A Playdate With Death

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Hello, I’m looking for Susan Sullivan.”

  “This is she.” Did I imagine a whiff of suspicion in her tone?

  “Mrs. Sullivan, I’m trying to track down the mother of a baby boy born in Haverford Memorial Hospital on February 15, 1972—”

  The phone clicked before I’d even finished my sentence. I was talking to empty air. I tried again, hoping that we’d just been disconnected, but the phone rang and rang. Susan Masters Sullivan did not want to be found. But found she was. I was determined to talk to her and see if she had any information about Bobby’s death, whether she wanted to see me or not.

  Unfortunately, I also had to go pick Ruby up from preschool. Isaac, who’d been napping while I made my calls, didn’t even stir when I hoisted him out of bed, flung him over my shoulder, and hauled him out to the car. The boy had slept about twenty minutes in the entire first four months of his life, turning me into a blithering idiot and putting a strain on my marriage the likes of which we’d never experienced before or since. Now a brass band wouldn’t wake him up.

  I was only seven minutes late picking up Ruby, a personal record, but nonetheless I found her tapping her foot, arms folded across her narrow little chest. I ignored her irritation and said, “Let’s get moving, kid. You and Isaac need to go home and play with Daddy.”

  “Why? I want to play with you.”

  “Sorry, Ruby. I’m busy this afternoon.”

  “What are you doing?”

  I certainly wasn’t going to say, “Investigating a murder.” So I settled for, “I’ve got a playdate.”

  That seemed to satisfy my daughter.

  I don’t know why, but I was expecting Susan Sullivan to live in one of the cute little bungalows on the tree-lined streets in Pacific Palisades. I knew once I saw the address that her house was going to be worth something, but even those little cottages sell for a cool million bucks in today’s overinflated real estate market. What I didn’t expect, however, was a mansion. I didn’t expect a house set so far back off the street that its driveway had a Private Road sign. I didn’t expect a curving drive of crushed pink gravel, lawns and gardens as far as the eye could see (at least up to the boundary rows of fragrant eucalyptus trees), or the glimpse of a marble-bordered pool peeping out from behind one wing of the salmon-stuccoed villa. I cringed as the wheels of my Volvo station wagon crushed the carefully combed stones and marred the manicured perfection of the circular driveway.

  Rich people make me nervous. I rummaged around in my purse for some makeup, found an old lipstick, and carefully applied it. I looked for something to cover the triangle of pimples that had taken up residence on my chin, cursing yet again the acne gods who didn’t even allow a single moment of bliss between blemishes and wrinkles. I’d gone from having one to having both with nary a day of smoothness in between.

  I fluffed up my cropped curls, relieved that at least I’d remembered to have my roots done, and firmly averted my eyes from the chocolate milk stain down one leg of my khaki capri pants. I was ready to see how the other half lived.

  I rang the bell, listening to the chimes echo throughout the house. The door was answered by an older Mexican woman in a plain gray smock.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Buenos días. Estoy buscando la señora de la casa, Mrs. Sullivan.”

  The woman flashed me a huge smile brightened by at least four silver teeth along the side of her mouth and, with a cascade of Spanish far beyond my limited skills, ushered me through the door and into a round entry hall. The ceiling was easily twenty or thirty feet tall and opened into a massive, round skylight of leaded stained glass. Little oblongs of brightly colored light glowed on the polished marble floor and up the circular staircase along the back wall.

  Within a few moments, the maid returned, following behind a tall blond woman wearing a white tennis dress with mint-green piping. Her bobbed hair was colored strawberry blond, as if she were matching the hair color she’d had as a girl. She looked like a blonde. Not a tanned, California surfer-girl kind of blonde but a pallid, English-lass kind of blonde. She had the faded prettiness so common in women of that coloring. She might have once been beautiful, but her skin had crumpled, and her chin seemed to have slipped back into her neck. Her nose, though, was sharp and defined. Her close-set, pale blue eyes glanced at me nervously, as if she knew me and had anticipated my arrival with trepidation.

  “Can I help you?” she said. She sounded as though what she really wanted to do was throw me out of her house.

  “Mrs. Sullivan, I don’t mean to cause you any trouble, and I’m terribly sorry for bothering you. But my friend Bobby Katz is dead, and I think you can help me.”

  Susan looked quickly at the maid, who kept her eyes firmly affixed to the floor.

  “That will be all, Salud,” Bobby’s birth mother dismissed her maid, her voice just the tiniest bit hesitant, as if asking the older woman’s permission to assert the authority her status ought to have made natural to her.

  “I bring you some limonada, Mrs. Susan? Some ice tea?” Salud asked.

  “No. No, thank you,” Susan said. Salud left, and Susan finally met my eye.

  “We can’t talk out here. Come into the living room,” she murmured.

  The living room was a vast open space reached through two oversized doors of heavy carved wood. The long gallery opened along one side to a flagstone patio that ran the length of the house. The many sets of French doors were closed against the late-afternoon chill.

  She sat down on a button-back armchair and motioned me toward the matching leather sofa. The buttery soft skin felt delicious against the backs of my legs. I introduced myself and told her how I knew Bobby.

  “You said he’s dead?” she asked in a soft voice.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. He died a couple of weeks ago.”

  “How?”

  “It’s not clear at this point. He was shot, but the police have not determined yet whether it was suicide or . . . or murder.”

  She nodded and then began fiddling with the diamond and gold tennis bracelet on her wrist.

  “Mrs. Sullivan, I believe you met Bobby,” I said.

  “He contacted me. As you did. It was you who called, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “He contacted me. But I told him what I’ll tell you. I didn’t give birth to a baby in 1972. I’m not his mother. He made a mistake.”

  I considered that possibility. Could the skip trace have led to the wrong person? It had been known to happen. But if that were the case, why was she so very nervous?

  “There doesn’t seem to be any doubt, Mrs. Sullivan. The woman who gave birth to Bobby had your name and used your social security number and birth date.”

  She kept her eyes on her bracelet, catching bits of light with the diamonds and sending them skittering across the walls.

  “There’s been a mistake. I’m sorry,” she insisted.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Suddenly she stood up and crossed the room. “See,” she said, grabbing a double frame with pictures of two young blond men. “These are my boys. P. J. was born in 1969, and Matthew in 1974. I was married in 1968. Why ever would I have given my baby up for adoption?”

  I looked at the pictures of the young men. They were both blond and blue-eyed. And they looked quite a bit like Bobby.

  I raised my eyebrows at Susan. We both jumped when a shrill ring pierced the silence like a siren. Moments later, Salud came into the living room, holding a cordless phone.

  “It’s Mr. Patrick, Mrs. Susan,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” Susan took the phone from her and walked quickly out of the room.

  “Can I get you a limonada, miss?” Salud asked.

  “That would be lovely,” I said, and she followed Susan out the door.

  I got up and started looking over the photographs perched on the grand piano and on the many bookcases and end tables. I crossed the room to get a better look at a large, glass-enclosed cabinet. In it, I
found photographs of men in uniform, fatigues, and camouflage hats. A few of the photos showed soldiers holding large machine guns, the sun beating down on their shirtless backs. Vietnam.

  A small glass case resting inside the cabinet held a medal. I looked closer. A Purple Heart. I wondered exactly when it was that Patrick Sullivan had served in Southeast Asia. Had he been over there in, say, June of 1971, nine months before Bobby was born?

  I heard Susan’s voice in the hall. “Take the phone, Matthew.”

  A petulant male voice said, “No. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Matthew. Your father wants to talk to you. Take the phone.”

  “I said no. I don’t need to hear what he has to say. He’s been yelling at me for, like, two days. Anyway, I have to get to work.”

  “Matthew, honey. Please,” she said, plaintively.

  “Screw him. And screw you, too.”

  The front door slammed, and Susan walked slowly back into the room.

  She immediately realized that I couldn’t have helped but overhear what she’d said. “My son Matthew,” she explained. “He and his father are having a disagreement.”

  I did my best to smile sympathetically. “So, Mrs. Sullivan, was your husband in the military?”

  “Yes. He was an Air Force pilot. An Academy graduate,” she said, as though by rote.

  “He served in Vietnam?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry about your friend. Really. But I can’t help you. I’m afraid I have to go now. I’m late for my match.” She walked quickly out the door and across the hallway. She opened the door and stood, waiting. Unable to think of a way to make her talk to me, I gathered my bag and left. As I walked out, I saw Salud walk out of a door in the back hall holding a tall tumbler, its sides dewed and a sprig of mint carefully balanced on the top. The maid caught my eye, shrugged, and then took a long sip from the glass.

  Eleven

  MAJOR Patrick Sullivan had served two tours of duty in Vietnam in the early seventies. In September of 1972, he’d been shot down over North Vietnam but had managed to work his way back to friendly territory, despite suffering two broken shoulders and severe burns on his hands. He was discharged not long after. The archive of the L.A. Times was full of stories describing his triumphant return, including one photograph of a much younger Susan Sullivan, wearing a pink pillbox hat and crouching next to two small boys as Major Sullivan ran across the tarmac toward them.

  A little more searching in on-line news files showed stories about the Sullivan family of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, going back as far as the archives would take me. One piece, an obituary of a Patrick Sullivan who died in 1980 at the age of seventy-three, was most instructive. Patrick Sr., Major Sullivan’s dad, had been, like his son after him, a pilot in the United States Air Force. He himself was described as a scion of an old California family that had earned its money during the gold rush and later on as real estate barons. He was an intimate friend of Archbishop Timothy Manning and an important member of the Catholic community. He was survived by his son Major Sullivan and his two grandsons, Patrick Jr. and Matthew, and by his brother, Father Edward Sullivan, provost of Saint Ignatius University. His will included a bequest described as “generous” to that Jesuit institution. A wing of the physical sciences building had been named in his honor.

  With a husband away at war and the reputation of a prominent Catholic family to consider, no wonder Susan Sullivan had, when she found herself pregnant, given birth in secret and given the baby up for adoption. It was curious, however, that she gave the baby up to a Jewish adoption service.

  The next morning, I stopped by Betsy’s house. She was home, and I got the feeling that that’s pretty much where she’d been since I’d seen her last. She wasn’t high, or at least she didn’t seem it. I found her watching television, wearing a pair of sweatpants that were clearly much too big for her and a man’s flannel shirt. Her hair stood up in odd clumps on her head. She had a huge mug of something steaming in her hand.

  “Want a mocha?”

  “Sure,” I said. I wheeled a snoozing Isaac into the living room and put him in a corner, far away from the blaring television. I’d schlepped him, strapped into his stroller, up the stairs to the apartment. Despite the few times I’d clunked him against the banister, and despite Jerry Springer’s theme music, he slept on, blessedly still wedded to his morning nap.

  I watched as Betsy puttered around the galley kitchen. She poured a packet of hot cocoa mix and a heaping tea-spoonful of instant coffee into a mug, drowned the mess in milk, and microwaved it. She garnished it with a dollop of Cool Whip. I gagged as I took my first sip. I didn’t see Betsy having a career at Starbucks in her future.

  “Mm. Delicious,” I said.

  “It’s my idea of comfort food. I’ve been pretty much living on these for the last couple of days. Ever since I took those . . . those . . . you know. That day you saw me. Eating kind of makes me sick, but I’m desperate for sugar. And I need the caffeine. I already sleep like twelve hours a night, even with, like, eight of these a day.” Betsy spoke in a listless monotone. She looked and sounded like the before character in a TV commercial for Prozac.

  “Honey,” I said. “I don’t mean to pry, but have you considered seeing someone? Maybe a grief counselor? It sounds to me like you’re pretty seriously depressed.”

  She shook her head. “The last thing I need is some shrink raking through my private business.”

  Now why would that be? “Well, have you been to a meeting since you took the pills?” She might not be able to say the words, but I sure could.

  She shrugged, slurping loudly from her cup. “Not really, but they’re kind of coming to me. Every reformed drunk and stoner I know keeps dropping by to tell me to ‘hang tough.’ Like they have a clue. Losers.”

  I set my mug down on the coffee table where it joined four or five other encrusted cups. “Betsy, don’t you think that those people might be just the ones who do have a clue? Some of them must have experienced the challenge of staying sober in the face of tragedy.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “What about work? When do you have to go back?” I asked.

  “I’m not going back.”

  “What?”

  “I quit my job. I’ve always hated it, and I don’t see why I should bother now. Even though Bobby’s family stole all my stuff and is tossing me out of my home, I was smarter than they were about at least some things.”

  This kind of belligerence was a side of Betsy I hadn’t seen before. I tried not to be judgmental. I tried to remember my Kübler-Ross. Wasn’t anger a stage of grief through which everyone passed?

  “Really?” I said, in a neutral tone.

  “Yup. Like our wedding account. Even though we always kept our money separate, we had a joint account set up for wedding expenses. Bobby’s parents didn’t know about it, because I guess they thought my parents were going to foot the bill for the wedding—like that would ever happen. As soon as I realized those cheapskates were going to Je—bleed me dry, I emptied the money out of that account.”

  Had she really been about to say “Jew me?”

  “How much was in it?” I asked. The question was clearly none of my business, but that didn’t seem to bother Betsy.

  “Almost fifteen grand. And the best part is that most of it wasn’t even mine. I mean, when we first set up the account, I put in about five thousand, but then I had to use that to pay for that fancy lawyer you sent us to. So that whole fifteen thousand came from Bobby’s savings, and I got every dime of it. Which is exactly what he would have wanted. I know it.” She took another slurp of her concoction, looking very satisfied with herself.

  To people like Bobby’s parents, fifteen thousand dollars was a fairly meaningless amount of money. But it was enough cash to convince Betsy that she could take some time off work.

  Betsy drained her cup and looked over at me. There was a smear of chocolate on her upper lip, and I could barely resist the urge to reach
into my purse for a baby wipe and clean it off.

  “What have you found out? Did you get any dirt on the creepy Katzes?”

  I was getting more and more uncomfortable with the vitriol Betsy was spewing in the direction of her would-have-been in-laws. Granted, they hadn’t behaved very well toward her. But, at the same time, she seemed to be almost enjoying her anger at them. “No,” I said. “But that really wasn’t the kind of thing we were looking into, was it?”

  She shrugged again.

  “I think I found Bobby’s birth mother, though.”

  That perked her up. “Really? Who is she? Did he meet her? What’s she like? Is she married? What does her husband do? Do they seem like they’ve got money?”

  Now Betsy was really making me uneasy. Why was she interested in Bobby’s mother’s financial situation? I was loath to tell her more than I absolutely had to. I told myself that she wasn’t technically a client of mine; I didn’t owe her any kind of duty, fiduciary or otherwise. I was just a friend of Bobby’s looking into his life to see if I could shed some light on his death.

  “Why don’t I check things out a little more, and when I’m sure it’s really her, I’ll let you know, okay?” I said.

  “Whatever,” Betsy said, seeming to lose interest.

  ISAAC woke up as I bumped him down the steps to the curb, and he started whining as soon as I loaded him into his car seat. Not even his favorite tape, The Coasters’ Greatest Hits, calmed him down. I decided to strike a bargain. I promised him half an hour at the playground if he promised to behave afterward and let me take him with me on a grown-up playdate.

  As soon as we crossed from sidewalk to sand, Isaac made a beeline for the tire swing. Since the little girl who was sitting in it didn’t want to give up her perch, he shoved her off. I ran over, scooped her up, and handed her to her mother, who snatched her out of my arms. I put Isaac in a time-out, which he didn’t seem to mind particularly. I released him on condition that he figure out a way to “share.” He did. He “shared” another child’s shovel by wrenching it out of the little boy’s hands, aiming it at his head, and shouting, “Bang, bang, you’re a dead man!” Then he poked the kid with the shovel. Hard.