Page 26 of Haven't Killed in Years
Fourteen
Ellen Calhoun lived ina white ranch house with blue shutters seven miles from my childhood home. She answered the door in a lavender sweater set and the leftover body of someone who had birthed a gaggle of children many years ago.
“Hi, Ms. Calhoun, I’m Dominic. And this is my colleague, Gwen.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, and I shook her flimsy Betty Crocker hand. “Come in.”
We followed her inside. The decor was that of a woman who hadn’t been with someone in a long time. That wasn’t a criticism, simply an observation that her deepest design desires were left unchecked—so many florals, knickknacks, wallpapers.
Dominic and I sat on a pastel plaid couch while Ellen brought in a tray of iced tea. “You said on the phone that you’re writing a book? Have you written anything I would know?” she asked as she handed him a glass.
“Probably not.” He smiled, having written zero total books.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t read very much anymore.” She took a seat across from us and rested her hands on her lap.
“Ellen—may I call you Ellen?” Dominic asked, and she nodded. “Has there been any news on James?”
She shook her head. “I know they found that other man. I know what that means, but they still won’t tell me anything.”
This had to be worse for her. It was pretty much a guarantee James was dead, but she was stuck living with the uncertainty. She needed a distraction—like a mold infestation or a hernia.
“I call the police station every day,” she continued. “But they aren’t very forthcoming. We’ve been divorced for twelve years after all.”
“Right,” he said.
“But we’re still close. Neither one of us ever remarried.”
“I know the Abel Haggerty case was a big one for James,” said Dominic. “It couldn’t have been easy for him, for both of you.”
Ellen examined her nails for a beat and Dominic reached across and rested his fingertips on the edge of her knee. “Let me know if I ask anything too personal. We’ll only talk about what you are comfortable with.”
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind talking about it. It sounds silly now, but I thought he was having an affair.”
Dominic pulled his hand back, not anticipating that turn.
“It started when they arrested Abel Haggerty, and I know you want me to say something like that twisted man got in his head, but that wasn’t it. James was actually in the best mood he’d been in in years. He was a hero. We would go out and people would come up and shake his hand, especially women. Then he started spending all day and night atwork.”
She tilted her head at me, the other woman in the room who would understand the connotations behind that.I get it, girl.
“At first,” she continued, “it didn’t seem strange to me. I mean,you have to do so much work when you make an arrest to ensure they can get a conviction. I’d gone through that with James many times.”
“What was different this time?” he asked.
“I found a barrette in his car.” She covered her face. “This feels like a lifetime ago.” Her hands fell back to her lap. “We had a great marriage. I’d loved him almost my whole life, but when I saw that barrette, I thought of all those smiling women, and years of trust dissolved into suspicion. I went through everything. All of his pockets, his desk, whatever I could get my hands on, and do you know what I found?”
“What?” I said before I realized I was speaking.
“Nothing.” She sighed. “I tried to let it go, but months later he told me he had to go out of town to New York for the weekend for work. How ridiculous. What local police detective goes out of state for the weekend for work? And he wouldn’t tell me one single detail. Every time I asked, he completely shut me down. We’d been married for fourteen years and he never spoke to me like he did those days leading up to hisworktrip.”
“So I let him go,” she continued, “and when he came back, he went straight to bed and I went through his pockets and his car again.” She paused, ashamed of her invasiveness. “There were receipts from East Buford, Pennsylvania. Meals for two. A hotel bill. Gas receipts. All crumpled up in a fast food bag I watched him burn in the backyard the next morning.”
Crap.I’dspent eight years in East Buford, Pennsylvania. That trip had been when James brought me to that school. I’d stayed in that hotel. That was my barrette. I remembered when I lost it. My dad had given it to me. I didn’t want to know where he’d gotten it from.
“I never told him what I found,” she said. “I just kept it inside until it destroyed us. Once the boys were out of the house, there wasnothing left to hold on to. I made him leave.” A tear formed in the corner of her eye, but she was quick to wipe it away before it could get loose. “But enough about that. I doubt your book is about infidelity. You must think James’s disappearance has something to do with Abel Haggerty.”
“Frankly, ma’am, I hope not,” said Dominic. “But it’s best for now if we keep that suspicion between us. The police have a history of pinning things on Abel Haggerty and I would hate for them to jump to that conclusion without proper evidence. I don’t want anything to affect finding James.”
So smooth. An easy lie.I made a mental note.
