A Playdate With Death

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Okay, let’s go find Candace.”

  Twenty

  AL and I decided that the benefit of surprise was worth risking the chance that Candace wouldn’t be at work. We lucked out. When we walked into the Starbucks across from the Westside Pavilion where she worked, we immediately saw her sitting at one of the little round tables, gripping the hand of a young woman who was weeping into a crumpled tissue. We paused in the doorway and listened.

  “Brittany, I know you are doing the right thing. Because I know you. You and I have a special bond, a deeper connection than normal people. Our shared abandonment has given us a unique nexus—a union of souls.”

  The younger woman smiled tearfully at Candace. “You’ve helped me so much,” she hiccuped.

  “And you’ve helped me. We’re lost birds, you and I. Two lost birds, clinging to one another in a tumultuous ocean.”

  “Like a couple of albatrosses,” I whispered to Al. He grinned.

  We walked over to Candace’s table, and I cleared my throat. She looked up at me, clearly irritated at the intrusion, and frowned.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “It’s me, Candace. Juliet Applebaum. Can we talk?”

  “I’m very busy right now.”

  The young woman shook her head. “No, no. That’s okay. I’ve got to go.” She stood up and hugged Candace. “I’ll Email you, okay?”

  “I’ll be expecting it.”

  The woman left the café, and Candace turned to me. “I really have to get back to work.”

  “Take a minute, Candace,” Al said, pulling up a chair and sitting down at the table.

  “Who’s he?” she said to me without looking at Al.

  “A colleague. Listen, Candace, we’d like to talk to you a little more about Bobby’s death.”

  The words were barely out of my mouth when she started shaking her head. “I really don’t have anything to say. I’ve moved beyond that whole thing. I’m concentrating on Brittany right now.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bobby’s gone, and I’m sad, but there are things I need to do. Brittany needs my help. I’ve got to get back to work.” She got up and walked away, ducking under the counter and busying herself at the coffee machine.

  Al and I looked at each other, and he raised his eyebrows. We left the store and stood outside for moment.

  “What the hell was that about?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine that she could have just threatened to harm my kids. She didn’t seem the slightest bit scared or worried when she saw us.”

  He shook his head. “More like just not interested.”

  “She could be faking it.”

  “She could be.”

  “So, now what?”

  Al rolled his eyes at me. I blushed. “Well, what would you do if you were still a cop?” I asked him.

  He shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Interrogate.”

  “Okay. Let’s interrogate her. It’s, like, the tiniest problem that we can’t arrest her or assert any kind of authority whatsoever, but hey, let’s go for it.”

  “Watch and learn, honey. Watch and learn.” He turned and headed back in the door of the café.

  I muttered something under my breath about not liking to be called honey, and followed him inside. He ambled up to the counter and leaned on it.

  “Candace, we’d like to have just a moment of your time. Can you spare that? For Bobby’s sake?” His voice was almost a purr.

  She shook her head angrily.

  “Let me buy you a coffee,” Al insisted. “What kind do you like? A mocha? A latte? How about one of those wonderful frozen things?”

  “I hate coffee,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows and looked around the café, a veritable shrine to the brew.

  “A juice, then,” Al said. “And a cookie. For Bobby’s sake. Because we all cared about him and want to find out what happened to him.”

  “Okay, okay,” Candace said. She poured herself a glass of milk and took a cookie from the case. “That’ll be three dollars and seventeen cents,” she said.

  Al handed her a five-dollar bill. She ostentatiously dumped the change in the tip cup and ducked under the counter. Then she motioned to us to move to the back of the café. We followed her and sat down at the little table she indicated.

  “So, what do you want from me?” she said.

  “Just your help. That’s all,” Al replied in the same honeyed tone with which he’d convinced her to come out from behind her counter.

  “How ’bout we start with the most obvious thing. Just a formality really,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Where were you when Bobby was killed?” His voice had suddenly turned stern. Candace flushed, and I held my breath.

  “I dunno. Home. I’m always home at night.”

  “But you don’t remember that night specifically?” Al asked.

  “No. I mean, why would I? I didn’t know he was going to die.”

  Al turned to me. “Juliet, what was the official time of death?”

  I blanched. Had I ever found that out? Al’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly.

  “I can prove where I was, no matter what time he died,” Candace said.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “I mean, I can show you where I was.”

  “At home?” Al asked.

  “Yeah, but I mean, I can show you where I was on-line. I’m always on-line.”

  “All night long?” I asked.

  She blushed again. “Yeah. Mostly. Until three or four, at least. That’s where I am every night. All you have to do is check the web sites. My posts will all be there. Dated and timed.”

  “How would we be sure that you didn’t just change the date and time on your computer?” Al said.

  “Because we can check the posts of the people who replied to her,” I said with a sigh. She had seemed such a likely suspect.

  “Do you want to look?” Candace said. “I have my laptop.” Candace went back behind the counter and pulled out a battered computer carrying case. She plugged the computer into the phone jack and began typing. I spent the next ten minutes bent over the counter at an uncomfortable angle, charting the course of Candace’s depressing on-line existence. The woman had begun posting messages on various boards at 7 P.M. Her last post was at 5:12 A.M.

  “If there’s nothing else you want, I’m going to get back to work,” she said finally, a victorious note in her voice.

  Al and I made our way back to the car. “We’ll check the time of death. Maybe it’s after 5:12.”

  “Maybe,” Al said, sounding doubtful.

  We got in my car and slammed our doors almost in unison. Jiggling the keys in my hand, I said, “Okay, let’s start from scratch. What’s the first rule of investigating a murder? Look to the family.” And then my cell phone rang. It was Michelle.

  “I couldn’t get the whole Tay-Sachs thing out of my mind,” she told me. “It was driving me crazy all night. I mean, of course it’s possible that Bobby got the gene from someone with no connection to an at-risk group, but that’s just so unlikely.”

  I agreed with her. “I can’t help but feel that if we figure out the source of Bobby’s genetic condition, we’ll have more of a clue about why he died.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. So, when I got to work this morning, I started searching the medical and genetic data-bases I work with. You’re not going to believe what I found out.”

  “What?” I said, not doing a very good job of keeping the impatience out of my voice.

  “You already know that approximately one in every thirty to thirty-five Ashkenazic Jews, French Canadians, and Louisiana Cajuns is a Tay-Sachs carrier.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, it turns out that there is another group with an almost equally high incidence, although for some reason it isn’t generally known.”

  By now I was ready to reach into the phone receiver and yank the words out of her t
hroat by force. “Who?”

  “One in every fifty Irish people, or people of exclusively Irish descent, is a Tay-Sachs carrier.”

  I leaned back in my seat. Major Patrick Sullivan, scion of one of Los Angeles’s most prominent Irish Catholic families. Bobby’s mother’s own husband. He was Bobby’s father. But how could he be? I’d considered that possibility more than once but had dismissed it each time. Susan Sullivan herself had told me that there was no way Bobby could have been her husband’s child. She said that the only time she’d had sex with her husband in the months before her pregnancy was the time she’d flown out to Japan to meet him on his leave. According to Susan, that had been at least a month before her birth control had failed her with Reuben Nadelman. But, I remembered, she’d also said that Bobby had been born a little early. What if he was, in fact, the product of the Japan leave but had been born a few weeks late, rather than a couple of weeks early?

  I thanked Michelle for her research and said a hurried goodbye. Waving off Al’s questions, I dialed Susan Sullivan’s number. I heaved a sigh of relief when she herself answered the phone.

  “It’s Juliet Applebaum. Please don’t hang up,” I said.

  “What? What do you want from me? Can’t you please leave me alone?” She whined.

  “I just have one question for you. Do you remember how much Bobby weighed when he was born?”

  “What? Why are you asking me that?”

  “Please. It’s important. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, after a pause. “I didn’t hold him. I couldn’t bear to. But I asked them whether it was a girl. I’d always wanted a girl. The nurse told me that it was a boy and that he weighed seven pounds seven ounces. I’ve always remembered because of the drink. You know, seven and seven.”

  Seven pounds seven ounces. Heavy for a baby born early. Maybe a little small for one born two or three weeks late.

  “Susan,” I asked. “Did your husband participate in the cystic fibrosis study?”

  “No, of course not. He’s not a blood relative of my niece.”

  “Then he never did the genetic screening that you and your sons did?”

  “No.”

  “Susan, is it possible that Bobby was your husband’s baby after all? That he wasn’t born early but rather a little late, maybe ten months or so after your trip to Japan?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line, and then, unexpectedly, the phone went dead.

  I turned to Al. “I’ll tell you all about it on the way,” I said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Pacific Palisades.”

  He shrugged his jacket off and tossed it in the backseat. That was when I noticed the brown leather holster clipped to his belt. I almost told him not to bring the gun, that we wouldn’t need it. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I should have. It’s hard to say.

  Twenty-one

  SALUD answered my ring. She recognized me but didn’t seem any more eager to let me in than she had been the last time.

  “I go see if Mrs. Susan in,” the maid said.

  “Podriamos esperar al dentro?” I wheedled. “Por favor?” Once again my attempt at conversing in her own language seemed to charm her. She flashed me a silver-capped smile and looked at Al.

  “El es un amigo mío,” I said, and Al smiled pleasantly.

  Salud opened the door and ushered us in, burbling in a Spanish so rapid and thickly accented that I could make out only every couple of words. I nodded and said, “Si, claro,” a few times although I had no idea what I was agreeing with.

  She looked at Al and then, in a loud, slow voice, as though speaking to the infirm, said, “You stay here. I get Mrs. Susan.”

  Al and I watched silently as she hurried up the stairs. Al whistled softly as he looked around the marble entryway.

  “Classy,” he said.

  “Old money. Or, as old as it gets around here. Patrick’s family made it big in the gold rush and then even bigger in Southern California real estate.”

  A few moments later, Salud came down the stairs. This time her tread was heavy and slow.

  “I am sorry, you go now,” she said, motioning us toward the door.

  “Que pasa con la señora?” I asked.

  “You go now,” she said again, refusing to reply in Spanish.

  “Tell Mrs. Sullivan that we need to talk to her. It’s very important,” I insisted.

  “She no want to talk to you. She say you go now. So you go.”

  I looked at Al, and he shrugged his shoulders. Then I started to get angry. I wasn’t entirely without sympathy for Susan Sullivan. I could only imagine what the woman was feeling, faced with the possibility that thirty years ago she’d made a horrible mistake. But Bobby Katz was dead, and I wanted answers. I wasn’t about to let his birth mother hide out from me. I was getting ready to tell Salud that she should inform Mrs. Susan that she could either talk to me or to the police when the door opened and Matthew Sullivan walked in.

  The blond young man was jangling a set of keys in his hand. He wore a buttery-soft, brown leather jacket and those nubbly soled driving shoes that you see in catalogues but nobody ever buys. Nobody outside of a Connecticut country club, that is. His face stiffened when he saw me, and then he smiled politely.

  “Can I help you? Juliet, is it? My mother’s friend from the library benefit.”

  “Er, right. The library benefit. I’m just here to talk to your mother for a moment.”

  “Mr. Matthew, Mrs. Susan say she no want to see the lady. She say the lady should go home,” Salud insisted.

  The blond man shrugged his shoulders. “I’m afraid my mother is busy, Mrs. Applebaum. You’ll have to come back some other time.”

  “Matthew, I don’t know your mother from the library. I need to speak to her about something personal and urgent. Why don’t you go upstairs and tell your mother that if she won’t talk to me, I’m going to have no choice but to go to the police with what I know.”

  His face blanched. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “It’s personal. Just tell her.”

  He looked over at Al. “Who’s that? Are you a cop?” His voice was hoarse and worried.

  “I’m a colleague of Ms. Applebaum’s,” Al said. “Go tell your mother that we’d like a few words. If you don’t mind.” Al had perfected his calm but firm cop’s voice. Matthew looked for a moment like he was about to follow the gently given instruction. At that moment, the door opened again, and Patrick Sullivan walked into the house.

  “Hello?” he said in a questioning voice. “What’s going on here?”

  His son turned beet red and began to mumble something unintelligible.

  “Mr. Patrick, Mrs. Susan say she no want to talk to these people, but they no leaving,” Salud said.

  “Can I help you?” His voice was cold and foreboding.

  For a brief second, I considered spilling the story to him, Susan’s feelings be damned, but I couldn’t bring myself to completely destroy the life she was so intent on keeping intact and undisturbed.

  “We were just leaving,” I said and motioned to Al to follow.

  Susan’s husband waved to his son. “Please see them out,” he said.

  Matthew jerked the door open, and Al and I filed through. As I walked by the young man, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a business card, and pressed it into his trembling hand. In a low, hurried voice meant for his ears only, I said, “This has my cell phone number on it. Tell your mom that she might be able to catch us on our way to the police station.”

  We’d parked the car on the circular driveway right in front of the house. As we pulled around to leave, Al said, “Well, so much for that.”

  “Do you think she’s just having some kind of hysterical breakdown at the thought of having given up her husband’s baby, or do you think she knows something about Bobby’s death?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Maybe she killed him, and she’s having a
hysterical breakdown because she just realized that she killed not just her own son, but her husband’s, too,” I said.

  “Maybe who Bobby’s father is has nothing at all to do with his death.”

  I hit the brakes and turned to Al. “You were the one who was so big on the no-coincidences theory!”

  He shrugged his shoulders, and I shook my head at him. Before I stepped on the gas, I looked back up the long driveway through my rearview mirror. A silver Audi TT and a gold Lexus coupe were parked around the side of the house in front of the three-car garage. Neither had been there when we’d arrived. I pulled into the street and headed toward Sunset Boulevard. Suddenly, I remembered the little sports car that had zipped by me on the PCH the last time I’d visited Susan Sullivan. I remembered the racing car that the boys said they’d seen when Peter’s BMW had been vandalized. I pulled over to the side of the road with a screech and turned to Al.

  “That’s the car,” I said.

  Al raised his eyebrows questioningly, and I reminded him about the boys and described the car that had almost rear-ended me.

  “The Audi. It’s got to be the Audi.”

  Al wasn’t convinced. “It’s possible. But if we call the detectives with nothing more than the possibility that the racing car the kids described could have been maybe the same Audi that blew by you on the highway and that might maybe be the same Audi that’s in this driveway, even though thousands of those cars are floating around the city right now, they’re going to laugh in our faces.”

  I knew he was right. “Well then, let’s get them something more than that.”

  He looked at me for a moment as if trying to figure out whether I was determined or foolhardy or both. Then he patted the gun strapped to his waist. “All right. Let’s.”

  Twenty-two

  AT first, no one answered our ring. Then I leaned on the bell. After a couple of cacophonous moments, Patrick Sullivan wrenched the door open and glared at us.