Murder Plays House (12 page)

“Was Alicia doing anything about it? Was she going to sue Julia?”

Moira nodded. “She wanted to. But it’s really hard to get a lawyer in Hollywood to take on a major studio like that. Everyone she talked to told her it was too hard a case to win. But Alicia wasn’t going to give up. She’d never give up. That’s just not the kind of person she was.”

Moira began crying again, and I gave her a minute. Then I asked, “Moira, was Alicia bulimic?”

“Oh God, no.”

“Really?”

“She’d never make herself throw up like that. Too gross. And you have to binge to purge. Alicia would never allow herself to eat that much.”

“Was she anorexic?”

Moira considered the question. “I don’t
think
so.”

“Could she have been?”

She shook her head, but not with any sense of certainty. “Maybe when she was a kid, or something. But not now. Not as an adult. I mean, she was really careful about what she ate—she never ate in front of people, because she thought that was just kind of gross, but she didn’t starve herself or anything.”

I thought of her emaciated corpse. “Are you sure, Moira? Is there any chance that she was anorexic, and just kept it a secret from you?”

Moira shook her head again, this time firmly. “No. No, I just don’t believe it. I mean, we were best friends. We knew everything about one another.”

I nodded. Then I said, “Moira, I hate to even ask this question, but you probably understand why I need to. And I’m sure the cops have asked you, or will ask you already.” I paused.

“Where was I when Alicia was murdered?”

I nodded.

“Right here,” Moira said. “Working with Aziz. Where I always am. Where I’m probably going to be for the rest of my life. In this grease pit with a boss who watches me every goddamn minute of every goddamn day.”

“You work nights?” I asked.

“I work all the time. Aziz lets me pull double shifts. It’s the only way I can afford to pay for my apartment, my car, and my answering service. Plus the more I work the more he feels like he owes me, so if I ever do get an audition again he won’t have any choice but to give me time off to take it.”

“The police will probably want a record of it.”

“I punch a time clock. They can look at that. And they can talk to old Aziz. He’ll tell them I didn’t do more than walk outside once or twice for a cigarette, if that.”

“Would you mind if I just checked the time clock? I trust you absolutely, but this way I can just cross you off the file, and make it look like I’m doing my job.” I used my best beleaguered-working-girl voice and topped it off with a ‘you know how it is’ shrug.

She called Aziz over, and the obviously good-natured manager supplied me both with Moira’s time card and his own firm recollection that she’d been working by his side all evening. He even let me use the office copy machine to make photocopy of the time card. I left the restaurant knowing a little more about Alicia Felix, and with at least one potential suspect firmly in the clear.

I
was still arguing with Stacy when I walked into my house.

“Why
not?
You’re being totally unreasonable,” I said into my cell phone.

“Why not? Because Charlie Hoynes is a creepy little dope and I’m not going to allow my name to be raised in his presence.”

“I won’t mention you when I
meet
him. Just on the phone to get him to take my call!”

“Not good enough. You just don’t understand how this works, Juliet.” She wasn’t exactly yelling, but I had to hold the phone a few inches away from my ear nonetheless.

“Sure I do,” I said. “If I use your name to get to Hoynes, then he’s doing you a favor by talking to me, and if he does you a favor, he’ll expect you to do one for him in return.”

“Precisely. And what he’ll ask for is that one of my clients agree to be in one of his sleaze-fests. And that’s just not going to happen.”

“So, you just say no! What’s so hard about that?”

“He’ll
call
me. And I’ll have to take his calls! That’s what’s so hard. Look, girlfriend. We’re done here. You can’t use my name, and that’s that. End of story.”

“But I don’t know anyone else who knows Charlie Hoynes,” I said, but she had hung up the phone.

“I know Charlie Hoynes,” Peter said pleasantly.

“What?” I snapped my head up. I was still standing in the entryway to our apartment, my cell phone in my hand. Through the arched doorway into the living room I could see Peter and the kids tumbled together on the couch. Isaac was asleep, his head resting on his father’s chest, and a string of drool connecting his pooched-out lower lip to the red plaid of Peter’s flannel shirt.

“How do you know Charlie Hoynes?” I whispered.

“You don’t need to whisper, he’s totally out,” Peter said.

“Yeah, Mama, watch this.” Ruby reached across Peter’s chest and smacked her brother in the head. He didn’t stir.

“Ruby!” I said.

She rolled her eyes at me and turned her attention back to the TV. They were watching
Thumbtanic.
Peter and Ruby had rented
Thumb Wars
(“If there were thumbs in space and they got mad at each other, those would be
Thumb Wars
”) and watched it pretty much nonstop for two weeks. Now they were on to the all-thumb version of James Cameron’s romantic classic. Nothing cracked my daughter up like an ocean full of drowning thumbs.

“How do you know Charlie Hoynes?” I repeated.

“Remember those two producers who pitched me that idea for the abortion movie?”

I groaned. When Peter and I had first arrived in Hollywood, he had been hungry enough to take meetings with
pretty much anyone who would see him, including a producing team that had an idea for a horror movie in which aborted fetuses came to life and attacked a city. It was supposed to be a comedy. Needless to say, Peter didn’t take that job.

“Please don’t tell me that that’s Charlie Hoynes,” I said.

“Indeed. Wait a second, it’s the ‘King of the World’ part.” He and Ruby poked each other and snickered.

“I’m the king of the world!” Peter said.

“I’m a dentist!” she replied.

Peter turned his attention back to me. “You want me to call him?”

“You don’t mind?” I asked.

“Why should I mind?”

“Well, he’ll have your number, and you’ll owe him a favor.”

“Please. Who cares? Go get me the phone.”

My generous spouse was somewhat less sanguine when Hoynes not only took his call, but insisted that we join him for dinner the following evening at Spago.

“Ick, Spago,” I said, when Peter hung up the phone.

“Don’t ick me. This is your fault.”

I sighed. “I’ll go call a babysitter.”

“Nobody old!” Ruby shouted. At her piercing howl, Isaac finally woke up, crying, as usual. Neither of my children has ever managed to arise from an afternoon nap without at least twenty minutes of hysterical tears. I used to wonder if the couple of hours of bliss while they slept was worth the drama of their rising, but then Ruby stopped napping and I quickly realized that an entire, uninterrupted thirteen-hour day with a child is significantly longer than your average human adult can tolerate. The break a nap provides is worth any amount of weeping.

T
HE
next day, after the usual Monday-morning horror—why am I constitutionally incapable of remembering to buy lunch-making materials when I’m at the grocery store?—I dropped the kids off at their respective schools and made my way to Silver Lake. I’d left a message for Spike Stevens, the director of the Left Coast Players. I hadn’t imagined that I’d reach him early on a Monday morning, but Moira had given me his home address, and I wanted at least to give him warning that I was on my way.

Spike lived near the “lake” for which his neighborhood is named, a reservoir strangely denuded of trees and surrounded by a high fence. His apartment building was a typical LA
dingbat
, an early-sixties multi-unit monstrosity, mostly carport, with an overhanging second floor and an outdoor staircase. Generally the only time people outside of our fair city see those buildings is in the wake of an earthquake, when the rubble of crushed cars and piles of cement
is broadcast on the news. Al met me out in front of the building. He hadn’t thought much of my idea to interview Spike—he didn’t think much of any part of the case, frankly, but Brodsky was too important to us for Al just to ignore what was going on. And it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

I rang Spike’s bell, to no avail. While I was writing a note to put in his mailbox, Al pushed open the wrought iron gate that passed for a security system. The lock was rusted open.

“Al!” I said, but he was already halfway up the stairs. Spike lived on the second floor, behind a steel door painted a noxious shade of ultramarine. I tried to avoid looking at it. I’d remained true to my promise that morning and had had no coffee. The combination of caffeine deprivation and the assault on my senses of that garish color was enough to rekindle my morning sickness.

After a few minutes of pounding, a middle-aged man attired solely in pajama bottoms answered the door. His skin was colored an unnatural orange, with streaks along the side of his bulging waist, and I recognized the inexpert application of tanning cream from my own ill-fated exploration of the product. His belly spilled over the waistband of his pants, despite his immediate effort to suck it in. His swift inhalation served only to expand his narrow chest and push his double chin to the fore.

“Can I help you?” he muttered, pushing his lank hair out of his eyes with one hand.

“Spike?” I asked.

“Yeah?” he said suspiciously, rubbing his eyes. He glanced at the flecks of sleep on his fingers and flicked them away. I flinched, trying not to leap out of the way of what Isaac and Ruby so accurately called “eye boogers.”

“I’m Juliet Applebaum. I left you a message?”

“Yeah?”

“This is my partner, Al Hockey. We’re investigators. We work for Alicia Felix’s family.”

“Oh, wow. Bummer. You guys want to come in?” He backed away from the door and held it open for me. I walked through the doorway, and for one, brief, nightmare-Sumo moment our bellies rubbed against each other. I blushed, and I think Spike might have too, but it was hard to tell, given the sickly orange hue of his skin.

The room was a small, white-painted box with pale grey indoor-outdoor carpeting and furniture straight out of the Ikea sale aisle. Al and I sat down on a pressed wood and canvas couch that was probably named something like the “Fjärk.” Spike settled into a “Snügens” sling-chair and leaned back with a groan.

“Sorry. Up late last night,” he said.

“Improv practice?”

“I wish. Catering gig. Premiere at Fox.”

“Good movie?”

“Hell if I know. They don’t let the help into the screening room. We’re supposed to pass the hors d’oeuvres, pour the champagne, and disappear into the woodwork.” His tone was matter-of-fact; almost entirely devoid of bitterness.

I nodded sympathetically and said, “You’re the director of the Left Coast Players?”

“I am.”

“Have you been doing it long?”

He groaned. “Long enough. Twenty-two years.”

I stifled my own groan. How could he stand it? How could any of them? Struggling along on the fringes of Hollywood, waiting tables, acting in comedy troupes and television
commercials and desperately hoping for a break. It was enough to make a person crazy, or suicidal. Was it enough to drive someone to murder?

Al said, “What can you tell us about Bingie McPurge?”

“Julia Brennan’s character? From
New York Live?”
He asked, disingenuously.

“Our understanding is that Alicia Felix created the character,” I said.

He sighed.

“Did she?”

“I’ve gotta have some coffee,” he said, leaping to his feet. “You guys want some?”

“Sure.”

Twenty minutes later we were sitting at a table in the Starbucks on the corner of his block. Spike had tried to make us coffee, but had been out of filters, milk, and sugar. And coffee.

“Bingie McPurge,” I said, once he’d taken his first sip of the coffee he so clearly needed. “Was she Alicia’s creation? Did Julia steal her?”

He smacked his lips and moaned ostentatiously, “Ah, the royal bean. Nectar of the gods.”

“Spike,” Al said sharply.

“Oh, all right. Don’t get your panties in a twist. Yes, Alicia had a similar character as one of her Left Coast characters.”

“One of them?” I said.

“Okay, her only character. But as I see it, Julia has improved significantly on the idea. Really developed it.”

“But it was Alicia’s to begin with?”

He nodded. “Alicia inspired the character. Birthed her, if you will. But Julia has made Bingie her own.”

I took a gulp of coffee and exhaled with relief as the
caffeine rushed to my head and chased my headache away. “Alicia didn’t give Julia permission to ‘make Bingie her own,’ though, did she?”

He waved his hand. “Permission? Since when does an artist need permission? Art is about taking risks, about gobbling up life. The artist is a selfish being, in thrall to his own creative muse. Who can say from where inspiration will spring?”

I was surprised that Al managed to keep the coffee from spraying out of his nose; his snort of derision was that loud.

Poor Alicia. How frustrating, how miserable it must have been to create something, only to have someone steal it away; and not only that, but to become so successful with it.

“Alicia was planning on suing Julia, wasn’t she?”

Spike sighed heavily. “Poor Alicia. She just didn’t have a good understanding of the creative muse. She made herself quite unpleasant around this issue.”

“What do you mean?”

“Julia told me that Alicia tried to contact her a number of times. Called her. Wrote her letters. I finally had to step in.”

“You?”

He nodded. “Julia asked me to. To, you know, see if I could calm Alicia down. Explain how things were. Let her know the steps Julia would have to take should she continue with her harassment.”