Address to Die For

by Mary Feliz

  Stephen stood and started pacing. Munchkin lifted his head, wagged his tail, and went back to sleep with a sigh. “For example, maybe Teddy didn’t do it but some other child did. If that’s the case, how did soda cans and water bottles with Tess and Teddy’s fingerprints make their way to the office and your basement?”

  “Tess volunteers in the office . . .” I said. “But she seemed mesmerized when I showed her around the house. If she’d been here before, I don’t think it was recently. It’s a good question to ask.”

  “Don’t get that glint in your eye,” Stephen said as I picked up a pen to make a note on my legal pad. “And don’t make a note to ask Tess or Teddy. Jason told you to stay out of it.”

  “Surely there are kids in town living under more pressure, in much worse circumstances than Teddy?”

  Stephen thought for a moment. “Well ...” he began. “No, never mind. Forget I said anything. Leave it to Jason.”

  To: Max.McDonald2111@gmail.com

  From: SimplicityItselfOrganizing@gmail.com

  I’ve attached the schedule for David’s performances. Can you make any of them? It would mean a lot to him.

  I got the furnace checked out and it’s perfect. Not so the roof, according to the building inspector. I’ve attached his report too.

  I’ll ask my friend Tess for a roofer recommendation—all the people she’s referred so far have been wonderful. We’ll need to get it attended to before it starts raining. It won’t be a fun project like the floors were, where we could see a massive improvement immediately, but we’ll be glad we took care of it. And, once we do, we won’t have to worry about it for years.

  I’m hoping I can convince some of these people to work with me and Simplicity Itself. Getting my go-to people lined up will be a big step toward opening up my shop here in Orchard View.

  Love, Maggie

  To: SimplicityItselfOrganizing@gmail.com

  From: Max.McDonald2111@gmail.com

  Are you OK? Your writing sounds tired . . . or at least less perky than usual. Please don’t try to do too much. And don’t get discouraged. I’ll be home soon and I’m sure it won’t take long for the Orchard View police to nab the guys causing all the trouble.

  Veejay is up and around and improving quickly—but still on too many painkillers to run the office.

  Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help from here.

  And don’t be too frustrated by the delays in getting Simplicity up and running. I can help with that when I get home. I owe you. I know that my trip here has put a huge strain on you and the boys—but despite that you’ve made enormous progress on the house.

  Love you!

  Max

  Chapter 22

  If you’re investing in home furnishings, from major appliances to window coverings, paying for installation can save time, energy, and headaches. Installers will have the appropriate tools and experience to complete the job in less time than it might take you to read the instructions and gather your tools.

  From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald

  Simplicity Itself Organizing Services

  Wednesday, September 10, Morning

  My phone rang the following day just after I’d finished dropping off Brian. I was on my way to a decorator fabric store Adelia had recommended. I glanced at the screen: Tess. I pulled the car to the side of the road and answered the phone.

  “Maggie, I’m so sorry about yesterday. I didn’t want to put you off. I’ve carved out some time this morning and wondered if you’d like to walk the dogs.”

  “I’m doing some errands. If I don’t get them done, I’ll be holding up Adelia’s schedule. Would you be willing to meet later this morning? Maybe ten thirty at Starbucks?”

  “Great! See you then.”

  Tess must still be rushed. By the time I said goodbye, she’d disconnected. It was one of the fastest conversations she and I had ever had. But it made sense—we were getting together shortly. Anything we had to talk about could wait.

  The fabric store I visited was a treat for the eyes and fertilizer for ideas I didn’t have time to put into action. Steeling myself against distractions, I found likely samples for curtains and cushions. I plunked down a deposit for three sample books and made an appointment to have a sales rep measure for curtains and suggest hardware options.

  I finished more quickly than I expected, so I drove straight to Starbucks and found a table in the shade. I ordered a medium latte, a spinach-cheese croissant, and a giant cup of water for Belle. Belle slurped. I sipped and pulled out my yellow pad to examine my lists while I waited for Tess.

  I needed to ask her about Pauline and Dennis. Were they benign oddballs or as volatile as they seemed? And how did Tess and Teddy’s fingerprints get on the soda cans at school and in my basement? Had they been in our house? Did they know Javier? If so, why hadn’t Tess told me?

  If Tess had known Javier Hernandez and neglected to tell me, what else might she be hiding? What else might she know? And who else might have known him and also neglected to tell me? I needed to start finding out more about him. I shivered and savored the comforting warmth of my coffee cup. I hated the idea that someone might have murdered an elderly man and gotten away with it.

  “Maggie!” Tess called from the doorway of Starbucks, waving and making hand motions that seemed to indicate she’d get her coffee and then join me.

  “No Mozart today?” I asked as Tess plopped purse, coffee cup, and keys on the table and dropped into the chair opposite me.

  “Nope. Not in the BMW and not with clients. I think Belle’s been wearing him out. He’s at home, asleep with his head under the couch looking like he’s nursing a hangover.”

  Belle’s tail thumped at the sound of her name.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” Tess said. “You sounded like you needed to talk. What’s up?”

  “I feel like I need an anthropologist to decrypt the local culture,” I said, shaking my head. “I just don’t get some of these people.”

  “Ahh. Which people?”

  “Pauline Windsor and Dennis DeSoto, for starters.”

  Tess laughed. “Pauline is harmless. She has no filter on her mouth, a bit of an entitlement complex, and can be self-centered. Err, not self-centered exactly . . .”

  Tess took a sip of her coffee and I told her about how Pauline berated me on the first day of school and said I’d stolen her parking space.

  “What an introduction to Orchard View,” she said, shaking her head. “Like I said, she’s not self-centered exactly—she’s always drumming up money for various charities and she’ll take on projects that everyone else has refused. It’s more like once she’s involved in a project it becomes the most important thing in the world, and she’s astonished that other people might have other things to do.”

  “And the parking space?”

  “She bought the right to park there in a silent-auction fund-raiser when her oldest child was at the middle school. It was meant to be a six-month permit, but she’s staked a permanent claim.”

  “Can she do that?”

  “No, but we let her because she takes on the really nasty volunteer projects and raises a ton of money.”

  “Okay, I get it. Don’t park there unless you want to take over Pauline’s volunteer responsibilities.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And Dennis?”

  “Oh boy,” said Tess. She leaned back in her chair, took a sip of her coffee, and looked around to see whether anyone was in earshot. There was no one near us, but she leaned forward, lowered her voice, and whispered.

  “That whole DeSoto family is a piece of work,” she said. “I’d tread carefully.”

  “Why?”

  “The DeSoto family is the closest thing Orchard View has to an aristocracy. Their family goes back to the days of the Spanish dons and land grants from the king. They used to own all of the land on the west side of Interstate 280 between Stanford and Cupertino. Even now, the DeSoto family members ar
e the biggest landowners in Orchard View. They’re generous to the community, though. Dennis’s brother Umberto runs that foundation I told you about. His sister is on the board at the children’s hospital. Colleges and universities all over California have DeSoto buildings.” Tess stared into the distance. “There’s something, though . . .”

  “What kind of something?”

  “In the last six months or so, Dennis has changed. Normally, he’s a big presence at school and town-council meetings. It’s like he gets a kick out of thinking that you can’t plan a project or run a meeting without him.” She paused for a moment, leaning back in her chair. “You know how every high school has a kid who tries to be in every yearbook picture? That’s Dennis. He’s always got his picture in the local paper: breaking ground, cutting a ribbon, presenting a check, shaking hands with a dignitary. Dennis is the king of the grip-and-grin photograph.”

  “But you said something changed?”

  Tess nodded. “Last spring, he was late to a bunch of meetings. This fall, he’s missed meetings completely. I heard that his oldest son was in trouble and maybe ran away from home, but it was hushed up. It was one of those rumors that comes and goes too quickly for most people to notice. I’d forgotten about it until now.”

  “I remember that when we met at Elaine’s, Dennis kind of blew in and then blew right back out again.”

  “Exactly. That never would have happened a year ago. He would have come in and taken charge of the meeting.”

  “What do you think changed?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. It could be almost anything. It’s a big family—very proud and very secretive. Someone could be sick. Someone’s business could be in trouble. It’s impossible to say. They stick together, the DeSotos. Dennis was a year ahead of me in school, and one of his sisters was two years behind me, so I didn’t know them very well. But Umberto was in my husband Patrick’s class. Patrick always uses Umberto as an example when he’s talking to Teddy about how to shut down bullying.”

  “Does this Umberto have a driver and ride around in a big SUV?” I asked. “I saw someone like that outside Flora’s shop. She called him Umberto.”

  “One and the same. He was arrested for driving under the influence a few years ago, but I think he likes the look of being important enough to have a driver. He still likes to throw his weight around.”

  Belle scrambled to her feet as if she’d just realized we were entertaining. She pushed her nose into Tess’s lap. Tess laughed and rubbed Belle behind the ears.

  “Once a bully, always a bully?” I asked. “Do you think Umberto could still be terrorizing people?” I thought of how afraid of him Flora had been when he drove down the alley in his intimidating car. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but she’d been terrified to the point of shaking. He’d seemed like an okay guy to me, but at the time I didn’t know he had connections to anything else.

  “Maybe,” said Tess. “Like I said, tread carefully. If he is still a bully, he might be dangerous. If what Patrick says is true, he had a mean streak that went beyond pranks and harassment.”

  Tess took another sip of her coffee and shifted the subject away from Umberto. “You said you’d talked to a bunch of people. Who else is on your list to psychoanalyze?”

  I started to protest, saying I was just trying to get a sense of who was who, but then I recognized Tess’s teasing for what it was.

  “I talked to Elaine, and she suggested that I consider everyone a suspect, even her. But I can’t imagine Elaine killing someone. Or nailing a squirrel to the wall.”

  Tess shuddered. “That whole squirrel thing creeped me out even more than the possible murder. It makes me sound callous, but think about it. At least on TV, when there’s a death, there’s a motive. Something happens that leads a damaged person to believe that the only option open to them is arranging someone’s death. But killing a squirrel? What did a squirrel ever do? And you’ve got to stalk one in order to kill it. You could hardly claim a squirrel killing was a crime of passion or revenge.”

  I laughed although Tess was right. It wasn’t funny. It was disturbing.

  “What about Stephen?”

  “Stephen?”

  “Well, Elaine said to look at everyone.”

  “Okay, she’s right.” Tess continued stroking Belle’s ears, and Belle was nearly groaning with pleasure, her eyes half closed. “Stephen . . .”

  “Would he kill to protect Jason?”

  “Maybe, if Jason’s life was at stake. But honor is a pretty big deal to him. I think if he’d killed someone he would admit it and take the consequences.”

  “What else might make him angry?”

  “Anyone who didn’t respect the contribution those military dogs have made,” she said. “He works so hard with them.”

  She tapped the side of her coffee cup with her index finger. “Probably the angriest I’ve seen him was when he was working with me and Mozart before I adopted him. Stephen wanted to make sure that Mozart and I were a good match and that I took my responsibilities seriously. We were talking and Mozart was sniffing at some bushes. Miss Harrier came out of nowhere, hit Mozart over the head with a newspaper, and told Stephen to keep his scruffy dogs and their stinking poop off of school grounds. Stephen turned, I dunno, purple? And then went pale. He called Mozart to heel, took on that extreme military honor-guard posture, and in a very low, very quiet voice he told Miss Harrier that Mozart was a decorated war hero and deserved her utmost respect.”

  “Oh, God. What happened then?”

  “He said he hoped he would never hear her disrespect a veteran again. He clipped Mozart to the leash and the two of them marched off with military precision. And Miss Harrier was speechless. Literally. She walked back to her office without saying a word. She treated Stephen very carefully after that.”

  “So you don’t think she’d do anything else to make him angry enough to kill?”

  “Not knowingly,” Tess said. “But . . . no, I don’t see it. Stephen has said he saw too much warrantless killing in Afghanistan. This is a hard thing to say, but I honestly believe he’d kill himself before he’d kill someone else.”

  “Which brings up the suggestion of suicide in Miss Harrier’s case. Was she the same way?”

  Tess ran her hand through her hair. “I don’t know. Miss Harrier was an extremely difficult person and difficult to get to know. She was prickly. You didn’t want to get too close.”

  None of my questions had uncovered anything to move the investigation forward. Should I mention the fingerprints to Tess? Jason and Stephen hadn’t told me to keep the information from her, but on TV, the detectives always held something back from the suspects, and letting that information out damaged their ability to make an arrest.

  I picked at the lid of my coffee cup. I was being ridiculous. Tess could not be involved in any murder.

  “Tess,” I began. “I talked to Stephen. He says they’ve identified fingerprints that showed up at both my house and in Miss Harrier’s office. They may prove a link between the two crime scenes, but they don’t make a lot of sense . . .”

  I felt awkward, as if I were accusing Tess of not one crime, but two. And not only Tess. Teddy’s fingerprints were in all the same places Tess’s were. I tried to think how to continue without damaging our friendship.

  I needn’t have worried. Tess got a text message on her phone, glanced at it, drained her coffee cup, gathered up her purse and keys, and smoothed her skirt. As usual, her business came before mysteries, murder, and gossip.

  “I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” Tess said. “Orchard View PD is small, but the best. Sorry, Maggie. Got to go. Are we still on for Monday with the dogs?”

  I nodded, uncertain whether to feel happy that her departure had saved me from continuing a difficult line of questioning, or frustrated because Tess had dodged questions to which I still needed answers.

  Chapter 23

  Make sure you manage your time for the world you live in. On a perfect day i
t might take fifteen minutes to drive to work. But that doesn’t mean you’ve got a fifteen-minute commute. In the real world, your commute is more realistically twenty to thirty minutes.

  Allow for a thirty-minute commute and relish the rare day when the universe turns the lights green and gives you the gift of an extra fifteen minutes.

  From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald

  Simplicity Itself Organizing Services

  Wednesday, September 10, Lunchtime

  Belle and I walked to the car. I hoped to catch Adelia at the house and talk to her about getting quotes from a landscape architect and a roofer.

  I was unlocking the car when I heard my name.

  “Yoo-hoo! Maggie!”

  Yoo-hoo? Who says “yoo-hoo”?

  Flora waved from the front of her shop where she was watering flowers in the containers that flanked the doorway. She turned off the water and started toward me, then stopped, looking back at the door.

  I guessed she was there alone and didn’t want to leave her business unattended.

  Belle looked at me and whined. I felt the same way. I wanted to get home. But Flora beckoned again.

  “We’ll just be a minute, Belle, I promise,” I said.

  I walked back toward the buildings and approached her store.

  “I baked some cookies last night,” Flora said. “I wanted to give some to you and the boys. Come inside.”

  I held up Belle’s leash. “I’ll stay out here. I don’t like to tie her unless I have to.”