Page 55 of Dear Wife

“I don’t know. Do you think I’m suggesting he was in a building with a microcell?” She gives me a saucy smile. “Because he was.”

I want to reach across the desk, grab her by the ears and plant one on her. That two-hour hole in Jeffrey’s day? History.

She whips a paper from the printer, slaps it to the desk and flips it around so I can see. A map of Little Rock, covered in time stamps. She taps a finger to one, smack in the middle of the airport.

“I started at twelve o’clock, right before his plane landed in Little Rock, and tracked him until 6:00 p.m., two hours after the neighbor said she spotted him pulling into his driveway in Pine Bluff. The time stamps on this map are every ten minutes, but if you need me to narrow the time gap, I can do that. It’ll just take me a few minutes to print you a new one.”

“Walk me through this one first, and then I’ll decide.” I scan the paper, taking in the time stamps. “Looks like he was at the airport until quarter to one.”

“Correct—12:48 p.m., to be precise. He gets into a car, then heads west on 440 to 30 North. Just over the river, he takes exit 141B.” She taps the spot with a short-clipped nail.

The next ping is a block away. I squint at the letters on the page. “What’s on Olive Street?”

“Vinny’s Little Italy. This isn’t the microcell yet, by the way. These are all pings from a cell tower.”

I nod, studying the map. So lunch at an Italian restaurant, at least, was true. “Vinny’s must be a pretty special place, seeing as he went all the way across the river. That’s what, twenty minutes out of the way?”

“Something like that, but it’s a dive. A 76 on the latest health inspection, which is basically like putting your life into their hands. A one-way ticket to a twenty-four-hour puke fest. He was there until just before two.”

“Don’t tell me that’s where he went next, clutching a toilet all that time.”

“Possible.” She locates the 2:00 p.m. dot on the map, then follows the pings south, back across the river then due west. At 2:10 p.m. he veers off another exit, heading north on University Avenue. Her finger stops at another cluster of time stamps, all within a square block.

“What’s this?” I say, looking up. “Why are these dots so spread out?”

“Bigger building. That whole block is CHI St. Vincent, a hospital with a microcell. He walks through the doors at 2:23 and heads to the southwest corner of the building. This is where things get dicey. The hospital is ten stories, including the basement. I can see where he is, but not which floor. I had to do a bit of sleuthing.”

“Again, legal sleuthing?”

She rolls her eyes. “Do you want to know where he was, or not?”

“Just tell me.”

“I held the pings up against the building plans, and then used process of elimination. Four stories I could cross off right away—supply closets, bathrooms, the morgue. I crossed off the floors with patient rooms next. The rooms are too small, and the time stamps would’ve meant he was moving through the walls. It had to be a larger space, and there was only one floor that had one big enough, the second. Suite 203, specifically.”

“Which is?”

“The urology unit. A Dr. Patrick R. Lee.”

“And you know this for sure.”

“One hundred percent.” Jade pauses, and she chews her bottom lip. “But maybe don’t tell anybody I said that. Maybe just take my word for it.”

I puff a laugh. “You hacked into the cameras, didn’t you?”

She doesn’t respond, and I take her silence as a yes.

To tell the truth, I could give a shit how she got the information. The point is, Jeffrey has an alibi, and it’s not food poisoning but a problem with his plumbing. So why lie? He had to know I’d track down the truth eventually. And didn’t he stop to consider that every minute I’ve spent chasing him down the rabbit hole of this reading-by-the-river bullshit, I could have been out there looking for his wife?

“Have you checked his finances?” Jade says, blowing back a chunk of bang. “Could have used a hired gun.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. I’ll take another look, but the accounts are mostly hers. Her salary is more than double his, and she’s squirreled a lot of it away. With her out of the picture, he’ll be a very wealthy man. Even the house is in her name.”

Jade raises an eyebrow. “Want me to keep digging? I could track his movements since Sabine went missing, see if there’s anything out of the ordinary.”

“There won’t be. He’s been careful, stuck close to home.”

“What about his emails, texts, things like that?”

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