The Last Word (4 page)

“No,” I said flatly. “You tell me what to do all the time. Some things are entirely
in my purview.”

Slayter pretended like he hadn’t heard me and moved on to the next subject.

“I bought Charlie that sweater,” Edward said, nodding in Charlie’s general direction.

It was a nice sweater. It had that soft cashmere look and was a blue-gray with a slim
red trim around the collar. It might have been the priciest thing Charlie owned.

“I like it.”

“I believe he was wearing it yesterday as well. And the day before that,” Slayter
said.

“It’s his favorite sweater,” I said. “He wears it at least three times a week.”

“Next time you get a chance,” Slayter said, “I’d like you to discuss rotating his
wardrobe with him. And maybe you can take him shopping so that he has a few more items
to rotate. And then maybe you could discuss dry cleaning with him.”

“I’m not sure that I understand dry cleaning. I mean, can you really get something
clean without getting it wet?”

“He smells, Isabel. You need to have a hygiene talk with him.”

“Do you really think I’m the best person for this job? Some nights I go to bed without—”

“Isabel, I realize this isn’t part of your job description, but it’s either you or
me and I think it would be better coming from you.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it,” I said.

“I want his new sweaters to be tasteful,” Slayter warned me. “Not like the last time.”

The previous holiday season, Slayter had asked me to buy Charlie a Christmas sweater.
He meant a sweater for Christmas. I interpreted it more literally and purchased a
red knit number with snowflakes and snowmen stitched over the fabric, creating a terrain
not unlike a relief map. I thought it was fun; Charlie loved it and wore it for a
week straight until Slayter made me make it disappear. Seriously, I had to steal it
from Charlie and pretend it was lost in an overheated cab ride. Charlie spent half
the afternoon phoning cab companies while it was at the bottom of my parents’ trash
bin. We called it Sweatergate. Charlie still talks about it.

•  •  •

Maybe now would be a good time to tell you about Charlie Black, navigational consultant.

I met Charlie on the steps outside of 101 Market Street maybe eight
months ago while I was surveilling Edward Slayter. To kill time, I was studying a
chess book that my ex-boyfriend Henry Stone was making me read. Charlie asked if he
could interest me in a game, swiftly pulling a chessboard out of his backpack. I agreed;
he won in about three minutes flat. As I continued my surveillance of Mr. Slayter,
I kept running into Charlie, since my surveillance took me to his haunts. I discovered
that Charlie was intelligent in a very particular way, unemployed, lonely, and trustworthy.
When I discovered that Mr. Slayter had Alzheimer’s we embarked on our unusual partnership;
I suggested Slayter hire Charlie as an assistant to discreetly make sure Edward was
at the right place at the right time.

As it turned out, Charlie and Slayter got along swimmingly despite their epic differences.
Edward is wealthy, handsome, charismatic, prone to suit-wearing, and quite powerful;
Black was a public servant made redundant who passed as a homeless person who played
chess on the streets until his latest gig, and has been known to wear the same outfit
five days in a row. The only thing they have in common now is their driver and chess.
Charlie is a good companion for Slayter; he doesn’t have a problem with nervous chatter,
a habit Slayter has no patience for, and he can navigate the streets of San Francisco
with the best of them. His feel for social terrain is far murkier.

Because of this fact, Slayter will often leave the more delicate conversations to
me, which is silly, if you’ve met me. I’m not exactly famous for mincing words, although
I’ve made a marked improvement.

Slayter and I parted in our usual fashion.

“I’ll see you Friday,” Slayter said.

“Friday doesn’t work for me,” I said to deaf ears.

Edward’s driver pulled up and attached Charlie’s bike to the rack that had been recently
added, and the three men got into the Town Car and drove away. Charlie waved a cheery
good-bye as I staggered over to my beat-up Buick, crawled into the backseat, and took
a short nap.

•  •  •

So far, all I’ve mentioned are hostile takeovers, jogging, and wardrobe disturbances,
which serve up only an appetizer in the world of Spellman Investigations. Let me be
clear: Before we’re a dysfunctional company and family, we are investigators, and
no matter what personal or professional conflicts simmer, our work does indeed take
priority.

1
. I realize this is open to interpretation.

2
. Not that this isn’t perfectly normal male behavior, as I’ve been told repeatedly.

3
. I had an overnight surveillance and got only a half hour of sleep. The inside of
the dress had obvious stitching and seams exposed. I have no idea how I managed to
drive to his office, take an elevator, and walk down a hallway without noticing.

4
. I have been using this excuse for years and it’s always worked. And no, I don’t
feel bad about it. And you won’t either once you meet her.

5
. Depends on how bad the hangover.

6
. Don’t judge me. Running is hard.

MEMO

To All Spellman Employees:

Albert and Olivia will be out of the office until Thursday afternoon. We will arrive
when our other business is taken care of.

Signed,

The Subordinates

N
o matter what my ragtag group of investigators is wearing, Spellman Investigations
tries to have a weekly summit in which we debrief each other on our current caseload.
This routine was intact for close to two years before I took the reins, and it will
remain intact as long as my parents don’t become nudists. It is policy to have the
meetings in the morning, since we don’t run the tightest ship and people like to skip
out early on Friday. I’m the kind of boss who doesn’t mind that sort of thing, so
long as the work is getting done and my employees aren’t in the other room eating
pancakes.

At the very least they could have been sneaky about it, but the unit was openly flaunting
their pancake consumption during the weekly summit.

I entered the kitchen to see whether I could wrangle my parents/underlings.

“Would you care to join us for the meeting?” I asked.

“Didn’t you get the memo?” Dad said.

“I did. Thank you for laminating it and Krazy Gluing it to the top of my desk. However,
since you’re only twenty feet from where the meeting is taking place, I don’t see
why you can’t make that short trek into the office.”

“Can’t you see we’re eating?” Mom said.

“You can bring your pancakes,” I said.

“They taste better in here,” Mom said, devouring half the stack in a mouthful.

“Well, we can wait ten, twenty minutes, until you’re done,” I said, being accommodating.
For a hundred-and-ten-pound woman my mother eats like a longshoreman. You’d think
she has a tapeworm.

“Nah, we don’t want to rush our digestions. We’ll see you later,” Dad said. Dad, alas,
most definitely does not have a tapeworm. I didn’t want to say anything. But Dad has
no business eating pancakes. It must have been his cheat day, but yesterday was his
cheat day.

There was no point in pushing the matter further. My current strategy for coping with
renegade employees was failing, and I needed to come up with another plan. I returned
to the office to find Demetrius (bow tie–free) and Vivien whispering conspiratorially.
I could only gather that they were discussing the dissension among the ranks. My lack
of leadership was becoming not only a professional problem but also a personal embarrassment.

My presence halted the sotto voce conversation. Vivien, looking worse for wear even
for a college coed, returned to her desk. I’m not one to judge; from age twelve to
twenty-five you could generally rely on my being the least-polished-looking person
in the vicinity, unless you dropped me by helicopter against my will at a Grateful
Dead concert.
¹
But Viv, that day, didn’t just appear ungroomed—she had clearly given up on a knotty
tangle in her long dark hair, and her clothes had the imprint of repeated wear—but
unhinged as well. Her bloodshot eyes darted around, like overcaffeinated scopes attached
to trigger-happy rifles.

“Have you eaten anything today, Viv?”

“Yes,” she said.

“No,” D said. “She raided Rae’s junk food stash.”

I returned to the kitchen, plucked a stack of leftover pancakes from the stove, squeezed
some fake maple syrup on top, and grabbed a fork. I responded to the unit’s protest
by explaining that the hotcakes were for Viv and returned to the office, putting the
plate on her desk.

“Since my parents are up to speed on the cases,
²
let’s have a quick meeting without them. D, can you do some background checks on
any employee who has been with Divine Strategies longer than five years?”

“I’ll get started today,” D said, shuffling papers distractedly.

“How did your interview with the inmate go?”

“Fine. Why do you ask?” D said. He said it defensively, if I was not mistaken.

“Because I usually ask about these cases. Is there a reason you don’t want to talk
about the interview?”

“No,” D said, pulling the file from his desk. “His name is Louis Myron Washburn. He
was convicted twelve years ago of armed robbery and second-degree murder. The witness
ID seems shaky. During the first interview she said it was the wrong man and then
changed her mind. Looks like a case of an unreliable cross-racial witness ID and maybe
some unhealthy influence from the cops. Washburn has a rap sheet—assault, possession
with intent to sell. The police probably were itching to take him down.”

“If you need any help, let me know,” I said. “Vivien, I need you to serve papers next
week. One looks cut-and-dried. He’s knows it’s coming. The other is a divorce situation.
The wife has filed and the husband has made himself scarce. I tried to serve him two
days ago at the golf course and he took off in his golf cart. Since he got a look
at me, I figured you could have a go at it. Considering your history with golf carts,
I’d rather you try to serve
him at home. Other than that, I don’t have much. Hope you have some papers due next
week.”

“I can handle being at a golf course,” Vivien said.

“I don’t want to risk it.”

Just then my sister Rae entered the office, eating a lone pancake folded like a taco.

“Have you tried these pancakes?” Rae said. “I think Mom stole your secret recipe,
D.”

“I don’t believe in secret recipes,” D said.

“Colonel Sanders would disagree with you, and that is why Colonel Sanders is rich
and you have enough money to put a down payment on a one-bedroom apartment in the
East Bay.”

Quick explanation for the mildly hostile exchange: When D was exonerated, Rae relentlessly
encouraged him to file a lawsuit for malicious prosecution. After almost a year of
debating his options, Demetrius finally agreed. He had a solid case, but both parties
wanted to avoid the public scrutiny of a lengthy and costly civil trial. D was given
a fair offer but never disclosed the sum to my sister, since she’s got a habit of
offering unsolicited financial advice. Rae merely assumed that it was a paltry settlement
and has been on D’s case ever since. It was not a paltry settlement. But D has managed
to be conservative with his investments and unless my sister opened his bank statements,
she’d be none the wiser. I can always see a veiled smirk of satisfaction on D’s face
when Rae trips over the subject.

“Is there something we can do for you, Rae?” I asked.

There was a time it seemed that my sister and I, together, were the future of Spellman
Investigations. As a child she was far more interested in the family business than
I ever pretended to be. But people change, I’ve discovered. Their goals and motivations
make invisible seismic shifts over time. My sister learned that you can’t get rich
being a PI; since she readily admits that money is her first love, the job eventually
lost its luster. Nowadays, Rae always manages to find lucrative part-time employment
and will only take a Spellman job under extreme duress. She comes to the house for
the obligatory Sunday-night dinners and is rarely heard from in between.

“I’ve got a case,” Rae said. “A friend of mine hired a moving and storage company
when she moved out of her apartment over summer and took a short holiday. She signed
a contract for the full service and paid fifty percent up front, which was twelve
hundred dollars. The services they were to provide included packing up her belongings
from her old apartment, keeping them in storage for four to six weeks, and then moving
them to the new location within a twenty-five-mile radius. When my client arranged
for the delivery of her stored items, the movers held her belongings ransom, claiming
that they exceeded the weight limit in the contract of two thousand pounds, and they
added a surplus charge for the single flight of stairs into her building. Not only
that, her television was cracked, her mattress was infected with bedbugs, and she
thinks some of her underwear is missing.

“When she tried to get reimbursed for the damages, the guy she dealt with, Owen Lukas,
said that she was entitled to twenty-five dollars since the insurance only covered
one dollar per pound of the property. After her stuff was in her house, she went to
the owner of the company and questioned the extortion money for damaged property.
Lukas simply repeated again and again, ‘I suggest you review the contract.’ ”

“What does she want to get out of this?”

“Justice,” said Rae. “And maybe her money back.”

“The cost of investigating and filing a claim could be a wash,” I said. “And that’s
if she wins.”