THE SPELLMANS STRIKE AGAIN

by Lisa Lutz

  “Well, she wouldn’t if she were drugged up all the time.”

  “Huh,” I said, thinking.

  “What should I do?”

  “You shouldn’t be going through her desk,” I said.

  “But what should I do about her anxiety?” Rae asked.

  “You should try not to stress her out.”

  “How?”

  “When she asks you to do something, do it.”

  “Do you think I’m the cause of her stress?”

  “I’m sure you’re a top contributor.”

  Rae seemed to mull that idea over for a very brief moment, but then she shook her head. “Nah, that’s not it,” she said, and went back to work.

  “These don’t match any of the others,” Rae said after careful scrutiny of our fingerprint samples.

  “Finally,” I replied, gathering the prints and putting them away safely in an envelope.

  Rae then tried to bring up Schmidt again. That’s when I told her our work was done. Coincidentally, it was.

  As I was driving Rae home, I tried to start a conversation about Rae’s new boyfriend and get a few more details on Logan, but Rae and I had decidedly conflicting agendas.

  “Were you and Logan ever going out, or were you just blackmailing him?” I asked.

  “There are other men and women wrongly incarcerated besides Schmidt.”

  “It seems like an extreme measure to take just to avoid riding the bus,” I said.

  “Maggie has many files in her office. You should look at them when you have the chance. It’s a better use of your time than obsessing over a has-been like Harkey.”

  “What happened to you on the bus?” I asked.

  “There are people on death row right now who are innocent.”

  “Who’s the new guy with the bicycle?”

  “Forget it,” Rae finally said. “There’s no way to convince you.”

  I pulled up in front of the Spellman house. Rae hopped out of the car, as did I.

  “I don’t require an escort,” Rae said.

  “The world doesn’t revolve around you and Schmidt. I need to talk to Dad.”

  “Whatever,” Rae replied.

  I followed her inside the house. Rae raced upstairs to her bedroom, as teenagers do. I roamed the residence looking for Dad. In the process, I noticed that the doorknob to the hall closet was missing.

  I found my dad parked in front of the television, belly-laughing at some inane program in which a family enters the witness protection program, only to be forced to work at a Frosty Freeze. They can’t handle their new lives and so they return to their criminal pasts, using their Frosty Freeze shifts as an alibi, while their handlers try to cover it up, since the family hasn’t yet testified against the crime family from whom they are hiding. It’s a comedy, I think. Or at least Dad thinks it’s a comedy.

  I sat down next to him, waited for the commercial break, and asked for the favor I’d come for.

  Only cops and FBI agents and official law-enforcement personnel have access to fingerprint databases. My dad no longer has direct access to this information, but he has a guy on the force who does.

  I put the envelope with the prints on the coffee table.

  “Dad, will you ask Gary to run these prints for me?”

  My father glanced at the envelope and then back at the television, even though only commercials were running.

  “I’ve called in a few too many favors this month. Can you find someone else?”

  “Who?”

  “Ask your mom. She has her own contact on the force.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “Did you know the doorknob on the hall closet is missing?”

  Dad paused, sighed, and then said, “Yeah. It fell off.”

  I went into the kitchen. My mother was in the midst of replacing a handle on the silverware drawer. Unfortunately, it didn’t match the other handles in the rest of the kitchen and I could see her scowling over this fact.

  “What happened to the other handle?”

  “It broke.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, Isabel.”

  “This one doesn’t match the others.”

  “Yes. I am aware of that,” Mom snapped. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I need some fingerprints run for the Winslow case. Dad doesn’t want to use his source. I was wondering if I could use yours.”

  “I always ask Henry,” Mom said.

  “Could you ask him for me?” I said, placing the envelope on the kitchen table.

  “Ask him yourself,” she replied in that tone that means the conversation is over.

  So I drove to Henry’s place.

  “Isabel, what a pleasant surprise,” he said pleasantly.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” I replied.

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  “I need a favor.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  I handed Henry the set of prints. “Will you run these for me?”

  “Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

  Apparently friends don’t just demand police work and run. They sit and chat and maybe drink or eat things together. At least that’s Henry’s agenda. So I played along in order to push my “favor” agenda. This is simply how the world works. I think. I’m just saying that, actually. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how the world works. Sometimes it seems like it’s not working at all.

  Henry asked me what I was drinking. I said, “Not tea.” He served me a beer and put out a bowl of spelt 1 pretzels. He asked me what was new; I said not much. He inquired into the Harkey matter and I said it was a dead end. He apologized for the insurance information. I told him not to worry about it. It was the only angle available to me. Henry asked me how Connor was doing. I said fine. He asked me whether our relationship was getting serious. I asked him to define “serious.” He described serious as “moving forward.” I asked Henry where forward might take someone. Henry said that forward usually leads to moving in, engagement, and maybe marriage. I told him that while Connor kept his own apartment, he had practically moved in. I see, Henry said. Then I explained that if Connor didn’t practically live with me, we’d never see each other, what with our opposite hours and such. Henry said, “I see,” again. Then he asked if Connor and I ever spoke of marriage. We didn’t, but I didn’t mention that. What I did mention was that way back my mom had had me sign a legal document promising that I wouldn’t marry Connor. I asked Henry whether he thought that document was legally binding and Henry said that he thought it was unlikely.

  “Do you want to marry him?” Henry asked.

  At this point my beer was finished. I asked for another one instead of answering the question.

  The truth: No, I didn’t. In fact, I was sure of that one thing. And yet I couldn’t tell you why. In case you’re wondering: Yes, I’ve discussed this in therapy, so I don’t see any point in going on about it here. As for Henry, the question quickly slipped away when I made it slip away by changing the subject. I casually brought up the far more compelling mystery of the missing fixtures in the Spellman home.

  “Isn’t that strange?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” Henry replied. “But it is an old house. Things are bound to break.”

  For another forty-five minutes, Henry inquired into an assortment of details about my life. Nothing too intrusive, but he got updates on Morty, Mom and Dad’s Lost Wednesdays, and even Bernie’s impending visit.

  “Do you think I should change the locks?” I asked.

  Henry said no. Turns out, Henry had never been so wrong.

  MY FIRST HOLDUP

  I was supposed to be sitting on a park bench in the middle of the night, waiting for my date. This didn’t seem like a wise location for a rendezvous, which I guess was the point.

  A man approached. He made no introduction. He then pointed something at me, which I guessed was a gun.

&
nbsp; “If you do everything I tell you, no one will get hurt,” he said. Then he stared at me with cool confidence.

  “Uh, okay,” I replied.

  “Give me all your money,” the man said.

  His dress wasn’t robber-appropriate, so I had some trouble taking him seriously. But I regrouped and realized that I shouldn’t stereotype. Robbers come with a variety of different fashion senses, and he’d probably come straight from work or something.

  “I don’t have my money with me,” I replied.

  “Where is it?”

  “In my purse.”

  “Where’s your purse?”

  “In my car.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “In the parking lot.”

  “Give me your car keys.”

  “Uh, okay,” I said, and handed him my keys.

  He took them.

  “A thank-you would be nice,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Empty your pockets,” he said.

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  “I’m not afraid to use this thing,” the man with no name said, sounding plausibly threatening.

  I had on a jacket and jeans, so there were a number of pockets.

  “You probably don’t want everything in my pockets,” I replied.

  He held out his other hand. “Everything,” he repeated.

  “Okay.”

  My jacket pocket held a used tissue, a paper clip, a lost Lifesaver, a parking stub, and a tampon. I tossed the items into his hands. The man with the gun tossed them on the ground.

  “If you didn’t want them, why did you ask?”

  He stared at me and at the bits and pieces on the ground for a while. It looked like he was thinking, but since I didn’t know the man, I couldn’t tell you for sure what he looked like when he was thinking.

  “I can’t do this,” he suddenly said, dropping his arms to his sides.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because you’re not taking this seriously.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re not scared.”

  “I would be if you were scary.”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault.”

  “Nobody’s to blame here,” I generously suggested.

  Finally the teacher, Mrs. Louise Granger, called, “Cut,” and our mediocre improvisation came to a halt. Unlike the previous three-minute performances, ours didn’t receive even token applause. Not one single clap to break the awkward silence. Perhaps it was my fault. And perhaps, as the teacher suggested later that night, acting classes were not for me. I was fine with all that. I just wanted to play the odds and find a room full of people who might work for free.

  When the evening came to a close and I had seen the wide variety of actors available to me, I approached my favorite (or at the very least the most gullible looking): Chelsea Jacobs, twenty-three, blond, skinny, fake tan, your usual actress in the last two years before regular Botox injections begin. Still, she wasn’t bad. In her improv, she played a woman trying to return a sweater to the wrong store. I liked her determination and she had some nice comic timing.

  Len was right. An actor has got to act. It took me about ten minutes to convince Chelsea that I was legit and not your average San Francisco lunatic.1 But by the end of the night, she had my card and promised to call. She even had some friends whom she thought might be up for the challenge.

  After improv class, I pulled Shana Breslin’s recycling, dropped it by Pratt’s house, waited fifteen minutes, and watched him stick the same bags back in his own recycling receptacle. I pulled the bags and stuck them in my trunk. That kid was up to something, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what.

  LOST WEDNESDAY

  THE THIRD

  I arrived at the offices in the afternoon. My parents were hunched over their desks, drinking coffee, yawning, and struggling to stay awake.

  “Too much salsa dancing?” I asked.

  They looked at each other, as far I could tell, to get their stories straight. My mom did the talking.

  “We went for a hike in Muir Woods. Maybe we overdid it.”

  “If you’re running around on outdoor adventures, then why do we need to leave the premises?”

  “Because it’s all about spontaneity, Isabel. We weren’t sure when we were going to return or what we’d want to do when we did.”

  “And what did you do?” I asked against my better judgment.

  “We watched moves and ate popcorn,” Dad replied. “Air popped,”1 he added to get sympathy.

  “What movies?” I inquired as I sat down at my desk.

  “We had a Mel Brooks marathon,” my mother answered, a little too quickly. “Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, and Young Frankenstein.”

  “Frahnkenshteen,” my father said, correcting her per Gene Wilder’s pronunciation. I guess you have to have seen it to understand. If you haven’t seen it, then you should put down this document immediately and run, not walk, to your local video store. You should also be ashamed of yourself, if you are over the age of eighteen.

  Here’s the problem with my parents’ collective claim to have watched movies all day: I couldn’t quiz them on the films since we’d all seen them at least five to ten times each. There was a deeper lie embedded in there somewhere, I just couldn’t figure out what.

  “There are a few holes in your story,” I said.

  “There were holes in every story you told from age nine to nineteen,” Mom replied. “Why don’t you just worry about your own work, and Dad and I will keep our marriage in order?”

  “Right,” I replied, and focused my attention back on my work.

  In the afternoon, when I was grabbing a snack from the kitchen, I noticed the light fixture was missing from the ceiling. This left a raw unfiltered light that was headache inducing. The fixture itself was nowhere to be seen.

  When Rae arrived home from school, I asked her where the light fixture had gone.

  “How should I know?” Rae replied.

  I followed her into the Spellman offices, where Mom was giving Dad a back rub.

  “Feel any better?” Mom asked.

  “Thanks, dear,” Dad replied.

  Rae glared at my parents and in complete silence dictated a new rule.

  Rule #44—No more PDA

  Then she departed without another word. My mother approached the whiteboard and vetoed the rule, followed by my father.

  While I’m no fan of watching my parents grope each other, I had other topics on my mind.

  “Why do things keep disappearing from the house?”

  “What are you talking about, sweetie?” Mom asked.

  “There was the towel rod that David noticed, then the doorknob the other day, and now the light fixture in the kitchen is gone. It’s kind of blinding in there.”

  “I was dusting and it broke,” Mom casually replied.

  “Since when do you dust?” I asked.

  “It happens on occasion,” Mom replied.

  “Okay, if that’s your story,” I said, and that was the end of the conversation for the time being. However, I decided then and there that these Lost Wednesdays needed some looking into.

  In the early evening I pulled the bags of screenplay fluff into the basement and started the long and miserable process of continuing the assembly of the confetti puzzle. Little progress was made in deciphering the text, but based on the three-hole-punch edges and the blank spaces on the sheets, the documents were almost certainly a screenplay. After two hours of time wasting, I decided there might be another way to figure out the mystery of Pratt.

  I parked outside his residence for two hours. He neither came nor went. I made use of the hours by studying astrological charts,2 but then it occurred to me that my arrests and court-ordered therapy were the consequences of my taking a case too far—often a case that wasn’t even mine. I was hired to pull Shana’s trash. Why was I wasting hours of my own time trying to understand a client’s motivation? I returned t
o the office and generated Pratt’s bill. I decided that if he paid it, there was no problem. If a man wants to throw away his parents’ hard-earned money, what’s it to me?

  DEAD ENDS AND

  NEW BEGINNINGS

  Chelsea, my free actress, met me for coffee thirty minutes after her first (and only) meeting with Harkey. The plan was for Chelsea to pretend she had an ex-boyfriend who owed her three thousand dollars in rent from when they’d lived together. After Harkey informed her of her legal options—namely, small-claims court—Chelsea was supposed to bat her eyelashes and ask if there was another way, because she was pretty sure that if she served her ex notice of any sort, he would skip town. If Harkey took the bait, he might suggest that he (or one of his guys) pay a visit to the deadbeat ex and maybe pretend to be a cop and maybe shake him down and scare him into paying up. Such behavior would at the very least be worthy of an investigation from the California Bureau of Consumer Affairs. PIs are forbidden to pretend to be persons of authority. We even had an actor lined up to play the lame ex, but it never came to that. Harkey told Chelsea that her only option was within the legal system. She cried and pleaded. I would have recorded the proceedings if it weren’t illegal and I was dealing with an unknown entity (i.e., an actor), so I can’t verify the quality of her performance. My uneducated opinion is that it probably sucked.

  The last thing Harkey said to Chelsea as she was exiting his office: “Say hi to Ms. Spellman for me.”

  • • •

  I decided to drown my sorrows and seek some comfort from my own ex. Specifically, Ex #12. It took only a half a pint to tell him the whole story, and I was drinking fast.

  “That’s all?” he said.

  “I could add some color to it, if you’re looking for more information. For instance, Chelsea was wearing a pink sweater and skinny jeans.”

  “So are ya done now?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “With this whole Harkey mess. Is it over?”

  “I was thinking I just needed a better actor. I went for the looks instead of talent, which is a common mistake it seems.”

  “Seriously?” Connor said, looking downright grumpy.

  “Have you been to the movies lately?” I asked.