33
Leigh Ann gestured for Laurie and Jerry to sit, and then positioned herself across from them on a matching light gray sofa. She seemed unfazed as the two Papillons leapt up and sat on either side of her.
“I should start by congratulating you, Laurie. Dan told me that in addition to your own successful career, you’re engaged to our newest federal judge. That’s very exciting. Quite the power couple.”
Laurie wasn’t sure how to respond. It had been a long time since she’d thought of herself as half of a couple at all, let alone a so-called power couple. “Thanks,” she said. “There’s still so much to do.”
“Well, not that you asked, but my advice is to just enjoy it. Let it be about the two of you instead of all the wedding plans and whatnot. My parents talked Dan and me into the whole hullabaloo at the Central Park Boathouse. I had to have my cousin follow Dan around the whole night reminding him who everyone was.”
Laurie smiled to herself. She and Alex still hadn’t told anyone else that they were planning a late summer wedding, precisely because they wanted a little more time before sharing the details.
“Anyway,” Leigh Ann said, “you’re not here for wedding consulting. Dan told me you’re reinvestigating Martin’s case.” Her voice took a more somber tone. “I still can’t believe someone would do that to him.”
“How did you hear about his death?” Laurie asked.
“My mom called me. The police had gone to the Bells’ apartment to break the news to them in person. As it happened, my parents were with the Bells at the apartment having cocktails before going out to dinner with them. You can only imagine the reaction when they were told about the tragedy.”
“Cynthia said you’d known Martin for a long time.”
She nodded sadly. “Since I was a kid. He was six years older than I, so we weren’t exactly friends. But our parents were close, so we’d be at the kids’ table together, or the older kids would play hide-and-seek with the young ones. That sort of thing. And then when I joined the alumni board at the Hayden School, it turned out he was on it, too.”
“Did you know Kendra?”
“Not at all. Dan and I were invited to the wedding, but it conflicted with a campaign event Dan had already scheduled.”
“He was already in the state assembly by then?” Laurie asked.
Leigh Ann looked up at the ceiling, doing the math. “Running for his second term, so that must have been . . . a little more than ten years ago? Mom and Dad went, and they said Kendra seemed nice, but they didn’t really get to spend any time with her. And then Mom mentioned a few times over the years that Cynthia thought Martin had made a terrible mistake, but, as I said, I didn’t know Kendra at all, and only reconnected with Martin through the alumni board.”
“Sorry to be blunt, but I’m sure you know why we wanted to speak with you. Kendra was convinced there was more to your relationship.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I’m sorry to laugh. I feel horrible for her, but it really is absurd. We’d see each other once a month at best, in a conference room with twenty-two other alumni. Then we wound up serving as co-chairs of the auction committee, which is a ton of work between planning the event, drumming up attendance, and locking down donations. These days, I’d never have the time for something like that, but back then, Dan was in Albany more often than not”—her face made it clear that she was not a fan of the state capital—“and I wanted to continue to have a purpose in the city. So when the previous chair of the auction couldn’t handle it that year, I figured, What the heck. I’ll do it as long as I have someone to help me. And Martin was practically a celebrity by then, and we’d known each other since we were kids, so I twisted his arm until he relented. The only thing I can think of is that Kendra saw how many phone calls we had between us and jumped to conclusions. But I promise you: the sexiest thing Martin Bell and I ever talked about was where to place the ice sculpture.”
“But the police interviewed you when Martin died?”
“Yes. I was absolutely flabbergasted. My mother told me later that Martin’s parents had warned her that Kendra had this crazy notion in her head, but no one had ever mentioned it to me while Martin was still alive. At first when they contacted me, the police simply told me that my number turned up frequently in Martin’s call records, so of course I explained the work we’d been doing on the auction. But then they told me that Kendra believed I was having an affair with Martin, and they wanted to know where Danny had been the night of the murder, in case he shared the same suspicions as Kendra.”
“And?” Laurie asked.
“He was in D.C. With me, in fact. The Senate seat had just become vacant, and we knew the governor was on the verge of naming Danny to the empty seat. In preparation, Danny drove down to D.C. to meet with several party leaders in the capital. I didn’t hold his hand through the meetings, of course, but I decided to take the trip down with him for moral support. And, well, to be honest, I much prefer accompanying him to D.C. than Albany. We stayed overnight so he could have breakfast in the morning with the Senate majority leader. We had just gotten back to the city when my mother called with the terrible news about Martin’s death.”
If Leigh Ann was telling the truth, it would have been easy for the police to confirm Dan’s alibi for the night of the murder. Once again, Laurie wished that she could convince the police department to be more open with her about their investigation.
“Having spoken to Kendra,” Laurie said, “I think part of the reason she suspected Martin of having an affair was that they were having serious problems within their own marriage. They were still living together, but it sounds almost as if they were estranged within the same home. I hate to be so personal, but how was the state of your marriage around that time?”
Leigh Ann smiled, but Laurie could tell that her patience was being tested. “You’re right. That is quite personal. What can I say? Danny and I are one of those lucky couples that found each other early on and decided to build a life together. I was finishing law school at Columbia, and he was completing his master’s degree in International and Public Affairs after leaving the military as a junior officer. I dropped my international law book in the line at Starbucks while I was trying to get my wallet out of my backpack. He picked it up for me, and we just started talking about foreign policy and then everything else under the sun. We had an immediate bond. We must have sat in that coffee shop for three hours. I went home that night and told my roommate that I had just met the man I was going to marry. When he proposed, he presented the engagement ring inside the paper coffee cup he had kept from that night. He said he immediately knew, too, that we were going to end up together.”
Effortless, Laurie thought—the way it was supposed to be.
“With your husband’s Senate appointment so imminent, you must have been concerned about your names surfacing in the media coverage of Martin’s murder. It was the top of the local crime news for a couple of weeks.”
“Honestly, it never dawned on me to worry about us. I was just rattled that someone I knew was murdered. And I was sorry to hear that Kendra, on top of losing her husband and being left with two young children, had any doubts about my connection to Martin. But it was obviously only in her imagination. Besides, by the time Martin was killed, the governor had already told Dan that the Senate seat was his. The trip to D.C. was pro forma—to kiss the rings and whatnot. In fact, if I recall correctly, the governor had made the announcement by the time the police detective interviewed us.”
Laurie had Googled the Longfellows to prepare for this interview. The outgoing senator had accepted a cabinet position ten days before Martin Bell was killed, and the governor appointed Longfellow—a forty-year-old, fourth-term assemblyman and war hero—to the vacant spot exactly two weeks after the senator announced his decision. If Leigh Ann’s recollection was correct, the police had taken at least five days to get around to interviewing the Longfellows. Laurie was raised by a cop. She knew exactly what that kind of delay meant: the police had not viewed the Longfellows as an investigative priority. It was yet another sign that the police had not found Kendra’s accusations credible.
“Did Martin ever talk to you about Kendra or the state of their marriage?”
“Not really.”
Laurie smiled. “Not really isn’t the same as no.”
“Look, I’ve got to be honest—I’m biased. My mother has told me that Cynthia and Robert feel quite strongly that Kendra was responsible for Martin’s death, but I have no firsthand knowledge of that.”
“But Martin did say something to you about Kendra?”
She nodded. “Not in a personal way. We weren’t close enough for that. But when we were initially scouting out potential venues for the auction, he couldn’t make the time I suggested because he had a meeting with a lawyer. I didn’t think anything of it and started proposing other dates, but he kept going. He let out kind of a sarcastic laugh”—she mimicked the sound—“and said, ‘Hey, tell me if you and Dan know any really good divorce lawyers. Apparently, I’m going to need a shark if I have any hope of keeping my children.’ Honestly, it was more than a bit awkward. I told him I was sorry to hear that and went on with finding another date on the calendar.”
It was yet another indication that Martin had been determined to divorce Kendra if only he could maintain custody of Bobby and Mindy.
Laurie did not have anything else to ask Leigh Ann, and the senator hadn’t returned yet from his conference call. “So did the auction go forward without Martin?” she asked, making small talk.
Leigh Ann smiled, appreciative of the question. “We sent out the invitations in his honor, in fact. His graduating class had a hundred-percent donation rate for the first time ever. Robert and Cynthia attended and even brought Bobby and Mindy. I thought all of us were going to break down in tears, those poor children. What hope do they have for a normal childhood after losing their father to such a ghastly crime?”
Plenty of hope, Laurie wanted to say. Maybe they will be strong and resilient and full of love and light like my amazing Timothy.
Leigh Ann looked up at the sound of her husband entering the room, and Ike and Lincoln immediately jumped down from the sofa to welcome the new arrival.
“Wow,” Jerry remarked. “They may be the Papillon Presidents, but they surely are excited to greet the senator from New York.”
“They do love their daddy, don’t they?” Leigh Ann cooed in baby talk as Dan bent over to give the dogs a few scratches behind their ears.
“You have to forgive us,” the senator said. “You may have noticed we dote on these little fellas. If it hadn’t finally warmed up over the last few days, you would have had the pleasure of seeing them in their turtleneck sweaters. Before too long, they’ll be in Gucci booties and designer sunglasses.”
“Stop it,” Leigh Ann teased. “They love their little outfits, don’t you, sweeties? You know how happy they make your mommy.”
Daniel and Leigh Ann had had a blitz of positive media coverage when he was first named to the vacant Senate seat. He may have been the darling of the New York State Assembly, but he was suddenly a national name after his elevation to the United States Senate. Political reporters loved the entire package of his personal background, centrist policy views, and picture-perfect marriage to a dynamic and intelligent commercial litigator. If there was any misstep during the rollout of his introduction to a national audience, it had belonged to Leigh Ann.
One of the cohosts of a daytime talk show, Dawn Harper, had asked Leigh Ann whether the couple ever planned to have children. Another one of the cohosts reprimanded Dawn for the question, and Dawn replied, “What? I’m just asking. Dan’s forty. She’s thirty-six. How about it, Leigh Ann? Is the biological clock ticking?”
Some members of the live audience groaned at the intrusiveness of the question, but it was Leigh Ann’s response that drew the true fire. “With all due respect, I graduated at the top of my class from Columbia Law School, am about to make partner at one of the largest law firms in the country, and am an equal partner to my husband in every way. The last thing I need to make me feel whole as a woman is a child.”
While some defended Leigh Ann’s comment as a rebuttal to Dawn’s assumption that all women were desperate for children by their mid thirties, many interpreted it as an attack against stay-at-home mothers. After a bruising twenty-four-hour news cycle, Dan and Leigh Ann made clear in a joint interview that they admired and respected all hardworking parents—both mothers and fathers, working inside or outside the home—but that they had made a personal decision not to have children. Laurie had been impressed at the time with their frankness about an intensely intimate topic. The pictures they had brought of their two “spoiled babies,” Ike and Lincoln, had helped soften Leigh Ann’s image.
Laurie could see now that they weren’t kidding when they said they treated their pets like their children.
“I expect you’re ready for me?” Senator Longfellow asked, rubbing his palms together.
Leigh Ann rose from the sofa and gave him a kiss on the lips before he took her place. “Make sure they read you your Miranda rights,” she called out as she walked away. “You’ve got a lawyer in the next room if you think you’re about to confess to anything, Senator.”