Revenge of the Spellmans (24 page)
Read Revenge of the Spellmans Online
Authors: Lisa Lutz
I
n the morning I phoned my mother to try to negotiate down the museum visit to something a little more, well, fun.
“Could I go to the zoo instead of SFMOMA?”
“I think you have the wrong number,” my mother said.
“How many times do I have to tell you that it’s
not funny when you do it
?”
“Isabel?”
“Thank you,” I replied.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t feel like going to the museum; I’d rather go to the zoo.”
“Have you been drinking?”
It was actually a reasonable question. My voice was hoarse and my throat was beginning to get sore. Was it possible that the cold medicine was giving me a cold?
I answered my mother’s question: “It’s nine
A
.
M
. Of course not.
1
Will you just answer the question?”
“What was the question again? Also, you should identify yourself when
you call people. It’s more…adult. You know, there’s no caller ID on the kitchen phone.”
“Could I go to the zoo instead of SFMOMA?”
“I don’t see why not,” Mom replied.
“Thank you,” I said. “And for being so agreeable, I’d like to share some dirt I’ve got on Rae.”
“I don’t know if I can take any more dirt.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Call me when you’re ready.”
“Don’t hang up!” Mom shouted.
“Oh, are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Rae didn’t cheat on the PSATs,” I said.
“Yes, she did.”
“No. She didn’t. Henry says she threw the second test. She didn’t like all that four-year-university talk, so she took action. She’d rather take a couple weeks of punishment now than four years of punishment later.”
Silence.
“Mom?”
“Why can’t I just find marijuana in her room and have the ‘This is your brain on drugs’ talk? I don’t know what to do with this kid.”
“You could ground her,” I suggested cheerily.
“She’s already grounded.”
“Are you going to cancel your disappearance?” I asked.
“Now I’m not so sure,” Mom said, but then she changed her tune. “No. No, I’m not.”
“Then what are you going to do about it?” I asked. “I mean, you have to do something.”
“Not sure. I need some time to come up with a plan.”
“Well, if you need any help, call me.”
“Just keep an eye on things this weekend. And when you’re done doing whatever it is with the GPS, please return it. We only have two, you know.”
I’d borrowed the one GPS, but had returned it. If the other one was missing, it was probably being used by Rae. It didn’t take me long to figure out what she was doing with it. To double-check, I pulled up the map on my computer screen (I have the link to both GPSs on my computer) and there was the dot, parked right where my car was last seen.
Of course,
this is how she was able to find my car at a moment’s notice. I should have figured it out, and I would have if there weren’t so many other things in my life to figure out. The good news for me was that my own days of car hunting were over. And I had my revenge to look forward to.
O
ther than continuing my surveillance on Linda Truesdale and Sharon Bancroft, I wasn’t sure where else I could go with the investigation. One thing that I found a bit odd while looking at their vital statistics was that there was a three-year age gap between the two women. Usually childhood friendships are forged by people closer in age.
I had never asked Ernie about his wife’s childhood, so I phoned him that afternoon to acquire some background information. Ernie continued to be a reluctant participant in my investigation. I couldn’t help but admire him for that. Still, I got him to talk. Even if Ernie could stop investigating his wife, I couldn’t.
I was intrigued to learn that Linda had grown up in the foster care system in Detroit. Her mother was a drug addict who abandoned her when she was five. She had no siblings or any other family to speak of. If the two women had met in school, it was an unlikely pairing. I needed more information. When the investigation began, it all seemed irrelevant; if you want to learn whether a wife is cheating on her husband, you don’t look into her childhood for the evidence. But now I was convinced that this mystery I couldn’t even name was tied to the past. I finally had concise questions to ask.
“Ernie, do you know the name of the school where Linda and Sharon met?”
“Probably had some president’s name in it.”
“Can you find out which president?”
“How would I go about doing that?”
“Well, you could ask,” I suggested. But I realized that I wanted more information than the name of Linda’s high school. For the next ten minutes I coached Ernie on how to interrogate his wife and gave him a page-long list of questions I wanted answered. Ernie told me he’d casually bring up the subject at dinner.
1
The following morning he called me with this information:
Linda went to Benjamin Franklin
2
High, which is where she met Sharon, in a Spanish class. And the tuna casserole was a big disaster, but Linda appreciated the effort.
“That’s all you got for me, Ernie?”
“Linda doesn’t like questions,” was Ernie’s reply.
Having known so few people in my life with an unqualified regard for privacy, I discovered a newfound respect for Ernie. I tried to imagine what life might be like without a current of suspicion running through me at all times. I traced backward in my life, hoping to pinpoint a time when that current wasn’t active, but I couldn’t remember it.
Respect or no, my suspicion remained and my investigation continued. Now that I knew where Linda had grown up, I was able to run a more complete background check on Ernie’s wife. She was forty-five, and the criminal databases in Michigan go back only ten years. My parents have associates in different states with whom they trade local information. I dropped by the house, laid out the facts to Mom and Dad, and explained that I wasn’t ready to let this case go. With all the information presented to them—the Harkey angle certainly helped matters—my parents agreed to cover the costs and, more importantly, sanction the investigation, allowing me access to their contacts.
Of course, once I laid out the few but incongruous facts, they couldn’t help but begin offering their own angles. No Spellman can resist yanking on the loose threads that make a mystery, and despite our job’s reputation, we know that mysteries are rare. I believed it was too soon to theorize about the secret that the women shared (which we agreed was the heart of the case) and whether that secret was even the reason behind Harkey’s investigation. But my father cannot resist parlor games, and my mother can’t resist being Dad’s heckling audience. I’ll share with you the least helpful portion of my afternoon:
DAD:
I have an idea.
ISABEL:
Why don’t we hold off on the ideas until we have something to work with?
DAD:
Let’s say Sharon had a marriage before the congressman and Linda was his mistress. When they both discover the other person, they conspire to commit murder. Only years later, the body turns up—
MOM:
[annoyed] Stop. That’s mostly the plot to a movie
3
we watched on cable last week. Remember?
DAD:
No.
MOM:
Remind me to ask Dr. Fisher to do some kind of memory evaluation on you.
ISABEL:
Mom, I hope you see the faulty logic in that.
[Long pause.]
MOM:
Oh, right. I’ll remind myself.
Once our “business” discussion came to a close, I got the lowdown on other family matters. I was delighted to learn that Rae was grounded for three months. Plus, in light of her recent PSAT scandal,
4
Rae’s base
line GPA (a B-minus standard set years ago) was raised to a B-plus. If Rae could not maintain the B-plus average, then she would lose the sort of privileges in the house that make life worth living for a teenager (television, telephone, Internet). And then, if she could not raise her grades after her first warning, she would lose the things that made life worth living for her in particular (anything containing high-fructose corn syrup).
As I was leaving the Spellman household, I announced my zoo excursion to see if I could get any company and also to ensure that my blackmailer knew I was meeting her demands. My dad took me up on my offer, which I regretted almost immediately.
While observing the delightful antics of the lemurs, Dad reminded me that my one-month clock to decide my entire future had ticked down to less than a month. As the giraffes snacked on leaves, Dad mentioned that he’d be willing to work in a retirement plan to sweeten the deal. As the African lion lounged about, which I suppose reminded my father of me, he said, “You can’t just sit around and do nothing all day long.” I then suggested lunch, since I figured the only time I could ensure he wouldn’t be talking was while he was chewing.
After lunch, we spent another hour roaming the grounds, got sort of lost on our way out, argued over who was more responsible for our loss of direction, and when we were finally back in the car without the distractions of caged animals, I kept the conversation under my control. Since I was curious how they were going to handle the upcoming disappearance in light of Rae’s grounding, I asked the obvious question:
“How will you monitor Rae’s grounding when you’re in a different city?”
“David’s spending the weekend at the house with Rae.”
“David?” I asked.
“You know, your brother. The handsome one.”
“Why did you ask him?”
“Your mother thinks David and Rae should spend more time together.”
“Why? Because I’m such a bad influence?”
“You’re not part of the equation, Isabel. Don’t make this about you.”
“It’s just strange that Mom would ask David to spend the weekend when she could ask me.”
“If you think about it, it’s not so strange.”
“Why?” I asked, bracing myself for some new assault on my character.
“Well, the last time you and Rae stayed in the house together, you left a banana in the hall closet.”
“Still with the banana!” I loudly replied.
5
“Three weeks!” my dad shouted. “Isabel, it took us three weeks to identify where the odor was coming from.”
Rather than continue defending myself over an honest mistake, I let the subject drop. No new subjects arose until Dad dropped me at my apartment. Unfortunately, this was very inconvenient for me, since A) it wasn’t my apartment anymore, and B) I didn’t even have the key to the foyer to fake it being my apartment anymore.
“Thanks, Dad. It’s been fun. Tell Mom I wouldn’t mind going to the aquarium next time, if this is thematically the way her blackmail is going to take us.”
“I meant to say something earlier,” my dad said. “I really don’t think your blackmailer is Mom.”
“You might have mentioned that before we spent three hours at the zoo.”
Dad ignored my comment and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.
“I know you’re low on cash,” Dad said, offering me a stack of bills.
“I’m okay,” I replied, waving off the money. (I kind of was okay. Not paying rent really helps, and I did have a small amount of savings beforehand.)
“I know you’re not. Your phone was shut off, which means your Internet was shut off. You can live without a landline, but—”
“Right,” I said, remembering that disconnecting my utilities was a side effect I hadn’t anticipated. Most people were in the habit of using
my cell number. Dad’s one of those people who will call you on every number he’s got.
“Don’t be proud,” my dad said, forcing the money into my hand.
I thanked him quietly and exited the car. Right before I shut the door, I heard, “You’ve got two weeks, Isabel. Two weeks.”
Correction: I had two point five weeks.
(THE WINE COUNTRY)
F
riday afternoon, just after Rae got home from school, my parents packed their car and began the two-hour drive north from San Francisco to Napa Valley.
My mother asked me to keep an eye on Rae during the afternoon while David was still at work. I used this time to make contact with the Detroit PI—Gus Nordvent—to see what information he could come up with on Linda Truesdale. An hour later, Gus phoned me back.
“Your girl has got a record,” Gus said optimistically as soon as I got him on the line. The truth is, PIs love finding dirt. For us, it’s good news. Plus, it makes you feel more justified in getting paid.
“What did she do?” I asked.
“Wrote some bad checks when she was nineteen. A forgery charge when she was twenty. Looks like she was siphoning money from a restaurant where she worked. She’s also got a juvie record, but, you know, that’s sealed.”
“Did she do time?”
“Four months in a minimum security.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“It looks like she’s been a good girl since.”
I hung up the phone and entered the kitchen. Rae sat at the Formica table eating a snack of pretzels and M&M’s, studying a math test she’d gotten back with a score of 68 percent.
“So now you’re throwing all your tests?” I asked.
“No,” Rae replied, staring down at the exam. “I studied for this.”
My sister then excused herself and said she needed a nap. I waited five minutes and circled the perimeter of the house, waiting for her to escape through the window. After ten minutes, I went back inside and tiptoed up the steps, opened her door, and saw her fast asleep. It occurred to me that if I was going to maintain an overnight surveillance on my sister this weekend I, too, needed my rest. I went downstairs and slept on the couch.
A few hours later, I awoke to the jarring sounds of pots and pans clanking in the kitchen. I got off the couch and found Rae ransacking the pantry.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Something to make for dinner.”
“Why don’t you order in?”
“I feel like cooking,” Rae replied.
David unlocked the front door just as I was about to take my leave.
“Warning,” I said, “she’s planning on cooking you dinner.”
“I just ate!” David shouted at the top of his lungs.
Rae exited the kitchen.
“You can go now, Isabel,” Rae said.
“Why are you trying to get rid of me?”
“I don’t need two prison guards,” she replied. Then she turned to David, staring at his un-lawyer-like ensemble, and said, “What are you wearing?”
“I just went to the gym,” David answered, tossing his bag on the couch.
“Are you going to take a shower?” Rae asked.
“What’s it to you?”
“I have a friend coming over for dinner,” she said.
“What friend?” I asked.
“I thought you were leaving,” Rae replied.
And so I left. I returned to my new home without any concern for David’s schedule, had a snack, read the paper, dropped by the bar to borrow Milo’s car, and returned two hours later to begin my stakeout outside the Spellman residence.
2000 hrs
I missed the arrival of Rae’s unfortunate dinner guest. I should have known that the victim of Rae’s cooking would be a surprise, since the usual suspects would never willingly consume a meal prepared by her.
1
The lights and shadows in the foyer and dining area indicated that Rae’s company had not yet departed. However, the identity of the dinner guest was a shock, to say the least. Shortly after nine
P
.
M
., one Maggie Mason exited the Spellman home.
I had not seen or spoken to Maggie since our awkward dinner at Henry’s house. I had considered calling her after I realized my mother was behind her “investigation,” but when Henry told me of their breakup, I couldn’t bring myself to make contact, as if I had to choose sides. I wondered if Rae’s dinner invitation to Maggie was simply her way of retaliating against Henry’s hostile stance. The problem with that theory is that it didn’t explain why David was there.
I maintained my post for two more hours after Maggie’s departure, but all I could see were the shadows of David and my sister watching television in the family room. They were in for the night, so I left. I returned to David’s house, hunted long and hard for parking, and went to bed. Strangely, with David out of the house, I managed to sleep almost five hours straight. When I woke up, I told myself that this was caused by simple exhaustion—I’d been so tired that my body finally relented. I didn’t acknowledge that I slept because my subconscious knew that at least that night I wouldn’t be caught.
Saturday I picked up my surveillance once again, only to spend another night observing my brother and sister watching television together in the family room. I phoned David to see what they had planned for the evening. I felt vaguely pathetic making this call from the cold discomfort of Milo’s overly pine-scented Toyota Camry.
“What’s up, Izzy?” David said upon answering the phone.
“Nothing. Just wanted to see how everything was going.”
“Fine,” David replied. “We’re watching
Trail of the Pink Panther.
”
“What would possess you to do that?”
“Because we watched the rest of the series last night and this is the only one left.”
“But it’s awful,”
2
I said.
“I explained that to Rae,” said David, “but she wanted to see the entire oeuvre. And, to answer your next question, yes, she actually used that word.”
“Did she pronounce it correctly?”
“No. But neither could you.”
“Are you going to watch the whole film?”
“It’s not so bad. David Niven is back. I like him.”
“Who doesn’t?” I replied. “How was last night?”
“Rae just baked some frozen hors d’oeuvres,” he replied.
“You dodged a bullet.”
I was expecting Maggie to come up somewhere in this conversation, but no luck. I played my cards close and didn’t inquire.
“Was there a reason you called?” David asked.
“So, you’re in for the evening?”
“Yes,” David said.
“Okay,” I replied, pausing for an invitation.
“Talk to you later,” David said, and hung up the phone.
From the car I phoned Petra to see what she was up to, but the call went straight to voice mail and then I vaguely remembered that she and Gabe were going to a movie or skateboarding, or whatever it is the kids do for fun these days. Len and Christopher were at the moment onstage in a production of
The Vagina Monologues.
3
I decided to return Milo’s car to the bar. It was a Saturday night, which used to mean a dozen customers and maybe a short wait for a game of pool, and sometimes dead silence because no one put any money in the jukebox. This night, it meant there was one empty bar stool amid a sea of students, the requisite San Francisco hipsters, regulars, and Irish people from god knows where. If I put a song on the jukebox, I wouldn’t hear it until hours later.
Connor and Jimmy tended bar. A young male playing the part of a fop—tweed coat, ascot, pink shirt—sidled up next to me.
“Hello there,” he said, all friendly.
Connor then approached, pulled a letter from beneath the bar, and slid it in front of me. He eyed the fop and said, “Keep moving, friend, she’s all wrong for you.”
The fop didn’t move. Connor smiled, but it didn’t look friendly.
“Move along, now,” he said. And suddenly Connor looked terrifying. The fop did some sort of medieval bow, which looked quite silly. Connor rolled his eyes and turned to me.
“A drink?” he asked, not waiting for a thank-you or anything.
“Why not?” I replied, and then I smiled. I love it when people move along.
Connor poured my whiskey and said, “I coulda sworn I’d go ta my grave without seeing Isabel Spellman smile. Thank you, orgeous.”
For once, I could understand him. Sort of. Wisely, Connor didn’t linger. He, too, moved along and served one of the many customers angling for his attention. I broke the seal on the envelope and opened the letter.
I Said Go To the Museum
Not the Zoo
Go 2 Sfmoma This Week Or
Ur Secret Will B Exposed
The next time Connor passed my way, I asked when the letter had arrived. This one was delivered, not mailed. Connor said it came sometime in the afternoon—after four
P
.
M
. My parents were home packing at that time; Rae was either in school or in her room. While it was possible that one of them was still my blackmailer, I had to rethink matters. Was it possible that David knew?
All at once the noise, the people, and the smell of beer became unpleasant. I left the bar without checking on Milo and went to see the one person who always seemed to be on my mind.
