Murder Plays House (18 page)

Just then, the door to the school burst open, and the children began to pour out. I caught sight of Ruby’s gleaming red curls immediately. When she saw my car she smiled widely, revealing the gap where her front tooth had just begun to grow in. I smiled back and waved. I was damned if I was going to let my little girl grow up feeling the way I did about my body. Ruby was going to be proud of how she looked, and take pleasure in every morsel that passed her lips, if I had to tie down every Tab-drinking mother in the city of Los Angeles and force-feed them Ding-Dongs from now until doomsday.

I
didn’t notice the Mercedes parked in front of my house. If I had, I might have hustled the kids off to the park, or to the movies, or anywhere at all to avoid the scene that greeted me when I walked into my apartment. Kat was huddled in an armchair, her face mottled with a humiliated blush, and her hands knotted in her lap. She was staring out the window, doing her best not to look at her mother-in-law and my husband, who were sitting side by side on the couch, their heads bent together in an altogether disturbing těte-à-těte. While I stood in the doorway, Nahid’s tinkling laugh filled the room, and she reached out one manicured hand, pushing at my husband’s sweatshirt-clad chest, as if he had said something so witty, so daring, that she needed to swat him for it. He laughed in reply, and leaned ever so slightly into her.

I coughed, loudly, and released my hold on Ruby’s and Isaac’s hands. They flung themselves into the room and onto their father’s lap, reminding him, I hope, that he was
married, and that flirting with middle-aged, artfully sculpted real estate agents was a singularly inappropriate activity.

Nahid looked at me, and her smile turned acid. Kat shot me a worried glance and turned back to the window. For a moment, I felt a tightening in my stomach. I shook it off, firmly reminding myself that Nahid Lahidji was not
my
mother-in-law. She couldn’t scare me. Could she?

“Hello Kat, Mrs. Lahidji. What’s up?” I said in a sprightly voice.

Peter set the children on the floor and said, “Guys, go play in Ruby’s room for a minute, we’ve got grown-up things to talk about.”

“But we just got home!” Ruby whined.

“And you said we’d play
Bionicles
today!” Isaac said, matching her tone.

“Give us a few minutes, kids,” I said, shooing them out of the room. “Daddy will be in to play with you soon.”

As soon as they were gone, I said, “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

Kat raised a grateful face, and nodded, but Nahid said, “No, no. We’re fine. Your
darling
husband has already made us very comfortable.” I could swear she batted her eyelashes at him.

“Well, what can I do for you?” I asked, settling myself on the ottoman that passed for a second chair in our living room.

“Juliet,” Peter said, “Mrs. Lahidji is worried about the whole house thing.” There was just the tiniest hint of ‘I told you so’ in his voice, and I scowled at him.

“Juliet, dear,” Nahid said. “I’m sure you had only the best intentions. After all, I know just how desperate you must be to move from here before the baby is born.” She waved a condescending hand around my living room, as if
to say that of course no one could imagine bringing a child into such desperate and meager surroundings. “But I’m afraid I must ask you to refrain from disturbing poor Felix and Farzad. They’ve gone through so much.”

“Disturbing them?” I sputtered.

“Katayoun has told me of your
plan.
”

“Kat!” I said to my friend. She winced, and shrugged as though to ask me what I had expected from her. Clearly I should not have imagined that she would withstand the force of nature that was her husband’s mother.

Nahid said, “She has told me everything. That you have befriended the poor grieving man. That you have worked your way into his confidences. All to convince him to sell you the house. Sell it
below market value!”
The outrage, the horror in her voice filled the room.

“Listen, Mrs. Lahidji, you’re being ridiculous. Yes, of course I’m interested in the house, and maybe my motives weren’t entirely altruistic at first. But I’m not trying to cheat Felix out of anything. Anyway, Felix has hired me to investigate his sister’s murder. He’s my client.”

She shook her head furiously. “How long do you think you’ll be working for him if I tell him you’re just after his home?”

“First of all, he knows I’m interested in his house. That’s the reason Kat and I were there in the first place. Second of all, how long do you think you’ll be his real estate agent if I tell him you care more about the price of his house then you do about finding out who killed Alicia?”

She sputtered for a moment, and then seemed to deflate just the tiniest bit. “Look my dear,” she said. “We are both on the same side here. We both want this situation with Alicia resolved as quickly as possible so that the house will be free to be sold. Let’s not argue.”

I turned to my husband. “Sweetie, give me your seat,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Your seat. My back is killing me.”

He leapt to his feet and gave me a hand up off the ottoman. “Maybe I should see how the kids are doing,” he said.

“Good idea.”

I sat down on the couch next to Nahid. “Mrs. Lahidji, I promise I won’t go behind your back, okay? If Felix ever decides to sell me the house, I promise you’ll not only be the first to know, but I’ll make sure you’re involved in the sale, okay? You’ll be able to advise him on a fair price.”

She pursed her lips together, and then stretched her mouth into a smile. “Very good, my dear. That is all I was asking.”

“On one condition.”

Her smile died. “What is that?”

I reached over for my purse and pulled out my little notebook. “Let’s talk a little bit about Alicia. Did you know her?”

“We should not discuss this unpleasantness.”

“How else will we achieve our mutual goal of resolving the issue quickly?”

Nahid narrowed her eyes. “I’d met her. But only once, when Farzad first had me over to look at the house. She was there, cleaning up after a dinner party. Or, rather, she was ordering the maid to clean up.” Her tone of voice made it clear that she had not liked Alicia.

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, my business was not with her. I was there to appraise the value of the house. Whether she liked it or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the girl obviously didn’t want her brother to sell
the house and move permanently to Palm Springs. She would have had to get a
job.
Find someplace to live. God knows how she would manage that. She was supposed to have been an actress, but Farzad said she hadn’t gotten a part in years. She was nothing but her little brother’s nanny!”

I looked up from my notebook, surprised. “Farzad told you that? He told you that she didn’t want Felix to move?”

Nahid waved a dismissive hand at me. Her diamond ring caught the light, and we were both momentarily distracted by its brilliance. “Lovely, isn’t it?” she purred. “I will tell your husband where my husband bought it. His cousin, Momo, is in the diamond business. He’ll give you a special deal.”

It looked like the glass shade on the Czechoslovakian floor lamp in my Bubbe’s old apartment. Only larger.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You were telling me about what Farzad told you?”

“Farzad didn’t need to tell me anything. The girl threw a tantrum as soon as she realized what I was doing. She began screaming at Farzad, telling him she would tell her brother he was trying to throw her in the street. She was like a wild person. Tears, howls. Awful. So tacky. So low class.”

“What did Farzad do?”

Nahid smiled. “He yelled right back at her! Farzad is like his mother, Lida. No one has ever won a fight with my cousin Lida Bahari. She is the most formidable woman I know.”

Kat and I sat in stunned silence for a few moments, contemplating just what a woman scarier than Nahid would be like.

“What did Farzad say to Alicia?” I asked, finally.

Nahid laughed. “He told her he’d throw her out right then if she didn’t close her mouth, and then he chased her
out to the guest house where she lived. Such a scene. The two of them, screaming like a couple of fishwives. Farzad is just like his mother. Only prettier.” She laughed again.

Suddenly, Kat leaned forward. “Nahidjoon, maybe we should go. Juliet probably has things to do.”

I scowled at her. She had been too afraid to speak a word the entire time, and now she mustered up the courage to cut our conversation off just when things where getting interesting?

Nahid nodded. “I must get back to the office. And you,” she said to Kat. “You need to get to work on those rental units. I need a full inventory of tenants and rents by the end of the day.”

Kat sighed, following in her mother-in-law’s wake out the door.

Once the two women had gone, I sat for a moment in my quiet living room, pondering what Nahid had told me. There was no love lost between Alicia and Farzad. If he had had his way, and it appeared like he had been about to, she would have been out on the street. I was supposed to be finding out who might have had a motive to kill Alicia, and instead I kept coming up with people whom
she
would have liked to see dead.

T
HE
next morning I dropped by Felix’s house. I found Farzad in the dining room conferring with two very young women over a pile of fabrics printed with black and white photographs.

“Hello, Juliet,” he said, when the housekeeper had shown me in. “Come, tell us what you think of these. Gorgeous, aren’t they?”

I fingered a corner of the soft gossamer fabric, and then held it up. “Are these crime scene photographs?” I asked, trying not to sound as horrified as I felt.

“Yes, aren’t they fabulous?” one of the young women said.
“So
edgy.”

“And so bloody,” I said. The length of silk I was holding had the image of a woman sprawled on a bed. Her head hung over the side, dripping a pool of black blood onto the floor. “What are these for?”

“Felix’s new line,” Farzad said. “Mostly formal-wear. He’s having problems with the final designs.”

“Gee, I wonder why?” I said.

Farzad smiled thinly. “I know what you’re saying, but Aimee and Bethany have been working on these for months. Long before Alicia died. It was Felix’s idea to use the Weegee photographs, and it cost a fortune to get the rights. We can’t exactly just toss the entire line because he’s having a personal crisis.”

I didn’t reply. What good would it have done to point out to my client’s partner that he was an insensitive ghoul?

“Felix is resting,” Farzad said. “Is there something important? Should I wake him?”

“No, don’t. Actually, I’ve come to talk to you.” I shot the girls a glance.

He gathered the fabric swathes into a pile and dumped them into the arms of one of the girls. “These are fine. Call the factory and tell them we’ll have final designs by the end of next week.”

“Are you sure?” the girl said. “I mean, if they get set to go, and we don’t have the drawings for them, they’re going to freak.”

“That’s Felix’s problem, darling, not yours.”

“Okay,” she said, doubtfully, and headed out of the room. The other girl scooped up their two identical Burberry totes and followed.

Farzad sighed and collapsed onto a leather Morris chair. He kicked off his embroidered slippers and tucked his feet up under him.

“I spoke to Nahid Lahidji yesterday,” I said, sitting down on the couch.

“Ah, Auntie Nahid, the dragon lady. I must call her.”

“She’s pretty anxious to get your house on the market.”

“No more anxious than I am. But we’re both going to have to wait. Felix won’t even talk about it.”

“He just needs some time to deal with everything that’s happened. I’m sure once Alicia’s murder has been resolved, and—he’s further along in his grieving process, he’ll be ready to contemplate leaving Los Angeles.”

“You may be right.” He glanced at me. “Or it could be wishful thinking, couldn’t it?”

I didn’t answer. I felt a twist of guilt. Farzad and I both knew that I was hoping that his poor lover would grieve quickly enough to sell me his house before I was forced to buy something else.

I eyed the leather ottoman tucked in next to the couch I was sitting on, wondering if it would be indelicate to heave my aching feet up on it.

“Please, relax,” Farzad said. “You must be exhausted.”

I nodded gratefully, and put my feet up. “I understand from Nahid that Alicia was very upset at your plans to sell the house.”

He wrapped his arms around his knees. There was something feline about Farzad—graceful, elegant and utterly consumed with his own comfort. “Of course she was. She was furious. She was going to have to pay for her own apartment.”

“Did she try to convince you and Felix to stay in LA?”

“Look, we all knew that this was really for the best. Alicia had always been much too dependent on Felix. It was time to cut the cord. Even she knew that.”

“But did she try to convince you to stay?”

He ran a careful hand through his thick hair. “Alicia was an actress.”

“Meaning?”

“She threw a fabulous tantrum. But Felix and I had our minds made up.”

“And did she realize that? Did she come to terms with it?”

He laughed. “Alicia never came to terms with anything in her life. She managed to convince Felix to keep her on salary, to do whatever he needed done in the city, God knows what that would have been. She was working on him to keep the house as a sort of
pied á terre.
And who knows, she might have succeeded.”

I sat forward a bit and fixed my eyes on him. “It’s ironic, don’t you think?”

“What is?”

“Well, here Alicia was trying so hard to convince Felix not to sell the house, and now she’s dead, and he can’t bring himself to sell.”

“I don’t know if it’s ironic, but it’s definitely typical of Alicia.”

“How so?”

He laughed again, without the slightest hint of humor. “She was the most stubborn woman in the world, and you’ve met my auntie Nahid, so you know I know what I’m talking about. Alicia would never rest until she had her way. I’m not at all surprised that she’s manipulating her brother, even from the grave.”