Murder Plays House

by Ayelet Waldman

  Alicia provided specific fat-burning exercises the girls could do in their beds in the middle of the night. Finally, she exhorted them to help one another. “Send a hospitalized friend some laxatives,” she wrote. Unfortunately, she said, doctors had grown wise to the trick of sewing pills into the bodies of stuffed animals, but stick deodorant containers were a good place to smuggle pills.

  There was more, much more, but by now I was too appalled to read on.

  Alicia Felix was, quite clearly, the doyenne of the Pro-Ana universe. She was a role-model—a source of information and inspiration to these pathetic girls. She was, I could not help but feel, a monster, preying on their worst insecurities. Why had she done it? I wondered. What had it given her? Power? A sense of control? Or was she some kind of twisted altruist, wanting to share the skills she had acquired over a lifetime of anorexia?

  I thought of Barbara Hoynes’s rage earlier in the day, at her daughter’s funeral. How much angrier would she have been had she known exactly what Alicia was up to? Or perhaps she had known. Perhaps that was why she screamed at her ex-husband, blaming him and his girlfriends for their daughter’s death. Perhaps that’s what she had meant when she told me of Alicia’s pernicious influence on her daughter.

  Thirty-one

  THE next morning, when I opened the door to pick up the newspaper, I found a terrifying man on our front stoop. He was huge, well over six feet tall, with a shaved head, a smashed, prize-fighter’s nose, and a tattoo of a death’s head climbing up from his neck over his left cheek. I gasped, as did he. He looked as scared to see me as I was to see him. He was clutching a letter in his hand, and had obviously been about to drop it in the mail-slot in the door when I opened the door.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  He pushed the letter toward me, but I backed away from his hand.

  “Take it,” he said, seeming to regain his composure. “Take it!”

  “No,” I said, grabbing the door behind me. I tried to slam it, but he wrenched the door out of my hands. That’s when I screamed. Within seconds, Peter was tearing down the steps behind me.

  “Take the letter!” the man said, just as Peter skidded to a stop next to me.

  “Larry?” Peter said.

  “Oh my God!” the scary guy said, staring at my husband. “Mr. Wyeth?”

  “Call me Peter, please. What’s up Larry? What are you doing here?”

  “You know this guy?” I said.

  “Sure I do,” Peter said. “Larry played a corpse on the last Cannibal movie. Didn’t you, Larry?”

  The man was smiling now. “I sure did. A one-legged corpse. I’m hoping to get a shot at a speaking part in the sequel.”

  I raised my hands. “What’s going on here?”

  “Oh man,” Larry groaned. “Look, I had no idea who you were. I mean, that you were Mr. Wyeth’s wife and all. I was just doing a favor for a friend. I wasn’t going to hurt you or anything. I was just supposed to drop this off.” He turned to Peter. “Swear to God, man. I wasn’t going to hurt your wife.”

  I snatched the letter out of his hand and tore open the envelope. In magic marker, on a sheet of plain white paper, it said, “Keep quiet about Dakota Swain, or else.” I raised my eyes to those of the massive man standing in front of my door. “You have got to be kidding,” I said.

  He blushed. “I’m sorry, man. Dakota just asked me to deliver it. I don’t even know what it says.”

  “Okay, well. Consider it delivered.”

  “You’re not mad?” he said to Peter.

  My husband looked at me, and I shook my head.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Peter replied.

  “Cool,” Larry said. “Well, bye.”

  “Bye.”

  He took off down the steps and jumped into the cab of a pick-up truck that had been pulled up onto our front lawn, crushing the grass. He leaned his head out the window. “Dakota’s cool!” he called. “She’s just all freaked out because that kid died and all.”

  I slammed the door shut and leaned against it.

  “What the hell?” Peter asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Are you going to call the cops?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because Larry’s a real sweetheart.”

  “Right.”

  “He just looks scary.” Peter took my hand and began leading me up the steps. “Do you think it’s a real threat?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “She’s just terrified I’ll tell Hoynes about the pills, and then he won’t give her the part.”

  “Maybe you should call the cops. I mean, you can’t be sure she’s not dangerous,” Peter said. Once burned, twice shy, but that’s another story.

  “I’ll figure it out later. There’s something I need to do first, this morning.”

  When Jews are mourning, we sit shiva. We sit in our homes, welcome guests, share food, and simply experience our grief for a period of seven days. I knew that Episcopalians had no similar formal ritual, but I was hoping that Barbara Hoynes would be home—I couldn’t imagine that a mother would go anywhere on the day after burying her daughter. Still, I didn’t expect to find Barbara Hoynes as I did, alone in her lavish home, wearing a bathrobe over her pajamas, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry.” I said when she answered the door. “I woke you.”

  She leaned against the doorjamb. “Can I help you?” she mumbled in a voice thickened by sleep, or grief, or a combination of both.

  I reminded her who I was.

  She stared at me, wordlessly. Her hair was matted down on one side, caught in a single barrette that swung free as she shook her head.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you, Ms. Hoynes, especially so soon after your daughter’s death. I know how you felt about Alicia. I know it’s asking a lot, but I hope you might consider talking to me, just for a few minutes.”

  “What time is it?” the woman asked.

  I looked at my watch. “11:15,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’ve been asleep for thirteen hours.”

  My eyes widened, but I merely said, “Well, that’s to be expected, given everything.”

  She sighed. “It’s to be expected given the three Ambien I took last night.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “I would have done the same. The nights must be unbearable.”

  She nodded. “They never end.” She leaned back in the doorway. “Come in,” she said, to my surprise.

  She led me through the darkened rooms to the kitchen. She motioned to a chair, and then stood in the middle of the room, looking vaguely around her.

  “Here,” I said. “You sit down. Can I make you a cup of coffee, or tea?”

  She collapsed into the chair and nodded. “Coffee. Over there.” She pointed at a complicated piece of equipment that looked more like a flight simulator than an espresso machine. I did my best, trying to imitate the baristas from whom I bought coffee every day. I didn’t do too badly, until it came time to steam the milk.

  “Don’t bother,” Barbara said, holding out her hand for the cup. I splashed some cold milk in mine and sat down next to her.

  “When we spoke last time, you told me that Alicia was a bad influence on your daughter. Did Alicia Felix actively encourage Halley to become anorexic? Was that how she got the disease?”

  Barbara took a careful sip of her coffee and then set the cup down on the table with a trembling hand. “I wish I could blame that on Alicia, but Halley has had an eating disorder for years. Since she was a little girl. Alicia didn’t make Halley anorexic. I did that all by myself.”

  “No,” I murmured. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Can’t I?” Barbara said, staring at her hands. “Halley was always a chubby little girl. The first time I had her on a diet was when she was two. I sent her to summer camps for overweight children from the time she was seven until she was twelve. Suddenly, she didn’t need them any more. She was thin. It took a couple of years before I realized tha
t she wasn’t just healthy and slim; she was actually too thin. It took even longer for me to figure out that she was sick. So you see, as much as I wish I could, I can’t blame Alicia. I can only blame myself.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I just patted her hand.

  Finally, I said, “Halley spent a lot of time on those Pro-Ana websites, didn’t she?”

  Barbara nodded, and then suddenly sobbed. She rubbed roughly at her eyes. “They all do. All those girls. That I blame on Alicia Felix. That I can lay squarely at her feet. She’s the one who got Halley started on those.” She beat her hands against the tabletop, and I jumped. “I was so stupid and naïve. At first I believed Halley when she told me that her father’s girlfriend was helping her, that she’d got her involved in an online support group. I even got a DSL line so Halley could get online more quickly. I actually thought it was like some kind of group therapy. I was such an idiot.”

  “How did you find out what the sites really were? Did you track Halley’s Internet usage?”

  She shook her head. “I wish I had. But I was too trusting. It never occurred to me that anything like that whole Pro-Ana thing could even exist. I didn’t find out about it until it was too late, until Halley was so far into it that I couldn’t save her.” She was crying freely now, wiping at her nose and mouth with the back of her fist. I looked around the room and, not finding any tissues, reached for a dishtowel that was hanging from the handle of the oven I gave it to her, and she wiped away the mucus that was dripping from her nose.

  “How did you find out what was really going on?” I asked.

  “Alicia’s best friend, Dina Kromm. Her mother told me.”

  “Dina? The girl who died?”

  Barbara nodded. “After her death, Susan and Duane went through Dina’s computer. She’d bookmarked the Pro-Ana sites. They came to me and told me about them. They even showed them to me. That’s how we found out about Alicia.”

  “They showed you her website?”

  She blew her nose again. “They wanted me to join them on a campaign to get the sites shut down, or at least barred from the larger search engines. We were going through the sites, reading them. Alicia’s is anonymous, but there were the pictures. She hid her face, but I could tell from her body that she was one of Charlie’s girls. They all look the same. Massive breasts, blond hair. Skinny. And Alicia mentions Charlie’s noxious TV show on the site. I knew right away it had to be Alicia. Halley said that Alicia had led her to the online support groups, and here was a site mentioning Charlie. It was too much of a coincidence. It had to be her.”

  “Did you confront your husband with what you’d found out?”

  “I tried to, but he refused to take my calls. He never would, that despicable creep. He always made me go through his lawyer when I wanted to talk to him.”

  “Did you confront Halley about it?”

  She nodded. “Right then, in front of Duane and Susan. I thought that given what happened to Dina, Halley would tell us the truth. And she did, in a way.”

  “In a way?”

  “I called her downstairs and showed her the site. I remember I was screaming. I asked her if this was what she meant by support groups. I asked her if this was her father’s girlfriend.”

  “What did she say?”

  Barbara knotted her hands together, her knuckles white against her chapped, red fingers. “She screamed right back at me. She gave me this ridiculous nonsense about anorexia being a life-choice not a disease. She said Alicia was her idol, that she was beautiful. That all the girls worshipped her. That . . . that . . .” her voice broke. She continued in a whisper. “She said she wished Alicia was her mother.”

  I leaned across the table and put my arm around her. Her body shook with sobs.

  We sat like that for a moment, and then she said, “I told Halley she couldn’t see Alicia anymore. I called Charlie’s lawyer; I called his office. But he wouldn’t speak to me. I was going to take him to court. I was going to get a restraining order against Alicia, and maybe even try to stop Halley’s unsupervised visitation with him. At least get rid of those overnights. Then Alicia was killed. And you know what? I was happy. I really was. Because she could never hurt Halley again. It never occurred to me that it was already too late.”

  Barbara sat up in her chair, shaking away my arm. I leaned back and looked at her. She took a shaky breath. “You probably want to know if I killed her, don’t you?”

  I did, but I doubted she’d tell me if she had.

  “The day she died was Halley’s first day in the hospital. I spent the whole day there with her. They let me sleep with her for the first night until they moved her to the ward. I almost wish it had been me who killed Alicia Felix, but it wasn’t.”

  Thirty-two

  I got the address of the Kromms and then left Barbara alone in her house. I didn’t want to. The idea of a mother grieving in a place empty but for memories of her child was nearly more than I could bear. Barbara was there, forced to stare at the beautifully framed photographs of her child, compelled to walk by the room with its pastel sheets and poster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the stacks of CDs by Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette, the outgrown stuffed animals and American Girl dolls gathering dust on the shelves, the iMac covered in stickers with its Grrl Power mouse pad. Halley’s room might have looked nothing like I imagined. The silence in the house, however, I knew would be exactly like that of my worst fears. The silence of a disappeared child is like no other.

  I picked Ruby up from school, leaving Isaac for his father. I needed some time with my girl, and I figured Peter and Isaac could amuse themselves with Legos and superheroes for a little while. Ruby and I had tea in her favorite café in Santa Monica, then we went on a drive through the Canyon. It was while we were winding through the narrow streets, counting Jacaranda trees, that I realized we were only a few blocks from where Halley’s friend Dina had lived. I rechecked the address and telephone number that Barbara Hoynes had given me, and then turned to Ruby.

  “Hey, chickadee. Do you mind if we make a stop?”

  She was chewing on the neck of her T-shirt. She spat out the fabric. “A work stop?”

  “Don’t chew your clothes. Yes, a work stop. But a short one.”

  She flicked out her tongue, catching the stretched out, damp bit of shirt in her mouth. “Okay,” she said.

  “Don’t chew your clothes.”

  “It’s all chewed up, already.”

  The blue cotton was crumpled and wadded, full of tiny holes made by her teeth. There was no point in trying to save it.

  Dina’s parents, Duane and Susan Kromm, lived in a stucco house set back from the road and nestled in a flower garden. It didn’t look any larger than my apartment, but given the neighborhood, probably cost well over two million dollars.

  Susan Kromm answered the door. “Can I help you?” she said in a soft, sweet voice.

  She glanced down at Ruby. “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi,” Ruby said.

  “I’m Juliet Applebaum,” I said. “We met at Halley’s funeral?”

  She smiled uncertainly.

  “I hope you don’t mind us dropping by like this. I know this is a painful time for you. But Barbara Hoynes gave me your name and address. I’m investigating what happened to Alicia Felix.”

  Susan Kromm’s face paled, and she bit her lip. “Why are you here? I mean, we didn’t know the woman. We never met her.”

  “I understand. I was hoping to talk to you a bit about the Pro-Ana websites. Barbara told me that you and your husband were involved in a campaign to have them shut down.”

  Susan nodded.

  “Do you mind if we come in?” I asked.

  She looked at Ruby.

  “Ruby will amuse herself,” I reassured the woman. “I have some paper and a pen in my purse.”

  Still looking unwilling, and suspicious, Susan motioned us inside. “Does she watch television?” she asked.

  “Yes, I do!” Ruby replied
.

  Ruby and I followed Susan into her kitchen. There was a small sitting area on one end of the room. She snapped on the TV, changed the channel, and handed Ruby the remote. “It’s on Cartoon Disney, honey. Don’t change it without asking your mom, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ruby said.

  “Would you like a cookie? I have Girl Scout cookies.” She turned to me. “They got delivered a few days ago. Dina must have ordered them from one of the neighbor girls.” The older woman’s cheeks twitched as she tried to hold back tears. “She ordered my favorite, Thin Mints, and her dad’s, Tagalongs. She never would have eaten them herself, but she liked to see us eat. I used to think she just liked to see us enjoying our food. Now I think it had more to do with feeling better than us, because she could resist a cookie, and neither Duane nor I could.”

  I laid a comforting hang on her arm. “I’m fine,” she said, swallowing hard. She bustled around her kitchen, laying a small pile of cookies on a plate for Ruby, and pouring a glass of milk to go with them.

  “What do you say?” I said, when Ruby had accepted the proffered plate and glass.

  “Thank you,” my daughter mumbled, her face already smeared with chocolate. “Is this nonfat milk?”

  “Ruby!”

  “What?”

  “Yes, honey. It’s nonfat. Is that okay?” Susan said.

  Ruby nodded. “Good. Nonfat is the best.”

  I resisted the urge to spank her. It wouldn’t have done any good. I satisfied myself with watching her gobble the cookies. Milk or no, she was getting plenty of good old fashioned fat into her body.