“Well, yes. I’m not on duty but I want to help if I can, Mrs. Perry.”
“Oh, call me Pauline. Everyone does. Why?”
“I was concerned about Charlie when I saw him last night. And I found his wallet.”
“Oh! It’s kind of you to return it,” Pauline said, reaching for it. Elise noted she wasn’t interested in why she’d been concerned about him. “Where did he drop it?”
“I found it on the ground last night.” Elise handed over the battered-looking wallet.
“In the High Street?” Pauline said, and looked to see if there was any money in it.
“No, at the Old Vicarage. I was at the festival there last night,” Elise said. “Anyway, I’m afraid there wasn’t any cash, or bank cards, in it. I think someone must have emptied it.”
“One of the weirdos who came for the festival must have dumped it after they stole it.” Pauline tossed the wallet on the work top. “I said the town would be filled with them.”
“Well, it was very crowded. You couldn’t move on the dance floor—it’s the sort of place where pickpockets operate.”
“Are you saying Charlie was at this ghastly event, then? What the hell was he doing there?”
“I think he was dancing,” Elise said.
“Dancing? He never dances—he hates it. That and loud music.”
There were an unfinished bowl of soup and two dirty mugs sitting on the kitchen table. Ronnie started sweeping the dishes into the sink and turning on the tap. “Where’s your washing-up liquid? Oh, here it is,” she chatted. “Sit down, Elise. You’re making the place look untidy.”
“So, friends—or family? I understand Charlie has a daughter.”
“No point asking her anything. And no one else has seen him.”
“Okay, the thing is, Charlie looked upset last night”—Elise got them back on track—“and he’d been drinking.”
“Well, he likes an occasional glass in the evening—just to be sociable,” Pauline said.
Ronnie and Elise exchanged a glance. It was a lie she must have told a hundred times—to the outside world and to herself.
“Of course,” Elise said. “Was he upset?”
Pauline shrugged again and got up to plug in the kettle. Elise could see the tension in her back.
“Anyway, the police are checking the hospitals—unless you’ve done it?” Elise said. It would’ve been the first thing she’d have done.
“No, I haven’t.” Pauline gnawed at a nail. “Will they let me know?”
“Of course.”
Pauline didn’t move from the counter as she waited for the water to boil. In the silence, Elise’s eyes slid to a letter sitting half out of its envelope on the table. She could only see the first paragraph but that was enough.
Pauline turned and caught her looking. “I hope you haven’t been reading my private correspondence,” she snapped.
“Sorry,” Elise said but held her eye and it was Pauline who looked away.
“I don’t really know what it’s about,” she muttered. “It came this morning. Money is Charlie’s department, not mine. I’m a bit of a featherhead when it comes to finances.”
“Well, it’s from a debt agency and says they’re going to take legal action to seize your assets,” Elise said, picking up the letter. “The house, I assume.”
“I had no idea things were this bad. No idea.” Pauline looked up at Elise through her lashes but her little-girl-lost act was wasted on the other woman. Elise had met real little lost girls. Pauline didn’t come close.
Elise wanted to say that the postwoman and her neighbors in Ebbing knew things were this bad but there seemed little point.
“Did you and Charlie discuss it?”
“No. As I say, money was his thing. Oh, what’s to become of me now?” And she picked up an emery board to saw at her nails, a fine mist powdering the tabletop.
“I think you probably need to talk to a lawyer. . . . Can I ask if Charlie is on any medication?”
“Umm, well, he sometimes takes pills for his blood pressure.”
“Perhaps you could look to see if he’s taken them with him?” Elise wanted to check if the disappearance had been planned—she suspected the debt might have a great deal to do with it.
But Pauline didn’t move off her chair. And as a “concerned neighbor,” Elise felt she couldn’t push the point.