Nursery Crimes (19 page)

I actually intended to tell Carswell about how Nina Tiger had found me going through her mailbox, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was, after all, a crime, and I hope I can be forgiven for failing to confess it to a police officer. Detective Carswell didn’t
need
to know that I’d broken into her mailbox or that I’d had a confrontation with her. It wouldn’t help or hurt his case any. I was rationalizing and I knew it, but I couldn’t help myself.

Detective Carswell and his partner made me go over everything a second time and then rose to leave.

“Wait!” I said. “What are you going to do now?”

The two cops glanced at each other. “We’ll review this information and have our computer experts track Mooney’s Internet activities,” Carswell said.

“And then?”

“Well, if it all checks out, if we’re convinced from the evidence that this was murder and not a hit-and-run accident, and if we can convince the judge that the evidence against him amounts to probable cause, then we’ll get a warrant and arrest Daniel Mooney.”

I couldn’t resist. “Pretty relevant information, after all, don’t you think?”

Carswell looked at me for a moment. Then, miraculously,
his stony face cracked into a smile. “Pretty relevant after all,” he agreed.

“Ms. Applebaum, it’s very important that you tell no one of the things you have discovered. We don’t want to take the chance that word will get to the suspect before we’re absolutely ready to act on this information,” he continued.

“Right. Of course. I was a public defender. I know how it works.”

At that piece of information Carswell’s partner looked really worried.

“Ms. Applebaum, your defense prejudice isn’t going to influence you, is it?” the young officer asked.

This steamed me. “Look, I just spent who knows how much time and energy trying to prove that this guy killed his wife! Why would I blow it now?”

Somewhat mollified, the two detectives left our house.

T
HE
next morning, Ruby woke me up earlier than normal. I plopped her in front of
Sesame Street
and headed out to the curb to get the newspaper. Cursing the delivery boy who had once again tossed the paper directly onto one of our sprinkler heads, I threaded my way, barefoot, over the grass. I picked up the soggy paper by one corner and went back inside. I tossed the paper into the oven and turned it on to about 200 degrees. I figured that as long as I stayed well below the famous Fahrenheit 451, nothing would burst into flames. I made myself a cup of tea, microwaved a few pancakes for Ruby, and settled down at the kitchen counter. Hoping that the paper was dry, I reached in with an oven mitt, grabbed it by a corner, and pulled it out. And then I started shouting.

“Peter! Peter!”

My husband came tearing out of the bedroom, stark naked.

“The baby? Is it the baby?”

I shoved the paper into his hands. He screamed and dropped it.

“Ouch! That’s hot!” he howled.

“Oh. Sorry. Look! Look at the front page!”

He leaned over the floor and read aloud, “Nursery School Teacher’s Husband Arrested for Murder!”

“They arrested him!”

“I can see that.”

Carswell wouldn’t give me any more information when I called him, so whatever I know I learned from that front-page article in the
Los Angeles Times.
Abigail Hathaway’s own car matched the description of the one that had run her down; she drove a two-year-old Mercedes sedan, black. Her car wasn’t at home, and when asked about it, Daniel Mooney apparently claimed to have assumed it was at the school. He said he hadn’t bothered to look for it after she’d been killed. But it wasn’t in the nursery school parking lot. The police searched the city, but unsurprisingly, it was nowhere to be found. The newspaper speculated that if the car had been abandoned after the murder, particularly if the keys had been left in the ignition, one or another of Los Angeles’s hyperefficient car theft rings would have had it lifted, painted, and on its way to Mexico or China within a couple of hours.

So there it was: Abigail was murdered by her own husband, driving her own car.

Peter and I read the newspaper article together, sitting side by side at the kitchen table. Reading about the crime, I felt this weird combination of sadness for Abigail and her poor daughter, and satisfaction at a job well done. It was sort of like what I’d felt after winning a trial. I’d be feeling on top of the world, proud of my success, and flying high on my ego. Then I’d look over to the family of the victim, or the victim himself, and feel a little deflated.
Sure, my client had gotten off because I’d done such a good job of convincing the jury of his lack of guilt or of the victim’s complicity. But criminal law isn’t a computer game. It isn’t just a question of winning or losing and racking up points. My victory meant that someone else lost. When that someone was just the government—if, for example it was a drug case and nobody except the DEA cared if my client was convicted—then it was easy to revel in my success. But often enough, my clients had actually hurt someone. It was a heck of a lot harder to find myself happy about winning their freedom under those circumstances.

I felt a similar bittersweetness that morning. Yes, I succeeded. I’d found Abigail’s murderer. But while Audrey was surely a lot safer with her stepfather behind bars, she was still an orphan, now more than ever.

“Maybe I should give Audrey a call,” I said. “She’s probably at her friend Alice’s house.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Peter answered.

I reached for the phone, but before I even dialed, it rang.

“Hello?”

“Juliet! This is Audrey! Isn’t this awesome! Isn’t this just totally bitchin’ what happened to Danny? That nimrod’s in jail! He is
in jail
!” Audrey was positively giddy.

“Yes, I guess it’s awesome. But how are you doing? You must be pretty freaked out by this all.” I looked over at Peter and mouthed silently, “Audrey.” He nodded.

“Freaked out? No way! I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life! He is G-O-N-E gone! Out of my life forever!” she shouted.

“So what are you going to do now?” I asked her.

“My aunt’s flying in tonight, so I guess I’ll just stay at home with her. I’ve gotta decide about New Jersey. What do you think I should do?”

I thought for a moment. “I guess I think you should go. New Jersey’s not so bad. It’s close to New York!”

“Hey! I didn’t think of that. New York. Now,
that
would be bitchin’.”

I laughed. “I guess it would. It sure can be. Promise me you’ll keep in touch, okay?”

“Definitely! What’s your E-mail address? I’ll E-mail you!”

What would the world be like without the Internet? I wonder. How did we ever survive, a mere five years ago, before everyone had her very own E-mail account?

I gave Audrey my E-mail address, and she promised to write. I hung up the phone.

“She’s staying with her friend until her aunt comes,” I said.

“How did she sound?”

“Relieved. Happy really,” I said. “I’m just glad she’s safe.”

The phone rang again. It was Stacy.

“Can you believe this?” she positively shrieked.

“Yes, actually because—”

“And you thought it was Bruce LeCrone! Ha. Please!”

“Well, actually, I was the one who—”

“Like Bruce would do that. Really. But her husband! I always knew that there was something fishy about—”

“Stacy! If you’d just shut up for a moment, I’ll tell you how I solved this murder!”

That shut her up. I described the events of the past week or so to Stacy, lingering over details of my derring-do. Once again I kept Julio out of it, as I’d promised Al, but no other element of the story was spared my dramatization. By the end of my tale I’d actually managed to leave Stacy speechless. I think that’s the first time that anyone has ever accomplished that. My story complete, I
said good-bye, hung up the phone and looked complacently over at Peter.

“Uh, Juliet, didn’t Detective Carswell ask you not to reveal any details of the investigation?” he said.

I blanched. “I totally forgot. Do you think it’s okay? Do you think Stacy will tell anyone?”

He looked at me.

I answered my own question. “Of course she will. Oh, no no no no.”

I immediately dialed her number, but got voice mail. She had already begun to broadcast. I left a frantic message, begging her not to tell a soul. She was definitely going to ignore it, but it was the best I could do. I put my head down on the kitchen counter and moaned. “I had to tell the single biggest gossip in Los Angeles. I hope this doesn’t get back to Carswell.”

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Peter said, patting my head. “Stacy and the detective don’t exactly travel in the same circles. It’ll probably be fine.”

I didn’t make the same mistake again. Both Al and Jerome called me that morning, and I remained discreet, expressing only my happiness that Daniel Mooney had been apprehended and nothing else. I didn’t let my guard down until I heard from Lilly Green.

Lilly called me from her car phone.

“Juliet! I just got my nails done and I’m right around the corner from you. Meet me for a cup of coffee at the Living Room and tell me everything about your murder!”

I threw a baseball cap on over my hair, quickly dragged on a pair of leggings and one of Peter’s flannel shirts, and promising Ruby and Peter that I would not be gone long, rushed out the door. As I was tearing up the block on my way to meet Lilly at the homey little café she favored, it occurred to me to wonder if I would have
dropped everything so quickly for a friend who wasn’t a famous, Oscar-winning movie star. Just how starstruck was I? I couldn’t answer the question and decided not to bother trying. I liked Lilly, and if I also liked being seen with her, well, that didn’t make me any worse or any better than the rest of Los Angeles. In L.A., being starstruck is one’s civic duty.

By the time I got to the café, huffing and puffing and beet-red with the exertion of my block-and-a-half walk, Lilly was already there, lounging on an overstuffed sofa, sipping a latté out of a cup the size of a basketball. She wore a pair of jeans and an old, ratty turtleneck sweater. Her hair was casually wound around her head and held in place with a chopstick. She looked gorgeous. I sighed for a moment, imagining just how beautiful I looked right then, exploding out of Peter’s old shirt, my leggings fraying at the seams with the effort of containing the bulk of my thighs. Silently repeating my mantra “I’m not fat, I’m pregnant,” I gave Lilly a hug and sank down next to her on the couch.

“Nonfat latte,” I said to the rail-thin young thing who had instantly appeared to take my order. I got service like that only when I was with Lilly. Alone, I’d have been waiting for hours.

“Decaf?” she asked, except it sounded like “detaf” because she was having difficulty talking through the large silver stud embedded in her tongue.

“No. Caf-caf,” I said.

The waitress looked disapprovingly at my belly and turned away.

“Lilly, can I bum a cigarette? Or a line of cocaine?” I asked, loud enough for the waitress to hear. Her back stiffened and she hustled off. “Why is it everyone thinks they can tell a pregnant woman what to drink, eat, whatever?
I mean, for crying out loud, it’s only coffee. Women in France drink coffee and swill red wine the whole time they’re pregnant. No one bugs
them.
”

“Yes, but then they give birth to little Frenchmen.”

“Good point.”

“So, you were right about Abigail Hathaway’s husband!” Lilly said, getting to the point.

Once again conveniently forgetting my promise not to discuss the case with anyone, I filled Lilly in on my role in the arrest of Daniel Mooney.

“Herma Wang should have her license revoked,” Lilly said once I’d finished.

“Why?”

“For not figuring out that he was so violent, that’s why. She was perfectly willing to tell me that the family is in crisis and go on and on about all the suppressed rage, but did she put two and two together and realize someone was actually in danger? God forbid.”

“She told you that? What is she, the Liz Smith of shrinks? Confidentiality be damned—I know a movie star!”

“I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it? I can only imagine what she’s told people about
us.
” Lilly grimaced. “I’m doing my best just not to think about it.”

“She wouldn’t talk
about
you. She just likes talking
to
you. She’s telling you stuff so you’ll keep having lunch with her and she can tell people she’s friends with a movie star. It’s hardly unusual. I mean, look at me, running out of my house at a moment’s notice to meet you for coffee.”

Lilly laughed uncomfortably, not sure if I was kidding.

At that moment my coffee showed up. I slurped at it loudly, for the pierced waitress’s benefit.

“Anyway, what else did Wang tell you?” I asked.

“Oh, not much more than that. The family was having terrible problems. They were considering divorce. The daughter was acting out, having problems in school, hanging with a fast crowd. That kind of thing.”

“Audrey, she’s the daughter, is kind of a lost soul,” I said. “She has this horrible shaved and dyed hairdo that I’m sure she got just to torture her mother.”

“They did a lot of torturing of each other, according to Herma,” Lilly said. “Not a very easy relationship. Abigail had high expectations, and Audrey had a hard time fulfilling them, or something like that. Apparently Mooney and the girl didn’t like each other, and that was a source of real tension in the marriage.”

“High expectations? Sounds like every mother-daughter relationship I’ve ever heard of,” I said.

“Not mine.” Lilly sounded bitter. “My mother expected me to get pregnant at fifteen and spend my life living in a trailer park with six kids by six different men. She’s sorely disappointed that I’ve exceeded her expectations.”

“God, are our kids going to be sitting here in thirty years having this discussion about us?” I asked, imagining Ruby and the twins bemoaning our various flaws over latte or proton shakes or whatever they’ll be drinking then.