Improbable Cause

by J. A. Jance

  "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."

  I didn't argue the point with her, but I could have. Dr. Frederick Nielsen's death may have been a terrible tragedy to his mother, but I doubted it was much of a loss to the rest of the world.

  From what I had been able to discover, it seemed to me as though someone had done the human race a real favor in getting rid of him.

  It was my job to find out who that person was.

  CHAPTER 12

  I asked Daisy if I could use the phone to check in with the department before I left the Edinburgh Arms. She obligingly led me to the kitchen. The receiver on the phone was dangling off the hook. "Is somebody using it?" I asked.

  "No," Daisy answered. "We did that this morning as soon as we saw the article in the paper. Rachel said we didn't need people calling here. I know they mean well, sympathy calls and all that, but with Dotty just out of the hospital..." Her voice trailed away.

  "Leaving it off the hook is probably a good idea," I told her.

  When I dialed the department, Big Al wasn't in, so I asked to speak to Sergeant Watkins instead.

  "Did the prosecutor finally put Al on the witness stand?" I asked.

  Watty laughed. "Are you kidding? There's been another delay. He's at lunch now, but I've got a note that says they'll want him for sure at one. What's happening with you, Beau? I heard from Al that you've managed to reach Dr. Nielsen's next of kin. Arlo Hamilton has scheduled a press conference for twelve-thirty. Any objections?"

  "None from me."

  "How about leads?"

  "It's coming together."

  My answer was evasive. Watty knew it and called me on it. "So what are you finding out?" he asked.

  "There's a witness up in Lake City," I replied. "Since I'm already halfway there, I think I'll go on up and see him. Once I talk to him, we'll know a whole lot more."

  "That still doesn't sound like a straight answer to me. Come on. What gives?" Watty insisted, pushing me into a corner.

  "This is all supposition, of course, but I'm leaning toward justifiable homicide."

  "Justifiable! What makes you say that?"

  "According to the wife, there was a fight. Nielsen tried to attack her and she fended him off, with the help of this other guy, a carpet installer named Larry Martin."

  "The one you're going to talk to now?"

  "Yeah."

  "Are you going to arrest him?"

  "No
, I'm not going to arrest him. I already told you. I just want to ask him some questions. My guess is it'll probably boil down to self-defense."

  Watty was silent, but only for a moment. "Tell me about the wife, Beau. Is she a looker? Your recent track record isn't so hot, you know. It wouldn't be the first time a pretty lady's turned your head."

  "Go to hell, Watty," I snarled.

  "By the way, Al says the medical examiner wants to know if you're psychic or what. He says there was a helluva bruise just behind Nielsen's left ear, a bruise and some pottery fragments."

  "I'm psychic, all right," I told him. I hung up the phone long enough to cut the connection, then I dropped the receiver again, leaving it hanging loose the same way I had found it.

  Behind me, Daisy came into the kitchen carrying a cardboard box. She opened it on the counter and carefully began removing and unwrapping the contents—a set of fine, bone china teacups and saucers. She held a delicate cup up to the window and examined it in the sunlight.

  "Dotty wants us to use her things," she said. "I'm afraid we'll break them."

  I could understand her concern. The china was as far from their worn Melmac as a shiny new Mercedes is from a broken down VW bus. Behind us the telephone squealed, letting us know it had not been hung up properly. We ignored it.

  Daisy escorted me back through the living room. On the bed in the corner, Dorothy Nielsen appeared to be sound asleep.

  "I couldn't help overhearing," Daisy said, once we were outside the apartment and well beyond Dorothy's earshot. "Did you say something about arresting someone?"

  "Don't believe everything you hear," I told her. "That was my supervisor downtown. He's overeager. This is an important case. The department wants some action, especially after Maxwell Cole's piece in the paper this morning, but it's far too soon to arrest anybody."

  "Do you have a suspect?" she persisted.

  I didn't want to offend her, but I didn't want to spill my guts, either. "Look," I said kindly, "I can certainly understand your concern, but I can't answer that question without jeopardizing the investigation. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

  She shook her head. I put one foot inside my car then pulled it back out. "By the way, Sergeant Watkins did tell me that they've scheduled a press conference for twelve-thirty. That's when they'll release your nephew's name. I know word leaked out before, but this will be the first official announcement."

  "All right," she said. "Thanks for telling me."

  She seemed strangely subdued, far different from the angry woman I had seen the day before, one who had been pitching heavy boxes and furniture into a U-Haul trailer. Today she was less angry, more approachable. I decided to go ahead and ask her the question that had been bothering me ever since my conversation with Dorothy Nielsen. After all, if Daisy turned on me, the worst that could happen would be having the car door slam shut in my face.

  "How did your sister break her hip?" I asked.

  "You heard what she said," Daisy replied. It was an answer that avoided my question.

  "I heard her say she was stupid, but stupidity doesn't usually break bones." Daisy turned her face away from me. Her eyes seemed to focus on a pair of squawking crows arguing noisily in a nearby tree. I tried another tack.

  "What did you think of your nephew?" I asked.

  She swung her face back toward me with something of the previous day's fire snapping in her eyes. "He was a worthless little no-account, no matter what his mother says." With that, Daisy turned on her heel and marched into the house.

  Her opinion of Dr. Frederick Nielsen tallied with everyone else's—everyone's but his mother's.

  I drove back to 1-5 on Forty-fifth and got on the freeway heading north. The Lake City Way exit is only two off-ramps above where I was. I cut across Seattle's north-end urban sprawl and through Lake City itself.

  Someone in Lake City had recently invested a wad of money in a local neighborhood beautification program. Trees and shrubs had been set in the median along Lake City Way. The greenery was accompanied by some artwork that looked for all the world like baked potatoes with knives stuck in them. It's part of a program called Art in Public Places.

  I call it Rocks in Public Places. For obvious reasons.

  My notebook told me that Larry Martin's address was on Erickson Place N.E. I never would have found it without a map. It was a short street, not much over a block or two long, off to the right, north of Lake City proper. I spotted the address first, then the orange-and-black for rent sign in the window.

  The apartment fronted on an alley. It was a small frame walk-up built over the garage of a weathered house that faced the street. I climbed the steep stairs and knocked. There was no answer.

  "You lookin' for a place to rent?" a voice called up to me.

  I turned around and looked down. An old man in a faded blue plaid shirt sat in a wobbly deck chair on the back porch of the main house. The chair had been positioned to take advantage of the single patch of sunlight that wasn't shaded by a huge, overhanging alder.

  "Actually, I'm looking for Larry Martin," I answered. "I understand he lives here."

  "Used to live here," the old man corrected. "Lived here right up until this morning."

  "What do you mean?" I climbed down the steps and crossed a tiny scrap of yard to where the old man sat. He was gnarled and wizened and totally bald. An old-fashioned hearing aid protruded from behind one ear. He leaned down and held out a misshapen paw of a hand.

  "Name's John Caldwell," he said. "Larry came tearing in here in that little red bug of his just about an hour and a half ago. Looked like he'd been in a cat fight, if you ask me. He was cut up pretty bad, had stitches all over his face. Told me his mother was real sick. He said she was so bad off that he was going to have to move back home to help take care of her. He asked me if he could have his deposit back, but I told him no way, not without at least a month's notice in advance so we'd have half a chance to rent it to someone else."

  "He moved out, just like that?"

  "Yup. Lock, stock, and barrel. He left some boxes in storage in the garage. Said he'd be back for those later. I called Gertie, my wife. She still works downtown. I'm retired, you see. So while he was packing, I called Gertie and asked her what she thought. She said he'd been a real good tenant, been here the better part of five years, always paid his rent on time, always kept the place neat, never was any trouble whatsoever. He was a hard worker, too. Worked all day and went to school at night over to the university. He never said what he was studying.

  "Anyway, Gertie says to me, you give him half his deposit today, since it sounds like he needs the money, and you tell him that we'll send the rest of it when we rent the place. So I did like she said. I gave him the hundred and fifty-three in cash, and he was real happy to have it. He must've been in a hurry. He went rushing off and didn't tell me where to send the stuff or when he'd be back for it."

  My mind was racing. Why was Larry Martin in such a hurry to leave town? I could think of only one possible reason.

  "What time did you say he got here?" I asked.

  The old man shrugged. "Right around ten-thirty, thereabouts. No later than that. Maybe a little before, now that I get thinking about it."

  I glanced at my watch. I had talked to LeAnn Nielsen between nine and ten. If she had known how to reach him, that would have given her time enough to warn Larry Martin that I was prowling around asking questions. Was it cause and effect?

  I've been a cop far too long to think otherwise.

  Playing it low key, I tried not to alarm the garrulous old man. I didn't want to shut off the flow of information.

  "Did he happen to mention where home was?"

  "Nope. If he did, I don't remember. Seems like he was from around these parts somewhere, but the details escape me. Gertie might know. She's good at remembering. Want me to call her and ask?"

  "Sure," I said. "If it isn't too much trouble."

  The old man helped himself up with the aid of a four
-pronged cane that had been lurking beneath his chair. Once up, he paused long enough to straighten his shirt and snap his red suspenders.

  "It's gonna be a scorcher by afternoon," he said, peering up at the cloudless blue sky overhead. "I don't like it when it gets too hot. Don't like it one bit."

  He tottered into the house, leaning heavily on the cane. I paced impatiently back and forth in the tiny yard, waiting for him to return. At last he reappeared at the back door.

  "Nope, Gertie don't remember either. She says she thinks he's from somewhere down around Raymond or Aberdeen maybe, but she can't say for certain. By the way, you didn't say what you wanted him for. He's not in any trouble, is he? I'd sure hate to think he was."