The Big Nap (21 page)

“I wrote down all the details,” Peter said. “She’ll save seats for you and Ruby.”

“Do you want to go instead?” I asked hopefully.

“Do you need me to go?” Peter asked.

“No, I guess not.”

“Good, because I’d rather have root canal. But have fun.”

T
HE
police came by again later that day. The female detective who’d spoken to me at Fraydle’s house was accompanied by an older man in an ill-fitting navy suit with the unmistakable sheen of polyester. She introduced her partner, Carl Hopkins, and herself, Susan Black.

Peter took the kids out to play in the yard and I sat at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a steaming cup of chamomile tea and, once again, and in more detail, told the officers everything I knew about Fraydle’s death.

“How well did you know the victim?” asked Detective Black.

“Not well at all. She baby-sat for me once, and then didn’t show up the next day. When I went looking for her, that’s when I found out that she was gone.”

“And when was that?”

“A little over a week ago.”

“And why didn’t you call the police then?” Detective Hopkins interrupted.

I turned to him. “It wasn’t my place to. I couldn’t report her as a missing person. Only her parents could have done that.”

“That’s not exactly true, ma’am,” Detective Black said. “You couldn’t have filed a report, because we would need a member of the family to verify that the girl was actually missing, but you certainly could have alerted us to her absence.”

I nodded my head and softly said, “I could have, and in retrospect I should have.”

Once we’d gone over the details of my search for Fraydle, Detective Black gave me her card and asked me to call her if I heard anything new. Then she leaned back in her chair, looked at me intently for a moment, and said, “Ms. Applebaum, I used to work with Detective Mitch Carswell of the Santa Monica Police Department.”

I swallowed, not a little nervously.

“I understand that you were helpful to him in solving the Hathaway murder.”

Helpful? If single-handedly finding out who killed Abigail Hathaway, the headmistress of Los Angeles’s most selective nursery school, qualifies as helpful, then I suppose I was.

“Yes,” I said.

“I understand that you were shot by Ms. Hathaway’s killer.”

I looked into Detective Black’s face. Her expression was absolutely impassive.

“Yes,” I said.

“Ms. Applebaum, we at the Los Angeles Police Department take our work very seriously.” She paused, as if waiting for me to say something. I didn’t. I just looked at her. Detective Hopkins stared at me balefully.

Finally, Detective Black continued. “This is
my
homicide investigation, Ms. Applebaum. I am the primary detective on the case. I expect you to provide me with any and all information you possess.”

“As I have,” I said.

She held up her hand as if to still my voice. “And I expect that you will do nothing else. No more trips to New York. No more interviews with witnesses. Nothing. Do you understand?”

I considered defending myself and explaining to her exactly
why I’d investigated Fraydle’s disappearance, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. I wasn’t going to convince the two detectives that they needed the services of a crime-solving soccer-mom-in-training to track down Fraydle’s killer. All the same, I felt a niggling sense of irritation. Why couldn’t the woman just say thank you and assure me that she would competently carry out the investigation? Why did she feel the need to warn me off, as if I were some recalcitrant adolescent mucking up her turf?

I nodded my head once, and rose from my chair. “If there’s nothing else, Detective, I’d like to get back to my husband and children,” I said.

“Do you understand me, Ms. Applebaum?” Detective Black asked again, also rising from her seat.

“Of course, Detective. Let me see you and your associate out.”

I hustled the two of them out the door, then turned and walked through the apartment to Peter’s office, at the back of the house. Leaning out the window overlooking the back yard, I shouted “All clear.” As my family came clomping up the back stairs, I looked around Peter’s office. Every available shelf was covered with toys. Action figures, mostly vintage and all in near-perfect condition. Peter, an avid collector, was in for a rude awakening. Ruby had never paid Peter’s toys the slightest attention, but at some time in the near future Isaac was surely going to wake up to the bounty in Daddy’s office and tear that Major Matt Mason right out of its original 1969 blister pack.

I
decided to studiously ignore the police detective’s instructions and make some phone calls. I had promised both Ari and Yossi that I would let them know if I heard anything definitive about Fraydle. Her death was something pretty definite. I had my suspicions about Yossi, but I was fairly convinced that Ari was innocent of the murder. I couldn’t say the same about his uncles, however. I managed to find Ari at the yeshiva, and as gently as I could, I told him about his fiancée’s death. He was shocked into silence for a few moments. Finally, he spoke, “Perhaps this is a message to me.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Perhaps
Ha Shem
is sending me a message that I should not be a married man.”

“Ari,” I said, “I don’t think God is sending you any kind of message. What I think is that some evil person killed
Fraydle. I also think that you had better be prepared to tell the police everything.”

Ari didn’t seem surprised that I’d ratted him out to the cops. On the contrary, he insisted that he wanted to help in any way that he could and asked me for the detective’s phone number so that he could call her right away. I had a sense that I didn’t need to worry about this young man. While confused, he seemed to have a deep sense of right and wrong. He was not only able but willing to take responsibility for his own actions. I had no idea what path he would choose, but I felt that he would ultimately lead a life he could be proud of.

I couldn’t get through to Yossi, and decided to call Al Hockey instead, to give him an update. His wife told me that he was out at the municipal golf course but gave me his cell phone number.

“Hockey!” he bellowed, by way of hello.

“Hi, Al, it’s Juliet.”

“Juliet? What the hell are you doing calling me on the golf course? Are you trying to ruin my swing?”

I could always count on Al’s bluster to improve my mood. I told him about Fraydle’s death and my part in the discovery of her body.

“Want me to make some calls, see what I can find out?” he asked.

“That would be great,” I said. “I have a feeling the cops aren’t going to be particularly forthcoming with details of their investigation.” I recounted my experience with Detective Black.

“I know the woman. She’s a real ball-buster.”

“Al,” I said, warningly. The guy was anything but politically correct.

“Hey, don’t get your panties in a twist. All I meant was
that the two of you have a lot in common. I’ll call you later.” He hung up.

A
L
called within an hour and offered to come over after dinner and tell me the little he’d found out. I was surprised at his willingness to drive all the way from Westminister, the small city on the way to Orange County that he called home, to my house in Hancock Park, but I was happy at the thought of seeing him in the flesh. It had been a while.

When he arrived, my old investigator and my husband greeted one another a little uncomfortably. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other. It was just that they were two different species. Al didn’t know quite what to make of my nerdy husband with the shaggy hair and sensitive-guy glasses who made his living writing movies about cannibals, homicidal androids, and teenage succubae. Peter hadn’t spent much time around middle-aged men with brush cuts and Marine Corps tattoos whose libraries contained pirated copies of the Zapruder tape and books with titles like
The Trilateral Commission Exposed.
The two men shook hands and made a few awkward comments about the Dodgers’ chances next season. Whatever would men talk about if it weren’t for sports?

Turning to me, Al said, “So where are those kids of yours?”

“Ruby’s asleep, or at least in bed. Isaac’s over there in his Johnny-Jump-Up.

“Johnny-what-up?” Al said.

“You know, that jumpy thing. Haven’t you ever seen one of those? It’s a kind of harness that hooks in a doorway and
lets the baby jump up and down. He’ll stay quiet in there for hours.”

As if to illustrate my point, Isaac sprang up and down a few times and laughed.

“Interesting contraption,” Al said, walking over to Isaac.

“You know,” I told him, “if you’d let your daughters get married, you might have a grandchild to buy one of those contraptions for.” Al was legendary for driving away potential mates for his three girls, all of whom still lived at home although they were well into their twenties.

“Yeah, well, soon as one of ’em brings home a man instead of a degenerate pile a crap, excuse my French, I’ll be slapping down my checkbook for a caterer and a band. But honestly, Juliet, you should see these guys. Earrings. Nose rings.
Nipple
rings, for crying out loud!”

Peter self-consciously covered his pierced left earlobe. “Um, honey, I’d better get to work, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Sure, babe. Hey, Peter, why don’t you show Al your bellybutton stud!”

Al blanched and Peter rolled his eyes. “I do
not
have a stud in my bellybutton. Very funny, Juliet.” He walked out of the room.

“Does he?” Al asked, obviously horrified.

I smiled mysteriously.

Suddenly, I remembered why he was there. “I can’t believe we’re sitting here joking around. Tell me what you found out about Fraydle’s death.”

Al plopped himself down on the couch and swung his feet onto the coffee table.

“Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

“Tea?” he asked, incredulous. “How about a beer? Something American.”

“I’ll check.” Rooting around in the fridge, I managed to locate an ancient bottle of Sam Adams from a party we’d had no more than a year before. I popped the top off and brought the bottle out to Al. “How’s this?” I asked.

He took a long swallow, burped, and said, “Fine.”

“What did you turn up?” I sat down in an armchair opposite him. I glanced over at Isaac, who was contentedly gnawing on one of the hanging straps holding him in the air.

“I talked to Fat Rolly Rollins, a detective in the division that includes Hancock Park. He’s an old buddy. Obviously they have no official cause of death yet, but the M. E. on the scene said the girl had a broken neck. She also suffered some kind of blow to her head.”

“Which of those killed her?” I asked.

“No way for them to tell now, although Fat Rolly did say it looks like she could have died by falling down the stairs and hitting her head on the concrete floor.”

“Falling down the stairs? And then what? Conveniently landing in the freezer, which then plugged itself in?”

“Maybe she was pushed.”

“Could someone have hit her on the head?”

“I suppose so. All I can tell you is what Fat Rolly heard from the officers on the scene. The M.E. said it looked like a fall to him.”

“Okay, what about time of death? Did the medical examiner have an estimate?”

“Not even a tentative at the scene. He couldn’t guess at anything, because of the freezer.”

“Did Fat Freddy—”

“Rolly. Fat Rolly.”

“Did Fat Rolly tell you if they had any suspects?”

“No, but Juliet, in cases like this they look to the family.”

I knew that. Most murder victims die at the hands of someone they know, and the circumstances of Fraydle’s death seemed to point particularly to the members of her family. Her body had been found at home. Her parents had failed to notify the police of her disappearance. It certainly looked damning.

I told Al about Ari and his uncles and filled him in on my latest experiences with Yossi.

“So what do you want to do now?” Al asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really. I’m going to let the police figure this out.”

Al snorted. “Whatever you say, Detective. I’d better get going. I’m going to be late.”

“Late? Where are you going?”

“You think I drove all the way to this cesspool of a city just to see you?” Al asked. “No way. I’ve got a meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“Southern L.A. Basin Chapter of the Freedom Brigade,” he said proudly.

“A militia! Are you out of your mind?”

“Listen, missy, last time I checked, the Constitution of this great nation still guaranteed us the right to a well-regulated militia. I’m just doing my bit to keep that alive.”

How could such a warm, loving guy with such an astute investigative mind be such a nut case?

“Just promise me that you’re not a white supremacist, Al,” I said.

He gave me a disgusted look. “Juliet, have you ever seen my wife?”

I thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think I have.”

“But you’ve seen pictures of my kids, right?”

“Of course.” Al’s office was covered with pictures of his three, dark-haired, beautiful daughters.

“Ever notice that my girls are biracial?”

“What? Really?” I hadn’t.

“My wife’s African-American, Juliet.”

I blushed. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry about the white supremacist comment.”

“Whatever. Us freedom fighters, we have to deal with that kind of ignorant nonsense all the time. Just because we don’t swallow every word the federal government says doesn’t mean we’re a bunch of racists. I’ll have you know that my chapter is full of all kinds. Black, white, Asian, Latino, you name it.”

I was just about to comment on how nice it was that his particular department of the lunatic fringe was an equal opportunity employer when I decided to give it up. You just can’t win with Al. Every time I wind up in one of those conversations with him, I swear to myself I’m never again going to mention Roswell, David Koresh, or the United Nations.