The Last Word (14 page)

She pointed to a phone on the wall. “You can answer phones as you file. And feel free
to take ten-minute breaks every hour or you’ll go crazy in here.”

I noticed a small pile of papers on top of the corner filing cabinet.

“Is that it?” I asked.

I followed Maureen’s gaze to a three-foot-high stack of loose pages leaning against
the wall.

“I’ll leave you to it, Isabel. Don’t forget to come up for air.”

So, some people might call this karma.

There wasn’t much reconnaissance I could do from the prison of the file room, so I
took as many breaks as I could and tried to make small talk in the bathroom. I also
tried to study the body language of the office staff as I was en route from the file
room to the bathroom. It was like watching people driving bumper cars but deliberately
avoiding each other. I didn’t see so much as a pat on the back. The only conclusion
I drew that morning: This would be an excellent place to work during flu season.

•  •  •

After I left Divine Strategies, I dropped by the drugstore and bought a box of Band-Aids
for my current and future paper-cut wounds. I entered the Spell-man office that afternoon
to find Grammy Spellman playing receptionist instead of toddler etiquette coach. I’m
not sure which role she was less suited for. Today Grammy was in her best beige polyester.
She sat primly, with the posture of someone with a two-by-four strapped to her back,
behind my father’s desk. In between answering calls, she sanitized the surface area
of the desk, the telephone, and the keyboard. She looked as she always does, as if
someone had just murdered her cat and she was contemplating modes of revenge. Sure,
she’s my grandma, but I’d go to the mat against anyone who thought they had a worse
grandma. Unless your grandmother is a serial killer. Then you win. Your grandmother
is awful, but honestly, she probably has better stories.

My point is, the unit’s decision to invite Grammy into the office could only be seen
as a direct act of aggression. Clearly no progress had been made in my peacemaking
efforts.

Spellman Central was otherwise abandoned. Whether Grammy’s presence was responsible
for that fact, I did not yet know.

“Grammy, what are you doing here?” I asked immediately upon entry.

“Albert asked me to help out since no one would be in the office this morning.”

“Where are Mom and Dad?”

“I believe they’re at an appointment.”

“What kind of appointment?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Thank you for your help, Grammy. You can go.”

“I have three messages for you. Mr. Demetrius called and he said that he had to do
a last-minute interview for one of Maggie’s cases. It’s near Sacramento. He won’t
be back in the office today. Vivien was here earlier and said to tell you that she’s
working on Lightning Fast? Is that some kind of diet?” Grammy asked.

Grammy is diet obsessed, so it would be a natural assumption.

“It’s a moving company.”

“And your gentleman friend Henry Stone called. He said you weren’t answering your
cell. He was a very nice man. It was so unfortunate that you couldn’t hang on to him.”

“Grammy, can I offer you a ride home?”

“Oh no. I’ll walk. The exercise is good for me. That’s how I keep my trim figure.
What’s your secret?” Grammy asked, seething with sarcasm.

“I’m on an all-seafood
⁶
-and-bourbon diet.”

“It’s doing wonders for your complexion.”

“Good-bye,” I said encouragingly.

“Always a pleasure,” Grammy said, clutching her purse and walking briskly out of the
office.

I tried to wake my computer and it responded like a teenager after a night on the
town. I pressed restart and the monitor turned black, a bunch of crazy numbers mobbed
the screen, and then it froze. I had Robbie Gruber on speed dial, but since I fired
him, I couldn’t summon the energy for what would amount to a groveling phone call.
I walked over to Vivien’s desk and turned on her computer.

Like most companies, we keep our files on a server so that they can be accessed from
any computer. I was about to enter a cursory report on my first day at Divine Strategies
when I noticed a file folder on Vivien’s computer desktop named Lightning. I clicked
on the folder. Inside was a collection of JPEG files but not a single text document.
Before I looked at the images, I checked the server for a matching file and found
a Lightning folder that contained only the scanned information from our intake form.
I clicked back on Vivien’s desktop, opened the Lightning file, and reviewed the collection
of unlabeled JPEGs.

01 The first image was of a male subject, approximately thirty-five years old, medium
height and build, with dark brown hair peppered with gray.

02 Second image showed Subject getting into his car.

03 Close-up of his license plate number.

04 Subject standing in foyer of a single-family home being greeted intimately by a
strawberry-blond-haired woman with flotation devices as breasts in a pink silk robe.

05 Photo through window into bedroom of home. Subject and same woman undressing in
bedroom.

06 The money shot.

There was no other information in the file and no way to confirm the identities of
the individuals other than checking the license plate number on the car.

I decided this was a good time to return Henry Stone’s phone call.

He picked up on the second ring. No hello, just, “Why does it take you three days
to return a phone call, and who hired Ruth
⁷
as receptionist?”

“My apologies. I’m running my business into the ground and having trouble keeping
up with non-work-related phone calls. I have no comment on the Grammy question. What’s
on your mind?” I asked.

“Let’s have a drink sometime.”

“Don’t tell me you knocked somebody else up.”

“No. I just want to have a drink. What are you doing tomorrow?”

Just when I was entirely convinced that the universe was conspiring against me, it
threw me a bone.

“I have plans,” I said.

“No you don’t,” he said, which wasn’t as insulting as it sounds. I rarely do have
plans.

“Seriously, I have plans. I’m having drinks or something with Edward’s new chief counsel.”

Dead silence. Henry might have been more shocked by what might have been construed
as me on a date than I was by his pregnancy blindside.

“Why don’t you have drinks with your new woman. I’m sure she’s thirsty.” I said, just
to fill the void.

“She doesn’t drink.”

“You’re dating a teetotaler?”

“She’s pregnant, Isabel.”

“Right. Well, it will have to be another time. Are you sure you can’t debrief me over
the phone, or via e-mail? I don’t mind a telegram now and again.”

“Drinks.”

“I’ll agree to drinks under one condition.”

“What?”

“I need you to run a license plate for me.”

“Now I know why you returned my call.”

After my phone call ended with Henry, I studied the photos on Vivien’s computer for
a few more minutes before I made the call. I left a standard message.

“Vivien, when you get the chance, call me back.”

There was no point in giving her time to conjure an explanation or contact my sister,
who at all times has a half dozen very plausible lies waiting in her back pocket.

Meanwhile I discovered yet another deception among my employees. Maggie phoned as
I was reluctantly tackling the massive filing heap.

“Hi, Isabel, sorry again about the other day,” she said.

“You’re not sorry. That’s the thing.”

“What did you think of Max, Claire’s dad? His divorce should be finalized in a few
weeks, but they’ve been separated two years, so he’s totally available.”

Now I was getting annoyed. “Seriously? Is that why you called?”

“No. I wanted to clear Demetrius’s schedule, if that’s all right. I need him to handle
some prison interviews for me. It’ll probably take up about fifteen to twenty hours
next week, including drive time. I assume he left you a note. He’s at San Quentin
right now.”

Just then D walked into the office.

“Right,” I said. “He said something about that. You sure it’s going to take all afternoon?”

“It’s a long drive and the interview will take at least an hour.”

“No problem,” I said. “Let me double-check his calendar.”

The inmate interview was clearly written for this afternoon, and yet here D was at
the Spellman compound.

I’m no snitch, so I decided to cover.

“I’m sure we can free his schedule whenever you need.”

“Thanks, Isabel.”

After we disconnected the call, I turned to D. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the Big
Q this afternoon?”

“The what?” D asked.

“Remember, we’re calling San Quentin ‘the Big Q.’ ”

“I had to reschedule,” D said, totally ignoring my reminder. “Had a dentist’s appointment
this morning.”

“How’d that go?”

“Great.”

The dentist is never great. Everybody knows that. But I like to respect D’s privacy,
so I let him keep his secret. Besides, that afternoon the office had a lot of foot
traffic, so there wasn’t much time for fishing.

First Loretta, D’s girlfriend, arrived. Everyone loves her. I suppose D loves her
most, but she’s a favorite among Spellmans. Loretta is tall, I think taller than D,
but he denies it and has refused to engage in a lineup. She’s partial to sweater sets
and wears glasses and large costume jewelry. That day, she brought a giant Tupperware
container of brownies. Loretta and D have been selling D’s baked goods at some gourmet
shops, restaurants, and specialty stores around the city. And since she was in between
jobs and not afraid of an oven, she had been testing out D’s recipes.

Loretta slipped off the airtight lid and said, “I think you’ll be pleased.”

D took a bite of a brownie and chewed. Then he forced a smile and said, “Delicious.
Did you make any adjustments to the recipe?”

“Just a dash of cinnamon. Do you like it?”

“Uh-huh,” D said. He was lying.

“I got to run. I have a nail appointment in fifteen minutes,” Loretta said. “Now,
Isabel, don’t work my man too hard.”

“Haven’t you heard? No one works here.”

“Nice seeing you, hon.”

Loretta kissed D on the forehead and headed out. I picked up the rest of the brownie
that D was clearly not going to eat and took a bite. It was excellent.

“This is really good.”

“Always with a dash of cinnamon,” D said, shaking his head. “Brownies don’t need cinnamon.”

“I can’t taste it.”

Then Vivien and Rae arrived, within minutes of each other, so I couldn’t interrogate
them separately. I thought about leading the conversation with, “Why do you have pictures
of a naked man and woman in the file for a moving company investigation?” but I had
hoped they’d offer this information on their own. Besides, Rae was in the middle of
crank-calling the moving company, which wasn’t exactly part of the “official” investigation,
but a memo had gone out requesting that the entire Spellman staff engage in at least
one time-consuming fake moving quote with Marcus Lorre.

“Okay, let’s go over this one more time,” Rae said into a burner cell phone. She proceeded
to take five minutes reading off an entire list of household belongings, provided
a zip code in the Boston area, and waited for the quote. “Can you bring that number
down a little? A little bit more than that? Okay. I can work with that number. One
last thing, I’ll need the move to happen at midnight and the movers will need to be
as quiet as possible. You don’t move in the middle of the night? That’s going to be
a problem. I haven’t told my parents that I’m moving them across the country. I wanted
it to be a surprise. Huh. You can’t work around that? I see. I see. I’m sorry we’re
not able to do business together. I’ll be sure to refer my friends, though.”

When Rae disconnected the call, she looked at her watch and did some internal calculations.
“That quote took two hours and forty-five minutes off of Lorre’s life.”

“I got news for you,” I said. “It also took two hours and forty-five minutes off of
your life.”

“But I enjoyed every minute of it.”

“How’s the legitimate Lightning Fast investigation coming along?” I asked.

I was now working at my dad’s computer, since mine was completely offline.

“Good,” Vivien said. “My computer has been running slow. Have you called anyone?”

“Still gathering evidence,” Rae said.

“And then what is the plan?” I asked.

“Are these for me?” Rae said to D, pointing at the tub of brownies. Apparently Rae
is also in on the baked-goods business.

D nodded.

“Excuse me, back to the Lightning update,” I said.

“Once we amass more evidence we’ll figure out the best way to proceed,” Rae said,
taking a bite of brownie.

“Vivien, you haven’t had any more contact with Lorre, right?”

“I haven’t called him again. I swear. Is there any chance I could get my paycheck
a day early?” Vivien asked. “Since I’m not coming in tomorrow.”

“Sure,” I said, pulling a blank check from the box.

“Blech,” Rae said, spitting out her half-masticated brownie in the trash.

“You taste it too?” D said.

“Loretta made these?” Rae asked.

“Yep.”

“I hate cinnamon.”

“That was obvious,” D said.

“I can’t promise that I’ll get full price for these,” Rae said.

“Isabel didn’t even notice,” D said.

“Lots of things slip by Isabel,” Rae said.

“But not voices five feet away from me,” I said.

I gave Vivien her check.

“You still don’t know how to use the accounting software?” Rae asked.

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

“Are you reconciling the bank statements?”

“What is it with everyone and bank statement reconciliations? Checks are not bouncing.
We’re good. But if you want to take over this responsibility at any time, please have
at it.”