The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(60)

I turned off the television and thought about what I had seen in those garbage bags in the basement. Would any woman really leave that much of her life behind?


I HAD TO find out the truth. I called the Nevada number I’d found on her cell phone over and over again that day and the next, always getting the voicemail. Then, at last, Will answered. Just my luck that it was Wednesday night and Kurt wasn’t involved in something at the church. He came into the front room just as I was saying, “Hello. Is this Will?” I was hoping the man wouldn’t immediately hang up and get rid of this phone, the way someone had gotten rid of the cell phone Carrie had called Kelly on.

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Linda Wallheim. I’m a friend of Carrie Helm’s,” I said, staring at Kurt. So much for keeping secrets.

“Carrie Helm?” he said. “Um, I don’t think I know anyone by that name.” His tone was defensive.

And it should be. This was the same voice I’d said all this to before. “Well, that’s interesting, because she has this number on her cell phone. She’s been missing for over a month now. She’s a wife and mother from Draper, Utah. You may have seen her on the news.” I didn’t know if anything about her disappearance had gone on national news, but it might have. “And also you and I talked on the phone just a few days ago.”

“Hmmm. Well,” he said.

This had to mean Carrie really had called Kelly that day, that she was in Las Vegas just as Jared had claimed. “Can I talk to Carrie, please?” I asked.

“Sorry, but she’s not here right now.”

“Are you just saying that to get me off the phone? Because I’m going to keep calling back if I have to, and you may end up with a visit from the police if they can trace this phone to your address. Is that what you want?”

Kurt had seated himself on the couch. I was acutely aware of him there, watching me work my way into more secrets. Other people’s secrets.

“Look, she was here, but she’s not anymore. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Why should I believe you?” I asked.

I was just a middle-aged woman a state away, but somehow I’d frightened him. “I swear, it’s the truth,” he said. “Please, don’t keep calling me. I can’t take it anymore.”

“Then you need to get Carrie to come home and answer some questions. Make sure she appears on TV so that people know that she hasn’t been harmed.” Kurt was trying to tell me something in sign language. I turned away. He was distracting me and I needed my focus.

“Harmed?” asked Will. “You mean by me? But that’s the whole reason she came here, so that she would feel safe.”

“Was her husband threatening her life?” I asked.

“Was she still married? She told me he was her ex.”

Ex-husband? My suspicions about Jared Helm cooled and my suspicions of Carrie rose to boiling. “They’re still married,” I said. “Legally, anyway.”

Will swore.

“And she has a daughter. A five-year-old. Kelly. Did she tell you that?”

He swore again. “No,” he said. “She didn’t tell me that either.”

“So you can see that Carrie needs to come back. If she wants a divorce, she needs to get one legally. And she needs to deal with custody issues. Even if she doesn’t want to see her daughter, she should legally give over her rights so that there are no questions.”

He sighed. “Well, good riddance to the bitch.”

The disdain in his voice seemed to echo Alex Helm’s, and I cringed. Had Carrie gone from the frying pan into the fire? “What do you mean by good riddance?” He’d said she was gone, but I’d thought he was prevaricating.

“All her crazy—it’s nothing to do with me anymore. She’s gone. She left last night, while I was asleep. She didn’t tell me she was leaving. She didn’t leave a note or nothing. She just disappeared. So good riddance, like I said.”

She had disappeared again, I thought. This was starting to sound like Carrie Helm’s M.O.

“Did she say anything about why she was leaving?” I asked. Was it because of the television news coverage? “Or where she was going?”

“I didn’t ask her to come here in the first place, you know. She just showed up, and it wasn’t a fun time. But I was trying to be the good guy. And then she just disappeared like that. Proves she never cared about anyone but herself.”

The more he talked, the less he sounded like the kind of person Carrie should have expected to help her. What had she been thinking? Was this proof of desperation or real mental illness?

“Did you call the police?” I asked. “Are you at all concerned that something might have happened to her?” She hadn’t come back home, as far as I knew. Maybe she would appear any moment and the news vans would get the story of the day. Or maybe she had moved on to another man, another cell phone, another city where she could get lost.

“Why would I call the police?” he said. “It isn’t as if we were married. I don’t even know that much about her.”

Clearly. I was getting the sense that sex with a random woman who needed a place to stay was par for the course for this guy.

“Now, I’ve got to go—” he began.