THE SPELLMANS STRIKE AGAIN

by Lisa Lutz

  Speaking of potato chips, my sister and Fred showed up a short time later. Henry had grown accustomed to their regular drop-bys, but this time there was a new energy in the air.

  “How’d you get here?” Henry asked, after he opened the door and peered outside for evidence of transportation.

  “We took the bus,” Fred said triumphantly.

  “Excuse me,” Rae said, brushing past Henry. “I need to wash my hands.”

  “So, how’d it go?” Henry asked anyone who would answer.

  Rae sighed. Fred smiled and said, “We got to where we were going and nobody vomited on anybody.”

  “There’s always next time,” I chimed in.

  Rae glared at me and then scoured the pantry looking for her not-so-secret-stash of junk food, which was not-so-secretly missing.

  “You got rid of it again?” Rae said, betrayed.

  “Yes, when you commit a felony, you lose junk-food storage privileges. That’s how the world works.”

  “Whatever,” Rae said, rolling her eyes. “Can we watch TV?”

  “What’s wrong with either of your homes?”

  “Lost Wednesday,” Rae replied. “And David is having a dinner party, which I’m not invited to. He told me to make myself scarce until ten.”

  “My parents don’t have cable,” Fred said, explaining his side of the bargain.

  “Just keep the volume down,” Henry said.

  “I’m not driving anyone home,” I announced ahead of time.

  “Who asked you?” Rae replied.

  •� •� •

  Two hours later, the kids performed a quiet disappearing act. I got the feeling Henry was wondering when I would do the same. I suppose I should have asked him earlier.

  “Can I sleep on your couch?”

  “Something wrong with your home?” he replied.

  “Yes. It’s being fumigated tonight.”

  I doubt he believed me, but Henry made up the couch and offered me an extra toothbrush. I turned off my cell phone just to make sure that my sleep wasn’t interrupted.

  REGRESSION

  I met Bernie at the Hemlock the following afternoon. I think this was the first time in our history that I returned his bear hug with the same enthusiasm. Bernie and I sat down at the bar and I said for the first time in my life, “Get this man the finest bourbon you have.”

  Of course I didn’t know that the finest bourbon would cost me ten dollars a shot, but still, it was worth it.

  “You okay?” I asked Bernie, eyeing him for any visual injuries.

  “I’m fine. Not sure I can say the same for the other guy, though,” Bernie replied, chuckling to himself.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “It’s a short story, Izz. I arrived at your apartment at two A.M. on the dot. I put on my PJs and got into bed. Believe it or not, I nodded off. The next thing I know, some Irish guy hops into bed with me, just wearing his T-shirt and shorts. If I weren’t so assured of my own manhood, I might have had an issue. Anyway, Irish guy screams like a girl, says, ‘Bloody ’ell,’ asks what I’m doing there. I says, ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ He says, ‘Where’s Isabel?’ I says, ‘She’s not here, but she gives you her best.’”

  “That was a nice touch,” I said.

  “I thought so. Then he puts on his clothes, storms out of the apartment, and the rest, as you say, is history.”

  There’s one final detail that I suppose will bring this matter to a close. Connor left a single voice mail message at three A.M.: “Okay, Isabel. I hear ya loud and clear. Give my regards to the fat guy. You know, he’s not so bad, come to think of it. At least he shows up when you make a date.”

  And that was the last I ever heard from Connor O’Sullivan, Ex-boyfriend #12.

  THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING DOORKNOBS

  I watched the exodus of stuff from the Spellman residence for over a month. I’d solved one piece of the puzzle, but there was another angle I couldn’t figure out. Light fixtures vanishing, doorknobs departing, and now the hot-water nozzle in the downstairs bathroom sink had made an exit.

  “All right. What gives?” I said to my parents when I returned to my desk after a quick bathroom break that required the use of my own personal doorknob.

  “Excuse me?” Mom said innocently.

  This time I was going for a direct approach.

  “When are you going to tell me what’s going on here?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Isabel,” Mom replied dismissively.

  Dad remained silent, as usual. I wasn’t surprised to see my father keeping his distance from the conversation, but I knew he was the weak link.

  I used my doorknob as a pointer and turned to him. “Something fishy is going on here, Dad. Speak.”

  “Don’t point that thing at me. It’s rude,” Dad replied.

  “Evading as usual,” I said.

  I spun around in my chair and directed the doorknob at Mom.

  “Are you happy living like this?”

  “We’re doing a little home improvement. That’s all. It always involves some chaos. You have to go with the flow, Izzy.”

  Eventually I realized I wouldn’t get anything out of these two impenetrable souls. I took my doorknob and the rest of the afternoon off.

  To clear my mind and improve my spirits, I picked up a coffee and sat by the community garden watching Rae scowl her way through her green probation. She had, however, managed to convince all of her co-gardeners to wear FREE SCHMIDT! shirts.

  While I was sipping coffee and delighting in my fantasy of Rae on an eco-friendly chain gang, I saw Fred out of the corner of my eye. He was hard to miss since he was wearing his usual FREE SCHMIDT! T-shirt with his army jacket uniform over it. Come to think of it, I never saw Fred in anything but that green jacket. I wondered if he had some odd clothing superstition like Uncle Ray did with his lucky shirt.1

  When Fred saw me, he waved and came over.

  “What are you doing here, Fred?”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Fred replied.

  Weren’t we all?

  He opened his brown-bag lunch and offered me half of a sandwich.

  “What kind is it?” I asked.

  “Ham and cheese,” Fred replied.

  “I thought you were lactose intolerant,” I said.

  “I just say that,” Fred replied, “so that I can quit the drinking game whenever I want.”

  “Smart man.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let me give you a piece of advice: If you’re ever being followed, lose the jacket.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” Fred said. “I keep my inhaler2 in it and it’s got all sorts of handy pockets. Sometimes you just decide that one jacket is all you need.”

  That got me thinking about Demetrius and his jacket. Where was that denim jacket right now? I needed to double-check the evidence log in the file. But first, I had to finish eating my excellent sandwich.

  “I had a feeling you’d be here,” Fred said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Rae says you find pleasure in her pain.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you, under the same set of circumstances?”

  “I’m not judging,” Fred replied.

  “You seem like a nice guy, Fred. What are you doing with her?”

  “She’s not like anybody else,” Fred replied.

  He was right. I just hoped he had the mettle to handle that human tornado.

  “Just be careful,” I said.

  “Will do,” Fred replied.

  “What we talked about the other day,” I said. “You’ve no doubt kept quiet.”

  “I’m a man of my word,” Fred replied.

  “Sorry to doubt you. I just don’t come across those very often.”

  Fred and I sat in silence, finishing our provisions and enjoying Rae’s frozen expression of hostility—or at least I was enjoying that.

  “Wow. She really hates this gardening,” I said.

/>   “I know,” Fred replied. “And now your brother is making her plant perennials in his backyard.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “Interesting.”

  MY AGENDA

  Sometimes I can barely keep track of the galaxy of investigations, deceit, turmoil, clashes, and chaos that I travel through every day. I had too many cases—professional, pro bono, and personal—to mentally catalog. I returned home and made a list of the dangling matters that I had to contend with so that I could come up with a clear plan for a solution. Here is my to-do list at the time, which I itemized in descending order of urgency.

  • Free Merriweather.

  • Destroy Harkey.

  • Discover Mrs. Enright’s angle.

  • Solve the doorknob conspiracy at Spellman headquarters.

  • Find out what dirt David has on Rae to explain extra gardening.

  • Take shower.

  I suppose the last item on the list wasn’t necessary, but since I was writing things down . . .

  After my shower, I reviewed the Merriweather police file again and focused primarily on the crime-scene photos. For years investigators have been familiar with the phenomenon of perps occasionally returning to the scene of the crime to glory in their handiwork. While reviewing the pictures, I was pretty sure I spotted Demetrius standing with the crowd behind the police tape. However, Demetrius, being Ms. Collins’s neighbor, would naturally have been curious when teams of squad cars and ambulances pulled up right next to his home. What I noticed about the picture was that Demetrius was wearing a jean jacket. A jean jacket that looked just like the one Jack Weaver said he was wearing the night of the crime. Now, if Demetrius stole Mrs. Collins’s TV and stabbed her fifteen times while wearing that jacket, shouldn’t it have been covered in blood?1 And would he have been foolish enough to return to the scene of the crime in a jacket splattered with the victim’s blood?

  Also in the file was a brief mention of another witness. The name was Craig Phelps. The note on Craig was brief. “Saw white man leaving Elsie’s house. Witness unreliable. Known drunk.”

  A witness who sees another person leaving Elsie’s house and there’s no follow-up? What kind of defense attorney did Mr. Merriweather have? I needed to consult Maggie on a few matters, so I put the file away and moved on to another item on my list.

  I pulled out my computer to check on the tracking device that was placed on Elizabeth Enright’s Toyota and watched her movements on her day off. Unfortunately, she drove her car to a parking garage off Van Ness, and it didn’t move for twenty-four hours. So Mrs. Enright’s vehicle wasn’t going to tell me anything. Maybe a short tail on her would. But there was no time for that now.

  I phoned Len and asked him how the valet interviews were going.

  “Dreadfully,” he replied.

  “Can you put Christopher on the phone?”

  “Hello,” Christopher said.

  “Are you moving to Los Angeles or New York?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Decide. Mr. Winslow has Len’s trust. He needs Len to help him find a replacement and Len won’t get anything done until you have a clear plan in sight.”

  “Isabel, sounds to me like those are your troubles, not mine.”

  “Well then I’m going to tell Len he can keep his job with Mr. Winslow, and they don’t need to look for a replacement. At least then I know my client will be in good hands.”

  “You’ve made your point, Isabel.”

  “Good night, Christopher.”

  THURSDAYS WITH

  MORTY REDUX

  I picked Morty up at the full-service condo that he and Ruthy were renting near the Embarcadero. It had only been seven months since I’d seen him, but those seven months had taken their toll. Florida will do that to you, I guess. He also had something of a tan. Mixed with his square Coke-bottle glasses, the tan made him look like a Miami natural, but he was glad to be home. I could see that.

  I gave Morty a Bernie-style bear hug, but then I softened the embrace because it felt like he would crumble in my arms. When Ruthy came out of the kitchen to greet me, she also appeared tired, as if the months in Florida hadn’t been as invigorating as she had hoped.

  “Nice to see you again, Isabel.”

  “You too,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Staying out of jail?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” I replied truthfully.

  “I don’t want to hear another word,” she said, and returned to the kitchen.

  After she left, I squeezed Morty’s weak bicep and said, “We need to get you back in a regular shuffleboard game,” I said. “You’re getting soft.”

  Morty ignored me and said, “Did you make a reservation?”

  “Of course. We need to hurry if we’re going to make the one o’clock seating.”

  Morty returned to the kitchen, where he said good-bye to Ruthy. I could overhear the tones of a mild disagreement, but I couldn’t make out any of the content.

  At Moishe’s Pippic,1 we took a table in the back. Morty ordered matzo-ball soup, which seemed odd since he was always talking up the pastrami. But maybe it’s hard to find yourself in the mood for soup in Miami and he was ready for a change. When Morty unbuttoned his Pendleton shirt, I noticed that he was sporting a FREE SCHMIDT! T-shirt underneath.

  “You’re wearing the wrong shirt,” I said.

  “I thought we wanted Schmidt free,” Morty said.

  “Sure we want Schmidt free, but that looks like it’s going to happen. Now we want to free Demetrius. He takes priority. I had another shirt made for you.”

  I gave Morty my offering.

  “ Justice 4 Merri-weather’?” Morty read as he held up his nice, new bright red shirt with black lettering. “Must have taken forever to iron on all those letters.”

  “Forever,” I replied, reliving the memory.

  “They’re crooked, you know.”

  “Not another word.”

  “So you’re done hunting Harkey?” Morty said with a tone of disbelief. “And now you’re searching for justice?”

  “That sounds fairly close to the truth,” I replied.

  “Why don’t you give me the whole truth and nothing but?”

  And so I did. And by the time Morty was finished with his soup and two cups of decaf coffee, he agreed that the evidence against Merriweather was shamefully weak—and also agreed to wear the Team Merriweather T‑shirt.

  FREE MERRIWEATHER—

  CHAPTER 5

  I phoned Harkey’s old partner, Inspector Andrew Fishman (now lieutenant), at least four times and left a message. I made a foolish mistake with the first phone call, mentioning that I wanted to discuss Harkey. This might have been the kiss of death—even when I followed him to work and then phoned his office, I was told that he was out for the day. There had to be another way. And the other way involved keeping me out of the picture.

  Next up, I had to track down Craig Phelps. The file contained only his name and an El Cerrito address. But that was twenty years ago; Craig Phelps is a fairly common name, and tracking him down based on a previous address alone was next to impossible. The police file didn’t even bother giving any other identifying information on Phelps, since he was so handily dismissed.

  I ran a name search for every city in the Bay Area and narrowed down the list by eliminating any Craig Phelpses under the age of forty or over eighty. This left me with ten Craig Phelpses. I started making phone calls. With each call I identified myself as a representative of a close relative who was trying to make contact with a certain Craig Phelps. Then I explained that the relative in question had lost touch with Phelps after he moved from the El Cerrito address that I provided. Craig Phelps #6 was my man. I arranged for us to meet at a nearby diner so that I could have his full attention.

  We met at a Denny’s on Carolina Street. Craig Phelps was now sixty and, as far as I could tell, sober. Although based on his complexio
n, it might have taken him a few years to dry out. I ordered pancakes with a whipped cream face because I thought it would keep things light. It’s hard to feel threatened by someone eating a happy face.

  “I’m afraid I’ve brought you here under false pretenses,” I said over my first bottomless cup of coffee.

  “Oh yeah?” Craig replied.

  “But really, it’s not that bad. I’m going to pay for your breakfast and give you fifty bucks after we have a short chat. No harm can come of that, right?”

  And so Craig and I chatted. I reminded him of the Merriweather case and did my best to jog his memory about the officer who interviewed him. The interview, he recalled, was short; the officer, based on his description alone, was Harkey.

  Then I asked Craig what he saw that night. He said he saw a white male exit through Ms. Collins’s back door sometime before dawn. Craig admitted to having been drunk at the time, but he was always drunk back then and it rarely incapacitated him. He stood by his original statement. He saw a white male, approximately twenty-five years of age, run off after exiting Elsie Collins’s home. According to the report, the date of the interview was five days after Elsie was murdered. I asked Craig if it was possible that he was remembering a white male exit her home on a different night. But he said no. The following day was etched in his memory because the murder caused such a stir in the whole neighborhood.

  I asked him if he knew Demetrius Merriweather.

  “Not very well,” Craig replied, “but I’m pretty sure he stole my hubcaps once.”

  •� •� •

  I drove to Maggie’s office after my meeting with Phelps. Same as my last visit, she was feasting on saltines and ginger ale and she had the general look of queasiness about her.

  “How long are you going to pretend not to notice?” Maggie asked.

  “As long as you’d like me to,” I replied.

  “Who knows?”

  “I think just me and Fred.”