LeAnn started to answer me, but Alice Fields stopped her. “No more questions until she has legal counsel with her, Detective Beaumont.”
“Of course,” I said agreeably. I didn’t want to press my luck with the executive director of Phoenix House.
“One of our attorneys will be in touch with you today or tomorrow,” Alice declared firmly. “In the meantime, since you didn’t read LeAnn her rights, I wouldn’t count on using anything she said in a court of law.”
With that, Alice Fields pulled LeAnn bodily to her feet and hustled her out of the room. She left me holding the ticket for both our cinnamon rolls.
LeAnn’s story sounded on first hearing like a case of self-defense. Grabbing whatever weapon happens to be at hand-including a broken flowerpot or a dental pick-and using it to ward off an attacker doesn’t imply premeditation. It’s not in the same class as sitting in a room with a loaded gun in your hand waiting for some poor sucker to walk in the door so you can blow him away.
Besides, I’m opposed to rape, all kinds of rape. Including marital rape. As far as I was concerned, LeAnn Nielsen’s story had played to a pretty sympathetic audience.
For a moment I considered trying to follow them in an effort to find out exactly where LeAnn lived, but that would only have provoked Alice Fields. It might have speeded the process some, to be able to question LeAnn at my convenience instead of at Alice Fields“, but I could afford to wait until LeAnn showed up with her attorney. I hoped he’d be a good one.
About that time Diane came by with a coffeepot and offered a refill. While I waited for it to cool off enough to drink, I scribbled down some notes from what I remembered of LeAnn’s story.
Reading back through it, I could see that most of it rang true. The part about using the money as bait and having LeAnn come over to his office to get it certainly squared with everything else I knew about the late, unlamented Frederick Nielsen.
Abusers are controllers. My years on the force have taught me that much. They want the people in their lives to dance to their tune like puppets on strings. They want to call the shots, all of them. If he was true to type, Nielsen would have wanted LeAnn to grovel for the money, preferably to crawl around on her hands and knees and beg for it. Barring that, if that hadn’t humiliated her enough, then forcibly taking what he regarded as his personal property and throwing Debi Rush in LeAnn’s face should have done the trick.
But it hadn’t worked. LeAnn hadn’t knuckled under. She had caught a little of Alice Fields’ contagious spunk during her stay at Phoenix House. She had fought her husband every step of the way, taken her money, and run.
And that’s when Larry Martin showed up to save the day. Of course, I’d have to get Martin to corroborate LeAnn’s story, but that seemed simple enough. It sounded like justifiable homicide to me.
Just then, though, the tiniest corner of doubt crept into my mind. I’ve been a cop too long. I’m becoming a cynic in my old age. Why had the story ended with the flowerpot? Had Alice Fields ended the narrative then, or had LeAnn broken off of her own accord, stopping just short of telling me about the dental pick? I couldn’t remember.
Doubts are meant to be resolved. My job is to prove things beyond a shadow of a doubt. So I went over the whole interview again in my mind. While the coffee grew stale in my cup, LeAnn’s story began to sour in my mind.
Had it really happened that way? Was it mere chance that Larry Martin had been there just when LeAnn needed help, or was there some other connection between Larry Martin and LeAnn Nielsen that I didn’t know about? And what about LeAnn’s reaction to the news of her husband’s death? Had she heard it from me first? If so, why the laughter? Relief, grief, shock? It could have been any of those things. Or none of them.
If LeAnn had known about Frederick“ s death since Saturday, if she had been there when he died, maybe she was laughing with relief because she no longer had to carry the secret around alone. Or maybe she was really happy that Nielsen was dead, that he would never be able to beat her up again.
I tried to fathom what LeAnn Nielsen was feeling. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. That hurts. It hurts like hell, but it’s simple. This was more complex. LeAnn had both loved and hated her husband, feared him and yet gone to him for help when she needed it. No wonder she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Are you Detective Beaumont?” A sharp voice penetrated my reverie.
“Yes.” I answered with a start.
The woman who had shown me to the table was speaking to me. “There’s a call for you. Somebody named Al. Says he needs to talk to you right away. The phone’s down by the cash register.”
I hurried back down the stairway. A red wall phone with the receiver swinging loose was between the end of the counter and the huge table where yet another steaming tray of cinnamon rolls was coming out of the oven. A clock on the wall over the oven said five after ten.
When I picked up the dangling receiver it was covered with a thick coating of flour. “I thought you’d be in court by now,” I said to Al.
“Now they say eleven.” he replied. “It looks like I’m going to squander the whole damn day locked up here in the office. Did the wife show? I hope I’m not interrupting something important.”
“She showed all right, but she’s gone. What’s up?”
“I just took a call from one of the LOLs, the one who ditched us.”
“You mean Rachel?”
“Yeah, her. I couldn’t remember her name.
It musta been a mental block. She called to say that her sister’s at home now. We’re welcome to come by and talk to her sometime today.“
“Al, you’re shitting me. You’re bored, so you made up this story to see what I’d say, right? Why would she ditch us one day and invite us to drop by for a visit the next?”
“I swear to God, I didn’t make this up, but I thought I’d tell you so you could go right over there from where you are. Figured it would save you some time.”
“Like hell you did,” I retorted. “You’re telling me now so I’ll go there while you’re still stuck on a short leash with the prosecutor’s office, while you aren’t in any danger of going yourself. Did that parrot bother you that much, or was it-the LOLs?“
There was no answer from Big Al’s end of the line. I had him dead to rights.
“Rachel said it would be better if we talked to Dorothy this morning. She’s just out of the hospital and evidently used to sleeping some in the afternoons.”
The lady from the cash register came over and pointed to a three-by-five card taped above the phone. On it was a typed message that read,
This is a business phone. Please do not tie it up with personal calls.
“I’ve got to get off the line here,” I said. “I’ll head on up to their apartment as soon as I can.
By the way, if you get a chance, call the medical examiner’s office and find out if there was a bruise behind Frederick Nielsen’s left ear.“
“Right,” Al said. “Will do.”
I hung up the phone and went back to my table. Diane came by and offered me one last cup of coffee, which I reluctantly refused. The bill for two coffees and two rolls was something less than five dollars. I left a ten on the table.
If Diane was just out of Phoenix House and struggling to get back on her feet, I figured she needed a big tip way more than I needed an extra five-dollar bill in my wallet.
It wasn’t charity, either. She had earned it.
CHAPTER 11
Rachel Miller was waiting for me when I got to the Edinburgh Arms at ten-thirty that morning. She was seated on a wooden bench in the garden, daintily drinking coffee from a Melmac cup. The fountain with its pissing cherub gurgled in the background.
Sitting there in the dappled morning shade, she was the perfect picture of a sweet, demure little old lady. I happened to know, however, that as far as she was concerned, appearances were deceiving.