A Denial of Death (18 page)

"I'm sure it's just a standard question," Helen said. "There are always stories about spouses being killed for the life insurance money."

"Angie's just missing, not dead," Ralph said emphatically. "She can't be dead. I would know. It doesn't matter whether there's life insurance, because she's not dead."

"But there is a policy, isn't there?"

"Of course there is. I sell life insurance, after all. We have a joint policy, for the benefit of the survivor. I told the police all about it. The face amount is a million dollars." Ralph held up a hand before Helen could comment on its potential as a motive for murder. "I know it sounds like a lot—the police were very interested when they heard the number too—but it doesn't really mean anything. I'm an insurance agent, after all, so it costs me practically nothing to get the coverage once you subtract my commission. I took out the policy more for the appearance of things than as part of any sort of financial planning package. It wouldn't look good if I didn't invest in the products I was selling. We've had the policy for years. Almost two decades, probably, ever since I first opened the agency. I never thought I'd collect on it. Always figured it would be there for Angie. I wouldn't know what to do with the money myself. The insurance agency has always provided a good living for me and Angie, and it's been doing better than ever recently, as home sales are improving, and prices are rising again, so more people need larger and larger homeowner's policies."

Helen really couldn't imagine the sad man across from her killing anyone for money or any other reason, but she wasn't as convinced as Ralph that Angie was still alive. And if she was dead, someone had had a reason to kill her. "What about an insurance policy on Angie's life but naming someone else as the beneficiary? Charlene mentioned she had a life insurance policy, and I got the impression Angie was the beneficiary. Did Angie have a matching policy for her sister's benefit? Or anyone else's?"

"I'd forgotten about Charlene's policy," Ralph said. "But there was no reciprocal policy. I suggested it, but Angie wasn't interested. She said it wasn't necessary, that Charlene could take care of herself. Angie loves her sister, but she doesn't approve of her spendthrift tendencies. Especially those art glass sculptures Charlene collects. I forget the artist's name, but he's got quite a following. Do you know how much some of those things sell for?"

Helen shook her head.

Ralph named a figure that was enough to buy a new car. Not a luxury car, but still, a car. All for a chunk of melted glass.

"Most of them are only worth a grand or two," Ralph continued, "but the bigger ones can get expensive. I know, because Charlene has them insured through my agency. She insists they're an investment, but Angie thinks this particular artist is just a fad and the prices on his work will crash soon, to be in line with what you'd pay at a craft show: hundreds of dollars, tops, not thousands. The pieces don't have any inherent value. They're too dependent on being the current big thing among collectors, and it's about time for a new trendy artist to come along and supplant this guy."

"If there's nothing else you can tell me, I should get going." Helen suspected Jack was getting antsy and would come check on her if he thought she was staying too long for her own good.

"I almost forgot," Ralph said. "You wanted to know if Angie took her new sparkly sneakers with her on this trip. I looked in her closet, and they're not in there, so she must have taken them."

"Thanks for looking." Helen had never really doubted Angie had left voluntarily, but it didn't hurt to get corroborating evidence. If the sparkly new sneakers were gone, then it seemed likely that Angie had done the packing and hadn't been kidnapped.

Helen left, somewhat discouraged that she hadn't learned anything new. She supposed it was useful to know the spendthrift Charlene wasn't the beneficiary of a life insurance policy on Angie's life, so she didn't have a financial incentive to kill her sister, but other than that, Helen still had no leads. Of course, neither did the police.

She almost felt sorry for Detective Peterson. Once he finally got it into his thick skull that Angie really was missing, he wasn't going to have any more leads to go on than Helen did. She wished she could see his face when he realized his most likely suspects were a besotted office manager and a library volunteer.

*  *  *

Helen successfully navigated the obstacle course of discarded tools and lumber, reaching the neatly maintained sidewalk in front of the Deckers' house just as the woman in the Hawaiian print housedress was crossing the street, supported on forearm crutches. An electric blue leash that matched both the Mini Cooper Countryman and some of the flowers in the woman's dress was wrapped around her wrist, with a tuxedo cat at the other end. The two were heading straight for where Jack waited in the driver's seat.

Maybe the funky-looking, attention-getting Mini Cooper Countryman wasn't such a bad choice for Helen, after all. She was curious about what the neighbor had seen on the day Angie disappeared, and it wasn't likely the woman would have come out from behind her curtain if it weren't for the urge to get a closer look at the car.

The driver's door swung open, and the large woman froze, panic written all over her long, narrow face. She mustn't have realized anyone was still inside the car.

Helen scooted over between the woman and the driver's side door, telling Jack, "Don't get out on my account. It'll be a few more minutes before I'm ready to leave."

"Anything you say, Ms. Binney." He shut himself back into the car, and reached for his phone and its games.

Heat rose from the asphalt in shimmery waves as Helen continued on to the middle of the quiet street, where the woman seemed torn between the desire to check out the car and her apparent fear of strangers.

"You have a beautiful cat. I've never been able to have a pet because of my husband's allergies, but now that we're divorced I could use some companionship." At least, that was what everyone was telling her. Helen wasn't entirely convinced, but it seemed like the right topic of conversation to get the woman to relax. "Perhaps you know where I could get one?"

"The Wharton shelter usually has several adult cats that need homes," she said, picking up her cat and hugging it against her ample chest as if afraid Helen would steal it. "I'd take them all if I could, but I'm on a fixed income. Disability, like you."

"I'm sorry," Helen said, without correcting the woman's assumption about her income. "Did you want to come take a look at my Mini Cooper? Well, it's not actually mine. I'm just test-driving it to see if I want to buy it. Do you think I should?"

The woman looked startled at the question, as if it had been a long time since anyone had asked for her opinion on anything. "My name's Francesca. And the cat's Mel. Short for Melanie, not Melvin."

"Nice to meet you both. I'm Helen." She turned toward the Mini Cooper. "So, what do you think of the car? Too odd? Too bright? It is comfortable, I have to say. And it seats five. That's really all I know about it."

Francesca made a slow circuit of the car, peering in each window and giving the tires a visual thumping, if not a physical one. Helen noticed Jack was talking to someone on his cell phone instead of playing a game.

Finally, Francesca was satisfied with her tour of the car. "It's okay. The only bad thing is that it attracts too much attention. I wouldn't want people staring at me all the time. I get enough of that already."

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Helen said. "There are times when I prefer to be inconspicuous. Sort of like how you must feel when you watch the world from behind your curtains."

Francesca nodded. "There isn't much else I can do these days. I like to watch people and imagine what their lives must be like."

"Were you watching the street the day Angie Decker disappeared?"

"I saw her get into a taxi a few weeks ago, and I never saw her come back. Is that what you mean?"

"A little over three weeks ago? On a Thursday?"

Francesca patted the tabby's head for a moment. "I think so. I tend to lose track of the days, but it was right after my disability benefits were deposited, and that would have been on a Wednesday."

"The police may want to talk to you about that day."

The cat screeched and squirmed out of Francesca's arms to jump down onto the street. "I didn't do anything to Angie. I don't care what she told you."

"She didn't tell me anything," Helen said soothingly. "I just meant you may have some useful information for the police. She's missing, and you may have noticed something that would help them figure out where she went."

"I'd help if I could," Francesca said, "but I don't know anything. The cabbie put her suitcase into the trunk, and she got into the front with her laptop, and then they left. She didn't say anything to me, for once."

That was odd. Why would Angie bring a laptop on vacation? It would make sense if she was planning to do some sort of work at the casino, like that woman, Leslie, with the lust for yarn, who did her graphic design work there so no one would interrupt her when she was on a deadline. But Angie didn't have a job. Come to think of it, Angie didn't have a laptop either, according to Ralph, and she didn't know how to use a computer.

"Are you sure she had a laptop with her?"

"I'm sure," Francesca said. "I heard her refusing to let the cabbie put it in the trunk with her suitcase. She said it had all her hard work on it and it was worth more than his taxi. More than a whole fleet of taxis, even."

Apparently Angie had been hiding more than just the seventy-five thousand dollars from Ralph. She'd also hidden both her laptop and her computer skills.

"So you were outside when she left?"

"Oh, no, but it was nice that day, and I didn't need air conditioning. My windows were open, and her voice travels," Francesca said. "I may be a bit sensitive to her voice in particular. She shouts at me from the street almost every day when she goes out to get her mail. Tells me to get a job and stop being a drain on society."

"I hope you tell her to mind her own business."

"I did the first few times," Francesca said, "but then she went and complained to the police, and they came and had a chat with me. I don't like having strangers in my house. Mel gets upset. It's better to just ignore her than risk having the police come back."

"You're a better person than I am," Helen said. "I'd probably have sought a restraining order against her. It can't be easy living right across the street from someone who's that much of a jerk to you."

Francesca shrugged. "You get used to it."

Helen heard the car door pop open and turned to look.

Jack poked his head out cautiously. "Excuse me, Ms. Binney, but I thought you'd want to know. I found the cabbie who delivered Angie to her sister's house."

This time, Jack didn't give Helen the chance to suggest a destination other than her own cottage. As soon as she shut the passenger door behind her, he threw an invisible wall up between them, more solid than the actual barrier that a limo had between the driver and passenger areas. He put the car into gear and started for her home.

Helen was tempted to insist on talking to the cabbie first, but she doubted he would do anything more than confirm what she already knew. She might as well go home, take her evening pills, and maybe ice down her hip before going online to see what she could learn about the last person, other than Martha Waddell, known to have argued with Angie: the president of the Friends of the Library.

When Helen didn't complain about their destination, Jack eventually dropped his invisible wall and said, "The cabbie was a guy I know named Barry. All he remembered was that he took Angie to Charlene's house on a Thursday. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon. He said she had a big suitcase, more than she'd need for an overnight visit, but not enough for the amount of time she's been gone."

"He's sure?" Helen said. "It happened three weeks ago, after all, and he must have had dozens of passengers since then."

"Anyone who's been on the receiving end of Angie's lectures never forgets her," Jack said. "Barry specifically remembered how much of a nag she was. He'd been planning to help carry her suitcase up to the front porch, but she'd been so annoying, and she'd already told him she wasn't going to give him a tip, so he tossed the bag on the sidewalk and left her to carry it up the driveway herself."

"She really told him he wasn't getting a tip?" Helen said. "Before he finished his job?"

"That's Angie for you," Jack said. "Makes things worse for herself by trying to get people to do things her way. I'm also fairly sure she hasn't been back in town since the day she left. No one remembers driving her anywhere since then, and, trust me, they'd have remembered if she'd been in their cab or bus."

"What do you know about this cabbie?" Helen asked. "He could be lying now because he kidnapped her or killed her."

"Barry?" He laughed. "No way. I've known him for years. He's a little odd, and he isn't above a little petty revenge like leaving her suitcase on the sidewalk, but he's a good guy. He's been with the same taxi company forever, and that doesn't happen if the driver routinely cheats the customers or even if he's rude with any frequency."

"I'm just trying to consider all the possibilities. I guess it wouldn't make sense to suspect the cabbie anyway. If someone had killed Angie before she got to Charlene's house, then Charlene would have been actively searching for her sister all this time, not covering up the crime by saying they went to the casino." Helen thought of Betty's and Josie's wild theories. "Unless Charlene and the cabbie were in cahoots, I suppose."

"Charlene and Barry?" Jack said. "No way. Barry used to be a monk. The real thing. Brown robes, vow of poverty, life of contemplation. Lived like some kind of saint. He's not all that different now, except he doesn't wear the robes, and he's human enough to get angry sometimes. He works just enough to pay his rent at the rooming house and to eat a subsistence diet. The rest of the time he's at the library or in a holy place, contemplating his sins. There's no way he'd have anything to do with lying, gambling, or Charlene's too-worldly ways."