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AS I DROVE TO TOWN, reality started to sink in. Donnie’s house was gone. Everything he’d worked to build had been destroyed. And someone had done it on purpose.
I put my phone on speaker and called Emma.
“This better be good,” she said. “We were just sitting down to dinner.”
“A little late for dinner, isn’t it?”
“It took a while for the pizza guy to get here.”
“Emma, Donnie’s house burned down.”
“Donnie’s house burned down? What hap—wait. Hang on a sec.”
I heard Emma’s voice offstage. “Yoshi, she doesn’t need a lecture about fire safety right now, okay? Molly.” Emma was back now. “How terrible. What happened? You think Davison left a cigarette burning somewhere?”
“Davison doesn’t smoke. He quit. He’s mister my-body-is-a-temple now, remember? Oh, shoot, that’s right. I’m probably going to have to go out and buy him grass-fed kale now or whatever it is that he eats.”
“Is he staying at your house?” Emma asked.
“Yes. They’re coming over tonight.”
“With just one bathroom for three of you? And where’s he gonna sleep? Oh, I know. You can put Davison up in a hotel.”
“I already lost that battle.”
“And Donnie’s gonna be staying there? You better move your shoes outta your oven before he actually tries to use it to bake something.”
“Shoot, I completely forgot about the oven. Emma, do you think we’re safe staying in my house?”
“What do you mean safe? You mean you’re afraid you might end up killing each other?”
“No. I’m afraid whoever burned down Donnie’s house might come after me next. On Donnie’s whole street, just his house burned. And not just charred. It looked like a bomb went off.”
“Well, we’ve publicly announced we’ve stopped work on the grant. So no one should be coming after us. This must have to do with something Donnie’s involved in. Or Davison.”
“Well...” I said.
“Well what?”
“You know my tenure package is making its way up the chain of command, right? And being an investigator on a major grant is the one thing that’ll definitely tip the scales in my favor. So I might have sent an email to Marshall Dixon and a few of the other administrators.”
“Which other administrators? Never mind. Doesn’t matter. You’re telling me you think the call is coming from inside the house? One of our own administrators will go to any lengths to silence you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Believe me, I realize how insane it sounds.” I had almost reached the Mahina city limit when brake lights flared to life in front of me. I hit my brakes, causing the back end of my Thunderbird to swing out.
“Well, what about me?” Emma said. “Nothing’s happened to me, and I’m the one doing the actual science on this thing.”
“I’m going to ignore your insulting remark. Maybe you should be careful, too.”
“Careful how? What should I be doing, exactly?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Molly, this obviously doesn’t have anything to do with our research. Weren’t you telling me Donnie was disappearing and not telling you where he was going? What ever happened with that? Any pattern to it?” I could hear Emma move her hand over the receiver. “Just a minute, Yoshi. This is important.”
“Let’s see. I think it’s usually been on Wednesday evenings, now that I think of it.”
“Tomorrow is Wednesday. Since he’s staying with you, it’ll be easier to keep tabs on him.”
I was heading toward my house now. The silhouettes of overgrown mango trees loomed on either side of the dark street.
“I’m almost home, pulling up now.”
“Anyone firebomb your house?” Emma asked.
“No damage at all. Everything looks fine.”
“Great. I’m gonna eat my pizza now before it gets cold.”
I pulled into the freshly-painted carport. Donnie would have to park behind me, blocking me in.
“Tell Yoshi hello for me,” I said. “Oh, tell him one of my students showed up to class wearing a t-shirt with his kraken design. It was the white on a navy-blue background. It looked good.”
By the time Donnie and Davison got back to my house, I had cleared the shoes out of my oven, moved the pantyhose out of my freezer, and dumped all of the “skinny” clothes from my spare room closet into big black trash bags. Then I’d stuffed all of the shoes and pantyhose and bags of clothing into the spacious trunk of my Thunderbird.
I led Donnie and Davison to the “guest” room. Donnie directed Davison to start stacking boxes against one wall, then went over and opened my cleared-out skinny closet.
“Are you going to need these boxes?” Donnie peered at the top shelf.
“The boxes. I forgot about those.”
I had divided the silver pieces between two boxes, hoisted them up onto the closet shelf with great effort (and a near shoulder sprain), and then forgotten about them. Of course, Donnie was tall enough to see them right away.
“Is this what Al Konishi’s guys found?” Donnie asked. “When they were fixing your wall?”
“It’s just old teapots an’ li’dat,” Davison remarked.
“I’ll take them to my bedroom. Our bedroom.”
“Let me do it.” Donnie easily took down the cardboard box, then the wooden soap box, and carried them out.
While Donnie and Davison rearranged the guest room, I opened the cardboard box to have another look at my little treasures. Inside were the silver-plated serving items and the folded-up newspaper pages Konishi Construction had found during the repair job. Maybe I’d polish the items and put them in my kitchen, where they’d get some use. I could worry about it later. Right now, I needed to get dinner ready for the three of us.
I was in the kitchen, setting out paper plates, when the doorbell rang.
“Are you expecting someone?” Donnie called from the guest room.
“I hope this isn’t against anyone’s religion,” I called back. “I sent out for pizza.”