Which, of course, made her want to drink even more. That was the Catch-22 of it all.
Still, they made it to the correct door, and Nate had only managed to put his hand out to knock on it when it opened. Evidently, Lucile Maddison's boyfriend had been watching through the peephole, waiting for them to show up.
“Come in,” he said, his voice ragged and raw with the grief that he had been going through for the past two days. His face was pale and drawn, and there were huge dark circles under each of his eyes. They were also red-rimmed, a clear sign that he had been crying this morning.
“We're very sorry for your loss,” Laura said. “Mr. Long, is it?”
“Call me Jay,” he said, turning to lead them inside. “Has something happened?”
“We don’t have anything new to share at this stage,” Nate said, following him down the hall to a small living room. It was decorated with cheap or old-looking furniture, the kind of things a young couple might put in their first home together. Hand-me-downs and thrift store finds.
“I’ve already told the police everything I could think of,” Jay said wearily, flopping down to sit on the sofa. There was only one other chair in the room; Laura took this, with Nate roaming
around the room liked a restless panther, prowling from one thing to another.
“We understand that,” Laura said, keeping her voice is sympathetic as possible. In the meantime, she was studying Jay closely. He was Asian-American, dark-haired with soft dark eyes that seemed to be full of sorrow. Laura tried to keep an open mind. There was a well-known fact that the partners of murder victims were almost always the ones to blame, but that did not necessarily mean he was guilty in this particular case. For one thing, Suzanna Brice was an anomaly. They didn't seem to have any connection. At least, nothing that the investigation had found so far. “We're just trying to conduct the most thorough investigation possible. If you could tell us again anything that might help.”
“I just don't know,” Jay said shrugging helplessly. “Lucy was a great person. Her students liked her, she never told me about any quarrels with any of them. We had a great bunch of friends that we spent a lot of time with. She's never had any enemies. She wasn't that kind of person.”
“Okay,” Laura said gently, making quick notes in her notebook. Not that there was much to write, so far. “And you didn't notice anything unusual in the days or weeks leading up to Lucy's death?”
“No, not at all,” he said. Jay leaned forward over the coffee table, putting his head in his hands. “We've been planning to go on vacation at the end of the year. She was really looking forward to it. We put down the deposit a couple of weeks ago. She never said anything about anyone suspicious; she wasn't nervous or scared or angry about anything. She was happy. We both were.”
Laura couldn't help but feel sympathy for him. He was acting like the grieving partner, but then again, she had seen men who were not the boyfriends of acting coaches and who managed to fool police investigations. Right up until the DNA evidence came out. This whole case was made more complex by the fact that actors were involved, but she had to remind herself that she knew what a liar looked like. She had seen enough of them in her time. People from all walks of life could be deceptive.
“Did you know a woman called Suzanna Brice, another acting coach?” Laura asked. She watched Jay closely, trying to gauge his reaction.
“No,” he said shaking his head. “It doesn't ring any bells.”
Nate turned from where he had been examining a few framed photographs on a shelf. All of them showed Jay with the late Lucile, happy and smiling in times gone by. “So, you didn't pay much attention to your girlfriend's professional life?” he asked, pointedly.
“What's that supposed to mean?” Jay asked, his head going up. He was on the verge of getting defensive, Laura could see. It wasn't good when the suspect was put on the defensive, unless they were the type to be pushed far enough to scream a confession. She hadn't yet figured out whether Jay was one of those or not.
“Suzanna Brice was one of her rivals,” Nate said. “A fellow acting coach.”
Jay shook his head. “Well, that doesn't make them rivals,” he said. “Lucy always said there were enough acting coaches to go around in Seattle. Enough aspiring actors to fill up all of the classes and more. She wouldn't have thought of her as a rival at all. Just a kindred spirit.”
He was making Lucile sound like a saint, which Laura had serious doubts about. But the man was hardly about to say horrible things about the girlfriend he loved who had just died. “Okay, Jay,” she said moving on. “What about ex-boyfriends? Did Lucy have any?”
Jay hesitated, just for a second. “Well, of course, she's dated other people before me,” he said.
“And anyone in particular that springs to mind?” Laura asked. She hadn't missed that moment of hesitation. She knew it had to mean something.
“I'm not sure it would be relevant,” Jay said.
“Anything could be relevant, no matter how small,” Laura said.
“Well,” Jay said, scratching the back of his head nervously. “There was this one guy. He was kind of a creep. I guess he wouldn't accept that Lucy had moved on with me, wouldn't leave her alone. He even came around here once or twice after we'd moved in together. She told him to go away, and I haven't seen him for a couple of months now. No, more than that - it must have been... I don't know, six months.”
“Well, that's something,” Laura said. “Do you happen to remember the guy’s name?”
“Yes, I can’t forget it,” Jay said. “His name was Scott Darnell. I think they met in one of her classes.”
“Thank you for that information,” Laura said, getting up with a significant glance at Nate. “We’ll be back in touch if we have any further questions – or any updates for you.”
“Thanks,” Jay said vaguely, but Laura was already moving on. She nodded at him and strode out of the apartment, waiting for Nate to catch up for only a second as she grabbed her cell phone out of her pocket.
“We go and speak to Scott Darnell?” Nate said.