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.
Rachel Miller may have qualified for senior citizen discounts, and she may have been sweet, but she was also the same spry old dame who had given Big Al and me the slip the day before. I didn’t trust her any farther than I could throw her.
“Over here,” she called, waving to me as I got out of the car.
She was dressed in an exact duplicate of the khaki uniform and Maine hunting boots I had seen her sister wearing the day before. A straw pith helmet lay on the bench beside her. She moved the helmet to her lap and patted the bench, inviting me to sit down beside her.
“I trust you’ll forgive me for yesterday,” she said apologetically. “I had to go with my conscience and do what I thought was right.”
“No problem,” I said, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of saying anything else.
“I’m glad you got here before I had to leave for the zoo. I’m going in today. Daisy and I have to juggle our schedules now so one of us can be home with Dorothy round the clock. Otherwise, she would have had to go to a nursing home.”
“She’s here with you now?”
Rachel nodded. “We picked her up from the hospital just this morning. She’s resting now.” Rachel Miller grew thoughtful. “I told her,” she said.
“About her son?”
“Yes. I couldn’t bear the idea of somebody else telling her, some stranger. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“She took it real hard. I was afraid she would. Fred was Dotty’s only child, you know.”
