Authors: Lisa Lutz
Wednesday, April 12
1830 hrs
I chose to reveal my conclusions as they are unveiled in traditional drawing-room mysteries. I gathered the key players at Henry Stone’s house the following evening, sat them all down on the couch, and allowed a pregnant pause to fill the room as I paced back and forth.
“Isabel, what’s going on?” my father asked impatiently.
“I’ve solved the copycat vandalism case,” I said.
“Who did it?” Mom asked in anticipation.
“That’s not how it’s done,” I replied. “Let me begin with the evidence. On Groundhog Day of this year, a series of adjustments to Mrs. Chandler’s holiday tableaux began. The adjustments followed the same MO as a series of vandalisms that occurred during the nineteen-ninety-two-through-ninety-three season.
“While many individuals were aware of these capers, only members of this family and possibly Henry were privy to the details, which means there are only seven true suspects. Since I know I didn’t do it, and let’s face it, we know Henry didn’t do it, that leaves only five suspects. Petra has been out of town for weeks now, which can be verified, so I know she didn’t do it. That leaves me with four suspects: Mom, Dad, David, and Rae. Let’s start with Dad…”
“Isabel, this is ridiculous. I was out of town over St. Patrick’s Day.”
“That is precisely the point I was going to make, although I was going to take my time doing it.”
“Can we move on?” my mother asked.
“No,” I said sternly. “We’re going to do this my way.” I continued.
“Since Dad was out of town on St. Patrick’s Day and Mom was out of town as well, I had to rule both of them out. Of course, David knew about the original vandalisms as well as anyone. But David was too depressed to have the follow-through required to commit these crimes. It’s true he had no alibi, but I had to consider him innocent. The only suspect left was Rae.”
“I have an alibi,” Rae said.
“It’s true,” I replied. “I am your alibi. You were in the Spellman home the night of the leprechaun attack. But you’re more clever than that, aren’t you, Rae?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rae casually replied.
I stared at my mother pointedly. “Everyone in this room has something to hide,” I said shrewdly. “I think it’s time we reveal some of these secrets and then maybe we can all get on with our lives.”
“What are you talking about, Isabel?” Dad asked nervously.
“In good time,” I said, savoring the moment. “You see, I had to solve another mystery to solve the case of the Copycat Vandals.”
“This is stupid,” Rae said. “Can I watch TV?”
“No,” I said. “Let’s see, where should I begin? I guess I’ll start with the evidence…
“Some time ago, I noticed that Mom was keeping unusual hours. One night I decided to follow her, and when I did I found Mom doing the oddest thing. She was driving to Noe Valley and vandalizing a motorbike.”
Rae gawked in sudden comprehension.
“Oh my god!”
she shouted.
My father turned to my mother in confusion, and Henry Stone put his head in his hands and sighed.
“Dad, since you’re the only person in the room who doesn’t understand what’s going on, let me clue you in. Rae has a boyfriend—”
“What?” my father said in disbelief.
“Let me finish. Rae has a boyfriend named Jason Rivers. She told Henry about this boyfriend four months ago when they started hanging out. As you know, she tells Henry everything. Henry didn’t like having key information like this all to himself, so Henry told Mom, because he felt it was the kind of information a mother should have. But he also emphasized to Mom that he didn’t want his broken confidence revealed.
“Mom, equipped with the boyfriend’s name, got an address from the school directory and began an informal tail on the young man. Discovering that this young male had a motorbike, and not being able to discuss young male with daughter and tell daughter in no uncertain terms that she was not to ride on said motorbike, Mother let air out of the tires, siphoned gas, put gum in the ignition, and did anything she could think of so that motorbike would not work.
“I solved the Copycat Vandal mystery perhaps a week or two ago. But then yesterday, it was confirmed. The person responsible for the copycat vandalism is Rae Spellman.”
I paused for dramatic effect and then pointed at my sister.
“But you’re my alibi,” Rae said in desperation.
“I’m not saying you committed the act, but you were the mastermind behind it.”
I turned to my mother and father and laid out all the facts that made my conclusion obvious.
“I caught three boys in the act last night, one of whom was Rae’s boyfriend. Rae had heard about these pranks for years. It’s safe to say she had the details memorized. The only problem was, when I got the job, Rae had to find a window of time when I wasn’t on the case for her pawns to strike.
“On St. Patrick’s Day, she waited until I was laid up in bed with a rib fracture. Then there was last night. I won’t go into the details, but Rae tried to distract me with another job. I didn’t bite. I stayed on the Chandler residence and that’s when I found the boys in the act.
“Case closed,” I said, as my family and Henry stared at me in disbelief.
Rae stood up and held out her hand. “Well done,” she conceded.
My mother turned to my sister and asked the obvious question: “Why?”
“I don’t know. Jason was talking about toilet-papering her yard after he saw her Christmas decorations and I thought that was so lame and boring. And then I told him about Isabel’s pranks—”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Would you stop that?” my dad snapped.
“The more I told them, the cooler the idea seemed,” Rae continued. “It was kind of like an homage.”
“Good word,” Henry said, “although I do
not
approve.”
Dad turned to Rae. “Pumpkin, this crime will not go unpunished.”
“I wouldn’t expect otherwise,” Rae stoically replied.
“Are we done here?” my mother asked.
“No,” I answered flatly. “There is one more thing I need to get off my chest.
“Mom and Dad. You both hate the vacations. If you’re doing them for each other, stop. I have the e-mails to prove that neither of you had a good time on either of those trips.”
Rae groaned like she was the victim of a stabbing, knowing that her parent-free weekends might never come again.
My stunned family filed out of Henry’s apartment in almost silence.
As Rae brushed past me, I whispered, “Did you really find that shirt in Subject’s trash?”
Rae shook her head in the negative and stared at her feet. “Sorry,” she said. “You gave me no choice.”
Dad was the last to leave, so I pulled him aside.
“You have twenty-four hours to tell Mom what I found in the glove compartment of your car. After that, I tell her.”
I presented the above episode of
Mystery!
in Technicolor because it was a case or a series of cases that I actually solved. I use the above episode to illustrate that I do have some skills of deduction that are perhaps better than average. Sometimes the evidence comes too quickly or one believes they’ve solved the mystery before all of the evidence is in. In those cases one might—meaning I might—take those new pieces of information and fit them into a theory that I’ve already imagined in my mind. This doesn’t mean I’m lousy at my job, it simply means that even when I gather all the relevant facts, I might force them into a puzzle that looks right on the surface, but has a few pieces left in the box.
Thursday, April 13
1610 hrs
Rae knocked on the door to Henry Stone’s apartment. When I unlocked the deadbolt, Rae pushed past me, grabbed the second-season DVD from beneath Stone’s television console, and popped it into the player. Before she pressed the Play button on the remote, she said, “I took care of that thing you wanted me to take care of.”
“You put the tracking device on Subject’s car?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “You can put my payment in the outside pocket of my backpack.”
“Do Mom and Dad know you’re here?”
“Shhh.”
“Have you told your boyfriend yet that the jig is up?”
“Shhh.”
“Are you planning on confessing to Mrs. Chandler or will I do that for you?”
“Shhh.”
Rae was clearly done talking. Only “Can I get you a snack?” elicited any response.
“There are some Cheetos stashed behind the five-pound bag of brown rice in the pantry. And I’ll take a glass of orange juice.”
Three episodes and two hours and fifteen minutes later, Henry arrived home. Rae ignored him, staring at the credits on the screen. Remember, Henry told Mom that Rae had a boyfriend—a fact that was conveyed in confidence. Rae’s cold shoulder put a frost on the entire room.
Henry sat down on the couch next to Rae. She didn’t even try to hide the bag of Cheetos or the bright orange dust that was settling on his couch and coffee table. Their brief conversation went like this.
“Rae.”
“Henry.”
“I can see you’re upset.”
“You betrayed my trust,” Rae said, finally looking him in the eye.
“You ran me over,” Henry replied.
“Oh, right,” Rae said. “Clean slate?”
“Deal,” said Henry, and then they shook on it.
Later, Henry explained to Rae that there were certain kinds of information of which he was uncomfortable being the sole recipient. In the future, he would give her the heads-up if he planned on revealing any confidence.
The simplicity of their settlement struck me as beautiful. I counted all the relationships in my life and none were quite as perfect as this one. Henry loosened his already-loosened watch/read rule and Rae spent the evening finishing the second season of
Dr. Who
.
“If you could time travel, where would you go?” Rae asked me.
“I’d go into the future and find out what Subject was up to. Then I’d go back in time and stop him.”
“You’re so predictable,” Rae said.
“I know,” I replied.
On the drive back to the Spellman residence, Rae confirmed that our father had finally revealed his medical condition to Mom.
“How’d she take it?” I asked.
“She said if he even looked at a French fry the wrong way she’d file for divorce.”
With that incident settled to my satisfaction, I decided to pump Rae for information that was not as easy to come by.
“Remember when you were giving Henry his space?”
“Oh, I remember,” Rae said, as if it was a traumatic event she did not wish to revisit.
“Right before I told you to leave him alone, I caught him in my bar one night. He was upset about something but wouldn’t tell me what it was. Do you know?”
“Yes,” Rae replied.
“So spill it.”
“I’m going to need some incentive,” Rae replied.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Free reign on Henry’s DVD collection…”
“Done.”
“And,” Rae continued, “make sure I’ve got some snacks around for my after-school visits. You can hide them on the bottom shelf in the linen closet. He won’t look there.”
“He will if he starts getting ants.”
“Those are my terms,” Rae replied as I pulled up in front of the Spellman home.
Rae and I shook on the deal and then Rae revealed her information: “This is what happened. Henry’s wife left him about two years ago. She moved to Boston or something. A couple months ago she came back hoping to reconcile. Henry needed some space to make the decision. Anyway, he decided he wanted a divorce. Which is a really good thing, because I hate her.”
“Have you met her?”
“No.”
“Henry told you all this?”
“Of course not,” Rae replied. “Henry doesn’t tell me anything.”
“So how did you acquire this information?” I asked.
“Through my keen powers of deduction and a thorough search of his residence,” was Rae’s cagey reply. “Thanks for the ride.”
Dad exited the house as Rae got out of the car. He approached the driver’s-side window, looking a little too serious for my liking.
“Isabel.”
“Dad.”
“I got John Brown to drop the B&E charge.”
“How?”
“I told him to file a restraining order instead.”
“Brilliant idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“This gives you a second chance. Do
not
disappoint me.”
Dad handed me an envelope. “You’ve been served,” he said.
Tuesday, April 18
Without a doubt the restraining order put a cramp in my investigation of Subject. I was reduced to surveillance from afar, following a dot on my computer screen. For four days, I tracked Subject’s whereabouts, hoping to find a break in his pattern that might lead me to the truth. But his pattern remained predictable. Other than his galaxy of community gardens and landscaping clients, Subject stayed within his usual stomping grounds. There was, however, one address across the Golden Gate Bridge that I found suspect. When I arrived at the site the day after observing the Dot, it seemed obvious that it was the home of a client, based on the quality of its surrounding garden.
That afternoon, I returned to Henry’s house and tried a reverse directory search on the address. The chain of ownership was hard to follow and the records appeared to have been set up purely to confuse. My cell phone rang, interrupting my internal deliberation.
“Isabel?”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t you RSVP’d to my wedding invitation?”
“Who is this?” I said, even though the caller ID told me exactly who it was. I said it to buy time.
“Daniel.”
“Oh, Daniel. Right. Well, it’s just that I’ve gotten so many wedding invitations this month. It’s hard to keep track of them all.”
“Sophia thinks you’re short on manners.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Daniel replied. “But there’s no reason for her to know that. Please send back the card. Will you be bringing a date?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If you’re not, then I have a few friends I’d like to introduce you to—”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?” Daniel said.
“Yes. I’ll be bringing a date.”