The Devil's Interval

by Linda Peterson

  “Well, not lots,” said Michael. “I see a lot of very nice silver-haired ladies when your little heathen Jewish self deigns to go to Mass with me, and there’s not one I’d call ‘a fox.’ Besides, that’s not precisely what I meant when I said to call Moon. I meant, run your theory by Moon and let him follow up. That’s his day job.”

  Andrea let out a gentle snore. Calvin stood up, and brushed her hair off her face. “Hey, Starchy,” he said, “you’re already in bed with the Sandman. Let’s get you home.”

  She moaned. “Okay, okay, just help me up.”

  Michael walked them to the door, and came back to watch me power through the rest of the oranges. “I’m just giving you grief, Mags, I can take the boys if you want.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t sleep now. I’m all wired. You go get a nap.” I looked over at him. “You do look beat. And you did make breakfast.”

  “Twice,” he said. “If you’re counting.” He headed upstairs. “Call Moon,” he hollered back at me.

  CHAPTER 38

  A person simply can’t think at a soccer game. First, there’s the search for the parking place, the unloading of the camp chair, hauling the wheeled cooler out of the back of the car if you’ve got snack duty, retrieving the errant shin guard that’s always left behind between the seats, juggling purse and sunglasses, and climbing the slope with all that baggage up to the fields. Coolers with wheels, now those were a great innovation. And, along the way, you’re navigating the gauntlet of other soccer parents, all of whom have too much of their own stuff to offer to help carry, and are inevitably looking to recruit you for another job. Since I was carrying my sunglasses in my teeth, because they kept slipping down my nose, I couldn’t talk. Which meant all I could do was nod okay to a request to organize the coach’s end-of-season gift, drive between the temple and the party venue for Emily Leventhal’s bat mitzvah, and sign up to bring dinner to another soccer mom and her family (breast cancer surgery, who’s going to say no?) next week.

  Every time I hear that the military has trouble meeting their recruiting goals, I think they ought to enlist a few of the Oakland Buccaneer team moms to hit the road as recruiters. There may be no crying in baseball, but for damn certain, there’s no naysaying in soccer.

  When I’d finally dumped the cooler, unfolded the camp chair strategically between the two different fields where the boys were playing, delivered the missing shin guard to Josh, smeared my face and arms with sunscreen, reperched the sunglasses on my nose, and sank into my chair, I realized I had not chosen my location wisely. Right next to me was the head soccer mom, the ne plus ultra of momhood, the one who put all the rest of us to shame. Lulu Brown, Yale undergrad, Wharton MBA, now volunteer CFO of every underfunded nonprofit in town and domestic goddess of her family.

  “Maggie,” said Lulu, “it’s great to see you. I usually see Michael at these games.”

  “Oh, we trade off,” I said. “Unless we can come together. How are you, Lulu?”

  I knew how Lulu was. She was great. She was always great. She looked great—snug jeans on long elegant legs, a crisp, pinstriped pink-and-white blouse, with the collar turned up, one heavy, twisted silver bracelet on her wrist, and tiny pearl studs in her ears.

  “Oh, I’m great,” she said. “Don’t you just love this time of year? All my snap peas are up, and Hal and I started our spring dance lessons.”

  Throughout our conversation, Lulu’s hands were briskly knitting away, as what appeared to be a tiny blue-and-gold sweater sleeve emerged from her needles.

  “Spring dance lessons?” I asked, glancing up at the field to see if I’d missed anything. Maybe I needed to station myself at the line, in case they needed someone else to call “out of bounds.” Of course, that seemed risky. I could never remember what circumstances called for a corner kick. I shook my head, trying to clear the no-sleep fog.

  “Yes,” she said, glancing over at me, continuing in a matter-of-fact tone. “Every season Hal and I take up a new dance form.” She paused to think, “Let’s see. We’ve done the Viennese waltz and West Coast swing, and oh, the tango. That was fun.” She twinkled at me. “Very sexy dance, you know. Hal just loved watching me put on those fishnet stockings.”

  I remembered Mr. and Mrs. Hothan on the street where Grace had grown up, and wondered if there was some rule that guys named Hal had to do the tango. Then, I moved on, trying to figure out if there was a way to work salsa or even the occasional fox trot lesson into our schedule. It sounded like a good idea. I like hobbies that require interesting wardrobes.

  “Anyway,” she continued briskly, “it’s a busy time of year. But you,” she said, shaking her head sympathetically, “I don’t know how you’re orchestrating everything now that you’ve gone back to work. I know the kids must miss you terribly. But then, you’ve always had that pretty foreign girl helping out, haven’t you?”

  I didn’t know where to begin. “Anya,” I said. “Yes, she is a help.” I considered for a minute. “Maybe I should send Anya to dancing lessons with Michael, since I’m so overcommitted.”

  Lulu glanced at me sharply. I’d forgotten how dangerous it was to wise off around her. She might seem a little Stepford-like, but she was anything but dumb.

  “What are you working on?” I asked, hoping to change directions, before my smart crack got me in trouble. “Those colors are lovely.”

  “One of the moms in my National Charity League group is having a second baby,” she said. “And they’re such Cal fans. Her husband practically bleeds blue and gold.” She held up the sleeve for me to admire. “So, I dyed two yarns in shades of blue and gold, and I’m weaving in the baby’s name and year of birth, so it will look like a little team jacket on the back.”

  I wanted so very much to ask if she’d made the dye herself from homegrown, mortar-and-pestle-pounded blue forget-menots or something. But I restrained myself.

  I watched as she slipped one of the needles out of the tiny Old Blue work-of-art-to-be and consulted a pattern secured by a rock next to her chair, and fluttering gently in the breeze.

  “I saw you last night, by the way,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “At that party in the city, for the jazz club. You know, The Devil’s Interval.”

  I blinked. “You were there?”

  She nodded. “Yes, Hal and I were there. We just popped in and out, because we had tickets to San Francisco Symphony. But we wanted to go support that poor woman who owns the place.”

  I kept readjusting my picture of Lulu. “So, you know The Devil’s Interval?”

  She looked up from the pattern, and reinserted the needle. She seemed puzzled. “Well, sure,” she said. “Anyone who likes jazz knows that place. Hal and I go there from time to time. Sometimes we stop by late, after a concert or dinner or something.”

  Of course you do, I thought, once again wishing it were possible to be Lulu, instead of desperately envying everything about her.

  “I didn’t see Michael, though,” she said, just a little pointedly.

  “No, I went with another friend. Michael had kid duty last night, because Anya was out.” I suddenly realized that Lulu didn’t know what had happened.

  I filled her in about the fire. Her blue eyes opened wide, and the knitting fell on her lap.

  “How awful,” she said.

  “It is,” I agreed. “It is absolutely awful.”

  We both sat in silence for a moment, glancing with glazed eyes at both fields.

  In a moment, I could see Lulu straighten, and pick up her knitting again.

  “What does she need, do you think?” asked Lulu. “I hate it when terrible things happen to people and everyone rushes in with help that isn’t any help at all. Then, it’s just one more thing they have to deal with. A friend of mine lost her husband suddenly just before Christmas last year, and all she ended up with was a freezer full of mediocre lasagna and banana bread.” She shook her head. “With nuts. And one of her kids is allergic to nuts. What were her
friends thinking?”

  “Better to do something than nothing, I guess,” I said feebly.

  She looked determined. “No, it’s not. She was writing thank-you notes and surreptitiously giving all that stuff away for weeks.”

  “Well, it sounds as if you know her better than I do,” continued Lulu. “You let me know what she needs, including a place to stay. I have a cousin in the City with an empty guest house.”

  “I think she’s fine for now,” I said. “Her friend Gus seems to be taking care of her.”

  “Oh,” said Lulu. “That not-very-well-groomed man who’s always following Ivory around at the club?”

  “That very one.”

  Lulu said nothing. We both watched the big boys’ field again. Josh’s team was getting trounced by the Berkeley Hobos. Zach’s team played shorter periods, and the boys were already sacked out on the ground. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep,” said Lulu, “I make up new names for the teams. That Berkeley team really bothers me. I think it’s disrespectful to both the hobos and the kids to call the team by that name.”

  I looked at Lulu. She seemed very serious. I couldn’t actually visualize her lying sleepless in bed. I would have assumed she’d get up and mill flaxseed for homemade bread or balance the federal budget or something.

  Before I could say anything, Lulu continued briskly, “I bet I know what you’re thinking about when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night,” she said, stopping a moment to count stitches. I braced myself, wondering what piece of trivia, or worse yet, deep remorse Lulu thought occupied my middle-of-the-night thoughts. “I bet you’re working on your case.”

  “My case?” I said, puzzled.

  She shot a sideways glance at me, and then returned to her knitting, her eyes on the field. “You’re investigating what happened in Ivory’s son’s case, I imagine,” she said.

  “Well, not exactly,” I said. Lulu turned her bright blue eyes on me.

  “Oh, really? I remember reading all about your last case in the paper. You figured out who murdered your boss, right? Well, it’s none of my business…”

  “Okay,” I interrupted. “You’re right. I’m not exactly investigating, but we’re doing a story for the magazine on the woman who was murdered, and it’s turned up lots of interesting angles.”

  “Goody!” she said. “I hoped you were. You’re so smart, Maggie, and it seems so unbelievable to me that Ivory’s son could have done such a thing.”

  I was astonished. Lulu, the perfect, the brilliant, the accomplished, thought I was smart. And more important, believed that Travis was innocent. Suddenly, it seemed like an inspired idea to tell her everything. Fresh eyes, fresh ears—powered by a formidable mind. And unlike me, she didn’t appear to be sleep-deprived or wallowing in marital challenges.

  “Lulu,” I began, “are you really interested in this? I would love to be able to talk it through with someone.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Is that okay? It’s not breaking confidentiality or anything?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve got a couple colleagues at work who are working on the story, and I need to call the guy over at SFPD who knows about the case. But, I don’t really want to do it from here, it’s just that…” I trailed off.

  “What?” she prodded, her knitting now in her lap, those perfectly manicured hands still, not moving at all.

  “I think we may have figured something out last night, but I’m so sleep-deprived, nothing is making sense.”

  “I’m listening,” she said. “Tell me the whole thing, beginning to end. They used to call me the deal-breaker at the investment bank where I worked before my kids were born, because I could always find the flaws. I was hell on wheels during due diligence.”

  She reached into her handbag and pulled out a note pad and a mechanical pencil. “Start talking,” she said. “It’s going to be snack time pretty soon, and I know you’re on duty.”

  I blinked. And in ten minutes, sketched out the highlights of the story, what we knew, what we thought we knew, what we didn’t know. Lulu listened intently and jotted notes on her pad.

  Just as I finished, I heard shouts from the field and watched as Josh gave me the high sign for break.

  “Gotta refresh the hordes,” I said, scrambling to my feet. Lulu carefully tucked her pencil and pad into her purse and rose in one elegant, effortless motion.

  “I’ll help,” she said. “We’ll get done faster. And I think better when I’m working.”

  Together we moved the cooler closer to the playing field, distributed water and Gatorade, and portioned out orange quarters to the sweaty, pink-cheeked boys. “Having fun, honey?” I asked Josh.

  He glared at me, “Mom, are you even watching the game? We’re getting killed.”

  “We’re watching,” said Lulu kindly. “Those Hobos are pretty good, but you guys work together as a team.

  And that was a great block you did a few minutes ago.”

  I was dumbfounded. How could she knit, listen to me, and pay attention not just to her kid but mine as well?

  After snack, Michael showed up to take Zach home.

  Lulu and I pulled the cooler back to our post, settled in, and resumed our conversation. Lulu dug in her pink Prada and pulled out a Three Musketeers candy bar and a Swiss Army knife. She sliced it in two and handed half to me. “These are disgusting,” she said, “but we need some energy.” She peeled back the paper, took a bite, and consulted her notepad again.

  “I think there are too many people with alibis,” she said. “And that seems pretty unusual to me. I mean, except for moms, who else is always, always, always surrounded by people who know where they are every minute of every day?”

  “Just a coincidence,” I offered.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think somebody’s lying. Maybe two somebodies.”

  “Who are your candidates?”

  She wrinkled her nose. It was like watching a very elegant bunny consider the merits of conflicting bunches of carrots. She tapped her pen on the pad.

  “Ivory, Ginger’s husband (the guy who looks like an anorexic dog), Carol Ann, and Ivory’s friend, Gus.”

  I shook my head. “You think they’re all lying?”

  “No,” she said. “That would be improbable. Unless they’re in cahoots, and that, all by itself, seems improbable. But anyone in that bunch could be telling a big, fat whopper.”

  “So, the task is…”

  “To figure out which one of those alibis is full of holes. And, figure out who had a reason to kill Grace and blame the whole thing on Travis.”

  She looked thoughtful. “You told me that Gus and that woman who runs the shelter for young moms and their kids have both been accused of violent crimes?”

  I frowned. “I read a little more about both of those ‘crimes.’ Purity went after some vicious jackass who showed up to threaten his ex-girlfriend. He was trying to push his way in, and Purity took him on with a baseball bat, before he got off the front porch. Seemed pretty idiosyncratic to me.”

  “Justified, too,” said Lulu. “But still, we know she can be provoked to violence. What about Gus?”

  “That one’s harder to pin down. Apparently Gus and one of his army buddies accosted a young woman on a deserted stretch of road leading out of Ho Chi Minh City. She’d apparently rebuffed their advances in a bar, where she was just trying to wash and dry glasses. They ran into her later and supposedly kidnapped her briefly to ‘teach her a lesson,’ or at least that’s what the charges said.”

  “Did they rape her?” asked Lulu in disgust.

  “Not according to the report. They just restrained her for a while and let her go. Scared her senseless, of course. But no witnesses, and they covered each other, insisting it had been a practical joke.”

  Lulu shook her head. “Lovely joke,” she said. “Wonder how Gus would like it if some creep went after his daughter like that?”

  The Hallelujah Chorus went off next to my knee. I rumma
ged in my own, nonlabel purse, and fished out the phone. It was Michael. How was the second half of the game going? Did Josh score? Had I called Lt. Moon yet? And should he and Zach stop at the store to get stuff to barbecue for dinner?

  “Game’s fine. Josh doesn’t seem very happy about it, though. Haven’t called Moon yet. It’s too noisy here. Get some fish to barbecue, the kids have been eating too much meat, meat, meat, meat,” I said.

  “Red meat and when they grow up, brown drinks,” said Michael. “They’ll be manly men.”

  Lulu had been making notes on her pad while I talked. She looked at what she’d written, put the pen and pad down, and picked up her knitting again. The blue and gold was emerging quickly, in between flashes of needles.

  As soon as I snapped my phone shut and tossed it back in my bag, she picked up our conversation, as if we’d never been interrupted. “Who had a reason?” she persisted. “Who benefited from Grace’s death?”

  “We went through the usual motives,” I said. “Money. There were a couple of people Grace had put in her will, for small bequests—Purity, over at A Mom’s Place, and Carol Ann.”

  “Did they know that?” countered Lulu. “Doesn’t mean much if they didn’t know.”

  I shrugged, “I don’t know.”

  “And then there’s jealousy,” said Lulu. “And, oh my, wouldn’t we have a whole trailer-truck full of that stuff—Frederick’s jealous of Travis and what he’s up to. Ivory could be jealous of her son’s beautiful, high-society sweetheart. Or maybe Bill Brand thought Grace was corrupting his sweet, innocent wife. Or Ivory thought Grace was corrupting Travis.”

  “You haven’t met Travis,” I said. “He’s very, very charming, but I wouldn’t put any good money on who’s doing the corrupting in any relationship that he’s involved in.”

  “That’s plenty of negativity,” said Lulu briskly. “If you’re going to be negative, you have to have a purpose—like ruling people out. That’s the principle of due diligence. So, here’s my list.” She ripped a sheet from her pad and handed it to me.