Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(56)

“So what kept him from apologizing?” I asked. “Pride?"

Helen nodded. “Exactly,” she said.

“Back to the prenup. Was that his idea or Shelley’s?” I asked.

“His, I’m sure,” Helen answered.

“Why? Because he was afraid from the beginning that the marriage would fall apart eventually?”

“Believe me, Roger has handled more than one contentious divorce in his time,” Helen replied.

“Wait,” I objected. “I thought he was a criminal attorney.”

“In a town like this,” Helen answered, “you have to be a jack-of-all-trades.”

No doubt that was true. Roger had probably dealt with plenty of ugly divorces, but there was something else here as well. Past history is not an automatic predictor of future behavior, but in the case of cheating spouses, straying isn’t usually a one-time-only thing. Since Shelley had cheated on Jack Loveday with Roger, what were the chances she’d cheat on him with someone else?

When I saw Shelley and her husband earlier, I’d wondered what a relatively young, good-looking, and vibrant woman was doing with a frail husk of an old man, but the existence of that prenup went a long way to explain why she would stick around. If she divorced him, she’d be out of luck. If she stuck it out with Roger till he died, she’d make out like a bandit, despite not receiving the life-insurance payout.

I brought Helen’s and my conversation back to that very topic.

“What’s the face amount on that life-insurance policy?” I asked.

“Five hundred thousand dollars.”

Receiving that kind of unanticipated death benefit would make a huge difference in Danitza Miller’s bottom line and life. I wondered how much of a dent it would put in what Shelley was expecting to receive.

“Do you think Shelley is aware of the change in beneficiary?”

“I doubt it. I certainly didn’t tell her, and I shouldn’t be telling you either. The only reason I am is I believe there’s something seriously wrong here—that things with Roger aren’t what they should be. When I went to see Danitza, I was planning on telling her about the insurance issue, just to get her to go see her dad to check on him, but at the last minute I decided against it. I would have been bribing her to come visit her father in almost the same way Roger bribed Chris Danielson in order to get him to leave town. For Nitz’s sake, I wanted her to come see her father for the right reasons rather than the wrong ones.”

“Earlier you mentioned that you thought there might be something ailing Roger,” I said. “Would you mind being more specific about that?”

Helen sighed. “By the middle of last summer, I noticed he was often out of sorts and just not himself. I told you earlier that he’d been having digestive issues, and those didn’t seem to let up, but the night he came to my retirement party, he acted like he’d tied one on before he and Shelley ever arrived. He started telling off-color jokes and making inappropriate remarks. I’d never seen him act like that before, and I was relieved when Shelley finally hustled him out of the room and took him home. I didn’t want him to embarrass himself any more than he already had.”

“That was the end of September. Have you seen him since?”

Helen shook her head. “I haven’t seen him or spoken to him in months, but not for lack of trying. Whenever I’ve tried calling, Shelley is the one who answers the phone, or she answers the door when I show up in person. There’s always some reason he can’t talk on the phone or come to the door—either he’s sleeping or he’s not feeling well. It’s like she’s running interference to keep me from seeing him. I’m pretty sure she answers his e-mails and texts, too.”

“If he has early-onset dementia of some kind, maybe he’s deteriorated to the point where he can’t answer for himself,” I suggested.

“That’s what I’m worried about, too,” Helen agreed, “and that’s exactly why I think Nitz needs to come see him now—while she still can and while he still knows who she is. I figure if Nitz were the one to show up instead of me, Shelley would pretty much have to let her inside.”

“What about Roger’s other friends and acquaintances?” I asked. “Have any of them seen him in the flesh recently?”

“Not so far as I know,” she said.

“And when you saw him that last time at the party, how much would you say he weighed?”

Helen frowned. “That was one of the reasons I suggested that he go see a doctor. Long before the party, I noticed he was losing weight, and as far as I know, he wasn’t dieting.”

“So how much?”

“Two-ten, maybe,” Helen answered with a frown, “but that’s probably ten or fifteen pounds less than he’s weighed most of his adult life. He was always concerned about the way he dressed. I noticed that his suits were getting baggy, but he didn’t seem to care.”

The Roger I’d seen earlier in the day, the guy in that pair of oversize pajamas, couldn’t have weighed in at one-seventy soaking wet. If he’d dropped forty pounds between the end of September and now, that meant he’d undergone a precipitous weight loss. It could be the result of radical dieting or indicative of some underlying health issue, but now I was wondering if it might be due to something else entirely. With that prenup in effect, maybe the easiest way for Shelley to lay hands on her husband’s money would be for him to cork off. What if she was actually starving him to death?