Murder Plays House

by Ayelet Waldman

  “It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen my Bubbe and Zayde,” she said.

  “Not that long,” I reminded her. “Bubbe was just here when Mama and Daddy went to Mexico.”

  “That was months and months ago,” she said.

  Suddenly, I thought of Julia Brennan, and New York Live. I might not be able to investigate the people who’d shown up at Marilyn Farley’s open house, but Goodenough couldn’t keep me away from Julia Brennan. I pushed against Peter’s chest, leveraging myself into a sitting position. “Honey, you know, that might not be such a bad idea,” I said.

  “What?” Peter said.

  “We should go with you to New York! We’ll see my folks, and I can do a little follow-up on this case.”

  “Tomorrow? You want to go to New York with me tomorrow?”

  “Sure! It’s a great idea. Ruby and Isaac will stay with my parents, and the two of us will have a romantic couple of days in the city.”

  “Are you allowed to fly? I mean, aren’t you too pregnant?”

  “The airlines let you on up to thirty-six weeks, and I know Dr. Kline won’t care.”

  “But I’m going to be working. And, anyway, do you know how much a ticket will cost at the last minute?”

  “Nothing, if we use frequent flyer miles. I’m going to get on the phone and see what I can do.” Suddenly I narrowed my eyes at him. “Unless you don’t want us to go with you.”

  He smiled a sickly smile. “No, no. I can’t think of anything more fun than flying cross-country with the kids for a two-day visit with your parents.”

  Lucky for us, the flight the studio had booked Peter on still had two seats available for frequent flyers. I gulped, and paid full fare for the third seat, reassuring myself that at least it was tax deductible. I was, after all, working on a case. Maybe I’d even be able to bill some part of the fare to Felix’s account—if it didn’t turn out to be a total waste of time, that is.

  What I didn’t remember until we actually arrived at the airport the next morning is that the Screenwriters Guild requires that all its members be flown first class. Not Business Class, and most certainly not, God forbid, coach. Peter boarded the plane at his leisure and began snacking on warm nuts and champagne, while I did my best to browbeat two people into swapping seats so that Ruby and Isaac would be sitting next to me. My entreaties fell on deaf ears. No one was willing to swap their aisle and window for any one of our three middle seats. Finally, I walked up to the florid man in the New York Jets sweatshirt sitting in the aisle seat next to Isaac and handed him an airsickness bag.

  “His name is Isaac, and he usually stops vomiting twenty minutes or so after take-off. I find it helpful to have a second bag at the ready, just in case he fills the first.”

  The man’s face turned even redder, and he leapt to his feet and stumbled over himself on his way to the seat that had been assigned to me.

  The flight attendant came over at this point, her perfectly made-up face twisted into a grim smile. “You’re going to have to take your seat, Ma’am.”

  “Okay, I just need another minute,” I said.

  “We can’t push back until you sit down, Ma’am,” she said firmly.

  “I know, and I’m so sorry. I’ll be just a second.” I craned my neck to find where Ruby’s seat was, and knelt down to point it out to her.

  “Now, Ma’am.”

  I stifled my irritation—you can never win an argument with a flight attendant. I once represented a woman who had an altercation with a stewardess over whether her stroller could fit in the overhead compartment. My client ended up getting charged with assault, all because she had tapped the stewardess’s name badge and told her she was going to report her to the airline. My poor client, a harried mother of three, was taken off the airplane in handcuffs.

  Now, the flight attendant seemed to notice my belly for the first time. Her face tightened into an expression that looked suspiciously victorious. “Ma’am, we don’t allow women in advanced stages pregnancy to fly.” She smiled at me maliciously. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  I looked her dead in the eye and said, in a voice so shocked and horrified that I nearly frightened myself, “What are you talking about? I’m not pregnant!” I lifted a trembling hand to my chest. “I’ve never been so offended in my life.”

  Ruby opened her mouth as if to protest, but I squeezed her shoulder.

  The flight attendant blushed a deep red, and stammered, “Oh. Oh no. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . . I’m so. . . . Oh, no.” She stumbled away from me back up the aisle. I turned my attention to the young woman in the window seat. She stared back at me over her copy of The Joy Luck Club, and then smiled.

  “All right,” she said. “You win.” She got up, and I pushed Ruby into the seat she vacated.

  “It’s 23B,” I said. “And thank you.”

  “No problem. When are you due?”

  I winked at her, snapping my seat belt closed.

  Here’s the irony of that particular flight. The truth was, Isaac never vomits on airplanes. He’s a terrific flyer. In fact, unlike his sister, who heaves her food at the drop of a hat, he almost never gets sick. However, I’d forgotten about his recent bout of stomach flu. Worse yet, the red-faced man hadn’t given me back the airsickness bag I’d handed him. Isaac did indeed fill more than one bag, but the second didn’t have the airline’s logo printed on it. With remarkable quick thinking for a six-year-old, Ruby grabbed my purse, dumped the contents into her lap, and handed it to me while I held Isaac’s head in my hands. Peter and I were going to need to make a stop at the Kate Spade boutique.

  At the end of the five-hour flight, my ankles had swollen to the size of basketballs, and Ruby, Isaac, and I were covered in a combination of orange juice, chicken gravy, and other things too disgusting to contemplate. Ruby’s hair resembled a pile of brightly colored autumn leaves, so that gave me some idea about what was probably going on with my own. We tumbled out of our seats and found Peter waiting for us at the door to the plane. His smile slowly faded as we approached.

  “Have a nice nap?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t sleep for more than an hour or two. I watched that new Sylvester Stallone movie.”

  If there were any justice in the world, the heat of my scowl would have burned a hole right through his chest. I handed him our flight bags and waddled after the children who had scampered out ahead of us.

  “I forgot my Lactaid!” he called after me. “So I got a really bad stomachache from the ice cream sundae. And you know how much I hate caviar. The gravlax was covered in it.”

  It was all I could do to keep from flinging myself at his throat.

  Twenty-four

  IT was over lunch the next day at the Union Square Café that I finally forgave my husband. His meeting was in the morning, and he’d begged off a business lunch in order to meet me. The kids were at my parents’ house in New Jersey, being stuffed with New York bagels, Stella D’oro cookies, and other delicacies unavailable in the wilds of California. Peter and I had had a lovely night on our own at the St. Regis hotel, one of those indulgences you are permitted only when traveling on the tab of someone far richer and more spoiled than yourself. The movie studio for which Peter had agreed to rewrite a Victorian Frankenstein romp qualified nicely.

  While Peter had been stuck in meetings, I’d spent the morning replacing the purse I’d sacrificed on the altar of Isaac’s roiling stomach, and was feeling pretty darn content. I’d even managed to find a maternity store in Soho that had, hidden on a crooked rack at the rear of the store, a few items in my size. At five feet tall, I’d never before considered myself an XXL, but the tunic with Chinese writing all over it was too cute to pass up purely because of size-related shame. I was a little worried that the letters might actually spell out something like “Ugly, fat, white woman,” or “Many years of bad luck to wearer,” but I suppressed that concern as soon as I realized how good the top looked with my new faded, flare je
ans.

  “Hey! You look adorable,” Peter said as soon as I walked in the door of the restaurant.

  I smiled brightly and showed off my purse. “What do you think?”

  He blinked. “Is that new, too?”

  “No, I spent the morning hosing the vomit out of the old one. Of course it’s new!”

  “Isn’t it the same bag?”

  “Not at all. This one has a thin red stripe in the fabric. See?” I held the bag out to him and he nodded suspiciously. “And the other one had blue piping, not black.”

  “Nice,” he said.

  We sat down at a table by the window, and I spent a delightful few minutes perusing the menu, specifically avoiding anything that could be considered even remotely kid-friendly I was seriously considering an entire meal of shellfish and carpaccio when I remembered that Ruby and Isaac’s absence didn’t liberate me in any real way, after all. I was carrying around my very own diet regulator. I would have to make due with grilled flank steak sandwich and fries, but I satisfied my urge to misbehave by ordering a glass of red wine. The New York waitress didn’t bat an eye, merely brought me my drink with a practiced flourish, and I tossed off half the glass with equal aplomb.

  As we waited for our food and made short work of the breadbasket, Peter said, “We’ve got an appointment to go to the set of New York Live after lunch.” I’d sent Peter to his meeting with instructions to ask if anyone there had a connection to New York Live that might result in an introduction to Julia Brennan. “One of the producers of my film used to write for the show. She made a call for me.”

  “That’s fabulous!” I exclaimed, nearly toppling my chair as I leaned to kiss my husband on his rough, stubbly cheek. Peter is the kind of guy who shaves only when not to would result in his being taken for an Orthodox Jew, or an Amish farmer.

  The New York Live set was an old theater, the Stanley, on 43rd street at Broadway. Rehearsals took place on the stage, and the red velvet and gilt of the hanging curtains and proscenium, combined with the hilarious antics of the actors, lent the proceeding something of the hysterical air of late 19th century vaudeville. We walked in on a lesson in pratfalling. A man with a bulbous forehead and a red, fleshy proboscis was flinging himself from a ladder onto the stage while a hovering crowd laughed and leapt out of the way. I recognized some of the actors from the show, including Julia Brennan.

  After a particularly dramatic tumble from the top of the ladder, the man limped off the stage and a young woman with a clipboard and an officious air called a break. We told her that we’d come to see Julia, and she called up to the stage, catching the comedienne right before she went off with the others. Julia came up to the row in front of ours and, leaning back over a chair, extended her hand in a friendly greeting. She was about twenty-five or -six years old and tall, taller than she seemed on television, with large hands and sharp, bony features. She looked somehow androgynous, manly even, like a transsexual who has given up the struggle for persuasive femininity and must content himself with a casual ambiguity.

  “Randy, the assistant stage-manager, tells me you write those cannibal movies,” she said to Peter.

  “Yup.”

  “Love them. They’re fun.” Then she looked at me. “What can I do for you?”

  “Ms. Brennan,” I began.

  “Julia.”

  The ancient seat springs groaned as I shifted my weight. Even had she not been so tall, Julia, standing there, would have loomed above me; but as it was, I felt like one of the Munchkins talking to the Great and Powerful Oz. She seemed to notice my discomfort and sat down, still in the row ahead, her long legs crossed and her arms resting on the seat back.

  “I’m an investigator. I work for Felix. Do you know who he is?”

  “The fashion designer? Sure! Tariq Jones, one of our younger comedians, does a bit spoofing his line.”

  I smiled, wondering what name Tariq could come up with that would seem more farcical than “Booty Rags.” “I think you knew his sister, Alicia Felix.”

  Julia narrowed her eyes at me for a moment and then assumed an expression of heartfelt sympathy. “Yeah, it’s really awful. I heard all about it from Spike Stevens.”

  “Felix has hired me to look into the circumstances of the murder.”

  “And that’s why you want to talk to me?”

  “I’m trying to get a sense of what kind of person Alicia was. What might have been going on in her life.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I understand that in recent years you two had some . . . difficulties.”

  Julia raised an eyebrow. “Difficulties? What do you mean?”

  “The character you do on the show, Bingie McPurge. It’s based on Alicia’s Mia bit, isn’t it?”

  “Based on? Hardly.”

  “Well, Alicia was doing Mia long before you were doing Bingie McPurge, wasn’t she?”

  Julia stood up suddenly. “I don’t think I should be talking to you. My lawyers are dealing with this.”

  I lifted a mollifying hand. “I’m just doing the best I can to find out about Alicia. Her disappointment over her career seems to have been one of the defining things about her, and your success with a very similar comedy schtick was clearly a source of frustration for her.”

  Julia folded her arms in front of her, but she didn’t walk away. “And? So what? I certainly hope you’re not trying to say that I had anything to do with her death.”

  Now it was my turn to pause. I hadn’t made any such implication, had I? “No. But you can’t deny the similarity of the characters.”

  “Let’s just say that Mia inspired me.”

  “Did Alicia ever speak to you personally about Bingie McPurge? Or were all your contacts through your lawyers?”

  Julia unfolded her arms and seemed to relax. “She certainly tried to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I won’t lie to you. You know Alicia was upset. She called my agent a few times, pretty hysterical. We even had to ask Spike to try to mellow her out. Anyway, there wasn’t much she could do, was there?

  “Wasn’t there? Weren’t you afraid she would, say, sue you?”

  Julia shook her head. “She might have threatened that, but she didn’t have any grounds, and she knew it. Sure, she had a character that was a bulimic. But I didn’t steal any of her jokes—honestly, why would I have? Alicia was no writer. Her routine basically consisted of gagging noises. Even if she had tried to sue, my agents, lawyers, the studio people, everyone said that she didn’t have a leg to stand on. Anyway, Alicia was, like, forty years old.” Julia looked at me, as if assessing whether or not I was close to that witching age. “She couldn’t play the part anymore. It was ridiculous.”

  Then Julia leaned over and lowered her voice. “I’ll tell you something; you should be looking at a whole different part of Alicia Felix’s life if you want to really get to know what she was like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Julia smiled. “She was a freak. I mean, really. My lawyers found out all sorts of stuff about her.”

  I deliberately forced my face to remain blandly neutral.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “That woman was insane. I mean, really nuts. You want to know why she died, you should look at her website.”

  “Her website?”

  At that moment, a voice called out. “Actors, places. Let’s go!”

  Julia turned her back on me and loped in the direction of the stage, her long legs carrying her like an elegant stick insect. Right before she reached the end of the row she turned back. “Hey,” she called. “Don’t you want to know where I was the night Alicia was killed?”

  Her jocular tone struck me as so inappropriate I didn’t even reply.

  “I was here, in the city. I have been for weeks. We’ve got rehearsal every day but Sunday, and the show is live on Saturdays.”

  “Okay,” I said. It wouldn’t take too much to follow up on her alibi. And even if it stuck, there was always the p
ossibility that she had arranged for someone else to do the murder. Although the truth is, it’s a lot more difficult to find a hit man than you might think.

  Julia said, “I hope you find out who killed her. I really do. Whatever Alicia and I thought of each other, nobody deserves to die like that.”

  The woman sounded absolutely sincere, and genuinely unconcerned. Her callousness might have been a product of her success, or simply of her youth. Whatever its source, she didn’t sound like someone who would have felt compelled to murder in order to protect her career. I wasn’t ready to dismiss the possibility of her guilt absolutely—after all, she might have been a better actress than the few minutes of the show Peter and I watched indicated—but something told me that my short list was down another suspect.

  Back at the hotel, I logged on to the Web and found Alicia’s website. I spent a good hour going through every page, but I could find nothing on the site that made Alicia seem any more bizarre than any other wanna-be in Hollywood. For that matter, I could find nothing that would have inspired the letters from the young girls that I’d seen tacked up on the bulletin board in the guest house. The site consisted of no more and no less than a series of photographs of Alicia in various theatrical incarnations, and her at once lengthy and spotty filmography. The closest I got to “freaky” was a series of photographs of Alicia in which she was naked, although her arms were wrapped tightly around her body, hiding everything from the lens. She looked lovely, almost ethereally beautiful, but also frightening. Alicia was just so thin. Like a half-starved Ophelia. Was this what Julia was referring to? Was it Alicia’s anorexia that made her, in the eyes of Bingie McPurge, a freak?

  Twenty-five

  ON the way home to Los Angeles, Peter gave me the first class seat. All the way onto the plane, I was the happiest woman on earth. So happy, in fact, that I was wishing for thick fog over LAX so we would have to circle the airport for a couple of extra hours. I was the first one on the plane, and I settled myself excitedly in my overstuffed seat, two fashion magazines and a mystery novel tucked into the back pocket of the seat in front of me, my shoes kicked off, my hand ready to receive my orange juice and cup of warmed nuts. Then my seatmate joined me. My very, very large seatmate. My very, very large seatmate, with a sinus condition. The man snorted and snuffed his way through an entire box of tissues before we had even taken off. I refused to allow myself to be troubled. I put my headphones on, turned the volume up loud, and pushed back against the massive elbow that had worked its way across the armrest and into my seat.