A Denial of Death

by Gin Jones

  "We didn't have any reason to believe there was anything to investigate then," Detective Peterson said. "Even Ralph here didn't think anything was wrong. It's hard to investigate a missing person when the closest relative doesn't think she's missing. It does raise the question of whether that closest relative might be hiding something, though. I hope we won't find anything, but we have to look."

  Helen had a feeling the real reason Peterson was finally doing something was that Betty and Josie had finally convinced his uncle to put some pressure on him to do his job.

  "If it will help you to find Angie and make sure she's safe, you're welcome to look at her things," Ralph said, raising the nail gun to gesture at the house. "The side door's unlocked."

  Peterson gestured for two more uniformed officers who'd been waiting on the sidewalk to join him before heading inside the house. He left the other four officers in the yard, presumably to make sure Ralph didn't try to run. Helen couldn't imagine anyone less likely to either a) kill his wife or b) try to evade police after committing a crime.

  "Shouldn't you call your lawyer?" Helen said.

  "Why?" Ralph said. "I've got nothing to hide."

  Tate would have shaken his head in dismay at those words. Helen could imagine him saying everyone had something to hide, and she agreed with him on that. Very few people were hiding evidence of murder, but everyone had secrets. And an investigator looking for evidence could misconstrue otherwise innocent things.

  Before Peterson reached the house, raised voices out by the street caught Helen's attention. One of them belonged to Jack. He deserved a raise after this. He had to be nervous, but he was so determined to protect her that he was willing to run the gauntlet of police officers between her and the street. Some of them had probably suspected Jack of being involved in Charlene's disappearance or at least of stealing from her, and yet Jack was halfway up the driveway, having left his precious Bentley unguarded. The closest uniformed officer shouted at him for a second time to stay where he was.

  Jack greeted the officer by name, keeping his hands away from his body and in clear sight. "I'm Ms. Binney's driver. I just want to make sure she's okay. I'm not here to steal anything from Ralph. You can ask him. He doesn't mind my being here."

  The uniformed officer turned uncertainly, looking to Detective Peterson for instructions.

  "Well?" the detective said to Ralph. "Has anything been stolen from you recently?"

  "Why would Jack steal anything from me?" Ralph said. "Never mind. Nothing makes any sense today. I haven't noticed anything missing, and I trust Jack. He's welcome here anytime."

  When Peterson still hesitated, Helen added, "Jack isn't a threat to anyone. He has no history of violence, not even from when he was foolish and did some illegal things. If you remember, he was also completely cleared of my nurse's murder when the real culprit confessed. You can't keep blaming him for everything that goes wrong in this town."

  "All right." Detective Peterson gestured to the officer to let Jack pass. "But now you've got an escort to your car—it's time for you to leave."

  "Ralph was just about to get me a drink of water," Helen extemporized. "I need to take my medication."

  Ralph didn't move from his dazed seat on the gazebo's steps.

  "Come on, Ralph," Helen said, tugging on his arm. "I need you to show me where the glasses are in the kitchen."

  "Oh. Right." Ralph stood up slowly, unbuckling his tool belt and dropping it beside the nail gun. Detective Peterson nudged the power tool aside with his foot, and one of the uniformed officers picked it up with a gloved hand and put it in an evidence bag.

  Once she and Jack were in the kitchen and Ralph was searching for a clean glass, Helen pulled Jack aside. "Tate isn't answering his phone, and I think Ralph needs him. I don't want to leave Ralph here alone, so would you go see if Tate's at my cottage working in his studio?"

  "I can't leave you here all alone. Your nieces—" Jack stopped abruptly. "I mean, it's not safe for you to stay here. You've got as much baggage with Detective Peterson as I do, and he's expecting you to leave with me."

  Jack might not be on her nieces' payroll, but he was every bit as much of a babysitter as if he were. She didn't find it as annoying as she might have four months earlier. There were times when she did need some back-up. Just not right now. "I'll be fine for the amount of time it will take you to go get Tate. Perhaps swing by his nephew's office if Tate's not at the studio. I'll come up with a reason why I can't leave just yet. I really don't think Peterson's going to arrest me for anything. It wouldn't look good, dragging pitiful little me downtown in handcuffs."

  "He might question you, though, and get the wrong idea about your involvement in Angie's disappearance."

  "There's nothing you could do to stop that," Helen said, "but Tate could. That's why you need to go get him."

  Jack sighed but nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I can. I should be able to slip around the other side of the yard where Peterson won't see me. I was pretty good at evading the cops back when I was doing the stupid things I'm definitely not doing any longer."

  "Thanks," Helen said. "Don't rush so much you damage the Bentley. Or get a speeding ticket. I'm not paying it if you do."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There was no outcry after Jack left, so Helen assumed he'd gotten away clean. No one would notice if she stayed here in the kitchen, quietly seated in the breakfast nook with Ralph. On rare occasions being easy to overlook came in handy.

  Officers came into the house with empty boxes and left with full ones. She wondered if any of them contained drafts of Angie's erotica and what the officers were going to make of them. She'd make sure to have a word with Peterson about keeping it quiet so as not to add any more embarrassment to Ralph's day.

  Eventually, the country-kitsch clock on the wall said it was approaching 5:00, almost two hours after Jack had left. Where was he? Had Tate not been at the garage, or had he insisted on staying until the end of his usual woodworking hours before coming to Ralph's rescue?

  Helen waited another half hour before running out of patience. If Tate was going to show up at all, it would be soon. If not, well, Jack would likely admit defeat and report back to her.

  "I'm going out to see what's keeping Jack," she told Ralph. "Don't talk to anyone about anything until I get back."

  Ralph stood. "I'll come with you. I wouldn't want you to trip over my supplies."

  "Just let me do all the talking."

  As it turned out, there wasn't much risk of Helen's falling. The officers had cleared two paths, one between the house and the gazebo where Detective Peterson was coordinating the search and the other between the gazebo and the driveway for carrying the boxes out to their cars for transport to the police station.

  Helen made her way over to the gazebo. "You're wasting your time searching here, Detective. If you really want to run up some overtime, you could try contacting the various hotels and B&Bs around Mystic Seaport. It's possible Angie went there after she left the casino."

  "If we don't find anything here, we'll look into that possibility. For now we've still got the yard to search." Peterson looked pointedly at the chaos surrounding the gazebo and then turned to Ralph. "I understand you applied for the permit to build this just a couple days before Angie disappeared."

  "It's my vacation project," Ralph said. "Angie left right before my vacation. She never likes to be here while I'm working at home."

  Helen finally understood why lawyers were so adamant that clients shouldn't say anything whatsoever to the police. Ralph's volunteering that Angie hadn't wanted to spend time with him was innocuous in his mind, but it wouldn't sound good to someone who suspected him of harming his wife. She fought the urge to use one of his construction rags to gag him. She couldn't even explain that he hadn't meant what it sounded like. That would just bring more attention to what Ralph had said, making sure the detective noticed its self-incriminatory nature.

  "Still," Peterson said, "the timing is a
bit convenient. When did you actually dig the foundation area?"

  Helen stifled a gasp. Did the detective seriously think Angie was buried in the yard under cover of the gazebo construction? Jack had better find Tate and get him here soon. Ralph wouldn't listen to her about not incriminating himself, but he might listen to Tate.

  "It was probably a couple days after she left," Ralph said. "I got home late on Saturday, so it would have been a Sunday when I started work."

  Two uniformed officers who'd carried boxes out to the police cars were now returning from the street. In place of the boxes, each of them held a metal detector and was putting on the attached headsets as they approached.

  Peterson asked Ralph, "Did you dig the foundation yourself, or did you have some help?"

  "A friend with a small earthmover came over on Sunday to help with the heavy digging. I did the rest."

  Detective Peterson seemed distracted by the sound of the metal detectors being turned on and tested. The two officers took up positions at opposite sides of the gazebo, one at the back and one at the front, and marked their starting points with a little flag. They moved over the lawn in overlapping grids.

  A couple minutes passed without anything triggering the machines, so Peterson turned back to Ralph. "I'll need the friend's name and address."

  "Sure. I have it inside."

  Ralph started to turn around, but Peterson stopped him. "It can wait until we're done with the search out here."

  As Ralph sat back down, he picked up his tool belt. "Do you mind if I continue working? I'd really like to have the gazebo done when Angie gets home."

  Helen held her breath, afraid the detective might view the hammer hanging from his belt as a weapon and Ralph's picking it up as the beginning of an attack. Before anyone could panic, she took the tool belt, along with its potential weapons, out of Ralph's unresisting hand.

  "This won't take long," Detective Peterson said, a little more kindly now, seeming to realize just how dazed Ralph was. "My men are experts."

  Just as he said that, one of the officers indicated he'd found something two feet away from the foundation, in an almost direct path from the driveway. Probably some nails Ralph had dropped, Helen thought. Or the residue of a previous project that had worked its way into the ground before Angie came along to pick up after him.

  The officer knelt to run his gloved hand over the ground. The grass there, like everywhere within about six feet of the gazebo, was littered with dirt and pebbles from the excavation work.

  Where was Jack? He should have been back with Tate by now. Unless Tate had refused to leave his studio and wasn't coming. "I really think you should call your attorney now, Ralph."

  "I've got nothing to hide," he insisted again. "They won't find anything useful out here."

  Helen turned to Peterson. She hated to think he was the most sensible person around, but at least he wasn't completely delusional. "Is this really necessary?"

  "Standard operating procedure," Peterson said. "Especially when it's a serial murder case."

  "Serial murder?" Helen glanced toward the street again, willing Jack to return with Tate in the nick of time. Even Tate would have to admit that Wharton's first-ever serial murder case was more interesting than his woodworking hobby. On the other hand, it was just as well Jack wasn't here to overhear Peterson's theory and inadvertently let the information slip to Lily and Laura. Her nieces wouldn't know just how unlikely it was that Angie was the victim of a serial killer, and they'd start worrying and hovering again, just when she'd finally convinced them she was perfectly safe living here in Wharton on her own. "How did we get from one case of a missing person, who might not even be missing, all the way to the opposite extreme of suspecting we've got a serial killer in our midst?"

  "Two missing persons," Peterson said smugly. "Angie and her sister. Charlene's been gone for more than twenty-four hours now."

  "Charlene isn't missing, and she's certainly not the victim of a serial killer," Helen said. "I talked to her yesterday. She's in Connecticut, looking for her sister."

  "Are you sure you were really talking to Charlene?" the detective asked. "Couldn't it have been someone pretending to be her?"

  "Why would anyone do that?"

  "To throw us off the track and keep us from searching Ralph's yard," Peterson said. "Besides, we've already paid for the backhoe, and we've got the search warrant. Might as well use them."

  Boys and their toys. They were going to put Ralph through all this stress, just so they could play with the metal detectors and backhoe.

  The officer who'd been brushing dirt away from a spot near the gazebo shouted for Peterson to come look at what they'd found.

  Helen followed as quickly as her hip would let her. "What is it?"

  The officer said, "It looks like a medical alert bracelet. One of those fancy ones with a GPS locator. The victim's name is engraved on it."

  Helen glanced over her shoulder, hoping Ralph hadn't heard. Finding the bracelet didn't look good for Angie's still being alive. Of course, it wasn't looking good for him being innocent of her murder, either. If the bracelet belonged to Angie, it meant Ralph had lied when he'd said it didn't have a GPS tracker.

  Ralph's confused expression suggested he had heard, and he was either completely clueless or else he was a psychopath who was really good at covering up his true personality.

  Where were Jack and Tate, anyway?

  The officer who'd found the incriminating evidence marked the spot, photographed the bracelet, and then placed it in an evidence bag.

  "I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation," Helen said to Peterson, keeping her voice low so Ralph wouldn't hear. "It could have been there for years."

  Peterson took the sealed bag from the other officer and peered through the plastic. "Looks pretty clean to me. Not like it's been here for more than a few days. A month, at the outside."

  Helen peered at it too. "The clasp is broken. Maybe she lost it right before she left on her vacation and either didn't notice or didn't want to take the time to search for it."

  "You don’t see things the way a trained professional does," Peterson said. "It obviously fell off when the killer dragged her body over here.”

  Helen could see where his theory was headed. He was going to dig up the gazebo, destroying Ralph's hard work, based on the increasingly reasonable theory that Ralph had killed his wife.

  Where was Tate? He would know how to stop this.

  "Ralph's attorney is on his way here," she said, willing it to be true. "You should wait until he gets here before you do anything drastic."

  "Ralph didn't say anything about an attorney," Peterson said. "I'll go ask him."

  She needed to buy some more time for Jack to arrive with Tate. For once, her slow walking pace might be useful. "Just give me a minute to talk to Ralph first. He still thinks Angie is just hiding, not in any real danger. It's going to come as a shock to hear that her bracelet was found in their yard."

  "We'll unload the backhoe while you talk to him."

  Helen went over to Ralph. "Why don't we go over to the patio where there's more comfortable seating?"

  "I'd rather stay here," Ralph said. "I don't want to waste any time before getting back to work as soon as they leave."

  The backhoe's engine roared to life, and the sharp beep of the back-up warning made it almost impossible to have a conversation.

  "Ralph, you aren't going to be able to get back to work today." Helen spared one last, despairing glance at the street that was empty of her car, her driver, and her attorney. "They're going to treat the gazebo area as a crime scene and not let anyone near it for a while. You heard them say they found one of Angie's medical alert bracelets."

  "She only has one," he said absently. "She's had it for years. Charlene gave it to her for her fortieth birthday, and Angie never loses anything. I'm the one who loses things, and she always finds them for me."

  "I'm sorry, Ralph," Helen said. "This is a newer bracelet. Maybe sh
e got it while you were gone and didn't tell you about it."

  "Another secret she's keeping from me." Ralph sighed. "I should have insisted on answers earlier."

  Peterson joined them. "Did you explain the situation to him?"

  "He's in shock. He's not in any condition to be here."

  Peterson squatted in front of Ralph to look him in the eyes. "Do you know who I am?"

  "Of course," Ralph said in a detached monotone. "You're Hank Peterson. Went to school with my cousin. You think I killed my wife. But she's not dead."

  "It's nothing personal," Peterson said with surprising gentleness. "I'm just following the evidence. And it's leading me to your gazebo. I need to look under it."

  Ralph frowned at the approaching backhoe. "Angie's going to be furious about the mess you're making of her yard."

  "We'll try not to make it any worse than necessary," Peterson said.

  "Just get on with it." Ralph stood and walked halfway to the house before turning around to stare at the gazebo dejectedly.

  Helen followed him. "You don't have to agree to this. I'm sure your attorney could explain everything so it won't be necessary to dig up Angie's gazebo."

  "No, no, it's all right," Ralph said. "I really want to have the gazebo finished before Angie returns, and the sooner they're done wrecking it, the sooner I can start rebuilding it."

  Helen watched helplessly as the backhoe bit into the gazebo's perfectly shingled siding, destroying hours and hours of Ralph's loving, meticulous work in a single moment.

  Jack finally returned a few minutes later from the opposite side of the house, slipping past Peterson and the uniformed officers who were all intent on the backhoe's progress. He joined her on the patio, where she was sitting with Ralph. "I'm sorry, Ms. Binney. I couldn't find Tate. He's not at his studio, office, or home. His nephew wasn't at the office either. I looked everywhere. Twice."

  "I'm sure you did everything you could," Helen said. "All we can do now is wait and see what the police find."

  They didn't have to wait long. The backhoe bit into the concrete foundation, reducing it to rubble and dumping it in a pile several feet away. Then the metal detectors were waved over the newly uncovered area until one pinged. Peterson called for shovels. The first blade hit something just an inch or two below the surface, and the dirt was carefully brushed away to reveal a denim-clad leg and a rhinestone-covered sneaker.