The Last Word (25 page)

“You didn’t drive here, did you?”

“I walked.”

“From where?”

“Edinburgh Castle.”

“That’s a long walk.”

“I got your message,” he said, taking a seat on my couch. “Tear gas canisters should
be safe unless the temperature rises considerably or you get in a car accident. I
wouldn’t leave them in the trunk for too long. Why do you have tear gas?”

“Did you come here to talk to me about tear gas?” I asked.

“Yes. Why else would I be here?”

“It’s past two in the morning.”

“Were you asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. Go back to bed.”

Henry stood up and weaved through the hallway to the front (well, back) door.

“How will you get home?”

“I’ll walk or get a cab.”

I followed him to the door.

“Why are you here?”

Henry turned around. He was close enough that I could smell the whiskey coming out
of his pores. He pushed me against the wall and kissed me. I let it go on longer than
I should have. Then I gently pushed him off.

“What are you doing?”

“I miss you.”

“I don’t think your baby mama would approve of this behavior.”

“You were supposed to meet me last week for a drink.”

“I don’t recall us ever choosing an exact date.”

“We did.”

“Then please accept my apologies,” I said.

“There’s something I wanted to tell you.”

“Well, if you’ve changed your mind and now you don’t want to tell me, I’m cool with
that. Frankly I’m still wrapping my head around you having a pregnant girlfriend.”

“We’re engaged.”

“Okay. Well, congratulations. I didn’t have time to get you a toaster in the last
two seconds. But I will start comparison shopping tomorrow. I do think you should
go.”

“Yes. I should go. I’m sorry about that thing I did.”

“No problem. I think it’s called cold feet,” I said.

“Nope. That’s not it,” Henry said.

He reached for the door. Before he left he turned back and said one last thing. Maybe
the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.

“If only you were a little bit more normal.”

And he left.

•  •  •

In the morning, I swapped cars with Rae and left the tear gas where it was. Then I
drove my crappy Buick to End Times ’n’ Such, the quaint survivalist shop in Millbrae
where the items of warfare were purchased.

“Can you help me?” I said pleasantly to the store clerk. Only recently have I learned
that being pleasant can often work in your favor.

“What can I do for you?” said the man in the plaid flannel shirt with a seven-blade
knife hitched to his belt. He had an unusual collection of scars on his knuckles and
forehead, leaving slices of his eyebrows permanently mowed.

“Do you sell tear gas?”

“We do. Although a customer just bought us out. We’ve got an order for another case.
Should be here on Monday.”

“This tear gas you sell. Is it like what the cops use in riots?”

“It’s a lacrimator in a canister. Just in a smaller dose,” the flannel
³
man said.

“What’s a lacrimator?”

“A tear-inducing chemical like chloroacetophenone or orthochlorobenzalmalononitrile,
which is generally the compound in tear gas.”

“I’m not an expert on the subject.”

“When a lacrimator, which is what Mace is—you should have a bottle on you at all times—makes
contact with the eyes, the ocular immune system will produce a physiological reaction
that will pump out a salty wash of protein, water, mucus, and oil to help rid eyes
of the irritant as quickly as possible. If you inhale the fumes, your lungs will have
a similar reaction. Now, most reasonable adults and bears will flee from the substance
and symptoms will subside within the hour, and there will be no long-term damage.”

“What happens if you don’t flee?”

“Depends on the individual. I learned in the army, during drills, that I’m mostly
immune to the substance. My eyes water a bit and I sneeze sometimes, but that’s about
it.”

“Some people are just lucky, I guess.”

“It’s kind of like a superpower,” Flannel Shirt Guy said.

“You could say that,” I said.
⁴

“You looking to buy for your bug-out bag?”

“I’m just getting started on my bug-out bag,
⁵
so I’m considering my options.”

“Well you’re definitely going to want tear gas and probably at least a month’s worth
of freeze-dried meals.”

“Can anyone buy tear gas? You don’t need a permit or anything?”

“Why would you need a permit?” Flannel Shirt Guy asked, as if I had offended his sense
of universal order.

“Are there any other uses for tear gas besides crowd control and evacuation?” I asked.

“Bears don’t like it much.”

“Bears. Hmm, well, thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

“See you Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“We’ll have a fresh case of lacrimators by the afternoon.”

“Right. See you then.”

I returned to my car and contemplated my next move.

There was an old coffee cup, a plastic water bottle, a newspaper, receipts, and other
debris littering the passenger-side floor. I remembered that a few months back Edward
had called me for a last-minute ride to the doctor. His driver had taken ill. I had
to rush to his house and had no time to clean out my car. Edward found a gum wrapper
with a piece of gum in the door handle and a coffee cup on the floor. I actually thought
the car was tidy, but he scolded me and told me that I was a grown-up and rubbish
should be put in its place. In my family the floor of the car kind of was its place.
Anyway, Edward’s voice was in my head, so I quickly gathered the obvious trash and
threw it in the bin at the edge of the parking lot. I reached into the passenger-side
door handle and found a USB device.

I put it in my pocket and drove home. These data storage devices are more common than
staplers in a PI office. You can find a couple floating around any of our desks. I
stuck this particular device into my computer to see if I could discern who the owner
was. Only it wasn’t an ordinary file-storage device. It was a voice-activated recorder
that had six hours of audio on it. Since it was in my car, I could only assume it
was intended to record me. I clicked on a file and heard the strangely unfamiliar
tone of my voice.

8.13.12.mp3

Hey, asshole, haven’t you heard of turn signals? [sound of horn honking] The light
has been green for a year now. Let’s move. Are you waiting for a formal invitation
to turn left? Satan, learn how to
drive. It’s not physically possible to drive any slower, moron. [sound of horn honking]

I think you get my drift. The device also recorded a few banal phone conversations,
since I don’t tend to do too much business in the car. It got this gem between me
and Princess Banana.

“Is your daddy home? Hello. This is your aunt Isabel. Can you put your daddy on the
phone? I don’t understand what you want. Can you put him on the phone? Can you
please
put him on the phone . . . David, do not let Banana answer the phone. I’m not going
to be reprimanded by a three-year-old lunatic who is in some kind of Emily Post/Princess
Diana cult whose guru is Grammy Spellman. Also, toddlers shouldn’t be answering phones.
It’s inefficient, annoying, and never, ever cute to anyone except the parent or grandparent.
And in this case, probably not cute to anyone. Why did I call? You know, I have no
fucking clue. Good-bye.”

I had no idea who planted the device. I knew it wasn’t the FBI (it was too low-rent
for them) but likely someone connected to Slayter Industries. Either way, the idea
that someone might retrieve the recordings and hear verbal rants without a hint of
scandal seemed sad. I know more than anyone how tedious a dull surveillance can get.
I decided to give my spy something to bite into.

I returned the device to my car, to match the background audio, and turned it on.

“Len, it’s Isabel. There’s something I need to get off my chest. I just embezzled
twenty thousand dollars from my boss. Pretty cool, huh?”

1
. Not a footnote.

2
. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened to me if I had actually made a profit.

3
. He was not wearing a name tag, so this is the best way to describe him. I have nothing
against flannel or the wearing thereof.

4
. Or, you could not say it.

5
. Note to self: Google “bug-out bag” later.

B
ack at the office I dove headfirst into the embezzler/boss-drugging investigation
and solicited Demetrius’s help. I gave D a list of Slayter Industries employees who
might
have access to bank information and had him check their credit reports and insurance
coverage. There were two ways to look at the case. Someone was stealing money either
to steal money or to poison the perception of Slayter’s judgment, and I was simply
collateral damage.

D read the list out loud: “ ‘Evelyn Glade, secretary; Arthur Bly, accountant; guy
with beard who works with Arthur; woman with braces in HR; lady who just bought new
car.’ Isabel, I’m going to need names.”

“I’ll get to that,” I said. “I was just brainstorming.”

My next order of business was following up with the members of the Slayter Industries
board of directors, any of whom might be voted in as CEO should Slayter be judged
incompetent. Aside from Edward, there were three other men and one woman: George Rhinebeck,
Reed Farnsworth, Gordon Wells, and Shannon Crane.

I immediately ruled out Reed Farnsworth since he was ninety-two years old, and while
I’m in no way an ageist, it seemed highly unlikely that a man who needed a staff of
two to even dress for the day would have the
energy to stage a corporate takeover. Then I struck Gordon Wells from the list. He
spent half the year in Paris and had a net worth of half a billion. I’ve heard the
saying that you can’t have too much money, but I’ve also heard Gordon say otherwise.
Apparently, his wife has some kind of condition that will eventually be recognized
in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
in which she can’t stop renovating homes. They own like five, and all are under constant
renovation. Eventually Gordon decided to purchase a twelve-hundred-square-foot log
cabin in Montana where he goes one week a year to escape the construction that surrounds
him the other fifty-one weeks out of the year.

This left George Rhinebeck and Shannon Crane. George was a close friend of Edward’s
and his time was already stretched in many directions. I think he was on the board
of at least three other successful companies. Shannon Crane, objectively, would be
the person who would want the job the most. She’d once held a CEO position at another
well-established venture capital firm, which she’d abdicated after her second child
was born. Her children were now teenagers and I suppose one could argue she had a
good reason for wanting to get out of the house. I’d have to look at her more closely.
But there was no getting around the fact that there were no obvious suspects on the
board of directors, and Edward was close friends with all of them. He never brought
anyone into the fold whom he didn’t trust implicitly.

I logged on to my computer to connect to a credit-check database; my computer began
to run in slow motion. I shook the mouse and then it was as if a poltergeist had control
of my computer. The cursor clicked onto the web browser and then a ghost in the machine
typed in the URL for Her Li’l Majesty, a shopping site for all things involving dressing
young girls like princesses or prostitutes. The monster in my computer began adding
various items into the shopping cart. Mini prom dresses, mini beaded evening gowns,
sashes, pumps in size three, toddler makeup, body glitter. I unplugged the computer
and dialed the number that Maggie had given me for Craig Finch, computer consultant.

Craig is a shut-in. Even if your hard drive actually needs to have physical
repairs, no contact is made. Instead, you’re given a drop-off location. No one has
ever seen Craig, according to Maggie. However, the invisible repairman comes highly
recommended.

“Mr. Finch,” I said. “This is Isabel Spellman; I’m Maggie Mason’s sister-in-law. She
gave me your number. I have some strange things going on with my computer.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Yes. Sometimes it freezes. Once a lot of crazy numbers started showing up on the
screen, mostly zeros and ones.”

“Binary code,” Finch said.

“Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s not. Also, sometimes our old computer repairman
is inside our computer playing mind games with us. Me specifically. We gave him remote
access once and I think he still has it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I know it sounds paranoid, but you’re going to have to take my word for it.”

“You’re going to have to give me remote access to poke around,” Finch said.

“And then what happens? You have a bad day, you don’t like the way I talk to you or
something, and the next thing I know you’re making me watch you buy toddler ball gowns
on my computer?”

“Think about it and get back to me.”

As soon as I disconnected the call, Mom entered the office and said that she needed
her paycheck early.

“What’s happening to all your money?”

“We have only a few more days to put money in our IRA.
¹
Your father and I would like to retire one day.”

“Talk to Rae. She’s writing the checks these days.”

Mom returned to the kitchen, where she proceeded to make toast, her signature dish.

“Is there something I should know?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mom said. “Navy blue and black are
not
the same color.”

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree.”

If you have to line up a shirt and sweater next to each other because you can barely
tell the difference, the difference becomes irrelevant. I’ve argued this point many
times before, and would gladly have argued it again, but at that juncture I needed
to stay on point.