by Mary Feliz
Paolo took another sip of water. “So, enter Fiona. She’s the oldest of five, from a farming family in Kansas. She had four brothers who were into sports, and she was in charge of the laundry. She wanted nothing to do with athletics and stinky gym socks. But she was as coordinated and active as the rest of the family, so she poured that talent into dance. She didn’t have the body type or the competitive drive required for ballet, but she taught ballroom dancing in Kansas before she moved here. She never married.”
“Again, what’s that got to do with Patrick?” Tess asked.
“She seemed so nice,” I added.
“Maybe,” Paolo said. “But she was tough too. She made Sean pay her, and she was well compensated, receiving more than any of the other caregivers they hired. Fiona defended Katherine from Sean and may have done a little Sean beating in retribution, but we can’t prove that. Not yet.”
“But why Patrick?”
“According to Fiona, Patrick’s death was all Sean’s fault. He blamed his disability on Patrick, and was growing increasingly jealous of the time Katherine spent with Patrick, the recognition he was getting from the community for helping with the sports teams, and his athletic ability. It made him furious that both Katherine and Patrick had been track stars in college, but were, in his words, squandering their athletic careers by pursuing the sport part-time while they focused instead on their professional careers, engineering, and in Patrick’s case, family. In the high-tech arena, Patrick’s career was going even better than Sean’s. This guy who’d been top dog a few years back suddenly felt that Patrick was crushing him. And then Sean decided Patrick was after his wife.”
“So again, wouldn’t that be reason for Sean to kill Patrick?” Tess said. “What possible motive could his sister have had? Did she even know Patrick?” Her face flushed. She pushed her hair back and sighed. “You know it’s ridiculous, right? Patrick would have welcomed Sean’s help with the team, and my husband had neither the time nor the inclination to pursue another woman. He wouldn’t.”
I put my arm around Tess and hugged her. “We know,” I told her. “We never thought that rumor was true.”
“Never? I’ll bet Pauline Windsor and Robert Wu relished it.”
“Maybe, but none of your friends put any stock in it.”
Paolo cleared his throat.
“Oops,” I said. “Sorry for the interruption. Go on.”
“To hear Fiona tell it, Sean was a complete mess professionally and personally, traumatizing Katherine with his violent outbursts. But then, a few weeks ago, he showed up at Fiona’s Silver Steppers dance class at the retirement home, drunk out of his mind. Someone from the class called the police. Sean had driven to the class, but how he managed it without killing someone is anyone’s guess. We tested him when we brought him in, and his blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit, without taking into account all the painkillers he had on board. And he wasn’t showing symptoms.”
Jason coughed. I couldn’t tell whether it was due to his oncoming cold or whether he was sending a message to Paolo. The younger man flushed and turned his attention back to his tablet. “Please don’t repeat any of that,” he told us. “It’s confidential, at least for now.”
Elaine spoke up then. “Let me get this straight. It seems Katherine might have had a motive for killing Sean, since he was probably racking up bills from the drug use and he was knocking her around. Sean might have had a motive for killing Patrick, since he was jealous and off his head on booze and pills. So, where does Fiona come into it? Was she unhappy living in that house? If she was, why didn’t she just head back to Kansas and leave her brother and sister-in-law to their miserable fates?”
Paolo shook his head. “She probably should have left. But she’s the sort of person who likes to resolve problems. She’s fiercely protective. When Sean became so disagreeable and refused to go to rehab or do any of the other things a responsible person does when they realize the kind of damage their lifestyle is inflicting on them and their family, she shifted her allegiance to Katherine. And at some point after the Silver Steppers incident, when she realized Sean was routinely driving drunk and imperiling the whole community, she decided to protect everyone else in Orchard View by killing her own brother.”
I gasped. Everything else Paolo had told us led to this revelation. Paolo held up his hand to forestall any questions and added, “The death of one of her students last month in a hit-and-run accident may have pushed her over the edge. She believes Sean was the driver and has asked us to investigate it.”
“So, then, why Patrick?” Tess asked, her voice catching. “What did Patrick have to do with any of this?”
Chapter 35
It’s never too late to rethink your career plan. Many professional organizers are pursuing second careers. If you sense that you are wasting your talent and energy in your current occupation, take the time to rethink your options, gain additional training, or consult a career planning professional.
From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald
Simplicity Itself Organizing Services
Friday, August 11, Morning
Paolo swallowed and cleared his throat.
“Do you need a break?” I asked him. “Does anyone? It’s getting late. Or early, I guess. It’s time to think about breakfast.”
Paolo shook his head. “No, I want to finish this. Tess and Teddy need to know where we are.” Tess and Teddy nodded their agreement, and no one else seemed interested in stopping. So on we went.
“Katherine said that Fiona had become increasingly impatient with Sean’s reckless driving, with his treatment of Katherine, and with his endless tirades about Patrick,” Paolo said. “It was getting so that any mention of work or Patrick put Fiona into a temper nearly as black as those from which Sean suffered. Katherine thought that Fiona might have been dipping into Sean’s pill stash. She was certainly drinking more. When we picked her up she had— Well, the amount doesn’t matter, but she was legally over the limit.”
Jason jumped in, giving Paolo a break. “Katherine thought Fiona had tried to kill Sean. There was one morning a few weekends ago when he fell asleep at the table. Katherine and Fiona moved him to the sofa, and Sean slept for nearly thirty-six hours straight. He claimed to have been fighting off the flu and catching up on his sleep, but in retrospect, Katherine wasn’t sure. She suspected Fiona gave him what, for anyone else, would have been an overdose of pills. Sean had been dosing himself at such a high level that what could have killed someone else may have just knocked him out for a bit. No matter how angry or disgusted by him she became, Fiona couldn’t bring herself to try again. Sean was her little brother. She loved him. But Patrick. His name began to send Fiona into homicidal rage, the same way it had Sean. She seemed to join Sean in blaming Patrick for Sean’s situation, but compounded Patrick’s supposed crimes by giving him responsibility for her near-murder of her brother, for her anger, and for Sean’s treatment of Katherine. Fiona convinced herself that, without Patrick, normalcy would be restored to her family, and life would go back to the calm, predictable life she craved.”
“But it sounds like that ship had sailed,” I said. “Nothing about their household had been normal for a long time.”
Jason leaned forward. “You’re right, Maggie. But that didn’t matter. If we’ve got this right, Fiona convinced herself that everyone’s problems would be solved, her friend’s death would be avenged, and order would be restored—as long as she killed Patrick. Fiona did a ton of research. She knew what kinds of guns Patrick had. She knew how his garage was organized, since Patrick had helped Katherine set theirs up the same way. With Sean wheelchair-bound, she’d taken on all of the household maintenance and repairs. While Sean had been stalking Patrick, Fiona had been following Sean and Tess. She even knew about Teddy’s accident with the garden tool.”
Jason took a long gulp of tea. “We’ve got a record of her
buying the same model of antique Olympic target shooting pistol that Patrick had. She’d begun target shooting with it.”
Tess leaned forward. “I remember. Patrick mentioned he was meeting someone at the range. This had to have been months ago. Back in January when it was raining so hard—I remember because they had trouble finding a dry weekend. Could that target-shooting buddy have been Fiona? Had she been planning Patrick’s death that long?”
“She bought the gun last November,” Jason said. He paused, and expressions of shock appeared on the faces of everyone around me. I felt the muscles in my own face move to mirror theirs.
“That’s cold,” I said. “Asking the person she plans to murder to help her become adept enough with a gun to pull it off? Who does that?”
Jason shook his head. “I want to talk to a psychologist about that myself. My guess is that each step of this plan, initially at least, didn’t necessarily lead to Patrick’s death. Fiona may have legitimately wanted to learn to target shoot, and the choice of an Olympic pistol grew naturally from Sean’s connections to the Olympics. Somehow, maybe through Katherine, Fiona learned about Patrick’s granddad and that’s how they eventually ended up shooting together at the range. Then, as her rage grew, it overpowered whatever budding friendship she had with Patrick.”
“The target pistol was all she needed to disable Patrick,” Stephen said. “Although she was much smaller than he was, once he was injured, he would have struggled to get up. It didn’t matter where she hit him. Any injury would have made regaining his footing very difficult on that steep hill. The target bullet wouldn’t kill him, but it would slow him down enough so that she could finish him off without endangering herself.”
Tess broke in then. “And because Fiona had been stalking Patrick, she knew she’d find him up on the ridge. Did she set the fire to cover her tracks?”
Paolo shook his head. “We don’t think so. The fire started much farther down on the other side of the ridge. She probably wishes that she did start it, though. That fire consumed a lot of the evidence, and the firefighters trampled other evidence into the ground. The fire danger itself delayed Sergeant Nguyen’s investigation.”
Teddy broke in, “So, is Fiona the one who left Dad’s gun out on the workbench? Did she plant the pickax? And did she set up that awful website to implicate my mom?”
Paolo’s head bobbed. “Good thinking, Teddy. That’s the scenario we’re working on, but she hasn’t confessed to it. We’re also not sure which tool is yours and which is hers. We’ll need you or your mom to help us with that. It doesn’t matter, though. The lab is still working on the DNA evidence, but we’ve got your dad’s blood and a woman’s blood on one of the garden tools, and we’re nearly certain that female DNA will match up to Fiona.”
“And one of them has my blood on it,” Teddy said, waving his foot in the air. “But Fiona could have used either our pickax or her own. We never lock the garage, so she could have taken the tool and the pistol at any time, then just as easily returned them without anyone knowing.”
“Right,” said Paolo. “Does anyone remember seeing Fiona at Tess and Teddy’s house the night after Patrick died, when everyone else was there?”
After a brief silence, David spoke up. “I did. I went into the garage to get a soda for Emily, and Fiona was in there. She was fussing with a towel on the workbench as if she was drying off a bottle of seltzer that had been in the ice bucket. I didn’t think anything more about it. There were so many people there, and I couldn’t have known who had an attachment of some kind to Patrick or Tess or Teddy, and who didn’t.”
“We’ve got a lot more work to do before we can bring charges against Fiona, but we’ll get there,” said Paolo. “Despite his misstep in arresting Tess, Nguyen’s team knows what they’re doing, and the Orchard View Police Department will help out as much as we can.”
“And the website?” asked David. “Will they charge her with a crime for that?”
Paolo shook his head. “We’re looking at someone else for that. The site is down, and we’re cleaning up all traces of it. The culprit has taken responsibility. Other than that, I can’t talk about it.” He looked at me and nodded. No one else noticed, but I took that to mean that Rebecca had kept her promise and Paolo was helping her.
“So, what happens now, Mom?” Teddy asked.
“We go on the best we can, Teddy. And we help each other to do that.” Tess said.
“We’ll help too,” I said.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think in jail,” Tess added. “And I’m sure Stephen will agree with me that this business of sitting in a cell when you’ve done nothing wrong is terrible. I don’t want anyone I know, or even a stranger, having to do that again, ever. I know you’re not supposed to make any big changes after someone dies, but I’m thinking of selling the real estate business to my partner, Robert—he’s been trying to maneuver me into it for years.”
“But what will you do?” I asked.
“While Teddy finishes high school, I’m going to take every law enforcement or legal studies class offered at Foothill College,” Tess said, lifting her chin as if daring us to try to change her mind. “When he’s finished, I’ll transfer to San Jose State or Santa Clara University and specialize. I don’t know whether I want to become a criminalist and work in the lab, if I want to be a lawyer and work with the Innocence Project, or if I want to do something else. But I’ve got a plan that’s good enough to start with, and I can fine-tune it as I go.”
“Whatever organization gets you in the end,” said Jason with the authority of his vast experience in a wide range of military and law enforcement fields, “they’ll be lucky to have you.”
Forrest agreed. “If you need any help exploring legal careers, let me know,” he said. “Or if you need a recommendation for those college applications or even an internship, I’d be happy to tell them that you were the most organized, determined, and honest client I’ve ever worked with.”
“I’m not sure being the most honest of the people you’ve defended from murder convictions is much to be proud of,” Tess said. “But thanks.”
Then she gave me a nudge. “And this is getting to be a habit for you. This ‘oh dear, my friend’s in jail, I’d better investigate a murder’ stuff. Don’t let it happen again. Ever.”
She took bite of a crunchy croissant and moaned with pleasure. “But if I’m ever in jail again, bring me a dozen of these, every day. I can exchange them for privileges. And you could also smuggle in tools that I could use to break out.”
“What tools?”
Tess shrugged. “How would I know? This is only the first time I’ve been charged with murder.” She took another bite. “But you? What is this, your fourth murder case? By now you should have a pretty good idea what tools are required. And if you don’t, you’d better figure it out soon. Unless you think you’ve single-handedly cleared out every murderer in the greater Bay Area. Murder has a way of finding you, doesn’t it, Maggie?”
I shrugged and grabbed another croissant for myself. What could I say to defend myself? Nothing. As usual, there was no arguing with Tess.
Epilogue
One Year Later
The following August, Orchard View celebrated the first annual Patrick Olmos Memorial Marathon and Fun Run. As often happens in Silicon Valley, the race title was shortened to its initials: POM. Race planners, with permission from the Olmos family, promoted the event as the great Silicon Valley POM-POM run. Pom-pom trimmed jerseys, sneakers, and tufted hats completed the race-day outfits of even the most serious runners. Charities and schools sold cheerleading accessories to spectators who encouraged runners with pom-poms representing the colors of their school, company, or favored cause. Race proceeds benefitted youth athletics, and would help maintain the running trails Patrick loved at Rancho San Antonio County Park. Patrick Olmos’s memory and his sense of community, sport, and fun were h
onored, celebrated, and remembered in one fell swoop.
Page eight of the local paper reported the final disposition of a legal case in which an appellate court affirmed an earlier Santa Clara County Superior Court ruling. According to the article, both courts ruled that land purchased or donated for public use must remain available to the general public in perpetuity. The verdict ended Pauline Windsor’s quest to rezone the land for luxury apartments and upscale homes.
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