“You shut up,” the older boy whacked his brother on the top of his head.
“Hey!” I grabbed the older boy’s arm. “No hitting.”
“Yeah, Fredo! No hitting,” the little boy said, his lip trembling.
“Fredo, tell me what happened to my car,” I said.
The boy rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. This phat car pulled up next to yours, and this dude got out. That’s all we know. Honest. I don’t know what he did or nothing. He was just, like, walking around your car.”
“Did you see him break the window?”
The little boys shook their heads.
“Do you know what kind of car he was driving?”
“No. It was phat.”
“Fat?”
The little boys rolled their eyes at my ignorance. “You know, cool. Awesome. Like a racing car,” Fredo said.
“What color was the racing car?”
“Metal,” said the younger boy.
PETER’S face turned a mottled red when I told him what had happened. He rushed out to his beloved car and knelt down next to the driver’s-side door. He ran his fingers along the scratches, swearing quietly under his breath.
“I’m so sorry, honey. Really,” I said.
“Who did this?” he asked, rising to his feet.
I told him what the two boys had told me. “I’m figuring that by racing car they meant sports car. That’s what Isaac calls them, doesn’t he?” Among our son’s many obsessions was one with the automobile. While Hondas were his inexplicable favorite—he called them Wandas and lovingly stroked each one we passed (it made for slow going on walks)—he was also enamored of anything he could call a racing car. For some mysterious reason, this included both sports cars and taxicabs.
Peter swore again.
“I’m sorry, Peter. Really I am.”
“It’s not the car that I’m upset about. I mean, yeah, I’m upset about the car. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to cost to fix this. The scratches go all the way through to the metal. But that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“I know,” I said.
We went back in the house. I called the police department, and while I waited on hold to file a report, the two of us ran through the various people involved in the case, trying to come up with a possible suspect. The problem was that the only person whom I could even remotely imagine doing something like that was the only one I could be sure hadn’t been involved. Betsy had been in the room with me the whole time I’d been parked in front of her house. That left the members of Bobby’s birth and adoptive families, none of whom seemed a particularly likely candidate for such a brutally juvenile warning. And then there was Candace.
Finally, after I’d waited close to a quarter of an hour on hold, a police officer picked up the line. I told her what had happened and where I’d been parked. Then, I said, “I think this might have something to do with the death of a friend of mine.”
The officer, who had seemed up until then utterly bored with the details of yet another act of destruction of property, perked up. “Excuse me?” she asked.
“My friend, Bobby Katz, was found dead in his car a couple of weeks ago. It appeared to be a suicide, and I understand that the Santa Monica Police Department has closed the case. However, I think that someone might have been trying to warn me off any further investigation.”
“Are you a private investigator, ma’am?” The cop’s voice was frosty.
“No. No, I’m not. I’m a friend of the deceased. I was simply trying to help his fiancée determine what happened to him. Perhaps you can refer this to the detectives assigned to the case.”
“Ma’am, there won’t be any detectives assigned to a suicide if the case is closed. However, I’m more than happy to pass this information along to someone in the Santa Monica PD.”
I was getting the brush-off. “Officer, listen. If Bobby was murdered, then it’s very possible that I just got a warning from his killer. I’m concerned. With reason, I think.”
“You said your friend committed suicide.”
“No, I said that the case had been ruled a suicide. There’s a difference.” I knew I was coming off high-handed, but I was scared, and she was making me angry.
“As I said, ma’am, I’ll pass this along. This is your police report number for insurance purposes.” She mumbled a string of numbers and then she hung up the phone.
“Well?” Peter asked. He was sitting at the table, holding Isaac on his lap. Isaac was sucking on a tube of yogurt and had a trail of fluorescent pink down the front of his shirt. I swabbed at the stain with a paper towel.
“Well?” my husband repeated.
“I don’t think they’re going to do anything.”
“Juliet, I’m worried about this.”
“I know. I am, too.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Wait to hear from the police, I guess.”
“I won’t hold my breath.” He kissed the top of Isaac’s head. For a split second, I wished I’d taken Al up on his offer. I imagined confronting this fear with a loaded revolver. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d feel safer.
“I’m going to call Bobby’s parents,” I said.
“Which ones?”
“The Katzes. Maybe they’ll let me take another look at Bobby’s things. If the cops aren’t going to do anything, I’m going to have to track down whoever is responsible myself.”
Peter compressed his lips in a thin line but didn’t say anything. He picked up Isaac and carried him out to the playroom, where Ruby was busy building a dollhouse out of blocks. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry with me for continuing my investigation or whether he understood that it was my only option. I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t try to find out.
I dug Bobby’s parents’ phone number out of my purse and picked up the phone. His father answered. Before I could make my request, he said, “Ms. Applebaum, we all appreciate that you are trying to help. However, I must insist that you refrain from continuing in these efforts. It’s a violation of Bobby’s privacy. And of ours.”
I had been expecting something like this. “I understand that you might feel that way, Dr. Katz. But Betsy isn’t convinced that Bobby committed suicide. It’s possible that I’ll be able to uncover enough information to convince the police to reopen the case.”
“Betsy is a deluded and manipulative drug addict, who seems to have sucked you into her fantasy or beguiled you into going along with her plans, whatever those may be. What she thinks about Bobby is utterly irrelevant. The police, the coroner, the medical examiner, all agree that Bobby killed himself. Your pursuit of intimate details of his life is not only unhelpful but destructive.” The doctor’s voice was cold and harsh, but I wasn’t giving up. Someone had struck out at me, had threatened me. It was personal now. I was too angry and too scared to back off.
“I’m terribly sorry to have offended you, Dr. Katz. But I have reason to believe not only that Bobby was murdered, but that the murderer is trying to scare me off the investigation.” I told him about the warning on my car.
He snorted derisively. “I haven’t any idea who did that to your car, Ms. Applebaum. Moreover, it’s ludicrous for you to imagine that it had anything to do with Bobby’s death. You parked in a lousy neighborhood. Be more careful next time.” And with that, he hung up on me.
My tenacity in the face of opposition is either my best or worst quality, depending on whom you ask. When I was a child, it was a source of intense frustration to my poor parents, who took a remarkably long time figuring out that the best way to get me to do something was to tell me not to. Peter has proved to be a better manipulator and generally avoids being on the wrong side of my intransigence. In fact, because he’s not a particularly obstinate person himself, he has always relished having, as he says, a pit bull in his corner. I myself grew somewhat less comfortable with this particular side of my personality when I began seeing it reflected back at me in Ruby’s face. My
daughter makes me look positively irresolute; she doesn’t have a pliable bone in her body. She came out of me with her little fists balled and raised and has been bashing her way through the world ever since.
I was debating the merits of driving out to Thousand Oaks and blustering into the Katzes’ home when the phone rang. It took me a moment to figure out that the whispering voice on the other end of the line belonged to Bobby’s sister, Michelle.
“I’m so sorry about my dad, Juliet. I just want you to know that not all of us think that way.”
“What way?” I asked.
“Not all of us think that Bobby killed himself. I mean, I don’t. He couldn’t have. And I really appreciate what you’ve been doing. It’s my fault my dad is all up in arms about this.”
“Your fault?”
“Yes,” she said apologetically. “I didn’t mean to get them upset or to get you in trouble.” That was a funny phrase for a grown woman to use. “But when my mother and David told us about your investigation, I tried to convince my parents to let you go forward. I’m convinced that there is more to this than the police think.”
“Michelle, why are we whispering?”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I could almost hear her blushing. “I’m at my parents’ house, and I’m on my cell phone. In the bathroom. I didn’t want my dad to know that I was calling you.”
The Drs. Katz were so formidable that they reduced their grown-up daughter, a woman of significant accomplishment in her own right, to a teenager sneaking a telephone call while pretending to use the toilet.
“There are a few things that I’d really like to talk about, and I can’t imagine you’ll be able to stay in the bathroom for long. Can you meet me?” I said.
“What? Now?”
“Yes. I mean, it doesn’t have to be right now, but it might as well be. Did your father tell you that someone threatened me?” I told Michelle about Peter’s car.
“Oh no! That’s awful. You must be terrified.” That was too strong a word. Nervous? Yes. Scared, even. But the feeling of foreboding inspired by the vandalism of the BMW certainly didn’t rise to the level of terror. Or so I tried to convince myself.
“I guess I could meet you,” Michelle continued. “I could pretend that I have to go into the office.”
It took me a while to convince Peter that I wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks by talking to Michelle. He finally agreed that I should go but insisted that he come along, too. And, since we were both going, Ruby and Isaac were necessarily invited along for the ride.
“We’ll have dinner at the mall,” I said, brightly, as if the prospect of limp egg rolls and gyro platters was an enticement. Actually, for them it probably was.
By the time we arrived, Michelle was already waiting for me at an orange plastic table in the food court.
I sat down opposite her and waved Peter in the direction of the California Pizza Kitchen. “I’ll find you guys in about half an hour,” I told him. I was about to ask him to get me a couple of slices of pizza but changed my mind. Michelle was one of those tiny little women who can’t find enough size twos to flesh out a decent wardrobe. I amended that to a Caesar salad. With the dressing on the side.
Michelle and I watched Peter and the kids wander off. Ruby was skipping ahead, and Isaac was sitting on his father’s shoulders.
“You have a lovely family,” she said.
“Thanks. Do you have kids?”
She shook her head. “No, not yet. We’re thinking about it, but my hours are really crazy. Larry didn’t even bat an eyelash when I told him and my parents that I had to go to work tonight. I probably spend more Sunday nights at work than at home.”
“That’s hard,” I said. I certainly wasn’t about to feed her the line about how it was perfectly reasonable to expect to have a demanding career and be an active and involved parent. I’d discovered the folly of that the hard way. But Michelle was at least thirty-five years old, if not older. She didn’t have a lot of time to debate the pros and cons of reproduction. No way I was going to tell her that, either.
“Anyway, like I said on the phone, I really do appreciate your trying to help us figure out what happened to Bobby,” she said.
If there was anyone who could help me rule out the possibility that Bobby had killed himself, maybe it was this woman, who loved him so much and knew him so well. “I’m sure you’ve gone over this a thousand times in your mind,” I said, “but thinking about everything that happened to Bobby right before his death—Betsy’s arrest, his discovery that he was adopted—does it seem possible that he could have been depressed enough to commit suicide?”
She shook her head. Tears welled up in her eyes and threatened to spill over. “I just don’t believe Bobby could have done that. He wasn’t like that. I mean, he definitely had a self-destructive side. I guess you know about his methamphetamine problem.”
I nodded.
“But he kicked that. Completely. He’d put all that behind him.”
“You don’t think that what happened with Betsy might have pushed him over the edge?”
“Of course Betsy’s relapse made him sad, that’s only natural. But you should have heard him defend her to my parents. He told them that addiction is a physical and mental disease and lectured them on tolerance and understanding. He was amazing. He stood by her the whole time, and honestly, I don’t think he would have abandoned her now, when she’s back in treatment and doing so well.”
I cringed a bit, remembering Betsy’s jag. “What about finding out about the adoption? Could that have depressed him sufficiently?”
Michelle shook her head. “Bobby wasn’t depressed or sad about that. I mean, he was furious with our parents for not telling him. But he wasn’t upset about being adopted. On the contrary. He seemed really excited about finding his birth mother. You see, our mother is a wonderful woman. She’s smart and strong and a real . . . a real . . .” I was tempted to fill her pause with the word bitch, but restrained myself. “She’s wonderful,” Michelle repeated lamely. “But, she’s very demanding. And she’s not a real affectionate person. Neither is my dad. I think Bobby needed that more than the rest of us did. It’s like Lisa, David, and I were kind of hardwired for my parents—we weren’t particularly needy children. But Bobby was wired for something else. He always wanted more of a certain kind of attention than my parents could give. And the attention they did give, the way they got involved in our schoolwork, in our grades, well, that didn’t usually work out so well for Bobby. He never excelled academically, so the fact that that was the way they showed their interest in him ended up causing him anxiety and stress instead of anything positive.”
“It sounds like he didn’t really fit your parents’ ideal of what a child should be like.”
She shook her head. “No, he certainly didn’t. After a while, they stopped demanding so much of him; after all, they had the three of us to satisfy them. Don’t get me wrong,” she said urgently. “They loved Bobby. Really they did. It was just a difficult relationship.”
“Why did they adopt him in the first place? I mean, they already had three children. Why did they want another?” I wanted to see if Michelle’s answer matched that of her mother’s.
“They always planned to have four children—two boys and two girls. They’d even timed everything perfectly so that their residencies wouldn’t be disrupted. But then my mom had to have C-sections with all of us. My birth was particularly hard on her, and the doctors were afraid that if she got pregnant again, she might have a uterine rupture. At first I think my parents accepted that. After all, they did wait eight years before they adopted Bobby. But, finally, I guess they decided that they really had to have their picture-perfect family complete with two of each kind of kid. So they adopted a little baby boy.”
“Do you think that Bobby was eager to find his birth parents because he imagined that they might give him the kind of acceptance that your parents never could?”
Michelle looked thoughtful. “I suppose
that’s possible. I only ever really talked about the adoption with him twice. The first time was right after he found out. David told him, and then the next weekend, he asked Lisa and me to meet him at Mom and Dad’s. He told us that he had something important to talk about with the whole family. It was pretty intense. He sat us all down in the kitchen and told us that he knew about the adoption. At first my father tried to pretend that he didn’t know what Bobby was talking about. I mean, he’d been pretending for so long.
“But Bobby didn’t let my dad get away with it. First, he tried to get Lisa and me to admit it, but I guess we were just too freaked out to say anything. I remember Lisa was leafing through a medical journal of Mom’s, and she just sat there, pretending to read. I don’t even know what I was doing. Probably trying to look invisible.”
“What made your father finally admit the truth?”
“Bobby was getting angrier and angrier. I think initially he was trying to protect David so that my parents wouldn’t know that he was the one who told, but when they kept insisting that it wasn’t true, he told them that David had told him everything. It was horrible. He just looked at Dad and said, “Stop lying. For once just stop lying.”
“Your father told him the truth?”
Michelle shook her head. “No, my mother did. She said that it was true, but that it didn’t mean anything. That it didn’t mean they didn’t love him. She even hugged him, which if you knew my mother, you’d know is a huge deal. She’s not a hugger.”
“How did Bobby respond?”
“He ended up bursting into tears. I did, too, and I swear I even saw a tear in Mom’s eye. Bobby told us that he loved us, and that he wasn’t upset about being adopted. He asked my parents what they knew about his birth mother, but we all could see right away that the question really upset them. From the very beginning, they were absolutely opposed to his finding out anything about her. I think they finally told him that Jewish Family Services would never tell them anything beyond his birth date and the fact that his mother was healthy. I don’t know if they know any specific facts, but I’m pretty confident that even if they do, they wouldn’t have told Bobby anything else. Mom especially didn’t think anything good could come out of looking for his birth mother. She told Bobby that it was obvious that the woman hadn’t wanted him, so he should just concentrate on the people who did. Namely, her and Dad. And us, of course.”
A Playdate With Death Page 14
