by Gin Jones
"You know how sisters can be," Josie said. "One minute we're best of friends, and the next we're tearing each other's hair out over some stupid borrowed sweater that was never returned."
"A missing sweater isn't the same as a missing sister," Helen said. "Don't you think Charlene would be worried if Angie had really disappeared?"
"I suppose," Betty said, but she still didn't look convinced. She and Josie both plied their needles in vaguely disappointed silence for several minutes, which deepened when the sweethearts in the corner were interrupted by attendants and escorted—separately—out of the activity room.
As they were leaving, Geoff Loring was arriving. The Wharton Gazette reporter was of average height, but the grand, double-wide doorway made him look as short as Helen. Much like the previous times she'd seen him, today he was wearing a faded blue sport shirt with rumpled khakis and loafers. He seemed to have fully recovered from his broken arm. The cast was gone, and his face was free of the chronic pain lines Helen saw too often in her own reflection. Of course, Geoff was only in his late twenties, so it wasn't surprising that he'd bounced back from the injury or that he still had the boyish good looks he took for granted.
Geoff usually had a particularly nice smile, but at the moment he was frowning in concentration as he peered around the room, apparently looking for someone. When he caught sight of Helen the missing smile appeared, and he abandoned his search. He strode across the room, snagging a straight-back chair on the way and dragging it over to the spot next to Helen. "Ms. Binney. Imagine seeing you here. I hope this is just temporary."
Helen knew only too well how quickly rumors could spread, especially when talking to a reporter, whether on or off the record. She had to nip this one in the bud. Too many people already thought she needed to be locked up and cosseted. "I'm not a resident, just visiting."
"Oh. Of course. Me too," Geoff said. "I get all my best stories here these days. The people here have lived such fascinating lives."
"Present tense, not past," Betty said, claiming his attention. "Our lives aren't over. We still do interesting things."
"I know," Geoff told Betty in genuine agreement before turning back to Helen. "Quite a few of the residents here have written their memoirs and published them. You wouldn't believe how many published authors we have right here in Wharton. They're fascinating people, so I'm trying to interview every single one of them. Most of them like the free publicity, but some like to play hard to get. Especially the ones who write under a pen name, but I'll find them eventually."
"Some people do like their privacy," Helen said.
"Not you, though," Geoff said. "After all those years in politics, you must have gotten used to being in the public eye."
"I got used to it, yes. Liked it, no."
"Listen, I meant to call you before now to set up an interview," Geoff said. "I hope you didn't think I was ignoring you."
Much as it usually annoyed her to be ignored when she had something to say, she found it even more annoying when Geoff paid attention to her. She thought she'd made that clear when they first met, and she'd pointedly refused to talk to him in his capacity as a reporter. "I don't do interviews anymore."
"Don't worry," he said. "I've changed. I'm not looking to do some big expose. Just a nice, little personal interest story. I'm sure there's something you're passionate about, something besides your political career that you'd like to share with my readers."
She knew he hadn't meant it as a reproach, but it stung to think she didn't, in fact, have anything she felt passionate about these days. There was nothing she cared about as much as Betty and Josie cared about their needlework, Tate cared about his woodworking, and Charlene cared about her art glass sculptures.
"Never mind my story," Helen said. "There's got to be something more interesting you could write about."
"Like what?"
"How does a missing persons case sound?"
He jumped to his feet, rubbing his right forearm—the one that had been broken—with his left hand. "No, thanks. That's a losing proposition for me, no matter what happened to the missing person. If he's dead and I start poking around, the killer could do something desperate to stop me. If the missing person is alive and doesn't want to be found, he could do something equally desperate to keep from being found. I'm not taking the risk. I'll call you later to schedule an interview."
He practically ran out of the activity room, disappearing before Helen could remind him he didn't have her phone number and she was prepared to sic her lawyer on Geoff if he trespassed at her cottage. That might not be as terrifying as the prospect of pursuing a real story, but most people found Tate seriously intimidating when he put on his lawyer face.
* * *
"I told you he wasn't a real reporter," Josie said. "If we have to wait for Geoff to figure out where Angie is, she'll never be found."
"It wouldn't be hard for him to drive to the casino and see if Angie's there." Helen borrowed a crochet hook and a skein of yarn from Josie and began making the chain that would form the bottom edge of a chemo cap. Jack never cared how long he had to wait for her, as long as his battery lasted for playing games on his smartphone. She wasn't in any rush to get back into the sports car, so she might as well try, once again, to make a chemo cap that Josie wouldn't have to unravel and remake.
Helen joined the chain together and looked at it. The loops were all different sizes, starting out tight and tiny when she'd started, getting looser as she got into the rhythm, with the occasional reversion to a tiny stitch or two when she stopped to count her stitches. She held it up to the experts. "What do you think? Is this okay, or should I pull it out and try again?"
Josie held out her hand, and Helen passed it over.
While the chain was unraveled and redone more evenly, Betty distracted Helen. "I just can't believe Angie went to a casino. Not for three whole weeks. She might have gone for a few days to see a show or something, but the only reason to stay that long is to gamble. Which she doesn't do."
"Unless her rant over the bingo was a case of protesting too much, because she has a secret addiction to gambling," Helen said. "Charlene said something about Angie staying until she ran out of money."
Betty pursed her lips and shook her head. "I think Charlene's lying."
"But why?" Helen said. "She really didn't seem worried at all, so she must know where Angie is."
Betty picked up her knitting again and worked to the end of a row where the color needed to change again. Instead of picking up the new color, she let her hands drift down into her lap. "Maybe she does know where her sister is. Angie's body, anyway. What if Ralph killed his wife, and he got Charlene to lie about the casino to help cover up the murder?"
"Ooh, yes," Josie said, having finished re-starting Helen's cap. "I bet that's what happened. Charlene and Ralph fell in love, and they knew the only way they could be together was if Angie died, so they killed her."
"It's not terribly difficult to get a divorce these days." Helen took the hook and the repaired cap foundation Josie held out to her. "If Ralph really did want the other sister, all he had to do was divorce Angie."
"And give Angie half of the insurance agency," Betty said. "Small businesses can be a nightmare to divide in a divorce. I saw it all the time as a bookkeeper. I had to produce the small business's profit and loss statements for the court, and I could see just how badly the bottom line was affected during the divorce. Ralph would never risk that sort of damage to the agency. That business is his life. He wouldn't give it up without a fight."
"Don't listen to her," Josie said. "She's thinking like a math person. Real people who are madly in love don't think that far ahead. I bet Ralph and Charlene only cared about being together, not about money. They tried not to give in to their feelings, but they couldn't help themselves. They were just so much in love. They just had to be together, but they also loved Angie, and they didn't want to break her heart."
"So they killed her instead?" Helen couldn't
imagine Charlene and Ralph carrying on some torrid love affair behind Angie's back. Charlene might not have been totally honest about her animosity toward Ralph—there had definitely been some tension between them in the picture with Angie—but it hadn't looked like romantic tension. It could have been guilt, she supposed, but if they'd been having an affair, surely they would have synchronized their stories about each other, instead of Ralph claiming Charlene hated him, and Charlene denying any animosity between them. "Why would you even think they might be having an affair, anyway?"
"Have you seen them?" Josie said incredulously. "They look like they could model for the little bride-and-groom statues that go on top of wedding cakes. The perfect couple. Not like the odd couple that Ralph and Angie were."
"It's not just their appearance," Betty said. "Ralph's and Charlene's personalities are more similar too. Charlene is a much nicer person than Angie. She works hard and treats everyone with respect. Maybe she's not quite as nice as Ralph, but she's close. Definitely not as…well, let's just say she's not as difficult as Angie is."
"If Charlene's so nice," Helen said, "then she wouldn't get involved with her sister's husband, let alone conspire with him to kill her sister or even to cover up her murder."
There was another period of silence while the two women stitched and Helen tried to make the next row of her chemo cap live up to Josie's first row.
Betty reached the end of a stripe and went looking for another color to add. When she'd settled on a dark blue, she said, "I suppose it's possible Angie went to the casino like Charlene said, to do something other than gamble, but she wouldn't have stayed for three solid weeks. Something must have happened to her while she was there."
Josie leaned forward eagerly. "Maybe she fell in love with an outrageously charming gambler who offered to keep her on a pedestal like she's always wanted, and they ran away together, freeing Ralph and Charlene to be together."
Helen hadn't reached the point where she could crochet and talk at the same time, and it was starting to look like she never would. She let the yarn and crochet hook fall into her lap. "Angie being swept off her feet like that is about as unlikely as Ralph and Charlene killing Angie so they won't have to hurt her feelings."
"I just hate not knowing what happened," Betty said, her needles stabbing into the yarn irritably. "We may never know until Angie is found."
"Dead or alive," Josie said, a bit too enthusiastically, and sounding as if she preferred the former.
Betty gave her friend a quelling look. "We both hope Angie is safe, but the longer she's missing, the harder it will be to pick up the trail when an official report is filed. Like you said, it wouldn't be all that big a deal for someone to visit the casino and confirm she's there enjoying herself. Then we wouldn't worry so much."
Helen had meant Geoff could go to the casino, not herself, but doing a little snooping sounded like a lot more fun than picking up her crochet hook again. Before she committed to going, though, she'd need to see whether Jack had time to drive her to the casino. His clay avatar business was growing daily, and he needed to put most of his energy into that work.
Betty misread Helen's silence as reluctance. "I know it's a lot to ask, but would you consider actually going to the casino? Find Angie and talk to her? If she's hiding from Ralph, she might not be willing to return your calls, but if you went there in person, you'd be bound to run into her. She's not the type to stay in her room and hide. She'd be in the middle of things, drawing attention to herself as best she can in a place where she's not the only person covered in rhinestones, sequins, and glitter."
Angie would have to be extraordinarily loud and sparkly to get more than a quick glance in a casino setting. Helen had been to several of them, not for her own entertainment, but as part of her work as the state's First Lady. Most of the visits had been a few years ago when her ex-husband had been lobbied to support the nascent gambling industry in Massachusetts, and she'd gone with him on a VIP tour of all the local competition. The casino in the picture Charlene had showed her was large enough and crowded enough that if Angie didn't want to be found, the odds were in her favor.
Helen observed the yarn work going on beside her and considered the prospect of making yet another lumpy cap Josie would have to unravel. It would be better for everyone if she found something else to do with her time. The casino was only a couple hours' drive from Wharton, after all. Jack could get her there and back in a single day if he didn't have anything too critical happening in his pottery studio tomorrow.
"Let me check my driver's schedule," Helen said. "I can't make any promises yet, but if he's available and we don't hear from Angie in the meantime, I'll go to the casino tomorrow."
"It's so unfair we can't go with you," Josie said. "Would you at least bring us back some postcards or something for our poker night?"
"That much I can promise." Souvenirs were guaranteed to be found in abundance at resort casinos. Missing persons, not so much.
* * *
When Helen emerged from the nursing home, the borrowed sports car was just pulling up to the curb. Jack's timing really was uncanny.
He helped her down into the leather seat, and she couldn't help noticing he'd stopped trying to convince her how great the car was. He even looked relieved when she said she was ready to go home for the day.
As Jack pulled out of the nursing home's tree-lined driveway, she realized she needed to talk to Tate again. He would know how to get information about Angie out of the hotel staff. He must have done that sort of thing before, to confirm a client's alibi or undermine an alternative suspect's alibi.
Of course, it wouldn't be simple to get Tate to share his information. It was second-nature for him to discourage the taking of risks, and he tended to focus exclusively on the possible negative consequences, ignoring any possible benefits. She wasn't a fool, though, and she did trust his advice. If he said the task was impossible, then she'd have to let Betty and Josie know she was off the case. It had been one thing risking arrest for interfering with the police investigation when her nurse had been killed, and Helen had felt responsible for the woman's death, but quite another to risk criminal charges in order to look for some woman Helen had never even met and who might well just be playing childish matrimonial games. The local police already looked at Helen askance, and Hank Peterson wouldn't hesitate to file changes against her if she meddled in something that turned out to be no crime at all.
She definitely needed Tate's advice, and she'd already used up a full month's worth of his goodwill yesterday. Fortunately, she knew exactly what kind of bribe he couldn't resist.
"Take me home by way of the specialty lumber yard, please," Helen told Jack. "I have to pick up something for Tate."
CHAPTER SIX
Tate's car was parked outside the garage when Helen finally returned to the cottage. As she opened the door of the ridiculous sports car, she could hear the sound of his lathe.
Once Jack had dragged her up and out of the car, she asked him to wait a few minutes after he unloaded the trunk. "I need to ask Tate something, and, depending on what he says, I may need a ride tomorrow, if you're available then."
"No problem." Jack went around to the trunk to get the stack of exotic wood Tate had been admiring for a while without quite bringing himself to pay the exorbitant price.
Helen didn't see what was so special about it. When she'd asked the sales rep why it was so expensive, he'd described the twelve-inch-long blocks as exquisite examples of burled wood, which still didn't explain anything as far as she was concerned.
Helen held the garage's side door open for Jack. Tate's pleased expression when he turned off the lathe, pulled off his safety glasses, and caught sight of the incoming wood was enough to confirm that the sales rep had been right. It wasn't often that Tate, with his extensive experience as a trial lawyer and tough negotiator, let his real feelings appear on his face. Today, though, he looked genuinely pleased by her offering of the burled wood.
&nbs
p; The pleased expression didn't last long before it turned into suspicion. That was the one emotion Tate never hesitated to exhibit. "That stuff's expensive. What kind of trouble have you gotten into now?"
"I haven't done anything," Helen said. "Yet."
He stared at the chunks of wood for a long moment, as if deciding just how much he wanted them before accepting them from Jack.
Jack left, and Helen made sure she was inside the garage before Tate could put down the wood and return to lock her out. She pulled one of the three ratty director's chairs over next to his workbench and climbed into it, relieving the stress on her irritated hip. The chair was old and sawdust-covered and higher than she'd prefer, but it made a nice change from scraping the ground in the sports car.
Tate stacked the new wood blocks on an empty shelf at eye level, directly across from the lathe, where he would be able to see them while he worked. Once he was done he turned to face Helen, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the shelving, as if bracing himself for their conversation. "Okay, tell me what I need to know."
"I know the routine," Helen said, trying to get comfortable on the high canvas seat, with her legs dangling over the edge. "I'm supposed to tell you the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth if it's self-incriminating."
"You still haven't killed anyone, right? And you haven't told anyone you might have killed someone?"
"Definitely not," Helen said.
"That's a start." He glanced over his shoulder at his new wood supply one more time before he nodded. "Go ahead."
"I spoke to Angie Decker's husband, and he thinks she's just punishing him for some domestic misdeed by running away for a bit, which she's done before, so he hasn't reported her missing yet. Her sister thinks pretty much the same thing and says Angie's at a casino in Connecticut. Except, it turns out Angie is vehemently opposed to gambling, so Betty and Josie don't believe she'd stay at a casino for more than the time it took to have dinner and see a show. Which is a lot less than three weeks."
