The Last Word (16 page)

I took a pad of paper off of his desk. “Give me her name and address and I’ll let
you close the deal.”

“You’re so crude.”

Edward reluctantly jotted down Lenore Parker’s information and passed me the slip
of paper.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said on my way out of the office.

“Was there a purpose to your visit?” Edward asked as an afterthought.

“I was going to debrief you on Divine Strategies. But mostly I was avoiding a playdate.”

From the foyer, I shouted my adieu to Lenore.

“Sorry to interrupt your evening. Nice meeting you.”

“I hope our next visit isn’t so brief,” Lenore politely lied.

“Me too,” I said.

•  •  •

Thursday afternoon, I returned to the Spellman compound, which was abandoned except
for D.

When my parents are in the house, there’s an ineffable energy, a vibration. You always
know where they are. You’d think snoops would have more stealth, but my parents, especially,
seem to have lead feet when they’re at home. My point is, within a few minutes of
arriving at Spellman Central, I could sense that the unit was out.

“Where is everyone?” I asked D.

“Your parents left around ten and Vivien was here for an hour filling out her time
sheets and then she got a call and left.”

On my desk was a stack of pleasantly surprising paperwork. My mother had entered all
the time sheets and generated the client bills, a chore she hadn’t performed in over
five months. On top of that was a check from someone named Marshall Greenblatt for
two thousand dollars.

“Have you seen Rae?” I asked.

“She was in this morning to drop off the check.”

“Do you know anything about this Marshall Greenblatt?”

“She mentioned another case to Vivien, but I don’t know anything.”

“I think you know something.”

“I think the muffins are ready,” D said, strolling into the kitchen.

I followed him to see if I could extract any more information or at least get a muffin
out of it.

“D, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head and I’m not here all of the time. If
something is going on that I need to know about, I would appreciate it if you told
me.”

“Do you know what happens to snitches in prison?” D asked.

“I don’t know, but this isn’t prison. So those rules don’t apply here. Out of curiosity,
what does happen to snitches? Do they get their tongues cut out?”

“It was more of a rhetorical question. I don’t want to get into it.”

“Then you shouldn’t have brought it up. Do we understand each other? This is not prison.”

“Muffin?”

“See? The opposite of prison. Thank you. Ouch.” I probably should have waited for
the muffin to cool and Demetrius probably should have waited to offer until the muffin
cooled. “Do you know where my parents are?”

“I have no idea where Al and Olivia are,” D said assertively, which, in contrast to
his lack of assertion about Rae’s activities, led me to believe he knew much more
than what he was saying. At least about my sister.

Just then the doorbell rang. I opened the door.

“Fred Finkel, computer repairman, at your service,” Fred Finkel said.

Fred is Rae’s boyfriend. There are many things to recommend Fred. In fact, his only
apparent flaw is his affection for my sister.

“Fred, nice to see you. What are you doing here?”

“I’m fixing your computers.”

“You can do that sort of thing?”

“I can do a lot of things,” he said.

“Be my guest,” I said, leading him into the office.

An hour later, Fred had a diagnosis.

“You’ve got the Remlu virus. I installed new antivirus software and defragmented all
the computers. You should do that every month. Should be fine now.”

“What do I owe you?” I asked.

“Fifty for my time, and Rae said I couldn’t leave without the oatmeal cookies.”

Just then D entered the office and delivered a giant Tupperware container of cookies
as if Fred had phoned in a preorder.

I wrote Fred a check and he and his cookies departed. I turned to D and asked the
obvious question.

“Does my sister have something on you?”

“We have a mutually beneficial business arrangement,” D said.

•  •  •

Once again, the unit had been out all day and returned home sometime in the afternoon.
Instead of loitering in the kitchen or dropping by the office to watch other people
work, which they sometimes did for fun, and often included some schoolyard mockery,
they went straight to their bedroom.

I removed my shoes and tiptoed up the stairs, hoping to catch a few scraps from their
private conversation. I knelt down by their bedroom door and caught only a few phrases
out of context.

“I didn’t like him,” Mom said. “I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Now you’re the expert.”

“This is serious. It’s not something you take lightly.”

As I was shifting weight on my legs, the floorboards creaked.

“Is somebody out there?” my mother asked.

I stood up straight and knocked on their door.

“Come in,” said Dad.

“Hi,” I said.

“Good afternoon, Isabel. Did you see I left the billing for you?” my mother said.

“Yes. Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“I’ll take care of the payroll this evening,” Mom said.

“You will?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything wrong with working during the day, like normal people?”

“Are you suggesting that people who work a swing shift aren’t normal?”

“Is it that you don’t want to be in the office with me?” I asked.

“I think we’ve earned the right to make our own hours,” Mom said.

“Where were you this morning?”

Dad hoisted himself off the bed and escorted me out of their room.

“I need a nap,” he said. “Try to keep it down, if you don’t mind.”

He shut the door before I could make any further inquiries. While I was desperately
in need of their help and grateful for it, their motivations didn’t sit right with
me. It wasn’t a complete turnaround, but their sudden agreeability struck me as uncharacteristic.
Considering the level our battle had reached, it seemed likely that they had a few
more airstrikes to make.

And what the hell were they whispering about?

When I returned to my desk, I found a suspicious business card sitting atop the stack
of suspicious paperwork. Despite the company name in our house design, it was not
company issued.

Spellman Investigations

Rae Spellman, Conflict Resolution Specialist

Instead of including the company phone number or address, the card contained Rae’s
cell number and a PO box address in the Mission District.

As far as I knew, only one person had been in the office since I left.

I held up the card and said, “D, where did this come from?”

“I have no idea,” D said, not turning away from his computer monitor.

“You were the only person in this office since I left.”

“Maybe you didn’t see it the first time around,” D said.

“What is a conflict resolution specialist?”

“That is an interesting question,” D said. “Something worth pondering.”

I approached Vivien’s desk and looked for anything that was in plain view. I certainly
wasn’t the type of employer who would go through an employee’s desk or read her e-mails
(which are fair game in the corporate world), but it was absolutely my right to pick
up the file folder labeled
Greenblatt, Marshall
(of two-thousand-dollar-check fame) and see what was inside.

I returned to my desk and perused the file, only to find myself more perplexed than
when I didn’t have the data. The entire case file contained newspaper and magazine
clippings of astrological forecasts for the last two weeks. It also included photocopies
from books on astrology, summarizing the essential traits of each sign. Several sections
were highlighted, with no discernible pattern. There was only one other piece of paper
in the file, a page from a legal notepad, handwritten in Rae’s distinct script with
a date from two weeks ago, the name Yvonne LaPlante, and the word
Aquarius
underlined three times below her name.

I showed the file to D.

“Does this make any sense to you?”

“No,” he calmly replied. “But nothing that girl does makes a whole lot of sense to
me.”

As if on cue, Rae phoned the office.

“Now that I’m back in the fold, so to speak,” she said, “the company financials are
a little more interesting to me. I’m concerned about your accounting system.”

I could hear the finger quotes around the word
system
over the phone line.

“What’s your concern?” I asked.

“Mom is under the impression that I have loaned the company money. She thinks we’re
underwater.”

“We’re fine. I’ve been checking the bank balance almost every day.”

“Who is GLD Inc.?” Rae asked.

“That was the large deposit about a month ago?” I asked.

“Exactly ten grand. Over three weeks ago.”

“I thought it was how Zylor Corporation wired money into the account,” I said. “I
thought it was a retainer.”

“Zylor has always written checks, and in what fantasy world of yours do they pay ten
thousand dollars a pop?” Rae said.

There is a particular circle of hell reserved for being shamed by your younger sibling.

“I don’t know. I guess I had a lot to do, and since the checks weren’t bouncing—”

“Izzy, I got news for you. That ten grand is not ours. We can’t touch it. I’m going
to deposit a loan from my own funds, so that we don’t get in trouble when the bank
wants it back. And they are going to want it back. Then I’m going to take over the
bookkeeping responsibilities, for which you’re going to pay me twenty-five dollars
an hour, which is really fair. Okay?”

“Okay. Can you do me a favor and not tell Mom and Dad?”

“Deal. And, one day, I might ask a favor of you . . .”

“Nothing with you is free,” I said as I hung up the phone.

•  •  •

Apparently, along with a company apartment, Edward Slayter issues a company car. And
a nice one.
³
I tried to arrange a neutral meeting location or a convenient intersection or bus
stop where I was happy to await his carriage, but Damien insisted on an at-home pickup.
I was going to use the office, but my mother kicked me out at six, so I texted my
brother’s address to Damien.

David, Maggie, and Sydney were in the middle of dinner, which calmed my nerves about
any flash babysitting scenario. David offered me a glass of wine, which I accepted,
but then made it clear he should not make the same offer to Damien.

“Who is this Damien?” Maggie asked.

“He’s Mr. Slayter’s new chief counsel.”

“A lawyer. Is he young? Is he cute?”

“That’s a subjective question.”

“That’s a yes,” Maggie said.

“No, it’s not like that. I’m showing him around the city and mostly I’m trying to
make sure that he’s someone Edward can trust.”

“I really must compliment you on your ability to lie to yourself,” said David.

“Thank you,” I said.

David stood up from the table, put his napkin on his chair, and walked over to the
front door. He waited exactly five seconds. The doorbell rang. I raced to the door
to intercept my brother, but it was too late. He was already shaking Damien’s hand.

“David Spellman, Isabel’s brother. A pleasure to meet you. Please come in. Can I offer
you a drink? We have everything.”

“We have to go,” I said.

“Hi, I’m Maggie.” You don’t need me to tell you who said that, right?

They shook hands and then Sydney was formally introduced.

Then people started stating their professions, as they do, and I realized I was outnumbered.
David suggested that Sydney was a likely future lawyer or doctor.

“Or a truck stop waitress,” I suggested.

Damien thought he should go to the source and said, “Sydney, what do you want to be
when you grow up?”

“A princess,” Sydney said.

“Good luck with that,” I said (to Sydney).

Sydney perhaps didn’t understand the content of my snide remark, but she grasped the
tone and responded with her usual two-word retort, “No Izzy.”

“Do you want a time-out?” Maggie asked.

“No. We’re going to drink elsewhere,” I said, tugging on Damien’s wrist.

My brother patted Damien on the back as he walked him to the door, as if they were
old college buddies. Then he leaned in conspiratorially and said, “Watch your back.”

•  •  •

Damien wanted a tour of the city. I wanted to drive the fancy car. Reluctantly, he
handed over the keys. Like any good tour guide, I began with locations associated
with our most infamous crimes. We drove past the St. Francis Hotel, where Fatty Arbuckle
came to celebrate his one-million-dollar contract and ended up getting accused of
rape and murder. Three trials later, he was exonerated and then blacklisted. My dad
used to shake his head and gaze disappointedly at the sky and say, “It would never
have happened to a thin guy.” Then we drove to the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre.
I’m not sure who runs it now, but not the Mitchell brothers. Their business partnership
ended tragically when Jim Mitchell shot Artie Mitchell, although the shooting happened
in Marin. There’s no point in driving to Marin unless you live there.

“Do you want to see the bank that Patty Hearst and the SLA held up? But it’s not a
bank anymore. In fact, I don’t think there’s anything there but an empty building,
maybe.”

“I think we can skip it.”

Since I’d seen Damien drink coffee, I pointed out the civic center location of Blue
Bottle Coffee,
⁴
which is so tucked away you’d think they were giving you a dime bag with your morning
brew. I told him where to find hookers and which kind if he was so inclined. Then
he suggested we get out of this part of town, which bordered the red-light district,
and asked if there was a place with a view. There’s always Twin Peaks, but Damien
seemed like a museum guy and I’d heard (from Edward Slayter) that the tower at the
de Young Museum was open some nights.