Trail of the Spellmans (22 page)

Five minutes later, I received another text: No go. Carded and discarded. UR paying travel costs, right?

Then I got an actual phone call.

“Izzeee,” Bernie said with the perky satisfaction of a winner. “Nice try.”

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

Clearly the Bernie Project was going to be more time-consuming than I’d planned. I patiently waited to set stage two in motion.

The next morning I moved on to the Chinese wall. I amassed a list of computer-repair establishments in the city, focusing on sole proprietors since I had a feeling I was most likely to find a hacker that way. I figured these people had some kind of code word for doing illegal activities, but I couldn’t call Robbie, so most of my inquiries fell flatter than a French crepe. Our conversations, if you can call them that,
²
went something like this:

ME:
Let’s just say, hypothetically, that my father forgot the password on his computer. Would you be able to access it?

ROBBIE #2:
Uh, probably. What system is he using?

ME:
He’s got a special password. Like, someone installed a serious firewall and he doesn’t remember the password.

ROBBIE #2:
Do you even know what a firewall is or did you hear it in a movie once?

ME:
Whatever you call it, there’s something that’s keeping me—I mean my father—from accessing his computer.

ROBBIE #2:
Why isn’t your father calling me?

ME:
Because he’s not good with computers.

ROBBIE #2:
Oh, so you’re the computer genius in the family.

ME
Can you help me or not?

ROBBIE #2:
This sounds like the kind of annoyance suited for the person who set up your quote-unquote firewall. He’s probably waiting at home right now for your phone call.

ME:
He’s on vacation.

ROBBIE #2:
Wait until he gets back. You’ll survive.

ME:
I have no idea when he’s coming back.

ROBBIE #2:
What does he say when you e-mail him?

ME:
He doesn’t respond.

ROBBIE #2:
Amateur hour. He can’t check his e-mail on vacation? Hilarious. Okay, since I’m an actual professional, maybe you can hire me to fix this. I have a few openings in my schedule.

ME:
Do you work late? One
A.M.
would be awesome.

ROBBIE #2:
I don’t make house calls at that hour.

ME:
I’ll pay double.

ROBBIE #2:
Is this your boyfriend’s computer?

ME:
No. Of course not.

ROBBIE #2:
You think he’s watching porn, right? Let me tell you something. It’s perfectly normal.

ME:
Okay, good-bye.

I suppose I could have gone with the truth, revealing Robbie as the wizard behind the wall and hoping that Robbie #2’s hubris would cause him to try to hack another guy’s system. I don’t know much about his world, but I do know that those kinds stick together. They’re like a cyberspace knitting
circle. Five more failed attempts to get midnight tech support and I finally accepted that my father’s computer and the surveillance reports on Meg Cooper were off-limits. But I had enough personal data to take a hammer and chisel to the wall in my own private way.

Most background checks involve criminal records, civil proceedings, property searches, and occasionally personal interviews. But finding the basic data on a person can take some time. I was trying to establish whether Margaret Slayter had any marriages prior to the one with Edward. She was thirty-five at the time of their wedding, so it was a distinct possibility. Margaret Slayter’s credit report went back only ten years. She possessed only one credit card under her maiden name, Cooper. She’d spent several years in San Jose, but there was no birth record for a Meg (or Margaret) Cooper in California and I wasn’t sure how to ask the client about her place of birth without raising suspicion.

I pulled the notes from my preliminary meeting with Adam Cooper.

We don’t ask clients for birth records or Social Security numbers, but a home address can tell you whether the client owns or rents. And from there, more information can be gleaned. Adam Cooper owned an apartment in the Inner Richmond. From that information I could access a DOB and a credit report.

Cooper had a second mortgage out on his apartment and credit card debt hovering just over fifty thousand dollars. I reviewed the report a number of times because there was something familiar in the data that I couldn’t put my finger on. Until I did: an address ten years ago in Fremont, California.

I pulled Meg Cooper’s saved credit report from my computer and found the same address in her file. While it wouldn’t be unheard of for siblings to live under the same roof well into their twenties, this revelation struck me as a bit odd. It also occurred to me that Meg and Adam bore no physical resemblance to each other.

Of course, it’s easy to chalk that up to the disguise of the modern woman. If you bleach, freeze, or paint every major feature, even a detective would have difficulty discerning your natural appearance. I hadn’t been looking for discrepancies in that part of the Slayter story. But once I started looking, they sprouted like weeds.

A quick marriage record search in Fresno verified my assumption: Meg Cooper was Margaret’s name when she was married to Adam Cooper, the man now claiming to be her brother. That pattern I was speaking about earlier was losing its symmetry. So, the milquetoast, sweater-vested Adam Cooper hired us to follow his “sister” because it was less suspicious and ethically dubious than hiring us to follow his ex-wife. A job we would have at the very least questioned, and probably turned down. It’s one thing if a client is interested in a current spouse’s activities, but once the divorce proceedings are complete, surveillance begins to look an awful lot like professional stalking.

I was now presented with my own ethical dilemma: tell the unit and deal with the consequences of both the breach and the cleanup, or take matters into my own hands. To be honest, the debate didn’t last very long.

Before risking a surveillance on a client, I performed a full background check on Adam Cooper. His credit report provided the address where he and Meg had lived as husband and wife. I did a property search and found a Louise Meyers who had owned a home next to their apartment building going on thirty years. I took an educated guess that she was familiar with the goings-on in her neighborhood; homeowners and the elderly tend to be more invested in their neighborhoods. I phoned Mrs. Meyers and left a message, explaining that I was a potential employer looking for information on Mr. Cooper. I couldn’t provide any other information, since the job required some sensitive security matters. She phoned me back in an hour, eager to help.

Mrs. Meyers said she made a habit of getting to know the people who
lived in her vicinity (brownies were her icebreaker) and keeping up with the goings-on about town. As far as she could tell, Meg and Adam were a normal couple with their share of problems. When I inquired as to the type of problems they might have, Mrs. Meyers switched into generalizations, for fear of losing Adam a job, I suspect.

“We are already aware of Mr. Cooper’s credit issues,” I explained.

“I see,” Mrs. Meyers replied.

“I understand your wish to be discreet, Mrs. Meyers, but this position could put Mr. Cooper’s past under a microscope. It is better if we have all the information from the start so that we can protect him from any undesirable elements.”

My generalized “we” was starting to sound like a preposterous fringe spy organization. I was hoping that Meyers watched too much television. Pretext calls are not my area of expertise (Mom, on the other hand, could probably get a Social Security number off an attorney). Fortunately, Meyers took the bait.

“The Coopers lived above their means,” Meyers replied.

“How do you mean?”

“Always leased new cars; Adam used to park in my driveway every weekend and wash and wax it. He loved that BMW. They always wore expensive clothes; at least that’s what Gloria told me.”

“And who is Gloria?”

“She lived next door to them, in the apartment complex. Unit 4C, I think.”

“Is she still there?”

“No, but I have her number.”

“I’m going to need that.”

Gloria took a bit longer to convince. I could discern from her voice that she was younger, so I skipped the spy act and asked when she’d last had contact with Mrs. Cooper. Since five years had passed, I gathered they weren’t
close and I explained that I was a private investigator working for her current husband and hoping to glean some information on Meg’s past.

Gloria was more than happy to help, which led me to believe that Meg and she weren’t neighborly neighbors. Friends can be virtually useless in a background investigation, but a five-minute conversation with an enemy can reveal more information than hours behind the glare of a computer screen.

The walls were thin in the Palms Caribbean apartment complex. Also, there was only one palm tree, which really got under Gloria’s skin (she worked as a proofreader at a law firm). Meg and Adam had a happy marriage for the most part. They were often inseparable and their public displays of affection bordered on pornography (according to Gloria). But like any couple, they did fight. They fought over money. Meg wanted more and Adam couldn’t provide it. But not for lack of trying.

Eventually Meg and Adam moved to San Francisco, where they hoped to find better job opportunities. I asked Gloria if she thought the couple was headed for divorce.

“Aren’t they all?” she dryly replied.

Our call ended on that note.

I looked up the Coopers’ divorce records (the ubiquitous “irreconcilable differences” were the cause) and learned that only four months after they moved to the city, they got divorced. However, according to Meg’s credit report, she and Adam lived under the same roof for a full year after that. I phoned the landlord to verify.

He got back to me two days later.

I asked him how long the couple had lived in his building and he responded by clearing his throat.

“Excuse me?” he said.

“I’m curious how long Mr. and Mrs. Cooper lived in your building.”

“Miss
Cooper,” the landlord said, clarifying. “Adam is Meg’s older brother. It was a two-bedroom apartment. They lived there for a year and a half until Meg got married.”

“I see,” I replied. “Thank you for your time.”

While there may have been other explanations for the ruse, I couldn’t help wondering whether Meg and Adam had been working on a long con for years. And if that was the case, were they still in it together, or had Meg jumped ship?

BACK ON PLANET SPELLMAN . . .

M
onday morning, I arrived at the Spellman compound at noon. D and Grammy had recently discovered that they shared a guilty pleasure—D’s soap opera,
Gossamer Heights.
However, this common ground did little to soften the tension between them. Grammy still held her purse to her chest, pretending she needed to access her medicine during commercial breaks. She sat on the farthest end of the couch, twisting her neck at an uncomfortable angle to see the TV screen.

Although she couldn’t resist snacking on D’s homemade Chex Mix.
¹

During commercial breaks she would attempt awkward conversation, continuing her habit of referencing any positive role model in the African-American community. She liked to talk about the president quite a bit. Although, in whatever etiquette class Grammy had taken, politics were apparently off the table, so she basically mentioned his excellent posture and choice of ties.

To stoke the fire of the conflicts that abounded, Rae paid us all a surprise visit. First on her agenda was repossessing her car. She planted herself in front of my father’s desk and waited for him to look up.

“Good afternoon, Rae. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I’d really like to have my car back.”

“I’d like to have my hair back,” Dad replied.

“Dad, if I had your hair, I would give it back.”

“Actually you’d probably hold it for ransom.”

“Maybe,” Rae replied. “But eventually it would be returned, because I have my own hair.”

“Thank you,” Dad said. “I’m really glad to hear that. But this is all hypothetical. You don’t have my hair to auction off.”

“Are you going to give me my car back?”

“No. Not just yet. I need it.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Rae said, too baffled by the turn of events to summon much indignation.

“Many things in life don’t make sense,” Dad said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a phone call to make.”

My father picked up the receiver and may have dialed a legitimate number, maybe not. Rae turned to my mother for an explanation.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, dear. Remember, the car is in your father’s name and he needs it for now. San Francisco has an excellent public transportation system. Many people in this city have never owned a vehicle.”

“Some of those people even have a car and choose public transportation instead,” I said.

Rae ignored me and continued her dialogue with Mom. “Something is going on that you’re not telling me.”

“I’m sure that’s always true,” my mother enigmatically replied.

Rae gave up on the unit and shot dagger eyes at me.