Authors: Lisa Lutz
“Is there a problem, officer?” he said, on guard.
Henry ignored the question and opened the passenger door. “Izzy Ellmanspay, I have a warrant for your arrest. Please keep your hands where I can see them and step out of the vehicle.”
I followed Henry’s instructions and got out of the car. He then spun me around and told me to keep my hands on the hood of the vehicle. He frisked me and then cuffed my hands behind my back.
Davis exited the car and circled to the other side.
“What’s going on here?” Davis asked.
“Ms. Ellmanspay,” Henry said, “is under arrest for fraud.”
“Fraud?” Davis asked, his face a collage of confusion.
“Yes,” Henry continued with pitch-perfect delivery. “We’ve been after her for quite some time. Her MO is impersonating an investigator and preying on the families of missing individuals. She claims there’s a man who has been seen with the individual shortly before his or her disappearance. She takes her victims on a phony chase where they eventually lose the trail. Once she’s got their trust and their hopes up, she mentions her fee. I have to ask,” Henry said to Mr. Davis. “Have you given her any money?”
“No. Not yet,” the stunned Mr. Davis replied.
“Good,” Henry said. “You’re one of the lucky ones. Sir, I suggest you go home and forget about this. I understand that your wife has recently disappeared. I’m sorry. But this woman does not know anything about her current whereabouts.”
“She was conning me?” Davis asked, looking truly lost.
“It’s what she does. I’m sorry,” Henry said. “Go home. Sit by the phone. I’m sure the police are doing everything they can. But this woman here, she can’t help you.”
Davis studied me in a new light. Anger hadn’t the time to surface. He remained baffled. “I thought there was something unstable about her,” Davis said.
Henry continued his performance: “Your instincts were correct. Take care of yourself, Mr. Davis,” he replied, and then guided me toward his car. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”
A
fter Henry placed me in the backseat of his car, he waited for Davis to pull back onto the highway. My sister popped up from her hiding place in the front seat and crawled next to me in the back.
“That was so cool,” Rae said, taking the key to unlock my cuffs.
“What is she doing here?” I asked Henry.
“She’s been shadowing your investigation all along. She put a GPS device on your car so she could keep up with the investigation.”
“I was wondering who took the other device.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Rae said. “I thought Subject was evil too until I started looking into Mr. Davis.”
“What is she doing
here
?” I asked again with a different word emphasis.
“It was only yesterday,” Henry said, “that I was able to follow up on Brown and Davis. I have a contact at the women’s shelter who happened to know John Brown. For years his older sister was a victim of spousal abuse. After working within the law to protect her, he gave up and helped her find a new identity. Over the years he’s cultivated more and more resources and now it’s just what he does—that and gardening, of course. If you think about all your evidence—the credit cards, the equipment for making phony IDs. It all adds up.”
“Why didn’t he just tell me?”
“The only reason he’s lasted as long as he has doing this is that only a handful of people know. You went on a few dates with him and spent most of that time searching his apartment. I hardly think that encourages trust.”
“I need a drink,” I said.
“I was about to find you at your apartment,” Henry continued, “when Rae came over and told me you had gone to the Davis residence.”
“But why did you let her come along for this sting operation?” I asked.
“Because,” Henry said with great hostility, “she stole my car keys and then refused to get out of the car. I had already lost enough time. I had to get on the road so I could catch up with you.”
“It was only fair,” Rae said. “I was the person who discovered that Davis was evil. Just a simple criminal check, Izzy. I can’t believe you didn’t do that,” Rae said, pouring salt on the wound. “Mom says you have tunnel vision.”
“The phony arrest. What was that about?” I asked.
“Henry was the mastermind behind that,” Rae said.
“We had to convince him,” Henry explained, “that you knew nothing. Otherwise he would have come after you and he wouldn’t have stopped until he got the information he wanted. He needed to see you as a dead end. It was the only way I could think of.”
I had turned on my digital recorder in the car with Davis, shortly after Henry called. I figured if things went bad, really bad, at least the police might find some evidence on my dead body to incriminate Mr. Davis. Fortunately, it never came to that. But I give to you now, ladies and gentlemen, the last known recording of
The Stone and Spellman Show.
After everything this man had done for me, I decided I could abide by his one recurring request.
“THE-FAREWELL-EPISODE”
Setting:
Davis pulls his car onto the road and disappears in the distance. Rae climbs into the front seat.
RAE
: Shotgun!
HENRY
: Buckle up.
[Henry pulls the car onto the highway and we head back to the city.]
RAE
: Your plan to throw Davis off the scent really was brilliant.
HENRY
: Thank you.
ISABEL
: Yes. Thank you.
RAE
: You know what, Henry?
HENRY
: What?
RAE
: When I grow up I want to be just like you.
HENRY
: You are too kind.
RAE
: Minus all the rules.
HENRY
: Of course.
RAE
: And your fear of junk food.
HENRY
: It’s not a phobia.
RAE
: And I probably won’t make people read for every hour they watch TV.
HENRY
: You don’t have to decide right now.
RAE
: And, of course, minus the whole being a man thing.
HENRY
: I get the point, Rae.
[End of tape.]
At the time, I barely registered the above episode. As the landscape passed by at seventy miles an hour, I had only my own crimes occupying my thoughts. I have made many mistakes in my life, but I don’t know of any one that paralleled this months-long error in judgment. To say it had me rethinking my future was an understatement. I was rethinking my whole life.
FOUR APOLOGIES
AND A WEDDING
June
A few weeks after the “rescue operation,” as Rae would later call it, my father and I agreed that I should take some time off work. We also agreed that I owed a number of apologies. I asked my Dad what number he was thinking of and he said four. We never discussed which four people those numbers were to represent, so I decided on my own.
But first there was an apology that I did not have to give. Two weeks after Petra’s return from Arizona and at least five unanswered phone calls later, David told me they had separated and were planning to divorce. Two more unanswered phone calls after that, I gave up trying to make contact and decided to wait for her to come to me. One month after Petra’s return from Arizona, she knocked on my closet door.
“I’m a coward,” she said.
“I know that,” I replied.
“This is between me and your brother. I hope that one day it will be less awkward.”
“What happened?” I had to ask. She was still standing in the foyer.
“Everything happened so quickly. David started talking about having children and I thought, when did this happen? When did I suddenly grow up? I wasn’t ready. One day I’m trying to decide where to go for happy hour and then the next thing I know, I’m hosting dinner parties for the partners at his law firm. I woke up one day married to a respectable lawyer and I wasn’t ready for it.”
“Have you seen him lately? He’s not all that respectable.”
“He’ll be fine,” Petra said. “You know that, right?”
“But why did you disappear like that?”
“I was afraid of you and your family. I couldn’t face any of you. And, frankly, I didn’t know what you all would do. It was terrifying.”
This fear of hers was not unwarranted; I softened my stance just a bit. “He actually tried to protect you from us,” I said.
“I know that now, but at the time I didn’t,” she replied, nervously dragging her sleeves over her hands. Her hesitant eye contact was making me nervous. Petra had always been the more poised of the two of us. But the woman staring back at me from the hallway of my grungy building I could hardly recognize.
“You think you might forgive me?” she asked.
What made the question so hard was the fact that if she weren’t married to my brother, I wouldn’t really have cared that she betrayed her husband. But what Petra’s vanishing act made me realize was that she was David’s wife (or soon-to-be-ex-wife) more than she was my best friend. This role switch happened without my knowing it. The best friend would never have vanished on me. That was the crime I couldn’t really forgive. I would eventually, but not in that moment.
“Maybe,” I replied. “But not right now. He’s my brother. I have to side with him, even if it’s just for show.”
“Is it just for show?”
“Nah. You fucked up.”
“I know. Well, you know where to find me,” Petra said, and left.
Actually, I didn’t. She had moved out of their house and didn’t leave a forwarding address. But we could find that out easily enough. I watched her vanish once again down the hallway, and for a very brief moment I tried to imagine what she was going through.
It had probably taken her weeks to build up the courage to offer that apology. The delay made it even harder to receive. I decided then that I would wait no longer to deliver my own quartet of apologies. That bandage would be removed with a quick snap.
Apology #1: Mrs. Chandler
It was time to come clean with Mrs. Chandler.
We sat in her kitchen sipping an herbal tea concoction that I considered might be illegal in some states.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, Mrs. Chandler, but I was the person responsible for the first wave of attacks on your front lawn. Almost fifteen years ago now.”
“Dear, everyone knew you did it.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s time I apologized. I’m very sorry for whatever pain I caused you.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Thank you,” I said, thinking this apologizing business was easier than I thought.
“Under one condition,” Mrs. Chandler added.
“Name it,” I replied, thinking I owed it to her.
“You’ll assist me with my Fourth of July installation. I feel, in these difficult times, what our country needs most is a reminder to give peace a chance.”
I agreed to Mrs. Chandler’s terms, although I was suddenly reminded why I began making “adjustments” to her tableaux to begin with.
Apology #2: Milo
My apology to Milo was decidedly simpler. I sat down at the bar and ordered a whiskey neat.
I said, “I’m a terrible, insensitive person. Sometimes all I think about is myself. Forgive me?”
“Eahh,” Milo said, waving his hand.
Apology #3: David Spellman
I announced my intentions at the front door. David’s patience with me had reached an all-time low in recent weeks, which was not alleviated when he learned I had vandalized his future ex-wife’s vehicle.
“I’m here to apologize,” I said. “Please invite me inside and offer me an alcoholic beverage. I’m going to need some help getting through this.”
You see, as far as I could recall, this was the first time I had ever attempted an apology to my brother. David’s agonizing perfection was always a barrier to any real apology. My brother walked over to his bar and poured us both a drink.
“Your godlike perfection has infuriated me for years. I’ve watched your playboy antics with women for close to a decade and I found you to be offensive.”
“
This
is an apology?” David asked.
“I’m getting to it,” I said.
“Hurry.”
“I assumed that it was your fault because you had done it before.”
“I wasn’t married before.”
“I used to think I got a raw deal having you as a brother, but let’s face it, you were the one who got shortchanged.”
“You’re not that bad, Isabel.”
“True. I could be a whole lot worse.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“I really am sorry, David.”
“Okay.”
Apology #4: John Brown
Another thing I learned about apologies is that it’s important to consider the needs of the person who is on the receiving end of the apology. Personally, I would have preferred to provide John Brown with a lengthy explanation of my recent behavior, but Henry Stone, after retrieving the tracking device from Subject’s vehicle, suggested I keep it much simpler. I wrote him a very short letter and mailed it to a P.O. box address that Henry tracked down for me.
Dear John,
I’m sorry.
Best Wishes,
—Isabel.
And Now…the Wedding
Daniel Castillo (Ex-boyfriend #9) did indeed marry his ex-Olympian sweetheart in a surprisingly ostentatious ceremony held at Grace Cathedral. The three-hundred-person reception took place at the Mark Hopkins hotel. Henry Stone accompanied me as my date. This was arranged by Rae, who told him I had no other options and that if I went with a relative or alone it would simply be “pathetic.”
Henry and I shared a cab home, both having decided ahead of time that this was an event requiring large quantities of alcohol. By the end of the evening my date and I had introduced ourselves as a wide range of dignitaries and low-level royalty. (Henry was 167th in line for the throne and I was 169th
1
).
“I’ve never met so many Olympians in my entire life,” I said.
“We only met two: the Guatemalan wrestler and the bride.”
“Still, my previous statement is correct.”
“Did I ever tell you I was in the Olympics?” Henry said with a delightful slur in his voice.
“The Academic Olympics don’t count,” I replied.
As the noise and sparkle of the evening gave way to the quiet of the San Francisco streets early in the morning of a Saturday night, Henry and I sat in comfortable silence. A night that I was convinced would be unbearable had turned out perfect. The liquor loosened my tongue and I spoke.
“We don’t deserve you, Henry,” I said, echoing my mother’s common refrain.
But luck was shining on me that night. Henry was out cold. Certainly a thank-you was in order, but there was no need to give him any ideas. The Spellmans needed Henry far more than he needed the Spellmans.