The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(59)

When I got home, my fingers were trembling. I checked that the bolt on the front door was locked three times over and then went into my bedroom and locked that door, too. At every sound I worried Alex Helm had come to my house to demand the phone back. My anxiety fed my imagination, and I kept thinking that a creak of the floor meant he had somehow come inside, that he would be brandishing a hammer.

Finally, Samuel came home. I showed him the phone and asked him if he had an adapter for it. He went to his room and poked around for a while, then returned with a cable. For the next several minutes, I waited anxiously as Samuel plugged it in. “Are you sure it will turn back on?”

“Just give it a minute,” said Samuel.

Then the phone beeped and I jumped.

“Mom, what’s on that phone?” he asked. “It isn’t yours, is it?”

“It’s Carrie Helm’s,” I said. “Please don’t tell your father.”

Samuel’s eyes went wide. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I nodded. “A woman’s life is at stake here,” I said.

He stared at me, then shook his head. “I don’t want to know anything more about it, then.”

He was right. I had been unfair to put him between me and Kurt.

I checked the phone anxiously for several minutes, until it had charged enough for me to thumb through old calls … Mostly calls to Jared Helm’s cell phone, and to the family home phone. I was surprised at how few numbers were listed. There was Alex Helm’s number, but I couldn’t find it in Carrie’s outgoing call record; she had never called it, though she had missed multiple calls from him.

But there were also three phone calls to a Nevada area code.

I punched in the number and waited for an answer. A male voice picked up, and I was startled for a moment until I realized it had gone to voicemail. The voice said that the man’s name was Will. The same Will who had picked up the now-dumped cell phone? It sounded like him, but I wasn’t sure. I would have to try back later.





CHAPTER 21




That night, the news revealed that Carrie Helm had purchased a bus ticket from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas early on the morning of her disappearance. There was grainy security camera footage of her buying the ticket, and the clear image of her family car in the background. And her husband, Jared, standing behind her, wearing a thick coat with the hood thrown back so his face was visible.

Jared had given a brief interview to reporters outside the police station as he left, and I could see his father hovering in the background as if to make sure he stayed on script.

“Yes, I took my wife to the bus station. And yes, I lied about not knowing where she had gone.” His words were dull and emotionless, not what you would expect of someone who was truly remorseful about concealing the truth.

“Why did you lie?” a reporter asked.

“I lied because I was embarrassed that she was leaving me.” He didn’t look embarrassed. There was a flicker of something—possibly anger—in his eyes. But it was quickly tamped down. “I also thought it would be more difficult for Kelly if she knew her mother had gone willingly.”

“And what about the cost of the investigation for the police?”

Jared glanced back at his father, and seemed to swallow hard. “I never wanted the police involved in this. It was her parents who did that. They are the ones who are at fault for making this more than it might have been.”

Their fault and mine, I thought. Carrie Helm had apparently wanted to disappear quietly.

And what about Carrie Helm herself? Why hadn’t she contacted the police herself? Or her parents? Or her daughter? Or Kurt? She could have done any number of things to save us all this anxiety and pain, and she hadn’t. She hadn’t looked back.

Maybe she was truly as selfish as Jared and Alex Helm claimed. All the anger I felt for them was now directed at Carrie instead.

“But you could have told the police the truth from the start,” said a reporter. “Are you going to face charges for misleading an official investigation?”

“I did what Carrie asked me to do,” said Jared. “And I never lied to the police. Not directly.” He glanced back at his father again.

“And why did she leave without taking anything? Not her purse or phone or even some extra clothes?” another reporter asked, this one a woman.

That was the right question, I thought. I stared more closely at Jared on the screen, and found that my anger was dissipating. Maybe I was just too tired to feel it anymore. “She felt that she didn’t deserve to take anything away from the marriage if she was leaving it,” said Jared.

“You didn’t make it a condition of her leaving peacefully that she give up everything?”

Jared shook his head. “Of course not. I wouldn’t have done that. She said she wanted a new start. She said she didn’t want any reminders of her old life.”

“What about her young daughter? She didn’t ask for a custody arrangement?” asked the female reporter.

“She trusted me to take care of Kelly,” said Jared. “She knows I love our daughter very much.”

“And what about her parents, who say that you abused her and that she wanted to escape from you because of that abuse?”

I saw a flash of Alex Helm in Jared as he turned angrily and stepped toward the reporter. But he stopped himself and took a breath, then said through gritted teeth, “I loved Carrie. She chose to leave despite my wishes. But it wasn’t because I threatened her. And it wasn’t because she feared for her life or for Kelly’s. That’s the end of this conference. Thank you,” he said, and got into his car.