Read Online A Playdate With Death by Ayelet Waldman - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I said in my most reassuring voice, “That’s a good point. I’ve never really thought of that. But couldn’t we solve that problem by requiring birth parents to provide medical histories when they relinquish their babies?”
    She pushed herself back in her chair and shook her head vigorously. “You don’t get it. It’s not just the medical stuff. It’s about your identity. I’m an Indian. You know what that means? That’s the reason I never felt at home in the white man’s world.” She waved angrily around her at the benches, the carefully selected prints and posters, the little wooden tables, the white coffee drinkers. “My whole life I felt like I didn’t belong. And if my birth mother had had her way, I’d have never known why. Well, now I know. I’m a Lakota woman. And nobody can keep that from me. Not even my mother.”
    She banged her fist on the table, again, hard. Isaac looked up, frightened, and I motioned him over with my hand. He ran up to me and I scooped him into my lap.
    “Thank you so much, Candace,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of these issues before, and I appreciate your taking the time to educate me.” We both knew I was buttering her up, butI smiled my sweetest smile anyway. “Betsy, Bobby’s fiancée, is desperate to figure out what was happening with him. I understand that you found out something important for Bobby, and that he met you here at the store. I need you to tell me what it was that you told him.”
    “Why should I tell you? I don’t know you. I don’t even know Betsy.” The name sounded like curdled milk on her tongue.
    “Please, Candace. I’m not trying to get you in any trouble. I’m just trying to track Bobby’s actions for the period before his death. We need to find out why he killed himself.
If
he killed himself.”
    She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Do you think someone murdered him?”
    Did I? That seemed even less likely than that the cheerful, optimistic man had committed suicide. “I don’t know. That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.”
    “What are you, some kind of a detective?”
    I paused at that. How much easier it would have been to say, “Yes, right. A detective.” Instead, I shook my head. “I’m just a friend. Candace, please. What did you find out?”
    “How do I know you’re not trying to pin all this on me?” she said, crossing her arms over her shelflike chest.
    That brought me up short. Pin what on her? Bobby’s death? I shook my head. “I’m not trying to pin anything on anybody. I’m just trying to find out if Bobby ever found his birth parents. And I know you can help me.”
    “Mama,” Isaac whimpered. The tone of our conversation was obviously frightening him. I couldn’t continue this infront of him. I wrapped him in my arms and gave him a kiss. Then I dug around in my bag for one of the business cards Peter had made up for me the previous Christmas. They were a pale moss green with my name, telephone numbers, and E-mail address engraved in a darker shade of the same color.
    “Here’s my number. Call me if you decide you’re willing to talk. In the meantime, you’ll forgive me if I turn your name over to the detectives investigating Bobby’s—” I looked down at Isaac in my lap and bit off the last word of my sentence.
    “No!” Candace said. Then, seemingly embarrassed at her own vehemence, she continued, “I’d prefer not to be involved. For the sake of Right to Know.”
    She paused for a moment and then, leaning forward, whispered, “All I can tell you is that Bobby was born at Haverford Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. That’s all I know. But it should be enough for you to find his mother.”

Seven
    A L ’ S new office turned out to be a phone line, a card table, and a dented filing cabinet shoved into one corner of his garage in Westminster, a small city just south of downtown L.A.
    “Nice digs,” I said.
    I’d called him on my way