Death Gets a Time-Out

by Ayelet Waldman

  Suddenly, I realized what she was talking about. “To your mother? You remember what happened to Trudy-Ann?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were glittering and her chest was rising and falling with her fast, sharp inhalations.

  “It happened when I heard about Raymond. One of the maids came to get me. When I got out to the living room, Beverly was already talking to the police officers. I couldn’t hear what they were saying as I walked across the room, but then I heard one of her assistants, the girl, cry out. She had her hands over her mouth. One of the men kept saying to the cop, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure it’s him?’ I ran up. I think I was screaming, ‘What happened, what happened?’ The girl said, ‘Somebody shot Raymond. Somebody shot Raymond.’ And then I looked at my mother, at Beverly. She was standing absolutely still, and then she crumpled to the floor. She just collapsed, like her legs couldn’t support her. That’s when I saw it.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Like a picture in my mind. Absolutely clear. I saw what happened to my mother—to my real mother.” Lilly’s breath was coming even faster than before. Her entire body was shaking so hard that it was thumping against the door. I grasped both her shoulders and led her over to the bed. She sat down and then toppled over to one side. She curled up into a tight ball. I sat down next to her and laid my hand on her still-quaking shoulder.

  “What did you see, Lilly? What happened to Trudy-Ann?” I said urgently.

  Her voice was soft, almost a monotone, and her eyes were squeezed tightly closed. “Jupiter and I were playing in the fountain. I remember he splashed me, and I was mad. I went inside. I was looking for my mother, to tell on him. I was in the hallway leading to her room, when I heard the shot. Like the loudest bang in the world. I was so scared of the noise. I ran the rest of the way to her room and saw her lying kind of half on, half off the bed. I reached out for her and put my hands on her chest. I thought there was a flower there. Like a red flower. Except it kept growing. And it was wet. I had my hands on her, and red just kept spreading and spreading all over her white nightgown.”

  “Who else was in the room, Lilly? Who was in the room when you got there?”

  “They were,” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Raymond was on the other side of the bed. I think . . . I think he was getting dressed. He was pulling on his pants. Beverly was in the middle of the room. I remember I had to push by her to get to my mother.”

  “What was Beverly doing?”

  “She was standing there, with her arm stretched out, like this.” Lilly flung one arm straight out, away from her body. “She had a gun in her hand.”

  “Be quiet, Lilly.” Lilly and I both leapt at the sound of the voice. Beverly was standing in the doorway. Somehow she’d managed to open the door without us noticing. I had no idea how long she’d been standing there.

  “I won’t. I won’t be quiet anymore,” Lilly whispered.

  “No one will believe you,” Beverly said coldly.

  Lilly sobbed. “Yes, yes they will,” she said.

  Beverly shook her head. “No they won’t. Your memory is as changeable as the tide, you foolish girl.”

  I stepped toward her, but she held up a warning hand. “None of this matters,” she said.

  I shook my head at her. “I bet the cops will disagree. And the voters, too.”

  She snorted. “You really think the death of some druggedout slut who slept with anyone who asked, some nasty little piece of work who couldn’t keep her hands off other women’s husbands, will make any difference at all to anyone?”

  Her face was flushed now, and I stared at her. Thirty years later, she still hated the woman whom Raymond had been unable to resist.

  She shook her head, as if shaking off her rage, and replaced it with a calm certainty that was all the more terrifying. “Anyway, whom do you think the police will believe? My stepdaughter with her history of mental illness, memory loss, and instability, or me? I’ll tell the police that she’s simply mistaken. That she’s remembering it all wrong.”

  Lilly shook her head, but her eyes seemed to grow muddy and confused. “I remember . . . I do . . .” she said.

  “How can you be sure?” Beverly asked, and laughed.

  I put a protective arm around Lilly. “She’s sure,” I said.

  “I am,” Lilly said again, but this time it was a question.

  “No you’re not,” Beverly said, and this time her voice was soft and almost wheedling.

  “I remember,” Lilly said, but all the certainty had drained from her voice. I had to put an end to it, before Beverly worked her malevolent magic on Lilly’s memory . . . again. I leapt to my feet, grabbed Beverly’s arm, and hauled her out of the room.

  “Here’s my professional advice, Speaker. Get a lawyer,” I said.

  She stared at me, and then turned and walked quickly down the hall.

  I ran back into Lilly’s bedroom. Once again she lay curled up on her bed. I sat down and began stroking her back, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that the trauma of her father’s murder had caused Lilly to recover her memory of her mother’s death. What she remembered was absolutely accurate—I was certain of it. Beverly had killed Trudy-Ann. But I would never be able to prove it.

  I had watched Lilly’s confidence in her own memory dissipate like vapor when confronted with her formidable stepmother. Beverly would blame someone else for the murder, perhaps Raymond, who was conveniently unable to defend himself. Had she killed him, too? Had she killed Chloe? Given that she had rock-solid alibis for both murders, had she paid someone to kill for her? I considered the possibility. She’d committed one murder thirty years ago; she was the obvious suspect for the later ones. A murder-for-hire was the neat and easy solution to this puzzle. So why didn’t it seem like the right answer?

  I wasn’t having any doubts about Beverly’s emotional capability to have paid someone to do her killing for her. Whatever moral compass she possessed quite obviously had profound self-interest as its true north. This was, after all, a woman who not only let a small child live a lifetime of crippling guilt, but also stepped into the shoes of the woman she’d murdered, even calling herself Lilly’s mother. No, Beverly Green was not a woman who would balk at murder to keep her secret. But neither was she a woman who would take the risk of hiring some unknown person to do the deed for her.

  It may be easy to find some lunatic to kill for you—Soldier of Fortune magazine is available online, after all. But Beverly would know that one’s cyberfootsteps can be traced. She would understand that it was virtually impossible to hire a hit man without that person figuring out the identity of his employer. I couldn’t believe that she would have been willing to risk placing her secret into unknown—and untrustworthy—hands.

  That left the possibility that she’d convinced someone she knew to murder on her behalf. Perhaps. I considered the aides who hovered around her, running her office and doing her bidding. But keeping the Speaker of the Assembly’s schedule was a far cry from helping her shoot her husband. No, I couldn’t believe one of her employees would provide this service. A lover, maybe? Beverly was the least passionate, the coldest of women. Would she have a lover? None of this made any sense to me. But if it wasn’t Beverly who killed Chloe and Raymond, then who was it?

  I looked down at Lilly. To my astonishment, she seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep. I tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. I found Rochelle sitting alone in the living room.

  “Where is Beverly?” I asked.

  “The Speaker and her assistants left.”

  I glanced around the silent, empty house, and raised my eyebrows.

  “The kids are having dinner out in the pool house with the nannies,” she said. She bit her lip. “I hope it’s okay, but I called the bodyguards.”

  “Bodyguards?”

  “Lilly sometimes uses this firm of bodyguards. You know, like when there’s some weird fan parked
outside the house or something? Anyway, I called them.”

  I sat down next to Rochelle and said, “Good idea.”

  At that moment the front doorbell rang. Rochelle ran to open it. She let in three burly men in plain blue suits. One was older, in his forties or even fifties. The other two were young men, probably no older than twenty-five. They all had identical cropped haircuts and expressionless faces.

  “Thanks so much for getting here so fast, Dror,” Rochelle said. “Juliet, this is Dror Amitav. He’s the owner of the bodyguard agency.”

  “Personal protection,” he corrected her in a thick Israeli accent, while looking me up and down suspiciously. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Juliet Applebaum,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m glad to see you here.” I pulled him aside and asked him to make sure that he let no one into the house, not even Beverly. Especially not Beverly. He didn’t even blink, just nodded his head.

  Dror sent one of the young men with me up to Lilly’s room. I peeked in and made sure she was still asleep. The bodyguard propped the door open about a foot and stood out in the hall in front of the open door, his feet planted hip distance apart, his hands hanging at his sides. He looked as if he was prepared to stand like that for the next ten or twenty hours.

  I walked down the stairs and sat down in the living room, going over it all again in my mind. Was I too quickly dismissing the gun-for-hire scenario? At that moment, my purse, which I’d forgotten in the inglenook, began to beep. I scooped it out and pulled out my cell phone. I hit the “missed calls” button and my mother’s number flashed on my screen. I resisted the urge to call her and get her advice or maybe just cry on her shoulder. Then I had a sudden epiphany.

  I yelled Rochelle’s name, and she ran into the hallway from the living room.

  “Were you in the room when Raymond got the phone call at breakfast? The one right before he went out?”

  She nodded.

  “Did the call come in on one of Lilly’s lines?”

  She shook her head. “On Raymond’s cell phone.”

  “Damn it!” I said, bringing my fist down on my thigh. I winced at the blow.

  “Why?”

  “Caller ID. I wanted to check the caller ID.”

  “Do you want to see his phone?” she asked.

  “What? It’s here? He didn’t take it with him?”

  “No. The battery ran out right after he got that call. I offered to charge it for him. We all use that same kind of Nokia phone.”

  I hustled her into the office. There, along a high shelf, was an entire row of telephone chargers, some empty, some holding cell phones. I snatched up the phone she pointed out to me and hit the “call history” button. I pushed the “incoming calls” button. There, at 9:11 A.M., was a call from a ten-digit number. I pressed the “callback” button and waited, holding my breath, while the connection was made. A moment later, the phone rang once. Then twice. Then someone picked it up.

  “Hello?” a small voice said. It was a child. A very young child.

  “Hello?” I replied tentatively. I didn’t want this little person to hang up the phone. “Who is this?” I said in a gentle, friendly voice.

  “Araceli,” the little girl replied.

  “Araceli, is your mommy there?”

  “No. She’s at home. But my daddy’s inside.”

  “Inside where?”

  “Inside the big store.”

  The big store? I listened closely and thought I could detect the sound of traffic. Was this a cell phone?

  “Araceli, my name is Juliet,” I said in Spanish.

  “Hola!” she said brightly.

  “Araceli, are you talking to me on your daddy’s cell phone?”

  “No. On the big store phone,” she said. “It’s a very, very big phone, and it rang!”

  A pay phone!

  “Are you standing outside a big store? Talking on the pay phone?”

  “We’re at Target!” she said. “And I’m waiting for my My Little Pony. Daddy’s buying me a My Little Pony if I just sit here and wait.”

  “That’s so neat! My daughter Ruby really wants a My Little Pony.”

  The voice on the other end suddenly grew doubtful and suspicious. “That’s my toy. I’m not sharing it,” she said.

  “No! Of course you’re not. Araceli, tell me, what is the name of the town you live in, do you know that?”

  “Um . . . California?” she said.

  “Right!” I answered. “But do you know the name of the place in California?”

  “Um . . . Lincoln Street?”

  I was beginning to lose hope. “Can you remember the name of the city, sweetie? Or the town?”

  “Ventura!” she said.

  “That’s right!” I said. “Do you live in Ventura?”

  “Yup!” she said.

  “Who is this?” a gruff voice with a Mexican accent said suddenly.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said quickly. “Your daughter picked up the telephone. I’m just trying to figure out where this number is. I’m assuming it’s a pay phone. Right?”

  “Yeah,” he said suspiciously.

  “And are you in Ventura?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said, my voice not much more than a whisper. I hung up the phone and leaned back in my chair. Ventura, California. Nice enough town, I suppose, but not somewhere you’d ever bother to go. Unless, of course, you were on your way to Ojai. Thank God for neglectful fathers, and little girls who pick up pay phones when they ring. Otherwise I would never have been able to figure out who it was that had used a pay phone to place the call that lured Raymond to his death.

  Dr. Reese Blackmore had worked a miracle cure on Lilly Green. He’d helped her recover her memory. He’d healed her. And he’d written article after article about his success. He had built his entire professional identity upon Little Girl Q’s cure. If the truth became known, if the world discovered not that Lilly Green was a murderer, but that she wasn’t, he would be ruined.

  I looked at the phone again. The voice mail indicator was flashing. I punched the key and put the phone to my ear. Raymond had two new messages. They were from Beverly, asking him, in a voice so cold that it made me wish for a sweater, just where the hell he’d gone. I supposed it could have been a careful plant, but I tended to think it evidence of her innocence—of his murder, at least.

  I clicked back over to the “call history” screen and pressed the “outgoing calls” button. There, at 7:42 A.M., was a call to the Ojai center. Raymond had called Blackmore. Blackmore had returned the call, careful to do so from a pay phone. He’d somehow convinced Raymond to meet him, and then he’d shot him. Something Raymond said must have convinced Blackmore that he was too dangerous to let live. It couldn’t have been difficult to persuade Raymond to meet him. He was running scared by then—scared he’d be implicated in the murder. Perhaps Raymond had gone to convince Blackmore that it was in both their interests to protect each other’s confidences. I didn’t know. We’d never know exactly how Blackmore had lured Raymond to his death, but I knew that he had.

  I turned off the cell phone. Ignoring Rochelle’s insistent questions, I picked up the office phone and called Al. Still out of range. Then I tried Valerie at Wasserman’s office, nearly screaming in frustration when I found myself forced to leave a voice mail message. I told her that Jupiter Jones was innocent and that I knew who had murdered Chloe. At the sound of Blackmore’s name, Rochelle gasped.

  “Go tell the bodyguards not to let him into the house,” I said to her.

  “Are you going to call the police?”

  Right. The police.

  “Do you have that detective’s card?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said.

  I remembered that Beverly’s aide had taken it. I dialed Information and got the general number for the Los Angeles Police Department. It took three different operators to be put through to someone who could take a message for Det
ective Staynor. I left my name and Lilly’s number. I hung up the phone and only then realized that I hadn’t called home in hours. I dialed my number and nearly threw the phone across the room when the answering machine picked up. I felt like I was having one of those dreams where you keep dialing and dialing but can’t get through. I didn’t bother to leave a message. Instead, I dialed my access code and listened to the messages on the machine. There was one from Al asking me where the hell I’d disappeared to. My jaw clenched in frustration. Then I heard Wanda’s voice.

  “Hi, Juliet. I got this number from the card you left me. I hope it’s okay that I’m calling you at home. I’m not sure why I’m calling, really. It’s just that you said to call if anything came up. Anyway, I just got a call from the Ojai rehab center. Apparently there was some stuff of Chloe’s that they want to return to me. They’re sending someone down here to give me her things, and I thought there might be something you’d be interested in. For your case. For Jupiter. I mean, we all want to make sure he’s really the one, right? Maybe there’ll be something here to help you find out for sure . . .” There was a beep, and whatever else Wanda said was cut off. I stared at the phone in horror and then called Detective Staynor again. This time, I told the operator that it was an emergency and gave her my cell phone number. I hung up the phone and turned to Rochelle.

  “If that cop calls, you tell him to call me immediately, okay?”

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “Laguna Beach.”

  Thirty-four

  BLACKMORE was on his way to Laguna Beach, and I had to get there first. I didn’t buy that story about Chloe’s personal belongings for a second. He’d killed Raymond, and he was on the way to do the same to Wanda. I snaked down Benedict Canyon with one eye on the road and one on my cell phone. Finally, Al answered his phone.

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “San Diego.”

  Damn. He was a full half hour farther from Laguna than I was. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Followed one of the workers’ comp slackers to a gun show,” he said almost defensively. “Why? What’s going on?”