Murder Plays House

by Ayelet Waldman

  Finally, just when I felt that I, who knew the poor woman not at all, might be forced to approach her to offer some kind of a comfort, another woman, small, round, dressed in a grey coat, crouched next to the grieving mother and pressed her damp face to her own doughy cheeks. The little woman cried, too, but silently, and something about her noiseless grief seemed to still her friend’s howling. They rocked together at the edge of the grave, until the last flower was tossed on the casket, and the priest had come to offer her arm.

  As we made our way back down the narrow paths to our cars, the priest announced that the family would like us to join them at Barbara Hoynes’s home in Brentwood. I pulled out my pad and jotted down the address. Peter glared at me.

  “We’re not going,” he said.

  “Yeah, we are.”

  “Why?”

  I pulled open my car door and motioned for him to get in. I didn’t want anyone else to hear this argument. “I don’t know. Because Alicia Felix was murdered just a few weeks ago, and now Halley Hoynes is dead, and I just have a feeling about it all.”

  Peter slammed the car into reverse and began to back slowly down the hill. “How can you possibly have a feeling? That’s ridiculous. Shameless. Charlie’s daughter died of anorexia. What could that possibly have to do with Alicia’s murder?”

  “Alicia was anorexic, too!”

  He shook his head at me. “And so is half of Los Angeles. So what?”

  I sighed and, slipping off my shoes, lifted my swollen feet onto the dashboard, making sure to tuck my skirt under me so as not to flash any of the other mourners. “You know what Al always says about coincidences.”

  Peter shook his head impatiently. “Juliet, we don’t know the woman. We never met her daughter. How can we just show up at her house? It’s absurd. Anyway, aren’t you afraid she’ll recognize you?”

  “There were at least a hundred people at this service. Do you honestly think anyone will notice us there?”

  “You’re not exactly small enough to fade into the woodwork, honey. And with my luck, Hoynes will trap me in some corner, and I’ll end up committing to writing his wretched movie, just because I feel sorry for him!”

  “Don’t be absurd. His daughter is dead. The last thing Hoynes is going to want to do is talk business.”

  But of course that’s exactly what Hoynes did want. As soon as we walked into the living room of the ostentatious plantation-style McMansion off Mulholland Drive, Hoynes grabbed Peter and dragged him off to talk business. Thank God Jake caught sight of the two of them and insinuated himself into their těte-à-těte, otherwise Peter’s career would surely have foundered on the rocky shoals of a vampire abortion comedy.

  Once I realized that my husband was safe in the hands of his agent, I felt free to wander the edges of the crowd, eavesdropping. It was essentially a typical Hollywood scene, although there were more overdeveloped young women in tight funeral wear than I’d seen before at the kind of parties Peter and I attended. I supposed that these were Charlie’s actresses, all there to prove their allegiance and hope it would be remembered when it came time to cast the next television show or movie.

  Barbara Hoynes’s friends looked like they had wandered in off the set of an entirely different picture. They were much older, in their late forties or early fifties, as was she. Many of them were typically thin and elegant, but the woman who had comforted her at the graveside was not the only one who looked like a regular person. There were one or two other women who, like Barbara herself, looked their ages. Barbara sat in an armchair in front of the empty fireplace, her face by now more or less composed. It was obvious even sitting down that she was a tall woman, and one who had once been shapely but had now grown more stately and imposing. She had a broad shelf of a bosom and a wide, flat face interlaced with a fine webbing of wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Unlike her husband’s current girlfriends, she had clearly avoided the plastic surgeon’s knife, although perhaps the size of her breasts indicated a long-ago familiarity with the shape-altering formula so prevalent among the younger women in the room.

  I was doing my best not to look like I was staring at Halley’s mother, when I felt a hand on my arm.

  “Hi,” Dakota said. She was still wearing her sunglasses.

  “Hi.”

  “This is a nightmare.”

  “It’s very sad.”

  Dakota ran a trembling hand through her hair. “I just can’t believe it. That stupid girl.”

  I glanced at her, surprised. Most of us try not to express those kinds of sentiments, even if we do feel them.

  Dakota took a huge gulp of the drink she held in her hands, grimaced, and sucked in air. “I just can’t believe it,” she said again.

  “I’m sure it’s a terrible shock.”

  “Halley was just so stupid. I mean, to end up killing herself?” She took another swallow, sucking the last bit of alcohol out of the plastic tumbler. She crunched an ice cube between her teeth and then swayed, grabbing my arm with her hand. It was only then that I realized how drunk she was. “If that bitch finds out about the pills, I am going to be so screwed,” she mumbled.

  I held my breath, willing her to continue.

  “That’s all I need, is for Tracker’s lunatic wife to figure out that I gave that crazy girl some of my pills.” She put a hand over her eyes. “Get me another drink, okay?”

  I propped her against the wall and crossed quickly to the bar, sniffing the glass she’d put in my hand. Gin. I motioned to the bartender to refill the drink. “Gin. Straight up,” I said.

  He glanced at my belly, but followed my instructions.

  Dakota was still waiting for me, and I pressed the glass into her hands. She lifted to her lips and drained it in a single, huge gulp.

  “Dakota,” I said softly. “What kind of pills did you give Halley?”

  She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, leaving a smear of red lipstick like a bloodstain. “Just normal pills. Speed, you know. But, like, natural.”

  “Ephedrine?” I asked.

  “Natural ephedrine. It works great.” Then, without another word, she stumbled off.

  I heard a disgusted snort and turned to find the small, heavy-set woman who had comforted Barbara when she had broken down at the graveside.

  “Horrible woman,” she said.

  I nodded and extended my hand. “I’m Juliet Applebaum.”

  “Susan Kromm. Poor Barbara, to have to deal with that woman.”

  I nodded.

  A man who was clearly her husband stepped up next to her. His head was a dome of mottled pink skin. He hadn’t, thank goodness, attempted the dreaded comb-over, but the bedraggled length of the few strands of baby-fine hair remaining on his head led me to believe that he might be considering it. He put his hand on the small of his wife’s back and she leaned into him.

  “This is so hard,” she whispered.

  “I know, dear,” he said, reaching a trembling finger to wipe a tear from her plump cheek.

  The moment was so intimate that it made me feel uncomfortable to be part of it. Just then, though, my attention was distracted by a stifled giggle. Crowded around a grand piano, not too far from Barbara, was gathered a group of teenage girls. Three of them sat thigh by thigh on the piano bench, and the others leaned against the heavy black sides of the instrument. The girls were whispering to one another, and every once in a while one of them giggled, and was immediately hushed by her peers. What was remarkable about the girls, or perhaps what was unremarkable about them, was their size. There were all, to a one, tiny. Tall or short, their waists could easily have been spanned by my hands. They had long legs, revealed by miniskirts, on which their knees bulged round and bony, separating fleshless thigh from sticklike calf. Individually, they might have seemed skinny, perhaps a bit unusually so, but together, in a group, they looked like nothing so much as a well-dressed, carefully made-up group of concentration camp survivors.

  I was not the only one whose attention was rivete
d on the girls. Barbara Hoynes’s eyes kept returning to them as though drawn by an irresistible force. One by one her guests approached her, murmuring their condolences. Each time she shook the proffered hand, nodded her thanks, and then looked back at the collection of bony limbs huddled around her piano. At last, her attention seemed diverted once and for all. Charlie, who had finally released Peter from his grip, crossed the room toward his ex-wife. He held Dakota’s hand in his, and she swayed against him. He came to a stop in front of Barbara’s chair and cleared his throat ostentatiously.

  “My dear—” he began, but Barbara cut him off.

  “Not now. Just shut up, Charlie.”

  The room grew absolutely silent. It was so quiet that one could almost hear the ticking of a hundred watches on a hundred wrists.

  “Just shut up, Charlie. Please.” Her voice was thick with pain and suppressed rage.

  “Our poor little girl,” Hoynes said, his face growing red, his eyes filling with tears. His grief seemed tried-on, like an ill-fitting outfit from the back of a studio’s costume warehouse. And yet it was most likely real, wasn’t it? He had lost his daughter. His only child.

  Barbara’s composure broke, and she began to scream. “You pig. You son of a bitch. You killed her. You and your gaunt and wasted girlfriends. She knew what you liked. She knew what you wanted, and she starved herself to try to be that for you. Look at that . . . that stick you’re with! Look at her! That’s what killed your daughter. You’re what killed my Halley!”

  She stabbed her finger at Dakota, and lunged at her. The younger woman leapt back, tripping over her feet, Hoynes’s hand the only thing that kept her from tumbling to the floor in a pile of twig limbs and falsely inflated breasts.

  The crowd of people had stopped even pretending to look away or be busy with their own conversations. Even Susan Kromm seemed frozen by shock and horror. Suddenly, the grieving mother turned toward the group of girls who had claimed her attention before her ex-husband’s approach.

  “And you!” she shouted. “What is wrong with all of you? You watch your friends die, one after the other, and it makes no impression on you at all. Are you trying to kill yourselves? Is that it? Will you only be happy when every last one of you is dead?”

  The girls at first seemed to shrink into themselves, then one of the three on the piano bench rose on shaky legs and ran from the room. Within seconds, the others followed. Barbara collapsed back in her chair and began to weep. The sound of her tears seemed to liberate the frozen crowd. Susan Kromm rushed up to her, along with a few other women. They crowded around her chair, stroking her hair and back. The others in the room began at first to whisper to one another, but quickly their voices rose to a low hum, and the tinkling of glasses and silverware resumed.

  Peter caught my eye from across the room, his eyebrows wiggling frantically. My husband wanted out of there. I shook my head at him and held up a finger. I needed just another minute or two.

  I walked out of the living room, through the front hall, searching for the girls. I found them outside, sitting on the wide low steps leading up the front porch. I opened the door and let myself out. As soon as they saw me, their voices hushed.

  “Hi,” I said.

  There were five of them, gawky, skinny girls with identical long, straight hair and pale skin. None of them responded to my greeting.

  “That was pretty awful, wasn’t it?” I said.

  A girl with brown hair and a mouth full of teal blue braces nodded, shivering dramatically and hugging herself with wrapped arms. “God,” she said.

  “She acts like it’s our fault,” another girl whispered. This one was the prettiest of the group, although her perfect features were marred by a rash of angry pimples across her chin and forehead.

  The other girls nodded. A tiny girl with close-set eyes, wearing a pale-pink childlike jumper over a Peter Pan blouse said, “She’s got it so backwards. I like almost told her, Halley was the one who taught me how to do a fifty calorie fast. She was like my mentor!”

  “Really?” I said, sitting down next to them on the step.

  The girl immediately seemed to regret her words.

  One of her friends rolled her eyes, and then said, in a cloying, rehearsed voice, “Halley had a terrible problem.”

  “Did she?” I asked. Then, watching the girls out of the corner of my eye, I said in a soft voice, “Well, I wish I had that problem.”

  They grew still, staring at me.

  “I mean,” I continued. “Look at me. I’m so fat.”

  “Aren’t you, like, pregnant?” the girl with the braces asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I’m so huge. I’ll never get back to the way I’m supposed to look. Not by normal means. I wish I could figure out what to do about it.”

  The pretty girl leaned toward me, her blond hair falling over her pale grey eyes. “It’s just a question of control,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the only reason you look like that is because you aren’t controlling yourself. I totally understand. I mean, look at me.” She poked one boney thigh. “I’m a total gross pig, but this is nothing compared to what I looked like six months ago. You’ve just got to assert some control.”

  The girl in the pink jumper nodded her head vigorously. “You know, support really helps. I mean, the world is full of people who just want you to be as fat and disgusting as they are. You have to try to find other people to help you. To inspire you.”

  “Like you guys found each other?” I said.

  They nodded.

  “Where did you all meet?”

  They glanced at one another, an unspoken debate going on. I smiled encouragingly, and finally the girl with the braces said, “We met online. In a Pro-Ana chat room.”

  Twenty-nine

  THE story the girls told me sounded like some kind of sick joke, an urban legend passed along in whispers from one hysterical parent to another. They were, however, in dead earnest. These girls were, the five of them, Anas. Actually, the girl in pink was an Ana and a Mia, but the others seemed to look down on her indecisiveness. She would occasionally allow food to pass her lips, so long as she promptly forced herself to purge. Theirs was a purer devotion; like the girl they had gathered to mourn, they preferred never to eat at all.

  Anas, they told me, viewed their anorexia not as a disease that must be cured, but rather as something to nurture and celebrate.

  “Look,” the girl with the braces told me. “We’re not stupid. I mean, I think every single one of us is on the honor roll.” They others all nodded. “We know anorexia is a mental illness,” she said. “It’s just that we prefer to suffer from it than to look . . .” Here she paused, and it was quite clear what she meant. Than to look like me.

  One of the girls, a tall, stoop-shouldered creature with a sharp nose and a small mouth crowded with teeth, piped up, “We don’t try to, what’s the word? Make other people join us, or anything.”

  “Proselytize,” I said.

  She nodded. “Right. We don’t do that. In fact, there isn’t a single Ana website that doesn’t say right off that it’s not a place to come to try to learn how to be anorexic, it’s just there to help and support people who already are.”

  “But not support like ‘help cure,’” the pretty blond with the bad skin interjected. “There’s always some idiot coming on the sites to flame us and tell us we’re crazy and we need therapy and all that. We shut them down pretty quick.”

  The girl with the braces nodded. “I mean, hello. We’re all in therapy. We’re in like more therapy than anyone in the free world!”

  The girls giggled.

  “Why are you in therapy?” I asked. “Why bother, if you don’t want to stop being anorexic?”

  The girl in pink waved one tiny hand at the door behind us. “Why do you think?” she said. “Our parents. They make us go.”

  I nodded. “Halley was in the hospital, wasn’t she? When she died?”

  At th
e mention of what was clearly a dreaded place, a palpable shudder ran through the group. I turned to the last girl, the only one who hadn’t spoken yet. She looked like a slightly mousier version of her blond friend. Her hair was dirty blond, and she wasn’t as pretty, although her skin was clearer. It was brilliantly clear, in fact. So pale and white that I could see the blue of her veins pulsing in the hollows of her forehead. “Have you ever been the hospital?”

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “I was there with Halley. That’s why I look like this.” She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to shrink her already minuscule body into something even smaller and more invisible.

  “Like what?” I asked gently.

  “You know. Fat.”

  The girl with the braces leaned across and hugged her friend. “It’s okay Tawna. It’s not your fault.”

  I did, I thought, a good job of wiping the astonishment from my face. Was this child serious? She looked like she weighed no more than Ruby, even though she was a few inches taller than I. Did she really think she was fat? And did the others agree with her?

  “They don’t let you out until you reach a certain weight,” the girl in pink explained to me. “It’s awful. They watch you at every meal; they even force-feed you. You get weighed every day, and they won’t discharge you until you reach whatever weight they decide is enough.”

  “What was their goal weight for you, Tawna?” I asked.

  She shook her head silently, as if the number were too depressing even to express aloud.