Death Gets a Time-Out

by Ayelet Waldman

  I didn’t bother to explain. I just told him to meet me at Wanda’s in Laguna Beach. It tells you everything you need to know about Al that he didn’t ask me a bunch of questions or badger me for more information. He just took down the address.

  “Bring whatever you bought today with you,” I said.

  There was a beat before he replied. “Don’t you go in there without me.”

  Before I could reply, the phone went dead. It flashed “out of range” the entire way down the 405.

  By the time I got to Laguna Beach, it was dark. I pulled into Wanda’s street and debated whether to cut my lights and engine and coast silently into her driveway. I could take Blackmore by surprise; ensure that he didn’t run. On the other hand, what if he pulled the trigger during the few moments it took me to creep up to the house? I slammed my palm down on my car horn and squealed into Wanda’s driveway. I ran up to the front door, tore it open, and then stopped, confused. Molly Weston, Blackmore’s assistant, stood in the middle of the living room, partially obscured behind a large, plastic bag. Dr. Reese Blackmore was nowhere to be seen.

  “Ms. Applebaum?” she said pleasantly. “It’s so nice to see you. I’m just here to bring Wanda some of poor Chloe’s clothes and things.” She hefted the bag, but did not put it down.

  I looked over at Wanda. She sat on the couch, her hands in her lap. She didn’t rise to her feet, and neither did she greet me with the same friendly expression I’d been treated to the last time I’d visited her. She smiled, but it was a tight, nervous smile.

  “Did Dr. Blackmore come down with you?” I asked Molly.

  “Reese? No, of course not. He’s too busy for this kind of errand, I’m afraid.” She turned to Wanda. “He did say to tell you how very sorry he is.”

  I looked back at Wanda. Suddenly, I noticed her feet. They were bare, like they were the other time I’d been to the house, and she’d clamped her toes around the leg of the couch. I’d never seen white knuckles on toes before, but I knew what they meant. Wanda was terrified.

  “Hey, Molly, why don’t I help you with that bag?” I said, crossing quickly toward the young woman, my hands outstretched.

  “No!” she said sharply, backing up. “No, no. I’m fine.”

  I noticed for the first time that one of her arms held the bag in place in front of her. The other hand was obscured from sight, tucked behind the bag.

  “Juliet, I’m so sorry. It’s really not a good time for me right now,” Wanda said softly but firmly. “I need to . . . to have some private time with Molly. To . . . to go through Chloe’s things.” I wrinkled my brow and looked at her. What was she doing? “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ll get together another time. You go and give those babies a kiss for me, okay?”

  She was trying to save me. My children’s faces flashed through my mind. I thought for a brief second about the one in my belly. I’d already been shot once while I was pregnant, and lived to give birth to my wonderful baby boy. Would I be so lucky again? I wondered how far away Al was. I wondered whether Detective Staynor had taken my message seriously. I considered leaving the house and calling the police. But you don’t leave someone alone with a murderer. You just don’t.

  “I’m so sorry. I really should have called first. Of course you need time alone for this,” I said brightly. “I’m just going to make myself a little cup of tea for the road, okay? Can I borrow a travel mug? Do you have one of those, Wanda?”

  “In the cupboard by the sink.” She began to rise, but I held out my hand. “No, no. I’ll be fine. It’ll just take a sec. Hope you don’t mind, Molly. I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

  Molly shrugged. I walked behind her toward the kitchen, and she swung her shoulders around so that she was facing me. In that instant, I caught a glimpse of it. She’d shoved her hand deep into the soft bulk of the full plastic bag, almost entirely obscuring the gun. I saw only the butt, peeping from the bottom of her fist, but it was enough. She was pointing a gun at Wanda, and I knew what I needed to do.

  I bustled around the kitchen, filling the tea kettle noisily, and lighting the burner. I smiled through the open door at Molly, who returned my grin with one equally false.

  I dug around the cupboard. “Ooh, peppermint,” I sang out. “I just love peppermint tea. No honey for me, though. I lose my taste for it when I’m knocked up.” I wanted to make sure Molly knew about my condition, if she hadn’t noticed it already. Nothing seems as benign as a pregnant woman.

  “Can I make you two some tea before I go?” I called.

  “No thanks,” Molly said.

  “How about for you, Wanda?”

  “No.”

  They say a watched pot never boils—well, the same is true for a kettle being stared at by two terrified women and one murderer. It felt like hours before the shrill whistle of the steam made me jump.

  I poured the boiling water into the oversized travel mug I found in the cupboard. Then I put the top on, making a great show of tightening it. As I walked out of the kitchen, I kept up a steady stream of patter. “Did you guys ever hear about that woman who sued McDonald’s because her coffee was too hot? I mean, my God, too hot. Like, isn’t coffee supposed to be hot, lady? People will sue over the most insane thing. Well, I’m on my way; this tea will keep me nice and toasty the whole way home.” I walked in the wake of my own chatter to the front door, passing behind Molly. Once again she turned slightly to face me, still keeping the bag in front of her chest. When I was about an arm’s length away from her, I jerked my hand out, and flung the cup I’d only pretended to close. The boiling water flew out of the cup and splashed her squarely in the face.

  She screamed and fell to the floor, dropping the plastic bag. I stomped on her hand, sending the gun skittering across the floor. She scrabbled at her face with her nails, shrieking, and I sat down heavily on her chest.

  “Get the gun, Wanda!” I shouted.

  At that moment, the door burst open. Al leapt into the room, landing heavily on one knee, his gun drawn. “Not her!” I shrieked as he swung the gun in Wanda’s direction. He paused and looked at me. I was sitting on Molly’s chest, pinning her hands to the floor under mine. I looked down at her. Her face was scalded bright red, and as I watched, it faded to a sick, corpse-like gray. Then it began to swell. Blisters fat with liquid popped out across her eyelids and cheeks, and her lips inflated, growing five or six times their normal size. She moaned, and it was a horrible, afflicted sound, full of agony and fear and frustrated rage.

  “Call 911,” I said. Al had already reached for his phone.

  I felt my stomach roil in the first wave of nausea I’d felt in over a week. I lurched to my feet and backed away from Molly’s pustulating face. I had never hurt anyone like that before, and I was horrified at what I’d done. Suddenly, I felt a pair of arms encircle me from behind. A hand stroked my hair, and a soft voice whispered in my ear. “Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.” I leaned back and rested my head against the comforting softness of Wanda Pakulski’s silicone breasts.

  When the paramedics had swathed Molly in soaking bandages and special blankets had rolled her away, and before the police began the interrogations of the three of us that would last well into the night, Wanda, Al, and I huddled in her kitchen. I gulped the water Wanda poured for me and tried to still my shaking.

  “Nick of time, partner,” Al said gruffly, leaning heavily against the counter.

  “You sure were,” I murmured.

  He shook his head. “Not me. You.”

  Wanda nodded. “Another moment and she would have killed me, Juliet. Just like she killed my daughter, and just like she killed that poor man, Raymond Green.”

  I looked up at her. “Molly told you?” I asked.

  She nodded again, and told us what had happened between her and the disturbed young woman. Molly had arrived with the bag of clothes, smiling and friendly. As soon as she was inside the house, and Wanda had closed the door behind her, she’d reached into the bag as thoug
h searching for something, and pulled out the gun.

  “I froze at first, of course, but then I could see that her hands were trembling,” Wanda said. “I started talking to her, like you would to a scared animal. And I started walking backward, trying to make it back to the front door. I thought if I could distract her with my voice, I might have time to wrench the door open and run. I’m not sure what I said. Something like, ‘You don’t want to kill me. I’m nothing to you.’ Something like that. That’s when she told me.” Wanda’s face crumpled, and for a moment I thought she might cry.

  “Told you what?” a voice said. We all turned to see a fresh-faced, uniformed man standing in the doorway—one of the police officers who had arrived along with the paramedics.

  Wanda swallowed hard, pulled herself together, and said, “She told me that she’d killed Chloe, and she’d killed Raymond Green, and she wasn’t afraid to kill me, too.”

  The cop opened his mouth as if to ask another question, but Al laid a quieting hand on his shoulder. Something about my partner’s demeanor, perhaps the authority he’d never lost even after he left the force, silenced the young man.

  Wanda continued. “I think I started to cry then. I asked her why. Why she’d killed Chloe. And she said it was my baby’s own fault. That if she’d done what Molly had told her to do, she would have been fine. That it was because she got greedy that she had to die. Molly said that Chloe was trying to destroy Dr. Blackmore, and that she, Molly, couldn’t allow that. Except she didn’t call him that. She called him ‘my Reese.’ She even said ‘my sweet Reese.’ She said she couldn’t let Chloe hurt him, and she couldn’t let Raymond hurt him. Do you know what she meant? Do you have any idea what was going on?”

  I nodded, but before I could explain, a man in a crumpled blue suit pushed by the young police officer and walked into the kitchen, flashing his badge.

  “Riley, get your butt back outside where it belongs,” he said to the uniformed cop. Then he turned to us. “Which of you is going to tell me what happened here?”

  Thirty-five

  WHATEVER a family’s tragedy, children demand to be cared for, fed, and played with. This is, I think, one of the great blessings they bring to our lives. Mourning must be filtered through the lens of their all-consuming needs, and their infinite capacity for joy. I found Lilly early the next day, sitting with her legs dangling in the heated water of her swimming pool. She was throwing brightly colored rings into the water for Amber and Jade to retrieve. The girls squealed as they hoisted themselves out of the pool into the chill of the cold morning air, and howled with victorious pleasure when they dove back in and returned to the surface, the red, purple, and blue rings stacked up on their skinny forearms.

  Lilly raised a hand in a small wave. I called a greeting out to the girls, dragged a chair close to Lilly, and sat down, tucking my knees under the stretched-out fisherman’s sweater I’d found in the bottom of Peter’s dresser.

  “How are you?” I asked gently.

  She shrugged and spun the rings out over the water with a practiced snap of her wrist.

  “Did you bring Ruby and Isaac?” Lilly said.

  When I’d called the night before to tell Lilly about Molly Weston, she’d asked me to come by the next day, and to bring my children. “I can’t bring myself to set up any playdates for the twins right now—I don’t want strangers in my house. But they need to be distracted from all this,” Lilly had said.

  “Ruby and Isaac are around the front, playing on the scooters,” I said.

  “Thanks for bringing them.”

  “It’s okay. They were glad to come. Should I go get them?”

  Lilly shook her head. “The girls will be done in a minute or two.”

  We sat side by side, Lilly on the edge of the pool, me curled up in my chair. Amber and Jade dove and splashed, and I tucked my chin against the spray of water.

  “Do you want me to tell you what happened?” I asked. I’d given her only the barest bones of the story the night before. She’d been too devastated to hear more.

  She shrugged and then nodded. Suddenly, she rose. “Not here,” she said. “Not in front of the girls.” As if summoned, although Lilly hadn’t called for anyone, one of the nannies appeared carrying thick white towels. She dried the girls off briskly and bundled them off to the house, presumably to play with Ruby and Isaac.

  Lilly slipped her feet into a pair of plain white loafers and led me across the patio to a small stone bench set at the edge of the garden.

  “Please start at the beginning,” she said. “I need to understand everything. How it happened. Why.”

  I nodded. “Well, I guess it began a few years ago, when Blackmore brought Chloe to his clinic.”

  Lilly shuddered, and I put a hand on her arm. “Are you sure you want me to tell you this?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, inhaling deeply—steeling herself. “I have to know. But wait a minute, okay? There’s someone else who needs to hear this, too. I’ll be right back.”

  I nodded, and she got to her feet and headed to the house. Within a few minutes she was back, leading Jupiter by the hand. His hair stood up on one side of his head, and his cheek was creased where he’d slept on it.

  “Jupiter!” I said, surprised to see him.

  He tucked his chin to his chest and smiled tentatively.

  “I had one of the bodyguards go get him last night, right after you called. I didn’t want him there, in that place. Not after I found out that Molly was the one . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Suddenly, something occurred to me. “But, Lilly, Jupiter was released to the custody of the center. If he leaves, the cops will consider that jumping bail.”

  She shrugged. “I told Wasserman and Dr. Blackmore to take care of it. They will. Especially now that Molly confessed. Wasserman says he’s sure the DA will dismiss the case against Jupiter. And today he’s going to arrange for Jupiter to check into another facility here in L.A. He’ll be there by this afternoon.”

  She reached an arm around the only brother she had, and squeezed him tight.

  “The two of you saved my life,” Jupiter said to me. “Lilly, and you.”

  Lilly shook her head. “Oh, honey, I didn’t save you. It’s completely my fault all this happened to you in the first place. I’m so sorry.” She looked like she was about to begin to cry.

  He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s not your fault. No one told me to sleep with Chloe. No one told me to keep using. It’s not your fault, Lilly. It’s mine. Recovery is about accepting responsibility, and that’s what I’m going to do, from now on.”

  They leaned back slightly, away from each other, and looked into one another’s eyes. Jupiter smiled his faltering smile, and Lilly returned it. Then they sat down next to me on the bench.

  “Okay, Juliet. Tell us what happened,” Lilly said.

  I nodded. “Parts of this you know already. Blackmore was one of Chloe’s clients. I think he was sleeping with her, but I also think, although I can’t prove it, that he intended to set her up with you, Jupiter, so she could be a connection to the CCU, and keep his clinic in the CCU’s good graces. Chloe traded up in the ranks, however, and ended up marrying your father. That worked just as well for Blackmore. Polaris was indebted to Blackmore for introducing him to his wife, and the CCU kept sending clients to the clinic. And so things went for a couple of years. Except it seems that, at some point, Polaris started souring on his young bride. Perhaps because he realized that she’d never stopped using drugs, but maybe because . . . well, because he found out that she’d never stopped sleeping with his son.

  “A few months before she was murdered, Chloe checked back into the clinic for an intensive therapy session. I guess her using had gotten out of hand, even for her. Maybe Polaris had finally given her an ultimatum. I don’t know. But that must have been when Molly Weston told her about . . . about your mother.”

  At the sound of the name of the woman who had killed her father, Lilly moaned. I pu
t a comforting arm around her.

  “Did you know her, Lilly? Had you met Molly?”

  “I knew who she was, of course,” Lilly said. “Dr. Blackmore talked about her. And her name is on all those articles with his. And I think I might have met her once when I was up at the clinic. But I really don’t know. Why did she want Chloe to blackmail me?”

  “I don’t think that’s what she intended. I’m pretty sure that she expected Chloe to use the information against Polaris. Which Chloe did. Whatever the Very Reverend thought of her drug use, and her extramarital activities, he had to stay with her, or risk exposure.”

  “But why would my secret have mattered to him? Why would he care if it got out? Did he know it was Beverly? Or did he think I did it?”

  I wrinkled my brow. “I’m not sure, Lilly. I don’t think he knew the truth. I think he got to the room after it happened. Maybe Beverly told him she’d taken the gun from you. Maybe he believed you had done it. We’ll never really know for sure. Unless Beverly tells, of course. But whatever he knew or didn’t know, Polaris had smuggled you out of Mexico without the police’s permission. And he kept quiet about the case for all these years. His credibility as a religious leader would have been compromised if that had come out.”

  “But I still don’t understand what Molly got out of getting Chloe to blackmail anybody.”

  “I think she imagined she was protecting Blackmore. She was in love with him. I should have seen it right away.”

  “He saved her life,” she said simply. “He saved her, like he saved so many others. He got them off drugs, he helped them find their past.”

  “But not you, Lilly. He didn’t help you find the past. He helped invent one that hadn’t happened at all.”

  She didn’t reply, and I continued. “Blackmore had tried to protect himself by setting Chloe up with Jupiter, but that was as far as he was willing to go. He wouldn’t resort to blackmail, even to protect the center. Whatever his mistakes, I think your therapist is a fundamentally decent person.”