Murder Plays House (16 page)

“You recorded this?” I said.

He shook his head. “No, but the software thinks I like it, so it keeps recording it for me, I think because I have it catching
Monty Python.
I haven’t bothered to correct it yet, so you’re in luck.”

Julia Brennan didn’t dance with a box of donuts, and
New York Live
had a slicker set and better costumes to lend that much-needed air of verisimilitude. Bingie McPurge’s attempts at emesis were thwarted by elaborate casts on her arms, by catching her thumbs in a pair of mouse-traps, by a toilet seat that was stuck shut, by a pair of Chinese finger cuffs. But it was the same gimmick exactly. The bulimic binges, and then cannot purge. And it was just as humorless in its more professional incarnation.

“Well, that’s pretty clear,” Peter said when the skit was over and Julia had gagged her way off screen.

“She stole the character from Alicia.”

He nodded. “Definitely. Although it does raise one really important question.”

“What’s that?”

He pounded on his pillow with his fist and lay back down in the bed, drawing the down comforter up to his chin. “Why in God’s name did she bother?”

I laughed. “It’s just unbelievably awful, isn’t it?”

“Yup.”

“Wanna hear something really horrible?” I turned off the light and curled up around him.

“What?” he murmured, already half asleep.

“They’re making it into a movie.”

“What?” He sat bolt upright.

“You heard me.”

“Oh my God!” He collapsed back onto the pillow. “Sometimes I really hate this business.”

T
HE
next morning, right as I was walking out the door to drive the kids to school, my phone rang. It was Farzad.

“There is a detective from the LA police department here. He wants to talk to Felix.”

“Damn,” I muttered, looking at my watch. Peter was sound asleep, and the kids needed to be at school in ten minutes. “Where is he?”

“Waiting in the living room.”

“And where’s Felix?”

“In the shower.”

“Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Give the detective a cup of coffee, and tell Felix to take his time getting dressed. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Good,” he said.

“Oh, and Farzad?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t say anything to the cop, okay?”

He grimaced. “What do you take me for, Juliet? I’m not some stupid American who confesses everything to the secret police.”

“Good,” I said, and hung up the phone, wondering if I should have pointed out to him that while the LAPD was far from perfect, their powers did not yet include hauling people from their homes in the middle of the night and making them disappear. At least, I didn’t think they did. I called Al and told him to meet me there, luckily catching him on his cell phone in the Ikea parking lot. He was only too happy to leave Jeanelle to shop on her own. It wasn’t until I was speeding down Beverly Boulevard to dump the kids and get to Felix’s house that it occurred to me to wonder what exactly it was that Farzad wasn’t dumb enough to confess to the police.

I managed to dump each of my children off in front of their respective schools. I gave Ruby to a mother with whom I’d once shared field trip carpool duties, and Isaac to the nanny of his best friend. I crossed my fingers that both women would sign the kids in correctly and make sure their lunches made it into their cubbies, and tore over to Felix’s house. For once, I actually made it in significantly less time than I’d promised.

Farzad answered the door and nodded his head in the direction of the living room.

“Where’s Felix?” I asked in a low voice.

He pointed up the stairs.

“Come with me,” I said.

We found Felix in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, his forearms resting on his knees, and his head bent low.

“Hey,” I said.

He raised his head at the sound of my voice, and I could see the tracks of tears down his cheeks.

“Thanks for coming over,” he said.

“Hey, that’s what you pay me for,” I replied. “Felix, do you have an attorney?”

He nodded. “Of course. I mean, the business does.”

A corporate lawyer adept at contract negotiations and employee disputes was not going to do Felix much good under these particular circumstances.

I sat down next to him and gave him the speech I gave every client about to be questioned by the authorities. Most of the people I’d represented had faced examination by the FBI or DEA, both agencies that tended to employ agents significantly more professional and educated than the average LAPD cop. I hadn’t often supervised an interview with a regular police officer, but I was confident in my ability to do so. While federal agents tend at least to simulate a respect for the strictures of the Constitution, they are also generally wilier and more skilled in the art of interrogation. The most important thing he was to remember, I told Felix, was to pause after hearing each question and before replying, both to make sure he understood the question and knew the answer, and to give me time to indicate to him not to reply if I felt that doing so would not be in his best interest.

“Why don’t I just tell the cops I won’t talk to them?” he said.

“You can do that. It’s up to you.”

“Will that make them think I had something to do with Alicia’s death?”

“It might. But then, they might think that already. It’s not what they’re suspicious of that matters. It’s what they can prove.”

He groaned. “I had nothing to do with it, you know that, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said, although of course I knew nothing of the kind.

“I want to help them find her killer. I really do.”

I waited.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said, finally.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“Okay then, let’s go. Don’t worry, I’ll stop the questioning if I think it’s going somewhere it shouldn’t.”

Before we were halfway down the stairs, the doorbell rang. I introduced Al to our clients,
sotto voce
, and together we went into the living room, where we discovered the detective peering at the photographs on the walls.

“Mapplethorpe,” he said, smiling.

Felix nodded.

“He’s one of my favorites.”

Felix and Farzad looked at each other quickly, and then back at the detective. I joined them in their appraisal, and agreed silently with what I knew was their conclusion. I looked over at Al, who was rocking back and forth on his heels, his eyes nearly bugging out of his head at the photographs. My partner is, like many aggressively masculine men, not particularly comfortable with gay people. To his credit, though, his political commitment to the libertarian cause makes him a live-and-let-live kind of guy.

“Detective Antoine Goodenough,” the cop said, extending a large hand with tapered fingers.

Felix’s hand disappeared into Detective Goodenough’s proffered mitt, and he very nearly smiled a greeting.

I stepped forward and introduced myself. “I’m Juliet Applebaum, and this is Al Hockey.”

The detective raised one, arched eyebrow.

“I’m an attorney, and a friend of Felix and Farzad’s. I hope you don’t mind if we sit in on the conversation.”

He paused, and looked for a moment like he was going
to object. Then he smiled pleasantly. “Where were you on the job?” he asked Al.

“Hollywood,” Al said. “Been retired nearly ten years now.”

The detective nodded. Then he turned to me and said, “You’re the woman who found the body, correct?”

He’d recognized my name from the report. “Yes,” I said.

Detective Goodenough was a tall man, with broad shoulders and a slim waist. His skin was the color of cinnamon, and a glint of russet was just visible in his shorn brown hair. His lips were thin, and he wore a narrow line of moustache as if to enhance, or deflect, attention from them. His eyes were almond-shaped, lending his face a faintly Asian cast. He looked like a Tartar, I decided. A very handsome, African-American Genghis Khan.

He reached a hand into his pocket and removed a silver card case. Unlike the one floating around in the bottom of my purse, his was untarnished, and had no lint-furred sucking candies stuck to its surface. He flipped it open with an elegant finger, removed four business cards, and handed one to each of us.

“I’m new to your sister’s case,” he said to Felix. “I wanted to come by to tell you how very sorry I am for your loss.”

Felix bent his head. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“I’ve read the reports prepared by the detectives who first arrived on the scene, as well as the crime scene and forensic files.”

“Detective Goodenough,” I interjected. “Is the case now yours?” Had the LAPD reassigned the case because they were either biased enough or savvy enough to assume that Detective Goodenough would be more adept at eliciting information from Alicia’s brother than a heterosexual officer?

“Please, sit down,” he said, welcoming Felix and Farzad
to their own living room. We followed his bidding. “This crime is a very high priority for my department. I want you to know that we’re devoting as much of our resources to it as possible. I’m now the lead detective on the case, but the entire department is working hard to find Alicia’s murderer.”

For what felt like hours, Detective Goodenough asked question after question about Alicia’s life, her childhood, her career. Al took his usual careful notes, and I listened closely.

“Did Alicia have any problems growing up? Was she, say, involved with drugs?” Goodenough asked.

Felix shook his head. “No, not at all.”

“Not at all,” Goodenough said, with a smile.

Felix smiled back. “Well, no more than was normal. You know, she smoked pot a little. Maybe even did some cocaine. Hell . . . we . . .”

I interrupted him quickly. “Felix,” I said.

He turned to me. “What?”

“I think the detective just wants to know if Alicia had any kind of a drug problem.” I stressed his sister’s name.

He nodded, and turned back to the detective. “She didn’t have a drug problem. At all.”

“Did she have any other problems?”

Felix nodded. “She had an eating disorder when she was a teenager.”

Goodenough made a note, and asked, “Any other issues?”

Felix shook his head.

I wanted to know more, however. “She was anorexic as a child, wasn’t she?” I asked.

Felix nodded.

“Severely?”

He nodded again. “Enough to be hospitalized a couple of times. She made it through, though. She went to this
inpatient facility back home in Florida for the whole summer before her senior year of high school. That cured her.”

But had it? I thought of her emaciated corpse with the pang of horror complicated by pity that struck me every time that image entered my mind. “Are you sure the problem hadn’t recurred?” I asked.

Felix shook his head. “Look, I’m a fashion designer. I can tell you—all women have an eating disorder. Alicia was no worse in the end than any one of the women who model my clothes.”

I thought this wasn’t saying very much.

“Was she ever
dangerously
thin? I mean, after that time she had to go to inpatient treatment?” I asked.

Felix shook his head, but Farzad said, “She was always too thin. Always.”

“Farzad!” Felix snapped.

“You spend too much of your time with models,” Farzad said. “Alicia
never
ate enough, and she was
always
too skinny.”

Felix shook his head and turned to the detective. “You’ll have to excuse my partner. He’s Iranian, and he’s gay. He has no idea what a normal-sized woman looks like.”

Al shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Thank goodness none of the other three men seemed to notice.

“That is ridiculous!” Farzad said. “Iranian women are
beautiful
, and stylish. And for your information they are not fat! They are very thin. Too thin, in fact, like your models. A woman should look like a woman! Not like a little boy. A woman should look like her!” He pointed to me, and all of them turned and fixed appraising gazes on my body. I could tell that Felix thought I was anything but normal-sized, and I blushed furiously.

“Except not so pregnant,” Farzad said.

“My sister was thin, but not abnormally so,” Felix said.

Detective Goodenough seemed to decide that we’d covered this topic in far more detail than necessary, and he reassumed control of the interview. He was, in the end, more thorough than I would have expected, and I was both impressed and made a bit anxious by his attention to detail. He jotted down a long list of every one of Alicia’s friends, family, members of her comedy troupe, people she came in contact with through her work as Felix’s assistant. He asked about boyfriends, and Farzad told him about Charlie Hoynes. I was glad not to have had to provide that information myself. It was surely something he needed to know, but I have a very hard time, both because of my training and because of my temperament, cooperating with the police, even when I know I should. A useless, even counterproductive holdover from my public defender days.

When the detective asked about people with whom Alicia had had conflicts, Farzad brought up Julia Brennan.

“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic,” Felix said at his boyfriend’s characterization of Alicia’s feelings toward the successful actress. “Alicia didn’t hate Julia. She was just a little jealous. Who wouldn’t be?”

Farzad pursed his lips. “She was planning on suing the woman. And what about the letter?” he said.

“Farzad!” Felix nearly shouted.

“What letter?” the detective asked.

“Julia Brennan had her lawyers send Alicia a letter.”

“A threatening letter?” Al asked.

Farzad glanced over at Felix. “I would say so,” the Iranian man said. “The lawyers told Alicia that if she continued to claim the character was hers, they would sue
her.”

“But the character
was
hers!” I said.

“Since when does that make any difference?” Farzad replied.

“What was Alicia’s response?” I said.

Felix spoke. “She didn’t have time to respond. At least, I don’t think she did. She got the letter just a little while before . . . before . . .” his voice trailed away.