Dating Is Murder

18

Sunday morning found Fredreeq and me at the Beverly Center.

“Shouldn’t you be with your family today?” I asked. “Or church?”

“The mall is my church, and Francis took the kids to paintball. Now listen,” she said, pulling me along level six, past the frogs in Pet Love. “This Marie changed her e-mail-maybe she got DSL or switched ISPs, people do it all the time. None of this matters. Go back to Mulholland Man. The radar part. You showed up Monday on his radar, he said?”

“Yes. And it was Monday I got the call from Mrs. Glück and started asking questions around the set. Tuesday I met everyone else, Maizie Quinn and Glenda, the au pair volunteer, and then on Wednesday creepy Marty at the agency, so this isn’t about them, it’s about the show. Someone on the show doesn’t want me looking for Annika.”

Fredreeq steered me past Bloomingdale’s. “No, no, no, forget Annika. It’s Savannah. Savannah’s now the odds-on favorite in Vegas. I saw this on the Internet. My theory is, Kim’s getting stalked too, but she mistook us for the enemy, which explains the thugs at Westside Pavilion. That part we’re going to take care of today.”

I followed Fredreeq through the busy mall, searching the crowd. I wasn’t even sure who I was searching for. “Why is Savannah the favorite?”

“The crowd loves her,” Fredreeq said. “She’s got that perky Paula Abdul thing going, and she’s into some kind of boxing, she’s got style. You were a stiff the first two weeks. But you’re coming to life now, and that’s a threat to Savannah’s people.”

“I gotta tell you, I don’t think this tall guy is some Biological Clock fan.”

“Not a fan,” Fredreeq said, “a professional saboteur. Big difference. But he watches the show, and I can prove it. When did his radar kick in? Monday. Monday was the episode where you wore Joey’s peasant blouse that was a little small and you talked about wanting your baby to have a father in its life because your own father walked out when you were six. The waitress in the background actually cried.”

“My God, how embarrassing-Bing was filming that? I didn’t realize we-”

“That was your finest moment. You left Savannah in the dust. Get it? Monday night.” Fredreeq took a good look at me. “Let’s hit Bebe.”

“Oh, please God, not Bebe, Fredreeq. It’s been a bad week, but I’d rather go back to the morgue than stuff myself into-”

“A celebrity dresses like a celebrity. You dress like a Home Depot clerk. Look at yourself. Here’s your New Year’s resolution a month early: No more fleece.”

“This is my good fleece-”

“Ever since Doc dumped you, you’re as sexy as cold oatmeal. Come to the party, girl. Who got press this week? Savannah Brook. You know who else? Raquel Welch. Yes, it’s a tacky story, it’s tabloid fodder, they went through her garbage. The point is, she’s older than God but she stays in the news because she is a star down to her toenails. She works it. She dresses up for 7-Eleven. She’s your role model from now on. No one’s going through your garbage, and doesn’t that bother you?”

“Look,” I said, “even if you’re right about the tall-guy stalker watching B.C.-”

“Hold Everything.” Fredreeq came to a dead stop.

“Okay, maybe ‘stalker’ is too strong a word-”

“Where is it?”

“What?”

“Hold Everything. It used to be right there.” She pointed to Bikini Bazaar. “They sold shoe trees. Man, I hate to lose a store.” Fredreeq strode ahead once more, me trotting to keep up. “Restoration Hardware, that’s our only hope. The day they fold is the day I start shopping online.”

Inside Restoration Hardware, Fredreeq got into deep conversation with the greeter and I pulled out my cell phone and called Maizie Quinn. I was explaining Marie-Thérèse to her machine when she picked up.

“Hi,” Maizie said, breathless. “Just getting a brioche out of the oven. Marie who?”

“Marie-Thérèse. I came across an e-mail-I think Annika confided in her.”

“About what?”

“Problems on Biological Clock. Annika was a sort of an unpaid production assistant, you probably know, and I think something there led to her disappearance.”

“Good Lord.” An audible sigh. “I should’ve kept a closer eye on her, but- Okay, let me think. She met so many au pairs in New York-all the girls start there for a week of orientation and training, a sort of boot camp before they meet their host families. Marie-Thérèse was probably one of those, the other January arrivals.”

“Did all these girls come from the same agency? Au Pairs par Excellence?”

There was a pause. “I’m not sure. I can- Yes, Emma, what?” Maizie’s voice went into another mode, pronounced patience. “No, Mommy’s on the phone. You need to wait one minute and I’ll do it for you. If you need it right now, you have to ask Lupe or Grammy Quinn.” Maizie returned to conversational mode. “Sorry, you were saying?”

“I have another thought. Emma’s music class-you said Annika made friends there? If I could visit the class-”

“The problem is, Music with Miss Grusha has a ‘no observers’ policy. She says visitors create performance anxiety. She was not very gracious to Grammy Quinn last month. You have to be enrolled in class and participating. Gene’s mom doesn’t do participation. If it involves hopping.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And I can’t alienate Miss Grusha; she’s my ticket into preschool. But I’ll ask the moms-oh, not tomorrow, I’m interviewing nannies. But next week, definitely.”

Next week? A week was a lifetime, I thought, hanging up. I joined Fredreeq at the register and told her about Miss Grusha’s antivisitor injunction. “What can I do?” I said. “I’ve got to talk to these women.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve gone through everyone else who knows Annika-the Quinns, the agency, Glenda, Britta, cops, boyfriend, mother. If I can’t find Marie-Thérèse or Richard Feynman, these music moms are my only hope.” I took the au pair application from my purse, but Fredreeq grabbed it.

“Here’s an idea. Give it a rest. You’re like a crazy person-”

“I’ll meet you up on seven,” I said, grabbing back the application. “I need a better German dictionary, and maybe a how-to book for finding missing persons-”

“Level eight,” the salesclerk said, scanning with a wand what appeared to be a butterfly net. “The bookstore’s on eight. Brentano’s. Down from the food court-”

“Thank you,” Fredreeq said, glaring at him. “We know all about level eight.” She turned to me. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard this week. A how-to book on missing persons. No. We are not going on a wild book chase. There is no such book, because there is no market for-”

“But there is, there are forty thousand missing Americans-”

“This is a missing German, who’s gone back to Germany and hasn’t told her fruitcakey mother, because she’s probably sick and tired of talking to her on the phone every damn Sunday. The cops told you that, the agency told you that, the Mother Goose mom told you that, how many votes have to be in-”

“No. There’s no consensus on what happened to her, everyone’s got different theories, and mine is, something happened on the show-”

“So someone hit on her. Welcome to show biz. Is that my total? Did you take off the extra ten percent on the fly gun and the card shuffler?” Fredreeq studied her receipt, then turned to me. “Look. We have two objectives today: destroy the competition and work on your wardrobe. No Soviet kindergartens, no German dictionaries…”

We argued about it all the way to a clothing store called Parsley Sage Rosemary, where Fredreeq’s voice dropped to a whisper. “No one shops here except people trying out for Hamlet. Okay, bury your face in brocade and stay low until I give the word. Here, hold my butterfly net. Excuse me,” she called, walking away before I could ask questions. “Is Kimberly working today?”

I realized this was the second day job for Kimberly Karmer. So I wasn’t the only Biological Clock contestant with multiple odd jobs. And Parsley Sage Rosemary was odd, as odd as Plastique, the velvets and ruffled blouses suitable for fairy tales, for maidens who hang out with unicorns. Greeting cards took shape: Hamlet at the mall, fencing across level six, up the escalator… My thoughts drifted for ten minutes or more until Fredreeq tapped my shoulder.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We got what we needed.”

Fredreeq couldn’t see why gathering dirt on Kim did not sit well with me.

“I came here to create an alliance with her,” she said, leading me past Baby Gap, “but she called in sick today, so I chatted up her coworkers. Is that a crime?”

“Fraud?” I said. “Yes, that’s a crime. Slander, libel, defamation of character, telling people you’re with the National Enquirer, that you’ll pay-”

“I never used the word ‘dirt’ and I only implied I’d pay if a story checked out. Lighten up. It worked. Kim has been followed; she’s called mall security twice in two weeks. Which confirms it’s Savannah who’s in league with the saboteurs. And Kim’s had breast implants, which I suspected, and enough botox to kill a cow. They hate her there-they’re on commission and she poaches customers.”

I gazed at a pregnant woman walking past us. “But how could anyone but B.C.’s editor influence how people vote? And if he did that, featured one contestant over another, wouldn’t we notice? Wouldn’t the producers?”

“Yes.” Fredreeq stopped, eyes wide. “Who’s to say the producers aren’t in on it? Maybe they kidnapped Annika, to create some buzz. Or-wait, wait! The saboteurs could be holding her hostage; they’ll release her after the producers do their bidding.”

I just stared.

“Yes!” she said excitedly. “The producers, in cahoots with bookies in Vegas. Not Joey, of course, but Elliot’s always been a little shady.” She took out her phone. “You go buy that dictionary. If this Music with Mrs. Khrushchev class is our only lead, I’ll get you in there. If someone’s kidnapped Annika and we expose it, we’re home free, because I don’t care what our ratings are, that story is headline news. So deal me in.”

In the bookstore I stood holding a German-English dictionary and staring at one page of Annika’s au pair application, the Führungszeugnis.

No single English word expressed it. Führungszeugnis needed its own sentence: “document issued by police certifying the holder has no criminal record.”

This sounded like good news except that the date circled in red pointed to the fact that Annika’s Führungszeugnis was several years old. And obsolete.

Someone else had figured this out too, someone who’d circled the date in red. And then what? Blackmailed her with the information? Who? To what end?

And for what crime?