by Lisa Lutz
“I thought I’d find you here,” the shadow said.
I had a mouthful of cake, so I didn’t respond. The shadow, otherwise known as Henry, took that as an invitation to sit down. The cake was extremely dense and so my chewing created an awkward silence that Henry thought needed filling. What it needed was milk.
“How’ve you been?” he asked.
Still working on that cake, my eyes said, How did you find me here?
“Your father suggested you’d be in the cafeteria.”
My eyes then said, How did you know my father was in the hospital? My eyes were doing all the talking because I was still chewing.
“I ran into Maggie at the courthouse. She told me.”
I finally stopped chewing and asked about the file.
“Oh, here’s the file you asked for,” Henry said. “The names have been redacted, but it’s pretty clear what happened. There was an office party at Bryan Lincoln’s house. People were drunk. Some illegal drugs were involved. Two days after the party, Naomi Clyde came into the Northern Station on Fillmore with her sister Maureen and filed rape charges against Brad Gillman and Bryan Lincoln. There were no witnesses. According to the victim, it happened in Bryan’s bedroom. They couldn’t do a rape kit because she came forward after forty-eight hours. However, the DA believed her and, after questioning both men, was ready to press charges, but Naomi recanted when the prosecutor started to discuss with her what would happen if they went to trial. Gillman and Lincoln lawyered up immediately and they were not going down without a fight. That’s all I know,” Henry said. “I’m sure you’ll fill in the blanks.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I didn’t have any other safe topics of conversation, so I pretended to be reviewing the file. Henry had already relayed the relevant information and yet he stayed put until he got my attention.
I closed the file and said, “How have you been?”
“Okay. How have you been?” he asked again with a little more weight.
I was in no mood for a meaningful conversation.
“I’m in the best restaurant in town. How do you think I am? Sorry I didn’t save any fries for you. But you didn’t tell me you were coming. Unannounced visits. This is a relatively new habit of yours, no?”
“Yes. Because you stink at prearranged visits.”
“That’s debatable.”
“How’s your mom doing?”
“Not bad. Dad in here means a lot less cooking. The woman knows how to look on the bright side. How’s, uh, your pregnant fiancée? I forgot her name. I’m sorry.”
“Annie. Annie Bloom. She’s good.”
There was a hiccup between the last two words, but it was none of my business and Henry offered no further information. I’m pretty sure the best way to move on is not to dig around in your ex-boyfriend’s personal life. I saved the metaphorical shovel for other matters.
“Glad to hear it,” I said in a tone that suggested, Let’s wrap this up.
“What’s your dad’s prognosis?” Henry asked. Sometimes I mix up the let’s wrap this up tone with the I’ve got all day tone.
“He’s going to live,” I said. “One way or another.”
It wasn’t Dad’s official prognosis; it was mine. And I was shocked how angry the words sounded as I said them.
“If you ever need anything . . . ,” Henry said, trailing off.
“Thanks,” I said.
The days of my asking Henry for anything other than running license plate numbers or looking up ancient police files were over. We knew that. It was a saying left over from another time. Those days were gone.
“I’ll see you around,” Henry said. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” I said.
I didn’t say good-bye, because we’d already said good-bye. And I knew I’d see him again. It’s always good to have a cop in your back pocket.
• • •
I was alone but five minutes, reviewing the file, when Charlie’s shadow ruined my reading light. A much more welcome shadow.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Charlie said.
“Why is that?” I said a bit snappishly.
“You seem to like the French fries.”1
“I take it Edward’s still chewing the fat with my dad.”
“They’re really hitting it off.”
“Do you know anything about this genius plan they’ve come up with? Dad said something about waiting for the dead body, working backward?”
“Habit number two: Begin with the end in mind, from Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you read anything in those business books Mr. Slayter gave you?”
“No. They were incredibly dull. No guns, no murders. You read those books?”
“When Mr. Slayter gave them to you, I figured there might be something valuable in them.”
“I still don’t understand how this is going to smoke out Edward’s adversary.”
“Edward was explaining his problem to your dad and I reminded them of habit number two: Begin with the end in mind. See, once the board of directors gets together and votes, it will become obvious who benefits from having Edward out of the picture. Then you know who set him up and it will be easier to assemble evidence if you only have one suspect. Once you have the evidence, you can go back to the board and have Edward reinstated.”
“That was your idea?”
“Yes.”
“Those two goons are taking credit for it.”
“Who cares, if it works?” Charlie said.
“Good point. Only there’s one problem with your plan. If the board knows about Edward’s illness, they won’t give him his old job back.”
“Your dad came up with the solution to that. The deal with the prosecutor is hush-hush. All they know is that an arrest and deal were made. As far as the board is concerned, Edward was charged with indecent exposure, which can be defended once you find out who was drugging him. If, of course, you find out who drugged him.”
“And if we don’t,” I said, “Edward’s career ends behind a curtain of scandal and shame.”
“Nobody said it was a perfect plan.”
• • •
After my father’s long day with his new BFF, he needed some rest. And I needed to close a case that had been nagging at me for the last two months. I decided to pay a visit to Maureen Stevens. Whatever was going on at Divine Strategies was not any of my concern, and the company had long ago ceased to be of interest to Slayter Industries. The simple truth is I wanted to understand.
I knew we couldn’t meet in the office and I didn’t want to trouble her at home. I caught Maureen at seven thirty outside of her Pilates studio. She did a double take when she saw me.
“Isabel, what are you doing here?”
“I was hoping I could buy you a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Whatever you want. I would like to go someplace and sit.”
“What’s this about?”
“I have a few questions. About Naomi.”
Maureen could have walked away on the spot, but some secrets are so bottomless, you’re always treading water. There’s a danger in keeping those kinds of secrets and they always have to be tended, like a domesticated rose garden.
We went to a café that served just about every beverage known to man. Maureen ordered a hot water with lemon. I’ve noticed that people who drink that beverage regularly have a disturbing level of restraint. If I fished for information, she wouldn’t bite. I had to bluff.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Maureen asked as she warmed her hands on the mug.
“This arrangement you have with Brad and Bryan.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a private investigator. I was hired by a venture capital firm to look into the fiscal health of your company. Some things were a bit off, like your
peculiar position of power.”
“It’s peculiar when a woman is in a position of power?”
“Why didn’t she press charges?”
Maureen took a sip of her hot water and decided how to play it.
“Those files are not public record.”
“And I’m not interested in making anything public. I just want to understand personally why you wouldn’t want to put two rapists in jail.”
“Because my sister refused to testify. She couldn’t bear the humiliation. She knew the defense attorney would eviscerate her on the stand. Naomi had quite the reputation in college and the idea of twelve strangers watching the video . . . it was too much. She was on so many meds she was practically catatonic.”
“What video?”
“They taped it. You didn’t know that?” Maureen asked.
“No. Where is the tape?”
“I have it. One of the secretaries back then told me they were showing it to their friends during lunch hour. I paid her a thousand dollars to make a copy. Then I applied for a job. Different last name. I was married then. They didn’t know who I was. The rest is history.”
“What do you get out of this?” I asked.
“The satisfaction of knowing that they’ll never forget what they did. And the money to cover my sister’s expenses.”
“And your expenses,” I said.
“Yes. If they went to prison, they’d have been out ages ago and maybe they would have done something like this again.”
“So this is justice? Don’t you trust God to mete out justice on the other side?”
“I have full faith in the Lord,” Maureen said. “But just in case he doesn’t . . .”
“I’m not sure I understand the point. You couldn’t send Brad and Bryan to prison, so you made sure all of you got stuck in one. No one survived this. How can you stand to go into an office every day and look at your sister’s rapists?”
“Because I know it hurts them more than it hurts me. Any more questions?”
“No,” I said. “I’m done.”
I could have asked a thousand more questions, because her motivations were so beyond the scope of my comprehension. But then I realized I simply didn’t want to understand her.
* * *
1. Note to self: Cut back on French fries. Especially hospital French fries. That’s just sad.
THE DEFECTIVE DETECTIVE
Maybe now would be a good time to call attention to the elephant on the page. Let’s review the cases, official and unofficial, that have been on my roster since becoming CEO of Spellman Investigations.
• Lightning Fast Moving Company, the corruptest movers in the west
• Ethan Jones, suspicious brother
• Rae Spellman, conflict resolution specialist
• Evelyn Glade, embezzler and framer
• Divine Strategies, the company with the dirty little secret
• Unknown, Edward’s corporate enemy
• Louis Myron Washburn, the guiltiest innocent prisoner at the Big Q
Of all the cases that can be filed away, it’s impossible not to notice that I didn’t solve a single one of them. Ethan was just suspicious and hardly capable of the many crimes I’d considered he committed. I didn’t solve anything. I walked up to a bail bondsman and asked him why he was following us, and he told me. And then Ethan filled in the blanks.
Maggie figured out that Rae was running the prison interviews instead of Demetrius, even though I was the first to read the transcripts and could have easily deduced the language patterns. And if the strange interviews hadn’t come to light, eventually a guy with tattoos making vague threats from the Big Q would have tipped us off.
Robbie Gruber turned my virtual binoculars in the direction of Evelyn Glade.
Mom practically solved Divine Strategies in her sleep. And if the end of Edward’s story revealed his true adversary, I’d be there to file the paperwork, but let there be no mistake: Charlie Black, navigational consultant, was the brains behind the operation.
If I’d failed at my job this profoundly a year ago, I’d have considered a career change and then quickly realized that I had no job skills. My only defense was that I was management now, and everyone knows that managers need to delegate. And, as far as I could tell, there was really only one problem with this setup: I wasn’t a manager; I was a detective. No, I was a burned-out detective on the precipice of calling it quits. I know, I sound like a broken record. You might hang on to the scratched-up vinyl for a while, but eventually you’ll just throw it away, because it doesn’t sound like it used to.
• • •
The board of directors met on Monday. Their first order of business was to relieve Edward of his duties as CEO. Shannon Crane was named temporary CEO, but she made it clear that her duties were transient and she was not interested in a full-time position. Edward, however, still owned 25 percent of the company, which made him the majority shareholder. When it came time to vote in a new member of the board, and the likely candidate for CEO, the shareholders had a meeting and two names were submitted: Connor Glenn and Lowell Frank.
When Edward returned from the meeting, he gave me the names and I went to work. Vivien surveilled Connor, and Demetrius made a rare exception to his rule against following white people and tailed Lowell, since the rest of the family was busy keeping Dad company and in Jell-O and Popsicles at the hospital. One of the nurses, in an attempt to pay Dad a compliment, said that she had never seen a person going through chemo who did such a good job of maintaining his weight. Dad was not flattered.
Mom, as expected, was holding it together extremely well. Too well, I noticed. When Dad dived too deeply into the helpless-patient mode, she snapped him out of it with a well-timed verbal jab. She stroked his brow when he needed it and made sure that nothing lime flavored passed the threshold of his room. If he pressed the nurse call button more than one time every two hours, she disconnected the switch, so Dad just thought the nurses were busy. Then when visitors or family took over the room and Mom was given a respite, she would disappear for a few hours and presumably go home to shower and change.
Eventually my siblings and I compared notes and we realized that no one had seen Mom at home when she wasn’t at the hospital.
So where did she go?
Not for the first time in my life, I followed my mother. The next day, Rae, then David, then Grammy, then several of Dad’s old cop buddies were stopping by the hospital to keep him company and Dad told Mom to go home and get some rest. Fortunately I was there to witness the exchange. Mom reluctantly said good-bye and went home, as she claimed she would. I had to keep a close tail because she had conveniently disabled the tracker on her car.
Mom was at home for no more than an hour, where she clearly showered and changed, and swiftly departed. I followed her along the barren stretch of highway that begins the journey to Sacramento. She stopped in Vallejo. There’s not a lot to recommend Vallejo, but my mother had found a place to her liking: Jimmy’s Casino Card Club. My mother is not a card player; my mother is no gambler. And yet, when I followed her into this lowest-rent casino, she was playing blackjack as if her life depended on it.
The place didn’t serve booze. They had a lousy restaurant with a dry roast beef advertised on a chalkboard sign by the front door. Cocktail waitresses who had seen better days in 1972 wore polyester miniskirts and served carbonated beverages to the clientele. The club advertised being open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-four days a year, which would explain why there was no time to vacuum or give the joint a rest from the odor of life.
My mother is an attractive woman for her age. In this joint she practically had to beat them off with a stick. I don’t think some of these men had seen a woman this striking in real life in years. Some official-looking guy who apparently knew my mother by name had to stand guard around her as she played. She was clearly winning, which they don’t like. But she kept the men at her table, which they like,
so they treated her well and made sure she had a bottomless glass of club soda. Mom must have set her phone on a timer, because exactly two hours later, when the dealer stood on seventeen and Mom took her chances and broke twenty-one, she didn’t try to end on a win; she let the timer decide and she promptly cashed out. Maybe she made five bucks for two hours.
I let her see me as I waited outside in the blazing sun.1 She was putting on her sunglasses and it took her eyes some time to adjust.
“Annie Duke,” I said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“She plays poker, Isabel. Learn your card games.”
“I know my card games,” I said. “I just don’t know any famous female blackjack players. What are you going to do with all that cash? Pay Dad’s hospital bills?”
“Izzy. My husband, your father, is gravely ill. Are you really giving me shit right now?”
There were so many things wrong with this moment. The first thing wrong with it was me. I was, obviously, incredibly insensitive and hadn’t paid enough attention to Mom.
“He’s going to be fine,” I said. I’m not sure if I added a question mark at the end of the sentence.
“He is going to be fine.” She said it like a mantra, to convince herself it was true.
“Are you going to be fine?” I asked, putting my arm around her and walking her to her car.
“I’m going to be fine,” she said. I was not convinced.
“Can I ask why? The hospital is a pretty depressing place, and yet Jimmy’s Casino Card Club makes the hospital look like Alcatraz.”2
“His odds were kind of like blackjack by the time we caught it. But the thing about blackjack that most people don’t know is that you can win. The odds, if you play it right and don’t take any unnecessary risks, are on your side.”
“Is that why you play?”
“No. Honestly. Those two hours I’m playing cards, I’m not thinking of anything else. It’s kind of like your dad with that dumb-ass video game with bobbing plants.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what, sweetie?” Mom asked.
I was sorry for so many things it didn’t seem like a good idea to list them, in case some had slipped her mind. I was sorry that I didn’t communicate more when I took over the business. I was sorry that I was such a monster when I had them on the ropes. I was sorry I had stopped asking my parents simple questions, like How are you doing? Have you been to a doctor recently? Can I see the results of your latest blood work? Mostly I was sorry because when all of this went down I never just stopped and looked my mother in the eye and asked her if she was okay. She would have lied to me, but at least I’d have asked. At least I would have known the truth.