Nursery Crimes

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Please deliver this to my mother with payment.”

  I took the bill and put it in my briefcase with the legal pad on which I’d made my copious notes. I reached out my hand to Julio who shook it once again.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Applebaum,” he said.

  “Ms. But you can call me Juliet.”

  “Of course, Ms. Applebaum. It was a pleasure to assist you.”

  “Thank you, Julio. Is there anything we can help you with? Do you need anything?”

  Julio smiled faintly. “Unless you have in your pocket a presidential pardon, I think that no, there is nothing you can do for me.”

  I smiled back at him. “Nope, fresh out of those. Sorry.”

  “Ah, well. Until next time, then.”

  “Hasta luego,” Al interrupted, making no attempt at a Mexican accent whatsoever.

  “Hasta proxima vez, Al,” Julio said.

  He rose and with a fluid, almost elegant stride, walked over to the guard, indicating that he was ready to go back up into the prison.

  Al and I gathered our things and executed the elaborate door ballet in reverse, once again waiting much too long to be buzzed through.

  “So, private eye Applebaum, did you get what you needed?” Al asked once we had settled ourselves into his car and driven through the gates of the prison.

  “Yup. I think so. Now we’ll just have to see if I can actually do this stuff on my computer.”

  “Julio’s directions are usually pretty clear. Call me if you have any problems. Maybe my nine-year-old nephew can help you out.”

  “Ha, ha. Very funny, Al. Hey, listen, if I give you the hundred bucks, will you deliver it to Julio’s mother?”

  “Sure.”

  I wrote Al out a check, balancing my checkbook on my stomach.

  “Hey, Juliet, interested in some barbecued oysters?”

  Of course I was. We stopped at a little roadside shack and prepared to feast. I wasn’t technically supposed to be eating oysters, but these were cooked, so I figured it was okay. Besides, there was no way I was going to sit and watch Al slurp up the contents of the oyster shells and lick sauce off his fingertips without having a plate of my own. I waited impatiently for my paper plate full of steaming shells drenched in spicy red sauce, and dove in headfirst when it arrived. As we gobbled our food, I brought Al up to date on my investigation. When I finished, he took a long draft of the one beer I had allowed him to order, swallowed loudly, belched, and pointed a thick finger at me.

  “You, girl, have found your calling.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Investigation. Detection. Forget the courtroom crap. Figuring out who done it. That’s the fun part.”

  “You know, I always enjoyed that part of it. You’re right.”

  “You should hang out a shingle: “Juliet Applebaum, Private Eye.”

  “You’re not the first person who’s said that. Anyway, stop worrying about my career and finish your food, man! Let’s get on the road.”

  We ate quickly, racing to see who could consume more oysters. Al won. With a final belch, he pushed back his chair and got up.

  “Lunch is on you, Detective,” he said.

  I got home in plenty of time to hang out with Ruby and Peter before dinner. We played a vigorous and cutthroat game of Hungry, Hungry, Hippos, in the midst of which I noticed that I was actually having a good time. While Ruby accumulated every marble in the game, as she always did through some innate power of control over plastic marble-devouring hippopotamuses, I brought Peter up to speed on what I had discovered. He seemed pretty impressed at my detective skills, and even promised to help me surf the Net for dirt on Daniel Mooney and Nina Tiger after Ruby went to bed.

  That night, Ruby seemed to sense that we wanted her to get to bed so we could get to work on the computer. First she needed an extra story. Then she needed another drink of water. Then she peed in her overnight diaper and couldn’t stand the idea of sleeping in it. And so on. After the third trip to the bathroom, I threatened her with no candy the next day if she didn’t go to sleep once and for all. That got her. It’s amazing how quickly kids discover that candy is, in fact, the reason and purpose for human existence.

  Peter and I settled ourselves in front of the computer and did our best to carry out Julio’s instructions. Honestly, I have no idea what we did. While I love using my computer, the technical details never remain in my brain for very long. I always have the same experience as when I took the bar exam. Walking in, the Rule Against Perpetuities was as clear to me as the nose on the proctor’s face. As soon as I’d filled in my last circle and lay down my number-two pencil, my brain flew open and promptly flushed away that and every other arcane law that remains on the books just to torment law students. They were gone, as if they’d never even been there.

  Somehow Peter and I managed to follow Julio’s directions, and it didn’t take long to accumulate a list of aliases for both Daniel Mooney and Nina Tiger. We started with Nina and spent a couple of hours tracing her cyberfootsteps. I wasn’t surprised to discover that Nina, using different aliases, was an active member of a number of sex-based newsgroups. As “muffdvr” she explored her lesbian sadomasochistic side. As “kittyhowl” she was an expert on clitoral piercing. Most bizarrely, as “judyspal” she had a couple of hundred gay men convinced that she was one of them. All pretty weird stuff, but nothing particularly incriminating.

  Finally, worried that spending too much time associating with the likes of Nina Tiger would kill our sex drives once and for all, Peter and I decided to explore Daniel Mooney’s seamy side. Like Nina Tiger, he had his own bunch of aliases—“mchoman,” “boytoy2000,” and even his own transvestite alias, “GRrrrL.” The same kinky stuff as Nina, with the added twist that “GRrrrL” liked to pretend to be a pubescent girl and flirt with older men.

  It didn’t take long to find the piece of evidence that would put Daniel Mooney behind bars for the murder of his wife.

  Fourteen

  DANIEL Mooney’s failing as a murderer was that he had the sophistication of a twelve-year-old. Using the alias “dollparts,” and going no farther to cover his tracks, Abigail Hathaway’s husband had posted the following advertisement on a website called “Soldiers of Fortune”:

  Wanted: Experienced soldier for special project. $5,000. Interested? Go to dollparts’ private chat room on this site Monday nights, 2:00 A.M.

  That was all, but it was everything. I immediately understood that Daniel Mooney had tried to hire someone to kill his wife. I hoped that Detective Carswell would understand the same. I’d been leaving him messages every couple of hours since two days before, when Audrey had come over to tell me about her suspicions about her stepfather, but Carswell still hadn’t called me back. I called him again anyway. He wasn’t at work. I spoke to the desk sergeant, asking him to find Carswell and let him know that it was a matter of great urgency that he call me, at any time, day or night. I could tell I wasn’t being taken seriously and was pretty sure I wouldn’t hear from Carswell that night.

  Peter didn’t go to work that night. Instead we crawled into bed together, both overcome with the enormity of what we had discovered. We lay side by side for a while, silently. Then, suddenly, I jumped.

  “Oh, my God, Peter. Audrey. I don’t know if she’s still at her friend Alice’s. What if she’s home? What if she’s all alone with him?”

  “Abigail’s daughter?”

  “She could be in the house with him! What’s to stop him from killing her, too?”

  “She’s probably at her friend’s. That’s where she told you she was going, right?”

  “Yeah, but that was yesterday!”

  “I’m sure she’s still there. And, anyway, there’s nothing we can do right now, Juliet. You called the detective.”

  “Maybe we should call nine-one-one. Or Social Services. Or something!” I was panicking.

  “And tell them what? That we think her dad’s a murderer because he was looking to chat w
ith an experienced soldier on the web? No one would believe us. We need to talk to Detective Carswell.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right. But what if something happens to her tonight and we could have prevented it? I couldn’t live with myself. You didn’t see her, Peter. She’s so vulnerable.”

  “Look, he has no reason to suspect that she knows anything. And anyway, he’d have to be a total moron to hurt her now, so soon after her mother’s death. That would immediately draw attention to him. He won’t do it. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. We’ll just have to hope that he acts sensibly.”

  Peter and I slept little that night. Finally, at about 6:00 A.M., I couldn’t wait any longer. I picked up the phone and dialed the Santa Monica P.D. Miraculously, Detective Carswell was in.

  To my surprise, he didn’t dismiss me right away. On the contrary, he took me much more seriously than I had expected and every bit as seriously as I hoped. Within half an hour he was on my doorstep, accompanied by another detective, a younger man who sported the same military haircut but wore, instead of a suit, a pair of khakis and a blue blazer. Kind of like an oversized Catholic schoolboy.

  I showed the two into my kitchen and offered them coffee. They accepted.

  “Ms. Applebaum, please tell us what you’ve discovered,” Carswell said, not patronizing me in the slightest. Finally.

  I described my computer investigation. Carswell seemed impressed at my savvy.

  “You figured out how to track his steps through all his various aliases?” he asked

  I certainly wasn’t going to tell him about Julio.

  “It’s really very easy,” I replied. “Any computer-literate eight-year-old could do it.”

  “Still, I’m impressed,” he said, not quite grudgingly.

  I smiled, feeling like I’d earned a gold star from my kindergarten teacher.

  “We’d like to see the files you’ve downloaded,” the other officer said.

  I showed them into my office and to my computer. The ad, which I had not only copied into my hard drive but also bookmarked, was on the screen. The young detective sat down at my chair, pulled a couple of floppy disks out of his coat pocket, and proceeded to make copies not only of the ad but also of the many conversations of the polyamorous newsgroup. Then the two sat with me for another hour, taking notes, while I described in detail all my investigations of the past week. I left out Audrey’s visit to me, because I’d promised her that I wouldn’t tell them about her, and my meeting with Julio, because I didn’t want Al to get into trouble.

  I actually intended to tell Carswell about how Nina Tiger had found me going through her mailbox, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was, after all, a crime, and I hope I can be forgiven for failing to confess it to a police officer. Detective Carswell didn’t need to know that I’d broken into her mailbox or that I’d had a confrontation with her. It wouldn’t help or hurt his case any. I was rationalizing and I knew it, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Detective Carswell and his partner made me go over everything a second time and then rose to leave.

  “Wait!” I said. “What are you going to do now?”

  The two cops glanced at each other. “We’ll review this information and have our computer experts track Mooney’s Internet activities,” Carswell said.

  “And then?”

  “Well, if it all checks out, if we’re convinced from the evidence that this was murder and not a hit-and-run accident, and if we can convince the judge that the evidence against him amounts to probable cause, then we’ll get a warrant and arrest Daniel Mooney.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Pretty relevant information, after all, don’t you think?”

  Carswell looked at me for a moment. Then, miraculously, his stony face cracked into a smile. “Pretty relevant after all,” he agreed.

  “Ms. Applebaum, it’s very important that you tell no one of the things you have discovered. We don’t want to take the chance that word will get to the suspect before we’re absolutely ready to act on this information,” he continued.

  “Right. Of course. I was a public defender. I know how it works.”

  At that piece of information Carswell’s partner looked really worried.

  “Ms. Applebaum, your defense prejudice isn’t going to influence you, is it?” the young officer asked.

  This steamed me. “Look, I just spent who knows how much time and energy trying to prove that this guy killed his wife! Why would I blow it now?”

  Somewhat mollified, the two detectives left our house.

  Fifteen

  THE next morning, Ruby woke me up earlier than normal. I plopped her in front of Sesame Street and headed out to the curb to get the newspaper. Cursing the delivery boy who had once again tossed the paper directly onto one of our sprinkler heads, I threaded my way, barefoot, over the grass. I picked up the soggy paper by one corner and went back inside. I tossed the paper into the oven and turned it on to about 200 degrees. I figured that as long as I stayed well below the famous Fahrenheit 451, nothing would burst into flames. I made myself a cup of tea, microwaved a few pancakes for Ruby, and settled down at the kitchen counter. Hoping that the paper was dry, I reached in with an oven mitt, grabbed it by a corner, and pulled it out. And then I started shouting.

  “Peter! Peter!”

  My husband came tearing out of the bedroom, stark naked.

  “The baby? Is it the baby?”

  I shoved the paper into his hands. He screamed and dropped it.

  “Ouch! That’s hot!” he howled.

  “Oh. Sorry. Look! Look at the front page!”

  He leaned over the floor and read aloud, “Nursery School Teacher’s Husband Arrested for Murder!”

  “They arrested him!”

  “I can see that.”

  Carswell wouldn’t give me any more information when I called him, so whatever I know I learned from that front-page article in the Los Angeles Times. Abigail Hathaway’s own car matched the description of the one that had run her down; she drove a two-year-old Mercedes sedan, black. Her car wasn’t at home, and when asked about it, Daniel Mooney apparently claimed to have assumed it was at the school. He said he hadn’t bothered to look for it after she’d been killed. But it wasn’t in the nursery school parking lot. The police searched the city, but unsurprisingly, it was nowhere to be found. The newspaper speculated that if the car had been abandoned after the murder, particularly if the keys had been left in the ignition, one or another of Los Angeles’s hyperefficient car theft rings would have had it lifted, painted, and on its way to Mexico or China within a couple of hours.

  So there it was: Abigail was murdered by her own husband, driving her own car.

  Peter and I read the newspaper article together, sitting side by side at the kitchen table. Reading about the crime, I felt this weird combination of sadness for Abigail and her poor daughter, and satisfaction at a job well done. It was sort of like what I’d felt after winning a trial. I’d be feeling on top of the world, proud of my success, and flying high on my ego. Then I’d look over to the family of the victim, or the victim himself, and feel a little deflated. Sure, my client had gotten off because I’d done such a good job of convincing the jury of his lack of guilt or of the victim’s complicity. But criminal law isn’t a computer game. It isn’t just a question of winning or losing and racking up points. My victory meant that someone else lost. When that someone was just the government—if, for example it was a drug case and nobody except the DEA cared if my client was convicted—then it was easy to revel in my success. But often enough, my clients had actually hurt someone. It was a heck of a lot harder to find myself happy about winning their freedom under those circumstances.

  I felt a similar bittersweetness that morning. Yes, I succeeded. I’d found Abigail’s murderer. But while Audrey was surely a lot safer with her stepfather behind bars, she was still an orphan, now more than ever.

  “Maybe I should give Audrey a call,�
� I said. “She’s probably at her friend Alice’s house.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Peter answered.

  I reached for the phone, but before I even dialed, it rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Juliet! This is Audrey! Isn’t this awesome! Isn’t this just totally bitchin’ what happened to Danny? That nimrod’s in jail! He is in jail!” Audrey was positively giddy.

  “Yes, I guess it’s awesome. But how are you doing? You must be pretty freaked out by this all.” I looked over at Peter and mouthed silently, “Audrey.” He nodded.

  “Freaked out? No way! I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life! He is G-O-N-E gone! Out of my life forever!” she shouted.

  “So what are you going to do now?” I asked her.

  “My aunt’s flying in tonight, so I guess I’ll just stay at home with her. I’ve gotta decide about New Jersey. What do you think I should do?”

  I thought for a moment. “I guess I think you should go. New Jersey’s not so bad. It’s close to New York!”

  “Hey! I didn’t think of that. New York. Now, that would be bitchin’.”

  I laughed. “I guess it would. It sure can be. Promise me you’ll keep in touch, okay?”

  “Definitely! What’s your E-mail address? I’ll E-mail you!”

  What would the world be like without the Internet? I wonder. How did we ever survive, a mere five years ago, before everyone had her very own E-mail account?

  I gave Audrey my E-mail address, and she promised to write. I hung up the phone.

  “She’s staying with her friend until her aunt comes,” I said.

  “How did she sound?”

  “Relieved. Happy really,” I said. “I’m just glad she’s safe.”

  The phone rang again. It was Stacy.

  “Can you believe this?” she positively shrieked.

  “Yes, actually because—”

  “And you thought it was Bruce LeCrone! Ha. Please!”

  “Well, actually, I was the one who—”

  “Like Bruce would do that. Really. But her husband! I always knew that there was something fishy about—”