by Lisa Lutz
“Who throws a party on a Wednesday night?” I asked.
“College students who don’t have to wake up until noon. You really should have gone, dear,” Mom said as she hung up the phone.
I dropped by the Spellman offices to pick up the surveillance equipment, check on my mother’s mental status, and see whether the coast was clear to hack into my dad’s computer. I found my mother in the kitchen, devouring the last of D’s Crack Mix (the bit that was left in the safe).
“How are you doing, Mom?” I gently asked.
“I’ve got some ideas.”
“Where’s the Tortoise?” I asked.
“Out,” my mother replied.
“Grammy and D?”
“Still at the movies.”
“The Weasel?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why don’t you take a bath, Mom? You need to relax,” I said.
My mother looked at the roast and the open cookbook on the kitchen counter.
“I can put the roast in,” I said.
“Four hundred and twenty-five degrees,” Mom said. “Ignore the recipe.”
“Got it,” I replied.
Mom climbed the stairs and I entered the office. The Weasel could be anywhere, and I couldn’t risk having her walk in on me, so I sent her a text to get her coordinates. Five minutes later, no response.
Then I texted Fred.
Is Rae with you?
I haven’t seen her in months.
Huh. I’m impressed you’re making it work with all that time apart.1
??
Define: ??
We broke up. Didn’t she tell U?
As a matter of fact, she did not. This new development would require further investigation, but at that moment I had other matters to attend to. Without having a tracking device on every Spellman capable of entering the office, I had to take the risk. I locked the door,2 sat down behind Dad’s computer, typed my name, and the next thing I knew I was copying files onto a data storage device that fit on my key ring.
I put the roast in the oven and checked the recipe. It called for three hundred and eighty degrees. Mom said four twenty-five; I jacked up the temperature to four fifty. I figured my mother had plausible deniability. She could blame me.
Then I picked up the surveillance camera, drove to the Mission, and double-parked in front of Vivien Blake’s residence.
SURVEILLANCE REPORT: VIVIEN BLAKE
November 2
2330 hrs
Female subject, 5’5”, 125 lbs, dark brown hair, wearing blue jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt over a dark green military jacket, exits a San Francisco apartment building at Twenty-sixth and Noe. She walks east down the street, scanning the parked cars. She presses a remote key and looks for a flash of taillights. A BMW winks in the distance. Female subject spins in a circle, checking her perimeter; approaches car; gets inside; and starts the engine. She drives east down to South Van Ness Avenue and makes a left turn, stopping on the corner of Seventeenth and South Van Ness at the establishment of Oscar’s Auto. Subject drives vehicle into covered garage. Unable to establish a visual on subject for fifteen minutes.
2345 hrs
Subject and an unknown male (midforties, heavyset, wearing blue mechanic’s jumpsuit with the Oscar’s Auto logo embroidered on the breast pocket) exit the office of establishment. They approach a tow truck with the same logo painted on the side. Subject slips an unidentifiable object into her pocket and jumps into a truck with unknown male. Investigator follows subject vehicle to a liquor store. Unknown male enters the store and leaves three minutes later with a large brown bag (about the size of a six-pack of beer).
The tow truck returns subject to the residence on Twenty-sixth Street where she was previously seen exiting. Subject rings the buzzer. (Could not establish unit number.) Female subject then enters the building and all visual contact is lost.
Like I said before: My father called, we got into an argument about the family nicknames, Dad asked me what Vivien was up to, and I lied. I lied because I didn’t know what she was up to, but I believe that sometimes young people should be allowed to get up to something without their parents finding out.
I also needed to get a handle on the situation before I disseminated any information. You could argue that what I was doing was as ethically dubious as my sister’s doctored reports. But there was a difference. I wasn’t swindling a client; I was protecting a subject. And I’m a firm believer that withholding information is not in the category of lying.
I think you know how the rest of this goes. I waited outside unknown male’s apartment and watched female subject defenestrate herself through a second-story window and walk back to her apartment. Then I arrived at Spellman central, where the Eagle was on the tarmac.
The smell of cremated roast lingered in the air.
My mother asked me about the Sparrow and then we sat in silence watching television. Breaking news on the tree sitters. Negotiations stalled. The newscaster reported the latest developments and the camera panned up the tree. My mother picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Rae. This is your mother calling. Get the hell out of that tree right now!”
Part III
RUINS
(November/December)
THE TREE INCIDENT
All of the Spellmans, sans David, are notorious for getting up to no good, but Rae’s treetop triumph was the finest “no good” achievement in Spellman history. And that’s quite an achievement.
Within five minutes of the news broadcast, Mom and Dad had left for the scene of the high crime. With the television blaring in the background, I picked up the phone and said to my brother, “You will not believe this.” I might have said that phrase before, but I think it was the first time I really meant it. David’s television was also blaring in the background. A different program—one involving grown men singing to children.
I provided the brushstrokes, which David misunderstood. He asked me to repeat myself and when I did, he said, “Who cares if Rae is in a teahouse?”
I repeated “tree house,” enunciating to the best of my ability. David said, “Yeah, and so?” I switched up descriptive terms and said, “Rae is one of the oak grove protesters!”
“Ogre protest?” he asked.
“What is an ogre protest?” I snapped.
“You tell me,” he replied.
“Turn off the TV,” I said. By some strange miracle, he understood that. Without the soundtrack of those sentence-enhancers playing in the background, I told David to turn the TV back on and to which station. In retrospect, I probably should have led with that. Once David absorbed the full impact of his little sister showing up on the evening news, he spoke. “Since when does she care about plant life, or any life besides her own? Remember when I gave her the Chia Pet?”
“I do,” I replied. “But that was ten years ago.”1
“Still,” David said. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
It didn’t. And though I had many mysteries occupying my brain, Rae’s sudden interest in a two-hundred-year-old oak grove sat at the top of the puzzle pyramid.
When Demetrius came in from (apparently) another one of his first dates, he stared at the television in awe.
“That girl is crazier than a june bug in May.”
“No argument from me. What do you think she’s up to?”
“Only one reason I can reckon for that kind of crazy,” D replied.
“Care to enlighten me?”
“Love,” D replied.
I phoned Fred.
“Fred.”
“Isabel.”
“What are you doing, Fred?”
“I’m watching TV. Just like you.”
“Do you know something about this?”
“Maybe,” Fred said.
He sounded guilty when he said it, so I was sure he knew more than maybe.
“I think I better head over there,” he said, disconnecting the call.
Twenty minutes later, t
he Spellman home and office lines were ringing off the hook.
Every person who had ever known a Spellman was keen to gather more details of Rae’s sudden rise to environmentalist infamy. Grammy Spellman, who had been watching one of her programs in the bedroom, finally surfaced and asked what all the ruckus was about. I was going to tell her when D interrupted. He said we had a break in a case and promised that the phones would quiet down shortly. Grammy, mildly appeased, returned to her room.
An hour after that, Fred arrived at the oak grove and, with the assistance of very serious threats from the unit, the police, and the dean’s office, managed to talk my sister down. At which point she was arrested. She spent four hours in a holding cell until my parents could post bail.
The following morning a family meeting (plus Fred) was called at my brother’s house.
My mother had insisted on a separate location to avoid Ruth’s endless inquiries. Grammy was utterly baffled by Vietnam War protesters; she certainly wasn’t going to understand squatting in a tree to keep it from being razed. As the meeting commenced, all parties appeared worn out from the sleepless night.
My father opened with a broad question: “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Photosynthesis is vital for all living species. Those oak trees have been providing oxygen for years. You can’t just toss them aside when you want to build an athletic center. And think about how much oxygen that place will use up,” Rae replied.
Dad wasn’t buying it. “Seriously, Rae, what’s this all about?”
Most things in life have come easily to Rae and those things that haven’t, like athletic or artistic talent, she isn’t much interested in. I think she always felt invincible, as if there were no situation that she couldn’t master. Negotiating with a stubborn child is one thing, but fighting against the brick wall of a grown-up is different; her immovable spirit had become somewhat terrifying to me. My mother had repeatedly argued that it was a phase, but it had ceased to feel like one long ago. The tree incident was oddly indicative of both her stubborn spirit itself and the softening of that spirit.
Fred Finkel, environmental activist, Sierra Club supporter, founding member of the Earthvibe newsletter, and public planning major, had broken up with Rae over her selfish indifference to the physical world: her habit of driving when public transportation was readily available; her use of plastic water bottles; her tendency to print out draft after draft of term papers for review; her “languid composting”;2 and her general environmental laissez-faire.
Fred claims he’d spoken to Rae on numerous occasions about his concerns over their civic differences, but Rae had made only superficial changes that didn’t convey respect for his beliefs. Only after Fred broke up with her did she fully comprehend how important the environment was to her boyfriend.
Rae grew up in a household motored by threats followed by ultimatums. Had she known that Fred would not have given her fair warning, she might have taken his requests more seriously. But Fred wasn’t an ultimatum kind of guy. Unlike Rae, he didn’t believe in bullying. He saw her disregard for his wishes as a serious symptom in their relationship and respectfully ended it. Rae, blindsided, tried some cheap measures to win him back—gifts of plants, sudden purchases of hemp clothing and even hemp stock, and buying all organic produce,3 along with a marked improvement in Rae’s languid composting.
When all of these motions fell flat, a grand gesture was required. Like most grand gestures, it took some time to bring about, since she first had to insinuate herself into the fringe protest group, which required learning far more about oak trees than she ever desired or thought possible.
While Rae regaled the family with her tale of infiltrating the tree minders, Fred sat in the background listening with bewildered intensity.
“You will definitely be getting at least community service for this, young lady,” my father said.
“Sometimes you have to take a stand,” Rae said.
“Oh please,” my mother said.
Rae ignored my mother and turned to Fred. “Do you forgive me now?”
“Those trees are a lost cause,” Fred replied. “I think it’s better to use our energy on a fight that can be won. And all I really want is for individuals to make small changes in their daily habits. The milk carton doesn’t go in the recycling bin. It’s compostable. I lost track of how many times I had to tell you that.”
“I spend eight hours in a tree for you and that’s all you have to say?” Rae replied.
Fred didn’t look like he had a good response, so I interrupted: “I just have one question, Rae. Did you use the bucket?”4
The unit escorted my sister into David’s office and had a private conversation with her where I suspect a very severe verbal lashing took place. David, Fred, and I sat in the living room, mostly silent, hoping to catch any bubbles of elevated words from the other room, but mostly we just caught bubbles of indecipherable elevated words. David bit his nails, which he does when he’s particularly agitated, a condition that the situation didn’t call for. I, for one, was enjoying myself immensely and experienced no elevated sibling concern.
At one point Fred turned to me and asked, “Is this my fault?”
David answered, “No, I think it’s mine.”
When all the parties had departed, I asked David what he meant.
“Nothing,” he replied.
But I knew that wasn’t true. I pressed him for details, but he wouldn’t answer.
Not then, anyway. But don’t worry; I eventually beat them out of him.
MORE EVIDENCE
I should remind you that I still had the key chain with my father’s entire file on “Meg Cooper” in my possession. With all the tree-hugging shenanigans going on, I hadn’t had time to even take a peek at the file. After I got a full night’s rest, I finally got back to the job. Well, my off-the-books job. I inserted the storage device into my laptop and downloaded two months’ worth of surveillance photos and reports.
Most of the surveillance information that my father had gathered on “Meg” involved photos of her with a particular gentleman. They were compromising, indeed, and sufficient proof of infidelity. Certainly, it was all the evidence that Mr. Slayter would be required to show in divorce proceedings, or enough evidence to blackmail Meg so the photos wouldn’t be revealed to her husband. Even more incriminating, perhaps, was that when I cross-checked the dates of Margaret’s liaisons, they matched up exactly with her requested surveillance dates on Mr. Slayter.
My hunch was dead-on. Not that I ever doubted myself.
There was, however, an oddity in my dad’s report. He never identified subject #2. It would have been procedure to run a license plate check or surveil subject #2 to his residence and perform a reverse address check. But Dad was holding out on the client. And the information wasn’t in the file.
My father always taught us that domestic cases require caution because of the volatility of emotions. It’s possible that he looked into the matter himself and discovered the true relationship between Meg and Adam. If he did, then he might have been reluctant to provide full disclosure to a client who represented himself under false pretenses. Unfortunately, the report couldn’t tell me what my father had discovered or what he was thinking.
All I knew was that Dad was treading carefully.
Aside from documentation of an affair, my father’s report covered a wide range of subject’s daily activities, which included legitimate treks to the gym, lunch with girlfriends, shopping expeditions, and a visit to a few office buildings in downtown San Francisco, one of which included a law firm.
The latest report had not been delivered to the client for lack of payment. In fact, Adam Cooper had paid the retainer, a partial on his first bill, and nothing since then. And yet my father continued surveilling Meg/Margaret. This got me thinking that he could pretend all he wanted that he was merely an omniscient narrator to the client, but I had his number.
I also had Demetrius’s number.
“You owe me twenty bucks,” I said.
Once again, I forgot that it’s unwise to approach D from behind and make demands right in his ear. D turned sharply in my direction and drew his hands into fists. For a second there it appeared that he didn’t know who I was.
“Oops. Sorry. I forgot,” I said.
D took a deep breath.
“I thought you hated these places,” I said.
Wearily, D replied, “What can I say, you got me.” Then he started getting all shifty-eyed, like he was casing the joint.
“Everything all right, D? You need me to drive the getaway car?”
“That was funny the first twenty times you said it,” D replied. “Why don’t you go ahead of me? I’m on a break anyway. Thought I’d read the paper.”
“I’m on a break too. Although I was not planning on reading the paper.”
“Don’t you need to get back to the office?” D said in a way that seemed like he really wanted me to get back to the office.
“Why are you trying to get rid of me?”
Just then, a lovely woman approached, patted D on the arm, and said, “Honey, I changed my mind. I will have whipped cream on the mocha.”
“Excellent choice,” I said.
“Hello,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“I’m Isabel,” I said.
“Izzy!” she said. “What a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard all about you.”
D then quickly made introductions. “Izzy, this is Mabel.”
“Mabel,” I said. “It’s so great to meet you. D will not stop talking about you. Seriously, I feel like I could write your bio by now.”