Nursery Crimes (12 page)

We sat like that for a few minutes. Finally, Audrey Hathaway sat up.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It sounded like she’d been saying that a lot.

“Don’t be sorry, honey. You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“I miss my mom.”

“I know, sweetie. I know.”

“You’re a friend of hers? I’ve never met you before.”

“Well, no. Not a friend. I met your mother right before . . . right before she died. My daughter applied to her school.”

She looked at me, still obviously not understanding what I was doing there.

What
was
I doing there? What had I been thinking? “I didn’t really know your mom at all. She didn’t even
accept my little girl to Heart’s Song. After I heard what happened I just thought you and your dad might not be that interested in cooking,” I finished lamely. I looked around at the devastation I had wrought on her house and on myself.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Audrey looked startled.

“Look at me!” I said with a gasp through my guffaws.

She seemed to see me for the first time and suddenly burst out laughing, too.

Wiping tears from our eyes, we got up from the floor.

“Can you just see me driving down Santa Monica Boulevard in this?” I asked her.

“You’d probably get arrested!”

“For solicitation! Of cows!” That set us off again.

Once we finally managed to catch our breaths, Audrey stuck her hand out.

“I’m Audrey.”

“I know. My name is Juliet.” I shook her hand.

We stood looking at each other for a moment and then I remembered something.

“Oh, my God, your father. I can’t let him see me like this.”

“Stepfather. And don’t worry. He’s not here.”

“You’re here alone?” I was astonished. What kind of a man leaves a child alone just days after her mother is killed?

“Yeah. He had to go out. He’ll be back soon. Maybe I can find you something to wear.”

“That would be great, although I hate to bother you.”

We both looked down at my stomach at the same time.

“I guess it would kind of have to be, like, a big shirt or something,” she said.

“Like, a really big shirt.”

“Wait just a sec, okay?” She ran up the stairs. A
moment later she was back, holding a man’s Oxford-cloth, button-down shirt, frayed at the collar and cuffs. I looked at it doubtfully.

“Is this your stepfather’s? Do you think he’ll mind?”

“It’s mine. It used to be my dad’s. My real dad. Not Daniel.” She spat her stepfather’s name out of her mouth as if it tasted bad.

“Do
you
mind if I borrow it?” I asked. “It looks kind of special.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I promise I’ll wash it and bring it back tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

We looked at each other, awkwardly, for another minute. It didn’t feel right for me to be there, but I didn’t want to leave the girl all alone. Someone had to take care of her, and it was clear that her stepfather wasn’t interested in the job.

Audrey reached up and brushed a lock of purple hair out of her eyes. I smiled and said, “I like your hair.”

She blushed. “My mom hates . . . hated it.”

“I’ll bet.”

“It’s not permanent or anything. It washes out after a while.”

“Did you do it yourself?”

“Yeah. I mean, I did the purple part myself. I got the haircut on Melrose.” She fingered the shorn side of her head. By now a fine fuzz covered the half that had looked shaved when I saw her at the memorial service.

“Can I feel it? I love the way a buzz cut feels.”

She leaned her head over to me and I rubbed my palm across the soft fuzz. “Mmm,” I said. “Soft.”

She smiled. “Hey, want something to drink? Like tea or something?”

“Sure.”

While Audrey bustled around the kitchen putting on the kettle and putting tea bags into pretty ceramic mugs, I perched on a stool at the counter.

“Is there anything you need, honey?” I asked. “Are you doing okay?”

It was a stupid question. She was pretty clearly not doing okay.

“No. I mean, yes. I’m doing fine, I guess. I don’t need anything.”

For the next fifteen minutes or so I sat sipping tea at Abigail Hathaway’s kitchen counter, next to her grieving daughter. Neither of us spoke much, except to comment on the flavor of the tea (peach ginseng) or the weather (chilly, for Los Angeles). There was, however, an odd companionable feeling between us, not like friends and nothing like mother-daughter, but some kind of link nonetheless. Audrey seemed comforted by my presence. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Maybe the girl was so lonely and so sad that any living, breathing presence would have been enough for her. Whatever it was, by the time I got up to leave, I felt like I had formed a bond with the awkward, sad child.

After my cup had long been empty, I kissed Audrey good-bye, gave her my phone number, and left. As I drove away I turned back to see her standing in the doorway, staring after me. I waved and she lifted her hand for an instant before disappearing into the house.

I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, onto the Santa Monica Freeway, and into an impenetrable wall of traffic. As my twenty-minute ride stretched to an hour and then some, I had plenty of time to reflect on my actions of the past few days. Investigating Abigail’s death had seemed like something I could do. More importantly, maybe, was that it was something
to
do. Meeting Audrey
Hathaway had changed all that. Suddenly I was confronted with what I should have understood from the very beginning. This was not a chapter out of a Nancy Drew story. It was a real, live tragedy. Abigail’s death was not an excuse for activity for a bored housewife, but the worst thing that would ever happen to a teenage girl. How dare I even attempt to “investigate”? How arrogant of me to think I was competent to solve this crime! Who did I think I was, running all over town, questioning nannies, brawling with studio executives, crashing funerals? I was deeply embarrassed by my gall in showing up at that poor girl’s house with a Trojan horse in the shape of a spinach-and-feta lasagna.

By the time I made my way home, I had firmly resolved to give up my investigative efforts. I decided to leave it to the people who really knew what they were doing: the police. I walked in the door, scooped up my own little girl, and squeezed her as hard as I could. As Ruby wriggled and howled in protest, I breathed in the puppy-dog smell of her hair and wordlessly promised her that I would never leave her like Abigail Hathaway had left her own little girl. My baby would never ache so for a mother’s touch that she needed to cry in the arms of a stranger.

I kissed Peter on the cheek and was just about to tell him about my decision to give up investigating the murder when he handed me a scrap of paper on which he’d written the following message:

“Lilly called. Says ‘PAY DIRT!’ Call her ASAP.”

“When did she call?” I asked.

“Just a couple of minutes ago,” he replied.

I had to at least find out what she’d discovered. I called her. The answering machine picked up the phone.

“Lilly? Are you there? It’s Juliet. Pick up. I know
you’re screening, because Peter says you just called. Pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up.”

By now Ruby had joined in and was shrieking “Pick up” and dancing around the room.

“All right, already. For goodness sake!” Lilly’s exasperated voice interrupted our song-and-dance number.

“Hi.”

“Hi, yourself. Boy, do you owe me. That was the worst lunch of my life. The woman brought a camera and kept asking the waiters to take our picture. By the time dessert showed up she’d taken enough for an entire album.”

“I’m so sorry I put you through that,” I said with a laugh.

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway, do I have some gossip for you!”

“Great!” I said. Then I remembered my decision. “Except I’d sort of decided not to look into this anymore.”

“What?!” She sounded genuinely angry. “Do you mean to tell me I withstood two hours of fawning by Herma Wang for nothing? I don’t think so, girlfriend.”

“I’m so sorry. It’s just that I met Abigail Hathaway’s daughter, who is in a really bad way, by the way, and I started feeling guilty about playing this Agatha Christie game. I should leave it to the cops, don’t you think?”

“Listen, what
I
think is that you are doing this girl a favor. You could find out who killed her mother! You have a civic duty to do whatever you can to help solve this murder. And, moreover, you started this ball rolling, and you should follow it up. At least listen to what I have to say. You can always just call the police and pass the information on to them!”

“I guess you’re right. Anyway, I’m dying to find out what Wang told you. I can’t believe she really said
anything.
Didn’t she take some kind of oath of confidentiality? Does that woman have no ethics?”

“Apparently not. Although it’s not like she told me intimate details or even really admitted to treating Abigail Hathaway.”

“What
did
she tell you?”

“She said she did have a patient named Abigail, no last name, wink, wink. Wang had been treating her primarily, but she saw the whole family at various points. You were right: Daniel-no-last-name-either and Abigail were having problems—serious ones, according to Wang. She wouldn’t tell me what, but she did say that divorce was possible, even likely.”

“I knew it. I just
knew
it.”

“That’s not all. Apparently she also saw the daughter a few times. There were some serious problems there, too.”

“I called that, too. I stopped by Abigail’s house today and found Audrey, the daughter, all by herself. Her mother
just died
, and her stepfather can’t be bothered to keep her company.”

“Nasty.”

“Yup. Did Wang give you any ideas about what was going on with Audrey and her stepfather? Any abuse or anything like that?”

“She didn’t say. All she would say was that the problems they were all having seemed more serious than normal marital difficulties or adolescent angst.”

“Lilly, you’ve outdone yourself. This is all
really
interesting. I’m not sure that it’s a motive for murder, but it sure does paint our grieving widower in a different light. I knew the guy was rotten the first time I saw him. And my first impressions are
always
right.”

“You know what I like best about you, Sherlock?”

“What, Watson?”

“Your self-effacing nature.”

“I
am
modest, aren’t I?”

I thanked Lilly for her time and, promising to see her soon, hung up the phone.

“What’s this I hear?” Peter said. “Giving up the private-eye biz?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “I guess so. I started feeling really guilty once I met Audrey, Abigail’s daughter. The poor thing cried in my arms today.”

“Jeez. I heard what you told Lilly about the stepfather. He sounds like a real creep.”

“Totally,” I agreed.

Peter, Ruby, and I got up a game of Chutes and Ladders, which I played absentmindedly, all the while trying to decide whether to act on the information Lilly had given me. Every time I landed on the boy stealing cookies or the girl coloring on the wall and had to slide my piece down a chute into a losing position, I felt like someone was trying to tell me something. Finally I decided that the only responsible thing to do was let the police know what I had discovered and leave it at that. Let Detective Carswell do his job.

After losing to Ruby as usual (Peter placed a distant third), I called the detective. I managed, miraculously, to find him at his desk.

“Detective Carswell? This is Juliet Applebaum. We spoke about the Hathaway affair, if you recall.”

“Yes, Mrs. . . . er, Ms. Applebaum. I do recall our conversation.”

“I have some more information for you.”

“Relevant information?”

Was it just to me, or was this guy this sarcastic to everyone he dealt with?

“Yes,
relevant
information. At least I think it’s relevant,” I answered, trying to keep my own voice as neutral as possible. The detective obviously thought I was a hysterical
ninny, and I didn’t want to give him any more fuel to add to his snide little fire.

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of the information’s relevance,” the detective said.

I gritted my teeth with irritation. Why is it that a certain kind of man thinks that just because you happen to be a mother you also are necessarily an idiot? In my prior incarnation as a criminal defense attorney, I had grown used to being taken seriously. Very seriously. Prosecutors might not like what I had to say, and they might not be willing to give my clients the deals I wanted, but they never condescended to me. Now, suddenly, just because I had doffed my barrister’s wig and donned a housewife’s kerchief, people like Detective Carswell thought they could pat me on the head and send me on my way.

“Well, Detective Carswell, how do you judge the relevance of the fact that Abigail Hathaway and her husband were going through serious marital difficulties and, in fact, were considering divorce?”

That got his attention.

“How do you know this? Who told you about this? How reliable is your source?” His sentences tumbled out in a rush.

Well, well, well. Now I was suddenly someone with sources.

“The information is very reliable. Ms. Hathaway and her husband were seeing a marital counselor named Herma Wang. According to Dr. Wang, they were in serious trouble, perhaps enough to lead them to divorce.”

“And you spoke to Dr. Wang?”

“No,
I
didn’t speak to her. A mutual friend and onetime patient of hers spoke to her and was told about this.”

“The psychiatrist discussed the case with your friend?”

“Yes and no.”

“Yes and no?”

“Yes, they discussed the case, but Dr. Wang, who’s a psychologist, by the way, kept the conversation hypothetical. It was clear who she was talking about, however.”

“Clear to whom?”

“To my friend.”

“And who is this friend?”

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge that information. I promised my ‘source’ confidentiality.”