Lisa Lutz Spellman Series E-Book Box Set: The Spellman Files, Curse of the Spellmans, Revenge of the Spellmans, The Spellmans Strike Again

by Lutz, Lisa

  “So, how was your marriage? Were you having any difficulties?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask any questions,” Henry said on the other end of the line.

  “We had our troubles just like anybody else, but we were working on them,” Davis replied.

  “I just wish I knew what was going on,” I said.

  “Me too,” Davis said.

  “Why can’t you just do this the easy way?” Henry asked.

  “It’s a mystery,” I replied.

  Davis probably thought I was rambling like those people who can’t stand long silences do. He ignored me, although I sensed his agitation was growing. What I wanted was for Henry to spill the dirt. I wanted to know who this man was that I was sharing a car with, this man who was apparently evil.

  Henry decided to enlighten me: “You left clues about your investigation all along. I won’t go into the details now, but I had enough evidence to look at it with fresh eyes. Rae told me about the GPS device. I figured you were tracking Brown, since surveillance had become too risky. Rae also told me about the man you visited in the Excelsior district. Might I remind you that including a minor in an unsanctioned job involving knocking on the door of a complete stranger is irresponsible and potentially very dangerous?”

  I cleared my throat to acknowledge my fault.

  “I checked out the case,” Henry continued. “The whole case. Not just the fact that Brown met a woman who later disappeared; I looked into her background, her husband’s background. You wrote down an address of a location Brown visited more than once. You left it on a Post-it in my house. The address looked familiar, so I did some digging. It’s a shelter for battered women. In the last ten years of her life, Mrs. Davis has been hospitalized over a dozen times for brutal assaults. She’s pressed charges against her husband twice, only to drop those charges later. Now you’re probably wondering what John Brown has to do with all of this. Say something casual to Mr. Davis so he doesn’t grow suspicious.”

  “I’m getting hungry. Are you?”

  Davis eyed me quizzically. It wasn’t my best material, I’ll say that. I realized that my color was probably whitening as I stared at my companion, seeing him in an entirely new light. As my heart started racing, Henry continued his story.

  “Here’s what you need to know about John Brown. That is indeed his name, but he’s working under a different social security number, not to hide his past but to protect those who contact him. I’m sure he gave you a phony DOB. What he does is provide new identities to women who are trying to escape abusive relationships. It’s a last resort for some women who can’t find protection under the law. They simply disappear and start a new life someplace else. Brown has cultivated connections with law enforcement and the Social Security Administration so there is no evidence of the woman’s previous life. Jennifer Davis is alive and well and living thousands of miles away. Tell Mr. Davis to take the next exit and head back south. Tell him Brown’s car has just passed you in the other direction.”

  “We need to turn around,” I said. “Subject has just passed us in the opposite direction.”

  “That was fast,” Davis remarked.

  “I think my screen froze for a minute. Sometimes there’s a glitch in the device. He appears to be moving again. We have to turn around.”

  “What do you think he’s doing?” Davis asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, as I tried to figure out Henry’s plan.

  “This won’t make sense now,” Henry said into my ear, “but you need to mention money. You must somehow bring up that you will be charging him for your services. Tell him your per diem.”

  Silence. I wasn’t sure what Henry was getting at.

  “Isabel, tell him right now that your investigative services run four hundred dollars a day plus expenses.” Henry sounded pretty adamant, so I obliged.

  “Mr. Davis, I hate to bring this up right now, but I feel I should mention that I—um—my investigative services cost four hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. We can, of course, negotiate a payment plan, but I just thought that in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that.”

  “If you can get my wife back, I don’t care what it costs.”

  “Good,” Henry replied. “Now figure out a casual way to tell me your current location.”

  “Subject is currently on 580 westbound, nearing the 680 interchange. We’re approximately three miles behind him,” I said, observing the upcoming exit signs.

  “Good,” Henry replied. “The Range Rover is black, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re three miles behind Subject,” I added to avoid suspicion.

  “We should be able to catch up with you in about fifteen minutes. You don’t know me,” Henry said. “And I’ll do all the talking. And I mean it this time.”

  “Yes. Stay at this speed, Mr. Davis, and we should catch him shortly.”

  “I know you’re scared,” Henry said. “But it will be fine. I’m going to hang up now,” Henry said, and the line went dead.

  In the intervening ten minutes, my mind raced with the new slant on the facts of the case, facts I had misread or ignored, oversights in an investigation that were unforgivable. It never occurred to me to follow up on the missing woman’s husband. It never occurred to me that Subject’s insistence on privacy was to protect the innocent, not the guilty. My error in judgment left me alone in a car with a man who was probably capable of murder, and I was about to lead him to his next victim. Talk about screwups. I’d never live this one down.

  1415 hrs

  A siren flashed behind the Range Rover. Davis turned to me and said, “Was I speeding?”

  “Everyone is speeding,” I replied. “But you better pull over.”

  Davis pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road. The unmarked police vehicle pulled up right behind us. Henry Stone got out of the car and walked over to the passenger side of the vehicle. Davis rolled down the window.

  “Is there a problem, officer?” he said, on guard.

  Henry ignored the question and opened the passenger door. “Izzy Ellmanspay, I have a warrant for your arrest. Please keep your hands where I can see them and step out of the vehicle.”

  I followed Henry’s instructions and got out of the car. He then spun me around and told me to keep my hands on the hood of the vehicle. He frisked me and then cuffed my hands behind my back.

  Davis exited the car and circled to the other side.

  “What’s going on here?” Davis asked.

  “Ms. Ellmanspay,” Henry said, “is under arrest for fraud.”

  “Fraud?” Davis asked, his face a collage of confusion.

  “Yes,” Henry continued with pitch-perfect delivery. “We’ve been after her for quite some time. Her MO is impersonating an investigator and preying on the families of missing individuals. She claims there’s a man who has been seen with the individual shortly before his or her disappearance. She takes her victims on a phony chase where they eventually lose the trail. Once she’s got their trust and their hopes up, she mentions her fee. I have to ask,” Henry said to Mr. Davis. “Have you given her any money?”

  “No. Not yet,” the stunned Mr. Davis replied.

  “Good,” Henry said. “You’re one of the lucky ones. Sir, I suggest you go home and forget about this. I understand that your wife has recently disappeared. I’m sorry. But this woman does not know anything about her current whereabouts.”

  “She was conning me?” Davis asked, looking truly lost.

  “It’s what she does. I’m sorry,” Henry said. “Go home. Sit by the phone. I’m sure the police are doing everything they can. But this woman here, she can’t help you.”

  Davis studied me in a new light. Anger hadn’t the time to surface. He remained baffled. “I thought there was something unstable about her,” Davis said.

  Henry continued his performance: “Your instincts were correct. Take care of yourself, Mr. Davis,” he replied, an
d then guided me toward his car. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

  AFTERMATH

  After Henry placed me in the backseat of his car, he waited for Davis to pull back onto the highway. My sister popped up from her hiding place in the front seat and crawled next to me in the back.

  “That was so cool,” Rae said, taking the key to unlock my cuffs.

  “What is she doing here?” I asked Henry.

  “She’s been shadowing your investigation all along. She put a GPS device on your car so she could keep up with the investigation.”

  “I was wondering who took the other device.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Rae said. “I thought Subject was evil too until I started looking into Mr. Davis.”

  “What is she doing here?” I asked again with a different word emphasis.

  “It was only yesterday,” Henry said, “that I was able to follow up on Brown and Davis. I have a contact at the women’s shelter who happened to know John Brown. For years his older sister was a victim of spousal abuse. After working within the law to protect her, he gave up and helped her find a new identity. Over the years he’s cultivated more and more resources and now it’s just what he does—that and gardening, of course. If you think about all your evidence—the credit cards, the equipment for making phony IDs. It all adds up.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell me?”

  “The only reason he’s lasted as long as he has doing this is that only a handful of people know. You went on a few dates with him and spent most of that time searching his apartment. I hardly think that encourages trust.”

  “I need a drink,” I said.

  “I was about to find you at your apartment,” Henry continued, “when Rae came over and told me you had gone to the Davis residence.”

  “But why did you let her come along for this sting operation?” I asked.

  “Because,” Henry said with great hostility, “she stole my car keys and then refused to get out of the car. I had already lost enough time. I had to get on the road so I could catch up with you.”

  “It was only fair,” Rae said. “I was the person who discovered that Davis was evil. Just a simple criminal check, Izzy. I can’t believe you didn’t do that,” Rae said, pouring salt on the wound. “Mom says you have tunnel vision.”

  “The phony arrest. What was that about?” I asked.

  “Henry was the mastermind behind that,” Rae said.

  “We had to convince him,” Henry explained, “that you knew nothing. Otherwise he would have come after you and he wouldn’t have stopped until he got the information he wanted. He needed to see you as a dead end. It was the only way I could think of.”

  I had turned on my digital recorder in the car with Davis, shortly after Henry called. I figured if things went bad, really bad, at least the police might find some evidence on my dead body to incriminate Mr. Davis. Fortunately, it never came to that. But I give to you now, ladies and gentlemen, the last known recording of The Stone and Spellman Show. After everything this man had done for me, I decided I could abide by his one recurring request.

  THE STONE AND SPELLMAN SHOW—EPISODE 48

  “THE-FAREWELL-EPISODE”

  Setting: Davis pulls his car onto the road and disappears in the distance. Rae climbs into the front seat.

  RAE: Shotgun!

  HENRY: Buckle up.

  [Henry pulls the car onto the highway and we head back to the city.]

  RAE: Your plan to throw Davis off the scent really was brilliant.

  HENRY: Thank you.

  ISABEL: Yes. Thank you.

  RAE: You know what, Henry?

  HENRY: What?

  RAE: When I grow up I want to be just like you.

  HENRY: You are too kind.

  RAE: Minus all the rules.

  HENRY: Of course.

  RAE: And your fear of junk food.

  HENRY: It’s not a phobia.

  RAE: And I probably won’t make people read for every hour they watch TV.

  HENRY: You don’t have to decide right now.

  RAE: And, of course, minus the whole being a man thing.

  HENRY: I get the point, Rae.

  [End of tape.]

  At the time, I barely registered the above episode. As the landscape passed by at seventy miles an hour, I had only my own crimes occupying my thoughts. I have made many mistakes in my life, but I don’t know of any one that paralleled this months-long error in judgment. To say it had me rethinking my future was an understatement. I was rethinking my whole life.

  EPILOGUE

  FOUR APOLOGIES

  AND A WEDDING

  June

  A few weeks after the “rescue operation,” as Rae would later call it, my father and I agreed that I should take some time off work. We also agreed that I owed a number of apologies. I asked my Dad what number he was thinking of and he said four. We never discussed which four people those numbers were to represent, so I decided on my own.

  But first there was an apology that I did not have to give. Two weeks after Petra’s return from Arizona and at least five unanswered phone calls later, David told me they had separated and were planning to divorce. Two more unanswered phone calls after that, I gave up trying to make contact and decided to wait for her to come to me. One month after Petra’s return from Arizona, she knocked on my closet door.

  “I’m a coward,” she said.

  “I know that,” I replied.

  “This is between me and your brother. I hope that one day it will be less awkward.”

  “What happened?” I had to ask. She was still standing in the foyer.

  “Everything happened so quickly. David started talking about having children and I thought, when did this happen? When did I suddenly grow up? I wasn’t ready. One day I’m trying to decide where to go for happy hour and then the next thing I know, I’m hosting dinner parties for the partners at his law firm. I woke up one day married to a respectable lawyer and I wasn’t ready for it.”

  “Have you seen him lately? He’s not all that respectable.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Petra said. “You know that, right?”

  “But why did you disappear like that?”

  “I was afraid of you and your family. I couldn’t face any of you. And, frankly, I didn’t know what you all would do. It was terrifying.”

  This fear of hers was not unwarranted; I softened my stance just a bit. “He actually tried to protect you from us,” I said.

  “I know that now, but at the time I didn’t,” she replied, nervously dragging her sleeves over her hands. Her hesitant eye contact was making me nervous. Petra had always been the more poised of the two of us. But the woman staring back at me from the hallway of my grungy building I could hardly recognize.

  “You think you might forgive me?” she asked.

  What made the question so hard was the fact that if she weren’t married to my brother, I wouldn’t really have cared that she betrayed her husband. But what Petra’s vanishing act made me realize was that she was David’s wife (or soon-to-be-ex-wife) more than she was my best friend. This role switch happened without my knowing it. The best friend would never have vanished on me. That was the crime I couldn’t really forgive. I would eventually, but not in that moment.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “But not right now. He’s my brother. I have to side with him, even if it’s just for show.”

  “Is it just for show?”

  “Nah. You fucked up.”

  “I know. Well, you know where to find me,” Petra said, and left.

  Actually, I didn’t. She had moved out of their house and didn’t leave a forwarding address. But we could find that out easily enough. I watched her vanish once again down the hallway, and for a very brief moment I tried to imagine what she was going through.

  It had probably taken her weeks to build up the courage to offer
that apology. The delay made it even harder to receive. I decided then that I would wait no longer to deliver my own quartet of apologies. That bandage would be removed with a quick snap.

  Apology #1: Mrs. Chandler

  It was time to come clean with Mrs. Chandler.

  We sat in her kitchen sipping an herbal tea concoction that I considered might be illegal in some states.

  “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, Mrs. Chandler, but I was the person responsible for the first wave of attacks on your front lawn. Almost fifteen years ago now.”

  “Dear, everyone knew you did it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s time I apologized. I’m very sorry for whatever pain I caused you.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Thank you,” I said, thinking this apologizing business was easier than I thought.

  “Under one condition,” Mrs. Chandler added.

  “Name it,” I replied, thinking I owed it to her.

  “You’ll assist me with my Fourth of July installation. I feel, in these difficult times, what our country needs most is a reminder to give peace a chance.”

  I agreed to Mrs. Chandler’s terms, although I was suddenly reminded why I began making “adjustments” to her tableaux to begin with.

  Apology #2: Milo

  My apology to Milo was decidedly simpler. I sat down at the bar and ordered a whiskey neat.

  I said, “I’m a terrible, insensitive person. Sometimes all I think about is myself. Forgive me?”

  “Eahh,” Milo said, waving his hand.

  Apology #3: David Spellman

  I announced my intentions at the front door. David’s patience with me had reached an all-time low in recent weeks, which was not alleviated when he learned I had vandalized his future ex-wife’s vehicle.

  “I’m here to apologize,” I said. “Please invite me inside and offer me an alcoholic beverage. I’m going to need some help getting through this.”

  You see, as far as I could recall, this was the first time I had ever attempted an apology to my brother. David’s agonizing perfection was always a barrier to any real apology. My brother walked over to his bar and poured us both a drink.