Death Gets a Time-Out

by Ayelet Waldman

Lilly nodded emphatically. “I know he is.”

  “But Molly is a different story. It probably seemed like a perfect scenario. She could use Chloe to ensure the center’s future, and at the same time prove to Blackmore that the woman with whom he’d once been involved, the woman he’d slept with when Molly had wanted him to sleep with her, was even more corrupt than he’d imagined. But then, Chloe got more creative than Molly had anticipated. She blackmailed Polaris, sure, but she also started blackmailing you.”

  “And I got my father involved.” Lilly’s voice caught, and she swallowed hard.

  I planted my hands on her shoulders and stared directly into her eyes. “This is not your fault, Lilly. What happened to Raymond is not your fault.”

  “He helped Chloe, didn’t he?” she said.

  I nodded. “He must have. He told her the truth, Lilly. He told her that you never shot your mother. He told her that the real killer was Beverly.”

  She moaned.

  “It’s not your fault,” I repeated. “It’s not your fault your father gave up his career when his wife became the Speaker of the Assembly. It’s not your fault he cheated on her, or that he was looking at the possibility of being left with nothing.”

  Lilly was crying now. “If I’d given him more money, he wouldn’t have needed to use Chloe.”

  I wondered if this were true. I loved my friend, but she had some serious issues around money. Raymond probably knew full well that he wasn’t going to get any help from her. Chloe’s blackmail was a stroke of luck for him. He could use Chloe to fund his separation from his wife. I wondered what he and Chloe had planned to do. Split the blackmail money fifty-fifty?

  “I don’t understand,” Lilly said, drying her eyes. “Why wasn’t he afraid of being caught himself?”

  “Maybe he trusted Chloe not to slaughter her own golden goose. Maybe he figured he was safe. If they were exposed, Polaris and Beverly would both face the ruin of their careers, whether or not they were extradited to Mexico. But your father had no career to lose. And he was, at worst, an accessory after the fact to a crime that happened a very long time ago.”

  “Beverly did it,” Lilly whispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Why? Why did my mother . . . why did Beverly . . .” Lilly bit her lip. The question in her heart was why had one of her mothers murdered the other. That was simply too difficult a construction to put into words, either semantically or emotionally.

  “Jealousy, I think. Your real mother and Raymond had begun sleeping together again. Beverly might have talked a good game about free love, and breaking the conventional chains of marriage, but when push came to shove, she wasn’t willing to share her husband, not even with the mother of his child.”

  “And then they blamed it on me,” Lilly said flatly.

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because you wouldn’t have had to go to jail. And Beverly would have. She was protecting herself, and your father probably felt guilty. After all, he’d been in bed with your real mother.”

  “And then I made it all so easy for them,” Lilly said bitterly.

  I didn’t reply. I didn’t need to. We both knew it was true. Lilly had solved all their problems in a way they probably could never have anticipated by recovering memories of a murder she had never committed.

  Suddenly Lilly stared at me, her face a twisted mask of horror. “Did Dr. Blackmore implant those memories on purpose?” she asked.

  I gave her a reassuring squeeze. “No. No. I’m sure he was operating in good faith. He was just wrong. Disastrously wrong.”

  Lilly nodded, this one fact a fragment of relief in the catastrophe that had become her life.

  “Tell me the rest,” she said.

  “Well, Raymond must have told Chloe what really happened, and she added Beverly to her list of extortion victims. Then, I assume Chloe made the terrible mistake of telling Molly how things were even more complicated—and lucrative—than even she had imagined. And that’s what killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your doctor has built his entire professional reputation around the idea of recovered memory. You were his most famous case. Little Girl Q was the basis for virtually all of his journal articles. If it ever came out that not only hadn’t Little Girl Q murdered her mother, but that he had, however unintentionally, implanted false memories of those events, then he would be exposed as a hack. Or worse. Molly couldn’t have that. First of all, she was utterly dependent on him for her professional success. All the research and writing she’s done has been with him. Without Blackmore, she’s just an ex-addict with limited credentials. She knew that if he went down, she’d follow. As long as he was an international success, Molly could parlay their relationship into a successful career as an academic or a shrink.”

  Lilly nodded. “And she loved him. That’s the other reason.”

  I nodded. “She couldn’t bear to see him destroyed. Worse, she couldn’t stand the idea of being the cause of his ruin. She had to make sure the story never saw the light of day. At first she trusted Raymond and Beverly not to talk. Raymond would never want his involvement in the blackmail to be exposed, and of course Beverly had everything to lose. But Chloe was another story. Chloe was never a particularly trustworthy person. She had never managed to kick her drug habit; she was a blackmailer. Molly couldn’t risk that Chloe would let the story out. So she killed her.”

  Lilly sighed, and turned to her brother. “I knew you hadn’t done it. I just knew it.” Another ray of hope in her desolate landscape.

  I watched the two of them for a moment, and then I remembered something. Why had Molly tried so hard to convince me that Jupiter was innocent? But had she? She’d told me how distraught he was; how much he loved Chloe; how devastated he had been when she had married his father. Molly had set him up with a motive, all the while pretending to be supporting his claim of innocence.

  “Why did she kill my father?” Lilly said, her voice once again hollow with despair.

  “My best guess is that once I started digging, Raymond began to panic. He was terrified that his involvement in the blackmail would come out and that he would become a suspect in Chloe’s murder. He called the Ojai center the morning he was killed. At first I had assumed he called Blackmore, but now I think it’s more likely that he was looking for Molly. I’m guessing that he knew Molly was the source of Chloe’s information, and he wanted to make sure she’d keep silent. I don’t know if he suspected her in Chloe’s murder. I tend to think not, because he agreed to meet her. Maybe he suspected Blackmore. Maybe he suspected you, Jupiter, or even . . .” I didn’t finish my sentence.

  “Even me?” Lilly asked.

  “No. No,” I said, although of course that was exactly what I’d meant. “Maybe he suspected Beverly. Whoever it was, Molly called him back and convinced him to meet her.”

  “Why did she kill him?” Lilly said.

  “Probably because she was afraid he was getting closer to figuring everything out. She got rid of him, like she’d gotten rid of Chloe.”

  Suddenly Lilly stared at me. “How the hell did you figure all this out?” She sounded almost angry.

  I said, “Actually, I didn’t. I was wrong. I thought Blackmore did it. It was just a lucky break that Molly started to panic. She must have been thinking about what I’d told her about how close Chloe and her mother were and decided not to take any chances. Wanda picked up the phone and called me, and that’s the only thing that saved her from the same fate as Chloe and your dad.”

  Lilly began to cry again. I wasn’t sure for whom. Her father? Her mother? Even her stepmother? Or for herself?

  Finally, she dried her eyes on a corner of her shirt. “What now?” she said.

  I sighed. “Well, like Wasserman told you, they are likely to dismiss the charges against Jupiter, although you never know with the Los Angeles DA. They are often happier with a bird in the hand e
ven if the one in the bush is quite clearly guilty. Thank God we have Molly’s comments to Wanda, because Molly’s not likely to confess. But even if the prosecution doesn’t dismiss the case against you, Jupiter, you can bet Wasserman will be able to convince a jury of your innocence.”

  Jupiter nodded, his relief palpable. Lilly said, “I’m sure it won’t get to trial, honey. They’ll dismiss the case. I know they will.”

  I continued. “As for Beverly, I just can’t say. She’ll resign, don’t you think?”

  Lilly shrugged. It didn’t seem like she cared.

  “I’m sure they’ll impeach her if she doesn’t. As far as prosecuting her goes . . . well, it all happened a long time ago. The evidence was lost in a fire in San Miguel; most of the witnesses are gone. Maybe they’ll try to reopen the case, but somehow I doubt it.”

  “They won’t prosecute,” Lilly said dully.

  I frowned, not understanding why she was so certain.

  “It’s just my word against hers. And no one would believe me.”

  Once again I didn’t answer. Lilly probably was right. I wasn’t sure how Mexican juries worked, but I knew it would be nigh on impossible to convince an American jury to believe the testimony of someone who had lost and recovered her memory so many different times, and in so many different ways. Juana’s testimony would help, but who knew if she’d be willing to go on the stand.

  Suddenly, Jupiter got to his feet. “I’m going to go play with the kids, okay?”

  Lilly raised her eyebrows at him.

  “I want to have some time with them before I go back into rehab,” he said.

  She nodded, and he walked quickly back to the house.

  “He just wanted to give us some time alone,” she said to me.

  Lilly and I sat together side by side. My friend’s father was dead; her stepmother had murdered her real mother. Her own career might or might not be over—it depended on whether any directors and producers would be willing to deal with the notoriety with which she would now forever be plagued. But the stepbrother whom she loved would be spared execution, and she could finally rest easily in the knowledge that she had had nothing to do with her mother’s murder.

  Was it worth it? Only Lilly knew.

  Suddenly, we heard squealing and the thumping of feet. The kids tore through the yard, heading in our direction, Jupiter bringing up the rear, laughing. I realized then that I’d never heard the young man laugh. It was a wonderful sound, full-bodied and joyful.

  “The mommies are base!” one of the twins shouted. Within seconds the three girls were scrambling all over us, grabbing on to our legs, flinging themselves into our laps. I held tight to a wriggling Ruby and to the lower half of the twin who had lain herself down over both Lilly’s and my laps. Isaac came up huffing and puffing, a much slower “it” in their game of tag. He scrambled up on the bench next to me and wrapped his arms around my neck. I bent lower to inhale his musty little boy smell and caught Lilly’s eye. She had her nose buried in her daughter’s hair. She smiled a sad smile, and then shut her eyes.

  In the end, in a world that spins out beyond our control, all we can do is hold our children close, and breathe in the scent of them. That’s all, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, that’s enough.

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