Mean Streak(49)

“Sounds like she’s got a kind spirit,” Knight said as he reached into the box for a second doughnut. “A genuine humanitarian.”

“She is, which is just one of the reasons why I love her. But with all due respect,” Jeff said as he folded his half-eaten doughnut into a napkin and replaced the cap on his Styrofoam cup of coffee, “you’re telling me things about my wife that I already know. When are you going to tell me something that I don’t know? Like why you can’t find her and what’s being done to remedy that.”

“We’re working on it.”

“So you’ve said. Dozens of times. But I see no evidence of it.”

“There weren’t any developments overnight. We’re hoping for better luck today.”

“You’re depending on luck? Jesus.”

He turned away from the rearview mirror, choosing to look out the window rather than into Knight’s woeful eyes. They had exited the main highway and were now on one with only two opposing lanes and an occasional passing lane. It was a twisty road, the curves coming so frequently that the backseat ride was making Jeff carsick.

“Don’t be discouraged,” Grange said. “We’re working on other angles.”

“You mentioned those last night,” Jeff said. “You failed to specify what those angles are.”

“Well, for one, there’s the money.”

Jeff’s head snapped around to Grange, who was watching him over the back of his seat.

“Emory’s money,” the detective clarified, as if Jeff didn’t know to whose money he referred.

“Your wife is loaded,” Knight said. “Family fortune. She could up and quit and never have to ask another kid to say ‘aah.’” He laughed. “If I was that rich, I’d never turn a lick.”

“That’s offensive,” Jeff snapped.

Knight looked at him in the mirror. “Sorry, Jeff, I didn’t mean—”

“Emory would be sorely offended by remarks like that. She works harder because of her inheritance.”

“Is that right?”

“She never mentions her wealth, much less flaunts it. In fact she’s almost apologetic about it.”

Grange said, “Which explains why she gives so much of it away.”

“She’s pledged two hundred grand to an upcoming marathon.” Knight addressed the information to his partner, but Jeff realized the older man had said it for his benefit. “Might take some time,” he went on, “but I guess if she applied herself to it, she could eventually give all her money away.”

“Which wouldn’t leave any left over for her beneficiary.” Grange looked back at Jeff. “Which happens to be you, doesn’t it?”

He gave the smug deputy an icy glare. “I believe you already know the answer to that.”

“Well, Jeff, we have to check these things out. It’s routine when a spouse goes missing.”

The folksier Knight’s tone became, the less Jeff liked and trusted it. Didn’t they realize that he was smart enough to know when he was being played? He said, “If you’ve checked out Emory’s finances, then you know that I don’t manage her portfolio. In fact, all her investments are with another firm.”

“Yeah, the top guy at your place of business told me that.”

He gave Knight a sharp look in the rearview mirror. “Excuse me?”

“You had led your company to believe that she would turn all her money matters over to your firm when y’all got married. But she didn’t. That’s what your boss told me anyway.”

“He told you?”

Knight nodded. “When I called him yesterday and asked him who held the reins for Emory’s fortune.”

It crawled all over Jeff to learn that yesterday, while for hours on end he’d been cooling his heels in the lobby of the Hicksville sheriff’s office, he was being investigated and talked about within his firm.

Which meant that his coworkers knew it wasn’t sickness that had kept him out of the office. They’d known the nature of the “family emergency” even before they’d heard about Emory’s disappearance on the news this morning. These yokels had made him out to be a liar to his firm’s senior partner, and that made him livid.

“You don’t manage her money,” Grange was saying, “but you get it if she predeceases you, correct?”

“If you had asked me, I would have told you that,” Jeff said, barely keeping his fury under control. “You wouldn’t have had to call my firm and bothered my coworkers with questions that have nothing to do with Emory’s disappearance.”

“We’ve got to cover every angle,” Grange said.

“Speaking of,” Knight said, “what’s the name of that drug you wanted Emory to endorse?”

“How did you know about that?”

“There were a lot of e-mails on her computer about it. Back and forth, between you, the pharmaceutical company, your wife. Going back more than a year. What was that all about?”

“Since you seem to already know, why don’t you tell me?”

“Be easier if you’d just put it in a nutshell for us,” Knight said. “We’ve got nothing else to do while we’re riding.”