“You’re the detective?”
“Yes, ma’am. Detective Beaumont.”
“Are you going to catch my son’s killer?”
“We can’t make any promises, of course, but we’re certainly going to try. We’re working very hard.”
She pointed to a newspaper at the foot of the bed. It was a copy of the P.I. folded open to Maxwell Cole’s column.
“That’s not what they said in the paper this morning,” she announced accusingly. “This man here said you weren’t doing anything at all.”
“The newspapers don’t have access to everything we do,” I said. I could have added “Thank God,” but I didn’t.
“So you are doing something, then?“ she insisted.
“Yes, we are. You don’t have to worry about that.”
She shook her head. For several moments she seemed to drift away from me, lost in a maze of private, painful recollection. “He was such a good boy,” she whimpered into a tissue. “Such a good boy. He never gave his father or me a moment’s trouble. Grew up to be a professional man, just like his father. If only he hadn’t married that woman.”
“You mean LeAnn?”
Dorothy Nielsen nodded. “She wasn’t good enough for him. She never was. He should have held out for something better.”
“What do you mean, she wasn’t good enough?”
“Dentists have to work very hard, you know,” she declared, pausing long enough to blow her nose. “It’s a very high-stress job. I should know, I was married to one. And when a man comes home from working that hard, he has a right to expect his house to be the way he wants it.”
“And how was that?”
“Straightened up, for one thing. He hated to come in and find toys scattered all over the living room or the laundry not done and put away. And he wanted the children fed and asleep by the time he came home from work. He needed peace and quiet. I kept trying to tell LeAnn that she should pay more attention to those little things instead of doing all that running around.”
“What running around?” I asked. Dorothy Nielsen was like her sister Rachel. It didn’t take much to prime the pump and get her talking.
“LeAnn’s a regular little joiner. Not things like the Junior League or something that would have helped Frederick, oh no. She worked on the P.T.A. used-book sale and insisted on being room mother, not just for little Freddy, but also for Cynthia’s class. And then she signed them both up for Tee-Ball this year. Can you imagine? A girl in Little League! What’s this world coming to, if they let girls do that!“
Tee-Ball and P.T.A. wasn’t exactly the kind of running around I expected to hear about. I was hoping for something a little more wicked, something sinister that would add up to motive rather than motherhood and apple pie. What was the world coming to, indeed!
I tried approaching the subject from another angle. “You said if only your son had married someone else. Are you implying that LeAnn may somehow be responsible for his death?”
“It was terrible of her to leave him like that, just terrible. He was wild with grief. It hurt him so much, you can’t imagine. He wasn’t himself.”
“But you didn’t answer my question.”
“Do I think she killed him? Probably not, but she didn’t make him happy. That’s what hurts me. If his life was going to be this short, she should have made him happy instead of running away, hiding from him, and breaking his heart.”
“Why do you suppose she did that?” We had been talking for some time, but Dorothy Nielsen hadn’t been looking at me. She had been staring indifferently at a section of blank wall across from the foot of her bed, distancing herself from me the way invalids do when they’re not firmly connected to whatever’s going on around them. Now she turned and looked me square in the face.
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply. “Do you have any idea why your daughter-in-law ran away?”
“None whatsoever.”
“How long did you live with them?”
“Me live with them? They lived with me, young man. They moved into my home right after they were married. We remodeled the maid’s quarters into a separate apartment for me. After all, there was no need for a maid anymore.”
“How many years ago was that?”
“Eight or nine. It must be nine now. They got married the year Frederick opened his practice down in Pioneer Square. LeAnn worked in his office for a while, but she quit after little Freddy was born. Frederick insisted that his wife stay home with the children.”
“Did the two of them ever quarrel?” I asked.
“Detective Beaumont,” she answered indignantly, “all married couples quarrel on occasion, or haven’t you noticed?”
“Did you ever see any signs of violence between them?”
“Violence?” she asked, mouthing the syllables as though the very word was foreign to her, offensive.
“Did you see any physical evidence of their quarreling?”
“Certainly not.”
“What about with the children?”
She pulled herself up in bed, incensed that I should dare to suggest such a thing. “Are you asking if my son harmed my grandchildren? Is that what you’re implying?”
“Did he?”
“Frederick believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child. Yes, he spanked them. Of course he spanked them.”
“Were you aware that when LeAnn left she went to a shelter for abused women?”
“Frederick told me that, yes. It was the worst possible thing she could have done. If word had gotten out, it would have created a dreadful scandal, him being a dentist and all. Frederick couldn’t believe she’d do such a disloyal, terrible, ungrateful thing. I couldn’t either. LeAnn and I had our differences, but I thought she was a better woman than that, a better wife.”
Again Dorothy Nielsen turned away from me. For a time she once more stared silently at the blank wall. “I’m tired,” she said at last.
As far as Dotty was concerned, our interview was over. I was being dismissed, but I still had unanswered questions. Dorothy Nielsen’s bedrock of denial fascinated me, made me wonder.
“How did you break your hip, Mrs. Nielsen?” I asked.
She shifted uncomfortably in the bed as though my mention of her injury had somehow reactivated the pain. She answered without looking at me. “I’m a stupid, clumsy old woman,” she said. “I fell.”
Before I could ask her anything else, she turned to Daisy. “I’m beginning to hurt again, Daze. Let the bed down and give me some of that pain medication. It’s time for me to have it again.”
Daisy moved quickly to Dotty’s side and shook two small white pills into her outstretched hand. As Dotty raised the pills to her mouth, I noticed the hospital ID bracelet was still on her narrow wrist. Seeing it gave me an idea. While Dotty sipped water from a glass, Daisy went to the foot of the bed to lower it. She finished drinking, and I moved closer to her to take the glass and place it on a bedside table.
“I see you’re still wearing your hospital ID bracelet,” I said casually. “Would you like me to clip it off?”
Dotty looked up at me and nodded gratefully. “That would be nice,” she said. “I hate those things.”
She held out her wrist and I cut through the thin plastic band with my pocket knife. “How’s that?” I asked.
“Thank you,” Dorothy replied. “It makes me feel like I’m finally really out of that place.”
Neither she nor Daisy noticed when I slipped the bracelet into my jacket pocket. I turned to go, then stopped. “Mrs. Nielsen, did your son have any enemies that you’re aware of?”
She shook her head. “No. Why would he? He was a good, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen. He was a good son, a loving son. I still can’t believe he’s gone, though. It’s such a waste, such a terrible, cruel waste.”
