Lisa Lutz Spellman Series E-Book Box Set: The Spellman Files, Curse of the Spellmans, Revenge of the Spellmans, The Spellmans Strike Again by Lisa Lutz Page B

skips to the next message. Tuesday, 7:15 A.>M .:
    I think they’re running a white slavery ring out of this place. Use that information however you see fit. Uh-oh, I better run—

    The next message didn’t arrive until Tuesday, 3:42 P.M .:
    Hi, it’s Rae. I changed my mind. This place isn’t so bad. I just snorted a line of cocaine and things are looking much brighter. I could use some more money—like a grand. And maybe some cigarettes.
    The last message made my dad laugh so hard, he choked on his coffee and then spent the next ten minutes recovering from a coughing fit. He said the messages alone were worth the cost of camp. But then the phone calls to Spellman Investigations halted abruptly.
    When I arrived early, for an 11:00 A.M . meeting at David’s office, Rae was already into her fourth phone call of the day to our brother. It was the first time that I noticed David spoke to all his family members as if we were well-funded but extremely difficult clients.
    “Listen to me very carefully, Rae,” my brother said. “I’m going to have my secretary send you a care package today—let me finish. In it will be all the crap you like. You’re going to eat it. You’re going to share it. And you will write me a letter—one letter only—thanking me for my thoughtful gift and informing me of at least one friend you’ve made. If I receive the letter and you refrain from making any more phone calls to me during the duration of your stay, then I’ll have a nice fifty-dollar bill for you when you return. Got it? I will not accept any more phone calls from a Rae Spellman.”
    David hung up the phone, satisfied that he had made his point.
    “For fifty bucks and some candy, I’ll stop calling you, too,” I said.
    Five minutes later, David got another phone call. The interim receptionist buzzed through.
    “Mr. Spellman, your sister Isabel is on the phone.”
    David replied, “My sister Isabel is sitting right in front of me.”
    “Excuse me, sir?”
    “Put her through.” David paused before he picked up the phone, still deciding what tack to take, presumably.
    “That’s it, Rae. No candy and no money,” David said in his most hardball lawyerly manner and slammed the phone into the receiver.
    “It’s hard to believe I’m related to her,” David said. Then, after he thought about it, continued, “Or you, for that matter.”
    What I found hard to believe was that Rae never called David back. I didn’t realize until much later that Rae had chosen a new opponent and an entirely different battle.

    Weeks later, Rae told me precisely when the tables had turned for her, when she knew that “this was a matter of life or death.”
    “At no point was it a matter of life or death, Rae,” I said. To which she replied, “If that’s what you have to tell yourself.”
    Semantics aside, the turning point was the Camp Winnemancha talent show.
    Kathryn Stewart, age twelve, was singing that annoying song from Titanic. Haley Granger and Darcy Spiegelman had just performed a tap dance duet to some crappy showtune. Tiffany Schmidt lip-synched and pranced around to a Britney Spears song. And Jamie Gerber and Brian Hall performed an original hip-hop number “so embarrassing it hurt.” Rae claimed that the talent show was the first thing that had made her cry in over two years. She responded with a talent act of her own: nicking one of the camp director’s cell phones and stealing out of the auditorium undetected.
    While the rest of the camp was distracted by the parade of future American Idol contestants, my sister roamed the woods draining the battery on Director Webber’s mobile phone. This time she didn’t call my brother, my mother, or my father. Rae had a plan and she was only interested in talking to one person: me. There were three messages on my cell phone, one at the office, and five on my home phone when I finally decided to pick up the latest call from a 707 area code. It was my plan to put an end to this once