The First Wife

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

PROLOGUE

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Chandler, Ohio

I WAS SITTING at my kitchen table that morning, having a banana and trying to decide whether to skate first—I’m an avid in-line skater—or read a couple of patient files and then skate, when the phone rang.

Not all that unusual. I’d lived in Chandler my entire life—except for when I was in college. I was on the committee to beautify Main Street, volunteered at our version of a soup kitchen, belonged to a book club, mentored a doctoral candidate for State Board of Psychology Licensure. And any number of my clients had my home phone number. I lived in a small town. There was no escaping them.

And truth be told, I didn’t want to escape them. I wanted to help them. I cared about them. Regardless of what the professors had taught us in all of my Clinical Psychology classes—that we were not to personalize our work—I got emotionally involved with my patients’ care. My professors’ theories worked on an academic level. They didn’t work in Chandler. Bottom line was, trauma didn’t punch a time clock. So neither did I. But I digress.

I was going to read files. Two in particular. And I was going to skate. The only question was which I would do first.

And then the call came.

Camy, or Camelia as the royal queen of the four-pound toy poodle world is more formally known, jumped down from my lap as I grabbed the phone.

I recognized the number on the display. Sheila Grant was one of Ohio’s leading county prosecutors. She also happened to live in Chandler—probably because, as the seat of Ford County, Chandler has the only courthouse.

A few years older than me, Sheila had been at her job a long time. And with her lover, Geraldine, even longer. I respected her. Liked her, even, but we’d never been close. Sheila enjoyed motorcycles, demolition derbies and pig roasts.

I didn’t.

“Hello?” That was the way I always answered the phone. Didn’t matter that now, with caller ID, I knew who was on the other end. I mean, what if it was my dad’s number and I let out a “what do you want?” and it turned out to be a cop using my dad’s phone to call and tell me Dad was dead on the side of the road?

“Good, you’re there,” Sheila said, her voice as feminine as her skin was tough.

“Yep. For the moment. What’s up?”

“I have a case.”

Of course she did. It was the only reason the prosecutor would be calling me at home. If she was selling raffle tickets for her latest cause, she’d have caught me at the courthouse. Or my office.

“What kind of case?”

“It’s a strange one, Kel,” Sheila said. “Murder, but that’s not what’s weird.”

“Okay.” I grabbed the pen and pad of paper from the counter because it was closer than the one on the table. Or the one beside the couch. Besides, it had colorful spring flowers in the background. I had a feeling I was going to need some cheer for this. “Fill me in.”

I hadn’t started my career with any desire to be an expert witness. And certainly not one who was nationally registered and got calls from all over the country. That hadn’t been my goal. But our purposes in life aren’t always clear to us, are they?

“I’ve got a guy who killed his wife.”

Dead wife, I jotted.

“The weird part is, I need you to interview his wife.”

Reading what I’d just written, I said, “I’m not real successful with dead people.” I’m also not callous, but Sheila seemed to bring out the dark in me.

Or maybe it was the stuff we dealt with that did it.

“This is a different wife,” Sheila replied, her serious and detached tone unchanged. “James Todd was a bigamist. Twice, actually. I spoke with Jane Hamilton, his first wife, early this morning. Seems to be in some kind of denial. I may need you to meet with her, too.”

“He was married to three women?” What a guy.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t that make him a polygamist?” Like it mattered. I was just trying to take it all in. Bigamy, deceit, I wrote.

“No, just twice a bigamist. He married Lee Anne Todd, the murder victim, while he was married to Jane. Kept them both for a couple of years and then divorced Jane, apparently without either of the women being the wiser.”

“What was he doing, a test run, to see which woman he preferred?”

“Who knows?” Sheila’s disgust was obvious. “But he wasn’t satisfied with wife number two, either. He married wife number three, Marla Anderson, last year, while still married to Lee Anne. Several months ago he asked Lee Anne for a divorce. She refused. She’d been spying on him, following him. She found out about wife number three, including the fact that Marla is an heiress, and threatened to expose him unless he paid her to be quiet. We think that’s why he killed her.”

“For what? To avoid a bigamy charge? I mean, what was he looking at? A fine?”

“Technically he could have done a little jail time, but avoiding the bigamy charge wasn’t his motive. Money was. If Lee Anne exposed him, his marriage to Marla would be legally void. Marla would know that their relationship was a hoax, and all that money would no longer be his. He either had to resign himself to paying Lee Anne forever to buy her silence—and to living with the threat of exposure hanging over him—or he had to get rid of her.”

“Do you know this or is it just theory at this point?” I knew how Sheila generally operated. Theory to proof, rather than proof to theory like some of the other prosecutors I’d worked with. Either way was fine with me. I just liked to know, going in, if I was up against opinion or fact.

“A bit of both. We’ve got some substantial evidence, but a lot of it is going to rely on the character witnesses. I need you to talk to Marla. Let me know if you think she’s telling the truth about this guy. She insists he’s the gentlest man she’s ever met. Never shown any temper or violence. If you think she’s lying I might need you to testify.”

“Okay.” I was interested. Very interested.

“She’s hostile at this point.”

I wasn’t surprised. The woman was married to a liar. Was probably in love with a liar. And, for now, she was desperate to believe a liar.

“I’m assuming spousal privilege doesn’t come into play?”

“Right. At the moment, anyway. Their marriage is void, but now that he’s a widower, they can always re-marry. He’s out on bond.”

So he might still get the money anyway. If Marla Anderson believed in him long enough to marry him again. I liked it better when life was fair.

“You said you already spoke with his first wife?” I read my notes. “Jane Hamilton.”

“Yeah.”

“Does she remember him being violent?”