Nursery Crimes (21 page)

I led the police officers directly to my computer, and I logged on and showed them what I’d found.

The young cop looked at Carswell. “Maybe we should talk to Ms. Tiger,” he said.

“We’d planned on interviewing her anyway. She’s on the witness list,” Carswell said, nodding his head.

The younger officer borrowed my phone and called the station house. Eavesdropping, I heard him ask for a DMV address on Nina Tiger.

“Is that all you have?” he said into the receiver.

He covered the receiver with his hand and spoke to Carswell. “Last known address is in Santa Barbara.”

“She lives here, in Venice,” I interrupted. “Remember, I told you that I followed her?”

He turned back to the phone. “Check for a Venice address.” He waited a moment and then replied, “Okay, we’ll get it from the witness.”

“What’s going on?” Carswell asked.

“No Venice address listed.”

“Ms. Applebaum,” Carswell asked me, “do you remember the address of her apartment in Venice?”

“It was on Rose Street,” I said. “A fourplex.”

“The house number?” he asked.

I racked my brain. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember. It was in the middle of the block. Mediterranean. Kind of like all the others on that block.”

“Would you know it if you saw it?”

“I think so. And I’d definitely recognize her car.”

I
drove with the detectives in their unmarked car, an anonymous blue, late-model American sedan, to Venice. Peter had been loath to let me go, but I had insisted. We drove onto the block, and I directed Carswell and the young detective to Nina Tiger’s apartment building. I pointed out the Mustang convertible parked at the curb.

“That’s her car,” I said.

“Now, you wait right here, Ms. Applebaum,” the young detective said.

“Don’t move,” Carswell reiterated.

I promised not to, and settled more comfortably in the backseat of the car, propping my feet up. I watched them head off up the path and imagined tigress’s face when she opened the door to them.

I hadn’t gotten very far in my fantasy when I noticed the door to the building open. With a flash of red hair and long legs, Nina Tiger strode down the path toward her car. They must have missed her!

For a moment I puzzled over what to do. I was under strict orders not to move. On the other hand, no way was I going to let her get away. She might have been on her way to Audrey’s house! I wrenched the car door open, leaned my head out, and shouted.

“YO! Tigress!”

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked around her,
finally spotting me. Meanwhile, I was having problems getting myself out of the car. I gave a final heave and staggered out onto the sidewalk. She looked at me blankly for a minute, and then I could see a flash of recognition cross her face.

“My mailbox!” she said, and ran over to me, hands on her hips. “Who are you? Why are you calling me ‘tigress’? Are you on one of my lists? What’s your name?”

With the final question she reached me and, sticking a finger out, poked me in the chest. Hard.

“Hey! Watch it!” I said, batting away her hand.

“No!
You
watch it.” She pushed me. I staggered back and swayed, scrambling with my feet to keep from falling. At that moment I heard a voice shout, “Police, put your hands up!”

“What the hell?” tigress said, turning around and spotting the detectives running from the house. “Are you out of your goddamn minds?” she screeched. “This bitch is assaulting me!”

“I am not!” I said indignantly. “She pushed me!”

“She broke into my mailbox!”

“Well, yeah, but not today!”

By then the detectives had reached us. Carswell grabbed tigress by the arm and dragged her away from me. The young guy helped me steady myself.

“Are you okay, Ms. Applebaum?” he asked.

“You know her? What’s going on here? Is she a cop?” Nina yelled.

Carswell led her a few feet away and asked calmly, “Are you Nina Tiger?”

“Yeah. So what? Am I under arrest?”

“I have some questions for you, Miss Tiger. Shall we continue this inside?”

“No way you are coming into my apartment!” she said with a snarl.

“Shall we continue this at the station house?”

She shrugged off his hand, angrily. “Look, if this is about Abigail Hathaway, I had nothing to do with that. I was in Santa Barbara, at my mother’s house. Three of her bridge partners saw me there. You can call them all!”

Detective Carswell paused for a minute and then said, “We simply have a number of questions for you. Nothing serious. Why don’t we go upstairs and discuss it.”

“Fine.” She stormed up the path to her front door.

Carswell looked at the younger detective and said, “Take Ms. Applebaum home and then come get me. ASAP.” He followed tigress into the house.

T
HE
detective dropped me off at home, and I walked in, shouting out, “I’m home!”

“How’d it go?” asked Peter.

“She has an alibi.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“She could have hired someone to kill Abigail,” I said, grasping at straws.

“I guess so. The police will figure it out,” Peter said.

“Yeah, I suppose they will. Is Ruby still asleep?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so? It’s late. We’d better wake her up.”

I walked into Ruby’s room and gently shook her awake. She responded by squawking in outrage and promptly bursting into tears. I tried pulling out her Tickle-Me-Elmo. The screaming continued. I grabbed her Madeleine doll. No effect. Finally, desperate, I said, “Hey, Peanut, want to go visit the Barbie website?”

“No. I hate Barbie.”

“You do not, Ruby. You have twenty Barbies. You
love
Barbie. Let’s go visit the website. It’ll be fun, I promise.”

I plopped Ruby on the chair at my desk and logged on. I quickly found the Barbie website, and set Ruby up selecting the accessory set for her personalized “Friend of Barbie” doll.

I leaned against my desk, too tired to stand but too lazy to get another chair. Ruby looked so sweet, her curls tumbling into her eyes, her face screwed up with concentration. I wondered, for the thousandth time, how she was going to tolerate another baby in the house. This child was so used to being the center of attention, the queen of the castle. The birth of a prince was going to be quite a shock.

Ruby interrupted my reverie. “Mommy, the computer said ‘You’ve got mail.’”

“Oh, that means an E-mail came in. Want to help me get it?”

“Yeah!”

“Move the mouse over to the little mailbox symbol.”

She followed my instructions.

“Now click twice.”

She did.

It was a piece of junk E-mail—spam. I showed Ruby how to delete it and then helped her click back over to Barbie. And then, watching her dress Barbie in a fuchsia boa and purple pedal pushers, I figured it out. I figured out who GRrrrL was.

I
’
M
not sure why I did what I did next. In hindsight, it was definitely an idiotic move. But, at the time, I really didn’t think I was putting myself in harm’s way. I felt pretty confident that I was right, but I knew that after the tigress fiasco the Santa Monica Police Department wasn’t going to accompany me on any more detective expeditions. I certainly wasn’t going to ask Peter to come with me, as that would have meant bringing Ruby along, too. So I told my husband that I had to go out, making up an excuse about going to the drugstore to buy pads for when I came home from the hospital. He was only too glad to watch the baby, relieved that I hadn’t sent him off to buy feminine hygiene products.

I drove across town on the freeway and up the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Monica Canyon. I was going very fast, and it’s a miracle I wasn’t pulled over for speeding. Still, it felt like hours before I finally pulled up in front of Abigail Hathaway’s Tudor house. I rammed
the car into park and, slamming the door behind me, ran up the path. I rang the bell and, too impatient to wait, pounded on the door.

After a moment or two, Audrey opened it. She looked the same as always, except she’d had half her hair shaved off again and the rest redyed a sapphire blue. She sported a new stud in her nose, a stone that matched her hair. She smiled nervously when she saw me. “Hi, Juliet! What’s going on? You look . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

I looked at my reflection in the long, narrow window next to the front door. I was wearing my usual uniform of leggings and shirt, but a length of thigh was peeping out a torn seam. I hadn’t even noticed. My hair was dragged off my face with a rubber band, and I wore not the slightest trace of makeup.

“Are you okay?” Audrey asked me.

“We need to talk. Is your aunt home?”

“No, she just left for the grocery store. Talk about what?” She held the door halfway closed.

“Let me in, Audrey.” I pushed against the door.

She held it against my hand.

“What’s going on, Juliet? You looked freaked.”

“Let me in
now.
” I jerked the door open and pushed by her.

“Fine, come in. What’s up with you?” she asked. She sounded angry but also a little nervous.

“I know about GRrrrL, Audrey,” I said, standing in the hall.

“Who? What girl?”

“Don’t lie to me, Audrey. I know that you’re using your stepfather’s computer and that your screen name is GRrrrL.”

“It is
not
his computer. My mom bought it. It’s a family
computer. I’m perfectly entitled to use it. And anyway, I’m not even using that computer. I’m using my mom’s laptop. One of the stupid teachers from her stupid school dropped it off a couple of days ago.”

She stalked off into the living room and shut the door after herself. I hustled in behind her and opened it to find her bent over her mother’s desk. She slammed shut a drawer as I walked in. Tossing her half-bald head, Audrey walked over to the couch and sat down. She held her chin high and crossed her legs primly. I could see the pulse beating in her throat.

“So you figured out my screen name. So what? What does that make you, some kind of genius? I, like, basically told you it was me.”

I sat down next to her. She still looked so vulnerable to me, so young despite her pathetic attempts at “cool.”

“Audrey, have you told the police about your screen name?” I asked her.

She looked at me incredulously. “No. Why should I? It’s none of their business.” She started picking at a cuticle on her right thumbnail. A bead of bright-red blood appeared. She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked on it, like a baby.

“Audrey, it is their business. You know that.” Was she really as obtuse as she was pretending to be? “Listen to me. You have to tell the police, because you can be sure Daniel will.”

“Oh, please, like they could care less about my screen name.”

“Audrey, the police confiscated Daniel’s computer, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, that’s why I had to wait like a week to get online. I couldn’t do anything until Maggie suddenly
remembered that she’d borrowed my mom’s computer and brought it back to me. I’m surprised the bitch didn’t just keep it.”

I started to defend the nursery school teacher but then shook my head. I wasn’t going to let Audrey distract me. I got back to the point. “Doesn’t the fact that they took Daniel’s computer make you think that they might be interested in whatever information you might have about his E-mail accounts?”

Audrey rolled her eyes at me. “GRrrrL isn’t the one who tried to find someone to kill my mother. It was his faggot screen name ‘boytoy2000’ that did that.”

She shouldn’t have known about the ad Mooney had placed for the hired killer. I hadn’t told her, it hadn’t been in the papers, and there was no reason in the world for the police or the DA to give her that kind of information. There was only one way for her to know about the ad, only one possible reason for her to have that kind of information.

“And anyway, he didn’t even hire someone to kill her. He did it himself, driving
her
car,” she continued.

I sat there on the couch, next to Abigail Hathaway’s teenage daughter, and felt sickened that what I had feared was actually true. She wasn’t just GRrrrl; she was also the person who placed the ad on the bulletin board. And if she’d placed the ad, I could be sure that she was the person who killed Abigail.