Improbable Cause

by J. A. Jance

  A waitress appeared and placed another mismatched cup and saucer in front of Alice. "Here's your coffee," she said. "Are you having breakfast this morning, or just coffee?"

  "Coffee and a roll, please. How about you, Detective Beaumont? The rolls are delicious here."

  "The same," I said.

  The waitress started away. Alice Fields stopped her. "How's it going, Diane?"

  Diane turned back to us. Looking for a name tag, I saw none and wondered how Alice Fields knew her.

  "All right," Diane answered. "I'm plugging away." With that, she left us.

  I must have looked puzzled. Alice Fields smiled. "One of our alumnae," she explained. "Our job is to help women get back on their feet. Many of them have never held jobs outside the home before, and they don't have any training. The owner here has been a big help in hiring some of our people and giving them a place to start."

  Diane was back almost instantly, carrying two of the biggest, gooiest cinnamon rolls I had ever seen. They were still hot from the oven.

  Miss Manners and Emily Post notwithstanding, there is only one way to eat a hot cinnamon roll properly—tear it apart, layer by layer, and butter each bite as you go. I was well into the process when a second woman stepped through the doorway and stopped beside Alice Fields.

  She was thirty-five or so, with doelike eyes and fawn-colored hair. She was small and delicate and scared to death. There was a huge purple bruise under her left eye.

  "Why, hello, LeAnn," Alice Fields said, ignoring the ugly bruise. "I'm glad you could come. This is Detective Beaumont, the person who needs to talk with you."

  I stood up, attempting to wipe the sugary goo off my fingers. They were so sticky the paper napkin shredded completely. "I'm glad to meet you, Mrs. Nielsen, won't you sit down?"

  LeAnn sat, but almost without seeing or acknowledging me. She was concentrating on Alice Fields.

  "I got your note," LeAnn said. "Is something wrong?"

  Alice glanced at me, one eyebrow arched in question. I nodded. It would be better if the words came from someone LeAnn knew rather than from a total stranger.

  "Have you read the paper this morning?" Alice asked.

  LeAnn shook her head. "No. Why?"

  "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 dar
k 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 contact with the abuser."

  "And you went anyway."

  "I needed money for my apartment. I'd found a job on Friday, and I needed to get moved in and settled. Fred promised he'd give me the money if I'd just come by and see him. He said he was sorry for what he'd done. He begged me to come."

  "And you agreed?"

  "Because I had to have the money," she answered. "I had given the landlord a small deposit, but I had to have the rest of it that afternoon or I'd lose the deposit. I wouldn't have been able to move in over the weekend."

  "He did give you the money, then," I continued. "I understand from Mrs. Fields here that you did get moved into your own place."

  If she heard my comment, LeAnn didn't acknowledge it. She seemed distant. When she spoke, her mind was still locked on the money and her need of it.

  "My counselor was right. Fred used the money for bait to get me to come to him. He had it there waiting for me in an envelope on his desk. When I reached for it, he pulled it away from me, pulled it closer to him. He said I'd have to pay to get it."

  "Pay? What do you mean?"

  "What do you think I mean?" She dropped her gaze. Her lower lip trembled. In the silence that followed, I could hear the clatter of silverware and the muted conversation of diners in the other room. Alice Fields had been right. The round table did provide some privacy. Some, but not enough.

  When LeAnn spoke again, it was in a ragged, painful whisper. "He said being with me made him want me again, turned him on. He said I could have the money if I'd make love to him there in his office, on the couch."

  "LeAnn, you don't have to do this," Alice said. "You shouldn't do this."

  Their hands were still clenched in what seemed like a death grip. Both sets of knuckles were white.

  "No," LeAnn insisted. "I have to tell him what happened. I told Fred no. It was the first time ever. I told him I wasn't his whore, that he couldn't pay me enough money to have sex with him." She paused and then continued. "That's when he hit me."

  "On your face?"

  She nodded, self-consciously touching the angry purple spot below her eye. "He hit me first and then he grabbed my arms and held me against the door. That's when he told me about her. I didn't want to listen, I didn't want to know about it, but he forced me to. I couldn't get away. He told me how nice it was to have a real woman for a change, one who knew her place and didn't mind doing things his way."

  "Such as?" I asked.

  "Like keeping his office immaculate and falling on her back whenever he snapped his fingers."

  "He told you that?"

  "Yes, he told me that," she hissed. "He wanted to rub my nose in it. He wanted me to understand that it was my problem, not his."

  I felt like I was missing important pieces of the conversation. "What was his problem?"

  "Sex. He wanted me to know that he could get it up with her even if he couldn't with me." She paused. "Except..." she added as an afterthought.

  "Except what?" I asked.

  "Except when he beat me up. He could do it then."

  "Did he?"

  She looked at me without flinching. "He tried. He let go of one of my arms to unfasten his pants. That's when I managed to get away. I grabbed the money and ran." She stopped.

  "Go on," I urged. "What happened then?"

  "There was a man standing right outside the door."

  "A man? Who?"

  "A carpet installer. I didn't know him, didn't know he was there. He was working in the other room and heard us. He said he heard me scream. Fred must have forgotten about him, too. Anyway, he told Fred to leave me alone, so Fred went after him."

  "Where was this?"

  "Out by Debi's desk. All I could think about was getting away, but I couldn't get past them.

  They were wrestling there in front of the door. I tried going out the back way."

  "Through the garage?"

  She nodded. "But the lock had been changed. My key wouldn't work. Fred came charging into the room. He picked up something by the door, a tool of some kind, and came after me with it. I fell against a flowerpot and knocked it down. Just then the other guy came in. He got between us, and he and Fred struggled. Fred hit him with that tool, that thing in his hand, and he started bleeding. That's when I hit him."

  "Hit who, Fred?"

  "Yes, with a piece of the flowerpot. I remember picking it up with both hands and hitting him over the head with it."

  "Where? On the back of his head? On the side?"

  "Here," she said, pointing to a place just above and behind her left ear.

  "And then what happened?"

  She shook her head. "I don't remember."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I must have gone back to Phoenix House, but I don't remember it. Someone told me I had blood all over me ..."

  Alice Fields had become more and more agitated as LeAnn talked. At last she could restrain herself no longer. "That's enough, LeAnn!" she ordered. "Don't say another word. We're going now, Detective Beaumont. You're not going to stop us."

  She stood up and glared at me defiantly. She must have thought I'd whip out a pair of handcuffs and arrest LeAnn on the spot. I didn't.

  "I'll need your address and telephone number," I said quietly to LeAnn. "Someone will need to come to the medical examiner's office and make a positive identification."

  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 quest
ion 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.