Trail of the Spellmans Read Online Free PDF

there’s usually something else.
    “Can you check and make sure that the bathroom sink is shut off?”
    It’s possible to fake check when I’m speaking into a phone line and know, based on ample history, that the answer will be no, but I never humor Walter. I’m paid for the work and I do what is asked of me.
    “All clear,” I said, securing the faucets, even though they were already secure.
    Walter sighed again, thanked me, and ended the call. As I combed the carpet, backing into the front door, I noticed that the electric cord on his toaster was still plugged in. Among Walter’s plethora of fears, electrical fires rank third after sewage backups and water-line breaks. I unplugged the cord and gazed at the outlet with a surprising sense of unease. It was as if someone else were in the apartment with me. Surrounded by erratic behavior, I think I’ve found some comfort in Walter’s religious consistency. I resolved to keep this inconsistency to myself. If Walter thought he was slipping, his condition would only worsen. Once again I combed the carpet and departed, wiping the doorknob with a handkerchief on my way out.
    You might be thinking that a problem like Walter’s would be betterserved by professional help. Believe me, I conveyed that very same sentiment after my third visit to his home. Walter assured me he had been through the gauntlet of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychics, spiritual healers, and even a life coach—whom he claimed was the biggest scam artist of the bunch.
    Until Walter’s wife moved out, his situation was somewhat under control. Spellman Investigations brought him back to his previous state of equilibrium. “Equilibrium” is not a word usually associated with my people.

DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES
    W ith the Spellmans there is always a steady simmer of conflicts, oddities, and subterfuge. And I cannot deny that I’ve come to find all of this quite ordinary. But as with any family, these things accumulate like the imaginary slow drip of Walter’s bathtub faucet. Only on occasion do I notice a sudden deluge.
    It was just another Wednesday in October when a series of unusual events took a mundane morning into an evening of chaos. It began like any other day. I was in the office filing because I chose rock over scissors. I suppose that’s the kind of comment that requires explanation.
    Every employee of Spellman Investigations despises filing. I’d argue that I loathe it the most, but then we’d get into a who-hates-filing-more debate, which is almost as tedious as the job in question. Throughout the years, we’ve flipped coins, drawn straws, used a lottery system to dispense with this odious chore. When D came to work for us, he kindly took over the chore, always filing when no one else was in the room to stop him or offer to take over. But then the oft-absent Rae suggested that between D’s cooking (which he enjoys) and grocery shopping (my mother never picks out the right item), we were treating D more like a personal assistant than an associate investigator. Since D is everyone’s favorite, we suddenly sawthe error of our ways and decided to split the job between the four fulltime employees.
    However, unlike sane people in a similar situation, we didn’t attempt to evenly split the chore. Instead, Rae suggested we play rock-paper-scissors for it once a week to determine who does the filing. For reasons I still cannot explain, 1 we all agreed.
    One would think, the game being only marginally skill based and almost entirely odds based, that approximately a fourth of the time, I would be saddled with this chore. My average was 72 percent 2 at the time.
    So, there I was filing for the third week in a row and the phone was ringing and the office was empty and I noticed that my mother and D’s “coffee break” had extended well past two hours. In fact, in recent weeks Mom’s hobbies had made her work absences rather pronounced. I certainly enjoyed having the office to