by Mary Feliz
I heard a scuffle on the kitchen tiles, looked up, and burst out laughing. All three of our animals, Belle, our boisterous golden retriever, and Holmes and Watson, our marmalade-colored cats, assisted Max as he loaded their food, travel dishes, water, and kitty litter into a plastic bin. Watson’s head was buried in a bag of cat kibble, while Belle nudged Max’s arm with her snout. She knocked Max’s steady hands out of alignment as he poured dog chow from a ten-pound bag into a one-gallon screw-top container. Dried nuggets skittered across the floor. Belle scrambled to help by gobbling up each morsel as quickly as possible. Holmes, Watson’s more reserved brother, batted at a tidbit that had bounced to a stop at his feet.
“When you’re done with that, hon, can you help the boys gather up the electronics? It’s too soon to put them in the cars, but I’d like them all down here charging up and ready to go.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Max said, saluting without looking up from his task.
“Too many orders? Too bossy?” Under stress, I tended to bark out instructions without thinking about how they might be received by the folks around me—even the people I loved the most.
My phone rang, saving Max from responding. I pulled it from my pocket and glanced at the screen as I answered. “Hey, Tess,” I said. “We’re nearly there. Did Patrick show up?”
The day before, Tess had told me that Patrick hadn’t responded to her phone calls. She’d wanted to let him know we might be camping out at their house for a few days to get out of the path of the potential firestorm. She’d speculated that he’d gone on an extended run or become caught up in a project at work. A devoted engineer, he often vanished into the thicket of a thorny technical problem and lost track of time, especially on weekends. But Patrick had been out of touch longer than usual, and I knew Tess was worried.
“That’s just it.” Tess’s voice caught, and I could hear her take a deep breath.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened? Do you want us to make alternative plans? If it’s not convenient—”
“No. No. No. It’s not that. It’s...”
“It’s what? You’re scaring me. Spill.”
“It’s Patrick. The police think they’ve found him.”
“The police?” The words I was using and the strained tone of my voice must have worried Max. He looked up and furrowed his brow.
“Does she need help?” he asked. “Take off if you need to. The boys and I can finish up and meet you in half an hour.”
I flapped my hand at Max, urging him to stop talking so I could hear Tess, who was, uncharacteristically, having trouble completing a sentence. She sighed.
“Oh, Maggie. The sheriff’s office just called. Around dawn this morning, they found a man up off the old Pacific Gas and Electric maintenance road. It looks like he fell. Patrick runs there all the time. They...they think it’s Patrick.”
“Is he hurt? Where is he now? Do you need a ride to the hospital? Is he conscious? Why don’t they just ask him who he is?”
“He’s dead.” Tess’s voice broke with a sob. “I mean, the guy they found is dead. It’s not Patrick, but they think it’s him.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say, and Tess didn’t give me time.
“Can you get down here, Maggie? Can Max and the boys stay with Teddy? They want me to identify the body, and...” Tess coughed and soldiered on. “I mean, they want me to confirm that it’s not my Patrick so they can figure out who he really is, poor guy.” Tess struggled to get her voice, tears, and breathing under control. In her grief, she sounded as if she’d just finished a marathon. Breathless and exhausted.
“Of course. Whatever you need. We’ll be right—”
Tess didn’t let me finish. “I don’t think I can drive safely, Maggie. It’s in Santa Clara. The medical examiner’s office.” She sniffed. “This is so stupid. I keep bursting into tears. But it’s ridiculous. Of course it’s not Patrick. He’s at work. Only he’s not answering his phone. The battery is dead, I’m sure. You know how he is.”
I did know Patrick. Keeping his phone charged wasn’t high on his priority list. But my skin rippled with goose bumps and I shivered. Whatever we discovered at the medical examiner’s office, I suspected the lives of Tess and her son, Teddy, would never be the same again.
Meet the Author
Photo Credit: Kathleen Dylan
Mary Feliz writes the Maggie McDonald Mysteries featuring a Silicon Valley professional organizer and her sidekick golden retriever. She’s worked for Fortune 500 firms and mom and pop enterprises, competed in whale boat races and done synchronized swimming. She attends organizing conferences in her character’s stead, but Maggie’s skills leave her in the dust.
A certified California Naturalist, Mary lives near the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for the area’s rich natural diversity.
Visit Mary online at MaryFeliz.com, or follow her on Twitter @MaryFelizAuthor.
Address to Die For
For professional organizer Maggie McDonald, moving her family into a new home should be the perfect organizational challenge. But murder was definitely not on the to-do list . . .
Maggie McDonald has a penchant for order that isn’t confined to her clients’ closets, kitchens, and sock drawers. As she lays out her plan to transfer her family to the hundred-year-old house her husband, Max, has inherited in the hills above Silicon Valley, she has every expectation for their new life to fall neatly into place. But as the family bounces up the driveway of their new home, she’s shocked to discover the house’s dilapidated condition. When her husband finds the caretaker face-down in their new basement, it’s the detectives who end up moving in. What a mess! While the investigation unravels and the family camps out in a barn, a killer remains at large—exactly the sort of loose end Maggie can’t help but clean up . . .
Scheduled to Death
Professional organizer Maggie McDonald has a knack for cleaning up other people’s messes. So when the fiancée of her latest client turns up dead, it’s up to her to sort through the untidy list of suspects and identify the real killer.
Maggie McDonald is hoping to raise the profile of her new Orchard View organizing business via her first high-profile client. Professor Lincoln Sinclair may be up for a Nobel Prize, but he’s hopeless when it comes to organizing anything other than his thoughts. For an academic, he’s also amassed more than his share of enemies. When Sinclair’s fiancée is found dead on the floor of his home laboratory—electrocuted in a puddle of water—Maggie takes on the added task of finding the woman’s murderer. To do so, she’ll have to outmaneuver the suspicious, obnoxious police investigator she’s nicknamed “Detective Awful” before a shadowy figure can check off the first item on their personal to-do list—Kill Maggie McDonald.
Dead Storage
As a professional organizer, Maggie McDonald brings order to messy situations. But when a good friend becomes a murder suspect, surviving the chaos is one tall task . . .
Despite a looming deadline, Maggie thinks she has what it takes to help friends Jason and Stephen unclutter their large Victorian in time for its scheduled renovation. But before she can fill a single bin with unused junk, Jason leaves for Texas on an emergency business trip, Stephen’s injured mastiff limps home—and Stephen himself lands in jail for murder. Someone killed the owner of a local Chinese restaurant and stuffed him in the freezer. Stephen, caught at the crime scene covered in blood, is the number one suspect. Now Maggie must devise a strategy to sort through secrets and set him free—before she’s tossed into permanent storage next . . .
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