Free A Playdate With Death by Ayelet Waldman Page A

chair and propped his feet up on the card table. He was wearing pale blue Sansabelt slacks with a slight flare, a gold shirt, and navy socks with white clocks. His shoes seemed to have been made out of the same material as my chair. I wondered if they came as a set.
    “Because you’re a defense attorney. You know how to put together a case. You know what kinds of things to investigate, what’s relevant, what’s not.”
    “But the lawyers you’re working with will tell you what they want investigated. They’ll put together their own cases.”
    “True. But having that added expertise would give us an edge on the competition. And how many times have I heard you say that two-thirds of the criminal defense lawyers out there don’t know their asses from their elbows? Just because they’re paying us doesn’t mean they have any idea what we should be doing.”
    That made sense to me. “But I’m not licensed.”
    “You don’t have to be. That’s the beauty of it. I’m a licensed private investigator. You work for me. We call you a defense specialist, or a mitigation specialist if we’re doing a death case, and then you don’t need to take the investigator’s test or do the obligatory hours. Or, if you want to, you can apply for your license, take the test, and then do your hours with me.”
    The idea did have a certain appeal. Since I’d quit work, I’d found myself increasingly bored and frustrated with staying home. I’d left my job because I thought raising my kids myself was more important than working, but sometimes it was difficult to imagine that my sighing, listless presence around the house was really doing Ruby and Isaac any good. The only time I’d been really happy over the last couple of years was when I’d been doing what amounted to investigative work. Only then did I feel like I was taking advantage of my skills and my intelligence. At the same time, however, I wasn’t ready to give up and go back to work even if pushing a stroller might not have been doing it for me.
    “The whole point of quitting the defender’s office was that I wanted to be home with my kids. If I wanted to go back to work, I’d go back to being a lawyer.”
    “Aren’t your kids in school by now?” Al asked.
    “Ruby’s in preschool. But Isaac’s just a baby. Almost. He’s two and a half.”
    “He’ll be in school soon, too. What are you going to do with yourself while the kids aren’t home? Are you planning on going back to the defender’s office then?
    He’d hit the nail on the head. What was I going to do when Isaac started school next year? Going back to a public defender’s rigorous schedule didn’t appeal to me. Someone had to pick the kids up every day after school, and Peter’s schedule was just too unpredictable. If I went back to my job, I wasn’t going to be able to be there when the kids came home. I’d show up in time for dinner, like I’d done when Ruby was a baby. I hadn’t wanted to do that then, and it wasn’t looking any better to me now. On the other hand, I wasn’t one of those people who could while away the school day at aerobics classes or volunteering at the local hospital. I was going to have to find something else to keep my mornings busy.
    The idea was sounding better all the time. But was I really ready? I didn’t think so. “I don’t know, Al. I’ll think about it. Anyway, are you going to charge me a hundred and fifty bucks an hour to tell me how to find the mothers who gave birth at Haverford Memorial on February 15, 1972?”
    Al smiled. “Nope. You’re still on the discount plan.”
    “Thanks. So, how do I go about tracking down the mothers?”
    “You read this list.” He swung his feet off the table and pushed a sheet of paper across to me. On it were the names of seven women.
    “What’s this?”
    “The mothers who gave birth at Haverford Memorial Hospital on February 15, 1972.”
    “No way! How’d you get this?”
    He smiled mysteriously. “Secret of