A Playdate With Death Read online

  Betsy and Bobby’s place was in Hollywood, not too far from my own duplex in Hancock Park. I gave a little shudder as I climbed the rickety outdoor staircase up to their apartment. The building was made of crumbling stucco held together with rotted metal braces. The doors of each unit were dented metal, spray painted puce. The floor tile in the hallway was cracked, and large chunks were missing. Given the Los Angeles real estate market, they probably paid at least fifteen hundred a month to live in this dump.

  Betsy opened the door and fell into my arms, a somewhat awkward endeavor since she was at least six inches taller than I. I led her inside and found myself face-to-face with two police officers. The cops took up much more space than it seemed they should have. The instruments hooked on to their black leather belts—the guns, billy clubs, radios, and other accoutrements of the LAPD—seemed to blow them up all out of human proportion. They were planted on the electric green carpet like a couple of bulls in a too-small pasture. I squeezed by one of the pneumatically enlarged officers and lowered Betsy onto the light beige leather couch, where she folded in on herself like a crumpled tissue.

  I turned back to the men. “I’m Juliet Applebaum. I’m a friend of Betsy and Bobby’s.”

  One of the officers, a man in his late twenties with a buzz cut so short and so new that his ears and neck looked raw, nodded curtly. “We’re here to escort Betsy on down to the station so she can give a statement.”

  I turned to the weeping girl. “Betsy, honey? Do you want to go with the officers?”

  She shook her head, buried her face in her hands, and slumped over on the couch.

  “I don’t think Betsy’s quite ready for that,” I said in a firm voice.

  The officer shook his head and, ignoring me, leaned over Betsy’s prone form. “It’ll just take a few minutes. The detectives are waiting for you.” He managed to sound both menacing and polite at the same time.

  Betsy just cried harder and jerked her arm away from the officer’s extended hand. I sat down next to her and slipped an arm around her shoulders.

  “Officer, why don’t you let the detectives know that Betsy’s just too distraught right now.” The cop started to shake his head, but I interrupted him. “Am I to understand that you are placing her under arrest?” I asked. I felt Betsy quiver under my arm, and I gave her back a reassuring pat.

  “No, no, nothing like that,” the other officer spoke up. He looked a bit older than the one trying to get Betsy up off the couch. “We just need her to give a statement to the detectives.”

  “Unless you’re planning on arresting her, Betsy’s going to stay home for now. You can let the detectives know that they can contact her here. And if there’s nothing further, I think Betsy would like to be left alone.”

  The police officers looked at each other for a moment, and then the older one shrugged his shoulders. They walked out the door, leaving behind a room that suddenly seemed to quadruple in size.

  I patted Betsy on the back for a while, and then got up to make some tea. Bobby had introduced me to the wonders of green tea, and I could think of no time when I’d needed a restorative cup of Silver Needle Jasmine more than at this moment. I opened the fridge in the little galley kitchen off the living room and sorted through the jars of protein powder and murky green bottles of wheat grass juice until I found a little black canister of tea. I dug up a teapot and ran the faucet until it was hot. I poured some water over the leaves and let them steep for a moment. By the time I came back out to the living room holding two small cups of tea, Betsy had gathered herself together and was wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You still know how to be a lawyer.”

  “What? Making tea?”

  “No, no.” She smiled through her tears. “Getting rid of the cops.”

  “Don’t mention it. Pissing off cops is my specialty. Are Bobby’s parents on their way?”

  Betsy shook her head.

  “Do they know?”

  She nodded and said, “The police called them this morning and told them. I tried to call, too, but they aren’t answering the phone. I just keep getting the machine.”

  That surprised me. “You mean you haven’t talked to them at all?”

  “I haven’t talked to them in months. Ever since . . . ever since that whole thing happened. When they found out about it, they tried to get Bobby to break up with me. They told him that I was a bad influence and that I’d drag him down. Which I guess I did.” The last was said in a sort of moan, and more tears dripped down her cheeks.

  I wrapped my arm around her and handed her a tissue and the cup of tea. “Drink,” I said. “It’ll make you feel better.” She took a few sips and then blew her nose loudly.

  “You weren’t a bad influence on Bobby,” I said, although I have to admit that at the time of her arrest, I’d taken the same line as Bobby’s parents, albeit a bit more delicately. I’d just suggested to Bobby that since he had worked so hard to kick his addiction, he might want to put a little distance between himself and Betsy, just until she got her act together. Bobby had thanked me for my advice and gently informed me that he loved Betsy and planned to stand by her. I’d been chastened and never mentioned my reservations again. I had still had them, though. Bobby was the poster child for twelve-step programs. He’d stopped using methamphetamine five years before and hadn’t missed a weekly meeting since. Before he’d gotten sober, his addiction was so bad that it was costing him hundreds of dollars a week, just to stay awake. He’d turned his athlete’s body into a husk of its former self. The damage he’d caused to his heart from years of drug abuse was permanent. Despite the great shape he’d managed to return himself to, he still had an enlarged heart and a severe arrhythmia. Bobby had once told me that methamphetamine was so toxic to him nowadays that even holding the stuff and having it absorb through his fingers could trigger a heart attack. The risks to him of falling off the wagon were astronomical. I’d been terribly worried that Betsy’s weakness would be contagious. But, in the end, he’d proven me wrong. He’d gotten her back on the program and never fallen off himself. So I had believed, until that morning.

  “Betsy, why were the police here? Did they tell you why they need you to make a statement?”

  “No. They just said I have to.”

  “But it’s a suicide, right? Bobby killed himself?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, that’s what they told me this morning. They said they found him in the car with a gun in his hand, and that he’d shot himself in the head.”

  “Was it his gun?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, he doesn’t have a gun. At least I don’t think he does.”

  “And just now, when the cops were here, did they tell you they were considering other things? Like maybe that someone had killed him?”

  She sniffed loudly and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “They didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Betsy, do you think Bobby killed himself?” I asked flat out.

  She shook her head and wailed, “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense. I mean, why would he kill himself?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But then, I don’t know him as well as you do. Had anything happened between you two? Had you guys been getting along?” The truth was, I didn’t expect Betsy to confide in me. I didn’t know her that well, and for all I knew, Bobby had told her that, like his parents, I’d encouraged him to break up with her.

  “Things were great. Great,” she said firmly, rubbing the tears away from her eyes. “We’d set a date for the wedding; we’d even picked a rabbi.”

  “A rabbi? But you’re not Jewish, are you?”

  “Bobby’s parents really wanted us to have a rabbi. Their guy said that he’d do it, if we went to premarital counseling and if Bobby did all the tests and stuff.”

  “Tests?”

  “Yeah, you know. Genetic testing for Tay-Sachs. The rabbi says he makes all Jews who he marries get Tay-Sachs testing. Just in case.�
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  Tay-Sachs disease is a birth defect that is carried by something like one in thirty Jews of European descent. If two carriers have children together, they have a one in four chance of giving birth to a baby who will die of Tay-Sachs. Tay-Sachs is always fatal; generally, children die by age five after being desperately ill for most of their lives. Nowadays, there’s a simple blood test to determine if you are a carrier. Most Jewish couples automatically gets tested, but Peter and I hadn’t bothered, since Peter wasn’t Jewish. Both of us would have had to be carriers for there to be any danger, so we’d never even considered it.

  “Bobby had it,” Betsy said.

  “Had it? You mean Tay-Sachs? He was a carrier?”

  “Yeah. We found out a few months ago, right before my . . . my arrest. I mean, it’s no big deal that he had it, because of course I don’t have it since I’m not Jewish. I mean, it wasn’t a big deal.” She sniffed. “I guess none of that matters anymore.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked, turning to me and peering into my eyes.

  I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know, Betsy. Get through every day, one day at a time, I guess.”

  “One day at a time? You sound like my goddamn sponsor,” she said. “You sound like Bobby.”

  I sat with Betsy for a while longer, leaving only when her Narcotics Anonymous sponsor and a few other friends from the group arrived.

  Two

  WHEN I got home from Betsy’s, I found my kids and my husband hurling themselves around the living room wearing pink tutus; Peter’s was around his neck. Ruby had a collection of tulle, lace, and ribbon that rivaled that of the Joffrey Ballet. From the moment she was able to make her sartorial preferences known, she’d begun lobbying for frills and ruffles. If she’d had her own way, she’d have had a pastel-colored confirmation gown for every day of the week. We compromised on cute little patterned cotton dresses and a costume box fit for a drag queen.

  As soon as Isaac was born, she’d begun stuffing him into leotards and draping feather boas around his neck. He was only too glad to oblige his idolized older sister and happily participated in her endless stage productions and ballet recitals. Lately, he’d begun adding his own accessories, and it was not uncommon to find him, as I did that day, wearing a pink tutu, a purple ostrich feather tucked behind his ear, and a sword and scabbard belted around his waist.

  “Mama! I’m a Princess Knight,” he announced. Then he whipped out his sword and clocked his sister on the head with it.

  “Damn it, Peter, I put that sword away for this very reason. Why did you take it out?” I said.

  “Because you can’t be a Princess Knight without a sword.”

  “Why does he have to be a Princess Knight? Why can’t he just be a princess? Or a prince? A nice prince. Who kisses the princess instead of hacking off her head.”

  Peter sighed dramatically and reached out his hand. “Okay, sport. Hand over the sword. Mama says no more fencing.”

  Isaac began to wail and didn’t stop until I’d popped a video into the VCR. The child development experts can shake their heads all they want. TV is an essential tool of the modern parent. How else can two adults have a conversation during the day? I’m all for stimulating my children’s tiny little developing brains, but sometimes you just need them to sit in one place and be quiet. My kids are going to have to be couch potatoes when I have something I absolutely must do. Like tell their father that I’d stumbled across yet another suspicious death.

  “He killed himself?” Peter asked.

  “I guess so. I mean, it looks that way with the gun and everything, but it seems so unlikely. He was such an upbeat kind of guy.”

  “Aren’t methamphetamine addicts sort of by definition upbeat? It’s called speed for a reason.”

  “He wasn’t an addict. I mean, he was, but he wasn’t using anymore. He’d been in recovery forever.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “What? That he wasn’t using?”

  “It’s not like he’d necessarily admit it to you if he was using. And you did always talk about how hyper he was.”

  “Hyper in a good way. Like a trainer is supposed to be. Not like some whacked-out speed freak. I think I’d know the difference,” I said. I certainly should know the difference. In my career as a federal public defender, I’d spent plenty of time with people addicted to all different sorts of substances. I’d had heroin-addict clients to whom I’d needed to give at least twenty-four hours’ notice that I was planning to drop by the Metropolitan Detention Center if I didn’t want them to be completely stoned when I had them brought down to the visiting room. As a young lawyer, it had taken me a while to figure out that they were wasted, not because they weren’t acting high, but just because I was so naive that it never occurred to me that the federal jail would be such an easy place to score. It turns out you can get pretty much anything at the MDC, and the prices aren’t much more than out on the street. Don’t ask me how they get the drugs into the jail. I suppose a cynical person might suggest taking a look at the fine display of automotive splendor in the prison guards parking lot.

  I’d represented my share of methamphetamine dealers, mostly Mexican guys who brought the precursor chemicals in over the border and cooked them up in labs out in the wilds of Riverside, or aging bikers who kept themselves in Harley parts doing the same. I knew a speed freak when I saw one, and by the time I met Bobby Katz, he wasn’t using. I was sure of it.

  “He wasn’t using,” I said firmly.

  “Okay. Well, maybe he just did a good job of hiding how depressed he was. Maybe that whole thing with his girlfriend was harder on him than you thought. Maybe she’s using again, and he couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “But isn’t it a bit more likely that he’d just leave her?”

  Peter shrugged. “When is the funeral?”

  “I don’t know. I guess that depends on when they release the body. If they decide it’s a suicide, I’m sure it will be soon. Bobby’s Jewish, and that means his parents will want to bury him as soon as possible.”

  Three

  “WHY is it that wearing black to a funeral seems ostentatious?” I said to my pint-sized companion. “I mean, you’re supposed to wear black. That’s the traditional color of mourning. Unless you’re Buddhist. Not that white would be any easier. I mean, I own literally nothing white except panties and bras.”

  “Wear this, Mommy. It’s black,” Ruby said, pulling my one full-length gown out of its dry cleaner bag.

  “I don’t know, honey. Sequins on a Sunday morning?”

  Ruby nodded. “They’re black sequins.”

  “Let’s try something less formal, shall we?” I waded to the back of my closet where I’d consigned my business attire. I pulled out a charcoal pantsuit and brushed the dust off the shoulders. I pulled on the slacks, exhaling while I zipped. “Ruby, hand me one of your hair elastics, would you?”

  She pulled one out of her ponytail, and I picked the clump of red hair out of it. I hooked one end around the button at the waistband of the pants and the other through the buttonhole. With that extra couple of inches, I could get away with the pants. Just. I found a pale gray cotton knit sweater and shrugged on the suit jacket.

  “So? What do you think?” I asked my four-year-old daughter.

  “Gorgeous. But a little fat.”

  I gave her the stink eye and pinched her on the tush. “Go tell your daddy I’m leaving.”

  The L.A. county coroner had released Bobby’s body a week after he died. Jewish law requires that a body be buried as soon as possible after death, within a day or two, so his parents arranged for him to be buried the day following the body’s release. Sometimes halacha has to give way to the exigencies of the criminal justice system, but all things considered, I thought the county had done a pretty good job of finishing their work expeditiously. It probably helped that they didn’t need to worry about what the body lo
oked like; we’re not allowed to have open caskets, so no one besides the undertaker was going to see whatever remained of poor Bobby Katz.

  The turnout for Bobby’s service was impressive, considering that it took place all the way out in Thousand Oaks. I got there early enough to take a strategic place in the back and watch people as they came in. Bobby’s friends from work were sitting in the first few rows. I noticed that none of them had had my doubts. To a one they were impeccably turned out in absolute, unremitting, pure black. The women wore severe dresses and suits that were just a shade too tight, and the men all seemed to have bought the same Armani funereal attire. I thought the midnight ties were a bit overkill, but then I had an elastic band around my waist, so who was I to comment?

  Behind them were a couple of rows of what had to be friends from Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous. They were a diverse bunch: old and young, nicely dressed and decidedly sloppy. It took a moment for me to realize that Betsy sat among them. I could just see the back of her bent neck leaning against the shoulder of an overweight woman whose thick gray ponytail was tied with a piece of red yarn. I considered getting up and paying my respects but decided to wait until after the ceremony. Older couples—most likely friends of Bobby’s parents—took up the rest of the seats. I couldn’t see anyone who looked like his family.

  After a few more minutes, a door opened, and Bobby’s family filed in. They sat down in a few rows of chairs set up to the side of the hall, and one of the ushers drew a large wooden screen in front of them, effectively shielding them from view. Odd, I thought, but then I hadn’t been to that many funerals.