That same infomercial queen, in barely there workout clothes broadcasting her muscular perfection, pointed down at Waldo from a billboard over Ventura Boulevard:
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE YOU!
He knew she was just a cynical huckster tapping into self-hatred and peddling superficial (if pricey) change; still, he contemplated this existential challenge she was posing and wished to God she were right.
Gaby rode in back, silent and pensive. Alastair, sober at this hour, steered onto Chandler and quickly into a near-hidden entrance to the Stoddard School. “Welcome,” he announced to Waldo, “to Kindergartens of the Rich and Famous.” A slow-moving line of cars safely offloaded elementary schoolers, but Alastair apparently had other plans: he cruised around the line and glided into a space with a sign marking it as RESERVED FOR THE PINCH FAMILY. Actually, the Hummer laid claim to a chunk of the adjacent handicapped space as well.
“What’d you do to deserve this?” asked Waldo.
“The school auctions off a space every year at their insufferable fund-raiser. I put in a bid to allay the boredom.”
“What it set you back?”
“Thirty.” Alastair shrugged. Waldo chose not to ask thirty what.
Gaby, freed from her car seat and distracted by the sight of her friends, jumped down and ran shouting into the playground, where she blended with a hundred other kids in identical white polos and navy shorts, wealthy and clean, protected from the bad world by oaks and fences, attentive faculty and sacrificing parents. Waldo watched Gaby and another girl with buckteeth and braided pigtails find each other like magnets and hug like sisters after a long separation. What did this little pal know about Gaby’s mother? Gaby’s father? And all these other kids—had their parents told them? Or was news, even scandalous news so close to home, one more thing they were protected from?
Every adult on the playground kept a careful eye on Waldo, a stranger and not a safe-looking one, strolling among their children alongside their presumptively lethal fellow parent. Only one approached, a reed-thin middle-aged man in rimless glasses, blazer and repp tie. Alastair introduced him as Dr. Sebastian Hexter, the headmaster, and left him to chat with Waldo while he collected Gaby and escorted her to her classroom.
“I’m happy to answer any questions you have,” Hexter said, “but I don’t expect that I or anyone at Stoddard would have much to offer that could help you.”
“At this point I’m trying to get a picture of the Pinches as a couple. How well have you known them?”
“Not well. Gaby’s in kindergarten, so this is their first year at the school, of course. My early impression has been that they’d be generous financially, if not particularly involved. We rarely see him at all, and she’s more of a drop-off mom.” He corrected himself. “Was.”
“Could I talk to Gaby’s teacher?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.” The bluntness was surprising. Hexter might look like an effete New England preppy transplanted under the California sun, but he was in command of his world and wanted to let Waldo know it. “This tragedy has rocked our campus, at least on the parent and faculty levels. There’s not much a headmaster can do in a situation like this, but I’ve been able to shield our students from the chaos, and I plan to keep it that way.” The children on the playground did indeed look untroubled playing tag and four square, but the headmaster’s pride rankled Waldo.
“Gaby Pinch is one of your students. I’d say the chaos already found her.”
Hexter’s smugness dissipated. He said, “Her name’s Jayne White. Room 2. I’ll walk you over.” They crossed the campus in a disagreeable silence. Hexter indicated the door without a good-bye and headed back toward the playground.
Waldo stepped into the classroom and saw a life-size plastic skeleton holding its own skull in an upraised palm. Alastair was standing behind the skeleton, his head atop the spine where the skull should be. Gaby and her bucktooth friend, sitting on the floor in front of the show, were already squealing with delight.
Alastair quieted them and began: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy . . .” He worked the bones like a skilled puppeteer, the arms expressive and elegant, the legs punctuating with an occasional twitch or kick. The girls were riveted; they didn’t need to understand the words, only that they hadn’t seen anything like it. Neither had Waldo.
“. . . he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed—” Alastair bussed the skull square on the mouth and turned to the little girls with an icked-out face. They screamed and giggled; the man knew his audience.
Alastair played the speech all the way to the end and the tiny crowd hung on every word. When he finished, all three applauded, and so did a fourth. Waldo looked over his shoulder and saw the teacher Jayne White, twenty-six maybe, simply and practically adorned for a day among five-year-olds, yet still so striking, hair so dark and eyes so pale, that Waldo took a second glance despite himself.
“Ms. White?”
“That’s me.”
Alastair affixed the skull to its rightful spot and said, “Come, girls—I’ll push you on the swings until the bell rings. Mr. Waldo wants to ask your teacher whether Daddy plays nicely with the other children.” They each grabbed a hand and he led them out, winking at Waldo and saying, “I’ll meet you at the car so you can gather your bicycle.”
When they were alone he said, “My name’s Waldo. I’m a detective working for Alastair.”
“Really.” She gave him a once-over. “I’d have guessed you were his stylist.”
The crack knocked him off-balance. But he recovered: “Give me some credit—not a lot of people could pull this off without looking scruffy.”
She smiled, then sobered. “I’m sorry; we shouldn’t be joking. My heart breaks for Gaby. This has to be all kinds of unreal for her. I can’t even imagine how she’s processing it. Mr. Pinch does a lot to keep her spirits up.”
“What was Mrs. Pinch like as a parent?”
Jayne thought before answering. “We have the children memorize these poems? I like to ask the kids whose mom and dad can recite them, too. Half the time the parents can’t, but the nanny can, in two languages.”
“And the Pinches?”
“Mrs. Pinch never knew the poems. Mr. Pinch, always.”
“Her death must have shocked the hell out of this place.”
“Not me.” That got his attention, but before he could follow up, a cluster of little boys broke the moment, tumbling into the room, screaming and knocking the carefully ordered desks askew. Jayne was gentle with them but firm. “No running in the classroom, you guys know that. And we use our inside voices, remember?” The boys settled down as Jayne took a marker and began writing on a sheet of construction paper.
Waldo said to her, “I want to hear more.”
“Come tomorrow night and hear me sing,” she said.
“You don’t look like a singer.”
She handed him the construction paper. It had an address on La Cienega, the other side of the hill, and below that she’d written, 8:30.
“This is Hollywood, Waldo. Who is who they are?”