Nursery Crimes

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Look, I happened to bump into your nanny at the park and we got to talking, that’s all,” I said, hoping to calm the furious man down. What had possessed Lola suddenly to turn loyal? Peter turned to look at me in surprise.

  “You just happened to ask her if I beat up my kid? Bullshit!” LeCrone said, his voice only slightly quieter than a shriek.

  “Can we just cut out the screaming?” Peter said. “There’s obviously been some kind of misunderstanding here.”

  “Exactly,” I interjected. I decided to go for broke. After all, I couldn’t get the guy any more furious than he already was. “I was actually trying to find out if you had an alibi for the night Abigail Hathaway was killed.”

  LeCrone exploded. With a bellow, he reached his arm back and shot out a fist, aiming it directly at my face. Peter jumped in to deflect the blow, managing to put his shoulder between LeCrone’s balled hand and my nose. Peter took the punch and staggered back with the force. LeCrone was getting ready to deliver another strike when the two security officers finally arrived at our sides. They grabbed LeCrone, one on each arm, and hauled him back a few feet. One raised a warning hand at Peter.

  “That’s it, buddy,” the officer said.

  As they hustled LeCrone off, he turned back and shouted over his shoulder, “I was at a reception at ICA, you dumb broad. That’s my alibi.” The last word was delivered in a snide snarl.

  I turned to Peter, who was staring at me, shaking his head.

  “I guess he has an alibi,” I said sheepishly.

  At that moment a long white limo pulled up at the curb and the Swede leaped out the door, arms outstretched to greet his public. A roar rose up from the crowd, and all attention was diverted from us and toward the evening’s kickboxing prince.

  “Juliet, what in God’s name were you thinking? Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Peter said as he grabbed my hand and dragged me into the theater.

  “Hardly,” I responded. “I just asked his nanny a question. How was I supposed to know that the guy would lose his mind?”

  We walked down the aisle and found ourselves two seats toward the back.

  “Might I remind you that you yourself called him psychotic and capable of murder?” Peter said.

  I settled myself into the chair. “Yeah, well, I guess I didn’t realize exactly how psychotic. Anyway, he has an alibi.” I reached across Peter’s body and gingerly touched his hurt shoulder. “I’m so sorry, honey. Are you okay? Does it hurt?”

  “Yes, it hurts. And don’t touch me,” Peter said, wincing and shrugging my hand off his shoulder.

  “My knight in shining armor. My hero,” I said, smiling sweetly.

  Peter snorted and turned his face to the screen. I could tell that under his irritation was a wellspring of macho pride happily bubbling to the surface. He’d protected his woman!

  “Thank God you were there. I swear he would have knocked me out if you hadn’t deflected that punch,” I said, leaning my head against his good shoulder and staring up at him admiringly.

  Peter grudgingly reached his arm around me and gave me a squeeze.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too. Even if you are an idiot.” He smiled despite himself. “I was about to really let him have it when those security guards showed up.”

  “It’s lucky you didn’t. You’re in much better shape than he is and you probably really would have hurt him,” I said, exaggerating more than a little but not more than necessary. A man’s ego is a fragile thing. It never hurts to give it a few pats every once in a while.

  We settled in to watch the movie.

  News travels fast in Hollywood. Bad news faster than good, and misinformation at the speed of light. By the time we got home that night our answering machine was blinking like a hopped-up cokehead with a twitch. Peter’s agent had called to ask if he had given any thought to his career before punching out the head of Parnassus Studios. My prenatal Yoga teacher had called because she’d heard I’d been beaten up and gone into early labor. Stacy left a hysterical shriek on the machine, shouting, “Juliet, my God, are you okay? I heard that you got into a fistfight with Bruce LeCrone at the premiere of Rumble in Rangoon! Did he hurt you? My assistant just told me that LeCrone knocked Peter out and had to be dragged off by four cops! What did you say to him? Are you nuts, Juliet? Are you totally insane? Call me as soon as you get this message. Call me right now!”

  I called.

  “Hi, Stace. It’s me. I’m fine. Nothing happened.”

  “What do you mean ‘nothing happened’? Everyone is talking about this. The only people not talking about this are lying under slabs at Forest Lawn. What in God’s name happened?”

  “Nothing happened. Nothing serious. LeCrone started screaming at me at the theater in front of every camera in Los Angeles, and that’s about it. Except that he also tried to punch me but Peter got between us. Peter’s fine. LeCrone hit him on the shoulder.”

  “And no one’s in the hospital?”

  “No, unless they locked LeCrone up in the booby hatch, which I hope they did because that is clearly where he belongs.”

  “But what did you do? Why did he try to kill you?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, he did not try to kill me. Jeez, Stace, you’re beginning to exaggerate worse than I do! He took one tiny punch.”

  “But what did you do, Juliet? People don’t just hit other people for no reason, not even studio executives.”

  “Nothing, really. I just met his nanny in the park. I might have asked her if she thought he might have any violent tendencies. Nothing more than that.” I sounded defensive, but I knew she would flip out. And she did.

  “Are you kidding me? What are you doing? What did you expect to happen? My God!”

  “Well, it’s all moot now, and anyway, I’d like to point out that you could have prevented this whole incident if you’d told me that LeCrone was at one of your parties on Monday night.”

  “What? One of my parties?”

  “He said he has an alibi. He said he was at an ICA cocktail party.”

  “Monday night? Monday night. What was Monday night?” She seemed to be flipping through a mental calendar. “Oh, right! Monday night was the unveiling. We had a cocktail party to celebrate the new Noguchi piece in the office lobby. I think I even remember seeing him there, now that you mention it.”

  “Gotta say, Stace, I wish you’d remembered this a couple of days ago,” I said, trying not to sound irritated. After all, it wasn’t Stacy’s fault that I was playing Hercule Poirot.

  “Gotta say, Jule, it never occurred to me that you would be accosting LeCrone’s household employees in the park. Otherwise, I might had worked harder to provide him with an alibi.”

  Stacy wouldn’t let me hang up until I’d promised to leave the sleuthing to the professionals with the badges and the guns. I crossed my fingers and vowed to concern myself with more appropriate things, like whether I’d have another C-section or manage to deliver the new baby in the old-fashioned way or where we would send Ruby to preschool now that Heart’s Song was no longer an option.

  As I returned the handset to its cradle it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Abigail Hathaway had been killed before putting her official rejection in Ruby’s file. Maybe we should apply again! I wouldn’t want to present too obvious a motive to Detective Carswell, but, on the other hand, I had Ruby’s future academic career to think about.

  Peter came in from walking Andrea to her car and locked the front door behind him.

  “Sorry your agent is so mad at you,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it. You know, I think that’s the first time she’s called me in about two years!” He kissed me on the forehead and headed off to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

  I followed him and we brushed our teeth side by side, alternating spitting in the sink. I pulled off my sequin shirt and leggings and climbed into bed. I dragged the full-length body pillow up alongside me and tucked one end up under m
y belly. As I was plumping the other pillows into position, Peter lay down on his side of the bed.

  “Construction complete yet?” he asked.

  “Almost,” I said, giving the pillow behind my back a last punch and settling down with a groan.

  “You’re going to have to redo the whole thing in ten minutes when you get up to pee.”

  “I know. Isn’t being pregnant fun?”

  He put his head down on the lone pillow I’d grudgingly left for his use. Looking up at the ceiling, he said, “Well, at least this whole thing is over. We know LeCrone didn’t murder Abigail Hathaway, and you can stop obsessing over this.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  Peter sat up. “Juliet!”

  “What?”

  “Your own best friend gave him an alibi. What more do you need?”

  “I suppose,” I said again.

  Peter rolled his eyes.

  “Look,” I said, “doesn’t it just seem a little pat to you? I mean, why would Stacy suddenly remember that she’d seen him? I talked to her the night of the murder. I even told her that I suspected him. So why didn’t she tell me then? Why didn’t she give him that foolproof alibi then?”

  That seemed to bring Peter up short. He paused for a moment and then shook his head. “You know what, Juliet? I don’t care. All I care about is that next time, you might just get one of us killed. Promise me that you’re not going to do any more investigating.”

  “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m sorry I even mentioned it.” I didn’t promise anything.

  “Are you working tonight?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Peter said, and hoisted himself up off the bed. “See you in the morning.”

  “I love you.”

  “Me, too. Good night.”

  Seven

  THE next morning I woke Peter up at eleven o’clock, as usual.

  “I have a midwife’s appointment today,” I said as I handed him his coffee.

  “Thanks.” He took a sip. “Do you want me to come?” When I was pregnant with Ruby, Peter had come to every single prenatal appointment. This time around he missed them more often then not.

  “No, that’s okay. It’s just a standard eight-month checkup. And I might go to prenatal Yoga afterward.”

  “Okay. Ruby and I’ll go to the Santa Monica pier, maybe ride the carousel.”

  I gave him a kiss. “See you later,” I said. I had the afternoon to myself.

  Dorothy, my midwife, shared offices with an acupuncturist and a massage therapist. The place had seemed a little kooky to me at first, but I had gotten used to it. Stacy had convinced me to use Dorothy instead of an obstetrician and, just as she’d promised, my prenatal care definitely had a more personal touch this time around. I’d gotten pretty sick of my old doctor asking me if I had any questions with her hand on the doorknob and her body half out in the hall, heading to the next patient.

  When I got to the office, I took off my shoes and stepped onto the scale. Gasping in horror, I stripped off my socks. No substantial difference. I took off my glasses, headband, and earrings. The scale began to wiggle a bit, like it was considering whether to cut me some slack. It decided not to. I’d gained seven pounds in the previous four weeks. I was tipping the scales at a cool 170. If the NFL was in the market for any short, female linebackers, I was ready to answer the call.

  I was tempted to take off my shirt, leggings, bra, and even my panties to try to bring the numbers down out of the leviathan and into the human range, but the scale was in the hall, and there were a couple of expectant fathers milling about. Modesty prevailed.

  Once inside the exam room, I listened patiently to Dorothy’s lecture about the dangers of excessive weight gain, and lay on my back as she palpated my belly.

  “Little guy been kicking much?” she asked.

  “Less than before,” I said. “That’s normal, right?”

  “Sure. There’s less room for him to move around in there. He’s getting big!”

  I smiled, imagining a big, fat boy curled up inside of me.

  “How are you doing, Juliet? You seem much happier to me. Last month you were a little blue.” Sometimes Dorothy seemed almost psychic. She immediately sized up my state of mind, and even seemed to know better than I how I was doing. She considered the emotional health of her patients to be as important to a successful pregnancy and birth as their physical condition. My emotions had been on something of a roller-coaster ride over the past eight months.

  I considered what she had just said. “You know, I am happier.” I hadn’t even noticed. “I’ve actually been feeling pretty good for the past few days!”

  “Terrific. Is something going on? Are you involved in a new project?” she asked.

  “No, there’s nothing going on. Not really. Maybe I’m just getting used to the idea of having another baby. It’s about time.”

  “True, true,” she said. “I’ve been hoping this would happen for a while now. Let’s listen to the baby’s heart.”

  I lay back as she moved the portable Doppler over my belly. After a few false starts we heard the rapid thump-thump of my baby’s heartbeat. My eyes welled up for a moment as I imagined him, this mysterious new creature, so completely familiar to me and so totally unknown.

  “He sounds great. And he’s perfectly in position, with his head down,” Dorothy said.

  “Hi, baby Isaac,” I murmured.

  “So it’s Isaac?” Dorothy asked.

  “Yup. We let Ruby choose between Isaac and Sam. She actually wanted to name him Odysseus but we nixed that.”

  “Odysseus! My goodness.”

  “She knows her Romans,” I said, smiling proudly.

  “Greeks.”

  “Right. I knew that.”

  Dorothy bustled around the room, putting away her instruments. She reached an arm out for me to hoist myself up off the table. I got myself dressed, scheduled my next appointment for two weeks hence, and went out to my car. I squeezed myself behind the wheel and turned on the radio to my favorite talk-radio station. Unfortunately, the Fates were conspiring to keep me involved with Abigail Hathaway. I tuned in just in time for the hour’s news wrap-up, including an announcement that crowds of Hollywood luminary-parents were expected at the preschool director’s memorial service, to be held at two o’clock that afternoon. I looked at my dashboard clock. It was one forty-five.

  For a split second I actually considered going to my prenatal Yoga class and forgetting about Abigail, LeCrone, and the whole Heart’s Song debacle. For a split second, only. I made a U-turn on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Naturally, there was valet parking. I gave the keys to my Volvo station wagon to a perky young blonde in a blue jacket with “Valet Girls” embroidered on the pocket. She could barely contain her disgust at the state of my car, which really irritated me because I had thoughtfully swept the used Kleenex, dried-out baby wipes, partly eaten apples, ancient Ritz crackers, chewed-up plastic dinosaur, and slightly rancid sippy cup of milk off the passenger seat and onto the floor. Maybe she was just disappointed because she had to park a beat-up old station wagon instead of a brand-new Porsche. As Ruby would say, tough noogies.

  I walked by the ubiquitous television cameras and into the chapel. The pews were crowded, and I saw a surprising number of children’s faces. My impression of her skill with children to the contrary, Abigail Hathaway must have been popular with her students. I was scanning the rows, looking for a spot large enough for my considerable bulk, when I heard a voice.

  “Juliet! Juliet!”

  I looked over my shoulder and spotted Stacy seated near the back of the chapel. She was wearing a severe black suit that showed off her creamy white skin. Her thick, blunt-cut, blond hair was hidden under a hat that was, perhaps, a bit too elegant for a funeral. She leaned down her row, and with a flash of red nails motioned to her pewmates to move over. Miraculously, a space was made. I squeezed in, apologizing to those I mashed on the way. I’ve never figured out what is the
appropriate way for a pregnant woman to move down a row of seats. Do you stand with your belly toward the people you are passing, impaling their noses on your jutting navel? Or do you go rear end first, forcing them to contort away from that particular body part? Obviously both options are an exercise in tackiness, but which is worse? I opted for the butt-in-the-face on purely selfish grounds—I wouldn’t have to look at them while I squeezed by—and sat down next to Stacy.

  “How come you didn’t tell me you were coming?” I whispered.

  “It never occurred to me that you’d be here. I mean, you didn’t get in, right?” Stacy didn’t whisper. Up and down the row, heads swiveled in my direction. I blushed.

  “Nice, Stace.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Forget it. What a turnout!” I said, changing the subject.

  “I know! Unbelievable. Look over there. There are Nicole and Tom sitting next to Michelle. She’s a client of ours. Michelle! Hi, Michelle.” Stacy waved at the movie star, who stared back, nonplussed.

  “For God’s sake, Stacy, this is a funeral, not a cocktail party! Keep your voice down!” I said.

  Chastened, Stacy assumed a stage whisper. “So, what are you going to do about preschool?”

  “I don’t know. We missed the deadline for most places.”

  “What were you thinking?” Stacy seemed genuinely disgusted. “How many schools did you apply to?”

  “Three. And we got rejected everywhere.”

  “Three? That’s it? Are you nuts?”

  A woman in the row ahead of us turned around to get a good look at the mother of the preschool reject. I smiled at her and waved. She blushed and turned back around.

  “Stacy, can we just drop this? I’ll figure something out.”

  “No, we cannot drop this. This is terrible. You don’t seem to understand. If Ruby doesn’t go to the right preschool, there is no way she’ll get into a decent elementary. Then you can kiss high school good-bye. And let’s not discuss college. This is a crisis. An absolute crisis.”