Murder Plays House (21 page)

“A little mother!” he interrupted. “When are you due?”

“In a couple of months, but—”

“Hmm, I hope I’ll be able to fit you in. Most of my little mamas come here a bit earlier to arrange for their tummy tucks. Let the nurse know when the c-section is scheduled for, and she’ll check on my availability. If I’m booked we’ll have to do it after the birth. Two months of recovery is usually enough. You don’t want to look like this longer than you have to.” He shocked me by reaching out a hand and gripping the hammock of fat that was slung below my pregnant belly. I jumped.

“Yup, we’ll get rid of all this jelly for you! You’ll be sleek and trim in no time. Stand up.”

“Dr. Calma, I have a few—”

“Up you go!” he said, hoisting me to my feet. “We should do some lipo here,” he said, pushing aside the gown
and tracing a warm hand down my hips and outer thighs. “And in here as well.” I was gratified that he refrained from actually touching my inner thigh; he just pointed at it.
“Upper arms
—that goes without saying.”

Upper arms? What was wrong with my upper arms?

“Turn around, please.”

Despite myself, I turned my back to him.

He raised the hem of my gown and clucked his tongue. “We can certainly solve this problem,” he said.

Problem? Was my rear end really a
problem?
I mean, I knew it was, well, sizeable, but wasn’t that a good thing? And anyway, I was
pregnant!
I glanced back over my shoulder and nearly groaned aloud. He was right. I was looking at one huge, gelatinous problem.

“Now, let’s get to your face. You can have a seat.”

I collapsed onto the chair, too horrified by the state of my belly, hips, thighs, upper arms, and above all my butt, to continue arguing.

He leaned in and peered at me closely, so close, in fact, that I could smell the warm cinnamon of his breath.

“Not too bad, considering how old you are,” he said. “We’ll just need to botox the forehead and lip, maybe tug back the jowls.” He traced a finger along the edge of my jaw. “We’ll erase these fine lines by the sides of your eyes, and get rid of this mole, and that’ll be all. Practically nothing!”

“What mole?” I said, and then I blushed. I hadn’t intended to shout.

“This one,” he said, pointing at a freckle on the side of my lip.

“That’s a beauty mark!”

“Hmm. Well, it’s up to you. I’d take it off, but it’s certainly your decision. Some people are rather inordinately attached to their moles.”

“It’s not a mole!” The doctor’s attack on the freckle of which I was, in fact, very fond, finally roused me from the stupor of self-loathing his criticism had inspired. Unfortunately, it also prevented me from continuing with my plan of delicately and carefully bringing up Alicia Felix. “I’m not actually here to schedule
any
surgery. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about one of your patients, Alicia Felix. She was murdered last week, and I’m representing her family in the investigation of the crime.”

Dr. Calma stepped back, looking horrified. “You’re not here for a pre-surgical consultation?”

“No.”

He snapped the medical chart closed. “I’m sure you understand how very busy I am.”

“Yes, and I’m sorry. I know it was ridiculous for me to come here like this, but there was simply no other way for me to get in to speak to you.”

He shook his head, clearly furious. “Haven’t you ever heard of the doctor/patient privilege? I’m not going to tell you anything about one of my patients!”

“But Alicia is dead, Dr. Calma. And, anyway, I’m just trying to find out anything about her that might shed light on who
murdered
her, and why.”

He spun on his heel. When he reached the door, he turned back to his nurse. “You can submit your questions in writing to my attorneys. Florence, have the front desk give her the information.” He turned back to me. “You know, you really could use some work. I’d be happy to talk to you about that. Anything else is quite simply out of the question.” And with that blistering comment about my appearance, he left the room, closing the door behind him with a firm click.

“Tsk tsk tsk,” the nurse clucked.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t worry, hon.” She patted my hand. “Someday you’ll probably be grateful for Dr. Calma’s discretion. He’s a wonderful plastic surgeon. The best.”

“I’m sure he is.” I gathered the robe around me and clambering down from the exam chair.”

“Here, hon, let me help you.” She took my arm and hoisted me down.

“Thanks. I’m not getting around real well lately.”

She laughed. “Of course you’re not. My goodness, you should have seen me with my twins. I was as big as a house. I had to get my poor husband to help me roll over in bed!”

I smiled. “I know the feeling.”

“Now, hon, what did you say that poor girl’s name was?”

“The murder victim? Alicia Felix.”

She nodded. “Wait right here. I’ll be right back.”

I dressed quickly and sat down on the doctor’s stool to wait for her. I wasn’t about to risk the exam chair again.

Within a couple of minutes she returned with two of the large photo albums that I’d looked through out in the waiting room.

“There’s no harm in showing you these,” the nurse said. “After all, Alicia posed for the photographs.” She began turning pages until she found what she was looking for. “Here’s your friend.”

The page she handed me was one that I recognized from my earlier perusal. It showed two photographs of a woman’s torso. Her face was turned away from the camera, leaving visible only a sheaf of long, blond hair. In the first photograph, her breasts looked almost prepubescent; they were nothing more than small, flat discs on which perched pale nipples. Her ribs stuck out farther than they did. The bones of her clavicle were sharp, and the hollow of her sternum
looked deep enough to sink a finger in up to the second knuckle. The “after” picture could not have looked more different. Alicia had been as uninterested in the concept of less-is-more as the rest of Dr. Calma’s patients. Or perhaps it was the doctor himself who preferred melons to oranges. Alicia’s new boobs were certainly lovely. They were round, and gravity defying, with nearly invisible scars. However, they looked somewhat bizarre, I thought, set on top of that bony torso.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” the nurse asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “Really nice ones.”

“Now, she had a double procedure. Lots of girls do. You’d probably want to consider the same thing. Here, let me show you.” She picked up the other album and flipped through it until she found the page she was looking for. I hadn’t spent enough time with the face book while waiting for my appointment—I’d been too eager to move on to boobs and hips. Alicia’s photographs were toward the back.

I took the book from the nurse and stared intently at the pictures. Alicia had had her face pulled and tugged to remove all wrinkles. She’d also had her nose narrowed slightly, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, she’d had some kind of implant put into her chin.

“Isn’t she lovely?” the nurse breathed.

“Oh yes,” I said. And she was, in a kind of ethereal, hollow-cheeked way.

“Dr. Calma works wonders. He really does. You should make another appointment. He could turn you into a princess!”

“I’m sure he could.”

Here again was more evidence of Alicia’s desperate attempts to make herself ever more beautiful, ever young.
There was something so achingly sad about the lengths she went to in what was doomed, finally, to be a failed endeavor. Alicia, and all the women in that waiting room, were engaged in a hopeless battle against an enemy that there is, ultimately, no way to fight. We all grow old, no matter how much we carve away at our bodies, no matter how much silicone and botox we inject. We can suck out the extra pounds middle age deposits on our hips, but the years will pass with an inexorable certainty. I glanced at myself in the full-length mirror on the wall of the exam room. There was no getting around it; everything the doctor said about my body was probably true. I was only in my mid-thirties, but I was heavy, and getting older every day. But was the answer really to hack and chop and diet and starve? Or was there some other approach to this inevitable collapse?

“H
AVE
you lost your mind?”

I sighed deeply into the cell phone. “Probably, yes.”

“Exactly how are we going to bill the client for that? I’m pretty sure our automatic billing program has no entry for ‘plastic surgery consult,’” Al said.

“Very funny.”

By the time Stacy blew into the restaurant with her hands extended before her like a blind woman, I’d had to endure a good ten minutes of that kind of abuse.

“Read me the specials,” she said as she sat down.

“Why? What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“What are you talking about? Nothing’s wrong with my eyes. I just had my nails done, and I don’t want to touch the menu.”

I looked at her gleaming burgundy fingernails. “And you give me grief about
my
work ethic? Getting your nails done before lunch!”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “My girl comes to the office. I did an entire morning’s worth of telephone calls while she was doing my hands and feet.”

I leaned back in my chair and gaped at her. “You have manicures and pedicures in the office?”

“Of course. Like I’ve got time to go to a salon every week? I don’t
think
so.”

What would I do without Stacy and her excesses to remind me what’s wrong with Hollywood?

“What’s next? Getting a bikini wax at your desk?”

She laughed. “Could you imagine? Crouching naked on my hands and knees on top of my credenza?”

“On your hands and knees?”

“You know. For when they do the—”

“Too much information, Stace!”

“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly become a prude. Like you’ve never had a Brazilian bikini wax.”

“Uh, no.” I couldn’t even remember the last time I got near a
bathing suit
, let alone required the services of a sadist armed with pink wax and a bunch of cloth strips.

“Well, that’s just disgusting,” she said. “What’s the salad of the day?”

I looked down at my menu. “No-carb Cobb.”

“Perfect.” When the waitress came, however, it was clear that the choice was far from perfect. By the time Stacy had finished substituting goat cheese for the blue, sliced turkey for the bacon, and adding two extra hard-boiled eggs, she’d made it into something different all together. But that’s my friend in a nutshell. She’s a woman who knows what she wants. Exactly, precisely, completely what she wants.

“I’ll just have the regular Cobb salad,” I said to the waitress, smiling to let her know that I knew just what a relief it
was to have a pleasant, easy-going person like myself to wait on.

The girl shook her head. “That blue isn’t pasteurized.”

I wrinkled my brow. “Excuse me?”

“Blue cheese? Listeria?”

I sighed. The pregnancy police were everywhere. “Okay, I’ll have the goat cheese, instead.”

“Ma’am!” she said, outraged. “That’s even worse! How about some Kraft slices?”

I closed my menu and stretched my irritated frown into a smile. “Why don’t you just hold the cheese altogether.”

“Of course. And I’ll give you a plain vinaigrette.” She raised her eyes from her pad and appraised me critically. “Unless you’d like the nonfat?”

“Vinaigrette is fine,” I said sharply.

She turned away, looking miffed.

Stacy spread her hands on the table and blew on them. “Harvey Brodsky called me this morning.”

I winced. “I’m such an ingrate. I haven’t even thanked you yet for that referral.” I’d gotten a message to Lilly that Brodsky might be calling her, but I’d never called Stacy to express my gratitude, and I felt bad. It should have been the first thing I’d done.

“You haven’t gotten the job yet,” she said.

“I know.”

She waggled her fingers in the air. “He seems pretty excited about this murder you’re investigating. My sense was that if this came out well, he’d be interested in putting you and your crazy partner on contract.”

“That’s basically what he said. And that’s why I called and asked you to lunch.”

Stacy interrupted me, suddenly calling out to the waitress.
“We’ll need two black napkins here!” She turned to me. “I don’t want white fluff all over my suit. And that black top of yours doesn’t need any more lint than it already has.”

I glanced down at my maternity smock and sighed. It wasn’t particularly linty, but there was a swath of pale green toothpaste where Isaac had wiped his mouth across my belly. When the waitress returned, I dipped a corner of my newly acquired black napkin in my water glass and dabbed at the stain. Something about the general sloppiness of my appearance reminded me of my adventures in personal improvement. “I went to see a plastic surgeon yesterday,” I said, and recounted the horror of my visit. “Can you believe he actually wanted to do all that stuff to me?”

“Ridiculous.” Then she paused. “What did he want to do to your face?”

I tugged back on the skin at my jaw.

“Hmm,” she said.

“Hmm what?”

“Nothing. I mean, it’s absurd, of course. Only . . .” her voice trailed off.

“Only what?” I scowled at her.

“No, no. I don’t mean for you. I’m just thinking about myself. I mean, about my own jaw line.” She patted at her jaw with the pads of her impeccably painted fingers. “Don’t you think I’d look better like this?” She pulled the skin back toward her ears.

“No,” I said, without looking.

“No, really. I mean, lately it’s just getting kind of, I don’t know, heavy. Droopy.”

“Stacy, what’s up with you?”

She dropped her hands to the table. “Nothing. You know. Just the usual. Andy.”

“Oh no, not again!” I said. Stacy’s husband has a notoriously roving eye. The two of them have been separated and reconciled more times than I can count.

“No, no. He’s not seeing anyone. I mean, I don’t
think
he is.” Stacy shook her head. I looked closely at her. Was that the glint of a tear in her eye?