Dear Wife

by Kimberly Belle

  The Reverend turns to me. “Is Charlene’s key still in my desk drawer?”

  “I...” I glance at Charlene, who’s crying for real now, and shrug. “There are a lot of keys in your desk drawer. Which one is it?”

  “The blue one, on a ring with a plastic running shoe and a pompom. Nike, I believe.”

  “Then yes. I was at your desk just this morning. I saw it.”

  Charlene flashes me a frown. “What now?” she says to the Reverend. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  At the last word, my heart stutters, and the skin of my face goes hot. If the Reverend says yes, I will be in my car before he can even pick up the phone. The instant his chin even dips in the direction of a nod, I’m out the door.

  What, you thought leaving me would be easy? Your voice whispers in my ear. You’re not just running from me. You’re running from the police now, too. How far do you think you’ll get now that everyone is hunting for you? Who do you think will find you first—them or me?

  As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right. If I run now, if anybody here decides I’m worth chasing down, one problem turns into two, and this becomes a whole different paradigm. And what about the money belt strapped to my waist? What would they think if they found it? What would the Reverend think? I wait for his response, and a trickle of sweat runs down my back.

  “‘People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving.’ Proverbs 6:30. Let us assume that whoever took that money has a hungry soul.”

  Charlene nods, then frowns. “You’re just going to let them keep it?”

  “Not exactly. What I’d like to do is for you to stay away from your desk for the next day or two, and to leave the top drawer open. That’ll give the thief time to rethink his or her actions and opportunity to return the money where they found it. If the money is back in the envelope by close of business tomorrow, we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  “But what if it’s not?” Charlene says, the question on everybody’s tongue. “What if they don’t put back the money?”

  The Reverend looks around at the people gathered in the hall, his gaze pausing on each woman’s eyes. When he gets to mine, my heart explodes. “Let’s just pray that they do.”

  MARCUS

  Dr. Trevor McAdams lives in one of those houses on Country Club Lane that’s trying too hard. Four sides of brick crawling with ivy. Sprawling rooms topped with slate roof tiles. A view of the golf course, where men in prissy shorts whack balls and slap each other on the shoulder as they discuss where to outsource Pine Bluff’s jobs next—Mexico or Asia. At least they’ll never be able to outsource mine. The more this city gets steered into the gutter, the more bad guys there are for me to catch.

  Not that Trevor McAdams is a bad guy. As far as I can tell, he’s only a heartsick puppy mooning over his missing lover. If those tears are an act, then give the man a golden statue.

  I ring the doorbell, one of those sleek high-tech devices with a camera picking up every pore on my skin. Inside, a dog goes ballistic.

  Along with Sabine’s sister, Trevor has grabbed hold of the search for Sabine like a single-minded pit bull, transforming the story into a prime-time media shit show. It’s got all the right ingredients for tabloid fare: a local heroine who’s young, attractive and moneyed; a handsome lover pitted against a brooding and unpopular husband; enough mystery to fuel a Twitter following of amateur detectives, all of them chatty and opinionated, filling his social media feeds with a million unanswered questions. The bloodsucking, schadenfreude-loving people of America are captivated.

  But I don’t like it, and neither does my boss. The Chief thinks the constant media attention is fucking with the investigation, and I don’t disagree. Before Sabine went missing, the Pine Bluff police force was already overworked and understaffed. Her case is not the only thing on my plate. I’ve got better things to do than pander to the press.

  The door opens, and there he is, our story’s hero, though standing here in rumpled scrubs and bare feet, he doesn’t look the part. He looks dingy, like he hasn’t slept in days. Hasn’t showered, either. His face is pale and thick with scruff, and his hair is flat, stuck to his head in greasy clumps.

  “Good morning, Detective. Please, come in.” He gestures with his arm that’s not holding the dog, a white, fluffy thing baring its fangs.

  I step inside. “Thanks for seeing me. I know you’re very busy.”

  He shuts the door, then puts the dog down, and it scurries off into a bright, modern kitchen overlooking the seventh green. Remainders of breakfast are spread across the granite countertops—a loaf of bread, a half-empty package of eggs, butter and two types of organic jam. The doctor pulls a couple of glasses from the cabinet and pours from a giant jug of orange juice. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

  “No, thanks. This shouldn’t take long.”

  “Please tell me you’re here to share some news.”

  “I’ve got some news to share. But not the news you’re hoping for, unfortunately.”

  “It’s been eight days, Detective.”

  Like I don’t know that. The doctor has only been phoning me daily, halting my work to hound me for information. Have you put a trace on her phone? Have you dusted for prints? Have you questioned her clients, her colleagues? What does he think, that I’m new at this? That I’m incompetent? Of course I’ve traced and dusted and questioned. This isn’t the movies, and I’m not some dumb ass small-town cop.

  He picks up the glasses and motions for me to follow.

  We pause at the door to the den, a room along the back of the house with a flat-screen as big as the wall. Two kids are parked on an overstuffed leather couch, a boy and a girl with the doctor’s face, two miniature doll-eyed yuppies. He settles the drinks on the coffee table.

  “Guys, I’m going to be out in the sunroom, talking to the detective. I need you both to stay here until we’re done. Okay?”

  The kids nod in unison. The boy returns his attention to the television screen, but the girl’s gaze sticks to me, wandering down my frame, zeroing in on my holster. Her eyes go wide, and she sinks deeper into the cushions. Great. The doctor is one of those parents, teaching their kids to be scared, not respectful of guns.

  We end up on a screened porch, where the sun beats down on the slate roof and turns the room into a furnace. The doctor digs through a giant clam filled with remotes until he finds the one he’s looking for, then points it at the wicker fan above our heads. From out on the green comes an occasional whop of metal whacking a ball.

  “Sorry about the heat, but this is the only room the kids can’t sneak into and hear us. They’re having a really tough time with this—the separation, I mean. I’m sure you’ve heard that their mother and I are divorcing. She wants to move them to Salt Lake City, where her parents live. Things are about to get ugly.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” The fan stirs the air, sending down a breeze that feels like Emma’s hair dryer after she’s just come out of the shower, hot and humid. Already a steady line of sweat is dripping down my back. “Your daughter looks a lot like my niece, Annabelle. Well, like she used to look, before the chemo. Her hair grew back in red and curly.”

  He nods, sinking into the chair across from me. “It’s called chemo curls. The color change isn’t uncommon, either, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it coming back red. But hair often picks up pigment as it grows back in so I suppose it’s possible. Who’s her doc?”

  “Annie Capelouto.”

  “Annie’s the best in town, but Pine Bluff isn’t exactly the center of the medical universe, you know. If your niece ever needs anything, give me a call. I did my residency at Northwestern and still have some pull there. Chicago’s not all that far.”

  And that right there is the problem with outsiders like Dr. McAdams, people who swoop into town with their money and their fancy degrees, acting like the people of Pine Bluff should be grateful they’ve come to this podunk town.
I never asked for his help. Dr. Capelouto already saved Annabelle once; who’s to say she can’t do it again if the worst happens, and the cancer returns?

  He swipes his palms down his thighs. “I’ll move to Salt Lake City if I have to, but not yet. I can’t leave this place. Not until you find Sabine.” He makes a sound, somewhere between a cough and a sob.

  I search for a fresh page in my notebook, giving him a moment to pull himself together.

  “What about Jeffrey?” He spits the name, his voice hard and hateful.

  “What about him?”

  “Please tell me he’s your lead suspect. He’s violent and he’s angry and he’s got a two-hour gap in his day, at the exact time Sabine went missing. I told her to change the locks and take out a restraining order, but she wouldn’t listen. She was scared of him—you know that, right?”

  “We’re looking into Mr. Hardison, but I’m afraid I can’t discuss the details. What I’d really like to talk with you about is you and Sabine.”

  This is what I meant when I said he’s a pit bull. It’s like I didn’t even speak. Excitement is piling up Trevor’s words, and he barely pauses to take a breath.

  “And it’s just all too convenient Sabine disappears right before she can file for divorce. Now he’s living in her house, spending her money. Have you checked his emails, searched the files on his computer? Have you looked into his internet history? I mean, I know it’s cliché but maybe he forgot to clear out his cache. You read all the time about how some idiot gets caught because they used Google to help them figure out the best place to bury a...”

  He swallows the last word, and his face crumples. “Is that what happened here? If it is, just tell me, Detective. For God’s sake, put me out of my misery. Because I’m trying to be hopeful but people simply don’t disappear into thin air and show up eight days later, alive and well. I mean, somebody must have seen something, right?”

  “If that person exists, they haven’t stepped forward.”

  A tear nosedives into the scruff on his cheek, and he drops his head in his hands, shoulders quaking. I should have known this would happen. It’s the same stunt he pulls every time a reporter points a camera at his face, blubbering for all the world to see. If he’s faking it, he’s a natural, I’ll give him that. Sabine’s disappearance has made national news, mostly thanks to this guy’s bawling.

  “Did you know Sabine was on Lexapro?”

  The doctor’s head pops up, and his expression is almost comical. Bugged eyes, unhinged jaw. “Lexapro is an SSRI, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. A very potent one. It’s used to treat anxiety and depression. Since when? Who prescribed it?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you the details. But according to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, she took it for years.”

  “Okay.” Trevor says it without conviction, like he’s bracing for what comes next. Like he suspects the prescription is not the only thing I’m about to drop on him. “But Sabine wasn’t depressed. I would have known. And I was with her a lot of the time. I never saw her taking any pills.”

  “She went off it last year...” I flip back a page or two in my notes. “In February. She was pregnant, and she was worried it would hurt the baby.”

  The doctor nods. “It’s a valid worry. SSRIs have been associated with increased risk for persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn. Her doctor would have helped wean her off it, and probably would have switched her to some kind of bupropion like Wellbutrin.”

  “That might be so, but she didn’t run it by her doctor. The pharmacy filled it, then reached out to her when she didn’t pick it up.” This part, at least, is true, at least according to the email correspondence I found on her laptop. The pharmacist warned her about going off it too quickly.

  But the doctor in him picks up on my point, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Please don’t tell me she quit cold turkey.”

  “She quit cold turkey.”

  Initially, when I’d gleaned this from the emails on Sabine’s laptop, I didn’t understand the implications, but the doctor does. He jumps up from the chair with a curse, pacing the length of the room. “And nobody told her what to expect? Nobody told her to, I don’t know, maybe check WebMD before deciding to go off her meds? She could have died!”

  I don’t respond. There’s a reason the FDA requires warning labels on drugs like Lexapro, because of too many links between the pills and people like Sabine slitting their wrists in a bathtub.

  But again, the doctor knows this.

  He stops pacing, turning to me with a frown. “Why are you telling me this? What does this have to do with whatever happened to Sabine?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

  “It sounds to me like you’re blaming the victim. Trying to make it seem like she was unhinged. Unstable.”

  “I’m just trying to get a clear and complete picture of Sabine.”

  “Does this have something to do with the bullshit Jeffrey was spouting off to Mandy in the Morning? Because Ingrid told me what happened back then. Sabine was leaving him, but she wasn’t running away. Ingrid knew where she was the whole time.”

  “Yes, she told me the same.” Twice, actually. First in a voice mail after Mandy’s show, then again when she stopped by the station.

  The doctor’s eyes go squinty. “Why do you say it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you don’t believe her. Like you think Sabine might have been a little unstable.”

  “We just determined that she was on Lexapro.”

  I might as well have slugged him in the gut. His shoulders hunch, and he falls back into his chair. “So she was going through a rough time. She lost her baby, got some shitty medical advice—or maybe none at all. But that was a long time ago, and the Sabine I know is not depressed. She doesn’t have mood swings. Her energy is normal, and so are her sleep patterns. The only symptom I’ve seen started a couple weeks ago.” His eyes tear up all over again, and I know he’s referring to her pregnancy.

  “I’m glad you brought that up, because—”

  “But the nausea never lasts long. She vomits, and then ten minutes later she’s digging through the pantry for food. Not like when—” He stops himself, grimacing, and I know he was about to compare his lover’s pregnancy to his wife’s. “The point is, Sabine’s appetite is fine.”

  “You know for certain that Sabine is pregnant.” I don’t phrase it as a question, even though it is one. The same one I asked her general practitioner and the ob-gyn who’d handled her last pregnancy. Both refused to give me an answer.

  The doctor looks properly insulted. “What? Of course Sabine is pregnant.”

  “Did you conduct the pregnancy test yourself?”

  “She peed on a stick. Those tests are ninety-nine percent accurate, you know.”

  “Did you see with your own eyes that the stick read positive?”

  “What are you implying here?” He’s getting riled up. His voice rises and his muscles tense, coiled for attack. “That Sabine lied? That she wasn’t pregnant?”

  I keep my own voice low and even. “I’m not implying anything. I’m just trying to dig up the truth.”

  “By implying she wasn’t pregnant.”

  “According to her husband, Sabine had trouble both getting pregnant and staying that way. Over the course of their nine-year marriage, she lost some seven pregnancies, and that’s only after going through multiple rounds of IVF.”

  “Maybe the problem was with him, with his sperm.”

  “Or maybe she’s had enough false starts to know how this pregnancy will end. If she’s pregnant, chances are high that she’ll miscarry, and if the past is any indication, somewhere between ten and fourteen weeks.”

  “If she’s pregnant? Why would she lie about something like that?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Let me get this straight. You don’t wan
t to ask me about my relationship with Sabine, when it started or what our plans are or to talk about any one of the million messages Sabine and I exchanged over these past five months. Instead you want to put doubts in my head as to her sanity and fertility. It’s almost like you’re trying to make me think that the woman I know and love is someone else entirely.”

  “All I’m doing is trying to fill in some blanks. In order to find a person, I need to know who she was.”

  He pales, his cheeks draining of blood. “Was?”

  “Is,” I say with all the conviction I can muster. It’s a blunder I won’t make again. “I am working under the assumption that Sabine is still alive, but in order to find her, I need a complete picture.”

  “You want a complete picture? Well, then, here it is. Sabine Hardison is a kind, loving, funny, honest, loyal, caring woman, and I love her with everything inside of me. No, she didn’t tell me about the Lexapro or the miscarriages, but that doesn’t make her a liar. It makes her a human with a past.”

  “Okay then. Let’s talk about your wife.”

  His spine straightens. “Shelley? What about her?”

  “I understand she’s in Chicago. Since when?”

  “Since last We—” He stops himself, shakes his head. Grows an inch in his chair. He was about to say Wednesday, the day Sabine disappeared. “No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Shelley may be hurt and angry, but she’s not a monster. She is the mother of my children. No way.”

  “Still. I’d love to talk to her in person, hear her say those words to me herself. When is she back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve been leaving messages on her cell. Maybe you could give her a little nudge, ask her to call me back.”

  He blasts me with a cold, sharp stare. “Look elsewhere, Detective. My wife has been through enough.”

  My wife. I let the words linger in the steamy air long enough that the doctor looks sheepish. He’s the possessive type, another strike against him.