Lisa Lutz Spellman Series E-Book Box Set: The Spellman Files, Curse of the Spellmans, Revenge of the Spellmans, The Spellmans Strike Again (54 page)

CHAPTER-4

Friday, March 17 1800 hours

Rae heated up a can of chicken soup for my dinner and served it to me in bed. The noodles reminded me of the leprechaun vomit and I lost my appetite.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I’m feeling very hostile toward that ladder, but otherwise I’m in extreme pain.”

“Do you need me to stay home and take care of you?” Rae asked.

“What would you do, serve me more lukewarm soup? No, thanks.”

“So is it all right if I go over to my friend’s house?”

“What friend?”

“Ashley Pierce.”

“Your co-sleuth in the mucous case?”

“Yep.”

“Write down all her info and keep your cell phone on.”

Rae scribbled on a piece of paper.

“Is it okay if I sleep over?” she asked. “Or do you need me to come home and change your bedpan?”

“You’re disgusting. Go to your slumber party. Have fun braiding each other’s hair.”

“
That’s
disgusting,” said Rae. “I’ll see you in the A.M. If you need anything, call 911.”

Rae departed shortly after seven
P.M
.

By eleven
P.M
., I was desperate for sleep and in unbearable pain. I raided Mom’s medicine cabinet and grabbed two Vicodin and a sleeping pill.
¹
I remained unconscious until three
A.M
., when I felt two strong hands on my shoulder.

The room was dark, I was still drugged, and my eyes could only make out the shape of a man standing above me, roughly shaking me.

I remember fear hitting me immediately. I awoke suddenly and gasped for breath. Then I screamed in pain and threw a punch at the unknown male in the room with me.

The man quickly backed away and touched the side of his face.

“That hurt, Isabel.”

The voice sounded familiar, but that didn’t necessarily mean I was out of danger. Remember, two Vicodin and a sleeping pill, and just woken from a deep sleep?

“I’m calling the police,” I meant to say, but it came out “Em police calling.”

Henry Stone flicked on the light.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, still slurring my words, but now putting them in the proper order.

“Rae phoned me about forty-five minutes ago from a party. She was barely conscious. She said she tried to call you and David but there was no answer. The call dropped before I could get an address. I’ve been calling your house and ringing the doorbell for about a half hour now.”

“Really?”

“What are you on, Isabel?”

“Vicodin and sleeping pills. Singular. Just one sleeping pill.”

“Why?”

“I think my rib or ribs are fractured or something.”

“Have you gone to the hospital?”

“No doctors!!”

“We’ll deal with this later. Do you know where Rae is?”

“Uh, yeah. She gave me the address of her friend’s house.”

I scanned the room and promptly found the slip of paper Rae left before she departed. Henry went to my closet and grabbed a coat and sneakers. While trying to get my arm inside the coat sleeve, I complained about the footwear option.

“I can’t wear those shoes.”

“What?” Stone said, annoyed. “You look like shit, Isabel. Shoes are not going to make a difference.”

“Boy, you’re rude. I can’t wear them because I can’t tie them. I can’t reach my feet.”

“Sit down,” Henry ordered.

I sat down on the bed and Henry quickly put the sneakers on my feet and tied the laces.

“Let’s go,” he said, and we got into his car and went in search of Rae.

We arrived at the aftermath of a party. The image was not unlike the drunken leprechauns sleeping amongst their wasted beer cans. The house was partially lit and through the window one could see lifeless bodies on the floor, the couch, some slouched against the wall.

Stone rang the doorbell at least half a dozen times and then banged on the door violently.

“Police. Open up,” he said, and I then I remembered that he was a cop.

Since “Police” usually works better as a wake-up call than “Anybody home?” the door was answered soon after by a grungy-looking fellow with long, sloppy hair. The stoner-dude mellow look on his face quickly shifted to fear when Henry stormed into the house and grabbed him by the collar.

“Where’s Rae Spellman?”

“Uh, I dunno.”

Stone backed the sloppy kid into a corner and offered up the most intimidating glare I had ever seen. I was so accustomed to observing Stone cowed by my mother and Rae’s outrageous demands that it never occurred to me he was anything but a slightly simmering, mild-mannered inspector.

“Think really fucking hard, because I’m not leaving until I find her.”

“Upstairs, maybe.”

“For your sake, I hope you’re right.”

Henry raced up the stairs. I limped after him. He began opening and closing doors, shouting out Rae’s name. Then he did the oddest thing. He picked up a half-awake kid on the floor, smacked his face lightly to wake him up, and then when the kid’s eyes opened, he said, “I’m very disappointed in you. You’ll be hearing from me again.”

Henry let the young man drop down to the floor and continued along the hallway. There was one final room that we had not checked. Henry tried the door, but it was locked. He banged on it and shouted, “Open up,” but there was no response. Henry backed away from the door as if he was going to force it open with his shoulder.

“Stop,” I shouted, searching through my coat pockets. “I can pick the lock.” I found a paper clip and a nail file. I had worn the same jacket the last time I went out with Subject, so I had the appropriate tools to get into that secret room. Henry paced tensely behind. Maybe it was the prescription drugs or the fact that this party scene didn’t hold a candle to some of the bashes I attended in my youth, but I wasn’t all that concerned.

“Hurry up,” Henry said as I started working on the door.

Two minutes later, we entered the locked room and found Rae, out cold, on the bed. Alone, thankfully. She had locked herself inside just before she passed out. I tried to wake her, but she was too groggy to walk herself to the car.

Henry carried the mostly unconscious Rae out of the war zone. The few stragglers we managed to wake cautiously cleared out of the way.

I buckled Rae up in the backseat and sat down next to her. Henry got into the car.

“We’re going to the hospital.”

“No, Henry.”

“What if she was drugged?” he asked.

“I can smell the beer all over her. She’s just very drunk and passed out.”

“Has she ever done this before?” Henry asked.

“No,” I replied. “But it’s about time.”

As Henry pulled his car into the driveway of 1799 Clay Street, Rae woke up and said, “I think I’m going to barf.” She vomited once on the front lawn and then raced into the bathroom off the kitchen.

“Thank you,” I said to Henry as we stood in the foyer listening to the traveling sound of Rae’s guttural hacking in the bathroom.

The early morning activities had distracted me from the pain. With the distraction gone, the pain returned. I grabbed my side and said, “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”

“What’s wrong with you, Isabel?”

“I don’t know,” I said, annoyed. “All sorts of things.”

“No, I mean your side. What did you do to yourself?”

“Nothing.”

Henry then lifted up my shirt. I smacked his hand away. “Stop that.”

“Let me see.”

“Stop trying to look at my stomach.”

“Stop moving,” Henry said, and then he finally got a look at the black-and-blue mark on my left side.

“You’re supposed to ask before you lift up a girl’s shirt.”

“I think you need to go to the hospital.”

“No doctors!!!”

“Isabel, be reasonable.”

“I’m not coughing blood.”

“What?”

“I can breathe. My pulse rate isn’t elevated. At least I don’t think it is. We looked it all up on the internet. If my ribs are fractured or bruised, they’ll heal themselves.”

Henry leaned against the door and stared down at his feet, shaking his head. Then he took off his jacket and threw it over the couch.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m staying,” Henry said, annoyed.

“Why?”

“Because, if I leave, it would be like abandoning two mentally challenged people in a nuclear waste dump.”

“That’s nice, Henry. Excuse me while I attend to Vomit Girl.”

I took the first shift with my sister, which meant sitting on the bathroom floor watching Rae heave up everything she had consumed in the previous six hours. Henry took the second shift, which involved an almost scientific replenishment of fluids, I would later discover. I slept eight hours that night out of sheer exhaustion and woke, still in pain but somewhat refreshed, at eleven
A.M
.

Saturday, March 18
1100 hrs

I entered the kitchen to the smell of pancakes, toast, and eggs (not sizzling, but poaching).

“Can I have bacon too?” Rae asked Henry. Rae, I should mention, was drinking orange juice, appearing not any shade of green or yellow, and sounding almost chipper.

“No,” Henry flatly replied.

“Good morning,” I said, entering the kitchen.

“I’m really sorry about last night, Isabel,” said Rae.

“Okay,” I replied, studying her for signs of irrepressible nausea and incapacitating head-throbbing.

“Why can’t I have bacon?”

“Because you woke me up in the middle of the night to remove you from a party you got wasted at. That’s why,” Henry replied.

I slipped over to Henry by the stove and whispered subtly, “Let her have the bacon. It will help her hangover.”

“She’s not hungover,” Henry said.

“How is that possible?” I asked, feeling downright hostile.

“Because,” Henry replied. “She barfed up everything she drank and then I made her consume half a gallon of water, two quarts of Gatorade, and three slices of toast before she went to bed.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked, annoyed.

“So she wouldn’t have a hangover.”

“She’s supposed to have a hangover right now. You,” I said to Rae, “are supposed to feel sicker than you’ve felt in your entire life.”

“It’s not like I feel one hundred percent,” said Rae.

“What purpose is a hangover going to serve?” Henry asked.

“Cause and effect. She’ll realize that drinking too much makes her feel ill and therefore she will hopefully not drink again, or at the very least drink moderately.”

“Really?” Henry replied, returning his attention to the stove. “How many hangovers did it take you until you learned to moderate?”

“One hundred and seventy-eight,”
¹
I replied, graciously losing the argument. I poured myself a cup of Stone-brewed coffee
²
and sat down across from Rae. Henry placed two poached eggs and dry whole-grain toast in front of my sister.

“Are you sure you don’t want any pancakes?” Henry asked.

“No, thanks,” Rae replied with a little too much conviction. Then she began dousing her eggs with ketchup.

“Can I have pancakes?” I asked, suspicious that Rae was turning down one of her favorite meals for morning, noon, and night.

“How many?” Stone asked.

“Three,” I replied.

“She’ll have one,” said Rae.

“No, I’m hungry. I’ll have three.”

“I tried,” Rae mumbled under her breath.

While Stone mixed the pancake batter and poured it into the pan, I decided it was time to interrogate my sister regarding her previous night’s activities.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to a party?”

“Did you always tell Mom and Dad when you were going to a party?”

My lack of credibility was a problem, I realized. I decided to take a different tack.

“How much did you have to drink?” I asked.

“Only five beers,” Rae replied.

“
Only
five?”

“I didn’t think it was that much.”

This is when Henry turned around, looking disturbed. “How can you not think five beers is a lot?”

“I saw Isabel drink an entire six-pack during the last Super Bowl.”

Henry shook his head in disappointment. “First of all,” he said to Rae, “your sister has had a lot of practice.”

“Hey!”

“Second of all, she weighs almost forty pounds more than you.”

“More like thirty,” I snapped back.

“Do you want to step on a scale?” Stone asked.

As he predicted, I didn’t follow through with that argument. However, another one had to be made.

“In my defense, I was drinking Bud Light, and I had like two hundred dollars on that game, and my team was not going to meet the spread.”

“That’s your defense?” Henry said.

Rae looked all too pleased to have the attention deflected. She continued eating her eggs and toast as if nothing unusual had transpired.

But watching Rae scarf down eggs (albeit poached ones) and drink orange juice as if this were just an average morning in the Spellman house, after the dramatic manhunt of the previous night, started to get under my skin. I slipped out of the kitchen, across the hall, and into the Spellman offices, grabbed a digital recorder, and turned it on while dropping it into the pocket of my robe. I wanted to make sure I got her confession on tape.

When I returned, the pancakes were served with a side of fresh fruit and Rae was doing some screwball comedy act, mouthing words at me when Henry wasn’t looking.