A Job to Kill For

by Janice Kaplan

  “If she didn’t take your class, how did you get to know Cassie?” I asked, trying to bring him back to the subject.

  “We never had sex,” he said.

  “So you mentioned.”

  “Standard logic sequence. I don’t have sex with any students. But that doesn’t mean I do have sex with everyone who’s not my student.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Who’d have time?”

  “You’re a busy man,” I said, thinking the fifth floor sounded more and more reasonable. “Teaching quantum mechanics and gravity and…um, everything.”

  “The Theory of Everything!” he said brightly. “Right there at the intersection of quantum mechanics and gravity. If I have sex too often, all I’ll ever discover is the Theory of Nothing.”

  Oddly enough, I actually followed his rant. To try to keep up with Grant, I’d kept a popular physics book by my bedside for a year now. Frankly, I didn’t understand a word of it. Grant teased that I didn’t need a bookmark—I could open to any page, any night, and never realize that I’d read it before. But I had picked up the fundamental conflict of modern physics. Einstein’s relativity theory described how the vast universe of stars and galaxies worked. Quantum mechanics offered a way to understand the tiniest particles, like quarks and muons. But they couldn’t both be right. So physicists had been searching for a way to put them together, understand the big and small with one theory that could explain the universe in all its extremes.

  “You’re working on the Theory of Everything?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I’d like to understand even one photon of this vast intergalactic world that we call home.”

  “A good reason to study physics,” I said, encouragingly.

  “I hope to learn something before we’re all pulled into some formless black hole that sucks the substance from our very being,” he said ominously.

  “Hopefully, that won’t occur too soon.”

  “You never know,” he said portentously. But then he spun around and climbed onto the seat of a wooden chair. “The best part of physics is that it’s fun, fun, fun!” On the last word, he jumped off the chair, doing a double twist on his way down. His foot hit the chair back, which clattered down on top of him. Only slightly abashed, he brushed himself off and stood up again.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Always,” he said.

  Before he could vault off to some bizarre fifth dimension, I quickly said, “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of things about Cassie?”

  “Ask away. Whatever I can tell you about”—he threw his arms wide and got down on one knee, singing—“Cassie, Cassie, bo-Bassie, banana-fana, mo-Massie. Fi-fi so sassy. Cass-ie.”

  I cleared my throat. Sassy Cassie. Hey, I could do this. I had a six-year-old.

  “It sounds like Cassie made a strong impression.”

  “Impression? You mean like when you make a snow angel?” He lay down flat on the floor and flapped his arms, like a child on a wintry day in Maine.

  “Um, this is Los Angeles,” I said.

  “Right. We never made snow angels.” He jumped up again. “She liked to come to my office and have me talk string theory to her. Tsk, tsk. Such a bad girl. I say too many people have already been seduced by that theory.”

  “You don’t believe it?” I asked.

  “Plink. Plink. Plink.” He plucked his fingers in the air, as if pulling at imaginary violin strings.

  “Was she seeing someone at the time?” I asked.

  “Time is a human construct, meaningful only as a comparative measure, not an absolute one,” he said. “Go on, time how long it takes me to do these, and then interpret.”

  He dropped to the floor and did ten push-ups, counting each out loud with a sharp bark. His arm muscles rippled under his T-shirt. For the next ten, he lifted himself off the floor each time and clapped his hands. He finished by pushing himself up into a handstand, then springing upright.

  “Yah!” he called, winking at me. He put his foot against the back of the chair, stretching out his hamstring. Then he looked at me and twisted his face into a silly expression, like Jim Carrey in Mask. His face was as elastic as his body.

  How could I possibly get information from this crazy man? I took a step back and realized that Professor Bohr couldn’t have been much more than thirty years old. To have a tenured professorship at that age (as I’d learned online that he did) put him in a rare stratosphere. He had to be a top-of-the-line genius.

  In other words, smart enough to play dumb. Hal Bohr had happily figured out how to play into the stereotype of physicist as crazed iconoclast.

  I pushed some books and newspapers aside and sat down on a broken-legged chair.

  “You’re very clever,” I said. “Clever enough not to give me a straight answer on anything. What are you hiding?”

  For the first time since I’d come in, Hal Bohr hesitated, and a shadow of uncertainty crossed his face. Then he pulled himself back into his wild-scientist role. “To hide in this vast galaxy is…”

  “I know all about this vast galaxy,” I said, interrupting. “What I don’t know is enough about Cassie Crawford. Your Cassie Cassie bo-Bassie. The one you didn’t sleep with.”

  “Not having sex sounds like I’m hiding something?” he asked.

  “Classic misdirection,” I said with a shrug. “You get me thinking on a personal level because there’s something else you don’t want to reveal.”

  His face twisted into such an expression of surprise that I figured I’d hit on something.

  “Come on,” I said. “You’ve got to help me. Let’s do this scientifically. I ask you four straight questions and you give me four straight answers.”

  “I do science all day. Let’s make it more fun than that.” He licked the edge of his lips with his tongue and came over next to me. “A reflex game. Do you like games?”

  He put his hands out in front of him, palms up, and gestured for me to put mine on top of them, palms down. Yup, I knew this game. I’d played it endlessly with Jimmy. He’d try to flip his hand over and slap me, while I tried to pull my hand away.

  “Four questions,” said Hal. “Each time I win, I don’t answer. Each time you win, I tell the truth.” His childish exuberance had melted away, replaced by an almost frightening intensity.

  I nodded and put my hands out, holding them lightly over his. “First question…How did you meet Cassie?” I asked.

  Hal stared down, moving his hands imperceptibly beneath mine. I pulled away slightly, put them back, pulled away…

  Slap.

  He got me.

  “I don’t have to answer that one,” he said happily.

  I nodded. “Okay, question two. Can you tell me anything from her student days—anybody she might have known—that could have led to her death?”

  “That’s two questions,” Hal complained. “Anything or anybody.”

  “Take it or leave it,” I said.

  “Take it.” He flipped the other hand for a quick slap, but I got away before any contact.

  He looked me straight in the eye. “While Cassie was an undergraduate, a physics student died coming home from a lab. She’d known him. The incident haunted her and lately she’d been asking a lot of questions about him. Still, I don’t see how his death could have led to hers—despite the interconnectedness of the universe.”

  I nodded. Hal’s eyes bored powerfully through me—as if seeing something I couldn’t. I gave a slight, involuntary tremble.

  “Next. Why would you answer my question about what might have led to her death by telling me about something that didn’t?”

  Almost before I finished talking, I felt Slap, slap! He flipped both hands and got both of mine.

  “No answer,” he said.

  Final chance. I didn’t hold out much hope—that I’d either have fast enough reflexes or an insightful enough question.

  “Last question,” I said. “Did you try to seduce her and fail?”

  Ha
l tipped his hands, I pulled mine away.

  His expression changed yet again. He tried to keep his features straight, but I saw a little smile playing on the edge of his lips.

  “Try with Cassie? No, definitely no. Not my type.”

  “Who is your type?” I asked.

  “Sorry, Ms. Lacy Fields, we’re done,” he said, dancing away. “We tied, two-two. I like this game. But I hate ties. Come back some time and we’ll play again.”

  With that, he went back to the wall and threw himself back into a headstand.

  I went out and closed the door behind me. I didn’t have a Theory of Everything. But I had the feeling that if I spent a little more time with Hal Bohr, I’d at least start to have a theory about Cassie Crawford.

  Chapter Nine

  Molly invited me to a gala beach party at Roger’s house.

  “His wife’s barely buried and he’s whooping it up?” I asked. “How’s that going to look on the style page? Not to mention the police blotter?”

  “It’s a charity event,” Molly said hurriedly. “Roger has decided not to let his personal grief get in the way of good works.”

  “Wallet of platinum and heart of gold.”

  “He wants to help people,” Molly whined.

  “You know who really gets helped by rich people’s parties? The caterers, florists, bartenders, and DJs.”

  “No DJ. He’s having a harp quartet. It’s the next fad,” said Molly, who always knew the latest trends before they even happened. She’d predicted the comeback of bell bottoms when the rest of us were still in boot-cut. But a harp as instrument of choice for dinner music? Molly had hit it again—harps were unusual, expensive, and difficult to handle. Perfect to show off at a Hollywood party. I thought briefly of Elsa Franklin’s Humanitarian Dinner honoring Dan. Next time we’d write a check and then eat take-out lo mein at home.

  “Where’s the party?” I asked. The penthouse on Wilshire probably still had too much yellow police tape for entertaining, and unless Roger planned to cart in busloads of sand, it didn’t have a beach.

  “Roger has his house in Malibu, but this will be in the event cottage next door. He bought it to be a separate bash abode.” She smiled, pleased to be in the know. “He got the idea from Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. We went to a dinner at their party house.”

  Instead of focusing on the decadence of a second residence kept just for merrymaking, I had a bigger concern.

  “We went to a dinner at Melanie Griffith’s?” I asked. “We as in you and Roger? We as in you and Roger who was probably married at the time?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment. “Roger and I have a connection that’s hard to explain,” she said finally.

  “Roger feels like bad news to me. I think you should get away from him.”

  “And you know I always listen to you,” Molly said tartly.

  “You should.”

  “Really? How about that comic I dated when we first got to LA. You figured he had no future and hounded me to break up with him.”

  “Which you did.”

  “Correct. I broke up with Ben Stiller. His last movie made two hundred million. Same with the one before that.”

  “Would you really want to be with Zoolander?” I asked defensively.

  “Maybe,” said Molly. She paused meaningfully, then smiled. “But maybe not. Never would have worked. He married that actress from The Brady Bunch Movie. Nobody would ever confuse me with Marcia Brady. But give me some credit, Lacy. I do have an eye for good guys.”

  “You’re convinced Roger’s a good guy?”

  “A good guy. But the police had him in for questioning again,” Molly said.

  “He’s their suspect?”

  “No,” she said softly. “His lawyer says all the questions were about me, and whether Roger led me to think I’d be wife number four.”

  “Number four. Can you imagine? He collects wives like I collect handbags.”

  “That’s me, an old bag,” said Molly grimly.

  “If that’s true, you’re an ostrich Kelly. Classic and classy and distinctive. The one everyone wants.”

  “The police want me, too. It’s all circumstantial, but they don’t care. I’m close to Roger, who owned the penthouse. I’m close to you, who had the key to let me in. Fingerprints on the fridge. I’m the center of the intersecting circles. Case closed.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Roger and I had so many plans.” She shrugged. “For now, I’m just going to his party. Will you come? There’ll be fireworks.”

  “Emotional or pyrotechnic?”

  “Definitely the latter,” she said with a laugh. Then with more menace than I would have expected, she added, “And with Roger, you never know what will explode.”

  Not versed in what to wear to a Malibu beach party, I wandered into Ashley’s room to consult my fashionista daughter.

  “Bathing suit or little black dress?” I asked, after explaining the situation.

  “Neither. A swing dress,” she said, obviously ready to edit Teen Vogue. “Empire waist and not too many pleats. Bright color, like pink or orange. Go for a designer like Stella McCartney or Alexander McQueen.”

  “Aren’t their styles a little young for me?”

  “You could get away with it,” she said looking me over carefully. “Tara has a swing dress from Derek Lam with a corset top. My God, it must have been so expensive.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure she…um…bought it?”

  “I sure hope so.” Ashley twisted her mouth, slightly embarrassed. I remembered the two girls outside the store, giggling about shoplifting. At least now, Ashley seemed to take the situation more seriously.

  “Her dad gave her a platinum AmEx card so that never happens again,” Ashley said. “Though I guess it wasn’t really about money the first time.”

  I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Simple rule of parenting: if you want your kid to talk, just listen.

  “Tara’s parents fight and don’t spend any time with her,” Ashley said. “She’s pretty sure they’re both having affairs.”

  “That must be awful for her.”

  “Awful, yup. And I’m the only one she tells about it,” Ashley said, with a hint of pride. “Her mom is always off getting laser treatments for her legs and Restylane for her wrinkles and Botox on her butt.”

  Botox on her butt? If I were going to waste time (and money) on beauty treatments, I’d at least want to see the results in my makeup mirror.

  “Sounds like shoplifting is Ashley’s way of acting out,” I said, sticking to the subject. “She’s trying to get her parents to notice her.”

  “I guess,” said Ashley with a shrug.

  I sat down at the edge of her bed, pushing aside half a dozen stuffed animals to make room. At fifteen and just starting high school, Ashley was still caught in that awkward, in-between phase: cool and grown-up one minute, but needing her security blanket the next. Right now, the only boy in her bed (thank God) was the beat-up purple Barney she’d had since age two. I wanted to preserve the wedge of innocence as long as possible.

  “Do you remember when you were little and I used to tell you that you never had to cry to get what you wanted?” I asked. “If you needed me, you just had to say…”

  “I want attention,” Ashley said, in a three-year-old’s wail.

  “And I’d drop anything else and give you attention.”

  Ashley sat down next to me, comfortably tucking her legs under her. “You always kept up your end, Mom. You’d stop talking to Molly or Daddy or whoever else and play with me.”

  We both smiled, remembering the toys and dolls spread across tables in restaurants and the dressing room at Saks. I never had any doubt that connecting with my daughter was priority number one.

  “Sometimes we’d take your Barbies and have conversations with them,” I said, thinking of the lessons I tried to teach.

  “One time you held up a Barb
ie in a bathing suit and insisted she’d just won the Nobel Prize for Economics,” giggled Ashley. “We had to get her dressed so she could go to Sweden. Somehow it made sense to me.”

  “At least we didn’t have Bratz. A doll in a thong might have put me over the edge.”

  We both laughed again, and I put my arm around my daughter’s slight shoulders. “It gets harder to ask for attention as you get older. What you want isn’t as clear. But I’m still here for you, honey. And always will be.”

  Ashley picked up the ragged Barney and put her head on my shoulder. “Sometimes I hate being a teenage girl,” she whispered.

  “All I can promise is that you’ll outgrow it,” I said, giving her a hug.

  “Tara’s having a secret party at her house on Friday night,” Ashley blurted. “Her dad’s out of town on business and her mom’s going to Bacara for the weekend.”

  Bacara? The lush resort in Santa Barbara offered romantic villas overlooking the Santa Ynez Mountains. Given that they could cost a thousand bucks a night, it was unlikely she’d be heading there alone. Tara had probably guessed right about her mom having an affair. But right now the mother’s morality didn’t worry me nearly as much as the empty, unchaperoned house.

  “What do you mean, a secret party?” I asked.

  “Tara’s allowed to have two friends over on Friday. Me and another girl. But everyone in school knows we’ll be there alone. A bunch of junior guys told Tara they’ll come by with beer, and the whole varsity lacrosse team’s going to show up and do vodka shots.”

  My fifteen-year-old daughter hugging Barney and talking about vodka shots?

  I needed to intervene. But given the reaction—or lack of one—when I’d phoned Tara’s mom about the shoplifting episode, I knew she wouldn’t cancel her getaway to supervise her daughter. Should I call the school? The police? Child Welfare?

  I shook my head. So far, nothing had happened. I couldn’t get carried away, but I still had to protect my daughter. My scared, confused, defiant daughter. She’d told me about the party because she couldn’t handle this one alone. I had to help her save face.

  “I guess it’s up to you,” I said carefully. “Tara’s your friend and all. But a shame about the timing. I thought you might come with me to Roger’s beach party Friday night.”