A Denial of Death Read online

  "I still don't think it's a good idea for you to get involved," Tate said from behind her. "If you're right that Angie got mixed up with something criminal, it could be dangerous. You should leave this to the police."

  Tate was too much of a distraction, and she was running out of time if she wanted to keep the casino trip to a single day. It wouldn't be fair to keep Jack away from his clay work for too long.

  The flyers didn't need to be fancy like what she'd done for her husband's fundraising events. She just needed something she could show to people at the casino. Helen abandoned the idea of cropping the picture and adding text. Instead, she keyed in the command to print a dozen copies.

  While the printer did its job, Helen turned back to Tate. "Ralph promised to file a missing persons report today, but you know the local police. They're going to see this as a domestic dispute, especially since Ralph still isn't entirely convinced the situation is all that serious. The police aren't going to do anything more than go through the motions. It could be weeks before they even consider sending someone across state lines to check out the casino. If Angie's in trouble, that could be too late."

  "It's still not your responsibility," Tate said. "I could have a talk with the police chief, see if I can get the department to take it seriously."

  "Good idea." The local authorities might listen to Tate. He was male, professional, and a native of Wharton, which, in their eyes, made him eminently more credible than Helen. Nobody overlooked him. "Meanwhile, I promised Betty and Josie I'd keep looking for Angie, and that's what I'm going to do. It's still possible that Angie is fine and this is all a misunderstanding that can be cleared up with a quick little day trip. It might be fun, even."

  Helen emptied the printer tray of the pictures and stuffed them into a large manila envelope. She grabbed her cane from its usual spot hanging from the front door. Her yarn bag was already in the car, so she'd have something to work on during the trip.

  Tate trailed behind her. "You know, I haven't played in a decent game of poker in years. I prefer bridge generally, but the skills are essentially the same."

  Helen shooed him out her front door and shut it behind her. "Ready to give up woodworking after only five months of retirement?"

  "Man does not live by wood alone," he said. "Just give me ten minutes to change."

  "You're coming with me?"

  "Thanks for the invitation." As he jogged toward the garage, he called out, "And don't even think about leaving without me, or you can forget about calling me later to bail you out."

  "I won't get arrested."

  "That's always the plan," he said as he unlocked the trunk of his car and pulled out a small duffle bag. "But things don't usually go as planned around you, which is why it's my professional opinion that you should take me along as insurance."

  * * *

  Once Jack heard Tate was joining them, he insisted that Helen sit in the back like a proper passenger. While she waited for Jack to join them, she dialed Lily's number. Helen had been formidable with a Rolodex and a telephone during her tenure in the governor's mansion; Lily was even better with her contacts database and a computer.

  Lily sounded distracted when she answered. "Hi, Aunt Helen. How's your nice little drive going?"

  "I'm just leaving now," she said. "I was wondering if you could do something for me while I'm away from home. I'm trying to find out more about a business known as SLP."

  There was a tapping sound. "Nothing in the Secretary of State's database." More tapping. "No complaints with the consumer affairs division, and there's no listing under that name with the Massachusetts Better Business Bureau. There's a bunch of listings on the internet, but I don't have any way to narrow down the possibilities."

  "Wait a second," Helen said, switching her smartphone's screen for a moment to look at the picture she'd taken of the tax form. "The company is based in Ohio. Would that help?"

  "It will, but I can't do it right now," Lily said. "I'm on my way to an appointment I can't miss, but I'll get on the research as soon as I get back."

  "I'll be on the road for the next few hours," Helen said. "Text me if you find out anything."

  "On the road?" Lily said. "You said you were taking a test drive, not something that would qualify as being 'on the road.'"

  There was no point in hiding it any longer. Tate was sure to tell Adam where they were going, and Adam couldn't keep anything from Lily. "We're going to Connecticut. To a casino."

  "Gambling away my inheritance?"

  "What inheritance?" Helen lied. "I disinherited you ages ago."

  "Does Tate know where you're going? Did he say it was okay?"

  "He knows about it." Helen heard the sound of the garage door slamming shut. "He's even coming with me."

  Helen could hear Lily's eyebrows rising. "You two are finally going on a date?"

  "Definitely not a date. I could never compete with his love for exotic lumber, and he could never compete with my passion for living alone. You know how tempted I am to kill anyone who spends more than an hour visiting my cottage."

  "That could be a problem if you had an overnight guest," Lily said. "Especially if the dead visitor is also the best criminal defense attorney in town."

  "Exactly. So this is not a date," Helen said. "If you have to know, we're going to see if we can find someone. A friend of a friend has disappeared, and she was last seen at the casino. We're going to see if she's still there. Now, tell me you love me and hang up. You'll be late for your appointment if you don't leave now."

  Lily paused indecisively. "You swear Tate is going with you?"

  "Go ahead and ask Adam."

  "I will." Lily hung up, which surprised Helen. She'd anticipated a much more drawn-out interrogation.

  The car's other passenger door swung open on silent hinges, and Tate climbed in, sawdust-free and dressed like a lawyer in a lightweight gray suit, white shirt, and conservative tie. He even carried a briefcase, but it was far more likely to contain woodworking books and graph paper for sketching design ideas than law books and legal pads. One way or another, his passion was never far from his thoughts.

  Helen thought guiltily of the uneven tangle of crochet inside the yarn bag on the seat between her and Tate. She was only too happy to forget about it.

  Tate settled into his corner of the back seat, and before they'd even left the driveway he was engrossed in a woodworking magazine. Helen tried to concentrate with equal intensity on the lumpy hat she was working on. She picked up the crochet hook and tried to find the next space for making a stitch.

  Helen had only completed one row when nausea overwhelmed her. She'd never been able to read in cars without getting motion sickness, and apparently crocheting upset her system in the same way. She glanced at Tate, but he didn't seem to be similarly affected, absorbed as he was by the magazine he was reading. As Josie would have said, it was so not fair.

  Helen stuffed the yarn and hook back into her bag and closed her eyes, hoping the sick feeling would dissipate. The next thing she knew she was waking up to Jack's announcement that they'd be arriving at the casino in about fifteen minutes.

  Helen did her best to straighten her clothing and brush the sleep from her mind before Jack pulled up in front of an elegant, eight-story building. She recognized it as the backdrop in the picture of Angie with her husband and sister.

  True to his formal chauffeur's uniform, Jack insisted on opening the back door for Helen and standing stiffly beside it while she climbed out. Fortunately, she didn't need either a ladder or a lift out of this vehicle. In fact, if it weren't so over-sized and over-priced, she might have put it on her short list. It was certainly comfortable. She couldn't remember ever falling asleep in a car before. She refused to dwell on the possibility that it had less to do with the vehicle, per se, and more to do with not being quite as young and energetic as she once was.

  She had no time to fret about it, since Tate was right behind her, getting out of the car. He left his briefcase o
n the back seat, apparently willing to be parted from thoughts of woodworking while he gave poker his full attention.

  Jack ducked into the back seat to retrieve Helen's abandoned yarn bag and hand it to her. Then he closed the back door and reached for the front handle. Helen put out a hand to stop him. "After you park the car would you ask around to see if any of the taxi or bus drivers have seen Angie?" Helen dug in her yarn bag for the envelope of pictures. As she pulled one out for him, she noticed Angie was even less conspicuous in the scanned copies than she'd been in the original prints. At first glance all anyone would see was the tall couple hovering over Angie. Still, it would have to do.

  She folded Jack's copy so only Angie was visible and handed it to him. "Text me if you find out anything."

  "Sure thing, Ms. Binney," he said. "I'll be at a pai gow tiles table after that if you need me for anything else."

  Tate said, "We'll find you when we're ready to leave."

  Jack looked insulted, but as long as he was inhabiting his formal chauffeur persona, he would never argue with a customer in public. Tate would learn soon enough that there was never any need to find Jack before departing; he would be waiting here with the car whenever they were ready to leave.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Inside, the place was as frenetic, dark, and confusing as Helen remembered from the VIP tours she'd taken with her ex-husband. She didn't expect any help from Tate, so she waved him toward the entrance to the gaming.

  She adjusted the strap of her yarn bag on her shoulder and made her way to the front desk. A row of clerks stood in front of sleek computer monitors, assisting guests. After a brief wait, Helen was invited over to the far end of the counter by a young woman with the high cheekbones, coppery skin, and dark hair that Hollywood had adopted as shorthand for Native American. Rather than the stereotypical stoic expression, though, she had a professionally cheerful smile. Her name tag identified her as Deb W.

  "I'd like to leave a message for a guest. Her name is Angie Decker." Helen spelled out the last name.

  "Certainly." Deb peered into her monitor while she typed. "I'm sorry. We don't have a guest registered under that name. Do you know what room she's in?"

  "Her sister told me she was here, but she didn't have the room number."

  "I'm sorry," Deb said in a tone that sounded truly regretful, "but she's not in the computer."

  "She was definitely here recently." Helen pulled out one of the pictures she'd printed, folding it so only Angie was visible. She pushed it across the counter. "Maybe you'd recognize her."

  Deb took the picture and glanced at it long enough to at least give the impression of caring and then shook her head. "She doesn't look at all familiar."

  "Maybe your paths just didn't cross."

  "I might have missed her if it was a day trip and she wasn't actually registered in the hotel," Deb said. "It's easy to miss even close friends out on the gaming floor. But if she was staying in a room here, I'd have seen her. Hotel guests go past this desk several times a day, and I've been here for eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week, for the past month." This time her smile was genuine, if a bit rueful. "With the economy the way it is, who can turn down overtime?"

  "She was registered here for a whole week," Helen said.

  Deb seemed surprised and peered at the picture more closely. Finally, she returned it, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, but I haven't seen her. Maybe she was with someone else who did all the registering, and she stayed in the room or on the gaming floor the whole time."

  "Her sister was with her for a day or two," Helen said. "After that, all we know is her credit card was used to prepay a whole week's hotel bill, and that was two weeks ago. She also used one of the ATMs here, around the same time."

  "Oh, that doesn't prove anything," Deb said. "ATMs can be used by anyone who has, or can guess, the PIN. The industry regulators are on us about it all the time. Occasionally a gaming addict who's down on his luck will get his hands on someone else's credit card, and he'll use it to get enough cash to keep playing. If you check out the ATMs, you'll see notices about special limits on withdrawals, intended to limit that sort of abuse."

  "I can see how that would be a big problem."

  "Not as big as you might think," Deb said. "The media blow it all out of proportion. They claim there are thousands of reported cases a year, and even more that are unreported. There's no way to track that, of course, so it's all just speculation."

  "Why wouldn't someone report a theft?"

  "If there's one thing I've learned from working customer service," Deb said, "it's that there's no rhyme or reason to what people do."

  "I know why people don't report the misuse of their debit cards," Tate said from behind Helen, startling her. "In most of the unreported cases, the alleged thief was a family member. The victim doesn't want him or her to go to jail, and the family thinks they can deal with the problem privately. They're usually wrong, but by the time they figure that out, it's too late to do anything about it."

  Family members. Like Charlene. Who had financial troubles, and by dint of driving Angie to the casino, would have been near Angie's purse and her credit card. Charlene probably knew Angie well enough to guess at a PIN, assuming Angie hadn't actually given her the number.

  "I thought you were going to play some poker," Helen said to Tate.

  "I wanted to be sure you didn't get arrested before I could even find a seat."

  "I'm not getting arrested. Deb here is being very helpful." She nodded toward the entrance of the gaming floor. "Go find your game. I'm just about done here."

  "I can spare a few more minutes."

  Helen looked down at the folded picture in her hands, trying to think of what else to ask the clerk. She turned over the folded paper to the side where Charlene was visible. If the clerk hadn't seen Angie, maybe she'd seen her sister.

  Helen handed the paper back to the clerk and pointed to Charlene. "What about this other woman? Have you seen her in the last month?"

  Deb barely glanced at the picture this time, but there was a glint of recognition in her face before she handed the picture back. She didn't meet Helen's eyes as she said, "I'm sorry, but we can't release any information about our guests."

  "So she was a guest at some point," Helen said. "Do you remember seeing anyone with her?"

  "I'm sorry," Deb said primly, "but we can't release any information about our guests."

  Helen refolded the picture once again to reveal Ralph and showed it to the clerk. "What about the man in the picture?"

  Deb took it from her again and shook her head. "I've never seen him before. I'd have definitely remembered him."

  No more hedging and refusing to answer, so Ralph probably hadn't been here for either a torrid love affair with his sister-in-law or a murderous row with his wife.

  Before Helen could come up with another question that might get an answer, Tate tapped her on the shoulder. "I'm ready to go over to the poker room now. Are you coming with me?"

  Helen started to shake her head, but Tate bent down and whispered, "That wasn't really a question. You are coming with me or at least stepping away from the front desk. The security staff are getting suspicious. We've been standing here for too long without actually checking in."

  "Right. We'd better be going. Tate's got games to play, and I've got…" She didn't have anything in particular to do. Not without more of a lead on Angie. "I'm sure I can find something to do here. Something more interesting than watching Tate play cards. It is a vacation destination after all."

  As they left, Helen handed Tate the picture she'd retrieved from the clerk. "Just in case the opportunity arises for you to ask around."

  "I'm here to keep you out of trouble, not to get us both kicked out of the casino," Tate said, tucking the picture into his jacket's inner pocket. "Poker players take their gaming seriously, and they don't like to be distracted from the cards. They're not interested in looking at any women who aren't queens."

  "
So tell them you've got a queen to show them, and see if they recognize her."

  "Yeah, I'll let you know how that works out when I meet you back here in two hours." Tate took a couple steps and then turned around. "Stay out of trouble."

  "That's no fun." Unfortunately, nothing the resort offered seemed like fun. Not compared to searching for Angie.

  Helen wandered past the banks of slot machines and the various tables, trying to get a good look at all the women's faces. She couldn't really imagine someone like Angie, who enjoyed being the center of attention, sitting anonymously at a slot machine, so Helen didn't bother to go up and down all of the rows. One of the more boisterous game tables might be more Angie's speed, except she'd likely find no mere human being could outshine the game itself.

  Even if Angie didn't have religious objections to gambling, this just didn't seem like a place she would enjoy. A dance floor or a bowling alley or even an open mic night at a club all seemed more like places she'd be drawn to. There, she had a chance to stand out and not be just another sparkly figure in the crowd.

  After about half an hour of searching, the ache in Helen's hip couldn't be ignored any longer. She'd have been fine if all she'd been doing was walking, but she kept jarring her hip when her yarn bag stuck out too far and snagged up against a slot machine, or her cane caught on the carpeting or a chair leg. She couldn't tell how much of the game floor she'd already searched or how many nooks and crannies she might have missed along the way, but she needed to take a break. Maybe if she sat in the lobby where there were fewer distractions and obstacles and the lighting was better, she might catch Angie on the way to or from her room.

  After a few wrong turns in the maze of the gaming floor, Helen caught sight of the front entrance. She hadn't noticed before that the space was almost entirely open, without the usual hotel-lobby seating arrangements for casual conversation. She finally found a pair of plush upholstered chairs tucked away in a corner and settled there to watch the passing foot traffic. It didn't take long to confirm what the clerk had said about how all paths led past the front desk. Despite the large numbers of people, it seemed unlikely any guest could go unnoticed if she was here for a week or more and wasn't confined to her room.