Address to Die For (5 page)

“Have you seen my family? I heard them when I woke up, but I haven't seen them yet.”

“They took off down the drive with your dog—Belle, is it? They looked like they were headed off to explore the neighborhood. One of the boys was carrying a stick like an expedition banner.”

Jason slapped the table with his palm and left. I looked at my watch. I had time to clean up before Max got back with the kids and we planned our next step.

My cell phone rang. I glanced at the display. My mom. Much as I loved her, she was the last person I wanted to talk to at the moment. She'd been against the move, insulted because she said Max and I were leaving her and the rest of my family.

I was sure Mom was calling to see how things were going, but I knew how the phone call would progress. I'd outline the roadblocks, including the late moving van, Max's impending flight to India, the body in the basement, the vandalism, and the devastating electrical fire we'd narrowly sidestepped. There would be a painful pause in the conversation. She'd take a deep breath and suggest moving back to Stockton. In fact, she'd probably drive her van out here and start loading us into it.

That couldn't happen. For me, there was no going back.

I'd return Mom's call later.

After my shower, I chose a clean white T-shirt and underwear from the Target bag, pulled on my jeans, and shoved my feet into my sneakers. Max and the kids still weren't home, so I headed up the hill, past the house, planning to walk to the end of the driveway to check the mailbox and to see if I could spot my family returning from their walk.

The herd of emergency vehicles had thinned. The jumpsuited pair with the generator was shoving their gear into the back of the same SUV it had emerged from almost twenty-four hours earlier. I thanked them and continued down the rutted drive toward the mailbox.

Pleased to see that someone had kept the mailbox clear of weeds and overhanging branches, I peered inside and plucked out a flyer advertising lawn services. I'd normally recycle something like that without reading it, but today, in a new place, it was mail. And it added to the growing feeling that I was at home.

The sound of raspy breathing made me look up. A tall, lean, blond man walked toward me down steep Briones Hill Road. He held the leashes of three wheezing Pekinese dogs, all of which began yapping once they saw me. Their high-pitched barks made me feel as if all the marbles in my head were loose and banging into one another.

The man's dress shoes slipped a bit on the gravel at the edge of the road. His neatly pressed pants, shirt, and jacket were huge leaps up, style-wise, from my jeans and sneakers. His hair, and the hair on the Pekes, made them all look like they'd stepped from a salon. I ran my hand through my still damp hair, thinking maybe it was time for a cut and highlights. My light-brown hair, dusted with what I liked to call tinsel, had a tendency to look drab and scruffy without routine maintenance.

I put out my hand and said hello. The man ignored both overtures. He looked me over, head to toe.

“Mrs. McDonald?” he said.

“Yes, yes I am,” I said, pleased that someone in the neighborhood seemed to have known we were coming. “I'm Maggie McDonald.” I stepped forward and held out my hand again. He ignored it.

“Quite a lot of noise here last night. This is a quiet neighborhood. I hope we won't be disturbed by sirens on a regular basis now that you have moved in.”

“Umm . . .” I had no idea how to respond to his comments, which were oddly unfriendly. I'd expected more of a
Welcome to the neighborhood, I'll bring cookies over later, do you need to use a phone?
kind of greeting.

But the man shifted tacks and held out his hand. “I'm Dennis DeSoto. We heard you were coming this weekend. I noticed no moving van has arrived. Are you staying or cleaning the house to sell?”

“Good morning, Mr. DeSoto,” I raised my voice to be heard over the yapping Pekes. “We're staying, but still waiting for our furniture to arrive.”

DeSoto made a face. “That house has become an eyesore since old Mrs. Kay McDonald left. It's dangerous. You might as well tear it down and start over. Build something fresh and modern. And I hope you'll be paying more attention to the landscaping.”

I surprised myself by leaping to the defense of our house. “Oh, it's not that bad,” I said. “It's a classic beauty that needs some tender loving care. We'll settle in quickly, I'm sure. My boys will be headed to Orchard View Middle School and Orchard View High School next week.”

“I hope you've pre-enrolled them,” Dennis said, making a little pout with his lips. “It's difficult to find room for students at this late date.”

“For the public schools? Don't they have to take everyone?”

“Everyone who lives within the district will find a spot, yes. But you'll need to show a deed or a gas bill to prove you live inside the boundaries. We've got the best schools in the state. All the parents want their kids to go here. You'd be surprised what people from other areas will do to sneak their kids in. You can find the details on the website outlining what paperwork we require.”

“We?”

“Oh, yes.
We
. I'm on the school board and am very involved in fund-raising and other important programs. I've got three children at Monte Viejo Elementary and a son at the middle school, where I'm the PTA treasurer. My oldest, Dante, is at the high school.”

“That's great. You've got kids the same age as mine. Maybe they'll have a chance to meet before school starts.”

“My children are consumed by athletic camps,” he said. “I doubt they'll have time.”

“
O-kay.
” I dragged out the syllables as I tried to find a way to end the conversation. “Well, thanks. Nice to meet you.” I used my best manners. I was new here and it was too soon to be making enemies. But that didn't stop me from bestowing an irreverent nickname on the self-involved fool. Henceforth, whenever he annoyed me, I'd refer to him as Mr. Snooty.

Mr. Snooty patted the pockets of his jacket while the Pekes sniffed at my ankles and left slobber on my sneakers. “I hope there is still room for your boy in the middle school. If not, you'll have to cart him across town to the other junior high.”

“No buses?”

Mr. Snooty looked shocked. “Buses? We haven't had buses since the 1970s. We
drive
our kids to school.

“Look,” he added, looking at me as if I were a hopeless case. “Here's my card. Let me know if you have questions as you settle in.”

I was feeling storm-tossed trying to keep up with the shifts in Mr. Snooty's demeanor. We actually
had
preregistered the kids for both schools, but I hadn't been able to interject that fact into the conversation. Mr. Snooty seemed happy to assume we'd dropped the ball on those details, but Max and I were serious about our kids' education and determined to leave nothing to chance. And what was with the business cards? Did everyone around here carry cards when they walked the dogs? If that was the case, I was out of my depth. When I walked Belle, I carried poop bags.

Mr. Snooty flapped the card in my face until I took it from him. “I'm a Realtor. If you decide you want to sell, let me know.”

I put the card in the back pocket of my jeans and looked up the road. It climbed quickly up the steep hill.

“Thanks so much,” I said with feigned cheeriness. “My family is off on a walk and I'm hoping to catch up with them. Maybe we'll see more of you after school starts.”

Mr. Snooty waved and I headed up the hill. I turned back once and saw him peering up our driveway with his hand on the mailbox. He crouched and knelt at the base of the post. I wondered if he was the one who'd weeded the area. Nah. I could already tell he wasn't the type. He was probably picking up after one of his dogs.

I turned my back on Mr. Snooty and I looked up toward a cleft in the mountains that separated Orchard View from the Pacific Coast. Max had told me that a thick bank of fog—the “marine layer” that served as natural air-conditioning for the San Francisco Bay Area—spilled over the top of the mountain in the late afternoon. Now, in mid-morning, it was receding as the sun heated the valley.

I caught up with my family at the top of the hill. Belle hopped around me and the boys regaled me with stories of the deer, rabbits, hares, and quail they'd seen. We walked a short way down the other side of the hill, hoping to see more wildlife, but after about fifteen minutes the boys said they were hungry. We headed back to the house together, making plans for the afternoon.

We were a hundred yards from the mailbox when it exploded with an ear-shattering
boom
.

When you're not sure how to tackle a cleaning or organizational problem, ask. Most people are delighted to share their expertise.

 

 

 

 

B
elle lunged, pulled the leash from Brian's hand, and ran to glue herself to my side to protect me and receive reassurance. I knelt, held her shivering body, and felt comforted myself.

The boys ran to the smoking mailbox before I could stop them. Max dialed 9-1-1. David pushed the hanging metal door closed with the corner of his T-shirt. I'd expected shrapnel and a splintered redwood post, but the damage seemed minimal despite the enormous boom.

“Cool!” David said.

“Someone might have been hurt,” I said. “What if we'd been standing next to it?”

“I think anyone standing right next to the explosion would have been more scared than hurt,” Max said, opening and closing the mailbox door, demonstrating that it still worked. He snuffed out a smoldering spark with his foot. David whacked at the weeds with a stick, looking for other signs of fire. Brian had gone up to the house to hunt for a bucket or a hose long enough to reach the mailbox. It had been a long, hot, dry summer all over California and we were conscious of how easy it would be to start a wildfire.

Our ears were still ringing ten minutes later when Officer Paolo Bianchi pulled his Subaru to the side of the road. This afternoon he had a sailboard strapped to the roof of the car. I wondered whether he sailed in the gale-force winds and tricky currents of San Francisco Bay or if he preferred someplace calmer.

He jumped from the car and tripped, grabbing the door for balance. Ducking, he reached into the car for his iPad. He pushed his sunglasses back on his head, greeted us, and replaced the glasses to peer at the mailbox.

“A cherry bomb,” he said. His fingers danced over the internal keyboard of the pad as he took notes. “Kids. They picture this giant explosion and think they'll film it and it will be the next viral video. Instead, there's a
boom
, the door blows open, and that's it.”

“The sound was loud enough for us,” Max said.

“They may have lit more than one bomb,” Bianchi said, peering into the box, plucking out the charred remains of explosives and placing them in an official-looking evidence envelope. “You know how to get the soot off?”

I nodded. “Swipe it with dish detergent and hose it down. If that doesn't get it all, start over and scrub a bit with a nail brush or try a solution of TSP—trisodium phosphate. Where's the nearest hardware store?”

“Head to the end of this road. Turn downhill at each intersection until you reach Foothill Expressway. Turn left and follow the signs to downtown. The hardware is on First Street.”

“You think kids did this?” I said.

Bianchi nodded.

“Why's that? Have you had a rash of explosions like this? We didn't see or hear any kids.” Once I'd started questioning him, it was hard to stop.

The young officer looked at me. His face turned pink. He opened his mouth and closed it. I wondered why someone who seemed so uncomfortable talking to people would chose a career that required interacting with the public.

“Umm,” he said, staring at the ground. “Maybe they had a remote? Like you use to ignite model rocket motors?” He walked behind the mailbox and pushed aside the grass. “Here,” he said, picking up a wire and following it until it disappeared among the overgrown shrubs that clogged the hillside between the house and the road.

“We'll get the crime-scene guys back out here and let them see if they can pick up any evidence the kids might have left.”

“Wouldn't kids be kind of giddy if they were planning something like this?” I asked. “We didn't see or hear anyone while we were walking down the hill.” I had two kids and I knew how noisy they could be, particularly when they were trying to be quiet.

Bianchi looked uncomfortable. Max came to his rescue.

“Maggie, let Officer Bianchi do his job,” Max said. “Let him ask the questions. He can check and see if there are records of other exploding mailboxes, I'm sure.”

“The only person I saw out here today was Dennis DeSoto,” I said, handing the officer the card Mr. Snooty had given me. “He was fussing around the mailbox about twenty minutes before it blew up. Maybe he saw someone.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” he said, taking the card. “Please call me Paolo. And please ask your boys to keep an eye on social media for videos posted by kids bragging about blowing things up.”

I nodded, although I wasn't sure how much good that would do. We hadn't lived here long enough for David and Brian to acquire local friends. I thanked Paolo for his time, especially since he'd been up all night working on the other investigation—the one involving the body in our basement.

Max and I waved goodbye to Paolo and walked back up the driveway. I'd have been happier with a swift apprehension of the brats who'd done this—and would have loved to see them covered with soot and soap, scrubbing our mailbox. But Max and Jason Mueller were right. Tracking down troublemakers was a job for the police, not for a professional organizer or a family that had as much on its plate as we did.

“The police,” Max said, interrupting my thoughts. “Our new best friends.”

* * *

The rest of the day and the weekend passed in a flurry of trips to the hardware store for household-repair items and to the mall to buy Max a wardrobe and luggage appropriate for India. The hazardous-waste cleanup team came and went, but between the lingering smell of death and the harsh chemicals they'd used to sanitize the basement, we decided to stay in the barn until our furniture arrived. A few more days with the windows open would help the house air out. I hoped it would also help me shed the creepy feelings I had every time I thought of a man lying dead in our basement.

I was also fighting my dread of Max's departure, though I tried to remain upbeat for his sake. I knew he felt guilty leaving us before we'd moved into the house, but we'd given up everything in Stockton to make this move, and we needed Max's job to be a success. He was still the new guy, and it was too soon for him to be saying he wouldn't do what the company asked.

I scratched at an itchy spot on my leg and shook off my negative feelings. I needed to focus on the good stuff that would happen this week. The moving van would arrive. The boys would start their new schools and we'd all start following a more predictable routine. I sighed. And one day soon, I'd be able to start my plans to launch Simplicity Itself 2.0, the Silicon Valley version.

Looking back on the weekend, I was glad I hadn't been able to see the future.