hands around her neck doesn’t mean you weren’t the one to kill her. Who’d you pay? How much did you pay him to kill Sabine?”

  His face is purple and shiny now, like an overripe plum. He slams the door in my face.

  BETH

  The work at Church of Christ’s Apostles is hard, the hours long, mostly because this place is always bustling. A rolling program of worship services and holy get-togethers, Bible studies and prayer breakfasts and marital counseling and kidz clubs and child care and wee worship for kids two to three—reel the little punks in before they know they’re bait, you would say
.

  And then there are all the people it takes to make this place run. The Reverend and his slew of church-lady assistants. His pastors and ministry staff. An army of volunteers. And everywhere these people go, they leave traces of themselves, fingerprints and shoe prints and keys that tumble from their pockets. We spend the day picking up and wiping away.

  But in the short time I’ve been here, the faces have become familiar, their smiles as we pass in the hallways more relaxed and instant. The Reverend was right; I am one of them now.

  The realization pushes a new worry up from the pile: that I will become too comfortable here. Or maybe that I already am. When I walked through the doors, I was so scared, so worn down from running that this place felt like something of a relief, a much-needed calm after the shitstorm.

  But already the relentless peacefulness of this place is getting to me, lulling me into a sense of security I can’t afford. Now that Sabine’s story has crept across state lines, now that it’s stretched from a tiny Arkansas town to Georgia and beyond, I know what it means.

  It means you’re closing in.

  The fear comes on strong and out of nowhere, and I sit back on my heels and swallow. Take a deep breath. Tell my heart to settle. I can’t afford to be lazy because you are stealthy and cunning. I won’t see you coming until you’re already here.

  I drop my sponge in the bucket and whirl around, feeling ungrounded even though the carpet is grinding into my knees. Sleep has been hard to come by the last few nights, and my exhaustion is doing a number on my head—too much up there to sort through. I can’t get a grip on any one solid thought.

  There’s nobody here. I’m alone. The Reverend’s office is an oasis of quiet.

  I spend all day up here now, ever since Oscar called to say he was staying in Florida and the Reverend gave me his job. Martina rolls her eyes whenever he brags about the brilliant job I did with his bookshelves, the way I grouped the books by subject, alphabetized them by author and created a checkout system that any idiot can monitor. She thinks there’s something else going on, some other reason he’s taken me under his wing, and I don’t disagree. Maybe it was my tears that first day, or my internet search history on his computer. Maybe he feels protective and wants to keep me close, or maybe he’s suspicious, I don’t know. I study his face for clues when he thinks I’m not looking, but I can’t find anything but kindness.

  Martina accused me of abandoning her, and she’s not wrong about that, either. Without me running interference between her and Ayana, the two in the same room are like a pressure cooker. The tiff I witnessed that first day only scratched the surface of the animosity between them, and eight hours of scrubbing the same floors each day has not improved the situation. I try to stay out of it, but Martina is like a middle schooler, badgering me to choose a side on the car rides to and from Morgan House.

  “Yours,” I told her just this morning behind the wheel of the Buick. “Of course I’m on your side.”

  And I am, mostly. Probably. Even though we haven’t had any heart-to-hearts, she still feels like someone who has my back. The least I can do is return the favor.

  So now I spend my days much like Oscar did, wiping down desks that are already spotless and shooting the shit with Charlene and the six other church ladies in the offices lining the hall. I haul drinks and snacks to staff meetings and the late afternoon huddle in the kitchen. I empty their trash cans and pick up the bits of paper that flutter from their pockets. The women are a chatty bunch, and in the dull patches of the day, when they’re not blabbing into their phones or clacking away at their keyboards, their questions come like gunfire.

  Where are you from? Out west.

  Are you single? Very.

  What brings you to Atlanta? It seemed like a nice place to settle.

  I don’t detect any agenda to their questions other than curiosity, but I always shift the conversation back to one of them. I’d much rather hear some long-winded discussion about a sister’s money troubles or how to choose the right private school for the twin four-year-olds. I feign shock when they tell me that Atlanta’s public schools are not godly places, nor are the people who let their children go there. I shake my head in dismay when they say the standardized test scores from the students who attend public school are barely high enough to squeak out an acceptance letter to DeVry. What I don’t do is bring up Martina’s half brother at Grady High, or tell them that even if he has the grades to get into private school, he probably couldn’t afford it anyway.

  But I’m not fooled by their friendly get-to-know-you inquiries and watercooler conversations. When lunchtime rolls around, they hook their bags over an arm and file out the door, arguing about whose turn it is to drive or whether they want salads or sandwiches, but not one of them ever thinks to ask me to join. There’s still a hierarchy to this place, and I’m still the maid.

  Or maybe they wonder if I’m not who I claim to be.

  * * *

  It’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m standing in the doorway of the Reverend’s office, looking for something to clean. I’ve scrubbed all the floorboards and organized his desk. Color-coded the file cabinets and polished all the picture frames. Unknotted every paper clip and thrown away every empty pen. How did Oscar do this job? Unlike him, I was not made to piddle the day away, scrubbing at spots that are already spotless. I need somebody to turn a briefcase upside down, or dump a full pot of coffee onto the Reverend’s carpet. Until something falls or spills, there’s nothing left to do.

  A commotion comes from behind me, from somewhere down the hall. Hurried footsteps and voices talking all at once, frantic words tumbling over each other in urgency, in alarm. One word sticks to the air like glue: money.

  I turn and collide into a cluster of church ladies, a knot of panicked women gathered around a pink-faced Charlene. I take in her wide, worried eyes, the two red spots that glow on the apples of her cheeks like a rash.

  “Where’s the Reverend?” she says, her voice breathy and taut. “I need to speak to the Reverend this instant.”

  “He had a meeting, but he should be back any minute. What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “It’s gone!” she wails. “The collection money is gone.”

  “Are you sure?” one of the church ladies says. “Maybe you just misplaced it.”

  “Well, of course I didn’t misplace it.” Charlene punches a fist into her bony hip. “It was there, in my top desk drawer, and now it’s gone. Somebody took it. Somebody stole it.”

  The words fall into the hallway like a dirty bomb, and two things flash through my mind at once. First, that I’ve never seen the normally perfect Charlene like this, all wild hair and smeared lipstick, not even when two birds flew into the chapel and began dive-bombing the women’s Bible study group. Charlene had calmly fetched a couple of oven mitts from the kitchen, plucked the birds out of the air and released them outside without ruffling a feather—theirs or hers.

  And second, that I’m surprised it took this long. What kind of idiot keeps a wad of cash in their desk drawer? Even in a church, even surrounded by all these godly people, it was only a matter of time before somebody swiped it. There were thieves in the Bible, too.

  The ladies gathered around Charlene clutch at their pearls. They may hold titles more impressive than Charlene’s—head of youth programming, volunteer coordinator, manager of a whole squad of counselors—but Charlene runs this place. When she says the money was stolen from her desk drawer, the money was stolen.

  “Maybe whoever took it... I don’t know, moved it to a safer location.” Like a bank, I think but don’t say.

  Behind them, at the other end of the hall, the Reverend steps through the double doors. He’s wearing a suit today, and a paisley tie so tightly knotted I wonder how he can breathe. He waves at me, cordial and cheerful as ever, and I hate what this is going to do to him.

  “My desk drawer is perfectly safe,” Charlene says to me. Her back is to the Reverend, so she hasn’t seen him yet, doe
sn’t know he’s sped up at the cluster of church ladies. “It’s locked, and only two people have a key—me and the Reverend.”

  “What about me?” he says, and the church ladies suck in a breath. Any other day, any other situation, I would laugh at how their eyes go wide, how they pivot to him as one. He takes in their expressions, and his friendly grin disappears. “Good gracious, what’s wrong?”

  Charlene fills him in on the missing money. The more agitated she becomes, the more the Reverend remains calm. He cups his chin in a hand and listens.

  “How much are we talking about?” he says when she’s done.

  Charlene turns a pale shade of green, grimacing like she might throw up. “Somewhere around two thousand dollars. A little more.”

  The Reverend takes it like a champ, barely even wincing. “Okay. Well, that’s...that’s a lot of money, isn’t it? When is the last time you saw it?”

  Charlene presses a finger to her lips and thinks for a moment. “Well, I added Monday night’s collection money to the bag this morning, along with the two twenties you borrowed from petty cash. The bag was still in there, closed and zipped, when I checked after lunch, but I didn’t look inside. I just assumed... But just now, when I went to get it ready for the bank deposit, it was all gone. The bag was empty.”

  “So if I’m understanding you correctly,” the Reverend says, “the last time you know for sure the money was still there was this morning. Is that right?”

  “Well...yes. When I added in the twenties.”

  “And you’re sure you locked the drawer afterward?”

  “I always lock the drawer. It’s as much a habit as brushing my teeth in the morning. I don’t even think about it, I just do it. There’s no way I would have forgotten.” Charlene’s answer is immediate, but her tone doesn’t sound all that certain.