Death Gets a Time-Out

by Ayelet Waldman

  I crouched down next to Peter. “Are you okay, honey?”

  “My back gave out,” he whined.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked.

  “I brought Patrick, one of my nannies,” Lilly said. “He took all the kids to a café on La Brea to get steamed milks.”

  “Oh. Great.” I smoothed Peter’s hair away from his forehead, and he winced. “Do you need anything?”

  He moaned.

  “Peter told me about the baby,” Lilly said. “Congratulations.”

  I resisted the urge to kick my prone husband while he was down. I was the one who got to tell my friends about the pregnancy. And even if Lilly counted as one of his friends, she was still my client. “Thanks,” I said.

  “I was just saying how much I admire you guys, going for three,” she said. “I could never handle it.”

  “Neither can we,” Peter said, and moaned again. This time I did kick him, but softly and just with the toe of my shoe. He howled.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said.

  “How do you know that?” he said, leaning up on his elbow. “I mean, we can’t even handle the two we have. We’ve had like one night out alone in the past six months. We’re always running from place to place, and half the time we end up not showing up on time. How many times have we been fined by the preschool for picking Isaac up late? And let’s not even talk about the money. You’re barely earning anything, and who knows if I’ll get another movie after this one. We don’t have enough time or money for the kids we have, let alone another one!” With that he sank back down onto the floor.

  I stared at him and felt tears pricking at the back of my eyes. “Are you saying you want me to get rid of it? Have an abortion?” I whispered.

  “No,” he groaned. “I’m just freaking out. I’m allowed to freak out, aren’t I?”

  “I’m freaked out, too,” I said. What I really wanted to tell him was that it was my career that was going to go down the toilet, my life that was going to be torn apart again. He’d pretty much go on as before, working, and spending time with the kids when he could. Sure, the financial burden rested on him, but every other part of it was squarely on my shoulders.

  “I’m pretty freaked out, myself,” Lilly said. “Not about your baby, obviously. But everything has just gotten too much for me. This whole thing.”

  I glanced down at Peter. She followed my gaze.

  “I told Peter everything,” she said.

  I hoped he had done a good job of faking ignorance. I mean, Lilly probably knew I was confiding in him, but technically I was supposed to keep professional confidences even from my husband.

  “I came by to cry on your shoulder, and Peter’s been giving me some great advice on everything. On Archer, in particular.”

  “From down there?” I said, pointing at him.

  “I have incredible clarity from this position,” my husband said.

  “Good to know,” I said.

  “Peter said I should take some time away from Archer, and from Jupiter and everything else. To kind of clear my head.”

  I nodded.

  “I have an offer from an advertising agency in Japan. Peter says I should take it. Take the girls and get out of town for a couple of weeks.”

  Great. Now my husband was instructing suspects in my murder investigations to leave the country.

  Lilly flung her feet off the table and stood up. “I’m going to go round up the kids and head home. I’ll drop yours off on my way. Tomorrow, if I can put it together, I’m getting all of us on a plane.” She bent down over Peter and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks, buddy. You’re a good friend.”

  He smiled, and then groaned again.

  I walked Lilly to the door and came back into the kitchen. Peter was standingin front of the open refrigerator door, staring at the contents.

  “How’s your back?” I asked.

  He placed his palms on the small of his back and leaned back. “Better. I got hungry.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You want to talk about this whole baby thing?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “We’ll work it out.”

  “Yeah,” I said. But would we?

  Eighteen

  I spent the next two weeks overwhelmed with work, following up on the lists that Jupiter and I had made of people who knew him. I drove around the city, interviewing school teachers and Boy Scout troop leaders, neighbors and distant relatives. I talked to CCU members whose children Jupiter had babysat when he was a teenager, and even to two windblown surfers who had taken lessons from him down in Mexico. I interrogated his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor and his therapist. I concentrated on creating a dossier on Jupiter, and did my best to suppress my fears about Lilly. Thankfully, I didn’t have to see my friend. She had left for Japan as promised, to shoot a series of commercials for Suntory beer.

  Wasserman engineered Jupiter’s release to the Ojai center, which made my life a lot easier. I could call Jupiter with questions and for follow-up information, and could relax a little, knowing he was being waited on by pool boys and not tortured by oversized inmates looking for a girlfriend.

  Every few days, I prepared a thick packet of witness statements for Wasserman and dropped them off, along with the tapes I made of my interviews. I never saw the man himself. Valerie and I compared belly sizes and swollen ankles, and I ignored my responsibility to tell Jupiter’s defense lawyers about what I’d discovered about Lilly. Finally, however, the guilt overwhelmed me.

  I was in Valerie’s office, listening to her describe, in excruciating detail, the size of the needle that had pierced her abdomen during her last obstetrical appointment, when Wasserman poked his head in her office door.

  “Honestly, the thing was the size of a meat thermometer. Richard looked like he was going to faint. He was more afraid than I was,” Valerie was saying.

  “What are you ladies chatting about?” Wasserman asked.

  “Uh, CVS,” Valerie mumbled, a flush creeping up her neck. “It’s a test for genetic problems. Like an amniocentesis, but you do it earlier.”

  “I’m having mine this afternoon,” I explained, “and your associate was doing her best to terrify me in anticipation.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding. “Girl talk.”

  Valerie’s face turned a mottled red, and I could imagine the calculation going on inside her head. Just how much extra work was she going to have to put in now, to remind her boss that she was a competent professional? Criminal defense is a brutally macho field of practice. It’s where the most aggressive men end up, the ones with the most to prove. It’s also a field with more than its share of dinosaurs—lawyers who much prefer to see a woman holdinga stenographer’s pad and not a litigation briefcase. A woman defense lawyer has to work double time to prove that she’s as tough, as determined, and as ruthless as the men around her. Being pregnant adds an extra burden. It’s hard to be one of the guys when your belly is sticking out two feet in front of you, your gums are bleeding, and your bra size is a letter in the second half of the alphabet.

  “Actually, Valerie and I were just evaluating a new wrinkle in the Jones case,” I said. She stifled an expression of surprise.

  “New wrinkle?” Wasserman said, and walked into the room. “What new wrinkle?” He sat down on the edge of her desk.

  I took a deep breath and told him about Lilly. I reminded him of the death of Trudy-Ann, and although I refrained from saying anything about it, we both recalled the conversation in which he’d told me that a thirty-year-old homicide had nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of our client. He didn’t speak as I described Chloe’s blackmail, just motioned to Valerie, who had already begun taking notes on a yellow pad.

  “Did you get all that?” he asked her when I was done.

  “I think so,” she said.

  He began to pace back and forth in the small office. “We’re going to have to be very careful with this information.”

  “We can use it to argue lack of premeditation,” Va
lerie said. “He goes to talk to Chloe, to convince her to stop her blackmail. There’s an argument, and he kills her.”

  Wasserman shrugged. “I liked the sex for that better, frankly. They make love, he begs her to leave his father, she refuses, he kills her. Crime of passion. With the blackmail, it’s too easy for the prosecution to argue that he decided to murder her to help out his stepsister. And then the sex works against us. The jury’s already predisposed to dislike a man who has sex with his victim before he kills her. If we’re arguing that he loves her, and that her rejection caused him to have a sudden burst of anger, that’s one thing. If we tell the jury that she’s a blackmailer, and that first he had sex with her, and then he killed her while he was trying to convince her to leave his movie star sister alone . . .” Wasserman shook his head. “I don’t like this. This doesn’t help us.”

  “Well, it could,” I said.

  He looked at me and raised his eyebrows, waiting. I continued, “It could help, if what you’re arguing for isn’t just second-degree murder. You could use it to present a defense of innocence.”

  Wasserman stopped his pacing. “Innocence?” he said, as though the very idea that his client might not be guilty of the crime were anathema to him.

  “Yes. Jupiter has said all along that he didn’t commit the murder. These allegations of blackmail seem, to me at least, to lend credence to the idea that someone else killed her.”

  He stared at me incredulously. “Isn’t Lilly Green a close friend of yours? Are you seriously suggesting that I mount a defense that she killed Chloe?”

  “Yes, Lilly’s my friend. And Jupiter is my client. I’m not suggesting that you pin the murder on Lilly, necessarily. Anyone who cares about Lilly might have done it. Her husband, her manager, her agent, her parents. Anyway, you don’t necessarily need to pick a suspect. You could present the jury with a whole host of potential killers.” I knew as well as Wasserman did that it is always better to give the jury a coherent and believable story, and that that generally requires a specific suspect. But I couldn’t bring myself to suggest that he convince the jury that Lilly committed the murder. Something else occurred to me. “Maybe Lilly wasn’t the only person Chloe was blackmailing. If she did it to Lilly, she may well have done it to other people. One of them might have killed her.”

  Wasserman sat back down on the edge of Valerie’s desk. I could see that he wasn’t convinced by any of my possible scenarios. He still believed Jupiter to be guilty, and if anything, the information I’d given him had served only to affirm that belief. At the same time, he was a good lawyer. He was responsible and thorough. He knew he couldn’t just dismiss what I’d told him as at best unhelpful and at worst damaging, even if that was what he believed. His obligation to his client required more. “Are you willing to investigate this? Both Ms. Green’s story, and the possibility of any other potential blackmail victims?” he asked me.

  “Of course,” I said.

  He paused and looked at me.

  “For free?” he said.

  I swallowed. Al was going to kill me.

  “We can’t exactly expect your friend to pay us to explore the possibility that she is a murderer,” Wasserman continued.

  He was right. It would be absolutely unethical to charge Lilly for this part of the investigation.

  “For free,” I agreed. And sighed.

  Nineteen

  I had to rush to make it to the obstetrician’s office on time. When I’d been pregnant with Ruby, Peter had come to absolutely every OB appointment. He’d held my hand through pelvic exams and blood tests, gazed adoringly at the screen during the ultrasounds, taken copious notes during the labor and delivery classes. When I was pregnant the next time, with Isaac, he had been there for the ultrasound appointments, and even joined me at the midwife’s office a few times, though he left his notebook behind. This time, I had a feeling that I was going to have to beg if I wanted him there at all. I called him from my cell phone on my way across town.

  “Meet me at the OB’s office in ten minutes,” I said as soon as he picked up the phone.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, an edge of panic in his voice.

  “No, no. I’m fine. I just want you to be there.”

  He groaned. “Oh, honey, do you mind if I give it a miss? I have a ton of work to do today.”

  “Yeah. I mind.” I looked at my watch. Eleven forty-five. “You have to be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Sweetie, you don’t need me. You’ve done this a thousand times before.”

  “I have not.” I punctuated my sentence with the gas pedal, and the car jerked forward. I hit the brakes, just missing rear-ending a cherry-red BMW that was stopped at a traffic light. “I’m having my CVS today. And they might have to stick this huge needle in me. I need you there.”

  “Okay. Okay. It might take me a little while, though. I’m not dressed.” Of course he wasn’t. I couldn’t remember the last time Peter had managed to shed his bathrobe before noon. I knew the man wasn’t lazy. He worked hard every night. He had for as long as I’d known him, but somehow the thought of him in his pajamas in the afternoon still gave me just the tiniest flash of irritation. Maybe it was because his schedule almost always gave him a full night’s sleep, and mine almost never did. And my maternal state of perpetual sleep deprivation was only going to get worse when the new baby came.

  It took Peter almost an hour to get to the doctor’s office, but I was still sitting in the waiting room, quietly seething, when he rushed through the door. Before I had time to blast him for keeping me waiting, he scooped me up in a hug.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, bussing me on the cheek and collapsing in the seat next to me. “Mindy Maxx called right as I was heading out the door.”

  I stifled the flicker of jealousy I always felt at any mention of the beautiful blond producer who had once taken up so much of my husband’s time and attention. “It’s no big deal,” I said, my tone belying my words. “They’re behind. As usual.” He kissed me again, and I smiled despite myself.

  Much to my relief, the nurse came to call us before I had to sit through too much conversation about the fabulous project Marvelous Mindy was pitching to my husband, and how smart she was, etc. etc. We went to the back of the office to a room full of medical equipment. We weren’t going to be seen by my normal physician because the procedure was so specialized that there was only one doctor in the practice who performed it. I followed the nurse’s instructions to remove all my clothes and did my best to drape the tiny paper towel she gave me over my already protruding belly. The doctor walked in while I was still trying to decide which part of my body it was less embarrassing to expose. It was hard to believe the guy had been around long enough to have the opportunity to become an expert in any field other than, say, riding a bike without training wheels. If it weren’t for his bald pate, I would have thought he was about nine years old. When exactly did I get old enough to have physicians who were younger than I?

  “How far along are you?” the baby doctor said gruffly, flipping through my chart. “We don’t really like to do this past thirteen weeks.” Bedside manner was clearly not one of his specialties.

  “I’m only ten and a half weeks pregnant,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he murmured doubtfully, looking at the size of my belly.

  “I’m just fat,” I said.

  “You’re not fat; you’re pregnant,” Peter said. This was the first opportunity he’d had to say that in this pregnancy, but if my previous two were any indication, it was soon to become a mantra.

  “Well, the ultrasound will tell us how old the baby is.” The doctor pushed Peter out of the way and sat down on a stool next to the bed. He squirted some gel onto my stomach, and I leapt at the chill. “I’m not going to be able to do this if you keep jumping around,” he said.

  Peter opened his mouth to object to the doctor’s obnox-iousness, but I silenced him with a glance. I did, however, make a mental note to let my own doctor know th
at I wasn’t interested in having this rude kid present in the delivery room when I had my baby. I was about to ask the doctor to stop poking me so hard when he flipped around a monitor that was hanging on an arm along one side of the bed so it faced us.

  “Here’s your baby,” he said.

  Peter and I gaped at the screen. We’d seen each of our children on the ultrasound when they were in utero, but either the technology had changed or our memories had grown dim. We could see everything so clearly. The baby was tiny, curled up like a little shrimp, and its entire body was visible on the screen. Its forehead hadn’t yet lost that early fetal bulbousness, but we could see eyes, a mouth, and a nose that I could swear possessed the trademark Wyeth hook. As we watched, it pushed one little arm up and kicked a leg. I looked over at my husband. His smile was as big as my own.

  “Look,” Peter said, “she’s waving at us.”

  “She?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a girl,” Peter said.

  “It’s impossible to differentiate at this early stage,” the doctor snapped, but we ignored him.

  “Hi, little girl,” I said, tears spilling down my cheeks. For the first time in weeks, Lilly and Jupiter were entirely out of my thoughts. There was room only for this beautiful new baby. And her father.

  The doctor moved the ultrasound wand around, and the baby swam out of view. Peter and I looked at each other, and I could see that he was crying, too. He smiled at me and kissed my forehead.

  “Your uterus isn’t positioned for a transcervical procedure,” the doctor said. “I’m going to have to punch through your abdomen.”

  That hurt every bit as much as it sounded like it would, and I spent the rest of the day recovering in bed. Peter was wonderful. He made me endless cups of tea, and when that proved insufficient to silence my whining, he took the kids out for an hour and returned, arms laden with Rocky Road, jars of hot fudge, and a can of whipped cream. I fell asleep that night with Ruby and Isaac curled up in bed next to me, our faces covered in chocolate, and our dreams full of babies waving hello.