Samantha Healy lived in one of the newer neighborhoods in suburban Highlands Ranch. I wasn’t particularly fond of the area – too many houses that followed a few basic floor plans. The homes were all two-story with three-car garages and vaulted roofs, each at least three thousand square feet, and every house was painted a neutral shade of tan with off-white trim. Where was the originality? As I drove along a wide street I couldn’t help but feel that the area lacked the kind of charm that older neighborhoods have.
After getting Samantha Healy’s phone number from Jack, I had spent the entire weekend trying to get in touch with her. I got an answering machine each time I called, and concluded, as a shrewd detective would, that she was either screening her calls, or she wasn’t home. So on Monday morning, I decided to visit her personally.
I pulled the 4-runner up in front of a house with a number of windows in the front, and a porch just large enough to display a green Welcome mat at the door. I rang the bell and waited, peeking in through the beveled glass window beside the door. After a moment, I heard the sharp click of heels and a shadow approached. Then the door opened.
I was speechless for a moment. The person before me was Samantha, but at the same time it wasn’t. This woman had the same face, the same build, the same breasts, but angry lines spread around eyes that stared at me with an intense fury. Her lips turned down into a scowl and I prepared for her to bite at me.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“Samantha?” I asked, taken aback. Perhaps she’d forgotten about the Welcome sign I was standing on.
“Yes? What do you want?” she repeated, clearly irate.
I introduced myself. “I’d like to speak to you about Ned Healy.”
If she was trying to look even angrier, she succeeded. I didn’t know eyebrows could actually join together until I saw hers do just that. Then she slammed the door shut. And I did what every detective in every pulp novel or movie did. I stuck my size-ten Reebok in the entryway to block the door from closing. And I damn near screamed as the heavy wood crushed my foot into the doorjamb. Those fictional detectives who managed this trick in so smooth and suave a manner must never have actually tried it.
“Argh,” I grunted, putting my hands on the door and pushing back. Maybe if I wore a Fedora like Bogie I’d look tough enough that I wouldn’t have to go through this. I pushed harder.
I swear Samantha snarled as she pushed with equal force on the other side of the door, surprising me with her strength. I heaved my shoulder into the door and shoved. “Look,” I gasped. “I just need a few moments of your time. I’m not the police.”
She suddenly stepped back and I catapulted into the entryway, stumbling and then catching myself on a half-table across from the door. I righted myself and turned around. I felt just like a cat that, misjudging a jump and falling ungracefully to the floor, looks at you like “I meant to do that.”
“Are you always this nice to visitors?” I asked, resisting an urge to take my shoe off and rub my wounded foot.
“You’re not a visitor,” she said, snipping off each word as if she were breaking twigs. “More like an intruder.” She crossed her arms and glared at me. “You have one minute to explain yourself, or I’m calling the police.” To emphasize her threat, she pulled a tiny cell phone from her jeans pocket and prepared to dial.
“I was hired by Jack Healy. He doesn’t believe that Ned’s death was an accident.”
“Oh, brother,” Samantha said, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated manner. “Now I’ve heard it all. I should call the psych ward, not the police.”
“Why do you say that?” I took a more imposing position with both feet firmly planted on the floor. She’d need a crane to move me. Or the cops.
“It was an accident, you idiot. The police said so. He ran his bike off the trail.”
“Did Ned like to ride when you were married?”
"Ride what?" she snapped.
"A bicycle."
She hesitated. “No, but maybe he’d taken it up in the last year. The man needed something cheap to do, that’s for sure. But my money says he set this whole thing up himself.”
“What do you mean?”
Samantha leaned forward as if she was telling me a secret. “If you want my opinion, Ned committed suicide and made it look like an accident.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Ned was not a sensible man.”
“How can you be so certain he committed suicide?”
“Have you seen where he lives? The car he drives?” Samantha threw her hands up. “The man doesn’t have anything. A few pieces of furniture and bare walls that a stupid movie poster won’t help. He screwed up and lost everything. And he couldn’t live with that.”
Wow. The words “amicable divorce” definitely did not apply.
“Did he ever seem suicidal when you were still married? Or depressed?”
“Are you listening to me? He was depressed all the time. He hated his life, what he turned into. The fact that he’d lost everything.”
“Why make it look like an accident unless someone was going to benefit?”
“You mean insurance money?”
I nodded. “But who would get the insurance money? You?”
Samantha briefly considered this. “Of course not. Maybe he was thinking about his brother.” The silence stretched out. “You’re the detective,” she said at last, unable to defend her theory. “You figure it out.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I hit back. “Did he drink a lot or do any drugs?”
“Ned never took any drugs, and he only drank a little. Although the last time we talked, he sounded drunk.”
“When was that?”
She screwed up her face, thinking. It was not a becoming look for her. “I think it was a couple of weeks before he died. He kept talking about how things were going to turn around, that I’d see a different Ned. Like I haven’t heard that before. The man didn’t have a dime, so how was he going to turn things around?”
“What about the alimony he paid you?”
“What about it?”
“Might that have something to do with his having no money?”
For a second I thought she might smack me, but instead she chose to bore a hole into me with her eyes. “I gave up a promising career when I married Ned. He at least owed me for that.”
“And what career was that?” I asked.
“I’m an actress,” she said, tossing her hair in a not-too-subtle eye-catching way. I tried to keep the corners of my mouth from moving up, but she must’ve seen something in my expression. “It’s true.” Now she pulled some hair behind her ears. “I’ve done some theater, and commercials. And I was in line for a new Steven Spielberg movie, but then Ned swept me off my feet.”
This version definitely didn’t fit with what Jack had told me. “Really?” I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“It’s true.” She flicked her hair again. “As you can see, I would’ve made a lot of money if I had continued my career. I felt Ned owed me for that. Once I got some good acting jobs, I was going to revisit the alimony.”
“What are you going to do now?”
She started to answer, then stopped. “I can’t see that that’s any of your business. And I said I’d give you a minute, which I did. Your time’s up.”
I wondered what had made her end the conversation so abruptly. “Here’s my card.” I pulled one out of my wallet. “If you can think of anything that might be helpful, please call me.”
“Anything helpful about a suicide?” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm, taking my card and dropping it unceremoniously on the half-table.
“If it was suicide.” I stepped cautiously by her and out the door. It slammed with a thunk behind me.