ever making a thing about it. I never saw grape leaves in the house, or anything like that.'
She looked and sounded tired, as if talking about the Doss family drained her.
I said, 'As friends and neighbors, they must have been a challenge.'
'What do you mean?' she said, in the same sharp tone I'd heard her use on an errant lawyer.
'They're the kind of people to whom things happen. When I spoke to Bob about Joanne's diagnosis, he sounded pretty frustrated about Joanne's condition-'
'Did he?' she said absently. She gazed around the room. A few more tables had filled. 'That's just Bob being Bob. He prides himself on being analytic: identify the problem, cut it out.'
'Which he couldn't do with Joanne.'
'No, he couldn't.' She stirred the drink. Eyes down again. Stress lines deeper.
'Bob seems to feel her illness was all emotional depression,' I said.
She looked over at a table to the right. Two couples seated a few minutes ago, laughing, drinking. She summoned the waiter over, ordered another gin and tonic.
'Do you agree?' I said.
'With what?'
'That it was all emotional.'
'I'm not a doctor, Alex. I couldn't begin to fathom Joanne's motivation.' Another glance at the happiness nearby.
'In terms of Eric and Stacy-'
'Eric and Stacy are going to cope and move on, right? That's why I sent Stacy to you.'
Her second drink came. We traded courtroom stories and I listened to her go on about municipal politics, the D.A.'s inability to collect child support. That enabled me to steer the conversation back where I wanted it.
'They couldn't get Mate, either.'
She stirred gin, nodded.
'I'm not sure Mate was happy about that,' I said. 'No more prime time.'
'Yes, he was a grandstander, wasn't he?'
'The interesting thing is, Judy, he never took credit for Joanne's death. Never even tried, and it's the only case I could find where that was true.'
She'd been holding the glass in midair, lowered it slowly. 'You've been researching?'
'The police assumed Mate had assisted Joanne, but they never confirmed it.'
'I'd say it's a pretty good assumption, Alex. Her body was full of those chemicals Mate used.'
Our salads arrived. Big plate of what looked like lawn shavings. A few cashews on mine. My belly was still filled with steak and nothing had transpired to spark my appetite. I pushed leaves around. Judy aimed her fork at a cherry tomato, tried to stab it, but it rolled out from under the tines. For a split second, fury darkened her face. Talking about the Dosses had been an ordeal.
She speared a speck of lettuce. 'Even if Richard was stupid enough to give money to that loser, the loser backed out. I'm hoping he didn't try again. After we spoke, I asked around. So far, nothing beyond solicitation. Have you heard anything to the contrary?'
'No,' I said.
'Passion, Alex. It makes people do crazy things.'
'Richard was passionate about Joanne?'
'I suppose he was.' Peeling back her sleeve, she glanced at the Lady Rolex.
'Here comes the egg timer,' I said.
She smiled. 'I'm sorry, Alex. I'm very tired-not hungry, either. Is there anything else?'
'I'd like to know more about Eric.'
'Just what I told you the first time. A genius, perfec-tionistic. Dominant personality.'
'Stacy said he and Ali dated.'
Pause. 'Yes, they did. Year ago. Ali said he was a bit of a control freak-nothing weird, he just proved too intense for her. She broke it off.'
Stacy had said Eric had severed the relationship. Teenage soap opera. Did it matter?
I said, 'He sounds a lot like Richard.'
'He's Richard's boy all the way. Like a little nuclear weapon with legs.'
'And Stacy?'
'You're Stacy's therapist. What do you think?'
'Was she distant from Joanne?'
'Why do you ask that?'
'Because it was Eric who spent time with Joanne during her last days.'
She pushed her plate away. 'Alex, I think you've gotten the wrong idea about the Dosses and us. We were friends, neighbors, lunched at the Cliffside. But for the most part they kept their problems to themselves and we lived our own life. Richard told Bob that Stacy seemed to be drifting. From the little I saw, she seemed a bit depressed, so I sent her to you. That's all there is. I can't carry any more on my shoulders. I'm sorry I haven't been more helpful, but that's all there is.'
She got up, marched to our waiter, who was talking with a colleague, stood there for a few seconds, then said something that caused his head to retract, as if he'd been bitten. He stalked away and she returned, finished her drink while standing. 'Snotty little bastard. I'm waiting to tell him we're ready for the check, he's discussing his latest audition.'
Looking off to one side, the object of her wrath raced over, flung the check at the table and fled. Judy reached for it, but I got there first.
'What?' she said. 'Bribing the judge?
Thanking the judge for her time,' I said. 'That's all I've given you,' she said. 'Time. Heat, no light.'
Her Lexus had been left at the curb and I waited for her to drive away. As I waited for the Seville, I tried to make sense out of the last half hour.
She'd arrived at the restaurant looking strained- more tense than I'd ever seen her-and each of my questions seemed to yank her psyche's drawstring tighter. Before she left, she warned off further inquiry. So I'd opened some kind of wound but had no idea what it was.
No chance to get to the topic of hospitals, no way to work it into the conversation.
I'd watched her in court, seen her handle the toughest of cases with aplomb, so this was something personal… The closest she'd gotten to autobiography was self-loathing about her teenage obesity.
I was repugnant… But if that related to the Dosses, I was missing the connection.
I can't carry any more on my shoulders.
Burdened by the Dosses, as was her husband? Bob expressing it as anger because he was a man of a certain generation?
Some kind of intimacy gone terribly bad? Bob jealous of Richard and Joanne in the pool-did it all reduce to another sleazy suburban couples' swap?
And had that related, in some way, to Joanne's decline? Something Richard couldn't forgive her for?
Guilt and expiation. Had Eric found out?
Eric and Allison breaking up, Becky in therapy, eating disorders, poor grades, Joanne quitting as tutor, Stacy losing focus, Eric dropping out. Bob enraged, Judy on the edge… Joanne dead.
Put together a certain way, I could make it sound like a psychopathology stew.
Even so, what did it have to do with Mate's corpse stretched out in the back of a van, geometry on flesh?
Why hadn't Mate taken credit for Joanne?
The Seville screeched to a halt and the attendant held my door with an expression that said I didn't deserve it. Driving away, I went over it again, finally decided I'd wasted my time and Judy's, most certainly damaged my relationship with the presiding judge of family court.
Another day, another triumph. The car was low on gas and I filled up at a station on Wilshire, used the pay phone near the men's room to call my service. Joseph Safer had phoned five minutes earlier from the Dosses' home number.
Richard answered, hoarse, quieter than usual. 'Doctor-hold on.' A second later, Safer's melodious voice flowed through the receiver.
