Murder Plays House (17 page)

Detective Goodenough turned to Farzad, “Do you think this woman, Julia, felt the same way toward Alicia as Alicia felt toward her?”

Farzad waggled his head in his half-nod, half-shake. “I have no idea. All I know is that Alicia hated Julia Brennan. It’s hard enough to make a name for yourself in this business without someone stealing your ideas. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if
Alicia
had killed
Julia!”

“Farzad!” Felix said sharply. “Alicia would never have hurt anybody. She was not that kind of person, and you know that.”

Farzad waved a hand in the air. “Whatever.”

It was time for me to step in. Nothing they were saying was exactly against their interests, but at the same time I wasn’t eager to expose my clients bickering to the curious eye of this very intelligent police officer.

“Detective, are there any other questions you have for Felix and Farzad?”

He nodded, fully aware of what I was doing, and then spent a few minutes going over the two men’s alibis for the night of Alicia’s murder. He took down the names of the maid and cook who kept the Palm Springs house in running order.

Felix sighed, and his eyes welled up with tears. “I just thought to myself, ‘I’ll have to get Alicia to call him with the phone numbers.’”

“She took care of that kind of thing for you?” the detective asked.

Felix nodded. “I’ve never had much of a head for details. And I’m so busy with my business. I have an assistant at work, of course, but he never had to deal with any personal stuff. I guess he’ll have to, now.”

“What kind of personal stuff?” Goodenough said.

“Oh, you know. She would take the clothes to the laundry. Make sure the cars got serviced. Deal with the house-cleaner and the gardener. Plan our dinner parties.”

“Buy our toiletries,” Farzad said. “You wouldn’t believe the different unguents Felix uses. Every part of his body has its own lotion, and God only knows where Alicia would get them all. If you think
I’m
going to be able to do that for you, sweetheart, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Felix seemed about to rebuke the younger man, but I shot him a warning glance. Instead, he said, “Alicia did all those errands that it’s hard for a busy person to get to. You know.”

I did know. I’d run out of deodorant over a week before, and I had no idea when I’d make it to the drug store. I was counting on it becoming apparent if things got out of control. For now I resisted the urge to sniff under my arm.

Goodenough tapped his pen on his notebook. “Alicia was your older sister, yes?”

Felix nodded.

“She didn’t mind running these kinds of errands for you?”

“No. Alicia had always taken care of me. Even when we were kids. This wasn’t any different. Anyway, she needed the money, and I needed the help.”

I could see that the detective didn’t buy that any more than I had. He was probably a younger sibling. Perhaps the
relationship between Alicia and Felix was every bit as uncomplicated as Felix claimed. Perhaps not. It was hard to imagine an older sister who wouldn’t resent buying her little brother’s toilet paper and toothpaste, or even his two-hundred dollar bottles of algae and placenta wrinkle cream. And a history of having been forced to babysit a younger sibling was, I thought, more likely to instill antipathy, rather than a willingness to continue a lifetime of selfless devotion. Still, Felix seemed entirely unaware there might be anything unusual or unbelievable about the way he characterized his relationship with his sister. Theirs had either been a very special bond indeed, or he was a singularly insensitive man.

Detective Goodenough finally wrapped up his questions and left.

After the door closed behind the handsome detective, Farzad whistled through his teeth. “Mmm,” he said.

“Oh, please!” Felix replied.

I looked over at Al, who was blushing. It was, I thought, the first time I’d seen him turn that shade of crimson.

I interrupted Felix and Farzad’s banter to reassure myself that neither man was worried about the interview. They were more interested in discussing the relative attractiveness of their interrogator than going over his questions, so there wasn’t anything more for Al and me to do.

We found Goodenough leaning against the hood of my car. He stood up when he saw me, shot his cuffs, and stepped forward.

“Ms. Applebaum, Mr. Hockey,” he said mildly. “I wonder if I might have a word.”

“Of course.”

“Ms. Applebaum, you said that you’re an attorney?”

“I am.”

“How long have you known Mr. Felix?”

“Not very long.”

“How long?”

“I met him after the death of his sister, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He looked surprised.

“Felix has retained us to assist him during the course of the investigation of his sister’s murder,” I said.

“How do you mean? Are you acting as his defense counsel?”

“No, of course not. He doesn’t need a defense attorney. My partner and I are merely assisting Felix and Farzad to navigate these very unfamiliar waters.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Do you have a ticket?”

“Excuse me?”

Al interrupted. “I do. Juliet works with me.”

Goodenough turned to Al. “You’re a licensed private investigator?”

Al nodded.

“But she’s not,” the detective said.

I was, in fact, in the process of getting licensed. The exams weren’t a problem; after all, I’d successfully taken and passed both the New York and California Bar Exams. The private investigator’s exam was nothing compared to those horrors. However, while Al was certainly qualified to supervise me, my hours weren’t exactly regular, what with taking care of Ruby and Isaac, and spending much of my first trimester vomiting instead of working. I was still nearly one hundred hours short of what was required for me to get licensed.

“Our goal isn’t to get in your way, Detective Goodenough,” I said.

The tall man smoothed the fabric of his expensive suit and picked an invisible piece of lint off the sleeve. Where
did an LAPD cop get the money for those clothes? “Of course not,” he said.

“Is your working theory of the case that it was a home invasion by a stranger? Using the lock box on the door?” I asked.

He waggled his head in something between a nod and a shake. “That’s one possibility.”

“Have there been other, similar, cases in the city?”

“If you’re asking whether we’ve had a rash of Charles Manson–like murders, then the answer is no. But of course there have been other home invasions.”

Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows.

“Two young men in Watts were killed when rival gang members broke into their homes last week,” he said. “And a mother of three was strangled in her bed while her children slept in the next room.”

“Domestic violence?” I asked.

He nodded. “We’ve arrested the children’s father.”

“But nothing like this?”

He shook his head. “No. No other rich, single women have been stabbed to death in their bathtubs.”

I had a feeling there was another adjective he might have substituted in that description. It took a very generous definition of the word to describe Alicia as rich, but she was most certainly white.

“Was there evidence of sexual assault?” I asked.

He pursed his lips and gazed at me, appraisingly. Finally he said, “I suppose it doesn’t hurt to tell you. She had had sexual intercourse within the previous twenty-four hours, but there was no evidence of assault.”

“How did you rule out rape?”

“No sign of bruising or tearing, and the presence of Nonoxynol 9.”

Well that seemed pretty clear. It’s a rare rapist who is both gentle and solicitous enough to use a condom. Alicia had most likely had consensual sex a day or so before she was killed.

“Did her body turn up any other evidence?” I asked. “Fingernail scrapings? Hairs?”

The detective shook his head. “As I’m sure your partner will explain to you, Ms. Applebaum, our information sharing cannot be the two-way street you would like it to be. I’m trusting you to turn over to me anything you discover. I will not be able to do the same. I’m sure you understand why not.”

I sighed. Of course I did. And I was used to being on the short end of the informational stick. As a public defender, what I knew was always limited to what my client was willing to tell me, and what I was able to pry out of the prosecutor, sometimes with the help of a judicial order. I didn’t expect Detective Goodenough to come entirely clean. Nonetheless, he’d already told me enough to convince me of one thing. I just didn’t believe Alicia was the victim of a random act of violence. Sure there were killers who didn’t rape their victims, but more often than not, this kind of stranger-attack was a sex crime. Perhaps the very fact that Alicia had been naked and in the shower was in and of itself sufficient to satisfy her killer’s sexual perversion. But I doubted it. The lack of any kind of physical violation seemed to preclude a stranger attack. Furthermore, Alicia had been murdered by someone who knew how to get the key out of the lock box, or someone who had keys to the house. Now, again, it was possible that there was a serial-killer/real estate agent on the loose in the greater Los Angeles area, but I didn’t believe that, and I was certain Detective Goodenough shared my doubts. No. Alicia Felix had been
murdered by someone who knew her well enough to gain access to her home. I hoped to God it wasn’t her brother, because I had every intention of figuring out who had killed her. And I seriously doubted Felix would sell me his house if I ended up putting him in jail.

O
N
my way home I stopped at the supermarket. We were entirely out of breakfast cereal, and I didn’t relish trying to force something else down my finicky children’s throats in the morning. It was hard enough getting them to eat a small bowl of organic chocolate crispies. Anything else was beyond them, and me.

Once inside the store I surprised myself by remembering deodorant, and a new tube of bubblegum-flavored toothpaste for the kids. I was so pleased with this feat of deep-pregnancy recall that I decided to reward myself with a donut. I still hadn’t gotten that life-size box of Krispie Kremes out of my mind. The pastry counter offered my honey glazed favorites in boxes of four, just enough, I told myself, for my perfectly sized little family. I ate my donut as I waited in line behind an elderly woman with a hand tremor who was insisting on paying by check. The confection went down altogether too fast. While the ancient woman consulted her calendar for the date, and laboriously filled in and then crossed out the number “19” in the spot for the year, I decided that not only wouldn’t Peter really expect me to bring him a donut, but that since I was eating for two, I really deserved another one myself. As long as I still had two left for Ruby and Isaac, I was fine.

Once I was in the car, I recollected what the kids’ dentist had said about sugary snacks late in the day, and the need for better toothbrushing. Well, I’d been trying, but I couldn’t
get the kids to brush with anything resembling the commitment the dentist demanded. I was going to have to limit the amount of sweets they were allowed. Therefore, it was my duty as their mother to eat the other two donuts.

I’d like to say I felt sick, or regretted my gluttony. I didn’t. In fact, I felt like I could easily put away another four-pack. But turning the car around and heading back to the pastry counter was beyond even me, wasn’t it? I checked my watch. Alas, I didn’t have time. I had to pick up the kids from school.

I started feeling bad while I was waiting out in front of Ruby’s school in the pick-up line. I don’t mean physically bad. Physically, I was just fine. No, what got to me wasn’t abdominal discomfort, but rather a bit of good old fashioned self-hatred. A group of moms had gotten out of their cars and were chatting amiably as they waited for the doors to open and the children to pour out. I joined them, and was confronted with the ugly truth. I was, by far, the fattest woman there. Now granted, I was pregnant, and moreover I wasn’t really
fat
by any stretch of the imagination. At least not fat like any normal person would consider fat. After all, when not under the influence of a developing fetus I fit more or less comfortably into a size 10, and could even manage an 8 if I was willing to forgo respiration. The problem was that these were all
Los Angeles
mothers. Not all were actresses, or even in the industry at all. In fact, these particular women were mostly stay-at-home mothers. But nonetheless they looked, to a one, like they had just walked off a movie set. They weren’t dressed particularly glamorously—a pair of tight yoga pants and a stretchy T-shirt was the style of the moment. But they were all thin. They were aerobicized and stepped and Zone-dieted down to a svelteness that only a
town that idolized the broomstick likes of Calista Flockheart and Lara Flynn Boyle could have considered normal. Alongside them, I felt hugely, lumberingly, hideously fat. I’m fully aware that it is simply unreasonable for a woman who has given birth even to just one child to have an abdomen that looks good in hip-hugger pants and a belly button ring. Still, it bothered me that my belly button, after three pregnancies, was going to look more like a deflated party balloon than a body part that deserved its own jewelry, and that even if I had a pupik-plasty or whatever that surgery was called, I still would never have the courage to bare my midriff.

I made as much small talk as I could stomach and then made my way back to my car, pulling my shirt over the behind that suddenly seemed bigger than anything that could easily fit into my station wagon. I thought of the donuts, each of them in turn, oily and coated with its grey scum of sugar. For the first time in my life I felt, or at least understood, the compulsion of women like Alicia. I wanted to run to the nearest ladies room, stick my finger down my throat, and get rid of the pounds of carbohydrate and fat that would soon be taking up permanent residence on my thighs.

Then the image of Alicia’s emaciated, vandalized body sprang before my eyes. Was that really what I wanted to be? I looked out the window at the woman gathered together in front of the school. How many of them maintained their slimness by denying themselves basic sustenance? How many of them vomited up any item not on the paltry list of foods they considered acceptable? I was willing to bet that it was more than a few. Not many of us ended up like Alicia, institutionalized and force-fed, but we were all completely crazy when it came to food. Felix was right. We all had eating disorders. It was only a question of degree.