The Last Word

by Lisa Lutz

  “You need highlights and lowlights and layers. And maybe bangs. It will make you look younger. Hide the creases on your forehead.”

  “Then why am I paying for Botox?”

  That stumped Rainbow until she gave me the card of her dermatologist and suggested I switch. Rainbow had to be under twenty-nine and yet she had the set face of a woman at war with time. It seemed particularly tragic to me to be under thirty, already terrified of losing your looks, and yet unable to physically register that emotion.

  “So what are we going to do?” Rainbow asked.

  “Just a wash and dry,” I said. “I have a dinner tonight.”

  Rainbow circled me, like someone at a used-car lot trying to assess whether the 1972 Oldsmobile could be salvaged.

  “Maybe if we put it up,” she said.

  As Rainbow washed my hair, she told me in excruciating detail about her breakup with her last boyfriend, Gavin. He wasn’t a talker, which Rainbow had no beef with since she could pick up the slack, but he also wasn’t a listener. He was a head-nodder, which led Rainbow to believe that Gavin was actually listening and had heard her when she said that they needed more milk, or a lightbulb changed, or that she wasn’t okay with his having naked pictures of his ex-girlfriend on his cell phone. In fact, even when Rainbow was finally worn down enough to end the relationship, Gavin didn’t hear her and continued to show up at the apartment until she sent him a text message and changed the locks.

  “Good riddance, girlfriend,” I said. “You have to love yourself first or no one can love you back.” Yes. I felt totally yucky saying something so cheesy, but the next thing you know Rainbow and I were besties and she was spilling what little dirt she had on Margaret Slayter, the ex–Mrs. Slayter.

  I showed her a picture.

  “Hey, do you know this woman?”

  “Haven’t seen her in ages. I heard she got a divorce and the prenup was airtight. Rumor is she’s living in a trailer park in San Jose.”1

  I held up both pictures.

  “Do you know if these two women were friends?”

  “I know I’ve seen them talking. They were both regulars for a quite a while. Couldn’t tell you if they were friends.”

  “But they were acquaintances.”

  “Definitely,” Rainbow said.

  I left the salon before Rainbow could use the flat iron on my hair. I pretended to get an urgent text, paid for the wash and dry, and drove straight to Margaret’s apartment, just off Lincoln and Twenty-ninth Avenue.

  The ex–Mrs. Slayter got enough in the divorce settlement to live a lower-middle-class lifestyle for a few years. She would use that time wisely and find another wealthy husband. I caught her just as she returned home from what was tantamount to her day job—going to the gym. Since I was single-handedly responsible for the demise of her sham marriage, she couldn’t even muster a sluggish hello. She merely opened the door and greeted me with an icy gaze.

  “This will be quick. I promise,” I said.

  No response. I showed her the photo of Lenore. Margaret’s eyes clicked in recognition.

  “I take it you know her,” I said.

  Still nothing.

  “Did you know she is dating your ex-husband?”

  Margaret audibly gasped and her nostrils flared like a dragon’s. She most definitely did not know that. My fears that the two women had some play against Slayter were unfounded. Under any other circumstance I couldn’t have expected Margaret to be a cooperative informant, but seeing her old friend with her ex-husband might spark some truth-telling jealousy.

  “Is she dating him because she likes him or because he has money?” I asked.

  “Probably both,” Margaret said. “He’s not going to find a woman who likes him just for him. His money will always be part of his appeal. If he’s hoping to find a woman who doesn’t care about it, then he’s a fool doomed to spend the rest of his life alone, or maybe he’ll just settle for his sloppy PI sidekick.”

  “Did you love him?” I asked, pretending I didn’t hear the last thing she said.

  “Of course,” Margaret replied.

  “Would you have loved him if he didn’t have the money?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. But I wouldn’t have married him.”

  • • •

  Despite Edward’s direct imperative, I returned to the trenches of the Divine Strategies file room to torture myself some more with grunt work, because something was clawing at the back of my brain telling me that I was missing something. When I arrived I noticed that Steve Grant’s office was vacated. I inquired about his absence on a carefully timed bathroom break. Amy Cohen told me that he had quit. Something about needing more money. Whatever hold Maureen Stevens had over the lot, I wasn’t going to learn it trapped in that file room. I was at the end of the massive filing pileup, counting the seconds until I could venture out into the cold office and begin my real undercover work, when Brad casually entered the file room with another giant heap of paperwork.

  “I was doing some spring cleaning and found this in my office.”

  I didn’t mention that it was close to fall. It’s possible that tears were welling up in my eyes because the next thing Brad said was, “Why don’t you take a break for today and you can get back to it later.”

  It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how much I loathed being in the confines of Divine Strategies, their weekly Bible study, personal-space office politics, and prison file room. And I had no idea how much I was looking forward to filing away that last sheet of paper. I sat down in the corner of the file room and called D.

  “I think your God is punishing me,” I said to D.

  “For what?” D asked.

  “For that filing memo I sent around.”

  “If we’re going to entertain this line of thinking,” D said, “let’s impose some logic here. You’ve been arrested, say, half a dozen times in your youth; you did some things we probably don’t want to revisit. You were a known vandal, occasional car thief, all-around menace to society, and my God decides to punish you for sending out a memo that suggested other employees do the filing, when, I should point out, no one actually followed the directives in the memo.”

  “All I’ve done at Divine Strategies is file. I don’t think I can work here another day.”

  “So what are you going to do?” D asked.

  “I need to get sexually harassed.”

  • • •

  I told Maureen I had a family emergency and asked if I could come back later in the afternoon and finish my shift. She didn’t have a problem with that. I went home, took a nap, changed into the most Evelyn outfit I had, and grabbed a bottle of midlevel bourbon from David’s house before I left.

  I arrived at Divine Strategies at four o’clock and hunkered down in the file room, waiting for the support staff to leave, hoping that one or two of the male partners would work late. Maureen left at five to pick up her daughter at school. The rest of the female staff was out of the office by five fifteen. It was down to Brad and Bryan. I’ll be honest, I was hoping it would be Bryan who stayed late, because I’d rather be groped by a semiattractive male than an unattractive one. As it was, fate decided. Bryan left before Brad and it was Brad who got the pleasure of my company. I took two buttons down on my blouse and tiptoed over to his office.

  “Long day?” I said, leaning against Brad’s doorway with a bottle of Knob Creek dangling from my right hand and two shot glasses clutched in the other.

  I must have startled Brad because he yelped and bounced a little in his chair.

  “Isabel. What are you doing here?”

  “The filing. It never ends, does it?” I said as seductively as one can say those words.

  “No. I guess not,” Brad said.

  “I could use a drink. How about you?”

  I put two shot glasses down on Brad’s desk and poured.

  “Oh, I’m good. I have to drive.”

  “Really? You’re going to make me drink alone, after I d
id all that nasty filing for you?”

  I have never tried to seduce anyone before and instead of taking a nap, maybe I should have Googled it or something.

  “I guess one drink wouldn’t hurt,” Brad said, taking a sip from his shot glass.

  I circled his desk and leaned against the edge, trying to nonchalantly hike my skirt up. Then I got an unattractive look at my flattened-out thigh and pulled my skirt down again. I took another shot to erase the memory of my thigh.

  “So, Brad, tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know everything. What do you like? What don’t you like? Any hobbies?”

  “I go bowling every Sunday.”

  “Bowling. Are you any good?”

  “I scored a two eighty once.”

  “Wow. That’s amazing. What pound ball do you use?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “You must have some very strong fingers.”2

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Can I top you off?” I asked.

  “What?” Brad said, looking frightened. Apparently he was unfamiliar with the phrase and didn’t notice the bottle of bourbon hovering above his glass. I added another drop anyway.

  I kicked off my heels, thinking that disrobing of some sort would seem suggestive and the only other thing I could imagine taking off was my watch.

  I took another shot, crossed one leg over the other, and tapped Brad’s thigh suggestively with my toe.

  “So, what’s a girl got to do to get a raise around here?”

  Fifteen minutes later, D was giving me a ride home.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I’m drunk,” I said. “And I think I just got fired for sexually harassing my boss.”

  D pretended he didn’t hear that last statement and relayed the day’s messages: “Rae called to suggest you take an accounting class or repeat fifth-grade math. Your father is putting in for a three-week vacation and Agent Bledsoe called again. This time he said it was urgent.”

  I didn’t call Bledsoe back. That might have been a mistake.

  • • •

  I granted myself the morning to sleep in after the previous evening’s humiliation. I took a cab to Divine Strategies, picked up my car, and drove to the Spellman office, arriving shortly after ten. When I saw that both of my parents’ cars were in the driveway, I had a brief moment of clarity and I thought, why not just ask my parents directly what was going on? So I climbed the stairs to their bedroom. My fist was poised to knock on the door and then I overheard this snippet of conversation.

  MOM: Don’t come home tonight.

  DAD: Olivia, be reasonable.

  MOM: I’m not talking about it anymore. You lied to me.

  DAD: It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  MOM: I’d pack a bag if I were you.

  I could hear my mother’s footsteps marching toward the door. Instead of facing the conflict head-on, I made a run for it down the stairs and bolted into the Spellman offices, where Rae was working on payroll and billing.

  “Mom and Dad are upstairs fighting,” I said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “What should we do about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Should we have an intervention?”

  “They’re not on meth.”

  “Clearly something is wrong with their marriage.”

  “I don’t think they’re headed for divorce, Izzy.”

  “How do you know?”

  Rae stared distractedly at the computer screen. “Shit. Not again.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Looks like we just embezzled another ten grand.”

  * * *

  1. She was in a one-bedroom in the Outer Sunset.

  2. It was the only plausible compliment I could offer.

  MISSING WORDS

  Another ten grand from GLD Inc. has been transferred into the Spellman Investigations checking account and I deny everything,” I said to Edward as we jogged past Spreckels Lake.

  “Over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars has been transferred into the Cayman Islands account. And yet, you’ve only siphoned twenty thousand for yourself,” Edward said.

  “It makes sense,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to draw too much attention to myself.”

  “But if you’re smart enough to embezzle over one hundred thousand into an offshore account, why would you then deposit money from that account back into your company’s checking account? Wouldn’t it make more sense to set up a DBA that wasn’t so obviously connected to you?”

  “Do you think I should call Agent Bledsoe and point that out to him? This case is a slam dunk. No self-respecting criminal would ever embezzle money in this fashion.”

  “Yes, why don’t you phone the FBI and tell them how you would embezzle money. That sounds like a brilliant plan, Isabel. And if for some maddening reason my sarcasm was lost on you, please listen clearly. Do. Not. Call. Agent Bledsoe. Under. Any. Circumstances. Whatsoever. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” I said, catching my breath. “So where did Lenore get that purse? You know they cost as much as your average used car.”

  Edward slowed to a brisk walk.

  “You’re walking,” I said. “Why are you walking?”

  “There are a few matters we need to discuss.”

  “There is a God,” I said as I caught my breath. Running is bad enough. Being expected to run and talk is inhumane.

  “I’d like you to quit with your side investigation of Lenore. Got it? I like her and I trust her and I’m not going to disrespect her by allowing you to dig around in her personal life the way you do. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” I said. There was a hint of anger in his voice that I’d never heard before.

  “And, Isabel, I heard from the temp office this morning. Even after I told you I wasn’t interested in Divine Strategies you returned to work there?” Slayter said.

  “I just wanted to know what was going on.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Isabel. It’s not our problem. And since we have problems, big problems, don’t you think we should be focusing on those?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “At least now I know you can’t return to work there. I won’t ask about the incident the other night.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let’s focus on this pesky embezzlement business. Who are our obvious suspects?”

  “People with access to the routing numbers, so the accounting department and people who don’t like me. Arthur and Arthur.”

  “For a detective, you can be extremely shortsighted.”

  “Heard it before. I’m sure I’ll hear it again.”

  Charlie rode up on his bike and said, “It’s nine fifteen, Mr. Slayter,” and then he handed him a towel. The towel thing was new.

  “I have a meeting,” Edward said.

  “Words.”

  “Let’s see. Turtle. Clock. Radiator.”

  “See you Friday,” I said.

  Slayter jogged off to his car. Charlie circled me on his bicycle.

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Charlie asked.

  “He got clock right,” I said.

  LACRIMATORS

  Tear gas. That’s what I was forgetting. D had texted me asking about the twelve cans of tear gas in my sister’s trunk and I had failed to investigate. Tear gas isn’t something you should forget about, but between embezzling money, watching my parents’ marriage deteriorate, trying to keep a failing business afloat, and my part-time job as receptionist, there was little time left to harness my sister’s activities.

  A few days later I sent D a text.

  Is the tear gas still in the trunk?

  don’t know.

  There was only one way to find out. I phoned Rae.

  “Can we swap cars this evening? I need to surveil someone who is familiar with my vehicle.”

  “But my car is better than your car,” Rae said.
/>
  “True, but both cars can take you from point A to point B.”

  “I believe some compensation for the imbalance would be appropriate.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Your car only has a cassette player,” Rae said.

  “We’re talking six hours tops. It’s quite possible that you wouldn’t even use your car in that time frame.”

  “And it’s quite possible I would.”

  “Give me a number.”

  “Fifty.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Thirty.”

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my sister over the years, it’s her bottom line.

  “Twenty-five. Final offer.”

  “Deal.”

  I had been hanging on to the Perrier bottle with the possibly tainted whiskey for a few days, trying to decide whether I should contact my usual source for lab work. Henry. But I knew Rae had a great chemist contact in her sticky blackmail network, so I brought the evidence to her apartment that night when I came to pick up the car.

  “Not thirsty, but thank you,” she said.

  “It’s evidence. I need to get it tested and I don’t want to go to Henry.”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  “Of course. Nothing with you is free,” I said as I gave her the twenty-five-dollar payment for the car swap.

  “Tank is empty,” Rae said as she tossed me the keys.

  I found the car parked around the corner, her usual spot, and immediately tried to open the trunk, only to realize that my sister had given me the valet key, which makes it impossible to open the trunk. I remembered that my parents, being the pink-slip owners of the vehicle (a calculated point of leverage), had an extra key at the house and drove home. I didn’t see either of their cars in the driveway, so it was safe to assume that both of my parents were out. I knocked on the door to be safe, waited a moment, and then used my key.

  I called out for my parents and found the house unresponsive. Then I decided to search their bedroom. I won’t bother offering an excuse, only an explanation: It was there, and I didn’t know when else I’d find the opportunity.