The Spellmans Strike Again (8 page)

MR. LEONARD
: For instance?

ME
: What do you make of the rest of the staff?

MR. LEONARD
: I believe the driver is doing a fine job. At least he keeps the cars in order and seems to obey the laws of traffic. I have not taken to Mrs. Enright, the head housekeeper, I have to admit. But how can you like someone who clearly despises you? I haven’t been loathed with that kind of passion since I stole the part of Sam in Athol Fugard’s
Master Harold . . . and the Boys
from Derek Miller.

ME
: You know that reference was totally lost on me.

MR. LEONARD
: Yes, I do. You need more culture.

ME
: Do me a favor and make sure Mr. Winslow finds those e-mails that Graves sent him. Also, find out who his lawyer is. I’m curious about the state of his will.

MR. LEONARD
: I will take care of these matters promptly.

ME
: Is there anyone in the house that you find suspicious?

MR. LEONARD
: Not yet. I suspect everyone was afraid of Mason. At least that seems to be the case since I can barely get any of the staff to talk to me and whenever I enter a room, all conversations are hushed and the parties hustle back to work.

ME
: Why is that?

MR. LEONARD
: I don’t know. It’s simply the roles that have been established. But they fear me. I’m like the evil foreman on a construction site or something.

ME
: Well, don’t let all that power go to your head.

LEN
:
⁴
Speaking of fear, did you tell Mr. Winslow I was a brother?

ME
: Um, I don’t think it came up. Why?

LEN
: Well, when I first met him in the driveway of the estate, he reached for his wallet as if he were going to hand it over.

ME
: That must have been awkward.

LEN
: We laugh about it now. I’ll be in touch, Ms. Spellman.

MANDATORY
LAWYER DATE #1

After hours of brainstorming, my mother and I could find no other way to verify my lawyer dates (and confirm that I was not deliberately sabotaging them) other than through digital recordings. Unfortunately, this is against the law in California (unless both parties consent, and that would be hard to explain on any first date), and so once my mother listened to the tape and verified that a date in fact occurred, we would destroy the evidence. My point is, don’t tell anyone about this. It’s illegal, but it’s not like I’m going to use the recordings in a legal proceeding; I’m simply complying with the intractable demands of my mother. Not that meeting these demands precluded subterfuge. Oh no, there would be subterfuge, all right.

The purpose of the recordings was to prove that the “dates” had the feel of dates—the uncomfortable, bio-swapping, dead-silent, ice-clinking, dread-filled feel of a date. As far as I could tell, I only had to be myself to bring about all that and more.

Since my first mandatory date was with a known entity—a valued client who had spent enough time with my parents to know that a few tools in their shed needed replacement, and one who was getting a discount for his troubles—he was a soft target. The others, I should mention now, were a trickier bunch.

After the initial pleasantries (if you don’t know what pleasantries are—I didn’t for years—they’re the “Hello, how are you doing,” ordering-drinks part of the introductions), I pulled the tape recorder from my pocket and showed it to Gerard.

“I need to record this for proof,” I said.

“Seriously?” Gerard replied.

“She needs evidence. Otherwise she’ll accuse me of deliberate sabotage or bribery.”

“Bribery?”

“You know, like I offer you twenty bucks or an extra 10 percent off future work if you just tell my mother that we had drinks and a few laughs, but I’m not the girl for you, which is what you’re going to tell her anyway.”

“I’m confused, Isabel.”

“Cards on the table, Gerard.”

“Oh, good.”

“I have a boyfriend. My mother loathes him. If I date two lawyers a month, she leaves him alone.”
¹

“If you don’t?”

“She calls the INS, the IRS, any governmental organization with three letters, and then, if that doesn’t work, she drops by the bar—”

“The bar?”

“He’s a bartender.”

“I see.”

“She drops by his bar with empty threats, which don’t seem empty to people who are not well acquainted with her.”

“I guess I should be glad she works for me,” Gerard said, appearing mildly stunned and a little bit tired.

Gerard drained his martini; I turned on the digital recorder once I got his nod of approval.

[Partial transcript reads as follows:]

ISABEL
: So, Gerard, tell me about yourself.

GERARD
: What do you want to know?

ISABEL
: Tell me everything. I want to know everything there is to know about you.

GERARD
: Waiter, can I get another drink?

WAITER
: Ma’am, would you like another?

ISABEL
: Yes, and make that the last time you call me “ma’am.”

[Long pause.]

ISABEL
: Go on, Gerard. Tell me your life story.

GERARD
: Two parents. One sister. Primary school. College. Law school. Lawyer. Married. No children. Divorced. Still lawyer.

ISABEL
: Wow. That was succinct.

GERARD
: I’ve always admired brevity.

ISABEL
: Me too. Except when I have fifteen minutes of tape to fill.

GERARD
: Isabel, I’m a lawyer, not an actor.

ISABEL
: If you want that discount my mom offered you, you better become one really fast.

[End of tape.]

In the end, after four martinis and two more hours of rehearsal time, Gerard finally stepped up and played the part of a drunk lawyer on an uncomfortable first date.

When I played the evidence for my mother, she furrowed her brow with concern and said, “What did you do to him, Isabel? He sounds drunk and . . . depressed.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I don’t think there will be a second date.”

According to script, Gerard called my mother the next day and said, “We had some drinks, some laughs, but I don’t think we’re a good match.”

As usual, my mother needed more information.

“Why not?”

“Your daughter scares me.”

Mom gave Gerard her secret hangover cure and got off the phone.

“Isabel, you better get on board with this.”

“I did what you asked,” I replied.

“Do it better.”

“Why?”

“Because Connor is not the man for you, and I would like you to get out more to see that.”

“Mom, I’m thirty-two years old. How is this any of your business?”

“I’m your mother and I have a stake in your happiness. I also have
very, very
serious dirt on you. This is how I want to leverage it.”

“You scare me,” I said.

“And I love you,” Mom replied.

DAVID’S NEW FRIEND/MY NEW CLIENT

To remain marginally in my mother’s good graces and spare Connor an impromptu visit, I decided to investigate what David was doing with all of his free time.

David’s mystery woman was indeed blond, curvy, and unnaturally tall—attractive in the vein of a 1940s movie star. Her hips tested the limits of her A-line skirt and the buttons on her blouse were on the borderline of tasteful. Her hair stretched down to her waist in waves–the kind that nature stubbornly refuses to create. Our mystery woman must have spent hours on her appearance every morning.

I staked out my brother’s house exactly one week after the day and time my mother had first spotted our blond Amazon. She exited his residence at roughly two
P.M.
There was no passionate embrace, but I did observe a warm hug that lingered longer than I thought appropriate. I was about to follow the mystery woman when my dad phoned from the office.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“In the Tenderloin, stocking up on a few rocks
¹
so I don’t have to drive back later,” I replied.

I think it’s important that the parents of a thiry-two-year-old daughter should not expect to know her whereabouts at all hours of the day.

“When you’re done scoring crack, can you please come into the office? You have a three thirty appointment with a new client.”

“How come I didn’t know about it?”

“Because the call came in on the same day as Rule #22
²
and your mother just put it on your calendar without mentioning it.”

“Oh, I should start checking that more.”

“I agree.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes. I need to get high first.”

My plan to tail the big blonde was foiled and instead I picked up my drugs (coffee) and headed back to Spellman headquarters to have an utterly painful meeting with Jeremy Pratt—screenwriter, filmmaker, painter, video artist, guitarist, freelance reviewer, and Francophile.
³
I didn’t ask Jeremy whether his enthusiasm for France extended to speaking the language, mostly because Jeremy was really good at elaborating without any encouragement.

Before I launch into a hearty complaint about my new client, I’d like to file an official one regarding my mother. At Spellman Investigations, like many police departments, the investigator who answers the call has officially “caught” the case. My mother answered Jeremy’s call and made an executive decision, based on Jeremy’s age and my mother’s ability to convince my father to agree with her on almost any subject under the sun, that I should take the case since such a “youthful” client would respond better to a younger investigator.

I entered through the office window in case the client was already waiting in the foyer. I wanted at least the preliminary information from my mother before my first meeting with Jeremy began. Mom made it sound so simple and easy and maybe even fun. But she’s evil that way.

Jeremy, as Mom explained, is an amateur screenwriter who used to work with a writing partner named Shana Breslin. They parted ways over artistic differences and couldn’t come to any official custody agreement on the script, and so their contentious collaboration was doomed to fall into the gaping abyss of unproduced screenplays. Or so it seemed, until Jeremy heard rumblings about meetings in Los Angeles and Shana landing an agent. I first asked my mother the obvious question:

“How is an unemployed screenwriter going to pay our fee?”

“He lives off a monthly stipend provided by his well-to-do parents.”

“No regular job?” I asked.

“No,” my mother replied.

“Not even at a coffee shop?”

“No.”

“I hate him already.”

“I know,” Mom said, smiling wickedly. “Me too!”

I cleared my desk and told my mother to make herself disappear. The layout of the Spellman offices (I should really use the singular form—it’s one large room) prevents private client meetings unless the room is vacated by other employees. Mom slipped into the basement, where we hide one desk, a paper shredder, and a DVD player. The room is dark, damp, and depressing; we keep our visits down there to a minimum. When I was a kid, that’s where all my punishment hearings were held. But I digress. Back to my new nemesis,
⁴
Jeremy Pratt.

The Snowball Effect

I estimated Jeremy’s age to be somewhere between twenty-four and twenty-five. He liked to layer his clothes as if a blizzard or a heat wave could attack at any moment. I never saw the very bottom layer, but there was a button-down thrift-store shirt under a blue Adidas warm-up jacket under a brown, orange, and yellow-striped ski jacket that his dad probably wore in the seventies. I offered to take his most outer layer, but that’s where he kept his paperwork, so he slung it over the back of his chair and pulled out some pages folded in quarters, unfolded them, and flattened them on top of my desk.

“Before we begin,” Jeremy said, “I need you to sign something.”

He then unzipped his Adidas warm-up jacket and pulled a gel pen from the breast pocket of his button-down shirt and readied it for me to sign, as if he were some kind of hipster real estate agent and we were closing a deal.

“What am I signing?” I asked.

“I cannot discuss any of my artistic endeavors unless you sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

“What is the purpose of this?”

“To make sure that you don’t a) steal my screenplay idea or b) discuss it with someone who might steal my idea. I’m afraid we can’t continue this meeting unless you sign.”

I snatched the pen in a split second.

“No problem,” I replied. “I have no show business aspirations.”

I did, however, read the contract—fine print and all—just to make sure that I was signing away my rights to his script and not, say, my liver.
⁵

I signed and then decided, based on my client’s ridiculous dress and even more ridiculous paranoid contract, that this conversation needed to go on record.

“Do you mind if I record this meeting?” I asked. “I’m afraid my penmanship makes note-taking a rather useless endeavor.”