The Last Word Read online

  On this run, the day after the foiled meeting with my parents, Edward decided to impart some advice.

  “It must be difficult running a business when you don’t have the respect of your employees,” he said.

  I could have launched into an extensive defense, explaining family history and my parents’ predilection for gamesmanship, but breathing took priority.

  “It is.”

  “Did you read the book I gave you?”

  “I skimmed it.”

  When the trouble began after my coup, Mr. Slayter gave me several books that had influenced his management style.

  “Have you completed step one?”

  “Working on it,” I said, slowing my pace to cut back on the chitchat and because I didn’t want to lie any further. The book Slayter was referring to, called How to Undo a Fiasco, included exercises. Chapter 1 encouraged you to make a list of all of your transgressions over the last ten years. For me that could have taken upwards of a year.

  “Have you tried listening to them—opening a dialogue to discuss what happened and how they feel? Maybe they just need to be heard, and then you can move on.”

  That was from one of the other books he gave me. I can’t remember which one. Or maybe it’s just common sense.

  “I’ll try that,” I said. “Again.” Because I was pretty sure I’d tried that before.

  “Please do. And report back to me. I think it’s important that I meet your parents before the fissure in communication becomes as deep as a canyon.”

  When we reached the end of the third loop, I slowed to a walk.

  “Good run,” I said.

  “We only did three loops, Isabel.”

  “No, we did four,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Edward turned to Charlie and said, “Charlie, how many miles have we covered?”

  I ducked behind Slayter and made the universal sign that means Don’t rat me out.

  “Three, sir,” Charlie, the rat, said.

  “Isabel, I can’t believe you would exploit my condition for your own benefit.”

  “I swear, I thought we did four laps.”6

  “Two more,” Slayter said, as punishment.

  “Only one more.”

  “Two. I forgot about the third. It happens.”

  Slayter picked up the pace. I trudged in his wake, drafting off of him. It helps a little and Slayter finds it annoying, which also improves my mood.

  After the final loop, I came to a complete stop and lay down on the grass.

  Charlie was across the field, riding in our direction. Slayter extended his hand, meaning for me to get up. He pulled me to my feet. For an old guy, he sure was strong.

  “Albino, gingivitis, and . . .” Slayter trailed off, staring at the white sky.

  In case you were wondering, my boss hadn’t contracted some rare language virus. At the beginning of every jogging session or other meeting, if I remember, I try to give Slayter three words to remember at the end of the meeting. Sometimes I forget the three words, which makes the whole thing a disaster, but now we make sure Charlie hears the words.

  “Three-card monte,” Slayter said, snapping his fingers. “Let’s stick to single words only in the future.”

  “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.

  SUBORDINATES

  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

  No 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.”

  “She doesn’t care. This Lukas guy lied to her and cheated her and they knew they could get away with it. I looked into it,” Rae said. “Moving companies aren’t properly regulated. If you ask me, it’s the new mob.”

  “Can she pay?” I asked.

  “No,” Rae said.

  “Then why would we take the case?”

  “Because he’s Satan,” Vivien said through a mouthful of pancakes.

  “Meet our client,” Rae said, nodding in Vivien’s direction. “Lightning Fast Moving Company, they’re called. I don’t think she’s their only victim, based on my preliminary research. I’ll check their corporate status and bankruptcy filings and see if there are any lawsuits on record, which seems likely. You wouldn’t believe their reviews on Yelp.”

  “What does this have to do with you?” I asked.

  “She came to me for help,” Rae said.

  “I take it these are what the phone calls have been about, and your bad hair days?”