DEAD
STORAGE
by
Mary Feliz
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Pub
Date: 7/18/2017
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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Thursday, February 16, Morning
"Maggie we've got a crisis," Jason had said the last time I'd talked to him. I know you insist on working with both halves of a couple—”
“But I’m also a problem solver.
What’s up?”
“That spate of tornadoes and flooding in Texas, that’s what. I’ve been deployed. I can’t back out or delay our departure.
Those people are hurting,
and it’s the first
test of my new auxiliary law-enforcement team. A group of TV journalists is reporting on
our project for some newsmagazine. Our funding and the future of programs like
this de- pend on our success.” Jason rattled off the sentences breathlessly,
without giving me a chance to comment or interrupt.
I understood his predicament. He’d been working on
establishing a rapid-response law enforcement team for as long as I’d known
him. The short version of the saga was that the team, with all its
supplies, could swoop into a disaster
area and support
law enforcement efforts under local authority. The idea
was to prevent looting, keep people safe, provide skilled guidance to volunteers, and eliminate many of the problems experienced by civilians, volunteers, and first respon- ders
following Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. Jason’s team and others like
it hoped to plug gaps between what FEMA and the National Guard could provide
and what community resources were designed to accomplish.
“No problem,” I
said. “We’ll start after you get
back.” “Stephen’s ready to start, like, yesterday, and the demolition is
only two
weeks away.”
“Ah . . .” I began, stalling for time. “To be successful, any system we
develop will have to include you. If it’s going to work long term—”
“Look, Maggie, I’ve got to go. They’re loading our
containers on the cargo plane. Stephen and I talked about priorities and goals
last night. We made a list.
I gave him parameters for tossing my stuff, and I promised not to divorce him if he
gives away my favorite baseball glove. If that works for you, great. If not,
take it up with Stephen. Arrange something—”
The phone cut off. I was left with the decision of whether to begin
or postpone. I spotted several potential problems with Jason’s plan. Among the stumbling blocks was the fact that they
might waste time and money creating
a system that would work for Stephen, but not for Jason. When I’d spoken to
Stephen, afterward, he considered my advice but ultimately decided to go ahead.
“No matter what Jason says, he’s going to have
trouble making time for this project, even once he’s home again,” Stephen said.
“Damn the torpedoes . . .”
That was two days
ago. I’d decided Stephen was right.
With Jason’s full-time
job as a police detective he was never in full control of his own hours. Stephen was a retired US Marine who
worked unpredictable hours
volunteering with veterans and
their canine counterparts,
creat- ing civilian partnerships. If we were going to have their house ready to
start a major remodel, there was no time to
waste.
Today, Stephen and I were meeting to start purging their belongings,
deciding what to save, and
fine-tuning our organizational strategy.
I knocked on the front door of their sprawling
Victorian near the Palo Alto border.
There was no answer to the bell.
No resonant woof from Stephen’s huge mastiff, Munchkin. I peered through the front window, leaving the print of my nose on
the glass. Only dust motes moved inside.
I sat on the front step and
texted Stephen:
My calendar says we’re meeting at 8:30 today. Do I have
that right?
Stephen was an early riser, so I’d agreed to meet him
as soon as I dropped my teen boys at
the middle school and high school. He’d promised me coffee and bagels. At the
thought of food, my stomach rumbled and my mouth filled
with saliva. I was starving
and caffeine deprived. My
golden retriever, Belle, thumped her tail, whined, and leaned into me, looking
up with yearning. Normally, I didn’t
bring Belle to work with me, but Stephen was a friend of mine, a dog per- son,
and Munchkin was Belle’s BFF.
“They’ll be back soon,” I told her, referring to both
Stephen and his seldom-absent canine partner. “I’m sure everything is fine. How
often are they ever late?”
Belle made a
polite sound in response. “Right,” I said. “Never . . . Well, nearly never.”
Extreme and unrelenting punctuality was a fault of
Stephen’s, an artifact of his time in the military. Some of his friends found
it an- noying, but I shared the trait and appreciated his timely arrival
when- ever we got together. I bit my lip, sighed,
and squinted into the sun to
scan the neighborhood. There was no car in the drive. He must have had a last-minute errand
that went longer
than he had planned. Unex- pected traffic tie-ups were a
recurring Silicon Valley problem. With the high-tech economy, growing
population, and high-density build- ing projects booming, the area was home to
a record number of peo- ple. More people meant more cars. A trip to the dentist
that took fifteen minutes a month or two earlier could easily take thirty min-
utes or longer today, even without
a rush-hour fender bender creating gridlock. The problem grew worse
daily and there was no easy solu- tion.
I looked at my watch. Any minute, I expected to see
Stephen and Munchkin loping up the street
from one direction or the other.
At six- foot-four inches,
accompanied by a dog that weighed almost
as much as he did, Stephen
was hard to miss.
I paced in front of the house. This situation
reminded me too much of a client session I’d begun four months earlier,
standing on a front porch a few blocks away when my client was late. That morn-
ing had culminated in the death of a dear friend. I shivered, drew my fleece
coat closer to me, peered at my phone, and dialed Stephen’s number.
The phone rang
before I could finish punching the buttons. “Hello?” I said. The phone
responded with crackles and pops. “. . . police station . . . jail . . .”
“Hello? Who is this? I’m not going to fall for that
trick. My kids are safe in school.” I disconnected the call. Our entire town had been plagued with phishing phone calls
from crooks pretending to be our children or grandchildren. The calls all
followed the same pattern: a distraught young voice claiming to be kin begged
for money to be wired immediately. Most people, like me, recognized it for what
it was and hung up the phone. But older people, those in the beginning stages
of dementia or vulnerable in other ways, grew distraught. A friend of my mom
called her daughter nearly every day to be reas- sured that the children and
grandchildren were safe. The scams were criminal, disruptive, and downright
cruel.
I shook off my righteous indignation and dialed
Stephen again. In the process,
I noted that the crooks, whoever they were, were getting crafty. My phone reported that the phishing
call originated from the police station in Mountain View, the town that abutted Orchard View’s southern
border. I made a mental
note to tell Jason about the
call the next time we spoke. When he wasn’t
helping flood-ravaged towns
in Texas, Jason was an
Orchard View detective. He’d know who
to no- tify about calls from people impersonating the police.
My call went to voice mail.
Mary
Feliz has
lived in five states and two countries but calls Silicon Valley home.
Traveling to other areas of the United States, she’s frequently
reminded that what seems normal in the high-tech heartland can seem
decidedly odd to the rest of the country. A big fan of irony,
serendipity, diversity, and quirky intelligence tempered with gentle
humor, Mary strives to bring these elements into her writing,
although her characters tend to take these elements to a whole new
level. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of
America, and National Association of Professional Organizers. Mary is
a Smith College graduate with a degree in Sociology. She lives in
Northern California with her husband, near the homes of their two
adult offspring.
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