by Lisa Lutz
“I’ll go to the store,” Maggie said. “Keep watching, Rae. I’ve seen these films at least ten times each.”
“What a complete waste of time,” said Henry.
“Keep your opinions to yourself,” Maggie replied.
“I’ll walk with you,” I said to Maggie. “I could use the air.”
Once outside, it was my plan to inform Maggie of the results of my investigation. I was reluctant to mention it to her since a week had passed without incident. But Maggie had other topics on her mind that day.
“Sometimes he drives me crazy. Always hanging up my sweaters and putting my shoes by the door. All those stupid household rules.”
“Just ignore them. That’s what I do.”
From my perspective, the silence that followed was an awkward one, but I couldn’t speak for her. To be honest—which I’m not all that often, or at least not to the extent that I’m about to be, so do me a favor and don’t expect this kind of honesty in the future—the whole Maggie/Henry relationship was hard on me. The fact that my sister was now making friends with Maggie was even harder. Sure, on some level it made everyone’s life easier, but it also made their relationship (Maggie and Henry’s) seem more permanent. The hardest part of all was that I liked Maggie. I tried not to, but I did. No matter how I turned the situation around in my head, the only solution was for me to get over Henry.
And so, right then and there, I got over him. That was it. I was moving on. Perhaps you don’t believe me. But seriously, I was over him. Like that.
“Nice job solving the Rae situation,” I said, breaking the silence and the debate going on inside my head.
“I learned to speak her language,” Maggie replied.
“Cash, television, and junk food?”
“That’s it.”
I hopped around a puddle and then stepped over a single tennis shoe and a bra.
“What happens on these streets when I’m asleep?” Maggie asked.
“You do not want to know,” I replied.
“Your shoe falls off and you don’t notice? You decide one shoe is enough?”
“Maybe you find a better pair of shoes,” I suggested.
“But why is there only one?”
“The other is probably kicked in a drain somewhere.”
“One of many possibilities,” she said, seeming distracted by much more than used personal items.
Then it was time to break it to her. “It was Rae,” I said. “The person who ran the credit check and asked the weird questions was Rae. Premeditation, of course. You’ve got nothing to worry about now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Aren’t you relieved?” I asked.
“No, actually. I’m not,” Maggie said, furrowing her brow and looking more than concerned.
“Why not?” I inquired.
“Rae may have been behind the phone calls and credit check, but now I’m being followed, or at least I think I’m being followed. Maybe not. I’m not sure,” Maggie said, sounding as if she was beginning to doubt her sanity.
“What kind of car?” I asked, already cataloguing the family vehicles.
“I think an SUV one time and the other time a gray sedan. It was at night. I could only see headlights, really. Rae only drives your mother’s Honda, right?”
It wasn’t Rae. That was obvious. Suddenly Maggie’s troubles seemed more troubling.
“Have you received any threats?”
“Nothing like that. Not yet, at least.”
“Do you have any idea who it might be?” I asked, happy to refocus my mental energy.
“Not exactly. But I defend a lot of criminals, so the suspect pool is deep,” Maggie replied.
“The next time something happens, give me a call. In the meantime, try to come up with a list of potential suspects from your client base and maybe we’ll start looking into them.”
“Thanks, Isabel. Let’s keep this between you and me, if you know what I mean,” Maggie said. Translation: Don’t tell Henry.
“No problem.”
Maggie and I returned to Stone’s residence equipped with an afternoon’s worth of movie-watching junk food. I decided to join in on the rest of the film festival since I couldn’t think of anything better to do that day. Plus, I really enjoyed the look of disappointment on Henry’s face when he realized that he could not enforce the Reading Rule 3 on a party including two full-grown adult women. Four hours later (revisiting The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark reaffirmed my opinion that the latter is far superior; Rae agreed, being particularly fond of Clouseau’s houseboy, Kato 4 ), as my eyes adjusted to something other than a television screen, Henry pulled a wool coat from his closet.
“You left this here last week,” he said, handing it to me.
“Thanks,” I replied, looking it over.
“A couple of the buttons were about to come loose,” he said. “I fixed them.”
Indeed he did. I turned to Maggie when Henry was out of earshot. “That, my friend, is how it is done.”
Four hours after Henry’s original phone call, I accomplished the task originally asked of me: I extracted Rae from his residence.
On the ride home (Rae had taken the bus to Henry’s place), Rae turned to me with an oddly apologetic expression.
“I like Maggie,” Rae said. “There, I said it. I’m sorry. But I can’t help it. She’s just my kind of person.”
“I like her, too,” I replied.
“You do?”
“She’s great. What’s not to like?”
“I’m confused,” said Rae. “Aren’t you jealous? Because Mom says you got a thing for Henry.”
“First of all, Rae, you keep that to yourself or I will make your life a living hell. And second of all, sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to.”
“I don’t know about that. Things usually work out exactly the way I want them to,” Rae said with more conviction than you could possibly imagine.
SPELLMAN TROUBLES
A s I exited David’s house to make my shift at the Philosopher’s Club, two men approached, one in a suit and tie and the other in a cardigan over a button-down shirt. Both were well groomed and appeared professional, except the man in the cardigan wore an extremely flashy pinky ring, which I found distracting and incongruous.
Pinky Ring Guy did the talking.
“Hi there. Is David home?”
“Are you a friend of his?” I asked.
“I’d say we’re friends,” Pinky Ring Guy said, although he didn’t sound all that friendly. “Are you David’s friend?”
“I’m his sister,” I coldly replied. Something wasn’t right about these guys, especially the one with the pinky ring. Actually, I had no business forming an opinion about the suited guy, since he hardly spoke. I could fault him for the company he kept, however.
“I didn’t know David had a sister,” Pinky Ring Guy said.
“You must not know him very well. Listen, I got to run. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Know when David will be back?”
“Nope,” I replied.
“Tell him Joe’s looking for him.”
“Joe who?” (Always try to get a last name.)
“He’ll know,” Apparently Joe said. “
Nice meeting you, sweetheart.”
The two suspicious gentlemen walked away, although they appeared, oddly, to be on foot, making it impossible to take down a license plate. On my way to the Philosopher’s Club I left a detailed message for David on his voice mail. And then I killed the rest of the afternoon serving drinks and concocting theories about my brother’s relationship with Apparently Joe. Until my dad walked in, that is.
I served Dad his usual glass of middling red wine and waited for him to file some kind of verbal complaint against me. Instead, he picked up a discarded newspaper and pretended to read it. I knew he was pretending because his eyes met only the headline. Eventually he put down the newspaper and spoke.
“One of Rae’s instructors accused her of cheating on the practice SAT. And another teacher supported her accuser,” Dad said, seeming genuinely troubled.
“On what grounds?”
“That Rae is a mediocre student and nothing in her academic history would support her having scored that high.”
“How does someone even cheat on the PSATs anymore? And why cheat on a test that’s just a trial run for the real thing?”
“I don’t know. They think she’s clever enough to cheat with her access to surveillance gadgets, but not smart enough to score in the ninety-fifth percentile.”
“What does Rae say?”
“Nothing. She won’t confirm or deny.”
“What do you mean she’s not confirming or denying?”
“It’s hard to explain,” my dad replied, although he did try to paraphrase some of Rae’s reactions to the accusations. But it’s probably best if you hear it from the source. I’ll get to that shortly.
After my dad finished his wine, he slipped five dollars on the counter and said, “You want to have lunch next week, Isabel?”
“Why?” I asked.
“No reason.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously, Isabel. I’m just asking you to lunch.”
“There’s got to be an angle.”
“Forget it. Have a nice evening, Izzy.”
Dad left. An hour later Rae arrived. I served her a ginger ale and tried to get to the bottom of the situation.
“Did you cheat on the SATs?”
“The PSATs,” 1 she corrected me.
“Answer the question.”
“Where are you getting your information?”
“Dad.”
“Interesting,” Rae replied.
“So?” I asked, leading once again back to the original question.
“I’m sorry. Where were we?”
“Why have you been accused of cheating?”
“Why is anyone ever accused of anything?”
“Why are you talking like this?”
“Like what?” she replied.
Out of frustration, I resorted to an ultimatum. “If you don’t answer my question, I’m going to ask you to leave.”
Rae finished her drink in a single gulp and left a dollar on the bar.
“Don’t expect a tip,” she said as she made her exit.
An hour later my mother called on her cell phone. In the most venomous tone, she said, “The next time your father asks you to lunch, you say yes.” Then she hung up on me.
The rest of the day I had only one thought in my mind: Is this really my life?
CASE #001
CHAPTER 4
T o the naked eye, Linda Black wasn’t doing anything wrong. But she must have been doing something to have two private investigators following her. I decided against telling Ernie about my latest information. I kept an eye on the blue Nissan’s whereabouts over the next few days. If Bob’s car was idling outside of Ernie’s muffler shop or home, I wouldn’t bother leaving the house, but on the rare occasion Linda (followed by Bob) ventured somewhere else, I’d pick up the tail. Other than the bank, lunch with a local female friend (not Sharon), and a trip to the library (where Linda used the computer but did not check out any books), the only location Mrs. Black visited was a mailbox center to check her mail.
I called Ernie that evening to ask about the rented mailbox.
“What rented mailbox?”
So Ernie didn’t know about the mailbox. Ernie also couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation for why his wife might require the mailbox. It occurred to me that his wife might have some financial issues that she was hiding from him. I asked Ernie who handled their finances. Linda, of course. He didn’t know how his business would have survived without her. Ernie was floored by the mailbox discovery. But his mind was still on Linda having an affair, so he molded this new information to fit his fears.
“Maybe she’s using the PO box to communicate with her lover,” Ernie said.
“Probably not.”
I tried to get Ernie interested in the money situation, but he wasn’t. Since I wasn’t ready to inform Ernie about the second investigation on his wife, I asked for Linda’s Social Security number and date of birth and offered to do a quick check on her finances. He didn’t see what that had to do with anything, but I pushed and he agreed.
And that’s how I learned that Ernie and Linda were not legally married. This took a few days to confirm. Linda Black’s credit reports bore the name Linda Truesdale—according to Ernie, his wife’s maiden name. Also according to Ernie, this was Linda’s first marriage. But since Ernie wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, or at least not the most suspicious, I decided to check their marriage license, which should contain each party’s birth name, location of birth, and previous marital history.
I phoned Ernie to verify the location of his wedding. They traveled a short distance up the coast, stayed at a beach hotel in Marin County, and were married by one of Linda’s friends, who just happened to be a minister of the Universal Life Church. 1 The wedding took place in Marin County, but there was no record in Marin. The couple lived in San Mateo County. There was no record in San Mateo County. In between San Mateo and Marin you will find San Francisco County. No record there.
I phoned Ernie again to see if maybe I had misunderstood him.
“Ernie, when you say that you’re married, do you mean you’re married in the legal sense, or that in your heart you’re married, or that you’re married in the common law sense of the word?”
“I mean I’m legally married with a marriage license and all that stuff.”
“Could you get me a copy of your marriage license, Ernie?”
“I’m sure it’s around somewhere.”
“How about your tax returns?”
“Linda handles all that.”
“But you should still have access to them, right?”
“I’m sure I could get that stuff for you, but why?”
“It’s important, Ernie. I’ll explain later. Just bring whatever you can by the bar sometime this week, okay?”
Two days later, Ernie dropped by in the afternoon. I served him club soda with a splash of whiskey. He’s not an afternoon drinker, he informed me, as if I would consider that a credit to his character.
Ernie had never been a fan of paperwork, filing, government documents, or proofs of existence. Ernie liked working on cars, buying suits, and taking short vacations in which relaxation—not education or experience—was the key ingredient. Ernie was a simple, likable man. He was probably even a very good husband, or at least was try
ing to be, based on the ridiculous literature he carried with him. (The latest tome under his arm was How to Make Women Happy Even If It Makes You Miserable: A Guide for Men. ) He was also the kind of husband one could easily dupe if one were in the business of duping husbands.
My client had only an hour to visit with me while Linda was running the shop. Ernie ran home and pulled every file from their file cabinet and brought it to the bar. I told him to chat with Milo while I perused the box. The most significant piece of paper that he pulled for me was a marriage license. It looked legitimate enough on the surface; in fact, it was—or had been once. It would be difficult to prove, but what I was holding in my hands was a doctored copy of a marriage license, with the names and dates changed to fit the parties involved. This document surely existed for Ernie’s benefit alone and therefore required minimal effort to create. I didn’t say anything to Ernie at the time. How do you tell a man who thinks he’s been married for five years that he’s not married at all? I’m all for the sport of uncovering bad news, but I’ve never enjoyed being the bearer of it. For the time being I would keep my silence. I searched through the rest of the box to see what else I could find.
The tax returns were enlightening. Ernie and Linda filed separately. As an employee at Ernie’s muffler shop, Linda received a W-2. A legitimate-looking W-2 sat in the file, but it was under Linda’s maiden name, Truesdale. It seemed safe to question Ernie on the financial matters. I interrupted him and Milo, who were in the midst of griping about Sunday’s game.
“Ernie, why do you and Linda file separate tax returns?”
“Linda has had some credit problems in the past and wanted to limit my liability. Something about the IRS coming after my business.”
“Did Linda legally change her name from Truesdale to Black?”
“No. I mean, people call her Mrs. Black, but on her driver’s license her name is Truesdale. She said she couldn’t deal with all the paperwork of a name change.”