Allan stared at her. She nervously brushed her hair behind her ears. He let her words sink in. He needed money and there was none to have. Absently he said, “How can it be closed?”
“It says here that the account was closed by a Sarah Tuttle,” the woman read from the screen. “Is that your wife?”
“Yes.” Allan said, staring at her blankly.
“Maybe you should talk to your wife,” the teller suggested.
“My wife?” Allan looked at her.
“About the account,” she said.
Allan nodded. “Right. The account. I need the money.”
“Yes, sir,” the teller said. “But as I said . . . “
Allan turned away and walked out the door, the guard watching him intently as he went.
Chapter 13
(Cleaning House)
The moment Sarah identified Mike’s body as Allan, she knew there was no going back. To admit that she had lied at best would get her in trouble for interfering with an investigation. At worst, it would place suspicion of Mike’s death on her. She would have to be diligent in keeping up the charade that her husband was dead. A task complicated by the fact that Allan was still out there, living and breathing.
After the reality of what she had done sank in, she began working on a plan to keep Allan from messing everything up. First thing, she closed their joint bank account to keep him from taking their money. She cancelled his credit cards and called a locksmith about changing the locks. She considered getting a dog to watch the house. Allan was deathly afraid of dogs. But she didn’t think she had the patience or time to work with one.
Phoning a funeral home about burial arrangements for Mike’s body proved harder than she anticipated. They asked who the deceased was and a chill crawled its way up her spine as she gave Allan’s name. There were a lot of details; selecting a casket, selecting a burial plot, selecting a suit, scheduling the burial itself, and the viewing.
“The viewing?” Sarah said into the phone.
“Yes, ma’am,” the woman on the other end said softly. She had a consoling voice and Sarah could understand why she was chosen to talk to families in this situation. “So friends and family can come say their good-byes. You know, and see him one last time.”
“I see,” Sarah said, her mind racing. It had never occurred to her that Allan might have friends and family come to his funeral. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“You don’t want a viewing?” the woman’s voice cracked.
“No,” Sarah said. “Just the funeral services. And . . . I need the casket lid to be closed.”
“A closed casket service?” the woman sounded stunned.
“Yes,” Sarah said. “That’s exactly right.”
“But,” the woman started.
“It’s for the best,” Sarah said. “If you knew Allan you would understand.”
That was true. If the woman knew Allan, she would know the body being buried was not him. She would understand why Sarah did not want anyone who knew Allan seeing the body. One call to the police and she was done.
“Okay,” the woman said, drawing the word out to fill the void while she thought. “What about yourself?”
“Me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t need to make arrangements for me,” Sarah said.
“Oh, no,” the woman said. “I wasn’t suggesting . . . I meant the viewing. Surely you would like to say good-bye.”
“I don’t think so,” Sarah said.
Taken aback, the woman said, “What about closure?”
“He’s dead,” Sarah said, matter-of-factly. “You can’t get much more closure than that.”
Sarah swore the woman’s voice was a little less consoling after that. They quickly went through the list funeral arrangement bullet points. Afterward, Sarah felt satisfied yet knew there was more to be done if she were going to pull this off. She needed to rid herself of the real Allan, erase him from her life.
Sarah gathered all the pictures her husband and piled them into the fireplace. They weren’t big on photos, so it did not take long. She checked again to be sure she had them all before returning to the fireplace where she doused them with lighter fluid. Striking a match, she hesitated only for a second before throwing it on the pile. She sat on the floor and watched the flames flare up and consume their life together.
Retrieving an empty box from the garage, Sarah started gathering some of Allan’s personal effects; toothbrush, razor and a few unique items that Allan could identify from memory if he tried to convince the police he lived there. She took the collection and placed the box in the trunk of her car. She would need to find a place to dispose of them where they would not come back to haunt her.
Opening Allan’s closet door brought a reality check. The clothing and shoes stored there were obviously too small for Mike. Yet, getting rid of everything would look like she was too eager to move on. Time and time again the news reported of a surviving spouse removing their partner’s things too soon after the day of their untimely demise. Every time the spouse would later be arrested for the murder. Sarah did not want that happening to her. She would need to go to consignment shops and garage sales to buy used clothes closer to Mike’s size and exchange the items in the closet. With luck the police would not look too closely at the closet until after she managed to replace most of the items.
Unable to do anything about the clothes at the moment, she turned her attention to detailing the house itself. With cleaning supplies in hand, she started cleaning the bathrooms to remove hairs and any other biological evidence of her husband. She dusted and vacuumed. She wiped down anything Allan may have touched to remove any trace of fingerprints. She wished she had a way to add Mike’s prints to make it look as if he lived there. She would have to settle for touching everything with her own hands so it wouldn’t look like she had just wiped the whole place down.
By the time she finished no one would ever be able to prove Allan once lived in the house. It was an incredible undertaking even for the small bungalow. It was amazing how many little things there were in drawers and on tables. She swore to herself while she worked, as soon as the coast was clear she was going to get rid of all the unnecessary clutter. For now, she simply polished the items one by one. Even though the work was strenuous, Sarah found herself whistling while she scrubbed away Allan’s existence.
Absorbed in her work she almost didn’t hear the doorbell ring. She stopped and listened. After the second ring, she debated whether she should answer or not. It could be Allan or the police; him to confront her, them to search the house. She was ready for neither one.
The bell rang a third time and Sarah knew they weren’t going away. She stood straight and stretched her aching muscles. No matter what, she would have to answer the door. So, dropping her apron to the floor with her cleaning supplies she started for the front door. She took a deep breath and pulled the knob. Standing on her porch was a young man holding a black bag. He was smiling broadly, looking up at her with bright eyes.
“Hello Ma’am,” he said, holding out a pamphlet. “We are doing a fundraiser, selling things to earn money for a trip to Mexico where we are going to help build housing for the poor. Would you care to buy something to help us with our cause?”
“No,” she said flatly and shut the door.
She returned to her cleaning and was getting very involved with a particularly ornate item, lots of surfaces for prints. The doorbell rang again. She huffed and threw her cloth down, marching to the front door, yanking it open.
“I said, no,” she snapped.
Standing in the doorway were the two detectives who had taken her to see Mike’s body. Her face flushed as she stared at them in shock. She wrung her hands in the apron she still wore. They stood with confused looks on their faces.
“I . . . uh . . . thought you were someone else,” she said.
“I thought as much,” Dave said. “May we come in?”
“Well,�
� she hesitated. “I suppose, for a little while.”
“I’m sorry if this is a bad time,” Philip said, stepping through the door. “We just have a few questions. They won’t take much of your time.”
“No, this is fine,” she wiped her hands on her apron. “I was just cleaning to get my mind off things. What kind of questions? I’m not sure I have much more to offer.”
“You might be surprised,” Dave said. “Sometimes little, insignificant details turn out to be keys to solving a case.”
“We're trying to draw a picture of the last hours or days of your husband’s life,” Philip said, “to see if that leads to a motive, or a suspect. Your answers will help us with that.”
“Okay,” Sarah said, uncertain. “If it will help.”
“It will,” Philip assured her.
“First,” Dave began. “Was your husband acting unusual in the days leading up to his murder?”
“Unusual?” Sarah contemplated. “I don’t think so. I mean nothing sticks out in my mind.”
“Do you know of anyone who may have been angry with him?” Dave asked. “Maybe a recent argument? A bad business deal?”
“No,” Sarah said. “Nothing like that.”
“What did your husband do?”
“What did he do?” Sarah repeated. “Well, he . . . he . . . he sold books.”
“A book salesman?”
“Like a book dealer,” Sarah said, thinking fast. He was gone a lot and had no co-workers. Her mind raced. “He would find books for collectors and arrange the purchase and delivery.”
She wasn’t sure where that had come from. Wasn’t even sure such a job existed. It was simply the first thing that came to mind.
“Did he do this for a company?” Dave asked. “Or was he self-employed?”
“Self-employed.”
“And could you tell me the names of any of the collectors he worked for?”
“No,” Sarah said.
“Mrs. Tuttle,” Dave said. “We aren’t going to cause any problems for your husband’s clients. He has been murdered and one of them may know something or even be involved.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” Sarah said. The wheels in her mind spun. Helping Allan develop storylines over the years was coming in handy. The narrative just rolled off her tongue. “My husband did not share his work with me. He kept all of that information with him in his briefcase, which he had with him when he left the house that night.”
“What about friends?” Dave asked.
“Friends?”
“Yes,” Dave said. “Did your husband have any friends that might know something about his business or social lives?”
“Honestly, detective,” Sarah smiled slightly, because this was something she could actually answer truthfully. “My husband did not have many friends. I’m not sure he had any. He wasn’t exactly the social type. We never went anywhere. And he never went out for anything but business.”
Dave sat and looked at her for a long time. Something bothered him about the circumstances of Tuttle’s death and he was beginning to understand what it was. He said in a soft voice, “Mrs. Tuttle, sometimes when men only go out for business and never tell their wives about where they are going or what they are doing it’s because they are up to something they don’t want their wives to know about.”
“You think he was having an affair?”
“It’s possible,” Philip said. “It’s also possible he did not deal in rare books. Did you ever see any of these books?”
“Well, no,” Sarah said. “He only bought books requested by collectors. And I assumed he kept them in his briefcase if he brought them home. He never let me look in there.”
She saw the advantage of feeding the idea that whatever Allan was doing was a mystery she knew nothing about and pounced on it.
“Mrs. Tuttle,” Dave said in his soft voice. “Did you and your husband have sex the day he left the house?”
“No,” she said.
“Well, I hate to be the one to inform you,” Dave said, “but your husband did have sex the day he died.”
Sarah was silent. The detectives thought she was letting this bit of bad news sink in. She was actually realizing that although she had not had sex with Allan, she had slept with Mike and DNA would suggest she was lying. The two men sat across from her, waiting.
“Are you okay?” Dave asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, another truthful statement.
“Listen,” Philip said. “I know it’s hard to hear something like this, especially when you’re still mourning the guy’s death. We need you to think. Have there been any women he’s spent time with, maybe clients or associates? Have there been any secretive phone calls? Did he have a cell phone on him when he left?”
“We need to find this woman,” Dave added. “She may have been the last person to see him alive.”
“She may have killed him?” Sarah asked.
“Possibly,” Dave nodded. “Or she may know who did. Right now, she is our best lead to finding the killer.”
They were exactly right. She had been the one who had sex with Mike and she knew who had killed him. However, she wasn’t going to tell them that. “I really don’t know any women in his life. And he doesn’t have a cell phone,” Another opportunity to fan the flames, she added, “at least not one I know about.”
The truth was, Allan had a fear of radiation and tumors caused by cell phones and refused to get one. Mike had one. It went down with Jimmy on the plane.
“That’s unusual in a sales profession,” Philip said. "How did he reach clients?"
"I don't know," Sarah answered. "He seldom made calls from home. He always told me home was home. He never talked about work.”
“He seems to have kept you in the dark about a lot of things,” Philip suggested.
“You don’t think he was sleeping with prostitutes, do you?” Sarah said, playing the role of the distraught wife to a tee. “I don’t think I could handle that. I have never been with anyone besides my husband. Maybe I just wasn’t good enough for him, you know, in bed.”
She could see Philip blush. Dave, to his credit, did not. Sarah was curious if the detective was able to control his reactions that well, or if he was simply comfortable discussing sex. She found that she really wanted to know the answer to that question.
“Mrs. Tuttle,” Dave said, soothingly, drawing her back to the present, “don’t try to guess your husband’s motives for doing what he did. There could be any number of reasons that have nothing to do with you. You’re an attractive woman and he was lucky to have you for a wife. And if you try to come up with his reasons, you’ll just blame yourself and become depressed. Don’t let him do that to you.”
Sarah looked at Dave and grinned slightly. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s nice of you to say.”
“Okay, well I have a few more questions,” Philip said.
“Yes?”
“What is it you do while your husband is off looking for books for his clients?”
“Well, I clean house, go to the store, read and watch television,” Sarah said. “Typical housewife stuff. The way my mother taught me.”
“And you never asked questions about his work?” Philip asked.
“I used to,” Sarah said. “But, like I said, he insisted on keeping work at work and home at home.”
“I’m sure he did,” Philip glanced at Dave. “What kind of car did he drive?”
“Car?” Sarah’s mind raced.
“How did he get around?” Philip asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t know?” Dave cocked his head.
“He took cabs most of the time,” she said.
“Cabs?”
“Well, he flew a lot,” she said. “I don’t know how he got around otherwise. He must have rented a car or had one parked somewhere in town.”
“Did you ever drive him anywhere?”
“No,” Sarah shook her h
ead. “He always took a cab.”
“Which cab company?”
Sarah went silent again. The cab company could verify her story that Allan used cabs and went to the airport, but also that he didn't go very often. And their records would show he came home the night he supposedly died. And if they showed his picture? Would a cab driver be the one to sink her story?
“Mrs. Tuttle?” Philip asked. “The cab company?”
“I can’t remember which one he used,” she said. “I saw the cabs from time to time. I never paid attention to which company it was. You know. A cab is a cab.”
“Okay,” Philip said. “That’s all I have for now.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Tuttle,” Dave said extending his hand to her. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“I really don’t think I have,” Sarah said, hoping she hadn’t. “I’m sorry I don’t know more.”
“It’s okay,” Dave said. “We learned a little more and that’s all we can hope for sometimes.”
Sarah stood at the door watching until the detectives drove away. Shutting the door, she slid to the floor with her back to the wall. That had been close. She was going to have to spend more time developing her story. If they returned with more questions, she had to be prepared. There were too many loose ends. She had to start tying them up.
She sat there for a long time breathing in and out slowly. She could feel her heart rate drop. When she was ready, she got back to cleaning. She had a strong suspension they would be back at some point to search the house. She would be ready for them. They would find no sign of Allan. She picked up her dust cloth and looked at the shelf of keepsakes. She never realized how much junk she owned.
Chapter 14
(Confrontation)
Allan walked along the old highway for more than an hour before a truck driver pulled over to give him a lift. Initially, the sheer size of the eighteen wheeler scared the hell out of him. Considering the last stranger to give him a lift aimed a shotgun at him, or at least in his general direction, did not alleviate his fear. Throw in the fact that one of the books he had written was about a cross-country truck driver who picked up hitchhikers, killed them, and spread their bones across the Midwest and he was almost in full panic mode before the man could say hello. The thought of being chopped up and disposed of frightened him. The prospect of walking the thirty plus miles home in his uncomfortable shoes was worse. He climbed into the passenger seat, fastened his seatbelt and hugged himself protectively.
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