Curse of the Spellmans: Document #2

An Introduction to Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

My mother used to say that if you can’t verify a man’s existence, you probably shouldn’t go home with him.

—Isabel Spellman, Curse of the Spellmans

Isabel Izzy Spellman—everyone’s favorite female PI and the madcap heroine of the uproarious New York Times bestseller The Spellman Files—is back, and she’s just been sprung from jail for the fourth time in three months. When she finds herself homeless and simultaneously barred from the Spellman offices-cum-residence by a very inconvenient temporary restraining order, Izzy meets with Mort Schilling, her octogenarian lawyer, to hammer out a defense and save her now-endangered PI license. Over San Francisco’s best New York–style deli fare, Izzy recaps the highlights of her recent past and her encounters with the man whose villainy she’s determined to unveil—even if she must break the law to do it.

When Izzy first met John Brown, she couldn’t have been more pleased with Spellman Investigations’ new neighbor. Handsome in a way reminiscent of her favorite Hitchcock actor,1 a great cook, and interested in her, John was too good to be true, so Izzy did what any sensible Spellman would do—she began to investigate him. But between his so common, too common, conveniently common name, his curious reluctance to let her rifle through his wallet, and the permanently locked room in his apartment, Izzy can’t get the information she needs for a background check. His kiss made me forget everything, she admits, but—forced to rely solely on her gut instincts—Izzy concludes that he is up to no good.

John Brown soon becomes Subject and Izzy’s infatuation quickly turns to obsession—of the nonromantic variety—when she bumps into him as he’s depositing his recycling and observes that For a gardener, he sure shreds a lot of paper. Izzy finds her suspicions validated when further surveillance reveals Subject participating in two clandestine package exchanges. However, Subject proves to be as wily as Izzy is persistent, and soon both the law and her parents are siding with him and trying to put a stop to her snooping.

To further complicate matters, ferreting out Subject’s crimes isn’t the only unpaid investigation that Izzy is working. A peculiar family on the best of days, the Spellman clan is outdoing itself in the erratic behavior department, so much so that Izzy finds herself writing up Suspicious Behavior Reports on each member—even her brother, David, a normally boring specimen of male perfection—hoping to figure out why everyone around her is acting so nutty. Her hitherto health-phobic dad is surreptitiously toting around a yoga mat and eating oatmeal, her mother is making midnight forays to vandalize a motorbike, and David has been moping and indulging in midday whiskey-tippling while his wife, Petra, suddenly goes out of town. Only Izzy’s teenage sister seems to be herself. But since normal for Rae means that she’s recently run over her forty-year-old police inspector and best friend, Henry Stone, Izzy finds herself posing as Henry’s fiancée to allay the fears of a nosy social services worker. To cap it all off, someone is reprising Izzy’s most creative juvenile vandalism, and the victim hires Spellman Investigations to find the culprit.

Curse of the Spellmans is a laugh-out-loud escapade that marks the much-anticipated return of detection’s most winning dysfunctional family and confirms Lisa Lutz as one of today’s finest comic writers, because whenever Isabel Spellman2 is on the case hilarious high-jinks are never far behind.

1 Joseph Cotton.

2 Or Izzy Ellmanspay—depending upon which business card she’s using.

IN THE MIDDLE . . .

Friday, April 21

1900 hrs

Hello?

Hi, Mom.

Who is this?

Isabel, and don’t ask me again.

Who?

Mom, it’s really not funny when you do it.

Seriously, who is this?

I don’t have time for your games right now.

Neither do I, said Mom, finally dropping the amnesia act. I’ll call you in a few days.

Don’t hang up!!! I shouted into the receiver.

Isabel, calm down.

Just don’t hang up.

Why not?

Because . . . I only get one phone call.

ARREST #2 (OR #4)1

That statement was, in fact, untrue. I used it purely for dramatic effect. According to the California Penal Code, Section 851.5, California grants arrestees the right to three telephone calls to the following individuals: 1.) an attorney, 2.) a bail bondsman, and 3.) a relative or other person. The code isn’t clear on whether the three calls must be made to each of the above or if you can double or triple up on any one.

Regardless, my mother was not my first choice. Before Mom, I tried my brother, David (no answer), and Mort Schilling, an old2 friend of mine who used to be a defense attorney. As of this arrest, I had not yet acquired the services of a regular bail bondsman. After searching through my internal Rolodex and running the list by my new friends, Scarlet and Lacey (also in lockup but for different offenses), they both agreed that I should call my mother.

If your own mother won’t bail you out of jail, who will? Lacey asked.

Her reasoning was sound, but I called my mom because I thought she owed me after arrest #1.5 (or #3, depending on how you’re counting). The rest of the conversation went like this:

MOM: Not again, Isabel. Please explain this to me.

ME: I’ll explain as soon as you pick me up.

MOM: We’re already on the road, dear. I’m not canceling our disappearance3 to bail you out of jail.

ME: Oh, I forgot about the disappearance.

MOM: You’re on your own, sweetie.

ME: No, Mom! You’ve got to call someone to get me out of here. I don’t want to spend the night in this place.

MOM: That might be a good idea. Remember Scared Straight!?

ME: Of course I remember it. You made me watch it at least ten times in high school.

MOM: A lot of good it did.

ME: Listen, call Morty again. Call until he picks up the phone. He’s home. He just can’t hear it.

MOM: I don’t think he should be driving at night.

ME: Mom, please.

MOM: Or during the day, for that matter.

OFFICER LINDLEY: Spellman, can you hurry this up?

ME: I gotta go. Just make sure someone gets me out of here.

MOM: I’ll do my best. See you on Monday, Isabel.

ME: Have a nice disappearance.

Three hours later, Officer Lindley banged his nightstick on the cage and said, Spellman, you’re out. After retrieving my personal effects from the clerk, I was led into the waiting room, which I scanned for a familiar face.

Morty was slumped over, asleep, in one of the green vinyl chairs. His wild, thinning hair drooped over his square Coke-bottle glasses. There was a crumpled lunch bag on his lap. His snoring alternated between kitchen blender and energy-efficient dishwasher.

Wake up, Morty, I said, gently shaking his shoulder.

Morty woke with a start, then turned to me and smiled. How’s my favorite delinquent? he asked.

I’ve been better, I replied.

What’s this, arrest number four?

Do you think it’s fair to count two and three?

We don’t have to count them if you don’t want. I thought you might be hungry, so I brought you a sandwich, Morty said, and then handed me the abused paper bag. It’s your favorite. Pastrami on rye.

No, Morty, it’s your favorite, which would account for why there’s only half a sandwich left.

I had to wait over an hour, Morty said in his own defense.

I put my arm around my pint-sized octogenarian friend and kissed him on the cheek. I knew you wouldn’t let me rot in there.

Let’s talk business for a minute, Morty said.

Shoot, I said, knowing it wouldn’t be good news.

"Your arraignment is on Monday. I don’t think I can get this charge dropped. Four arrests in under two months. They’re getting tired of seeing your mug around here. You violated a TRO.4 Izzele,5 what were you thinking?"

Arrests two and three don’t count, Morty. As for the other two, I think we can defend against those charges, although I need more evidence.

Gathering evidence is what got you in trouble in the first place. You got to stop that. Besides, your mother wanted me to tell you that you’re grounded.

I’m thirty years old. She can’t ground me.

She can fire you, Morty replied. And then what are you going to do?

Morty had a point. But I was convinced that once I solved my primary mystery, all my troubles would vanish. But first, I had to stay out of jail, which meant staging a defense.

*  *  *

At 9:00 A.M. the following Monday morning I was arraigned in Courtroom Four of the San Francisco criminal court building. Morty predicted correctly: these charges would not be dropped. My preliminary hearing was set for the following Monday, which gave Morty and me a full week to stage my defense. We returned to Morty’s office later that morning to go over the details of my case.

1 Depends on whether you count #2 and #3—I don’t.

2 Old refers to the age of the friend, not the length of our friendship.

3 Disappearance means vacation in the Spellman household. I will explain the origin of this later.

4 Temporary restraining order.

5 Morty likes to Yiddishify my name.

THE LAW OFFICES OF MORT SCHILLING

Monday, April 24

1000 hrs

Morty punched holes in my arrest sheet and secured it in his brand-new file on Isabel Spellman, or Spellman, Isabel (case #21). Me.

We should be able to keep the second and third arrests out of any court hearing. I can argue that they’re not related.

Good.

What?

Good!

"During our lunches2 you’ve told me bits and pieces about this case, but I need the whole picture to figure out the best way to paint your story in court."

Do you really think this is going to court?

What? Speak up.

Do you think this will go to—Morty, put in your hearing aid.

Morty reached into his desk drawer, stuck in his hearing aid, and adjusted the volume.

This thing drives me crazy. What were you saying?

Do you think this will even go to court? I mean, we can explain the evidence to the district attorney and maybe they’ll finally investigate this guy.

Isabel, first things first. Let’s get your story down and then we’ll figure out how to deal with the DA. Right now I want you to tell me the whole story, and don’t leave anything out. I like the details and I’ve got all day. And I’ve got tomorrow and the next day, God willing.

But I’ve already figured out my defense.

Enlighten me, Morty replied.

I’m innocent, I said.

But you acknowledge you violated a TRO?

I acknowledge that.

Then how can you be innocent?

Because the person who filed the restraining order is not who he says he is. Therefore the TRO is invalid.

Why don’t we start at the beginning, Isabel.

1 Notice the case number. The only other case Morty had this year was his nephew’s traffic violation.

2 Morty and I have a standing lunch date every week. I will explain how we met and the nature of our relationship in due time.

Part I

BEGINNINGS

SUBJECT MOVES INTO 1797 CLAY STREET . . .

Sunday, January 8

1100 hrs

I have trouble with beginnings. For one thing, I don’t find stories all that interesting when you start at the beginning. If you ask me, you only know there is a story when you get to the middle. And besides, beginnings are hard to determine. One could argue that the true beginning to all stories is the beginning of time. But Morty is already eighty-two years old, so given our time constraints, I’ll begin this story on the date I met, or, more specifically, first laid eyes on John Brown (hereafter referred to as Subject or by some variation of his alias, John Brown).

I remember the day that Subject moved in next door to my parents like it was yesterday. He was taking over the second-story apartment of a triplex, previously occupied by Mr. Rafter, whose tenancy lasted close to thirty years. David knew Mr. Rafter better than I since his bedroom was six feet from Rafter’s den and their windows were level enough to provide each a fishbowl view of the other. Since Rafter spent most of his time watching television in his den and David spent most of his time studying in his bedroom, the two men got to know each other in their respective comfortable silences (minus the sounds of the television, that is).

But I digress. As I said, I remember the day Subject moved in next door like it was yesterday. And I suppose the reason I remember it so vividly is because of the events that transpired earlier that day, the events that caused me to be at my family’s home at the precise moment Subject’s moving truck double-parked out front. So, I’m thinking I should probably start earlier that day and mention the aforementioned events.

0900 hrs

I woke in my bed, or, more precisely, the bed in the home of Bernie Peterson, a retired SFPD lieutenant whom I sublet from. My illegal residence in the Richmond district is exactly 2.8 miles and one giant hill away from my parents’ home, but I’m always just a phone call away.

The phone rang, like it always does, before I’d had enough coffee to face the day.

Hello.

Isabel, it’s Mom.

Who?

I’m not in the mood for this today.

Not ringing a bell. When did we meet?

Listen to me very carefully; I don’t want to repeat myself. I need you to pick up Rae from the hospital.

Is she all right? I asked, concern altering the tone of my voice.1

"She’s fine. But Henry2 isn’t."

What happened?

She ran him over.

How?

With a car, Isabel.

I got that part, Mom.

Izzy, I’m in the middle of a job. I have to go. Please get all the details of what went down. As usual, record everything. Call me when you get home.

San Francisco General Hospital

1000 hrs

The woman at the reception desk told me that only immediate family would be allowed in Henry’s room. I flashed my quarter-carat engagement ring and asked if fiancées qualified.

A nurse directed me toward room 873 and explained that he was in serious, but stable, condition.

Can you tell me what happened? I asked the nurse.

Your daughter is with him now. I’ll let her explain.

My daughter?

I found my sister, Rae, sitting by Inspector Henry Stone’s bedside, staring at the electronic device monitoring his vitals.

Henry’s nurse tried to smile over her annoyance at Rae’s hypervigilant announcements.

Seventy-two. His heart rate went up by five beats, Rae said as I entered.

My sister’s eyes were bloodshot and her flushed cheeks showed signs of recent crying. The nurse looked relieved when she saw me and said to Rae, Oh, good. Your mother’s here.

Eew, I said, offended. I’m not her mother. Do I look old enough to be the mother of a fifteen-year-old girl?

I hadn’t thought about it, she replied.

I’m his fiancée, I clarified to the nurse, and then turned to the inspector.

Henry Stone was lying in the hospital bed with an assortment of tubes and monitors attached to his body, wearing the standard-issue hospital gown. Minus the unfortunate outfit and the single gauze bandage stuck to his left temple, he looked pretty much the same as he always does: well groomed, slightly underweight, and handsome in a way that’s very easy to ignore. His usually short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair had grown out more in the past few weeks, which had the added benefit of making him appear younger than his forty-four years. Although at that moment the dark circles under his eyes and his patently agitated expression had offset that benefit.

How is he? I asked the nurse, trying to emote the appropriate shade of concern.

There’s some bruising on the legs just below the knee, but nothing’s broken. The main concern is the concussion. He lost consciousness for five minutes and is experiencing nausea. We did a CT and everything looks fine, but we need to keep him under observation for forty-eight hours.

Will he have permanent brain damage? Rae asked.

Henry grabbed my wrist. Hard. I need to speak to you in private, he said.

I turned to Rae. Leave the room.

No, she replied. I never thought a single syllable could possess such heartbreaking desperation.

Get out, Henry demanded, unmoved by her wells of emotion.

Are you ever going to forgive me? she said to him.

It’s only been two hours since you ran me over, he replied.

Accidentally! she shouted.

Then Henry shot her a look that seemed to have more power than any lecture, punishment, or curfew my parents ever unleashed on Rae.

Two and a half hours, Rae mumbled as she soberly exited the room.

Henry gripped my arm even tighter after Rae was out of earshot.

That kind of hurts, Henry.

Don’t talk to me about pain.

Right. Sorry.

I need you to do me a favor.

Shoot.

Keep her away from me.

For how long?

A couple weeks.

Dream on.

Isabel, please. I need a break.

I’ll do what I can, but—

Your sister almost killed me today—

Accidentally! shouted Rae from the other side of the door.

"I need a Rae vacation.3 Please. Help me."

1 In case you’re wondering, I know when to give up the shtick.

2 Inspector Henry Stone. I’ll explain all about him later.

3 In this instance, the word vacation is being used in its traditional sense.

THE LAW OFFICES OF MORT SCHILLING

Monday, April 24

1015 hrs

When did you and Inspector Stone get engaged?

We’re not engaged. We’re ‘engaged’, I said, using finger quotes.1

You’re not wearing an engagement ring.

I don’t need to wear it anymore.

Run that by me again.

It’s a really long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?

I want to hear any story that will help explain the evidence that has been amassed against you.

That might take a while.

Morty shrugged his shoulders. Retirement hadn’t been his cup of tea. Anything that kept him busy was.

Like I said, beginnings are impossible to define. For my story and my defense to make complete sense, I need to provide details from long before my troubles with John Brown began.

1 Generally I’m opposed to the use of finger quotes. There are rare exceptions.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ME

I am the second child of Albert and Olivia Spellman. Since the age of twelve I have worked for the family business, Spellman Investigations, a private investigative firm located inside the Spellman family residence in San Francisco, California. My brother, David, is two years my senior and my sister, Rae, fourteen-plus years my junior.

I was, unequivocally, the difficult child (and adolescent and young adult). My reign of terror over the Spellman household lasted almost twenty years. I have often theorized that my bad seed MO arose out of having a sibling (David) whose perfection, both physical and intellectual, could not be matched. Because I could not compete with my brother, I responded by slumming in imperfection, leaving a wake of vandalism and truancy everywhere I went. David often tried to temper my exploits by sweeping whatever he could under the rug, but eventually even he grew tired of compensating for me. Now David is a lawyer married to my best friend, Petra.1 His primary connection to the family business is throwing work our way.

My sister, Rae, age fifteen (and a half), barely looks a day over thirteen. She inherited her small frame from our mother, but the dirty-blonde hair and freckles mimic no one else in the family. My sister’s grand loyalty to the family, and especially the family business, has set her apart from me and David. Rae began working for Spellman Investigations when she was six years old and seemed to believe that she led the perfect life. For her, maybe it was true; it appeared that she was born into precisely the right family.

In my mid-twenties, I eventually came to realize that my behavior was the formative example to an impressionable pre-teen; because of this and a few other mitigating factors, I grew up. My transformation was quick. To the untrained eye it would appear that I fell asleep a delinquent and woke up a somewhat responsible member of society.

It was then that my family experienced its longest spate of normalcy, which lasted approximately four years. Then two years ago, after my Uncle Ray2 moved into the Spellman home, battles began to simmer between me, my parents, my sister, my uncle Ray, and my brother. And then we went to war.

The war began when I started dating a dentist behind my mother’s back. My mother hates dentists, you see. Or she did, back when the wounds were fresh from her undercover work in a sexual assault case involving a dentist who felt up his patients while they were under anesthesia. I still say Mom and Dad fired the first shots. They hired my sister Rae (fourteen at the time) to follow me. That’s how they discovered I was dating Daniel Castillo, DDS (Ex-boyfriend #9—see appendix). After a humiliating meeting between Ex #9 and my family, I decided that I had to get out of the family business.

That is when our war escalated. My parents commenced twenty-four-hour surveillance on me (using my sister as their primary operative), and just when we thought this game of cat and mouse couldn’t get any worse, my sister disappeared.

It was later discovered that Rae kidnapped herself in a preemptive strike to end the war. And she got exactly what she wanted: the war ended and my family returned to its previous state of normalcy. Although my sister’s dramatic play did not go unpunished.

It was during Rae’s six-month probation that she began visiting Henry Stone—the primary officer on her own missing person case. What began as weekly visits to the oddly well-groomed, highly ethical inspector in the San Francisco Police Department’s Bryant Street headquarters would end eighteen months later when my sister almost murdered him with his own car.

1 Who happened to be my partner in crime during most of my delinquent years.

2 I’ll get to him in five pages or so.

SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL HOSPITAL

Sunday, January 8

1005 hrs

My mother would have murdered me if she knew how long I had been in the hospital room without turning on the tape recorder.1 Before another word was uttered, I slipped my hand into my pocket and switched on my palm-sized digital recorder.

The transcript reads as follows:

[Rae reenters the room as Nurse Stinson finishes filling out Inspector Stone’s medical chart. The nurse smiles professionally and goes to the door.]

NURSE: If you need anything, Inspector, please use the call button. [She turns to me and Rae.]

NURSE: Ladies, visiting hours will be over in two hours.

HENRY: I’m very tired. I think they should leave now.

ISABEL: We’ll leave in a few minutes.

HENRY: No. Leave now. Please. Nurse?

RAE: His pulse just went up by two beats. Now it’s seventy-four.

NURSE: He’s fine. I’ll check on you in an hour.

[Nurse Stinson exits the room.]

ISABEL: Henry, we’ll be out of here in a minute. But Mom wants a complete rundown of the events, which means she needs to hear it from you. Oh, and I’m recording this. Tell me exactly what happened.

HENRY: Your sister ran me over—

RAE: Accidentally!

ISABEL: The accidentally is implied, Rae. What I’d like to know is how. You have a learner’s permit, not a license. You’re not supposed to be in the driver’s seat of a car without a licensed driver with you at all times. If you ran Henry over, clearly he was outside of the car.

HENRY: Please keep it down. My head hurts.

ISABEL: Sorry. [to Rae] Talk.

RAE: We were leaving the police station for my driving lesson.

HENRY: I hope you enjoyed it, because that was the last driving lesson I will ever give you.

RAE: I think that’s the head injury talking.

HENRY: Mark my words.

ISABEL: Can we get on with the story?

RAE: Henry was carrying a box and then he stopped to talk to that guy who smells like fish.

HENRY: Captain Greely.

ISABEL: Why does he smell like fish?

RAE: I have no idea.

ISABEL: So he just smells like fish all the time?

RAE: Every time I’ve smelled him he’s smelled like fish.

HENRY: [snappishly] He takes fish oil supplements for his heart. Can we get on with this?

ISABEL: Right. Okay, then what happened?

RAE: I ran ahead to the car, got in the driver’s seat, and waited for Henry.

But he was still holding the box and talking to the fish guy.

HENRY: Captain Greely.

RAE: [snotty] Captain Greely.

HENRY: Young lady, on the day you run me over—

RAE: Accidentally!

HENRY: —you don’t get to talk to me like that.

RAE: I think you need to calm down. Your heart rate is up to eighty beats per minute.

HENRY: Isabel, I want you to get her out of here.

ISABEL: In a minute. I promise. Can I please hear the end of the story? Rae, hurry up and talk.

RAE: So he had this heavy box and he was talking to the—Captain Greely, and I just thought if I drove the car twenty feet that wouldn’t be a big deal and he wouldn’t have to carry the box to the car. I was trying to be nice. So I turned on the engine and started to drive and then I saw Henry and he looked so mad and he stepped out in front of the car and shouted for me to stop and I got scared and I meant to hit the brakes, but I hit the gas. [Tears of guilt have formed in Rae’s eyes.]

ISABEL: Are you crying?

RAE: I almost accidentally murdered my best friend today.

HENRY AND ISABEL: Stop saying that!

Although Morty had not interrupted my story for further exposition on the bizarre relationship between my fifteen-and-a-half-year-old sister and the forty-four-year-old inspector, I think further background information will help illuminate this moment in the hospital room and many of the events that will follow.

1 Will explain the chronic tape-recording later.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HENRY AND RAE

Remember the wars I mentioned earlier? They were not exclusive to me and my parents. My sister, Rae, was a party in her own conflict against Uncle Ray. Uncle Ray was my father’s older brother. Almost seventeen years ago, within the span of six months, he got cancer, his wife left him, he almost died, and then he recovered. The once clean-living/responsible/much-admired police inspector uncle then became a slovenly shadow of his former well-scrubbed self. New Uncle Ray would often disappear on benders that my family dubbed Lost Weekends. Every time he disappeared, we would retrieve him, pay off his gambling debts, sober him up enough to maintain civilized grooming standards, and keep as watchful an eye on him as we could until the next Lost Weekend.

My sister’s age and high work ethic made her initial relationship with her namesake hostile at best, but eventually, when Rae realized that her uncle was not a selfish old fool but a lonely man who got dealt a hand of cards that he didn’t know how to play, she softened her opinion of him and they eventually made peace.

However, as soon as my sister had grown accustomed to her regular television-watching/sugar-consuming/card-playing companion, Uncle Ray passed out in a bathtub in a casino hotel in Reno, Nevada, after a long day of poker losses and binge drinking.

My sister took Uncle Ray’s death harder than anyone, and soon her bimonthly visits to Henry Stone turned into biweekly drop-ins to his station office. Henry tried to turn