“Is that what you think happened?” Newhouse wanted to know, getting visibly agitated. “They wouldn’t let me see him. Does it look like a suicide?”
“It’s too early to say,” Jessie told her truthfully. “But I want to know if he was in the headspace where that seems like something he might have done.”
Newhouse closed her eyes tightly for several seconds before opening them wide. She sighed again.
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” she said cautiously. “He didn’t say anything unusual and he seemed like his normal self this morning when we walked over to the spa. Maybe he was a littler quieter than usual. I guess you never know what’s going on in someone’s head.”
Jessie was about to press that issue when Newhouse continued.
“But I’d have to say no, I don’t think so. He seemed like himself. He mentioned a meeting he had to call into today. Last night we talked about what kind of birthday party we were going to have for our younger son; he acted like he planned to be here.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, as if that settled the matter for now, though both of them knew it didn’t. “Let’s move on to this morning if that’s okay. We’re trying to establish a timeline of events.”
“Okay,” Newhouse said, though she still seemed to be thinking about whether her husband was capable of ending his life.
“You said you walked over to the spa together, right?” he confirmed.
“Uh-huh.”
“Around what time was that?” he asked.
“We left here around 9:20-ish. I had a massage scheduled for 10 a.m. and I wanted some time to decompress beforehand. I didn’t want to be rushed.”
“Was Scott going to get a massage too?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “He actually finds them stressful. He was always worried that he might giggle or pass gas or something embarrassing.”
“So why did he go?” Jessie asked perplexed.
“Mostly just to keep me company on the walk there and back,” she explained, smiling at the memory of it. “He said that he’d just relax until I was done. He mentioned going in the Jacuzzi or the steam room, then showering, and reading in the men’s lounge area for a while.”
The realization that he would never do any of those things again seemed to hit her and Bridget Newhouse choked back a sob.
“Are we almost done?” she asked.
“Almost,” Ryan said. Jessie could tell from his tone that he was about to dive into the biggest remaining issue: Newhouse’s alibi. She was right. “So you walked to the spa together. What happened once you and Scott parted ways—where did you go after that?”
Newhouse’s brow crinkled as she tried to recall her activities that morning.
“I went into the women’s lounge,” she said. “When I got there, first I went to the locker room and changed into a robe. Then I went to the quiet room for a bit.”
“The quiet room?” Ryan repeated.
“It’s not as fancy as it sounds,” Newhouse explained. “It’s just a sound-proofed room with several easy chairs that can be extended out so that you can lie flat if you want. Each chair is separated by a black curtain attached to the ceiling, like something they’d use in a hospital room with two beds to offer some measure of privacy to each patient. It’s a place to zone out for a while.”
“How long were you in there?” Jessie asked.
“Not more than ten minutes,” Newhouse said. “They have a steam box full of hot washcloths by each chair. I put one on my face, used the noise cancelling headphones they had on the side table, and just chilled for a bit. Then I went back to the locker room for one last bathroom break. After that, I waited in the lounge to be called in for my massage.”
“Did you interact with anyone during that time?” Ryan asked.
Again, Newhouse’s brow crinkled as she struggled to remember.
“Not in any meaningful way. I mean, there were other women changing in the locker room and we exchanged pleasantries. There were two other women in the first two chairs in the quiet room. I nodded at them as I passed by to get to the third chair. It was mostly just polite smiles or greetings. Why?”
“We’re just trying to get a sense of things,” Jessie replied nonchalantly. “So what happened after you were called in for your massage?”
“Nothing—the massage started. Everything was normal. But about twenty minutes in, we were interrupted by the assistant spa manager. She said she needed a word with me. I knew something was wrong right away. I’ve never had anything like that happen before. I remember pulling on my robe and shaking a little, even though I wasn’t cold. She took me to her office and…”
She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence.
“Is that when she told you what happened?” Jessie asked softly.
Newhouse nodded. After taking several deep breaths, she went on.
“Yes. She said that Scott had passed away. She wouldn’t say how, just that he was in the men’s lounge area when it happened. They wouldn’t let me see him. She had two security guards at the door of her office that physically prevented me from going to him. They said it would be too upsetting for me.”
“I think that was probably a wise decision, Mrs. Newhouse,” Ryan told her.
“Maybe, but then they wouldn’t let me see my friends either. One of the security guys said that I should hold off on any conversations until the authorities had a chance to speak to me. So I’ve been holed up here for the last hour, listening to music, waiting for word about my dead husband.”
The bitterness leaked through in that last answer. Jessie couldn’t blame her. If she’d been in that position—confused, traumatized, and scared—she’d be lashing out too. But she had to set aside any empathy for the time being. Until she could determine the validity of the woman’s alibi, it was best not let compassion into the mix. Besides, right now she was more interested in something that Bridget Newhouse had mentioned in passing.
“Did you say that you’re here with friends?”
“Yes,” Newhouse replied, apparently surprised that Jessie had fixated on that, “three couples all together, including us. We came as a group. We were all going to work on building marital communication as couples through activities during the day and then decompress over long meals with friends in the evening.”
“You’ve been friends for a while?” she probed.
“For years,” Newhouse answered. “We do everything together; we know all each other’s secrets. Why?”
Jessie glanced over at Ryan and saw that he was thinking the same thing as her. In Jessie’s experience, if these couples were all really as close as Newhouse suggested, they were sure to have rivalries, petty jealousies, and buried resentments.
With just one statement, they suddenly had four new suspects.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ryan looked at his watch for the third time in the last five minutes.
It was 11:58 a.m., only two minutes until the end of lovemaking coach Honey Potter’s “session” with the Darcys. If he was going to catch them before they left, he needed to hurry, so he broke into a jog. It felt good to do it without worrying about whether his body would hold up.