Neighbors clustered as close to the makeshift barrier-a police cruiser, parked crosswise a few hundred yards away-as they could and watched the firemen unreel their hoses with the grim faces of men who recognized a hopeless cause. At the moment the fire trucks arrived, though, and for quite a while afterward, no one knew what was happening. By then, of course, Izzy would be long gone, leaving no one to defend her, and people could-and did-say whatever they liked. Later people would say that the signs had been there all along: that Izzy was a little lunatic, that there had always been something off about the Richardson family, that as soon as they heard the sirens that morning they knew something terrible had happened.
By a quarter after twelve there were four of them parked in a haphazard red line along Parkland Drive, where all six bedrooms of the Richardson house were ablaze, and everyone within a half mile could see the smoke rising over the trees like a dense black thundercloud. A little after noon on that Saturday morning in May, the shoppers pushing their grocery carts in Heinen's heard the fire engines wail to life and careen away, toward the duck pond. All spring the gossip had been about little Mirabelle McCullough-or, depending which side you were on, May Ling Chow-and now, at last, there was something new and sensational to discuss. Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.
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