drink with someone and forgotten to tell you?”
I open my mouth to tell him no, but yet again, Ingrid beats me to it. “Sabine is too responsible to stay out all night without calling, and she always calls me back. Always. It’s how I know something has happened to her. Something bad.”
I turn to the detective with a pained smile. “Ingrid is right to be worried, I’m afraid. It’s unlike Sabine to not let one of us know where she is. Their father is dead, and their mother is in assisted living over at Oakmont. The only other place she would have gone is to her sister’s.”
“Have one of you called over to Oakmont just to be sure?”
“I have,” Ingrid says. “One of the nurses spoke to her on the phone yesterday, but the others haven’t seen or heard from her in days.”
The detective flips to a fresh sheet in his pad, writes OAKMONT across the top in all caps. He points to the kitchen, where the lights are still burning despite the early morning sunshine. “Maybe we could sit down?”
“Of course, of course.” I sweep an arm toward the doorway like Vanna fucking White.
In the kitchen, Ingrid makes a beeline to the table, parking herself on the same chair as before, her back to the wall, her hands folded on her notepad. Detective Durand chooses my chair, the one at the head. A man used to being in charge.
“Detective, can I offer you something to drink? I think I have some Coke in the fridge, or I can make a pot of coffee if you’d like.” I’ll admit the offer is not entirely unselfish. Last night’s pizza has resulted in a ferocious thirst, and it’s probably not a bad idea to demonstrate I am both helpful and forthcoming. So far he hasn’t said anything to indicate he might suspect me, but he’s also not said very much.
“I’ll have a water,” Ingrid says, and I glare at her over the detective’s head.
“Did either of you call any of your wife’s friends before you called the police?” he says. “Her colleagues?”
I pull three glasses from the cabinet by the sink. “It was the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake anyone up. And I am certain my wife wouldn’t go to their houses anyway. She’d go to her sister’s.”
“Jeffrey and I don’t agree on much, but he’s right. Sabine and I talk multiple times a day. I know her schedule. She would have come to me, and she would have told me if she was going anywhere else. That’s why this is so urgent.”
The detective looks at her with new interest. Not, I sense, because of her conviction some awful disaster has overcome her sister, but because of her first words. The ones that imply she and I don’t get along.
She rips the top few pages from the notepad and holds them across the table. “The names and numbers of everybody I could think of who might know Sabine’s schedule yesterday. I left messages with everyone I got through to. I also wrote down Sabine’s description, the make and model of her car, her email and cell phone number. If you give me your number, I can text you her picture.”
Detective Durand takes a few seconds to scan the pages, then looks up with a nod. “This is all very helpful, ma’am. A great start.”
His voice is as earnest as his expression, and I get the sudden and sinking feeling that Ingrid is showing me up, making me look unprepared. That I’m uncaring, when I’m anything but. I’m the one who sounded the alarm in the first place. Leave it to Ingrid to make me feel defensive in my own house—which she so kindly pointed out is actually Sabine’s. Leave it to her to make me feel like a bum, a mooch.
It’s always the husband. Especially one like me—sexually frustrated and financially dependent. It wouldn’t take much digging to uncover our marital issues. Ingrid knows. How long until she tells the detective?
I fill the glasses with water from the tap, a sudden surge to seem cooperative. “So what now? What’s next?”
“You mentioned she had a showing. Where was it? What time?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “only that she said she’d be home by nine.”
Ingrid’s eyes hold mine for a second too long. “The showing was at seven thirty.” She turns to the detective. “Sabine is the lead broker at that new development on Linden Street. You know, the one