by Mary Feliz
Seated, I felt a disadvantage I corrected immediately by standing myself. “I’m so sorry to keep you,” I said. “I was lost in my thoughts. Do you have a card? Can I call or email you if I think of any other questions?”
Robert reached for his wallet, pulled out a business card, and handed it to me in a smooth and practiced motion, then pulled it back. “But why are you asking these questions? Isn’t that a job for the sheriff’s office? Or the Orchard View Police? I hope they wrap this up quickly. It’s terrible for property values.”
Horrified by the way he was harping on money when his supposed friend and colleague was in such terrible trouble, I snatched the card from his hand and tucked it in the front pocket of my backpack. I held out my hand to shake his. “Thank you for your time. I know I’m holding you up. May I sit in in the lobby for a moment? I need to check my email and make a call before I get back behind the wheel.”
Seeing a chance to make a graceful exit seemed to please Robert. He shook my hand firmly. “Please make yourself at home. That’s what all this is for.” He turned and extended his hand in an arc to indicate every part of what Tess called the “customer room.” “Ask Kitty for anything you need. She never did bring that coffee.” He made an angry tsking noise and stomped off. Just before he rounded the divider that separated the lounge area from the receptionist’s desk, I thought of another question and called out his name.
Chapter 16
Cell phones and other devices may not work properly or consistently following a disaster. If you’ll need a map to walk or drive to safety, stash a paper one in your emergency kit and glove box.
From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald
Simplicity Itself Organizing Services
Tuesday, August 8, Morning
“Robert, sorry. Wait. I don’t suppose you can provide Tess with an alibi, can you? Were you working with her either Saturday night or Sunday morning?”
Robert flushed, though I had no idea why. My question wasn’t embarrassing. Of course, I was really asking for his alibi, but I’d couched the query in a way that concealed my objectives—at least I hoped it did. I waited for an answer without speaking.
“Er, I was working all weekend. Showing houses, making phone calls. When I wasn’t with clients, I was at home. I don’t think I saw Tess. Kitty would know. She keeps my schedule and my charge sheet.” He turned without waiting for a response.
After I could no longer see him beyond the partition, I could still hear the angry, dismissive tone he was using to berate Ketifa for, I assumed, being late with the coffee. The thud of a palm on glass followed, indicating he’d used far more force than necessary to open the door, and he’d almost certainly left a handprint marring the otherwise spotless door.
I decided to check in with Elaine and was rummaging in my backpack for my phone when Ketifa appeared from behind the divider with a tray containing two steaming mugs and a plate of what looked like handcrafted biscotti.
“Do you mind if I join you?” she asked. “My neighbor makes these, and they’re gastronomical.” She tilted her head. “Somedays I don’t feel like sharing them with...him.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear his nonsense about Tess. I was steaming. Withholding biscotti is as petty as it comes, and I’m not proud of it. But, here.” She set the plate on the coffee table and pushed it toward me. “I don’t mind sharing with you.”
Ketifa was twenty, but she was wise beyond her years and she lived in a galaxy distant from Robert’s self-centered worldview.
I hugged her, then held her at arm’s length. “You look strong, fit, and rested. Not like a new mother at all. How are you? And how is baby Sabih? You have pictures, I’m sure.”
Ketifa whipped out her phone and showed me photos of her seven-month-old son, who exuded intelligence, energy, humor, and health. Which meant, I knew, that he’d be a handful for any young mother, particularly one who was far from home and alone. Her husband was missing in action, but not by choice. Army investigators believed he’d been wounded and captured in the confusion following an air strike in Nangarhar Province near Jalalabad.
“And are you still living at Moffett Field?” Though Max and I had hoped that Ketifa would board with us after Sabih was born, the young woman was fiercely independent. Once Stephen had helped her receive the benefits to which she was entitled, she’d found a roommate who served in one of the Army Reserve units still based at Moffett Field in Mountain View.
Ketifa shook her head, took a sip of coffee, then picked up the plate of biscotti. “You have to try these. An Italian lady who lives downstairs from us makes them. She speaks a bazillion languages and is in one of the army’s psychological operation units. I suspect this is one of their secret weapons.”
I took one, broke it in half, and nibbled. My eyes widened as the flavors exploded. Vanilla, almond, cinnamon, a hint of citrus, and other spices I could only guess at.
“Delicious, right? I’ll give you some to take home to your guys. I think she should quit her army gig and bake these full-time.” While Ketifa talked, I kept busy trying to identify the cookie’s complex flavors.
I brushed the inevitable crumbs from my lap. “But if you’re not at Moffett, then where?” Affordable housing wasn’t easy to come by in the Bay Area, and I couldn’t imagine Ketifa would willingly give up her adorable apartment.
“Oh, I still have the apartment,” Ketifa said. “But Susan—she’s my roommate. She’s getting serious with her boyfriend, so when Tess offered me this job, and the chance to house-sit one of those downtown apartments, I jumped at it. Susan’s paying my half of the rent so I can afford Sabih’s day care.” She sat up straight and beamed. “Everything’s within walking distance—grocery, work, day care, and the mosque.”
“You know you have a home with us anytime. But I can’t match this deal for convenience. You like working with Tess?”
“Oh, Maggie, can you help her? I can’t believe the police took her.” Somehow, when Ketifa said those words—“the police took her”—I was reminded that the police in many nations, and even within some American communities, were not as uniformly helpful as Paolo and Jason and the rest of the Orchard View Police Force. In many places on our planet, being “taken by the police” could mean disappearing forever. I reached out and took Ketifa’s hand to reassure her. Her fingers were cold and she shivered, despite being covered head to toe in a modest but still trendy charcoal-grey outfit that announced both her religious affiliations and her identity as a fashionista.
“It’ll be okay. Forrest is working on it.” Ketifa had met the lawyer and me at about the same time, shortly before Sabih was born.
“And Teddy? He’s Sabih’s favorite babysitter.” Ketifa passed me her phone to show me a picture of a sleepy baby curled up in Teddy’s lap, as the older boy read from what appeared to be a physics text.
Ketifa sighed in what I assumed was frustration, because I was feeling similar emotions. There were no words for the trauma Teddy and Tess had experienced. We reached for the plate of biscotti at the same time.
“You came here to help Tess,” Ketifa said. “Did you get the information you’d hoped for?”
I bit my lip and massaged the tense muscles in the back of my neck. “I’m going to have to think about that. Most of what I learned from your coworker wasn’t in what he told me, but in the scurrilous gossip he chose to believe—and in the way he gleefully repeated it. He’s no friend of Tess’s, is he?”
“No friend of Patrick’s, that’s for sure. With Tess? There, it’s complicated. He’s a mess.” She shook her head. “A pitiful excuse for a grown man.”
“‘Kitty’?”
Ketifa smiled and patted her hijab, a pretty black and red floral scarf. While she’d previously favored a rainbow of vibrant colors, her current outfit echoed the color scheme Tess so often wore. Modest, fashionable, and businesslike, it suited her.<
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“He claims that ‘Ketifa’ is too difficult for him to pronounce.” She waggled her eyebrows. “More likely, he doesn’t like the feel of an Islamic name on his tongue. Like, if he uses it, Immigration will break down the door and arrest both of us. What a dork.”
“Are you afraid?”
She snorted. “Of Robert, or of Immigration? Neither of them. What’ll they do, deport me? Where to? My great-grandmother was born in Iowa and built bombers during World War II. It’s not like Muslims suddenly landed here after the World Trade Center attack. It’s so stupid. Like, if I was a terrorist, would I run around in my hijab? No. I’d dye my hair pink and dress like a hipster so I could go anywhere and no one would notice me.” She brushed crumbs from her lap. “But you didn’t come here to listen to my family history. How can I help Tess?”
“Robert mentioned this Katherine McNamara—”
Ketifa snorted again in the midst of taking a sip of her coffee. I handed her a napkin, and she wiped steamed milk from her face before answering. “What an idiot. Katherine and Tess are friends. They helped me paint my apartment. Katherine likes to run, you know, for exercise. But she’s a software engineer, and she works those crazy hours. She runs with Patrick and the kids for safety and fun, not because she has designs on Patrick. As if.” She shook her head. “I mean, they’re both great people, but she’s got a husband, Sean.” At the mention of Sean’s name, Ketifa rubbed her chin, and her expression changed in a way I didn’t understand. Whatever it was, the micro-expression disappeared quickly, making me wonder whether I’d imagined it. Was she afraid of Sean? Disgusted by him? Concerned? I didn’t know. But something about him apparently bothered her.
Before I could ask a follow-up question, Ketifa reached for her phone and began scrolling. “Let me set up a meeting for you with Katherine. You’ll like her. Robert has twisted ideas about her...probably projecting his obsession with Tess. You can form your own opinion, and see if she has any ideas about how we can help Tess and Teddy. She’s probably spent more hours—innocent hours—with Patrick than anyone else outside his family, since she worked with him and ran with him.”
While Ketifa waited for the phone to ring, I headed to the restroom. As I walked toward the back of the building, I could hear her voice lift in a way that told me she’d connected with someone she liked and trusted. Though her words were businesslike and direct, laughter threatened to break through at any moment.
Ketifa was still chatting with Katherine when I returned. “Hang on a sec,” she said, pushing a button to mute the call. “She’s invited you to lunch at the office, can you make it?”
I took a moment to consult the not-always-reliable calendar in my head. I was pretty sure I didn’t have any appointments for the rest of the week. Early August was a quiet time in Orchard View. Most people were away on vacation, and no one needed my organizing services. I kept a calendar on my phone, but it would take so long to access it that I might seem rude and I didn’t want to put Katherine off before I’d had an opportunity to meet her.
“Twelve thirty?” I asked. Ketifa consulted Katherine, thanked her, and ended the call.
“She’ll text you the address. She’ll meet you in the outdoor lunch area, at a table with a green umbrella. Here’s her picture.” Ketifa showed me her phone, which displayed a snapshot of Katherine with her arm around Patrick at the end of a race. Others milled about in the photo. The pair were laughing and happy, with fondness for one another they didn’t try to hide. To someone else, their closeness might indicate a romantic relationship, but I detected a fuzzy ear in the bottom of the picture that I suspected belonged to Mozart.
“Did Tess take this picture? Is that Mozart’s ear?” I raised my eyebrows in question.
Ketifa nodded. “Tess takes tons of pictures for work, and they instantly upload to my phone and computer. She’s supposed to change the settings after work, but she usually forgets, so I get lots of pictures of her family and friends.” Ketifa shrugged. “Either she trusts me, or she’s not taking pictures of anything she needs to hide.”
“So, no selfies of her with a murder weapon?”
Ketifa smiled, sort of. “Ick.”
“Ick is right. On that note, I think it’s time for me to leave.” I thanked her for the biscotti, invited her and Sabih to dinner, and told her that Teddy was staying with us at least until Tess returned. “I’m encouraging them both to stay as long as they like,” I added. “Those news vans are everywhere. Tess and Teddy don’t need that hassle on top of everything else they’re going through.”
I added Katherine’s address and cell phone number to my list of contacts, then followed my phone’s GPS directions. Though the office was less than five miles away, it would take me nearly a half hour to get there. I checked my watch. I had enough time, just.
Chapter 17
Establish a backup plan for your pets. If you evacuate to a shelter, that shelter may not take animals, and local kennels may also be under evacuation orders.
From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald
Simplicity Itself Organizing Services
Tuesday, August 8, 12:30 p.m.
I turned into an expansive shaded parking lot in an area of Mountain View dominated by Google; its parent company, Alphabet; and spin-offs of both organizations. These days, it was often difficult to tell where one high-tech company ended and another began. Products, people, and buildings were interdependent and intertwined.
I found a parking spot not too far from an outdoor patio filled with round tables of varying sizes shaded by umbrellas in bright colors. A woman matching Katherine’s photo approached me, balancing on a pair of crutches while struggling to get her long auburn hair under control in the gusty breeze.
She wrangled her hair into a lopsided ponytail, and we shook hands. “I tried to get a table with a green umbrella like I said I would, but they were all taken. Are you okay with more shade?” When I agreed, she led me to a table under an all-weather overhang. She nodded toward a bright red fleece jacket slung over the back of one of the chairs. “It gets brisk out here close to the Bay, and not everyone’s dressed for it. You can borrow that if you get cold.”
We hustled inside to pick up our food, and I asked Katherine about her foot, offering to juggle her tray and my own. “I’ll get help from one of the servers,” she said. “They have to offer. It’s part of the Americans with Disabilities Act. They’ve also got some wheeled tray tables around here somewhere, if I can locate one.”
She glanced around, then pulled a plastic tray from a stack at the end of a cafeteria line. She handed it to me and pulled another one from the stack for herself.
“What are you hungry for?” she asked.
It wasn’t an easy decision. The food at many Silicon Valley companies was legendary, an important perk designed to attract and retain employees. Most offered locally sourced produce. Choices here ranged from healthy versions of comfort food to ethnic options and sushi. I was overwhelmed, but Katherine helped me out. “The fish tacos are to die for, or we can do build-your-own omelets or wraps.” We both chose the tacos with delicately fried white fish, avocados, and fresh mango salsa on corn tortillas as good as any I’d tasted. While Google and its offshoots were famous for lunchtime fare that was served from dawn to well past dark, this was the first time I’d eaten here. There was no awkwardness about who would pay. The food was available before, during, and after traditional work hours at no charge to employees and their guests. At the end of the line, a server appeared, as if by magic, to carry Katherine’s tray to our table.
Once we’d settled into our seats, we enjoyed a few moments of silent appreciation for the food. But in short order, Katherine wiped mango juice from her chin and eyed my rapidly disappearing meal. “We can get more if you like.”
I shook my head. “This is plenty. I apologize for my overly enthusiastic appetite.”
Katherine waved off my
apology. “No, no. We tend to get jaded about the food here, so it’s great to be reminded how special it is.”
“I’d wondered whether a free employee café could really live up to the hype, but this truly is ‘unmatched epic foodie cuisine’.” I did the air-quote thing. “I read that somewhere, but I’m not sure where.”
“We can go drool over the dessert tray in a bit, but in the meantime, how can I help? I’m still in shock over the news about Pat. I keep expecting him to run in, apologizing for being late. How are Tess and Teddy doing? Are they holding a memorial service? I’d like to attend.”
Katherine’s barrage of rapid-fire questions matched my much-maligned style of speech—spitting out sentences as fast as I could without filtering my thoughts or giving anyone else a chance to respond.
She began to apologize, but I shook my head. “Never mind, I think I’ve got it.” I kept track of my responses by touching the index finger of my right hand to the extended fingers of my left. “Tess and Teddy are doing...okay. They’re both as tough as they come, but this is a terrible blow.”
“Salt of the earth. I’d expect nothing less, but is Tess really alright? I mean, Patrick, and now jail.”
“So you’re aware Tess is a person of interest. I haven’t heard from her since her arrest yesterday. Her lawyer says she’s doing fine, though, and that her biggest problem is that she’s worried about Teddy.”
“Can we visit her?”
I frowned, and my voice cracked as I answered. “No. Apparently there’s a weeklong adjustment period during which prisoners can’t receive any visitors without special dispensation from the warden—dispensation he’s not inclined to grant.”
“Whackadoodle.”
We laughed, then took turns rattling off a series of increasingly ridiculous synonyms that matched the truly unhinged decision of the sheriff’s office to arrest our friend. Our laughter edged into tears as our grief for Patrick broke through the lingering shock. We’d bonded over the laughter, but we were still brand-new acquaintances. I sensed that Katherine was as wary of giving in to a public display of grief as I was.