Address to Die For (20 page)

“Come in,” said Flora. “Come in, quickly.”

Flora was an odd, jittery woman, and apparently prone to mood swings, but her shop was warm, inviting, and very well organized. It smelled fresh and clean, without the overpowering sweetness of a candle or soap store. The shop welcomed visitors to linger, with tea and cookies set out on a low table in the center of a cozy seating area that included a floral-cushioned love seat and two armchairs. Soft flute music mingled with the sounds of rain-forest birds on a hidden sound system.

“Your shop is lovely,” I said, scanning the shelves to see if I could spot the medical-marijuana products I'd heard about. I scanned the room, trying to determine at a glance whether there were any professional services I could offer to help Flora run her business more efficiently. Given the personalized nature of her business, I thought it would be nice to do away with the grocery store type shelving and install narrow glass shelves that stocked her products one-deep, emphasizing the freshness and uniqueness of each organic product. I saw gift baskets of bath oils, candles, and wooden massage rollers that looked like children's toys. Prisms, crystals, and New Age self-help books. Earrings, yoga mats, and chimes, but none of the smoking paraphernalia I'd expected. And, other than the expensive glass shelving I could easily imagine, there were no obvious business opportunities for Simplicity Itself other than the fact that Flora and I might have some crossover clientele interested in a variety of self-help services.

I wasn't sure what a marijuana dispensary looked like nor did I know for sure whether Flora ran that portion of her business from here or from home or another location. In short, I didn't really know much at all. I reminded myself that Flora's pot business, licensed and legal or otherwise, was an unconfirmed rumor, not a fact.

“I'm sorry I hung up on you earlier,” said Flora, whispering. “Elisabeth DeSoto came in for a massage, and I didn't feel comfortable talking about Dennis and the treasurer's reports while she was here. I can't afford to insult
any
of my customers.”

“But I just spoke with you a few minutes ago,” I said, thinking that was the world's fastest massage.

“She's in the back with Jenelle, my massage therapist. You should come in for a session. It would take care of that stress you're building up in your shoulders and neck. The first one is half price. I have Jenelle's cards here somewhere.”

Flora stepped behind the counter and rummaged in a box next to the cash register.

“I know a great product for keeping track of loose business cards,” I said. “Did I tell you that I'll be launching my own business in the next few months? It's Simplicity Itself and my goal is to find ways for all my clients to operate their homes and businesses more efficiently. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like my help with. I have my own card right here.”

I'd stuffed a few of my cards into my bag last night on a whim, since business cards seemed to be part of even the most informal meetings in Orchard View.

Flora apparently hadn't heard me because she ignored my outstretched hand.

“Aha,” she said. “Here you go. Jenelle keeps her own schedule, so you can call her directly.”

I took the card and added it to the stack I'd collected and secured it with a rubber band.

“Flora, was there a reason you pulled me in here?” I said, once again offering her my card.

“Oh, right,” she said, patting the pockets on her work apron and pulling out a fist-sized set of keys. Flora selected a key from the ring, one with a green plastic bumper around the head of the key.

“Come through to the back,” she said. “I wanted to give you the PTA binders so that you'll know which of the treasury reports I'm missing. When you get them from Dennis, you can pop the new ones in and give the whole thing to April.”

“Can't I just give the reports to April?”

“You could, I guess, but it seems better to keep the whole binder together,” Flora said, bustling through a curtained doorway to the back of the store. I followed behind her like a baby duck following its mother. We passed a restroom and two doors marked
Whisper, Please. Therapy in Session
. A utilitarian stockroom and office followed, with a short row of purse-sized lockers secured with combination locks. Next to the lockers was a towel rack around which an additional collection of locks was fastened.

Flora saw me looking at them. “That's Jennifer's project,” she said. “My daughter. She's a huge fan of
Elementary
, and wants to be able to pick a lock faster than Joan Watson.”

The hallway ended in a door that opened onto a delivery alley with spots for owners to park behind their shops.

I wasn't going to argue with Flora. I was the newcomer. She was the old hand. I knew enough about PTA politics to avoid rocking the boat. If she wanted me to put the reports in the binder before I gave them to April, that's what I'd do. It wasn't a battle worth fighting. And Flora seemed emotionally brittle, somehow. I wasn't sure why, but I felt she needed protecting, like a baby bird.

She unlocked the passenger door of a vintage, hunter-green VW bug in mint condition, with blue, purple, and rainbow-colored bumper stickers saying
Co-exist
;
Tolerance
;
Respect
; and
Namaste
. The little car was adorable—a throwback that spoke of frugality and painstaking maintenance.

Flipping the seat forward, Flora rummaged among school sweatshirts and dance clothes in the backseat, searching, I guessed, for the binder.

I peered over her shoulder to see if I could help. “If you can't find it, Flora, it's not a problem,” I said.

“It was here this morning,” Flora said. “It must be here now.”

She pushed past me, muttering a quick “Excuse me,” and attacked the clutter in the backseat from the driver's-side door. I was reminded again of a fluttering baby bird and moved to help her look.

The clutter was girl clutter, with lots of purple and pink: a pair of tap shoes, a teddy bear wearing a pink tutu, and some sparkly hair ties. At the bottom of the pile, something black and clunky fell from the seat to the floor.

I reached down, wrapped my hand around the handle, then pulled it up and stared.

“You have a gun?” I said.

Gossip often reveals more about the gossiper than the gossipee. Organizing professionals can use that knowledge to their advantage in getting to know their clients.

 

 

 

 

I
stared at the gun, which became weightier as I held it.

“Is that safe, just sitting out here like this?” I didn't know anything about guns, but I was sure there were laws that said you couldn't carry one around in the backseat of your car.

“That's Jennifer's,” said Flora.

“Jennifer's? Your eighth-grade daughter?”

I turned the gun over. It was definitely a pistol—heavy and black. But someone had drawn polka dots on the side with fuchsia nail polish.

“Jennifer's?”

“Got it!” said Flora, grabbing a massive black binder and standing. She banged her head on the roof of the VW.

Breathing hard, she hefted the book out of the car, lifted it up and let it drop on the roof. She pushed the binder across the roof to me, but I was still holding the polka-dotted gun.

“Oh, just shove that back under the sweatshirts,” said Flora.

“Seriously?” I couldn't for the life of me reconcile the fact that the woman I'd pegged as a liberal earth mother tolerated handgun ownership among children.

“Oh, for Goddess sake,” she said. “Hand it over.”

I did, happy to be rid of it.

“See this?” she said, sticking her index finger into the barrel like a cartoon character about to get her arm blown off. “This orange tip means it's an airsoft gun. A toy. I'm not a big fan of toy guns, but Jennifer bought it herself with money she earned doing chores for the other shop owners after school. The hobby shop next to her dance studio has a target range. She practices there sometimes while she waits for her dad or me to give her a ride home.”

“May I see?” I said, changing my mind about handling the gun. Flora handed it over. I'd never seen an airsoft gun before. Most of what I heard wasn't good. Besides the fact that Stephen had said one was used in the shoot-out at our house last night, news reports in Stockton about airsoft guns usually focused on the fact that they looked just like real guns. Tragedy ensued when police mistook airsoft guns for real guns or vice versa.

The orange end was pretty small, and I approved of Jennifer's efforts to differentiate the pistol from a real handgun by painting it with fuchsia dots. Maybe she should have gone a step further and painted the whole thing purple.

I didn't like it. I knelt and wrapped the handgun in a purple sweatshirt with
Namaste
printed across the front in pink glitter. I stuffed the bundle as far as I could under the front seat and packed frilly dance clothes around it.

I sucked in my cheeks, not wanting to lecture Flora on the danger of handguns, real or pseudo-real. Orchard View wasn't as close to California's growing gang problems as we'd been in Stockton. Children here didn't wake up to the sound of gunshots and wonder whether one of their classmates would be missing from school on Monday because their uncle, older brother, or neighbor had been killed.

In the northern part of Stockton where we'd lived, we'd been insulated from that trouble for the most part, although Brian's first-grade teacher had lost her brother in a drive-by shooting.

Here in Orchard View, maybe kids only associated guns with target-shooting or video games, and a handgun could be separated from tragedy, fear, danger, and death if it sported a fluorescent orange tip on the barrel. It was a question for another day.

All I knew for now was that Flora seemed like a good soul and an unlikely killer. She worked the long hours required of a single mom and small-business owner who volunteered in the local school. Neither Flora nor her daughter had likely spent yesterday night at our house shooting out our windows with a purple polka-dotted handgun.

I took the black binder from Flora and promised her I'd be back to visit the shop. It seemed like a great place to pick up birthday presents for my nieces, and a massage was definitely going to be part of my future as soon as I could squeeze in the time.

We were walking back to the shop when Flora froze. I turned toward her. Her face was pale, her eyes were wide, and her teeth were clenched. She made a short hissing noise and fisted her hands. I was about to ask if she was in pain and needed help, when I realized she was staring down the alley. I turned to see what she was looking at. A black SUV with darkly tinted windows drove toward us. Flora put out her arm and pushed me back toward her store like a mother trying to keep her child from hitting the dashboard. I stepped back and watched the scene unfold. Flora was clearly upset, to the point of barely being able to breathe or talk. The black SUV kept coming, but slowly. It didn't seem like a threat to me.

As the SUV drew abreast of us, the rear window rolled down, and a man with a round face and cheery smile leaned out.

“Morning, Flora!” he said. “How's the family?”

Flora still looked sick, but she answered, “Doing fine, Umberto. It's good to see you.”

“Do you have that order ready for me yet?”

“On Thursday, Umberto, just as we discussed.”

“Great! I'll see you then.”

Flora and I stood in the shadow of the building and watched the SUV until it reached the end of the alley and turned onto the main road. I wondered if this Umberto could possibly be Dennis DeSoto's brother, the one who ran their family foundation. I discarded the thought. There was little to no resemblance between rail-thin Dennis and the more rotund Umberto.

Flora let out a deep breath and walked back into her shop. She sank down onto the sofa in the front window, poured a glass of iced tea, and drank most of it before looking up. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead.

“I'm sorry, Maggie. Would you like a glass?”

I shook my head. “Is there anything I can do for you, Flora? That man upset you. Do you want me to call someone? Are you safe here?”

“He's just a client,” Flora said, finishing the rest of her tea. “Please sit down, Maggie. There's something I need to tell you.”

I sat, thinking that she was going to tell me who Umberto was and why he scared her. I was wrong.

“At the meeting the other day we were talking about who had secrets, and who had a motive for murder,” Flora said. “Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember. What about it?”

“Pauline Windsor is telling people that
you
had the best motive for murder, and that
you
were furious with Miss Harrier for changing Brian's schedule. She says that Orchard View was a quiet town with zero murders on the books until you moved in and ‘found' a dead body in your basement. She's suggesting you brought the body with you, that you killed Harrier, and that you're faking the vandalism at your house to deflect attention.”

Flora looked horrified, but I laughed, assuming she was kidding. “Seriously? She doesn't even know me.”

“It's awkward telling you about it. Maybe I shouldn't have? I thought you'd want to know. Stephen said we needed to share everything and look at the big picture if we were going to learn anything.”

Flora sounded hurt. I thanked her and assured her she'd done the right thing. I glanced at my watch.

“Are you sure you're okay?” I asked. “I need to get home, but I could call someone for you.”

Flora convinced me she was fine, so I returned to my car and reviewed the odd behavior of the only people I knew in town. First, there was Elaine pushing me to investigate.

Second, there was Flora, who accused Tess and Dennis, but was driving around with an airsoft gun in the car—an airsoft gun like those that had done so much damage at our house. And who was Umberto, who was chauffeured in a black SUV like a movie mobster and terrified Flora, but seemed nice enough to me?

And what was with Pauline, who'd been accusing me of all sorts of nefarious activities starting with parking-spot stealing?

And where was Tess? Why hadn't she returned my call?

Flora had said there was friction between Tess and Miss Harrier over Teddy's eligibility for school. Tess, like most mothers, was ferocious in support of her son. How far would she go to secure the best education possible for Teddy?

The text alert on my phone went off as I reached the car. Juggling my backpack and my keys, I pulled out my phone. I'd assumed it was Tess, but the alert said it was the middle school.

Assuming the news was bad, I unlocked the phone and read the text. It was from April.

I had to admire an administrator who led with
Your child is fine
. What parent didn't panic at a message from school during school hours?

I texted back:

I pulled into the school parking lot, which seemed empty now that the emergency vehicles had left. The crowd of concerned parents had dispersed and the students were safely ensconced in their classrooms.

April, in her canary-yellow garb, stood behind the front counter sorting papers.

“Oh, hi Maggie,” she said. “Thanks for coming. I didn't mean to alarm you. We could probably have covered this over the phone or after school.”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

April looked around. “Hmm. We can't meet in Miss Harrier's office. Let's go to the table in the break room. This will only take a minute.”

I followed April out the back door of the office and across the open-air corridor to a teachers' break room. Counters filled with copiers, laminating equipment, and stencil machines lined the room, which held the smell of stale coffee and microwaved popcorn.

April pulled out a chair and asked me to sit in the chair opposite.

“What's up? You said Brian was fine.”

“He is . . .”

“But?”

“I don't know if this is anything to worry about, but I know your family has been under a lot of stress, so I thought I'd mention it.”

“You're scaring me.”

“Brian's eyes were super-red this morning and he fell asleep in math and music. I know those are his favorite classes.”

“I hope he's not coming down with something. Although things have been so crazy at our house, he may not be sleeping well. And then there's our move, I guess, though I've kind of lost sight of how that might be affecting the kids, what with everything else going on.”

April raised her eyebrows as if she were asking whether I'd finished what I had to say.

“Sorry,” I said. “Tell me more about your concerns.”

“Falling asleep in class could mean a number of things, including that he's a normal middle-school boy who is growing fast and needs more sleep than he's getting,” April said. “It's one of the signs we watch for. I don't think it's anything serious in Brian's case, but it can mean that things are rocky at home, that a child is experimenting with drugs, that they're depressed, studying too much, texting too late, or reading to the end of a great book.”

“But . . .”

“I asked Brian to come see me at lunchtime and asked him how things were going. I offered him a soda—which the kids know is pure contraband around here—and asked him why he was so tired.”

“And . . .” I was desperate to hear her answer, but worried too.

“He told me that you and Stephen set up spy cameras to watch for the crooks who've been trashing your house.”

“That's right.”

“Could Stephen have said he wanted eyes on the cameras all night? Could Brian have overheard that?”

I thought for a moment and nodded. “Not Stephen, I don't think. But Jason.” Of course Brian could have heard him. Kids hear everything. Jason, Stephen, and I hadn't tried to keep anything from either Brian or David about efforts to catch the local miscreants in the act.

“Apparently he stayed up all night watching the feed on his computer.”

“That's just like Brian—taking on more than he can handle, trying to single-handedly manage chaos. I'll talk to him, April. Thanks.”

“No problem, Maggie. It's what I'm here for. You seem tired yourself.” April leaned forward and whispered, “You wanna soda?”

I laughed and said I was fine, but I was glad to know where I could score a cola if I needed one.

I drove home and pulled into our driveway, cringing as the car lurched from pothole to pothole. I'd have to move resurfacing the driveway higher up on my list of necessary renovations.

I sat on the back porch to eat my lunch and keep an eye on Belle—and so she could keep an eye on me. I texted Tess. My previous messages had been purely social. Now, I was growing desperate to talk to someone about how crazy things were getting. I was worried about the murderer and the vandals who threatened the security of my home and my family. I was concerned that the police were making no progress in the investigation into any of the crimes. And I worried about the toll that sleepless nights and the chaos were taking on all of us, particularly Brian.

And I still had the nagging feeling that I was missing something—something important.