The nanny murders (7 page)

What was happening to me? Couldn’t I just sit quietly and have a meal with my friend? Couldn’t I take even a brief break from the craziness around me? I should be able to; I was a therapist, a mental health professional, trained to deal with emotional problems.

But the fact was that I wasn’t dealing. I was tense, tired, and stressed. And Susan looked like I felt. Maybe even worse. She sat across the table, at once wired and haggard.

“Mom, can you find any forks in this picture?” Molly pointed to a puzzle on her place mat. Arthur the Squirrel couldn’t eat his
dinner without dishes and utensils, and they were all hidden in the drawing.

“I found it,” Emily bragged. She pointed to a tiny fork hidden in a tree branch. Molly leaned across the table to see, and the girls chattered, weaving a nonstop conversation.

Susan and I, though, were quiet. Susan’s mood pendulum seemed to have swung. After her impassioned rabble-rousing at gymnastics, she’d suddenly deflated. Her black hair hung limp, framing bloodshot eyes. Her skin had a grayish tone.

“Susan,” I asked, “you okay?”

She sighed. “As okay as any of us.”

“You look awful.”

“Thanks. I love you, too.”

“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“So who asked you to love me?” Her shoulders caved, and she let go of her menu. “You’re right, though. I’ve been a mess since Claudia. And now—Tamara? I adore those girls, Zoe.” Her eyes filled. “It’s just too much. I haven’t slept—I stay up thinking all night. About who took them. If they suffered. You know.”

I knew. We sat, silent and hurting.

“I didn’t know that Coach Gene asked Tamara out,” I finally said.

“Oh, please, Zoe. He asks them all out. Coach Gene likes anything that wiggles.”

“Coach Gene likes what, Mom?” Molly’s ears had perked up.

“He likes wiggles,” Emily explained. “You know.” She began, of course, to wiggle. Molly joined her, erupting into squirming giggles.

“Girls,” I rubbed my temples. “You’re shaking the booth.” “Emily,” Susan barked. “Sit still.”

The girls quieted, stifling laughter, and Susan and I settled back into our glumness.

“Last time I saw Tamara, she talked about you,” Susan said.

“About me?”

“She said she admired you. Called you a survivor.” Now I was the one blinking away tears. “A lot of single people adopt—”

“Why do you assume it’s about that? We were talking about strong women. She used you as an example of an old soul, strong because of—I don’t know—something about knowing how to flow with life instead of fighting it. Anyhow, she thought you must have lived many lives.”

What was she talking about? “Tamara’s always been a flake.”

“She said I should learn from you. That I waste energy by fighting battles that can’t be won.”

Then again, maybe not such a flake.

“Mom—I can’t find the cup.” Molly shoved the place mat in front of me.

“I’ll show you,” Emily offered. “Here’s a hint. Look near his tail.”

Molly continued to search. “How come you can find everything?”

“Cuz I’m older than you.” “When’s your birthday?”

Their conversation went on, traveling its separate path, occasionally crossing ours. Molly opened her mouth to display her loose baby tooth, Emily to introduce two emerging permanent ones.

“By the way, I asked Ed about your detective.” Ed was a cop, one of Susan’s pals in Homicide.

My detective? “Stiles?” I saw him at my door, his eyes sizing me up. I still hadn’t found out why he’d called. He hadn’t called back. Maybe he hadn’t gotten my message. I should try to call again.

“He’s new in town. A hotshot from Baltimore. Has degrees in criminology and psychology and every other ology Ed could
think of, and he’s heading the nanny investigation, which has all the guys who are senior to him, which is basically everybody, pretty pissed off. Apparently, he does things his own way or no way, isn’t exactly a cop’s cop. But he’s supposed to be smart.”

“So what did Ed say about the finger?”

Susan’s voice was flat. Listless. “They haven’t matched the print yet, but Ed said it’s gotta be one of the nannies’. I didn’t say this to the others, but the cops figure those girls are dead.”

Tamara blinked from behind the sugar bowl. I looked away, at Emily and Molly. They were engrossed in their games, holding their parallel conversation, cheerful. Oblivious.

“No wonder you haven’t slept.”

“It’s not only the nannies. I’m stressed out. I scream at the girls. Lisa asks me to help with her homework and I scream. Julie wants a ride somewhere and I scream. I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping. The plumbing leaks upstairs so we’ve got to redo the master bath and the ceiling under it, and we need a new roof. I’ve got those three felony cases, more coming up. My caseload’s staggering. Tim’s out of town again, has to be in L.A. off and on, commuting back and forth, probably through March. Bonita won’t be back until next week, and the sitter who’s filling in has to leave early every day but Thursday, the one day a week I don’t need her to stay. I want to scream.”

I sat with my hands clasped, holding on. As long as I’d known her, Susan had been on overload, managing the many and complicated levels of her life tirelessly, with grace and aplomb. She could be passionate and scathingly articulate, but never frazzled. She could multitask, multitalk, and multithink. She’d been my support during my divorce, the adoption, the millions of times I’d needed a shoulder or a friend. To me, she defined stability, capability, dependability. She was my rock.

But now, she was imploding. Coming apart.

Susan looked at her hand and studied her wedding ring, her
brow furrowed. I knew, by her expression, that there was more. She was deciding how much to reveal. “Go on,” I said. “What?”

She looked up, all innocence. “What do you mean, ‘what’?” “What else?”

“Nothing else. So,” she dodged, changing the subject, “how’s work?”

“Work’s fine. Don’t change the subject.”

“What subject. We weren’t talking about anything.”

I didn’t know whether to press the topic or let it go, wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do. This was a new situation for us. Suddenly, I smelled flowers.

“Ready?”

No, not flowers. I smelled Gladys, the waitress. Her lily of the valley toilet water.

Gladys didn’t like waiting and punctuated passing seconds by batting her false lashes. She had large hands with long, silver sculpted nails, silver rings on every finger.

“Can I have a milk shake, Mom?”

“Can we get onion rings?”

Normally, it was Susan who ordered. She naturally assumed the alpha position. Top dog, head hen, queen bee. But now, even menu items were beyond her; she had no capacity for making choices. Gladys tapped her nails on the order pad, shifted her pen, rolled her eyes, and glowered until, finally, I managed to spit out the names of enough dishes and drinks to feed the four of us and probably half the people in the place.

Gladys scribbled on her pad and snorted off.

“I’m starving.” Molly whined. “How long till the food comes?”

“Don’t whine,” I said. “You’re not starving. You don’t even know what starving is.”

“Yes, I do. It’s dying of hunger. And I am.”

I didn’t want to get into it with her. “Hang on. It’ll be here
soon.” She complained some more but gave up after a while, when I didn’t respond. She and Emily began a hidden-word place-mat game.

“I see one. P-I-G. That spells pig.”

Molly had sounded it out. I kissed her as Emily, ever competitive, declared that she’d found D-O-G first. I returned my attention to Susan.

“It’s really nothing.” It took a second to figure out what she was talking about. She’d picked up our conversation exactly where we’d left it.

“What’s nothing?”

She fidgeted with her silverware. “It’s no big deal, Zoe. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?” Obviously, she did. “Talking won’t do any good.”

“Susan, please don’t say that to a therapist. It’s like telling a lawyer that suing won’t do any good.”

“You’re an art therapist, not a talk therapist. I didn’t knock making pottery or mosaics.”

“Okay. Don’t tell me.”

“I’ve had some nightmares, that’s all.”

“Nightmares?” Susan had my attention. I was, after all, an expert on nightmares, having had my share. I knew what it was to wake up sweating, caught in the talons of a bad dream.

“All week. Since Claudia. I’ve just been rattled.”

Except that Susan didn’t rattle. She dealt with murders and murderers every day. Reality, even brutality, didn’t shake her.

“Dreams can seem more real than reality,” I said.

She nodded. “I don’t sleep. That’s the main thing. I’m so tired.”

I couldn’t help playing therapist. “Do the nightmares come only when Tim’s out of town?” “No. It’s not like that.”

“Well, do you know what sets them off? PMS, maybe? Or the moon? Your diet? Trial dates?”

“No, no. They just began the other night. After Claudia.” She stopped, irritated, wanting the topic to go away. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“But if they’re so bad that you’re not functioning—”

“It’s no big deal. It’s just temporary. Stress. I’ll manage. Let’s forget I brought it up? And, please, don’t repeat this—”

“Repeat it? Why would I—”

“I know you wouldn’t. It’s stupid to say that. But I have trouble enough being taken seriously around the Justice Center—I’d be finished if anyone knew about this. Not even Tim knows.”

“Susan. There’s nothing shameful about having nightmares.”

“Yes, there is. For a criminal lawyer, there is.”

She glanced at the girls, making sure they were absorbed in their own banter. “See, they’re about the crimes. The victims.” Susan looked at her hands, studied her manicure. “They, uh, come back in the night. Every night, since Claudia disappeared. They’re after me, as if it’s my fault they’re dead. They blame me.”

“Blame you? For what?”

She looked at me as if I were addled. “For what. For defending their killers. For getting their killers off so they can go free.”

“Oh,” I nodded. “That’s scary.” A macabre chortle slipped out my mouth.

The girls, finished with the puzzles, began discussing what colors to make Arthur and his shirt and pants.

Susan went on. “Zoe, they stalk me. They’re broken, cut, shot, slashed—however they were when they were found. That black kid who was beaten to death? He follows me—he just walks into my dreams with his head bashed in, leaking brains.”

Okay. That was scary. “Jeez, Susan.”

“This has never happened to me before, not in thirteen years of criminal defense work. Dealing with crime and grit is my job.
I defend the accused, no matter how sleazy—guilty or innocent, violent or benign. I’ve seen it all, defended it all. But suddenly it’s coming back to haunt me. I see death, victims, corpses every time I doze off.”

Susan’s voice was getting louder and higher as she talked. Emily and Molly stopped talking and watched her, and the two men in the booth behind her cocked their heads, listening.

“See, in our country everybody has the right—and I believe that they should have the right, guilty or innocent—to be represented by counsel who present their best possible defense. That’s how our legal system works. But lately—”

“Shhh
—Mom, you’re shouting,” Emily shouted.

Susan leaned across the table, whispering now. The men in the booth behind her leaned back, straining to hear. “Lately—Zoe— don’t tell anyone, but I want to see my own clients fry. I see what they’ve done to their victims and I can barely sit in a room to interview them. How am I supposed to argue for their defense?”

I didn’t know. I reached over and squeezed her arm.

“Zoe, you realize you’re the only one I can talk to about this.”

Molly and Emily stared at her, twin wide-eyed expressions. One of the men behind Susan took our lull in conversation as an opportunity to turn around and gape. I met his eyes; he turned back and hunkered into his seat.

“Susan,” I said softly, “maybe you’re burned out. Maybe you need a break. A sabbatical. Look at all the pressure on you. I mean, forget about the nanny situation. In normal circumstances, you’ve got three kids, a house, a traveling husband, unreliable child care, a job that people’s lives depend on. One minute you’re helping a kid with long division and the next you’re trying to save a guy from lethal injection. Most people make mistakes at work and so what? They have to retype a page or they lose a sale. But if you make a mistake, somebody goes to jail for years—or gets the needle. That’s pressure.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Her voice was a subdued wail.

“Maybe the dreams are your mind’s way of telling you to take a break and think about your own needs for a change.” I sounded confident and assured. It was easy to give advice, but my advice was pure fluff. Susan’s crisis had not been brought on by overwork or pressure; it had started specifically with Claudia’s disappearance. And it wasn’t going to stop just because she took some time off work or got a weekly massage.

“Lisa wants to quit piano. And Julie’s begun to lie. About the stupidest things, like whether or not she’s been to Disney World. Does she think I don’t know the truth?”

“Yeah, Julie lies to me, too,” Emily chimed in, suddenly part of our conversation. Molly looked up attentively.

“She does?” Susan’s voice was unimpressed.

“Yesterday, she said there was a dead bird in the backyard, but there wasn’t. And she ate the last pudding pop and said she didn’t.” Emily continued coloring while listing offenses. “And know what? She said somebody’s stealing all the babysitters. Julie’s such a liar.”

Susan became even more gray.

“How can someone steal a babysitter?” Emily shook her head, as if the concept were ridiculous.

“What, Mom? What did Emily say?” Molly tugged at my arm. “What did she mean, ‘somebody’s stealing babysitters’?”

“It’s just a lie,” Emily declared.

Susan fumbled for an answer.

“Mom? Billy said Tamara went away. Did she get stealed?” “Stolen,” I said.

“Did she? Will the stealer steal Angela?” “No, of course not—”