Murder Plays House

by Ayelet Waldman

  I had been, in fact, thinking exactly that. Two desperate women competing for the same last-chance role. What better motive for murder was there in Hollywood?

  “I can’t say I was particularly upset when she got killed,” Dakota continued. “You probably think that makes me a terrible person.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  Again I remained silent.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You should buy the shoes,” I said. With a last, longing look at the buttery crimson boots that were slowly cutting off the circulation to my feet, I tugged them off and put them back in the box.

  “I’m going to,” she said.

  “I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.”

  She smiled. “Me either.”

  By the time I returned to my men’s department, Peter was out of the dressing room and waiting for his purchases to be wrapped by the now-sycophantic salesclerk.

  “When you see this bill you are going to be so sorry,” my husband said.

  “Don’t worry about it. I just saved us four hundred dollars.”

  Nineteen

  I decided to visit Charlie Hoynes’s ex-wife not because I thought that anyone in her right mind would feel sufficiently rivalrous over ol’ Tracker’s affections to kill his current girlfriend—especially not when there seemed to be a virtual harem of skinny blond women at the man’s disposal—but because Hoynes had been so adamant about his ex-wife’s loathing of Alicia. I didn’t imagine that jealousy over your daughter’s affections provided quite the same motive as that over your lover’s or husband’s, but interviewing her seemed the only sensible thing to do.

  A few minutes on the web was enough to give me Barbara Hoynes’s home telephone number and address. She lived in Brentwood, plenty close enough to my house to warrant a quick trip while Peter was getting the kids to bed after dinner. It was too dark to see what ersatz architectural style Hoyne’s ex-wife had chosen for her house. Unlike most of her neighbors, Barbara hadn’t lit the front of her home with floodlights and tracking beams—or perhaps she simply hadn’t turned hers on. I could see enough to know that the place was large. She’d clearly come out well in the divorce, or had money of her own.

  The woman who answered the door looked nothing at all like the two other women with whom Hoynes had chosen to spend his time; neither did it seem like she’d ever looked like them, even when she was young. She was shorter, first of all, and a brunette. She hadn’t had the assistance of a plastic surgeon—on the contrary, Barbara Hoynes looked her age, and then some. She looked like a middle-aged woman who had spent many sleepless nights worrying about her daughter in the hospital.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, in the wary tone of a woman not looking forward to dealing with the demands of a late-night solicitor.

  Since I knew this was a woman who despised her ex-husband, I figured the easiest way to get her to talk to me was to align myself with her. “Ms. Hoynes, I’m so sorry to bother you in the evening. My name is Juliet Applebaum, and I’m investigating the circumstances of Alicia Felix’s death, particularly her relationship with Charlie Hoynes. I was hoping you would be willing to answer a few questions. Just as background really.”

  She gave a dry bark of laughter. “Is Charlie a suspect?”

  “It’s too early to rule anyone out, of course,” I said, letting rest the implication that I had any legitimate business drawing up lists of suspects.

  She leaned against the doorjamb, crossing her arms over her chest. “What do you want to know?”

  I put my hands to my back, which wasn’t aching more than usual, and winced. “Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked, looking vaguely around me. I was standing on the long flat porch, but there were no benches or chairs in evidence. I winced at the imaginary pain.

  Barbara was obviously fighting an internal battle. She didn’t want to ask me in, but neither did she want to force a pregnant woman to stand, sway-backed and uncomfortable, outside her door. Finally, she said, “Why don’t we just sit on the steps.” She checked the latch with one finger and then let the door slam shut behind her. Frustrated, I followed her down a step or two and settled myself next to her. Without the light from inside the house, I could only just barely see her face.

  “Did you know Alicia Felix?” I asked.

  “I never met her, no.”

  “Had your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  I did my best to make out her expression in the dim light from the streetlamps. The moon was far too thin and too high in the sky to be of much use. “Were they friendly?” I asked, pretending I’d heard nothing from Hoynes himself.

  Barbara didn’t answer, and I could swear I could see the knot of her jaw working, as if she were gritting her teeth. Finally, she said, “My ex-husband takes a sick pride in parading his girlfriends in front of his teenage daughter. Alicia Felix was just one of them. I doubt Halley thought much about her at all.”

  I considered this, and decided to confront her with at least part of what Hoynes had told me. “I was under the impression that Halley was a bit closer to Alicia. That they had some things in common.”

  This time, Barbara’s voice came suddenly, and harshly. “In common? No. No, they had nothing in common. That woman did her best to worm herself into my daughter’s affections, but they had nothing in common.”

  “Your ex-husband made a statement that Alicia was helping Halley in her battle with anorexia.” Well, it was a statement. Not sworn, true, but a statement nonetheless.

  Barbara leapt to her feet. “Helping her? Helping her? Is that what that miserable son of a bitch said? Exactly how was that wretched woman helping my child? By traipsing around in front of her like some kind of human skeleton? By giving her lessons in how to starve herself to death? What kind of help is that? What does he think, that Alicia was some kind of role model for Halley? Is he out of his mind?”

  I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, she wrenched the front door open.

  “I don’t need to talk to you anymore. None of this has anything to do with me, or my daughter. Charlie Hoynes is a sick cretin, and I’d bet every dime I have that he’s the one who murdered that horrible woman.” She slammed the door, leaving me sitting on the steps in the dark.

  Twenty

  THE next morning, for lack of anything better to do, I called Dr. Calma’s office. It would have been only marginally more difficult for this particular chubby, pregnant Jewish girl from New Jersey to get an audience with the pope than with the plastic surgeon to the stars. It took an entire morning to get beyond the receptionist’s assistant or perhaps it was the receptionist’s assistant’s receptionist—anyway, when I did finally reach the woman, I was told that Dr. Calma had no time to speak to anyone, especially not someone investigating a murder, and that he had, in fact, just turned away an interviewer from Redbook magazine. Dr. Calma was being profiled in Vanity Fair, and even other periodicals were simply too prosaic and pedestrian for the great man to waste his time with, so who exactly did I think I was?

  Out of desperation, I called back, and, hiding my voice by reinvigorating the New Jersey accent I’d long ago lost, tried make an appointment. That inspired a bout of pitying mirth. Wasn’t I aware, the receptionist asked, that without a personal referral the wait to see His Gloriousness was nearly six months? And that even with a letter from a previous patient I’d be lucky to get in before the summer? My obvious frustration inspired a brief but inspiring lecture on the desirability of Dr. Calma’s talents.

  Finally, just as I was about to fling the phone to the floor in frustration, the woman said, “Please hold.”

  I nearly hung up. I’m not sure what kept me on the line, but within a few moments the woman came back. “My goodness, this is your lucky day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That was Dr. Calma’s nine thirty-five. She has a callback this morning for a Spielberg film. She canceled, even though I told her that Dr.
Calma wouldn’t see her again if she did. So if you can be here in twenty-two minutes, the appointment is yours.”

  I managed to get dressed, drop the kids off at school, and make it to Beverly Hills in just under half an hour. Thank God the good doctor had valet parking, because if I’d had to troll the streets looking for a space I would have been even later. As it was, the scowl on the receptionist’s face when I walked in at nine forty-three made me feel like a misbehaving schoolgirl.

  She pursed her lips and gazed ostentatiously at the clock.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “Lucky for you the doctor is a bit behind schedule, otherwise you would have forfeited your appointment.”

  She handed me a clipboard, and I took it to a long, white couch. There were at least fifteen women waiting to see the doctor, and there was only one seat left in the crowded room. They were mostly of a certain age, although a few were quite young. I figured the younger women for breast enhancement or liposuction. Most of the older women looked as though they had already had those procedures. They were surely in for facelifts, although it was difficult to imagine why they thought they needed them. Surprisingly, I wasn’t the only pregnant woman in the room, although I was certainly the largest. The other two were the olive-on-a-toothpicks one sees in Los Angeles gyms, stairmastering away any semblance of a pregnant body.

  I glanced down at the clipboard in my hand. It was the usual patient information sheet. I debated handing it back to the receptionist and letting her know that I was just interested in talking to the doctor, but frankly the woman scared me. I laboriously recorded my history of caesarian sections, my father’s heart disease, my mother’s high blood pressure. By the time I was done I had acquired a whole host of psychosomatic ailments. Headaches, backaches, nausea. I was trying to decide whether I saw spots—I sort of thought I did—when the receptionist cleared her throat.

  “Have you finished with that?” she said.

  I leapt to my feet, assuming that she wanted the form back because I was about to be seen by the doctor. Wishful thinking, that. An hour later, I was still cooling my heels in the waiting room, entertaining myself by looking through photo albums full of before and after pictures. It didn’t seem quite fair; the before photos of the facial surgery were all harshly lit and featured women with hair hauled back from their foreheads, their faces stripped of makeup. The after shots, on the other hand, had clearly benefited from the ministrations of makeup artists and soft-focus camera lenses. Still, the difference post-surgery was pretty dramatic. Dr. Calma appeared to be carving away years.

  The liposuction pictures were even more remarkable. It was all I could do to keep from pinching my expanding thighs as I leafed through the pages. However, my favorites were the breast enlargement photographs. Neither Dr. Calma nor his patients seemed interested in moderation. I suppose it’s like buying a pair of shoes. The small ones aren’t any cheaper.

  After I’d been waiting for nearly an hour an a half, the nurse in the lavender scrubs who had periodically been peeping her head into the room and announcing everyone else’s name, called mine. I followed her down a long hallway, past half a dozen closed doors, to a small exam room furnished in tasteful purples and pinks. The nurse and the wallpaper matched perfectly.

  “Please take everything off and put on this gown,” the nurse said, handing me the most beautiful hospital gown I’d ever seen. It too was lavender, like the nurse’s scrubs, and had pale pink lace on the collar and hems.

  “Um, I’m really just here to talk to the doctor,” I said, backing away from the proffered gown.

  The nurse shook her head. “Everything off, dear. It opens in the front.”

  She left me alone, and I stood fingering the gown. Finally, I stripped off my clothes, leaving the white socks with red jalapeños that I’d grabbed from my sock drawer. They clashed terribly with the elegant hospital gown. The gown was made for a woman who was rather less vast than I. It might have been designed to close in the front, but it gaped around my protruding belly. I did my best to hold it closed and sat on the edge of the pink exam chair. The seat was tilted upward like a birthing chair, and it was upholstered in a slippery vinyl. I kept sliding off the edge, and I wished for a set of stirrups on which to prop my legs to keep me from falling right off.

  I sat there for much longer than any woman should have to in a too-small hospital gown. By the time Dr. Calma burst into the room, followed by his lavender nurse, I was feeling about as dejected as I ever had in my life. What exactly was I doing there, half naked, waiting for an examination for which I had absolutely no need?

  The doctor was much younger than I expected, or perhaps he was just a satisfied consumer of his own products and procedures. He was handsome, in a kind of Ken-doll way. His face was tanned an unnaturally even brown, and his hair was impeccably waved. One lock hung over his eye in a facsimile of rakishness that probably enchanted his patients. I was too irritated by my long wait to feel even remotely captivated.

  “Okay, so what have we here?” he said, standing a few feet back from me and staring at me critically.

  How far was I planning on going with this charade. “Dr. Calma,” I began.

  “A little mother!” he interrupted. “When are you due?”

  “In a couple of months, but—”

  “Hmm, I hope I’ll be able to fit you in. Most of my little mamas come here a bit earlier to arrange for their tummy tucks. Let the nurse know when the c-section is scheduled for, and she’ll check on my availability. If I’m booked we’ll have to do it after the birth. Two months of recovery is usually enough. You don’t want to look like this longer than you have to.” He shocked me by reaching out a hand and gripping the hammock of fat that was slung below my pregnant belly. I jumped.

  “Yup, we’ll get rid of all this jelly for you! You’ll be sleek and trim in no time. Stand up.”

  “Dr. Calma, I have a few—”

  “Up you go!” he said, hoisting me to my feet. “We should do some lipo here,” he said, pushing aside the gown and tracing a warm hand down my hips and outer thighs. “And in here as well.” I was gratified that he refrained from actually touching my inner thigh; he just pointed at it. “Upper arms—that goes without saying.”

  Upper arms? What was wrong with my upper arms?

  “Turn around, please.”

  Despite myself, I turned my back to him.

  He raised the hem of my gown and clucked his tongue. “We can certainly solve this problem,” he said.

  Problem? Was my rear end really a problem? I mean, I knew it was, well, sizeable, but wasn’t that a good thing? And anyway, I was pregnant! I glanced back over my shoulder and nearly groaned aloud. He was right. I was looking at one huge, gelatinous problem.

  “Now, let’s get to your face. You can have a seat.”

  I collapsed onto the chair, too horrified by the state of my belly, hips, thighs, upper arms, and above all my butt, to continue arguing.

  He leaned in and peered at me closely, so close, in fact, that I could smell the warm cinnamon of his breath.

  “Not too bad, considering how old you are,” he said. “We’ll just need to botox the forehead and lip, maybe tug back the jowls.” He traced a finger along the edge of my jaw. “We’ll erase these fine lines by the sides of your eyes, and get rid of this mole, and that’ll be all. Practically nothing!”

  “What mole?” I said, and then I blushed. I hadn’t intended to shout.

  “This one,” he said, pointing at a freckle on the side of my lip.

  “That’s a beauty mark!”

  “Hmm. Well, it’s up to you. I’d take it off, but it’s certainly your decision. Some people are rather inordinately attached to their moles.”

  “It’s not a mole!” The doctor’s attack on the freckle of which I was, in fact, very fond, finally roused me from the stupor of self-loathing his criticism had inspired. Unfortunately, it also prevented me from continuing with my plan of delicately and carefully bringing u
p Alicia Felix. “I’m not actually here to schedule any surgery. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about one of your patients, Alicia Felix. She was murdered last week, and I’m representing her family in the investigation of the crime.”

  Dr. Calma stepped back, looking horrified. “You’re not here for a pre-surgical consultation?”

  “No.”

  He snapped the medical chart closed. “I’m sure you understand how very busy I am.”

  “Yes, and I’m sorry. I know it was ridiculous for me to come here like this, but there was simply no other way for me to get in to speak to you.”

  He shook his head, clearly furious. “Haven’t you ever heard of the doctor/patient privilege? I’m not going to tell you anything about one of my patients!”

  “But Alicia is dead, Dr. Calma. And, anyway, I’m just trying to find out anything about her that might shed light on who murdered her, and why.”

  He spun on his heel. When he reached the door, he turned back to his nurse. “You can submit your questions in writing to my attorneys. Florence, have the front desk give her the information.” He turned back to me. “You know, you really could use some work. I’d be happy to talk to you about that. Anything else is quite simply out of the question.” And with that blistering comment about my appearance, he left the room, closing the door behind him with a firm click.

  “Tsk tsk tsk,” the nurse clucked.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, hon.” She patted my hand. “Someday you’ll probably be grateful for Dr. Calma’s discretion. He’s a wonderful plastic surgeon. The best.”

  “I’m sure he is.” I gathered the robe around me and clambering down from the exam chair.”

  “Here, hon, let me help you.” She took my arm and hoisted me down.

  “Thanks. I’m not getting around real well lately.”

  She laughed. “Of course you’re not. My goodness, you should have seen me with my twins. I was as big as a house. I had to get my poor husband to help me roll over in bed!”