Revenge of the Spellmans

by Lisa Lutz

  Ernie was asking the wrong person that question. I didn’t know what to say. The case might have been over for him, but it wasn’t for me.

  “If you want me to stop, I’ll stop. 1 But I’d like to continue the investigation just a little longer.”

  “Is there some new angle you’re looking at?” Ernie asked.

  “Sharon Bancroft. Something about her isn’t right.”

  “You’re not charging me to investigate the congressman’s wife, are you?”

  “Of course not. The rest of this is free of charge. It’s just to satisfy my own curiosity.”

  “Do what you want,” Ernie said. “Just let me know if you find out something that really matters.”

  “Thanks, Ernie. Do me a favor. The next time it seems like your wife is planning on meeting with Sharon, let me know.”

  “Sure,” Ernie replied. “I’ve always had a funny feeling about that one.”

  “Don’t forget,” I said, and hung up.

  I spent that evening at Morty and Ruth’s house helping them pack. Gabe and Petra had arrived hours earlier and had already packed up all the books, tchotchkes, and family photos from the living room. The new couple was in the inseparable stage. While in normal relationship terms it was too soon for Petra to meet the grandparents, because Morty and Ruth would be en route to Florida within the week, Gabe couldn’t resist an introduction.

  I found Morty and Ruth in their bedroom, downsizing his winter wardrobe. Ruth put a black cashmere/wool blend overcoat in a donation pile by the door.

  “That’s my favorite coat,” Morty said.

  “It never dips below sixty degrees there,” said Ruth. “You won’t need it.”

  “So I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a sauna. We’ll never even vacation someplace cool?”

  Morty picked the coat off the pile and put it back on the bed. I watched them from the doorway.

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “Isabel,” she said. “Thank god you’re here. I need a cup of tea. Listen, Morty has to cut out all the winter clothes from his wardrobe. We’ve been fighting all day. Talk some sense into him, okay?”

  Ruth didn’t wait for a reply; she simply exited the room. Morty rolled his eyes and gave me a look that I read as This is all your fault.

  Morty opened his sweater drawer and said, “If I run the air conditioner really high, I can probably make use of some of these.”

  I wasn’t willing to push Morty to the brink, so I agreed. I told him to lose half the drawer and then he was done. While Morty picked through and sorted his favorite sweaters, I scanned his ties and told him which ones had to go (for aesthetic reasons, not atmospheric ones). We’d been working in somber silence for about fifteen minutes when Morty stopped what he was doing and made what I hoped would be his final complaint to me before his departure.

  “Oh, and thanks a lot for the shiksa with the tattoos,” he said, rather annoyed.

  “I’ve known her for years, Morty. I can vouch for her.” 2

  “What’s that crazy-looking thing above her eye?”

  “It’s just like an earring, but it’s in her eyebrow instead,” I replied, trying to make it sound as ordinary as possible.

  Morty shook his head in sad disappointment. “I don’t get you kids today. I just don’t.”

  A few more minutes of silence passed. My friend’s distaste for the task at hand was becoming toxic.

  “Morty, there’s no way around this. You know that, right?”

  The old man looked up at me, lost. “Yes,” he said, and then quickly looked away.

  “Find a way to be okay with it.”

  A few hours later, we all went to eat at a local Chinese restaurant. Morty ordered all the foods that Ruthy usually forbids and she said not one word.

  “How’s the kung pao?” I asked.

  “Deadly,” Gabe replied.

  “Pass the kung pao,” said Morty.

  I guess Morty still hadn’t found a way.

  Petra offered to give me a ride home as we were leaving the restaurant, but I turned her down. Since we were both, in theory, heading in the same direction, this raised some suspicion.

  “Why don’t you want to take a ride from me?” Petra asked.

  “I feel like walking,” I replied. I’m not known for the taking of exercise, but walking was as good an excuse as any.

  “Really?” Petra replied skeptically.

  “Yes,” I said, fully committing to my act. “I need some fresh air.” Then I committed even further and began walking.

  After about ten minutes—when I was certain that all relevant parties had returned to their cars and evacuated the near premises—I hopped on the bus. It wasn’t air I needed but a nice, long bus nap. I rode the Geary bus to the financial district and waited for the bus driver to wake me at the end of the line. Then I grabbed a cab to go home. No, this was hardly an economical form of travel, but at least I got some rest.

  The cab dropped me on the corner of Jackson and Leavenworth, where my notes indicated my car was last seen. I roamed the streets looking for its new location. I found it on Clay and Jones, jotted down the location on my notepad, pulled the tape from the hidden camera (under a blanket in the trunk), and walked the five blocks back to David’s and my home.

  As I approached our street, I turned right around, since he was standing on his front porch, chatting with a male I recognized as a neighbor. Based on the noise level coming from David’s place, he was having a barbecue or a party or something (and I wasn’t invited!). As far as I could tell, at least a dozen people were loitering in the vicinity of the house. I had two choices: A) pretend I was in the neighborhood and crash the party, or B) go somewhere else.

  SOMEWHERE ELSE

  I finally got that walk I had been lying about. I arrived at the Spellman residence twenty minutes later to a scene of courtroomlike drama. My mother, my father, and Rae sat around the dining room table in stony silence.

  “Hi,” I said, after I let myself in through the front door.

  My friendly hello was met with mumbled greetings.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, still all friendly.

  The three parties involved in the sober proceedings stared at one another, as if not sure how to proceed.

  “We’re having a family meeting,” my mother said.

  Normally the words “family meeting” fill me with an unnatural dread, but normally family meetings are in my honor. Since I crashed this meeting, clearly I was living in that delightful off-the-radar territory. I cheerily sat down, looking forward to whatever kind of dirt might surface.

  Mom and Dad glanced at me awkwardly and asked if maybe I could wait in another room for a few minutes until they were done.

  I remembered that I had the videotape to watch and so I escaped into the office, snapped the tape into my parents’ camera, and hooked it up to a computer. I had approximately twenty-four hours of low-quality video of my empty driver’s seat to watch, or however much time passed between when I set up the camera and my car thief broke in. I ran the tape at a high-speed fast-forward that would skip hours at a time. Once I saw the car’s location change, I watched the tape in rewind mode until I caught my culprit. I then watched the tape in real time with the sound on.

  Rae, using a regular old key—she must have had a spare made—entered my vehicle and immediately made a call on her cell:

&
nbsp; RAE: Hi, it’s me. I just got to the car. Izzy must have some rich new boyfriend that she’s keeping secret. She keeps parking around Russian Hill. I’m about ten minutes out. I’ll be there in, like, fifteen. Who’s drunk already? Madison? She’s always drunk.

  As the tape continued to roll, I watched Rae drive to a residence somewhere in the Avenues, then get out of the car. Two hours later, she returned to the car with three very drunk teenagers in tow. I watched my sister proceed to drive the first two semiconscious adolescents home and then pull the car to the side of the road while the third one presumably vomited. (The vomiting was off camera, but my sister’s comment, “Make sure all your puke ends up outside the car,” clued me in.) The rest of the action on the tape consisted of Rae collecting money for her chauffeuring services, driving back to the vicinity of her original theft, and approximately thirty-five minutes of hunting for a parking space. I disconnected the camera from the computer, returned it to my bag, and exited the office to find my parents now seated alone at the dining room table.

  “Where’s Rae?” I asked, ready for a fight. “I need to speak with her.”

  “She’s upstairs, beginning what will be a very lengthy grounding,” said my mother.

  “What did she do?” I asked, my edge quieted a bit by the news of Rae’s punishment.

  “I still can’t believe it,” said my dad, shaking his head.

  “We should just be grateful that these were practice tests and nothing will go on her permanent record,” said Mom.

  “Hello. I’m still here,” I said.

  “Rae’s PSAT scores came in. They dropped by twenty-five percent.”

  “She cheated?” I asked.

  “So it seems,” my mother replied.

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  My father shook his head again and again. “She won’t say. Says she’s willing to accept whatever punishment we dole out, but she won’t reveal how she did it.”

  My mom appeared the most distressed. Her recent dreams of Rae’s Ivy League education had come crashing to the ground. This new piece of information, illuminating yet another level of my sister’s deceptions, left me dumbfounded. I would have to do some plotting before I could confront my sister. It was time to make my exit.

  “You okay, Mom?” I asked.

  “She’s getting worse.”

  I felt sympathy and a touch of vindication. Rae has always been a volatile personality, but my parents let most of her questionable behavior slip through the cracks because, well, she was never as obviously bad as I was. But my rebellion was different; it was loud, obscene, and easy to recognize in both its motivation and expression. It seemed that the Unit was finally waking up to the potential troubles that lay in my sister’s future. I could feel the crackdown coming.

  As I was putting on my coat, my father said to my mother, “Should we cancel our disappearance?” 1

  “Definitely not,” Mom replied.

  “What disappearance?” I asked.

  “We were planning a weekend in wine country,” my dad replied.

  “Al, we’ll figure something out. But I am not canceling that disappearance for her,” Mom said.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Dad said as he walked me to the door.

  “Tell me you took care of Harkey,” Dad whispered in a conspiratorial tone.

  “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You quit, right?” he said.

  “I quit. I swear.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied.

  “I hope you’re thinking about what we talked about.”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “Time is running out, Isabel. I want a decision.”

  “No problem. ‘Decision’ is my middle name,” I said, sounding like a lunatic.

  “Maybe next week we can have lunch.”

  “You still own a refrigerator, right?”

  “One month. Use that time wisely.”

  Oh, I would.

  I exited the house without relaying my recent discovery of Rae’s car theft and return. There were lessons that my sister needed to be taught—lessons that would require careful planning. I had only one place to turn.

  NEW INFORMATION

  I walked up to Van Ness and Clay Street and hailed a cab to Henry Stone’s place. I arrived shortly after ten P.M. to find a man in his PJs and a robe (not unlike Morty’s recent habitual ensemble).

  Henry looked surprised when he opened the door.

  “Isabel,” he said.

  “Good, you remember me,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” Henry asked.

  “A number of things,” I replied.

  “For instance?” he said.

  “I thought you were the one with the manners.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are we going to have this entire conversation in the foyer?”

  “Is it going to be an entire conversation?” Henry said, finally turning back into his apartment, allowing my entrance.

  “Can I offer you some herbal tea?” Henry asked.

  “Sure, if you spike it with whiskey.”

  Henry decided not to bother with the kettle and poured two thimbleful glasses of whiskey. When he sat down on his couch next to me, I noticed that his gaze seemed a bit hazy, his bearing shaky.

  “You look tired,” I said.

  “I worked a double shift yesterday,” he replied. “Haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”

  “I’ll get to the point,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Rae has been driving my car without my permission,” I said.

  “Is that all?”

  “And she cheated on the PSATs,” I added, thinking, Isn’t grand theft auto enough?

  “She cheated on the PSATs,” Henry repeated in a dull, annoyed tone.

  “Do you want me to come back after you’ve had some rest?”

  “You people cannot be this clueless,” Henry said, closing his eyes.

  “Excuse me?”

  “She didn’t cheat, Isabel.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “No. She didn’t,” Henry said. “She threw the test.”

  “Huh?”

  “She threw it, you numbskull. The original numbers were right.”

  “Are you sure? And make that the last time you call me a numbskull.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Do you remember how many hours of SAT prep I did with that tyrant? I know what she’s capable of, in both the good and the evil senses. When your parents started pushing the idea of a four-year university and forgoing the family business, she didn’t like it and took action.”

  “Wow. This is some piece of information you have for me.”

  “Honestly,” said Henry. “These days I don’t like that kid so much.”

  Henry and I sat in a comfortable silence. In some other story, this would be when the heroine confesses her undying love. But, if you’ve been paying attention, I’m not exactly comfortable with expressing, considering, or even recognizing my own emotional landscape. But you have to agree, I took a step in the right direction. I invited Henry to be my accomplice in my sting operation against Rae, which
is not unlike asking someone out on a date. If you think about it.

  “Someone needs to teach her a lesson,” I said. “Are you in?”

  “I’m so in,” Henry replied.

  THE RANSOM

  PART III

  H enry needed sleep, so I left shortly after our plan was hatched. It was still too early to safely return to David’s place, so I took yet another cab to the Philosopher’s Club. It was packed with a postcollegiate crowd, in stark contrast to the few old regulars who usually show up in the afternoon. It had been a month since my firing, which from a purely business perspective seemed to have been a good idea. I had to give the Irishman credit; he was doing something right, although what, exactly, escaped me.

  “Allo orgeous,” he said when I sat down at the only empty bar stool. “Aht an eye etcha?”

  “Guinness,” I replied, hoping the conversation would end then and there.

  As Connor pulled my pint, he reached under the bar and handed over an envelope addressed to me. I opened it and struggled to read in the dim light of the bar. Connor saw the effort I was making, and after he served my drink, he held a small flashlight over the paper. He certainly had a gift for customer service, not that the note improved my drinking experience. My blackmailer was at it again.

  If U Would Like 2

  Keep Ur Secret Go 2 Sfmoma

  This Weekend

  A brochure for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art was also enclosed, along with a Muni map and explicit directions. I wasn’t too worried, since I figured that my mother had bigger troubles and I might be able to negotiate this down to a slightly more desirable activity. I would call Mom in the morning to discuss.

  I returned the letter to my bag and consulted my beer for answers. An oversized ex–frat boy with a booming voice began ordering for his posse of friends. I was in no mood for anything, especially loud people shouting into my ear, so I turned to Connor and asked him if Milo was in. Connor said something that didn’t sound anything at all like “He’s in the office,” but I took that to be the gist. I slipped away from the bar and knocked on Milo’s door.