The Girl in the Green Raincoat_ A Novel - Laura Lippman [19]
“And he could have a conspirator,” she insisted. “Based on history, he already has his next wife lined up. Cherchez la femme, Martin. He gets rid of them when he tires of them, probably to avoid alimony. If Carole Epstein managed to siphon all that money out of their joint accounts, then she’s the first one to walk away with a nickel. The rest all walked away dead, if you will. And what about the car at Penn Station, the keys? He could have left it there, gone home on the number sixty-one bus.”
“Look, we’re not saying he’s in the clear,” Tull said. “Not at all. And we would like Mrs. Epstein to show up, explain a few things. Then again, she has a very plausible reason not to come forward, right? If the guy’s right, she’s on an island somewhere.”
It would be a good revenge plot of sorts, Tess thought, if Carole Epstein believed that Don had killed her sister yet couldn’t prove it. But would she settle for money? Would that begin to approximate justice? No, Tess believed this woman had bigger fish to fry.
“She left her dog behind,” Tess said. “Knowing Don Epstein as she does, she never would have left Dempsey in his care.”
“She let go of her dog’s leash, assuming it would find a good home when she made a run for it,” Tull said. “And it has.”
Dempsey looked up, as if aware that he was the topic of conversation, then went back to gnawing on his own haunch. The dog had an amazing repertoire of neurotic tics. He chewed his own legs, worried his lower lip, scratched himself raw in places.
“The vet says he has emotional issues,” Tess said. “Sort of like those adolescent girls that cut themselves.”
“Yeah,” Tull said, “who wouldn’t take that dog along on her new life?”
He had a point.
“Look,” he added. “I agree this all stinks. And we’ve put out the word that we’d like to hear from her—and not by e-mail or text message. But what else can we do? There’s no evidence of foul play on his part.”
“Does he have an alibi for the day she disappeared?”
“He says he was stuck in traffic on the Beltway. But there was a lot of publicity about an overturned tractor-trailer on the outer loop that afternoon, so he could be making it up. Thing is, hard as it is for him to prove he was there, we can’t disprove it.”
“He never uses the same method twice,” Tess said. “A carjacking, a fall, a mysterious infection that could have been avoided if the hospital knew the patient was taking antibiotics. He’s got a good imagination.”
“Yeah, well,” Tull said. “He’s not the only one.”
* * *
Don Epstein was on television but just a local show. Even the cable networks that seemed devoted to covering missing white women 24/7 didn’t care about Epstein. It was the runaway bride story, played out before it even started: missing/faker/skank. At least this one reporter, one of the few enterprising investigative reporters on local television, was skeptical of him. So much bad luck, for one man. Did he feel cursed? Had he considered forswearing the company of women, given how badly it seemed to end for him, every time? Was he sure that his wife hadn’t been the victim of foul play, that the computer transfers of money had been done by someone else with access to her laptop?
Yet Don Epstein preened, happy in the spotlight, indifferent to the subtext. Yes, he had been unlucky in love, he told the reporter. He did wonder if he was cursed, if he should take himself out of the dating pool. Even as he was speaking, a woman e-mailed the studio and the reporter read her comment on air: “I’d take a chance on you, Don. Call me!”
Tess could not fathom this. Why would anyone want Don Epstein under any circumstances? What did he have to offer any woman? Money, yes—although he had less than he once had, if one believed that Carole Epstein had absconded with almost half his savings. Still, it was a substantial fortune. He wasn’t bad-looking, if one’s taste ran to the overly virile and hirsute. Still, there was the fact of three wives, one girlfriend, all dead. Well, three dead and one