Nursery Crimes (11 page)

“I’m glad you didn’t. I don’t think I could be so understanding about kidnapping.”

“Teenagernapping, actually. She’s about fifteen or so. Anyway, it turns out that Abigail was seeing a shrink, and you’ll never believe who.”

“Who?”

“Herma Wang!”

“Herma Wang, celebotherapist?”

“Wouldn’t it be celebratherapist?”

“Celebo is better.”

“Whatever. Yes, her! I was thinking I would call Lilly and see if she’s still seeing Wang. If she is, maybe she can find out for me whether Abigail was seeing her, too, and if she was, whether it was for couples counseling.”

“Lilly’s in town,” Peter said. “She left a message on the machine this morning. By the way, do we want to stay with her and the twins at the Telluride Film Festival this year?”

“Um, Peter, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m about to have a baby. I don’t thing we’re going to make it to Telluride this year.”

“Oh, right.” He laughed. “I keep forgetting.”

“Maybe I’ll give her a call and ask her about Wang.”

“You do that. I’m going to get back to work,” Peter said.

“
Back
to work?”

He blushed. “To work.”

“Um, Peter, I found out something else.”

“Hmm?” He was already thinking about his script.

“Stacy was with Bruce LeCrone the night of the murder.”

“At the ICA party. You knew that.”

“No, Peter. She was
with
him.”

He looked at me. “With as in
with?
”

I nodded.

“Wow. Does Andy know?”

“I don’t think so. At least not yet.”

“Wow.”

We looked at each other and recognized the emotion we were both feeling. Relief. Profound relief to be married to one another. To be married to someone we not only loved, but also trusted.

I kissed Peter and, leaving him to his toys, went to call Lilly from our bedroom. Lilly Green is definitely our most famous friend. She’s the only one who’s really achieved movie-star status. Despite this, she’s managed to stay unpretentious and almost normal. She has the usual Hollywood retinue of personal assistants, business managers, and household staff, but she still drives her twin daughters to school every morning that she’s not working.

One of her assistants answered the phone and put me on hold while she checked if Lilly was “available.”

“Juliet! Great to hear from you. So, do you guys want to join us at Telluride?” Lilly shouted in the receiver.

“I wish we could, but I don’t think we’ll be able to manage it with the new baby.”

“Oh, that’s right, I totally forgot! When are you due?”

“In about a month.”

“How fabulous! Boy or girl?”

“A little boy. His name is Isaac.”

“That’s so sweet! What a terrific name. I can’t believe you’ve picked out a name already. The girls were almost a month old before we’d settled on Amber and Jade. And even then I wanted to change it two weeks later!”

“Well, you know me, decisive to a fault. Listen, I was wondering if you could help me out with something?”

“Sure.”

“Remember that therapist you recommended to Peter a couple of years ago? Herma Wang?”

“Of course.” Lilly’s voice lowered in sympathy. “Do you need her number? Is something going on with you two? Are you okay?”

“No, no, we’re fine, it’s not that. It’s just . . . where do I begin here?” I launched into the long, tangled story of why I wanted to track down the good Dr. Wang. When I’d finished, Lilly whistled.

“Juliet, you are so cool! The crime-solving soccer mom!”

I snorted. “Ruby hasn’t started soccer yet. And I haven’t solved any crimes.”

“I haven’t seen Wang as a patient in about a year, but ever since I got my Oscar she’s called every couple of months inviting me to lunch.”

“How starstruck
is
she?”

“She’s pretty bad. It was kind of icky by the end of therapy. She
always
took my side, not that I minded, but it did get a little ridiculous.”

“Starstruck enough to breach confidentiality? Could you try to find out if she was seeing Abigail alone, or if she was treating her and her husband, together? And it would be really good to know
why
she was seeing her, okay?”

“I bet I could find out
something
from her. She’s so completely indiscreet. I’ll take her to the Ivy. That’ll knock her onto her butt-kissing butt. This is kind of fun; I feel like Miss Marple!”

“Only much better-looking,” I said.

“You flatter me, dahling,” Lilly replied, doing her best Zsa Zsa Gabor. “I’ll call you as soon as I talk to the doc.”

“Great! Talk to you soon.”

I hung up the phone just in time to hear Ruby yelling from her bed.

“Mama! Nap all done! Come get me! Mama come
now
!!”

“I’m coming!” I yelled back. “And stop yelling at me!”

I walked into Ruby’s room and found her standing in her crib, one leg hoisted over the side.

“What are you doing, Houdini-baby?” I said, grabbing her just in time to break her fall.

“Nap all done,” she said. “I want out.”

“I see that,” I said. “If you’re big enough to climb out of your crib, maybe you’re big enough to get a big-girl bed. Do you want a big-girl bed?”

“No.”

“You could pick one out by yourself.”

“No.”

“It could be a really pretty bed,” I wheedled. I needed to get her out of that crib before her brother made his appearance. No way was I buying a second crib.

“No.”
Jeez
, this kid was stubborn. Wherever did she get that?

“It could be pink,” I said in a singsong voice.

That sparked her interest. “Pink?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t that be great? Let’s go buy you a pink, big-girl bed!”

“No.”

Time to quit while I was behind. “Okay. Never mind. Let’s go find Daddy.”

It took all of three seconds to pry Peter away from his work. The bait was a trip to the grocery store to buy the fixings for chicken tacos. The man is easily distracted.

Peter wheeled our big cart down the aisles, Ruby trundled along behind wheeling her minicart, and I brought up the rear, wishing that one of them was wheeling me. In the produce aisle I caught up to Peter and asked, “Do you
goyim
have any ritual where friends and family pay visits on the bereaved after a death?”

“You mean like a wake?” he asked.

“No. Not like a party or anything. More like . . . well, like a
shiva
call.”

“What’s a
shiva
call?”

“You know, we paid a
shiva
call on my aunt Gracie when Uncle Irving died.”

“Oh, right. Of course. When they sat around on stools for seven days and everybody came by with food.”

“Exactly.”

“Nope. I don’t think there’s a WASP equivalent.”

“Really? That’s so cold! You just let the family mope in their house all alone?”

“No, Juliet. We all meet up at the country club and play a round of golf. And then we have a big meeting and discuss how to keep the Jews and blacks out of the neighborhood.”

I laughed. “Seriously, there’s no time where you just drop by and visit the family?”

“Not really. Although my mom is always dropping off casseroles for eligible widowers. Does that count?”

“No, I don’t think . . . wait a minute, maybe that
could
work.”

“What could work?”

“Maybe I could make a casserole for Abigail Hathaway’s husband!”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Why? I think it’s a great idea.”

“First of all, didn’t you say she had a daughter?”

“Yes. So what?”

“It’s hardly fair to leave her an orphan. I can’t imagine a surer way to kill the poor girl’s stepfather than feeding him a casserole that you made.”

“Ha, ha. You’re a laugh a minute.”

“Seriously, Juliet. You don’t even know these people. You can’t just show up with food.”

“Why not? I’m just showing support. Helping them out. And I did
so
know her.”

“You did not. She probably wouldn’t even have recognized you.”

“Yes, she would have. She would have remembered that you saved her from Bruce LeCrone. And anyway,
they
don’t know how well I knew her.”

“Juliet, be careful around that family. This isn’t a game. They’re grieving.”

“I will be careful. I just want to get a sense of them, on a more personal level. I’m not even going to ask any questions.”

“I’m just giving you my two cents.”

“Duly noted. And I will be discreet. I promise.” I gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Peter?”

“Yes?”

“How would you feel about cooking up a little casserole?”

“Oh, my God. No. Definitely not.”

“Please. Oh, please.” I kissed him on the cheek.

“I can’t believe you.”

I reached out to a grocery bin and tossed a few bags of spinach into our cart.

“What’s that for?” Peter asked.

“Spinach lasagna. Only make it with fewer onions this time. Most people don’t like as many onions as you do.”

T
HE
preschool gig sure paid well, I thought as I pulled up in front of Abigail Hathaway’s oversized Tudor house in the Santa Monica Canyon, one of the most prestigious neighborhoods on the Westside. A manicured lawn stretched from the brass-riveted front door down to the curb. A brick path meandered down the lawn between carefully tended beds of winter flowers. In the driveway were parked two cars—a bright-blue Jeep, and one of those BMW two-seaters that a certain kind of middle-aged man feels compelled to purchase immediately upon seeing James Bond tooling around in one on the silver screen.

Gee, I wonder which car belongs to Daniel Mooney? I thought.

I got out of my suburban-matron heap, careful not to wrinkle the baby-blue maternity smock I had found crumpled at the back of my closet and had actually managed
to iron in preparation for my incursion into Mooney territory. I looked innocuous and very, very sweet.

Reaching into the backseat, I grabbed the handles of a shopping bag containing a spinach-and-feta-cheese lasagna that Peter had obligingly whipped up. I walked up to the front door, stretched my face into a sickly sweet smile, and knocked briskly. While I waited for an answer, I reached into the shopping bag and took out the foil pan of lasagna. Without warning and with a sudden jerk, the door opened. Startled, I gave a little jump. Not much, but just enough to tilt the lasagna pan and send a stream of tomato sauce out from under the foil wrapper and all over the front of my smock.

“Oh!” I said with a gasp.

Abigail Hathaway’s daughter stood in the doorway. “Oh, no!” she said, reaching out and steadying the pan. “You got it all over yourself!”

I looked down at the splash of red festooning my chest and belly.

“Lovely. Just lovely,” I said, ruefully.

“I’m so sorry,” the girl said.

“No, no! It’s not your fault! Don’t be sorry. It’s me. I’m just a complete klutz. I’m the one who’s sorry.” I motioned toward the sauce-covered pan. “This is for you and your . . . your dad.”

“Thanks,” she said, although she clearly didn’t mean it.

“It’s lasagna.”

“Great.” Looking vaguely nauseated, she gingerly took the pan from my outstretched arms.

“Would you like to come in and get cleaned up?”

“That would be terrific. My name is Juliet Applebaum. I knew your mom.”

Standing in the doorway, holding a pan of lasagna, Abigail Hathaway’s daughter started to cry. She cried not
like the grown woman she looked like, but like the child she was. Huge, gasping sobs shook her narrow chest and tears poured down her face. Her nose streamed and, arms filled with lasagna, she turned her head to the side, trying ineffectually to wipe her nose on her shoulder. As she lifted her shoulder to meet her nose, the pan slipped from her hands, falling to the floor with a wet
splat
and spilling tomato sauce over her shoes.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!” the girl wailed, dropping to her knees and trying to stem the tide of sauce making its way across the floor in the direction of a pink and white Oriental floor runner.

I looked around me for a cloth, anything to catch the spill before it ruined what was surely an expensive carpet. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing to be found. I looked down at my shirt, and, with a helpless shrug, whipped it off over my shoulders and, joining Audrey Hathaway on the floor, used it to mop the spilled sauce. She sat back and stared at me, her surprise completely stopping her tears. I finished cleaning up the spill, tossed my filthy shirt on top of the lasagna pan, and hoisted myself to my feet, holding the by now quite disgusting offering in my arms.

“Where’s the garbage pail?” I asked.

“In the kitchen. Through there.” The girl pointed down the hall. I first checked my shoes to be sure they were clean of sauce, and then headed down the hall toward the perfectly appointed kitchen. I glanced at a gilt-framed mirror that I passed and was horrified to see myself in my black-and-white-spotted maternity bra, the one Ruby likes to call my cow bra. My stomach bulged over the top of my leggings, and my belly button made a little tent in the black fabric. Shuddering, I rushed into the kitchen. I crammed the pan, shirt and all, into the stainless steel
trash bucket under the sink, found some paper towels on the counter, unrolled a few dozen sheets, and soaked them with warm water. Carefully squeezing out the towels, I made my way back to Audrey, who was still kneeling in the middle of the entryway. She hadn’t moved, but neither had she resumed her sobbing. I took each of her hands and gently cleaned them. Then, I wiped the sauce off her shoes and scrubbed up the last traces from the floor. I went back to the kitchen, threw out the mess of paper towels, and returned to the hall. Audrey hadn’t budged.

Groaning, I lowered myself next to her and stretched my arms out to her. Silently, she inched over to me and awkwardly leaned into my arms, resting her head on my chest. She started to cry again, but without the violence of the first episode. This time her tears fell quickly and silently, dampening my bra. I rocked her gently, smoothing her hair with my hand.