Disorderly Conduct. Mary Feliz
fire. If they can be safe up there, I’d be happy to have their company and their help. They could hose down the yard, the roof, and each other. But if conditions are uncertain, or if the air quality is bad, I’d like to leave the dogs and kids down here. Those fires can shift on a dime.”
“If it’s that iffy, I don’t want you up there, either.”
“Let me get the information first, then we’ll compare notes.”
I thought about Max’s plan for a moment. “Won’t plowing the grass and weeds increase the odds of erosion and mudslides once it starts raining?” I asked. “We don’t want to exchange one dire threat for another.”
Max shook his head. “Let’s deal with today’s threat. Once the fire moves on, we can plant something that will keep the soil in place. We’ve got months before we see any significant rainfall.”
I soon realized that rain would be the least of our problems.
Tess and Teddy came to the table and poured juice and cereal they didn’t touch. Both had deep circles under their eyes and downcast expressions.
Tess stared at the bottom of her mug. “Coffee?” I asked, holding up the pot.
Tess smiled, briefly. “Thanks. I was having the hardest time figuring out how to make that happen. My brain is on strike.” She rubbed her eyes, tried to continue smiling, and failed. “Thanks for getting the breakfast stuff out. I’m a terrible hostess. Someone did the laundry yesterday too...” She paused, stricken. “What am I going to do with Patrick’s clothes? His sports equipment?” Her rich olive complexion turned gray-green, pale, and lined with pain.
I hurried to her side and hugged her. “There’ll be time enough to figure that out. And people to help, if you want that. Try to think of one thing at a time. Do you and Teddy want to visit the funeral home?”
Tess looked blank, so I prompted. “You talked yesterday about letting Teddy see Patrick. Patrick’s body...” I wanted my language to be clear and precise, because both Tess and Teddy seemed to be having trouble processing anything. I didn’t know how much they remembered about yesterday. I tried to stay alert to their reactions, in case my terms were too clinical or caused discomfort. Adding to their burden was the last thing I wanted to do.
Tess squinted at Teddy, who nodded.
“Do you want to do that first thing?” I asked. “Would you like a chauffeur? I could drop you right at the door so you don’t have to worry about parking.”
“That’d be great, thanks. I don’t think I’m safe to drive.” She startled and half-stood, to gain an angle from which she could peer out the front window. “What’s that?”
I heard it too—loud voices from the front yard accompanied by the sound of enormous trucks with heavy engines. My first thought was that someone was delivering the construction equipment Max had talked about.
Max and David ran to the window over the sink, jostling for position. David turned away immediately. “News trucks,” he called in a voice loud enough to reach down the hall to Teddy’s bedroom. “Teddy. Brian. Help.”
I looked to Max for answers. “Pull down the blinds and close the curtains. No one’s going anywhere,” Max said as he lowered the kitchen mini-blinds with a clatter. Shaking his head, he dashed to the door leading to the garage. In a moment, I heard the motor of the garage door, and then his voice from the front yard.
“This is private property. I have to ask you to leave.”
Unintelligible shouted questions followed, drowning out anything else Max had to say.
Belle and Mozart scratched at the front door. A siren blurted briefly, and I assumed that Jason or Paolo had arrived. After a brief period of additional shouting, we heard the garage-door motor again. Max entered the kitchen, followed by Jason, who let the frantic dogs out into the garage, where their barking added to the din.
“Let them bark,” Jason said. “They’ll make it difficult to record commentary and will keep any particularly earnest reporters out of the backyard. If the journalists dare to spin a story about vicious dogs, I’ll find a station that will do a feel-good follow-up with Belle and a little kid with an ice cream cone.” He reached for a coffee mug, and I filled it. “I moved them off the lawn. With rush hour heating up, they’re going to make enemies if they snarl up traffic in the street.”
Tess lived on a quiet road with a fifteen-mile-an-hour school-speed zone. With the advent of real-time traffic data on cell phones, it had become a congestion-dodging commuter route to the freeways, especially in the summer, when working people didn’t have to compete with school traffic.
Jason parted the slats in the mini-blinds and peered out. “It looks like they’re moving down the street to the school parking lot. I’ll call the district administrators and see if we can’t move them along.”
Peering over his shoulder, I watched him signal to two motorcycle patrol officers, who then followed the news vans to the school down the street.
I stepped back and turned toward the breakfast table, where Tess, Teddy, Brian, and David stared in varied degrees of horror.
“But, Mom, we were headed to the park to play Ultimate Frisbee.” said David.
Brian sighed. “Will we be trapped inside all day?”
Tess scrolled through her phone. “I have to cancel my appointments for the rest of the week.”
And Teddy’s face fell. “Does that mean we can’t get to the funeral home? Will they...keep him? Do we have to call?”
I glanced from Max’s distraught face to Jason’s stern one. Were they going to address Teddy’s question, or was I? What were the answers? If Patrick had truly been murdered, was someone out to get him or the entire family? Either way, killing Patrick was an evil, unforgivable act that had devastated his wife and teenaged boy. They might never recover any semblance of what they previously called their “normal” life.
“Look, all of you,” I said, making direct eye contact with each boy in turn. “We’ll figure this out. We’ll not be cowed by an Internet bully, vicious rumors, or gossip mongering talking heads from the television news. We’re tougher than that. We’re better than that.” I stood as straight as I could and squared my shoulders, trying to exude the confidence of a superhero. “Roll up your sleeping bags, take turns with the shower, and get dressed. By the time you’re finished, and you’ve cleaned up the bathroom”—the boys moaned, which told me at least one thing had returned to normal—“we’ll have a better sense of how, exactly, we’ll beat this thing.”
Brian and David took off for the back of the house, with the dogs following. Teddy stayed behind. He gripped my arm and tugged at it, like a small child aching for a grown-up’s attention. “Mrs. M., you’ll help us find the truth, right? And make that web page stop telling lies about my mom and dad?”
I silently consulted Max. I seemed to have become embroiled in a number of dramatic legal cases recently, and I’d promised Max that I would stay far away from law enforcement, detective work, and especially murder. But this was Tess and Teddy we were talking about. Surely we couldn’t leave them in the lurch. With all they had on their plates, and the suffering they had in store as they grieved and tried to define their new normal, there was no way they had time to ferret out the truth. Would those investigating the case see through the nonsense on the web page and identify it as what it was: childish muckraking worthy of the worst of the supermarket tabloids?
Max nodded in answer to my unspoken questions. Before I could reassure Teddy that I’d do what I could to track down the facts, the doorbell rang, startling us as though a firecracker had gone off. Between shock, frazzled nerves, and little sleep, none of us had a firm grip on our emotions.
Max sighed, put down his coffee mug, and walked toward the door, muttering about annoying newspeople who wouldn’t allow Tess a moment’s peace. I expected him to speak sternly but politely to whoever was ringing the