A Denial of Death (28 page)

"Are you saying you did hurt her?"

"I pray daily that I would never fall so low. Still, I let my anger control me. I threw her suitcase onto the sidewalk instead of carrying it to the front porch. I should have tried to understand why she was so unhappy. I could have done something to make her day better. Instead, I made it worse."

"After you tossed her stuff, then what happened?"

Barry shook his head and slumped even more, until he was barely taller than she was. "I left and did not think any further of her. Not until our friend Jack told me she had disappeared. Then I realized how great my sin was. If I had been more compassionate, evil might have been prevented."

"If all you did was return her rudeness with a little rudeness of your own, you can't blame yourself for what happened to her."

He shook his head. "I am responsible for my pride and my anger. After my shift on Sunday I cloistered myself in a silent retreat at a nearby monastery to ask for forgiveness. There is nothing more I can do except strive to be a better person going forward."

"You can help by telling me again what you remember of the day you drove Angie to her sister's house. There might be some detail that will help find the real killer."

"I prayed about that too. I cannot recall anything beyond what I told Jack. I picked Angie up at her house. She was wearing jeans and a bright red tank top shirt embellished with rhinestones to match her sneakers. She had one suitcase which had also been embellished with paint and glitter, obscuring the manufacturer's name. Only the laptop was unadorned." He frowned. "She kept the computer with her during the trip, and I could see the logo. Mea culpa, but it was not a brand I recognized."

"Then what?"

"Then we drove to her sister's house. The fare was just under eight dollars. She gave me the exact change and proceeded to tell me every driving mistake she believed I had made, as an explanation for denying me a gratuity."

"And that's when you tossed her suitcase out of your cab."

"Not quite yet," he said, drawing out the last word while he thought. "First, I went around to open the passenger side door, since she would not open it herself. Then I unloaded the suitcase. She told me to wait while she checked to see if her sister was home. She dashed up the driveway with her laptop. To my unending sorrow, I chucked the suitcase onto the sidewalk and left."

"You never saw her again after that?"

"To my shame, I did want to see how angry Angie was when she realized I hadn't waited for her. I found the willpower not to indulge in such sinful gloating. I did not look in the rear view mirror."

"What about later?" Helen said. "She might have returned about a week after she left. Did you see her any time after you dropped her off at her sister's?"

"I wish I had. Then I might have been able to make reparations directly to her. Now I can only make them to her husband and to my God." He pulled a crumpled card from his pocket, which was a little bigger than a business card and had the serenity prayer printed on the front. On the back was the name and address of a monastery that offered lodgings for devout men committed to silent contemplation and prayer. At the top was a hand-written reservation number that presumably could confirm his time spent on retreat. At the bottom, in a blank spot, Barry had written his name and a phone number. "If I can help you or Ralph in any way, please call on me. I will answer, no matter the time of day or night."

"Thank you." Helen took the card as the mini-van pulled up next to her with a surprisingly cheerful Jack at the wheel.

Barry glanced inside his cab. "The fare is nineteen thirty-five. Jack said you would pay it."

"Of course." Apparently Barry's charitable impulses only went so far. Helen dug her wallet out of her yarn bag and handed over two twenty-dollar bills.

Jack jumped out of the mini-van. "Do you want to try out the rear sliding doors, or do you prefer the front seat? There's a video screen and game console in the back."

That extra feature explained Jack's enthusiasm. "The front, please." The air conditioning was likely to be stronger there. "I'll leave the console testing to you."

"Anything you say, Ms. Binney."

She climbed into the passenger seat, finding it a little awkward to get into but more manageable than either the huge SUV or the tiny sports car. "I know we planned to decide on a car today, but I'd like to make a quick stop at the nursing home first. While I'm there could you swing by Charlene's house and see if she's come home? Maybe check the store where she works too. I'd really like to know she's safe." And available for Helen to question about Angie's argument with Ralph.

"Sure," Jack said, politely hiding what she assumed was his disappointment that he wouldn't get to check out the game console while he waited outside the nursing home.

"I wouldn't ask you to go to Charlene's house if anyone else could do it," Helen said. "I'm afraid the police might be staking it out, so watch out for them, and don't take any unnecessary risks."

"If they're outside her house, we'll know they're still waiting for her to return," Jack said. "I bet they want to talk to her as much as you do, now that Angie's body has been found."

"You're probably right." Helen stared unseeing out the side window. With Charlene missing, and Peterson leaping to the wild conclusion that there was a serial killer on the loose, Barry had been her only real lead, and instead he'd turned out to be the most unlikely suspect of all, if what he said about his monastic retreat was true. "How long have you known Barry? Is he really so holy he'd spend several days in prayer to atone for a perfectly understandable and harmless display of temper?"

"He is," Jack said without hesitation. "He didn't leave his monastic calling out of a lack faith. It was more because of an over-abundance of faith. He felt he needed to be out in the world, fighting temptation and modeling a virtuous life. Like it was too easy in the cloister."

Helen went back to contemplating the road in front of her without seeing it. If Barry was no longer a credible suspect, and Tate didn't see much potential for reasonable doubt with either the insurance agency's manager or Martha Waddell, then Ralph was in serious trouble.

"You don't really believe Ralph killed Angie, do you?" Betty said as soon as she saw Helen approaching. She and Josie were in their usual spots in the far corner of the nursing home's activity room, surrounded by their yarn.

"I wasn't sure if you'd heard about it." Helen pulled up a chair and tucked her yarn bag in beside her. "Was there something in the local paper?"

Josie waved her crochet hook dismissively. "We never wait for the
Wharton Times'
version of events."

"Detective Peterson's uncle told us about it," Betty confided. "Took credit for the arrest too, forgetting we were the ones who convinced him to pressure his nephew to do something."

"We should have known the police would get it wrong," Josie said in disgust. "No sane person could possibly think they've arrested the right person."

"I don't know what to believe." Helen was inclined to automatically believe the exact opposite of whatever Detective Peterson did, but she wasn't having any luck finding a better suspect. "I was so sure they wouldn't find anything except rocks and sand and perhaps a few lost tools under the gazebo. Much as it galls me to admit it, I was wrong, and Detective Peterson was right."

"It still doesn't mean Ralph offed Angie." Josie reached over and snagged Helen's yarn bag to remove her latest project. Josie blinked, obviously surprised to see a cap that might fit a human head.

Helen refrained from admitting it was her friend at the casino who'd done the work. "You two blamed Ralph in the beginning, when you asked me to look for Angie."

"We never
really
thought he'd done it," Betty said. "We just knew something was wrong, and no one would listen to us, not even Ralph, so it sort of made sense that he was involved somehow. We wouldn't have said anything if we'd thought Ralph would get into trouble."

"I'm working on convincing Tate to represent Ralph," Helen said. "If anyone can help now, Tate can."

"It would be better if you could figure out who really killed Angie," Betty said. "Then Ralph wouldn't need a lawyer, and no one would get away with murder."

"I'd love to figure out the real killer," Helen said, "but I've run out of suspects, and I'm afraid I'm just going to make things worse for Ralph. I've talked to every possible suspect I could think of, no matter how unlikely, and Tate says none of them would provide a jury with reasonable doubt. Angie was definitely annoying, but no one had any serious grudge against her, and no one would benefit from her death, except for Ralph."

"What about Samantha, the agency's office manager?" Josie suggested. "Now that Angie's gone, Ralph might notice she's in love with him."

"I'm not entirely sure, but it’s likely that she's over him," Helen said. "She's got a boyfriend now."

"Isn't that nice?" Josie said dreamily. "I love a happy ending."

"It's not such a happy ending for Ralph." Helen took back the cap that had passed Josie's inspection, along with the hook. "It means Samantha didn't have a motive to kill Angie."

"Are you sure?" Betty said. "Did you meet the boyfriend? People sometimes claim to have a relationship in order to hide an unrequited crush."

"It's a long shot, but I can double-check." Helen picked up her yarn and made the first few stitches of the next row. The surface of the cap already refused to lie flat. Maybe it would work itself out if she just kept going. Or perhaps blocking would fix it.

Josie glanced at Helen's stitches, and flinched. "There has to be something more you can do for Ralph."

"I'd love to talk to Angie's sister again, but she seems to have disappeared too. Charlene called me on her way home from Connecticut, after looking for her sister, but as of yesterday afternoon, she still wasn't back. Jack is checking now to see if she's come home yet."

"You think she's dead too?" Josie said. "I bet they'll find her body in the trash compactor at the big box store where she works."

"Or she could be on the run, hiding out from the police," Betty said in her no-nonsense tone. "Charlene was the last person to see Angie alive, right? Maybe she killed her sister and then lied about taking her to the casino."

"Angie definitely made it to the casino," Helen said. "I've seen the bank records. She paid for a week's stay, starting the day she disappeared. Besides, why would Charlene kill Angie? As far as I can tell, they were very close. Charlene gave Angie rides whenever she asked, and they even went on vacations together."

"Except when they were fighting about money," Betty said.

"Money changes everything," Josie said darkly as she plucked the chemo cap out of Helen's hands and unraveled all the new stitches.

"Charlene doesn't inherit anything from Angie. If the motive was money, then the police got it right when they arrested Ralph."

"Ralph's never been all that interested in money," Betty said. "He never would have started his own agency if it hadn't been for Angie pushing him."

"Even so, he's the only one who benefits financially from her death," Helen said. "Ralph will get the house and the bank accounts and everything else they owned together. Plus, Ralph admitted to being the sole beneficiary of a substantial life insurance policy."

"Angie might have left Charlene something in her will," Betty said.

Josie shook her head. "Angie would never give her sister any money. She didn't approve of Charlene's spendthrift ways."

"No matter how you look at it, Charlene doesn't have a motive to kill Angie." Then again, no one else Helen had talked to had a particularly persuasive motive either. Barry had vented his brief anger by tossing Angie's suitcase; Francesca seemed too depressed to summon up the anger necessary to commit murder; and Martha Waddell was too secure in her job to care about Angie's meaningless threats. Terri Greene might have the potential for violence if the library were threatened, but now that Helen knew Angie's money had come from a legitimate source and hadn't been embezzled from the library, Terri didn't have any reason to feel anything more than mild irritation with her least favorite volunteer. "Lots of people were annoyed with Angie, but not to the point of murderous rage. Unless you can think of anyone with a real reason to kill her, there's nothing more I can do."

Josie handed back the chemo cap, which had had the few bad stitches removed and three new rows added. "I still can't believe Ralph did it. We should never have gotten you involved, and the police would never have started looking for the body, and Ralph wouldn’t be in trouble."

"It's not your fault." Helen stuffed the cap and crochet hook into her yarn bag, so as not to make more work for Josie.

"What about a random killing at the casino?" Betty said. "Angie could have been killed there and brought back here to be buried."

"I don't think so," Helen said. "If she'd been killed in some random act at the casino, why would he go to all the trouble of looking up her address and then bringing her body back to her house, when he could have just dumped the body somewhere closer to the casino? He wouldn't have had any way of knowing there'd be a convenient hole waiting for him at her house, about to be covered with concrete."

Josie was looking past Helen, at the entrance to the activity room. Helen glanced over her shoulder and caught the arrival of the elderly sweethearts who'd been feuding the last time she was here, up until the moment when the woman had needed medical intervention. Today, they were holding hands and leaning into each other, possibly for physical support, but mostly for the emotional closeness.

"They're so sweet," Josie said dreamily.

Betty laughed wryly. "What impresses a girl definitely changes with age. Used to be the guy would have to be doing something extraordinary to get our attention, but at our age we're impressed by any small thoughtfulness."

"In that case," Josie said thoughtfully, "you could say whoever buried Angie was being sweet too. Not the killing her part, but the part where she's buried under the gazebo she's always wanted, on the property she's always taken meticulous care of. I mean, if you're going to be dumped somewhere, a beautiful, quiet spot has to be better than the bottom of a swamp or underneath a parking lot or something."