Murder Plays House

by Ayelet Waldman

“Cool outfit,” I said, wondering if I shouldn’t hire her out to Felix. She seemed to have his style down pat.

  She leaned back in her chair and gazed at her handiwork appraisingly. “It’s okay. Mom?”

  “What?”

  “I need a belly button pierce.”

  I lifted my eyes from my stomach and stared at my six-year-old, dumbfounded. “You need what?”

  “I need a belly button pierce. Like Barbie.” She pointed at her design. It was only then that I noticed that she’d decorated the doll with a thick gold hoop where her belly button would be. The thing is, though, Barbie is not particularly anatomically correct, and Ruby’s ring sat on an empty expanse of virtual belly.

  “You don’t need your navel pierced, kid.”

  “Yes I do!” she said. “Barbie has one!” She poked the screen with one indignant finger.

  “First of all, Barbie isn’t real. She’s a doll. And that’s just a picture of a doll that you made. And anyway, if she were real, Barbie would be a lot older than you, Ruby.”

  “But I’d look really good with a belly button pierce.” She lifted up her shirt and showed off her delicious rounded stomach. I scooped her up in my arms and kissed her exactly where she’d hoped to impale a bit of metal.

  “Mom!” she objected.

  “Sweetie, we’re not having this argument. You’re not getting your pupik pierced, and that’s that.”

  “Pupik is not an English word, mama.”

  “I know sweetie. It’s Yiddish. It’s what your Bubbe and Zayde call a belly button.”

  She sat up in my lap and gazed at me, her expression carefully devoid of expression. “Okay, well. How about earrings?”

  I stared back at her. Had this all been a ploy to get me to agree to pierce her ears? Was my little girl capable of that kind of craftily sophisticated manipulation?

  “When you’re twelve, Ruby. You know that.”

  She groaned in frustration and heaved herself off my lap. “When I’m twelve? I can’t wait that long! I might already be ugly when I’m twelve! I might be . . .” she paused for dramatic effect. “I might be fat!” She whispered the word, as though it were too horrible even to say out loud. I could have been imagining it, but I swear she shot a horrified glance at the stomach peeping out from underneath my too-small shirt.

  I was saved from launching into a defense of my prenatal weight gain by the chirping of the telephone. Peter had reprogrammed all the ringers on our various phones so they did anything but ring. They beeped, they twittered, they squawked.

  I left Ruby to her fashion design and went to answer the phone. Kat didn’t even bother to say hello.

  “She says if I even talk to them she’ll force me to manage rental units for the next thirty years.”

  “What?” I asked, perplexed.

  “Nahid. My mother-in-law. My boss,” she snarled. “She caught me going through the computer looking for Felix’s phone number. She freaked. I mean, freaked.”

  “Why? What did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything.” Kat paused. “Okay, I told her that we’d decided to approach Felix to see if he’d be interested in a quiet sale.”

  “You what?” I’m ashamed to say I shouted. “Why? Why would you tell her?”

  “You don’t understand the woman,” Kat shouted back. “She’s a djinn! I couldn’t help it. I had to tell her.”

  Now, Peter’s mother and I weren’t friends. I had never managed to muster sufficient interest in her Hummel figurine and Beanie Baby collections even to feign a relationship. Did I think Peter’s mother was crazy? Sure. Did I find her irritating? Definitely. But even I had never thought of the woman who insisted on being called “Mother Wyeth” as being a demon capable of assuming both human and animal form. But then, perhaps I’d change my tune if I had to work for her.

  “It’s okay,” I said to Kat.

  “No it’s not,” she groaned. “You loved that house. We’ll never find you anything like it again.”

  “Spoken like a true real estate agent.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  We both sighed at the same time, and then giggled half-heartedly.

  “I’m not giving up,” I said.

  “I am.”

  “Look, I’m not afraid of Nahid. She can’t hurt me, I’m not married to her son.”

  “But I can’t get Felix’s number. And even if I could, I can’t give you any kind of introduction. She’d kill me.”

  “There’s got to be another way to get to him. Once he hires me, what’s she going to do?”

  “Sic the forces of evil on you. Curse you and all your progeny for a thousand years.” Kat didn’t exactly sound like she was kidding, but I laughed anyway.

  “You, butt out, okay?” I said. “You’re no longer involved. The next thing you’re going to do is cash your commission check. Other than that, you’re an innocent bystander.”

  She grunted. “Yeah, she’ll believe that.”

  “She’ll have to. It’s the truth.”

  I hung up the phone and peeked a head into the kitchen. “How long until dinner?” I asked. Peter and Isaac were lying on their backs on the kitchen floor, their faces covered with flattened pancakes of raw pizza dough.

  “Like, ten minutes,” my husband said, his voice muffled.

  “We’re monsters that don’t have any faces!” Isaac said, lifting up a corner of his mask. “Get it?”

  “I do. You definitely scared me.”

  “But you didn’t scream!”

  I obliged with a howl of shock and fear, and went back out to the living room. After a minute, I dialed my friend Stacy, the one person I knew who was sure to have a way in to Felix.

  Stacy and I have been friends since college, when our competitive natures and single-minded ambition forced us either to become enemies or intimates. We’d chosen the latter, and had spoken pretty much every day for the last seventeen years. We’d gone to graduate school together at Harvard—me to the law school and Stacy to the business school. She’d moved out to LA as soon as she’d graduated, taking a job at ICA, one of Hollywood’s top agencies. She’d soared up through the ranks, swiftly becoming a star at the agency. Through the first years of our careers we were pretty evenly matched, Stacy and I, although she always made much more money than I did. Despite that financial disparity, we excelled at more or less the same pace. I won my first jury trial, Stacy signed her first major star. I appeared on NPR to discuss a Ninth Circuit appeal, she did an interview for Entertainment Tonight about hot young women directors. Unlike me, however, Stacy had not let pregnancy and parenting derail her career. She’d limited herself to one child, Zachary, who was brilliant and accomplished enough for a whole pack of siblings. Zach had inherited his mother’s looks—he was sharp-faced and attractive, with the same thick head of dark brown hair growing low on his forehead that I vaguely remembered Stacy sporting before she’d begun dying it a succession of glittering tones. She had been a honey blond for years, and had lately taken to wearing her hair swept up in an artfully messy bun at the top of her head, clipped with one or two antique marcasite hair clasps.

  It took a moment to convince Stacy’s new assistant that she should put me through to her boss. I’ve been known to keep a pair of pantyhose longer than Stacy keeps one of these poor young things. They never last more than a few months—she chews them up and spits them out, much the worse for wear. To my friend’s credit, however, her assistants invariably end up moving up the ranks of the ICA hierarchy, or into a better job at a studio or production company. The assistants might have a miserable few months in Stacy’s employ, but she prepares them for a career in Hollywood, and she champions them forever after. Los Angeles is full of her castoffs, and no matter how severe their nervous twitches, or how bad their cases of hives, once they move on to bigger and better things they remember her, if not fondly, then with respect and admiration.

  “Jules!” Stacy shouted. “I just got back from the Manolo Blahnik trunk show
at Neiman’s!”

  “Lucky you,” I replied, wishing that I, too, could indulge in the purchase of a pair of three hundred and fifty dollar stiletto heels I’d have no opportunity to wear. I have, I’m afraid, something of a shoe problem. For a woman who spends her life in maternity smocks and overalls, I have a rather stunning collection of pumps and strappy sandals. As indulgences go, it’s not so bad, is it? And anyway, since I’d discovered eBay, my shoe fetish had come to be satisfied with bargain basement bidding.

  Once I’d managed to divert my friend’s attentions from the delightful distraction of overpriced footwear, I said, “Felix. The designer. You know him?”

  “Booty Rags? Of course. He’s a friend.” She paused. “Anyway, I’ve met him once or twice. On the phone. He dressed Fiona.” Fiona Rytler was one of Stacy’s latest mega stars, a waiflike blond with a classical Shakespearian education and a talent for comedy.

  “He dressed her?”

  “Yup. For the MTV Movie Awards. He had her in this amazing black dress, like a spider web. Didn’t you see it?”

  “Uh, Stace?”

  “Right, right. What was I thinking? You don’t watch award shows.”

  Peter and I had long ago made a vow that we wouldn’t watch the Oscars or any of the other of the multitude of award shows unless and until he was nominated for one. I had a feeling we’d be spending the Oscar nights of our golden years catching reruns of The Rockford Files on TV Land.

  “Anyway, we were on the phone for weeks working out the dress. He’s a sweetheart.”

  “Can you call him for me?”

  “Why?” she asked, suspiciously.

  I explained about my investigation.

  “Oh, Juliet. When are you going to give this nonsense up? I mean, you can’t possibly be making any money at it, can you?”

  “We’re doing fine,” I said, barely managing to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I knew Stacy had my best interest at heart, but she didn’t approve of my burgeoning career as an investigator. She, like my mother, felt I should be working at what I was really good at: keeping criminals out of jail. She was convinced that I was wasting my time hanging out with the kids and playing at being a private eye. She was probably right, as I freely admitted to her. Still, I reassured myself that, unlike Zachary, my kids have never had to play a game of soccer with the nanny cheering from the sidelines, and no one else there to notice. In my more content moments I was confident that I didn’t want to exchange that for Stacy’s glittering career, no matter how bored and frustrated I found myself.

  “Really? I mean, I can’t imagine there’s any money in the investigation business.”

  “Of course there is!” I said, refraining from mentioning that Al and I weren’t earning any of it. “We bill out at more or less what an attorney charges. It’s a great part-time job.”

  “But do you have any clients? I mean, paying clients?”

  “Well, I might have one if you would just call Felix for me!”

  “Is that it? You mean you have no other clients at all?”

  I gritted my teeth. “We’re doing fine, Stacy. I told you. We’re in a bit of dry spell now, but it will pass.”

  She clucked her tongue sympathetically and I gripped the phone receiver to keep from smashing it down in its cradle.

  “I’ll call Felix for you. But, Juliet?”

  “What?”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be. We’re doing great, Al and I.” I was plenty worried about us, myself. I didn’t need her help.

  Eight

  STACY’S intervention inspired in me a sartorial crisis the likes of which I’d never experienced before. I must have tried on every piece of maternity clothing in my closet before flinging the last stretched-out smock to the ground in a fit of pique.

  “Damn it!” I snarled.

  “Mama!” Ruby said, pretending to be horrified at my language. I rolled my eyes at her. Unless her teacher was lying, she knew worse words than that one, and felt free to use them on the playground.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Peter said from under the covers, where he and Isaac were building a fort out of blankets.

  The only time Felix could see me was on a Sunday morning. While the rest of my family was playing amidst the pillows and sprinkling bagel crumbs in the sheets, I was forced to confront the terrifying paucity of my wardrobe.

  “I have nothing to wear!” I wailed.

  “What are you talking about? You’ve got piles of clothes in there.”

  I’d been wearing the same maternity and nursing clothes for the past six years, with ever-increasing dissatisfaction; and now that I’d been sucked into a more stylish orbit, it seemed I had an emergency on my hands. I threw a rolled-up sock at my husband’s head. “Felix is a fashion designer! I can’t wear your old Fantastic Four T-shirt to a meeting with a fashion designer!”

  “So go buy something new,” he said, entirely unsympathetically. The few times in recent years that I’d had to buy clothes had been exercises more in humiliation than anything else. It was no fun to shop for my rapidly expanding and slowly deflating body, and I had decided just to wait until I was back to something approximating a normal size before I hit the boutiques again. I was obviously going to have to reevaluate that decision.

  I was on my way out the door when the telephone rang.

  “Please hold one minute for Mr. Brodsky.”

  A few moments later a deep voice purred into the phone: “Ms. Applebaum. I received your name and number from a mutual friend, Stacy Holland. I’m with the firm of Brodsky, Brodsky & Shapiro. I imagine you’ve heard of us?”

  I had. They were a fairly well-known entertainment law firm in the city, and were not infrequently cited in the trades. “Of course. What can I do for you?” I crossed every finger and toe, praying that he had a case for us.

  “My firm has lately been exploring the possibility of engaging in a relationship with an investigative office that specializes in criminal defense. The idea would be to have someone on call when our clients find themselves in unexpected difficulties. Difficulties that require a different kind of expertise to resolve than we possess.”

  I didn’t scream and shout in a combination of joy and relief, but that’s only because I clamped my lips shut.

  “What kind of difficulties?” I said calmly.

  He paused, and my stomach tightened. Had my question caused him to doubt me?

  “Perhaps situations where claims are made against your clients, either in the press or simply as rumor?” I asked.

  “That’s one kind of situation.”

  “And I imagine there are the occasional brushes with the criminal justice system; situations where hiring a defense attorney might be premature, but where an investigation might prove useful.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I think we can certainly help you,” I said. “My partner is an ex-police officer, and thus has both connections and experience that is invaluable in all kinds of different situations. And I am a criminal defense attorney, although I no longer practice in the courtroom. I can make sure that any investigation would not endanger future criminal defenses.”

  “That is what Ms. Holland led us to understand. She believes your firm would suit our needs nicely.”

  I sent a wordless blessing to Stacy.

  “Do you, perhaps, have any references?” Brodsky asked.

  I gave him Sandra’s name, but I could tell he wanted someone, well, glitzier. I told him I’d need to consult my clients before handing out their names, but I was sure that I’d have something for him. Lilly would talk to him, I just knew she would. And then I made a terrible mistake. It was an understandable error, born as it was of my desperation to close the deal, of my concern for Al, and for my own professional future, but I regretted the words as soon as they left my lips: “I’ve just taken on a rather high-profile case,” I said. “Of course I can’t go into detail, but it’s a murder investigation involving a number of well-k
nown individuals.”

  “A high-profile murder investigation? Going on right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Felix case? The murder of the fashion designer’s sister? You’re investigating that? I know Felix quite well. We represented a company that sought to acquire his a few years ago.”

  I gulped and said, “I’m so sorry; confidentiality prevents me from saying any more.”

  “Of course, of course. Well, Ms. Applebaum, that certainly is impressive. My partners and I will be watching to see how that case turns out. Why don’t we plan on speaking once things are resolved? At that point we’ll all have a good idea if working together would be in our mutual best interests.”

  It was all I could do to keep from strangling myself with the phone cord. Had I really all but told the man that I represented Felix? I had. And had he really made our hiring contingent on resolving Alicia’s murder? He had. Of course, Felix hadn’t even hired me yet, and even if he did, who knew if I was ever going to be able to solve the case? What a fool I was. What a complete and total fool.

  In a terrible funk, I made my way to Liz Lange, a maternity clothing store that was so expensive I’d never done more than casually browse the window displays. A meeting with the founder of Booty Rags justified a more intensive scrutiny of their wares, and my misery was more than enough excuse for some retail therapy. Thirty minutes and over two hundred dollars later I flounced out of the store wearing a tight, black, long-sleeved T-shirt that showed off my belly, and a grey skirt that did much the same to my rather corpulent behind. The salesgirl had assured me that tight clothes were in for pregnant woman. The idea, I guess, is to celebrate the vastness, not disguise it. Since I was well aware that any attempts at concealment were at best fruitless and at worst pathetic, I was ready to jump on the celebratory bandwagon. Still, I was not quite willing to buy myself a pair of maternity thong underpants—every girl has her limits. A pair of high-heeled black boots that I’d brought with me completed the ensemble, and I felt great, panty lines and all.

  The door to my dream house was answered by a small man with a thick shock of black hair and the largest brown eyes I’d ever seen in my life. His sooty lashes were so long they looked tangled, and his lips were full and red. He was beautiful, although certainly not traditionally handsome. He was far too petite for that. He looked like a miniature movie star, a fashion model writ two sizes smaller than normal.