Dating is Murder (13 page)

18

S
unday morning found
Fredreeq and me at the Beverly Center.

“Shouldn’t you be with your family today?” I asked. “Or church?”

“The mall is my church, and Francis took the kids to paintball. Now listen,” she said, pulling me along level six, past the frogs in Pet Love. “This Marie changed her e-mail—maybe she got DSL or switched ISPs, people do it all the time. None of this matters. Go back to Mulholland Man. The radar part. You showed up Monday on his radar, he said?”

“Yes. And it was Monday I got the call from Mrs. Glück and started asking questions around the set. Tuesday I met everyone else, Maizie Quinn and Glenda, the au pair volunteer, and then on Wednesday creepy Marty at the agency, so this isn’t about them, it’s about the show. Someone on the show doesn’t want me looking for Annika.”

Fredreeq steered me past Bloomingdale’s. “No, no, no, forget Annika. It’s Savannah. Savannah’s now the odds-on favorite in Vegas. I saw this on the Internet. My theory is, Kim’s getting stalked too, but she mistook us for the enemy, which explains the thugs at Westside Pavilion. That part we’re going to take care of today.”

I followed Fredreeq through the busy mall, searching the crowd. I wasn’t even sure who I was searching for. “Why is Savannah the favorite?”

“The crowd loves her,” Fredreeq said. “She’s got that perky Paula Abdul thing going, and she’s into some kind of boxing, she’s got style. You were a stiff the first two weeks. But you’re coming to life now, and that’s a threat to Savannah’s people.”

“I gotta tell you, I don’t think this tall guy is some
Biological Clock
fan.”

“Not a fan,” Fredreeq said, “a professional saboteur. Big difference. But he watches the show, and I can prove it. When did his radar kick in? Monday. Monday was the episode where you wore Joey’s peasant blouse that was a little small and you talked about wanting your baby to have a father in its life because your own father walked out when you were six. The waitress in the background actually cried.”

“My God, how embarrassing—Bing was filming that? I didn’t realize we—”

“That was your finest moment. You left Savannah in the dust. Get it? Monday night.” Fredreeq took a good look at me. “Let’s hit Bebe.”

“Oh, please God, not Bebe, Fredreeq. It’s been a bad week, but I’d rather go back to the
morgue
than stuff myself into—”

“A celebrity dresses like a celebrity. You dress like a Home Depot clerk. Look at yourself. Here’s your New Year’s resolution a month early: No more fleece.”

“This is my good fleece—”

“Ever since Doc dumped you, you’re as sexy as cold oatmeal. Come to the party, girl. Who got press this week? Savannah Brook. You know who else? Raquel Welch. Yes, it’s a tacky story, it’s tabloid fodder, they went through her garbage. The point is, she’s older than God but she stays in the news because she is a star down to her toenails. She works it. She dresses up for 7-Eleven. She’s your role model from now on. No one’s going through your garbage, and doesn’t that bother you?”

“Look,” I said, “even if you’re right about the tall-guy stalker watching
B.C.—
”

“Hold Everything.” Fredreeq came to a dead stop.

“Okay, maybe ‘stalker’ is too strong a word—”

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“Hold Everything. It used to be right there.” She pointed to Bikini Bazaar. “They sold shoe trees. Man, I hate to lose a store.” Fredreeq strode ahead once more, me trotting to keep up. “Restoration Hardware, that’s our only hope. The day they fold is the day I start shopping online.”

Inside Restoration Hardware, Fredreeq got into deep conversation with the greeter and I pulled out my cell phone and called Maizie Quinn. I was explaining Marie-Thérèse to her machine when she picked up.

“Hi,” Maizie said, breathless. “Just getting a brioche out of the oven. Marie who?”

“Marie-Thérèse. I came across an e-mail—I think Annika confided in her.”

“About what?”

“Problems on
Biological Clock.
Annika was a sort of an unpaid production assistant, you probably know, and I think something there led to her disappearance.”

“Good Lord.” An audible sigh. “I should’ve kept a closer eye on her, but— Okay, let me think. She met so many au pairs in New York—all the girls start there for a week of orientation and training, a sort of boot camp before they meet their host families. Marie-Thérèse was probably one of those, the other January arrivals.”

“Did all these girls come from the same agency? Au Pairs par Excellence?”

There was a pause. “I’m not sure. I can— Yes, Emma, what?” Maizie’s voice went into another mode, pronounced patience. “No, Mommy’s on the phone. You need to wait one minute and I’ll do it for you. If you need it right now, you have to ask Lupe or Grammy Quinn.” Maizie returned to conversational mode. “Sorry, you were saying?”

“I have another thought. Emma’s music class—you said Annika made friends there? If I could visit the class—”

“The problem is, Music with Miss Grusha has a ‘no observers’ policy. She says visitors create performance anxiety. She was not very gracious to Grammy Quinn last month. You have to be enrolled in class and participating. Gene’s mom doesn’t do participation. If it involves hopping.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And I can’t alienate Miss Grusha; she’s my ticket into preschool. But I’ll ask the moms—oh, not tomorrow, I’m interviewing nannies. But next week, definitely.”

Next week? A week was a lifetime, I thought, hanging up. I joined Fredreeq at the register and told her about Miss Grusha’s antivisitor injunction. “What can I do?” I said. “I’ve got to talk to these women.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve gone through everyone else who knows Annika—the Quinns, the agency, Glenda, Britta, cops, boyfriend, mother. If I can’t find Marie-Thérèse or Richard Feynman, these music moms are my only hope.” I took the au pair application from my purse, but Fredreeq grabbed it.

“Here’s an idea. Give it a rest. You’re like a crazy person—”

“I’ll meet you up on seven,” I said, grabbing back the application. “I need a better German dictionary, and maybe a how-to book for finding missing persons—”

“Level eight,” the salesclerk said, scanning with a wand what appeared to be a butterfly net. “The bookstore’s on eight. Brentano’s. Down from the food court—”

“Thank you,” Fredreeq said, glaring at him. “We know all about level eight.” She turned to me. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard this week. A how-to book on missing persons. No. We are not going on a wild book chase. There is no such book, because there is no market for—”

“But there is, there are forty thousand missing Americans—”

“This is a missing
German,
who’s gone back to
Germany
and hasn’t told her fruitcakey
mother,
because she’s probably sick and tired of talking to her on the phone every damn Sunday. The cops told you that, the agency told you that, the Mother Goose mom told you that, how many votes have to be in—”

“No. There’s no consensus on what happened to her, everyone’s got different theories, and mine is, something happened on the show—”

“So someone hit on her. Welcome to show biz. Is that my total? Did you take off the extra ten percent on the fly gun and the card shuffler?” Fredreeq studied her receipt, then turned to me. “Look. We have two objectives today: destroy the competition and work on your wardrobe. No Soviet kindergartens, no German dictionaries . . .”

We argued about it all the way to a clothing store called Parsley Sage Rosemary, where Fredreeq’s voice dropped to a whisper. “No one shops here except people trying out for
Hamlet.
Okay, bury your face in brocade and stay low until I give the word. Here, hold my butterfly net. Excuse me,” she called, walking away before I could ask questions. “Is Kimberly working today?”

I realized this was the second day job for Kimberly Karmer. So I wasn’t the only
Biological Clock
contestant with multiple odd jobs. And Parsley Sage Rosemary was odd, as odd as Plastique, the velvets and ruffled blouses suitable for fairy tales, for maidens who hang out with unicorns. Greeting cards took shape: Hamlet at the mall, fencing across level six, up the escalator . . . My thoughts drifted for ten minutes or more until Fredreeq tapped my shoulder.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We got what we needed.”

Fredreeq couldn’t see
why gathering dirt on Kim did not sit well with me.

“I came here to create an alliance with her,” she said, leading me past Baby Gap, “but she called in sick today, so I chatted up her coworkers. Is that a crime?”

“Fraud?” I said. “Yes, that’s a crime. Slander, libel, defamation of character, telling people you’re with the
National Enquirer,
that you’ll pay—”

“I never used the word ‘dirt’ and I only implied I’d pay
if
a story checked out. Lighten up. It worked. Kim has been followed; she’s called mall security twice in two weeks. Which confirms it’s Savannah who’s in league with the saboteurs. And Kim’s had breast implants, which I suspected, and enough botox to kill a cow. They hate her there—they’re on commission and she poaches customers.”

I gazed at a pregnant woman walking past us. “But how could anyone but
B.C.
’s editor influence how people vote? And if he did that, featured one contestant over another, wouldn’t we notice? Wouldn’t the producers?”

“Yes.” Fredreeq stopped, eyes wide. “Who’s to say the producers aren’t in on it? Maybe they kidnapped Annika, to create some buzz. Or—wait, wait! The saboteurs could be holding her hostage; they’ll release her after the producers do their bidding.”

I just stared.

“Yes!” she said excitedly. “The producers, in cahoots with bookies in Vegas. Not Joey, of course, but Elliot’s always been a little shady.” She took out her phone. “You go buy that dictionary. If this Music with Mrs. Khrushchev class is our only lead, I’ll get you in there. If someone’s kidnapped Annika and we expose it, we’re home free, because I don’t care what our ratings are, that story is headline news. So deal me in.”

In the bookstore
I stood holding a German-English dictionary and staring at one page of Annika’s au pair application, the
Führungszeugnis.

No single English word expressed it.
Führungszeugnis
needed its own sentence: “document issued by police certifying the holder has no criminal record.”

This sounded like good news except that the date circled in red pointed to the fact that Annika’s
Führungszeugnis
was several years old. And obsolete.

Someone else had figured this out too, someone who’d circled the date in red. And then what? Blackmailed her with the information? Who? To what end?

And for what crime?

19

“
S
azheeq, this is
Wollie,” Fredreeq said. “Auntie Freddie’s friend.”

I squinted through the window at the child in the car seat that took up half of Fredreeq’s Volvo. We were in front of Wee Willie Winkies Preschool, on a quiet block of Moorpark in Studio City, in time for Music with Miss Grusha. “Hello, Sazheeq,” I said.

Sazheeq said nothing. She was two and a half, younger than Emma Quinn but as tall, I could tell—all skinny arms and legs and pigtails.

“Come say hello to Aunt Wollie.” Fredreeq hauled her niece out of the car and deposited her in my arms. Sazheeq climbed out of my arms. “Remember: french fries afterward if you’re good. We’ll rendezvous at Mickey D’s.”

Miss Grusha’s was crowded. Two- and three-year-olds with attendant adults sat on the floor of the small room amid toys. A thin woman in red overalls and implausibly blond hair jumped up from the piano to greet us. “I am Grusha. You are Wollie? This is Sazheeq?” She was no spring chicken, but she looked like she could give toddlers a run for their money in the energy department. “Come,” she said, taking Sazheeq’s hand. “Tell us your favorite song so Miss Grusha may play it for you on the piano. If I sound funny it is because I have an accent. Miss Grusha is Russian.”

Sazheeq, finding this acceptable, walked off with Miss Grusha. I joined the group of moms and mom substitutes on the floor.

“Adorable girl,” one said. “Adopted?”

“Uh, no,” I said, then realized that this was the most reasonable explanation for a pale white adult with a very black-skinned child. “I’m taking care of her.”

This did not dispel curiosity; a black child with an Anglo-Saxon nanny would be sociologically odd. I was about to say I’d borrowed her but then I’d have to explain that, and what was the point of a cover story if you spilled the beans at the outset?

The woman introduced herself as Rachel. She pointed out her son, Brandon, and recited the names of the eight other children, all of which I immediately forgot. Rachel then rejoined her conversational pod, discussing someone’s pediatrician’s divorce. Two other women chatted in Spanish. An Asian girl stared out the door, clearly bored, the only adult young enough to be Annika’s peer. I crawled over to her under the pretext of recovering a Nerf ball. “Hi,” I whispered. “Do you know Annika Glück?” She looked at me as if I’d suggested something distasteful and moved away.

I’d crawled back to Rachel to ask her the same question when a musical triangle sounded. On cue, the children tossed toys into a wicker basket. Miss Grusha went to shut the door, just as Maizie Quinn and little Emma squeaked through.

Maizie scanned the room and saw me. A look of surprise replaced her smile, then curiosity as Sazheeq sat next to me. Emma waved in a matter-of-fact way, as though seeing me in her music class were an everyday occurrence.

The next hour we danced with scarves, hopped like bunnies, rode hobbyhorses, sang songs involving hand puppets on a shopping spree, and acted out a condensed version of
The Nutcracker Suite
with me assigned the role of someone’s uncle. Sazheeq spent part of the time watching, part of the time trying to open the door and make a break, and part of the time lying spread-eagled on the floor, barking like a dog. I attempted talking to her during a dog episode, but this brought forth a scream of such epic proportions that I backed off. Other children hugged, climbed on, and clung to their attendants, but at no time did Sazheeq treat me as anything but a chance-met stranger of dubious character. This caregiver business wasn’t as easy as it looked.

Others seemed to enjoy themselves, and Maizie had particular success as a sugarplum fairy, suggesting ballet in her past. Class was still in progress when she and Emma took off. “Nanny interviews,” she said, and left behind homemade pumpkin cupcakes in honor of Thanksgiving week. Miss Grusha handed out napkins and sent us outside to plastic tables. This was my opportunity.

I told Rachel that Annika had disappeared, that I was looking for anyone who’d been a friend of hers, and that Maizie had recommended this class as a place to start. Rachel was astonished, concerned, and delighted to be drafted. “Georgine! Michelle!” She hailed moms from the cupcake tables. “Come!”

I recounted to them the events of the past week.

“I’m shocked.” Georgine, in workout clothes and full makeup, looked less shocked than titillated. “She was the übernanny. I tried to hire her. Offered her a real salary, but she wouldn’t leave that family. I bet they have a seriously nice house. Seen it?”

“Yes. Very nice,” I said. “So Annika didn’t seem depressed to you, or—”

“No,” Georgine and Rachel said together. The other mom, Michelle, was silent.

“Did she ever talk about a Marie-Thérèse? Richard Feynman?” I asked.

More head shaking.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Georgine said. “Maizie, Emma’s mom? Not that she’s unattractive, but come on. She’s not twenty. I don’t care how good her cupcakes are, she’s nuts to have a girl as pretty as Annika live in.”

“Maybe she’s divorced,” Rachel said.

“No, there’s a husband,” I said. “I’ve never met him, but she talks about him.”

“I’ve met him,” Georgine said. “An HMO doc, so I bet she has to work. And those guys don’t keep super-long hours, not like real doctors, so there you go.”

“What are you saying, the husband had an affair with Annika?” Rachel asked.

Georgine glanced at the picnic table. “Hallie, no more cupcakes, you’ll get carsick,” she called, then turned back to us. “It happens. Ever read
Jane Eyre
?”

Good God. This was something I’d never considered.

Michelle, an athletic brunette, smiled. “So why would you hire her, Georgine?”

“I was separated. Last summer, before Allen came crawling back. Now I’ve got Maria, two hundred pounds and gray hair. Hallie loves her, Allen doesn’t. Hallie! Two more minutes, then we have to go shoe shopping!”

Belatedly, I remembered my own charge. Sazheeq, now in the sandbox, was bathed in orange frosting. How many of those damn cupcakes had she eaten? Stricken, I went to collect her. The party broke up as bigger children and their keepers filtered in for the next class. I separated Sazheeq from the sandbox and Miss Grusha separated twenty-five dollars from me, saying she hoped to see us again.

Rachel wished me luck. “Georgine might be right, but I’ll tell you, I never saw a kid and a nanny crazy about each other like Emma and Annika. I hope for Emma’s sake that you find her. And that it’s nothing—you know. Icky.”

When we got out to the parking lot, Michelle was squatting in front of a Jeep Cherokee, brushing crumbs from her son’s overalls. She stood when she saw Sazheeq and me and flagged us down.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Georgine,” she said, “but two weeks ago—well, the last time I saw her—Annika asked me how to find a lawyer. I told her I’m a lawyer. I don’t practice, but I’m a member of the bar. She got a little flustered and said no, she needs the kind who finds lost people, an immigration lawyer. I said that’s not what lawyers do, but she said she’d heard of ones who find people who disappear.”

My heart was beating a little faster. “Disappear.”

Michelle looked down at her son and Sazheeq, staring at each other the way children do before manners set in and force them to either converse or feign disinterest. “Disappear into the judicial system. Noncitizens, held without charges, who don’t get a phone call. She heard about it on National Public Radio.” She rubbed her forehead. “I was in a hurry. I said, Don’t worry, you’re not a terrorist, this wouldn’t happen to you. But she wasn’t the worrying type. She was in trouble, I’m thinking now. Damn it. I should’ve asked more questions.”

“Damn it,” the little boy repeated.

“Okay, you, jump in your car seat,” Michelle said. She opened the Jeep and her son climbed in the back. She reached into her glove compartment, withdrew a business card, and handed it to me. “In case you find her and she’s in trouble. I did estate planning, so as a lawyer, I may not be much help. But as a mother I may be.”

Michelle’s words rang
in my ears. I dialed Annika’s mother, as I’d been doing periodically since waking up. I’d done the same the day before, Sunday, until ten
P.M.
German time. The response was the same now as it had been the last eight tries.

No one picked up the phone.

The answering machine wasn’t on.

Mrs. Glück seemed, in fact, to have disappeared.

There were no
horned frogs on my mural. I realized this as I changed into an old pair of Doc’s sweatpants at the Mansion. I was not fond of the grumpy, cannibalistic ceratophrines and had let personal taste outweigh artistic considerations, but really, is eating one’s own species worse than eating “prekilled” pinkie mice or the vitamin-dusted crickets that other pet frogs call lunch? And while I found horned frogs homely, Tricia might thrill to them. People did.

I found a place over the vegetable sink for a Chaco horned frog,
Ceratophrys cranwelli,
and set to work. To achieve the mottled effect of the Chaco’s brown-on-beige markings, I needed a daub cloth, and I was searching the Mansion for a rag when I recalled something else about the Chaco. And about Annika.

It was nearly the last time I’d seen her. She’d been looking through one of my frog books, lying on the floor of my apartment. “How do you call this one?” she’d asked. “
Chay-ko,
like the drug lord?”

I’d told her my guess was
Chock-o,
more Spanish-sounding, since the frogs were South American. And then, wondering why a drug lord would be a point of reference, I’d asked what her interest in Tcheiko was.

“He grew up in East Berlin,” she’d said. “We hear of him, even before—but he is so evil, this man, and scary—” And then she’d changed the subject, visibly disturbed. I’d wanted to tell her she wasn’t responsible for every bad egg who ever lived in Berlin.

I wondered about this now, thinking about the bedroom eyes I’d seen in
International Celeb,
but the thoughts troubled me, and I tried to focus on work. I tore off one leg of Doc’s sweatpants below the knee, creating a daub cloth. If I’d had a degree in graphic arts, maybe I’d be better equipped for this kind of work, instead of making up tools as I went along. Not that it was a big sacrifice; the sweatpants were spattered with saffron-colored paint and destined for the ragbag anyway. Which would please Fredreeq.

What wouldn’t please Fredreeq was me stopping for gas on the way home, in full view of Ventura Boulevard at rush hour, without changing back into my “good” sweats. While the gas pumped, I went for the squeegee. A dirty car is a moral issue in L.A., making my Integra a degenerate. A sports car pulled up behind me—strange, considering there were four empty self-serve islands at the station. I turned toward it.

The car was clean. Metallic. A grille like a flyswatter.

A man got out of the car. Tall. Very tall.

The Guy. The Mulholland menace. My heart started
thump thump thump
ing away, the blood sprinting through my veins.

If I dove into my car and drove off, would the pump go with me or would the hose disengage, spraying gas all over Ventura Boulevard? What about my gas cap?

The man walked toward me. Long strides. Relaxed.

What should’ve concerned me was that we were the only ones here at the gas station—not counting the clerk inside, who wasn’t paid enough to intervene, should this encounter turn dangerous. What did concern me, of course, was how I looked.

He stopped in front of me, inches away, and settled against my extremely dirty car, hands in pockets. A beautifully casual pose, like a clothing ad.

“Hello,” I said. It came out crackly. I cleared my throat. “Hello. Again.”

“Hello.”

I could sense his body temperature. Standing this close to someone signaled impending contact: Teeth cleaning. An eye exam. Assault.

A kiss.

This preoccupation with kissing: could I be coming down with a psychiatric disorder, some late-onset obsessive-compulsive stress-induced—

“You’re dripping.”

“I beg your pardon?” I looked down to see the windshield squeegee raining soapy water onto my pants, my saffron-spotted sweatpants, cut off below the knee on the left side, as if I’d borrowed them from a peg-leg pirate.

He reached out and took the squeegee and set to work on my windshield.

I stood, lumplike. Another person would’ve asked what kind of stalker cleans his victim’s windshield, but not me because I was too busy watching his forearms flex. He wore a pale yellow dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His arms were muscular, tanned, with fine blond hair glinting under the gas station lights and a silver watch going back and forth, back and forth with the squeegee, his moves displaying the grace of an athlete or a professional gas station attendant.

Why on earth was he doing this? Why wasn’t I asking?

He finished, returned the squeegee to its water pail, and instead of using the paper-towel dispenser, wiped his hand on the back of his pants, which made me like him more. They were beautiful pants, charcoal, well-fitting, knife-creased, worn with a belt I recognized as a Cartier. Not that I was staring, I told myself. It’s just sad, having a stalker so much better dressed than oneself.

“Shall I check the oil?”

I dragged my eyes from his lower anatomy to his face. “No, thanks. I already did that this year.”

He smiled. His face wasn’t hard after all. How had this happened? “I was wrong about you,” he said. “You’re a very good girl, aren’t you?”

I winced. Guys did not, in general, fall for very good girls, any more than girls went for very nice guys. I tried to keep the defensive note out of my voice. “Sometimes I leave shopping carts in the parking lot instead of returning them to their racks.”

An eyebrow went up.

“Sometimes I eat grapes in the produce section. I tell myself it’s to make sure they’re not sour, but after the first eight or ten, I lose credibility. Also, I read magazines I don’t buy.”

“Is all your bad behavior grocery based?”