Trail of the Spellmans

by Lisa Lutz

  “What friend?” Henry asked.

  “Emily.”

  “Who is Emily?”

  “A friend from college.”

  “Why haven’t I heard of her?”

  “Because we didn’t go to college together, dear. Remember, you weren’t born yet?”

  “Were you close?”

  “Mortal enemies. But time heals all wounds. At least most flesh wounds.”

  “It was a reasonable question,” Henry said.

  “Can’t help myself, dear.”

  “Call me if you’re going to be late,” Henry said.

  “How about you just assume I’m going to be late? In fact, maybe as late as tomorrow morning.”

  “You might stay over?”

  “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Call me and let me know either way.”

  “Good night, Henry.”

  Just when my mother ordered me to roll up my sleeves and do the dishes, my cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “My toaster is on fire.”

  “I’ll be right there.”3

  Henry drove to my new favorite client’s apartment and waited in the car as I went upstairs to “investigate.” As expected, nothing was aflame. However, when I performed my usual walk-through, I found the bathtub on a slow drip, with the plug soundly in place, the water cresting toward the edge. I reached into the claw-foot tub and removed the stopper, displacing water onto the tile floor. I waited for it to drain and soon realized that this was not merely a case of Walter’s forgetfulness but deliberate sabotage. I had to decide whether I should feed Walter’s general paranoia and OCD or find the culprit on my own.

  Back in the car, Henry and I made small talk. Or what I like to call “evasive talk,” where we talk about everything but what we should be talking about.

  “I think it might rain,” Henry said.

  “Light showers, I read.”

  “They really should fix the potholes in the street.”

  “Why don’t you fix them? Just get some gravel and tar and have at it,” I said.

  “No. I think I’ll just write another letter.”

  “Because that clearly works.”

  Silence.

  “So, that went well,” Henry said.

  “What?”

  “The dinner.”

  “Oh, yes. It did, didn’t it?”

  Silence.

  “Maybe we should take a vacation,” Henry said.

  “From each other?” I asked.

  “No. I meant together. Do you want to take a vacation? From me?”

  “I just get confused when people say ‘vacation’ instead of ‘disappearance.’ I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Before I could dig myself further into a pothole, my mother called. Usually I’m more than happy to send her to voice mail, but I welcomed the distraction.

  “It was a lovely evening, wasn’t it?” Mom said.

  “Yes,” I said. “For once it was actually a good meal,” I added, thinking she was fishing for a compliment.

  “Thank you, sweetie. I’m quite fond of Gerty.”

  “Please stop talking like that.”

  “She’s great company.”

  “I agree.”

  “I thought of something after you left.”

  “If you have one more drink, you might forget it,” I suggested.

  “You know who Gerty reminds me of?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You.”

  “Have that drink, Mom,” I said, disconnecting the call.

  While Gerty and I bore no physical resemblance, I had to admit that my mother had a point. Objectively (and I like to think I can be that on occasion), I found something oddly familiar about Gerty’s general evasiveness, her refusal to tell Henry where she was going or where she had been, and her fondness for booze. However, no one wants to think that her boyfriend digs her because she reminds him of his mother, so I brushed that thought aside as best I could and focused on more pressing matters. Like, for instance, what was Gerty hiding? Because she was definitely hiding something.

  PAPERWORK

  It is company policy to have all surveillance reports proofread by an employee other than the operative on the case. I wasn’t assigned to the Blake case but I pulled my sister’s second surveillance report off of my mother’s desk and cleared the next few hours for Rae’s grunt work. You’d be surprised how quickly a client will turn on you if you provide a sloppy report. If you think about it, documenting hours of nothing is a tricky job. If the subject is doing nothing—like sleeping—how much filler is reasonable?

  6:45 A.M.

  The sun rises over the horizon, casting its rosy glow upon the sleepy suburban neighborhood. Investigator believes the subject is still sleeping. Neighbor #5 exits residence, sits in her car, and carries on a ten-minute cell phone conversation. Neighbor #5’s vehicle should have the muffler checked. Neighbor #3 appears to steal Neighbor #4’s newspaper. Neighbor #2 puts recycling in Neighbor #3’s bin.

  6:55 A.M.

  A light turns on in subject’s kitchen.

  7:05 A.M.

  A garbage truck meanders down the street, picking up refuse. Neighbor #6 stands on her porch and waves at one of the sanitation workers. He waves back. They exchange a warm glance. Investigator believes that they are having an affair.

  For the record, that’s too much detail. The subject is the star of this one-person show and only suspicious behavior that relates to her should be described.

  Now let’s return to our subject, Vivien Blake. Surveillance is a pricey endeavor; even many well-off clients can’t afford round-the-clock operatives. Often clients will pick windows of time to have the subject under surveillance, hoping that the chosen window will shed some light on subject’s extracurricular activities. Mr. and Mrs. Blake chose a weekly stipend, which covered fifteen hours of a one-person job, which we were to use at our discretion. Since Rae was the primary investigator, the time frame of Vivien’s surveillance was mostly under Rae’s domain. However, it was understood that she would vary her hours to oversee a wide variety of Vivien’s chosen habits.

  The rest of Rae’s report sufficiently covered an appropriate cross-section of time and, to her credit, was professional, typo free, and had just the right amount of detail. However, there was one detail that was missing—one that virtually no client would ever think of.

  Surveillance Report: Vivien Blake

  Thursday, September 15

  900 hrs

  Surveillance commences. Subject is believed to be inside her residence at [redacted]. Investigator waits in Dolores Park across the street.

  952 hrs

  Subject departs residence and walks three blocks to Muddy Waters Coffee House on Valencia Street. Subject enters establishment. Investigator also enters café and finds corner table away from subject’s view. Investigator observes subject drinking coffee and studying. A large textbook sits on the table.

  1115 hrs

  Unknown male #1 (early twenties, light brown hair, medium build, average height) sits down at subject’s table. Unknown male #1 drinks coffee and appears to be studying in silence with subject. A brief communication is observed.

  1145 hrs

  Unknown male #1 leaves a brown paper bag on the table and leaves café.

  1200 hrs

  Subject puts the paper bag into her backpack and leaves the café. Subject walks to the Sixteenth Street BART station.

  1215 hrs

  Subject boards the Fremont train.

  1243 hrs

  exits at the Berkeley station and walks to the Berkeley campus.

  1300 hrs

  Subject enters library and sits down next to unknown male #2 (early twenties, brown hair, thin build, average height). Subject gives unknown male #2 brown paper bag.

  1315 hrs

  Subject leaves library and returns to BART station, taking the train back to San Francisco.

  1400 hrs

  Invest
igator ends surveillance.

  Rae’s report covered two more days of Vivien studying and having a few meetings that could be either suspicious or not. It also included a twenty-three-hour period in which Rae could not locate subject at her residence or any of her known haunts.

  However, it wasn’t the specifics about Vivien in the report that I found suspect. It was the investigator. I made the alibi call first, since I know how to play this game.

  “Fred,” I said into the receiver.

  “Isabel,” he replied.

  “Have you aided my sister on any surveillance in the past week?”

  “No. And I think it’s unlikely that she’d ask.”

  “Maybe because you haven’t gotten the concept down.”

  “Did you call me to tell me that I screwed up again? Because you made that clear the first time around.”

  “It was worth mentioning one more time.”

  “Anything else, Isabel?”

  “Nope. Thanks, Fred.”

  Then I phoned Rae. She picked up on the fourth ring.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  I hung up and sent her a text: That’s not how you answer the phone.

  She replied a minute later: Not how U txt

  FU (how’s that?)

  UNTCO1

  What?!!!

  :-o zz2

  I phoned again.

  “What do you want?” she rudely answered once again.

  “I want you to stop being a pain in my ass.”

  “Then get to the point.”

  “I’m reviewing your surveillance report on Blake.”

  “On who?”

  “On Vivien Blake.”

  “Who?”

  “On the Sparrow. Satisfied?”

  “I left that report for Mom to cover.”

  “Mom’s busy. Have you seen her hobby load?”

  “You’re still not getting to the point.”

  “Did you have help on the job?”

  “No.”

  “Did you lose visual on the subject at any time?”

  “No. I made that clear in the report,” Rae impatiently replied.

  “So at no point did you break surveillance?”

  “No. Is there anything else?”

  “That will be all,” I said, disconnecting the call.

  There was no point in tipping my hand to Rae just yet. My sister was hard to manage when she was young, but as a citizen of legal age, with complete access to vehicles, money, and the myriad tools of the trade we had taught her, she had become a wild variable in any equation. She was that chemical in a chemistry experiment that caused an inert substance to explode.

  I couldn’t go to my parents with the flimsy dirt I had on my sister. She faked a surveillance report. My evidence? Rae can’t go four hours without peeing. It’s thin, I know. But I’ve worked jobs with her for fourteen years and that’s a simple fact. Why she would doctor a report was my first question. And, secondly, what did she do to David?

  A few hours later, I sent a follow-up text: IO2U.

  Rae refused to reply, probably because my acronym hadn’t entered the lexicon just yet. But I am hopeful it will one day.

  I’m onto you.

  BAD DETECTIVE

  Four weeks had passed since we took on our collection of domestic cases and I still couldn’t tell you why my sister had doctored the Vivien Blake report, or why Gerty extended her San Francisco visit for another two weeks and then virtually disappeared, or what motivated my mother to rush off to classes that she clearly did not enjoy. I still had no idea what Rae had done to my brother. Nor could I comprehend why Mrs. Slayter wanted Mr. Slayter followed. The one thing I could say for certain was that there was no reason to surveil Edward Slayter. Because Mr. Slayter did nothing at all.

  I should clarify: Mr. Slayter went to meetings, he met men in suits for lunch, he met more men in suits for dinner, he went for long strolls in the park, he had tennis dates and even a few doctor’s appointments. Mrs. Slayter merely wanted to know where he was and yet she didn’t seem particularly interested in what he was doing when he was there.

  At one point I suggested she stick a tracking device in his coat pocket when he left the house, which might have been more accurate and cost-effective than hiring a PI. She seemed to mull the idea over for a few seconds and then replied, “But sometimes he leaves his coat at the office.”

  I voiced my concern to Mom at one point. She asked me if Mrs. Slayter was current with her payments. I replied that she was. Our conversation ended there.

  I voiced my concerns to Dad. He asked me the same question Mom did. I gave him the same answer. “Then what’s the problem?” he replied.

  The problem was that I didn’t trust Mrs. Slayter. It’s one thing if a client asks me to follow a suspicious spouse, but following an unsuspicious one is a truly uncommon request. I’ve been at this job long enough to know when I’m being played and I couldn’t shake that feeling when it came to Mrs. Slayter.

  When I was younger, I always had an excess of broke friends to hire on a moment’s notice for backup on a surveillance job. In the intervening years those friends moved away, got married, had kids, became gainfully employed, or discovered that surveillance was about as interesting as bird-watching. No offense to bird-watchers.

  My point: I had to call Fred again, since what I was doing was in the shady section of the PI department store.

  “Now, let’s go over this one more time, Fred,” I said when I dropped off Finkel in front of Mr. Slayter’s office building on Market Street. “All you have to do is follow him and text me his current location. You don’t provide subject with directions, transportation, or medical advice, or offer to buy him lunch. Got it?”

  “What if he’s hit by a car?”

  “Call 911.”

  “What if he’s bleeding profusely?”

  “The ambulance guys will take care of it,” I said.

  “They’re called EMTs,” Fred replied.

  “Finkel, do you want to make fifty bucks in cash or not?”

  “I do.”

  “Then shut up and do as I tell you.”

  Silence.

  “Got it?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “Acknowledge you understand me.”

  Fred nodded his head. I drove off before he could convince me to take him off the job.

  Mrs. Slayter sent me a text message while I was parked three doors down from her house, requesting her husband’s coordinates. I informed her that he was at the office, which, as I far as I knew, was the truth.

  Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Slayter left her home carrying a gym bag and wearing what I presume were workout clothes. There was some writing on her ass, which I couldn’t make out, so I kept staring at it. I couldn’t figure why you would have something written on your butt unless you really wanted people to stare at it. For the record, the primary reason I stopped wearing my extra JUSTICE 4 MERRI-WEATHER T-shirts was because I got tired of people reading my chest. Another thing I noticed about Mrs. Slayter was that she was in full makeup, which I think is kind of gross if you’re going to the gym. Turns out Mrs. Slayter wasn’t going to the gym.

  Mrs. Slayter pulled her Mercedes out of the driveway and turned north, making a right on Gough Street. I started my engine and was about to sneak in behind her when a black Audi cut me off. The driver didn’t notice my cheap Buick on his tail. He was too focused on following the Mercedes. I hung back just a bit to keep a low profile and followed the Audi, following Mrs. Slayter to the Four Seasons hotel. Mrs. Slayter valet-parked. The driver of the Audi followed suit. Since I knew I’d miss the party if I tried to find a metered spot on the street, I valet-parked my crappy Buick. To the valet’s credit he treated me like I was driving a Benz.

  “Are you a guest, ma’am?”

  “No, and please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’”1

  I rushed into the lavish lobby of the swanky hotel to catch a brief glimpse of Mrs. Slayter entering the elevator
with an unknown male. The unknown male, I should mention, was approximately twenty years younger than her husband and not unattractive. While they did not show any affectionate exchange during my brief sighting of them, they were riding an elevator together to the guest-room towers of the Four Seasons.

  I then scanned the expansive lobby and found a known male comfortably seated on a plush beige couch, reading a newspaper.

  “Dad, what are you doing here?”

  INTERSECTION

  The question is, what are you doing here?” my father replied, folding his newspaper in quarters.

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Would a straight answer every once in a while kill you?”

  “I don’t know; I’ve never tried it.”

  “You know this place is kind of above your pay grade.”

  “We need to do something about that. So, Dad, what case are you working on?”

  “I’m on a surveillance job for the Sweater Vest.”

  “Who is the Sweater Vest?”

  “You took the meeting.”

  “You mean the guy from the library?”

  “We call him the Sweater Vest, because he wears sweater vests.”

  “Do you see now why this nickname business is idiotic?” I asked.

  “Right now it’s not working for you and me, but Rae and I have no problem with it.”

  “The client’s name is Adam Cooper, right?”

  “Yes. Now, would you like to tell me why you’re here?” Dad asked.

  “Who are you surveilling?” I replied.

  “Meg Cooper, and you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “The blonde who got into the elevator with the younger man?”

  “Yes, Isabel. What’s going on?”

  “Meg Cooper is Margaret Slayter.”

  “And that is?”

  “Margaret Slayter is a client. She hired me to follow her husband.”

  “Is her husband at this hotel?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I followed Mrs. Slayter here.”