“Detective Beaumont has been trying to reach you since yesterday,” Alice Fields said.
“Something terrible has happened, LeAnn. Your husband is dead.”
For several long seconds we sat there quietly at the table with Alice Fields’ words lingering in the air. The only sound was the clatter of dishes in the kitchen on the other side of the wall.
“You’re kidding,” LeAnn said at last.
Alice shook her head. “Ask Detective Beaumont,” she said.
LeAnn Nielsen turned to me. “Is it true?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Nielsen,” I answered. “I’m afraid it is. He was murdered in his office sometime over the weekend.”
LeAnn began shaking her head, moving it slowly from side to side. “It can’t be. It can’t be,” she repeated over and over.
Tears sprang to her eyes. She put one hand to her mouth as if to stifle a sob, but the wail that escaped her lips wasn’t a cry so much as it was a laugh, a strangled, hyenalike, hysterical laugh.
The very sound of it made my blood run cold.
CHAPTER 10
LeAnn Nielsen’s reaction was anything but typical. In all the years I’d been doing next-of-kin notifications, no one had ever laughed before. I waited, unsure of what to do or say, while Alice Fields took LeAnn in her arms and held her in a fiercely protective hug. She was there to backstop LeAnn every step of the way.
Gradually LeAnn’s strange laughter evolved into something different, into something that approximated genuine weeping. At one point I started to say something, but Alice leveled a forbidding look in my direction and gave a slight shake of her head that told me to shut up, take a number, and get in line. I’d talk to LeAnn Nielsen when Alice Fields was damned good and ready and not a moment before.
Eventually LeAnn quieted some. Alice Fields patted her comfortingly. “You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to, LeAnn,” Alice said. “Do you understand that? I wanted you to meet him here so you could be officially notified, that’s all.”
LeAnn Nielsen nodded numbly.
“And you don’t have to answer any questions without having an attorney present, is that clear? You might say things that could be held against you later.”
It wasn’t exactly an official reading of LeAnn’s rights, but it was as close as Alice Fields would let me get. If I had tried it, she probably would have packed LeAnn up right then and disappeared with her.
“Why would I need an attorney?” LeAnn asked. Since the question was addressed to Alice Fields, I let her answer it.
“Detective Beaumont told me on the phone that you’re a possible suspect.”
For the first time LeAnn seemed to be aware of my existence. Paling, she turned and looked at me, her brown eyes deep and unsettling. She swallowed hard before she spoke. “Is that true? Am I?” she asked.
I nodded briefly. There was no point in dancing around the issue. Alice Fields wouldn’t have let me get away with that for one minute. “You are a possibility, Mrs. Nielsen. You have to understand, though, it’s still very early in the investigation. We haven’t ruled anyone out yet.”
“A suspect,” she said incredulously, as if saying the word aloud would somehow help her comprehend it. “I had no idea he was dead. How could…” Her voice faded away. She stopped talking and sat looking at her hands. She clenched them tightly and placed them in her lap.
There’s a standard set of questions that relatives usually ask in this kind of situation: How did it happen? When? Where? LeAnn Nielsen asked none of the usual ones. She just sat there, silently staring at her hands. Alice Fields finally broke the long silence.
“What about your children?” she asked, butting in and changing the subject. “Where are they?”
I’m sure Alice Fields got to be executive director of Phoenix House because she was decisive and insightful. She seemed to grasp all the ramifications of what had happened and what would need to be done, but for my money, someone like her is the very last thing a homicide detective needs when he starts to question a suspect.
Alice Fields was the last thing I needed, but there was no way to get rid of her. She was there for the duration.
“I left the kids in a day-care center near the apartment,” LeAnn answered quietly. “I’m supposed to go in this afternoon for a training session at Sea-Tac. I thought it would be good for them to stay at the center all day, to try it out and see how they like it.”
“I’ll call and cancel the training as soon as we finish here,” Alice said firmly. “Then I’ll take you down to pick up the children. You should have someone with you when you tell them.”
LeAnn nodded gratefully, then she turned back to me, but still without asking any questions. The thought crossed my mind that maybe she didn’t have to ask. Maybe she already knew.
“Do you want me to tell you what happened?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath before launching into it. “Your husband died sometime early Saturday afternoon. He wasn’t found until yesterday morning when his receptionist came in to work.”
“That bitch!” LeAnn’s two-word reaction was explosive, instantaneous, and totally at odds with her previously mild appearance.
“Who?” I asked.
“You know who! Debi Rush, that’s who!”
“What about her?”
“She wasn’t just a receptionist,” LeAnn said bitterly.
I put one and two together and came up with a triangle. “You mean she was having an affair with your husband?”
LeAnn nodded. With that gesture, Debi Rush’s uncontrollable grief, the heartbroken sobs we had heard at the crime scene, suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Receptionists don’t necessarily fall apart when their bosses die. When lovers die? That’s a different story.
Alice Fields interrupted again. “LeAnn, I’m not sure you should say anything more without having an attorney present.”
LeAnn’s dark eyes flashed with anger. “Why shouldn’t I tell him? I’ve pretended long enough. Lived a lie long enough. It’s time people knew the truth about Fred. It’s time they heard the real story.”
She dissolved in tears again. This time her whole body shook with wrenching sobs that bore absolutely no resemblance to her earlier eerie laughter. It was several long minutes before she grew quiet again, straightened up, and blew her nose into one of the paper napkins from the table.
She looked directly at me. “What do you want from me?” she asked.
“When did you last see your husband?”
LeAnn drew in a long, shuddering breath, the kind you take when you try to stop crying. Alice Fields reached out and took one of LeAnn’s hands, lifted it to the surface of the table, and held it there. The older woman shook her head in silent warning, but LeAnn ignored it.
“No, it’s all right, Alice. I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” LeAnn turned to me. “I saw him Saturday afternoon.”
“Where?”
“At his office.”
“When?”
“I got there right around one. We had an appointment.“
“What for?”
She sighed. “She told me not to go.”
“Who told you not to go?”
“My counselor from Phoenix House. She didn’t say so in so many words, but we’re not supposed to have any
