Dating is Murder

by Harley Jane Kozak

  And how exactly was I to stop looking for her? Should I stop thinking about her? Avoid saying her name? Not drive my car? Quit the show? Leave town? Which part of my life was the dangerous part? Being a CW, a cooperating witness for the FBI, the job she’d turned down?

  Tell no one, Annika had said.

  I had to tell someone. Cziemanski? Annika was still his case. No, not a case, a missing person’s report. He might see this e-mail as confirmation that she’d left voluntarily.

  Joey. Tell no one wouldn’t mean Joey, because Annika, unlike the FBI, understood about best friends. When I reached Sherman Oaks, I went into Rex and Tricia’s Mansion, armed myself with a gallon can of deck paint as a weapon, checked the house from top to bottom, locked the door, and left a message for Joey.

  One good thing about the e-mail, beyond the fact that Annika was alive, was that it distracted me from my hangover. I don’t get drunk often, being, if not a blackout drinker, a brownout one. I don’t forget whom I was with, just the details of what I did with them. Which makes for some uncomfortable mornings after. This one was no exception.

  “Wollie, I can’t talk,” Joey said on the phone, interrupting my painting. “But be home at three-thirty. I have a plan.” She hung up. Immediately, my cell phone rang again.

  “Joey?” I said, but it wasn’t my friend’s gravelly voice that responded.

  “Miss Shelley?” It was a woman, soft-spoken. I thought of the female plumber and felt chills up and down my spine. “My name is Lauren Rodriguez. I’m—”

  “Oh, gosh.” Rico’s mother. I froze. “I know who you are. How are you doing?”

  “Not well.” An audible breath. “Pardon the intrusion. I was given your number by Kevin Irving. Richie’s roommate. I understand you met Kevin. And Lyle. At Pepperdine.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Kevin tells me—he’s very kind, he calls the house every day—he says you’re friends with a young woman Richie dated. A girl from Germany.”

  “Annika. Yes.”

  “I’ve spoken to the detective in charge of my son’s case. I asked about this young woman. He says the connection is tenuous. Miss Shelley—”

  “Call me Wollie.”

  “The detective feels it best if we leave him to do his job. I am not much interested in the detective’s feelings. I don’t know if this will make sense to you, but I want to meet everyone my son met, go where he went; I would like to walk through his life of the past weeks. I’d like to hear about this young woman. If we could meet for a cup of coffee, lunch, anything. Anytime you like. I have nothing but time.”

  I felt sad down to my toes. What could I say to this woman, what could possibly help her right now?

  Information. Knowledge.

  “Of course I’ll meet you,” I said. “But there’s someone else you may want to talk to. I’ll make a call and get right back to you.”

  Maizie answered on the first ring. “Wollie! Guess what: Grammy Quinn called last night from Palm Springs, she just figured out why you looked so familiar—she’s a huge fan of this show you’re on. Hey, do you have an autographed photo? She’ll be back for Christmas—”

  “I can do better than that,” I said. “She can visit the set if she wants. Listen, though—”

  “Oh, my God. It would be like the Second Coming— Emma Amanda Quinn!” Maizie’s voice changed drastically. “Don’t you go near that ironing board. Lupe! Dónde está?”

  I spoke quickly. “Maizie, I’m close by and I wonder if I could bring a friend to meet—”

  “Yes, fine— Emma! Wollie, I’m sorry, I have to deal with this. Come on over. Bye.”

  I drove from Sherman Oaks and Lauren Rodriguez drove from Lost Hills, both of us heading to Encino. As I’d expected, when she heard Annika was an au pair, Lauren wanted to meet the host family. I drove as fast as Ventura Boulevard allowed, anxious to brief Maizie on the sensitive nature of this visit. I was putting her on the spot, but I couldn’t see her refusing, and I was glad not to have to meet Lauren alone. There is something scary about grief.

  Lupe and Mr. Snuggles escorted me into the kitchen, where Emma sat at the table with a plastic plate in front of her and a bib around her neck. “Emma eat lunch,” the child informed me, holding up tiny silverware.

  “Looks good.” Turkey, stuffing, and peas sat on the plate, each food forming an island, nothing touching. A tiny, perfect wedge of apple pie occupied its own plate, just out of reach.

  Maizie came through the doorway, aproned, carrying a large Tupperware bowl. “Hey, there,” she said, heading for the counter. “What can I get you, Wollie? Actually, you might want to help yourself—we’re doing sausage, and it’s not pretty. Gene took one look and went to play golf. City boy. There’s fresh-squeezed juice in the fridge.”

  “That’s the fridge,” Emma said, pointing to the paneled-front appliance. “It’s a refrigerator fridge.”

  “I see,” I said. “Maizie, you make your own sausage?”

  “Yes, I’m taking a charcuterie class.” She poured the contents of her Tupperware into an enormous bowl, added a measuring cupful of what appeared to be spices, and plunged her hands in. “Oh, Lupe, I have the three-eighths-inch blade chilling in the fridge, could you get it? Anyhow, Wollie, come to our Christmas Eve open house. Grammy Quinn comes in the day before—oh—” She looked up. “Did you say you were bringing a friend?”

  “She’s on her way,” I said. “And she’s not precisely a friend.” Maizie looked curious but continued kneading. I said, “Her name is Lauren Rodriguez. Her son was Annika’s boyfriend, Rico. He’s missing. Have you heard about this? It’s been on the news.”

  Maizie stopped working, hands suspended above the bowl. She stared at me. “His mother is coming here?”

  “Yes. I think she’s in bad shape, understandably, and she’s trying to . . . um, retrace the steps of her son’s—I’m sorry, this is very awkward. Is it a problem?”

  Maizie glanced at Emma, a stricken look on her face. I felt my own face go red, as though I’d just burped loudly. I said, “I guess it is a problem. I—wasn’t thinking.”

  A buzzer rang.

  “Lupe,” Maizie said, “please show our guest in.” She stepped over to the sink and washed her hands. She dried them on a dish towel, removed her apron, inspected her nails, then moved to Emma’s high chair. She smoothed the flyaway hair until Emma batted her away the way you’d shoo a fly. Maizie smoothed her own hair. The seconds dragged by. She gave me an uncertain smile. “It’s fine, really, I just can’t . . . fathom what that woman is going through. I have seen the news. It’s every mother’s nightmare, you know.”

  I didn’t know. I wasn’t a mother. I could only guess.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway. We all watched the doorway.

  Lauren Rodriguez was medium height, shorter than Maizie and me, and ballerina slender. She preceded Lupe into the kitchen like a gazelle, long-necked and fragile. She looked nothing like Rico, her sandy hair pulled back into a ponytail and held with a tortoiseshell barrette. She wore khaki pants, a white blouse, loafers without socks, and carried a purse. Her only jewelry was a gold watch and a wedding ring. Her pierced ears were bare. She shook hands with us, with a strong grip. I remembered she was a politician’s wife.

  “You’ve both met my son.” It was a voice unadorned with inflection.

  Maizie asked Lupe to finish with Emma’s lunch. Then she led Lauren and me into what would’ve been described in another era as a parlor. It was a room suited to tense conversation. The furniture was antique mahogany with needlepoint cushions, small, dark, and hard.

  “I met Rico—Richard—very briefly, last Thursday,” I said. “To talk about Annika.”

  Maizie cleared her throat. “Two or three times he came here to pick up Annika for a date, or just to visit. Once I made pizza and we all watched the World Series in the den. A charming young man. Extremely well mannered.”

  “Yes, he is,” Lauren said. “Thank you. What can you tell me about
this girl?”

  “Annika?” Maizie said. “Wonderful with children, excellent English. Good personal hygiene. A little . . . withdrawn, the last month or two, but I chalked it up to hormones or homesickness. An ideal employee in every way, until she disappeared. Such a bright girl.”

  I nodded. “Really smart. And energy—volunteer jobs, projects, college courses . . . generous and goal-oriented.”

  A fleeting smile appeared on Lauren’s face. “She doesn’t sound like Richie’s type.”

  “What’s his type?” I asked.

  “Trouble.”

  “Annika is very pretty,” Maizie said, almost defensively.

  “Yes, of course.” Lauren’s eyes darted around, her social mechanism breaking down. Already she looked older than she had on TV days before. A beautiful woman, affected by sleeplessness, anxiety, and heartsickness. She wore no makeup. Her pallor unsettled me.

  “Lauren, I have a question—” I started, then stopped. There was really no graceful segue from teen dating to crime.

  “Ask. I’ve been asked everything this week.”

  “Was your son ever involved in—or were his friends into . . . um, drugs?”

  Both women looked at me with blank expressions.

  “No,” Lauren said. “Richie was never a problem, even as a little boy. He never liked guns or swords. Just fire engines and cars. His train set, of course. Then girls.”

  What a strange answer. It told me nothing about him, but something about her, what she could bear to think about.

  “I have this hope,” she said, “that they ran off together, Richie and this Annika. He never brought her home. His roommate, Kevin, tells me my husband might have found her . . . unacceptable. Do you think that’s possible, that they eloped?” Her face was a plea.

  I looked at Maizie, who studied her hands, frowning as though trying to understand the question. I swallowed. “That wasn’t the impression I got from him,” I said. “But of course, I’d just met him; he’d hardly confide in me.”

  Lauren’s thin fingers worked the clasp on her bag. “It’s a silly theory. Who elopes?”

  “I believe Annika felt herself to be—” Maizie chose her next words carefully. “In love with your son. I can’t say whether it was reciprocated. He seemed to come around less in the last few weeks.” A strained silence followed. “Can I get you anything?”

  Lauren appeared not to hear. “Also, he would never let me worry like this. He called Saturday from school to say he would sleep in on Sunday, but he’d be home to watch the game. Football. And dinner. He said he had a mountain of laundry. He would never lie to me, you see. He’s a good boy. Not with his father, not always, but with me.”

  She went back to rubbing the clasp on her purse. It was Prada, I noticed. How far from these women I lived, with no children, no husband, no holiday open house. I had odd jobs. And I was dressed in orange spandex bicycle shorts and a blue, red, and yellow rugby shirt, clothes belonging to dear gay Hubie, found in the bottom of a closet. I had no costly accessory to fidget with. The only thing I owned as expensive as that Prada handbag was my car.

  After an awkward conversational lull, Maizie offered to show Lauren Annika’s room.

  The attic bedroom was now a quilting room. Intricate quilts hung on the walls, and some sort of oversize frame was set up on the bed, holding a quilt in progress. They were gorgeous, but Lauren ignored them. She stood, breathing hard, as if she could inhale a clue. What was it she hoped to find? An emotional connection, a psychic one?

  Maizie said, “There’s not much here. I sent most of her things back to Germany.”

  “Already?” I said, wondering if anyone would be there to receive them. I hadn’t told Maizie that Annika’s mother was missing. Now probably wasn’t the moment.

  “Gene thought it was time.” Maizie’s lips pressed together, as though the next thought had to be held back. Then she said, “He felt a week was long enough.”

  Lauren’s face went rigid. It was another story at her house, I guessed. Rico’s bedroom would be as he’d left it to go to Pepperdine: athletic trophies, his train set, plaid blankets on bunk beds. Nothing would’ve changed in the last few years, and now, unless he showed up alive, nothing in that room would ever change. Lauren stared out the window, and I stared at her. Her arms were folded, her right hand gripping her left bicep. Her nails were painted a shade of pale coral, but the polish was chipped and the nails themselves ragged and uneven. This shocked me. Like spotting a cold sore on the Mona Lisa.

  “The police,” she said, as if someone had just asked a question, “think he had a date Saturday night with a girl. But they can’t find the girl. So when Kevin told me about Annika disappearing . . .” Her shoulders slumped, and her head dropped to her chest.

  We left the room, and then the house. Maizie walked us to the porch, and Lauren and I continued down the drive, to our cars. The film shoot that had been down the block last week was now across the street. A woman was setting up director’s chairs on the front lawn. I wanted to say something personal to Lauren, but everything I thought of sounded platitudinous to my ears. Like a bad greeting card.

  “Did Rico talk about Annika?” I asked.

  “Not by name.” A smile touched her face, making wrinkles around her eyes. This was someone who smiled a lot, in normal life. “The last time he was home—he comes home every few weekends—I said, ‘Is there anyone special?’ He said, ‘They’re all special, Mom.’ ”

  I waited. She stayed with her memory until we reached her car, a Jaguar convertible, dark green. “He said a funny thing. He said ‘Even Dad would like this one. He just wouldn’t like her for me.’ You see?”

  “Um, no,” I said.

  “It’s the way you described her. My husband respects a good work ethic. But whoever Richie ends up with will have to have more, and I think that’s what he was acknowledging.”

  “What will she have to have?”

  “Social prominence. Style, education. Things I assume this girl doesn’t have.”

  I looked down at my orange bicycle shorts. “A lot of people don’t.”

  “Something else. He said, ‘Mom, she’s just like you. She’s beautiful and blond and she speaks three languages.’ ”

  I stared at her, but she didn’t notice.

  So I just came right out and told her. Annika wasn’t remotely blond.

  32

  Blondes. Bleach blonde, honey blonde, ash blonde, dishwater blonde. Bad blonde. Rico’s last date was a bad blonde, because if she had nothing to hide, she’d go to the cops and say, “I was with him the night he disappeared. I was the last to see him.” Or nearly the last. If she was truly the last, then she had reason to keep it to herself.

  I was no longer thinking of Annika. Or Simon. I wasn’t even hung over. Driving east to San Marino, I had a prickly feeling, like my whole body had gone to sleep and was now waking up. I hadn’t called first, because I wanted to try out Joey’s theory of lying, which required surprise. I had to see Britta’s face.

  I heard her first. Or, rather, I heard the children she took care of. Why weren’t they in school, I wondered, and then realized the Friday after Thanksgiving was a holiday. I followed the sounds to the back of the house and let myself in through a gate connected to a high fence. Two skinny boys jumped off a low diving board into a black-bottomed pool in a manner calculated to create the largest possible splash. Slumped on a beach chair in a sweatshirt and tight jeans was Britta, clearly bored. Very blond.

  Because of the splashing I was able to get next to her without being heard. “Hi, Britta.”

  She jumped to her feet. Recognition dawned, then hope. “Rico? He is found?”

  “No.” I hesitated, then plowed onward. “Britta, you dated him, didn’t you?”

  The switch to sullen was instantaneous. “It was you who have told this to police.” She took in my outfit, the bicycle shorts and nonmatching shirt, and seemed to find it an affront.

  “I—no, I didn’t,” I
said. “Have they talked to you?”

  “Yesterday. Joshua!” Her head snapped around. “Do not hit your brother!”

  I turned to look. One skinny kid was hitting the other while the other screamed.

  “Joshua! Stop this any minute!”

  One day, some civilizing force might set in, but now the boys were monkeys. Not cute baby ones, but the hostile kind you see at the zoo, screeching when they catch you looking. Joshua paused in midattack and pointed an accusing finger. “Who’s she?”

  “She is—nobody.”

  “You’re not supposed to have friends over when you’re on duty.”

  “Anyway, she is not a friend.”

  Joshua’s brother used this distraction to push Joshua into the pool, then took off running. Britta yelled at him not to run. He paid no attention.

  “I’ll leave in a minute,” I said. “So the cops know you were sleeping with Rico?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to talk to you. You are not police.”

  “No, but—do you know what a private detective is?”

  “You are a detective?”

  Joey and I had already played this out with Kevin and Lyle, but it was still hard for me to lie. I sat on the chaise longue. “What’s nice about private detectives,” I said, “is that people tell them things, things they never have to report to the police—”

  “So? This is not a crime, I think, to have sex with people.” She flipped her straight blond hair with both hands.

  “Of course not. And by the way, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you and Rico were in love, or I would’ve been more sensitive when I told you the news the other day.”

  Britta nodded.

  “What I care about,” I said, leaning in, “is finding Rico. This is why I ask personal questions. Forgive me. It must be painful to talk about. I won’t tell the police anything.”