I chose to ignore the slight to Sofia. “I just want to know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“If ‘helping’ means proving the old lady’s innocent, don’t bother.”
“Have the results come in on the blood?”
“No, but it only makes sense. We know it’s not hers, so who else’s could it be? She had the opportunity, and we know the weapon was a piece of rusty rebar—one of those steel rods used to reinforce concrete. There’s certainly enough of that lying around the trashy parking lot, so she had easy access to it.”
“Do you have the rebar?”
“Yes, it weighs about five pounds, not a stretch for a strong, tall woman like Sofia. And did I mention that we also have a motive?”
I straightened up. “A motive?”
“They had a prior relationship. The vic and the old lady.”
I let out an exasperated sigh at Skip’s tone and language. What happened to my sensitive, wonderful nephew? I wondered. Had making detective hardened him? Was there some wisecracking test he’d had to pass or an insulting jargon list he’d had to master to get his new shield?
“Sofia. The old lady’s name is Sofia Muniz,” I said. “And the vic is Carl Tirado, a once-living man. And of course there was a prior relationship. He sometimes worked as a gardener in the home where she lived. Where there are hundreds of other residents and employees.” I made a mental note to check those numbers with Linda. But surely there were a lot of others inside and outside of the rambling Mary Todd property. “And didn’t he also live in the old neighborhood at Nolin Creek?”
My tirade seemed to have no effect, positive or negative, on my nephew. “Maybe the old guy, uh, Carl, attacked the señora in some kind of drunken stupor and she fought back and accidentally killed him. Can’t say more right now,” he said.
“I might as well have brought Maddie in,” I grumbled.
“Unless you happen to have more ginger cookies.” He reached down to my partially open tote and pulled on the bit of plastic poking out. Up came a bag of ginger cookies. “Well, well, were you holding these hostage?”
I smiled. “What are they worth to you?” I didn’t think it necessary to tell him he’d have gotten them anyway. (My granddaughter’s negotiating skills were rubbing off.)
“There might . . . I emphasize might . . . be something you can do when we start interviewing the Mary Todd residents, probably later today. If we need a translator. You might, you know, relate to them better.”
“Meaning I’m an old lady, too?” I fluffed my hair. Maybe I should reconsider my hairdresser’s suggestion to “play down” the emerging strands of gray.
Skip blushed. “No . . .” He’d already eaten one cookie and started in on another. “These are even better than usual, Aunt Gerry. You’re the best—”
“I know. I’m the best baker you know. By the way, if you want to be in a casual setting with about eight old people this morning, you can come to my crafts workshop at ten thirty.”
Skip’s turn to straighten up. “At the Mary Todd?”
I nodded. “The one and only. We’ll even give you an apron so you don’t mess up your new suit.”
Another blush. My “cool” nephew was self-conscious about the more professional dress required of him as a detective. His new, more mature wardrobe, which included sports jackets and ties, gave his mother and me a whole new source of gift ideas (and teasing).
I gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder and shook the jingle bells hanging from a pushpin on his bulletin board. “Now come and say hi to your little cousin once removed.”
“I’ll never learn that organization chart of family relationships. I like it when she just calls me Uncle Skip.”
“Whatever she calls you, she thinks you walk on water.”
Maddie hardly needed another person in her queenly court in the broken room. A swarm of officers, male and female, was doting on her. She had a can of soda (at nine thirty in the morning!) in one hand and sleigh-shaped cookie in the other. There went any promise of a healthy diet at Grandma’s.
At the moment Skip and I walked in Maddie was ending a presentation, between mouthfuls of junk food and drink, on Father Junipero Serra’s first mission in San Diego, a project she’d tackled for her history class.
“What’s it like living in Los Angeles?” a uniformed female officer asked her, as if L.A. were an exotic land, one to which she couldn’t fly in just over an hour. From the way the policewoman glanced at Skip, I got the feeling she had ulterior motives in being so interested in this ten-year-old with a visitor’s badge. Maddie wasn’t picky about who lavished attention on her, or why, however. She pulled a photo of herself, one we’d seen last night, out of her sweatshirt pocket.
“Look what happened to me in L.A.,” Maddie said. In the photo, her body was half stuffed into a giant shark, only her little derriere and long legs hanging out between the rows of enormous, pointy teeth. The officers passed the photo around.
“Whoa,” another female officer said. “That looks scary.”
“What’s that eating you up?” Skip asked, grabbing her by the waist (he’d done this last night also, and the move was a big hit) as if he himself were a shark.
Maddie laughed uncontrollably, still the innocent little girl. I knew it couldn’t last much longer and I certainly didn’t want to hold her back, but it was very nice to have her this way.
“It’s Jaws the Shark eating me up. It’s just fake!” she told her fans. “My mom and dad took me and my friend, Devyn, to Universal Studios.”
To my amazement, the officers applauded. I heard one say, “We’d better get back to work, Maddie, but come and see us again, okay?” As if there were any chance she wouldn’t.
When I heard the Jaws story last night I’d been slightly horrified at the thought that Maddie might have seen a movie about a man- (little-girl-) eating shark.
“Nuh-uh. I didn’t see the movie,” she’d said. “Mom says it’s too gory. But lots of kids in my class saw it. And I know the whole story anyway.”
Nothing I could do about that. I had to count on Mary Lou’s having filled Maddie’s suitcase with age-appropriate videos so Grandma wouldn’t make a mistake.
Once I dragged Maddie away from her adoring fans in uniform, we set out on foot for our delivery to Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop. Maddie insisted she could be trusted to carry Susan Giles’s model soda fountain. I agreed, conditionally. We’d have to pack the room box into a tote with handles and she’d have to leave her backpack in the car.
“Deal,” she said. Once again, I pictured a plaque on her desk in about twenty years: “Madeline Porter, Esq.” or whatever female lawyers used after their names.
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” rang through my purse as we walked down Springfield Boulevard.
“You’ve got to change this tune, Maddie,” I said, flipping open my cell phone. “Or teach me how. I’d like one of Beethoven’s sonatas. Or a Dean Martin tune.”
Maddie looked confused by both names, then shrugged her shoulders and smiled, hoping to fulfill my request at a time when she could make a deal, I suspected.
I clicked the button to take the call, walking and talking. My cell phone skills were increasing by the day.
“Geraldine, you’ll never guess. Apparently Sofia had an excellent motive for killing Carl.” This was Linda on the line, having moved, I noticed, toward the LPPD theory: Sofia was presumed guilty. “She knew him.”
I started in on my “of course she knew the gardener” routine, then stopped. Something about Linda’s emphasis on the word “knew” gave me second thoughts. “How well did she know him?”
“It’s fascinating, Gerry. I see why you’re so into detective work.”
“Linda? The story?”
I pictured her in the nurses’ lounge at the Mary Todd, a soda and a bag of chips in front of her. Maybe it was the crunching sound that gave it away. “It turns out Carl was the coyote who was supposed to bring Dolores’s fiancé across
the border to San Diego.”
Coyote. Not the four-legged prairie wolf, but the dreaded mercenaries who preyed upon people who would do anything, give all they had, to enter the United States.
Maddie and I entered an empty bus shelter so I could sit for this briefing. “When was this?”
Maddie attached her iPod to her head and moved her body to some inaudible tune.
“Years ago,” Linda said. (Crunch, crunch.) “Dolores was pregnant with her daughter when she and Sofia crossed. Ernesto stayed behind and was supposed to be on the next truck, or whatever, but Carl—his real name is Carlos Guzman—took Ernesto’s money and it was an especially full truck, like the freight-car kind with no ventilation, and Ernesto died. I’m not sure how.”
“Leaving Dolores an unmarried mother.”
“Uh-huh. Apparently Sofia never forgave Carlos for making her only great-grandchild a bastard.”
Did they even use that term these days? Even if the term was obsolete, I could believe that it mattered a lot to Sofia’s generation and culture.
“How did all this come out?”
“An anonymous tip to the police. So, what do you think, Gerry?”
If Sofia knew the gardener, then so did Dolores. Funny that she didn’t mention it. I remembered asking her that question specifically.
“Fascinating, as you said, Linda.”
“There’s something else, Gerry.” Linda paused. I waited her out, not to confirm her pegging me as a nosy would-be detective. “It’s personal. About Jason.”
Uh-oh. Back to juvenile detention behavior? Linda’s son Jason had spent a lot of his fifteen years in custody, on charges of petty theft, assault, and other mischief, but I thought he’d turned that around. “What about Jason?”
“He’s flunking English. I was wondering if you could maybe help him?”
Whew. Much as I would like it to be, flunking English was not a crime. But happy and eager tutor though I was, I believed the best situation involved “strangers,” not close friends. Or the son of a close friend. Too many opportunities for embarrassment, bad feelings if it didn’t work, and general discomfort. I explained this to Linda, gently and reasonably, I thought.
“Well, isn’t that just like you, Gerry. You’ll help any stranger that knocks on your door, but when it comes to me or my son, you just don’t have time.”
“I didn’t say anything about not having time, Linda. I’ll take Jason to lunch or to the movies if you want. I’ll even go to his basketball games.” I hoped this would not be required. I didn’t even like going to Maddie’s games. “I just don’t think tutoring someone I feel so close to would work. I can recommend any number of excellent people for him. He needs someone objective and professional, not someone who likes him too much to discipline—”
“He doesn’t need discipline. He needs help writing essays. I’m sorry I asked.”
With that, Linda hung up.
I knew she’d think about what I said and hopefully come around. She usually did when similar incidents had occurred. I wished I could learn to communicate with Linda more effectively. I heard Ken’s voice at the back of my head, telling me that these were no-win situations with Linda, that she was always ready to be the victim.
Still, it bothered me to think I’d hurt a friend. And, to be truthful, that I may have lost a source of inside information for this case that I was not investigating. In some ways, Linda’s vantage point as an employee of the Mary Todd was more valuable to me than Skip’s. If I cared, that is.
It also bothered me that Dolores hadn’t been completely honest with me about Sofia and Carlos. I knew about the Munizes’ San Diego roots and I suppose I could have guessed that at least Sofia had been born in Mexico and transported somehow. Dolores wouldn’t be able to have her job at city hall if she weren’t a citizen, natural or otherwise, and Ernestine, being born here, was automatically a citizen. I wondered about Sofia’s status.
I decided to let the information sit for a while and see what developed. If nothing else, Dolores’s lying to me gave me a good reason to bow out of this case.
I had a granddaughter to entertain and a holiday to celebrate. I tugged at Maddie’s arm (she was in an iPod trance) and we resumed our walk down the garland-laden streets.
In the twenty-four hours since I’d driven Dolores on her quest to find Sofia, nearly all the businesses along Springfield Boulevard had sprouted miniature scenes. I could identify many of them even before reading the labels. I pointed out to Maddie a miniature bookshop in the window of Rosie Norman’s real-life bookstore. Its creator, Karen Striker, had represented a storefront with books displayed behind a small plastic sheet serving as a window and crates of “sale books” out front. She’d used titles of Victorian classics and strung garlands across the scene. Bits of “snow” marked the corners of the plastic “windows.”
Maddie’s favorite touch was the snowfall that had apparently hit Rosie’s while we weren’t looking. “Do you think we’ll ever have a white Christmas, Grandma?”
“Probably not in L.A. or Lincoln Point, sweetheart, but maybe some year we can all go to the mountains.”
“Next year, okay?”
“We’ll see what your parents say.”
A huff and a puff. “That’s all I ever get. Mom says, ‘We’ll see what Dad says,’ and Dad says, ‘We’ll see what Mom says,’ and now you’re saying—”
“It’s tough being ten, isn’t it?” I tapped her just above the waist where she was most ticklish.
She giggled herself out of her short-lived funk and we were able to move on.
Gail Musgrave, a newly elected Lincoln Point councilwoman, had managed to find time for a small scene for the card shop. She’d started with a normal-size Christmas card with a glittery spruce printed on it. She’d stiffened the card so that it could stand up on a small piece of carpet (red fabric with a felt-tip pen design). In front of the card tree Gail had piled colorfully wrapped presents of all sizes. Also a miniature bicycle and a toy train. Simple, but effective.
I hoped next year some of my seniors from the Mary Todd would have contributions for the town’s decorations.
Speaking of which, “We’d better cross over to Sadie’s and drop off this fountain,” I told Maddie. “We have to be at the Mary Todd at ten thirty.”
“Does that mean no time for ice cream?”
“That means it’s too early for ice cream.”
“So we can come back for lunch.”
“My plan exactly.”
Maddie and I weren’t the only early birds to Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop. Steve Talley, Dolores’s nemesis, was laying out colorful flyers on the counter while Sadie’s daughter-in-law and hired help, Colleen, made a shake for him. In his expensive-looking suit and overcoat, he didn’t look as embarrassed as I would have, if caught ordering dessert at this time of day. I remembered old Mr. Mooney saying, “I never drink before noon, but it’s always noon somewhere.” I guessed it was always ice cream time somewhere, too.
“Glad I ran into you, Geraldine,” Steve said, handing me one of his flyers. I was tempted to check his eyes for pinpoint pupils but controlled my gaze. “I had these little FAQ sheets made up. Talley’s Restoration Plan will be coming before the city council early in the new year, and he could use your support.” He laughed, as if referring to himself in the third person was equivalent to the New Yorker’s cartoon of the week.
I took a flyer. “Very slick,” I said, meaning both the multicolor printing job and Steve’s manner. Steve had come to town only a couple of years ago, from a city somewhere between the Bronx and Lincoln Point, and had always dressed and acted much beyond his station as a city hall clerk. I found myself siding with Dolores on the matter of Talley’s Restoration Plan on that basis alone, even before I knew much about the proposal. Not a very intelligent way to make choices, I realized, but that’s what politicians counted on.
“Thanks, Steve,” I said. “I’ve heard some negative comments about the plan. Does this sheet trea
t both pros and cons?”
“There’s always going to be the naysayers out there. Right, Geraldine? But let me tell you”—he leaned into me. A secret between buddies—“this will be a feather in the cap of Lincoln Point, when we pull this off.” He swept his hand toward the south. “Slums no more.” He took my hand, pumped it up and down, made a tipping-the-hat gesture, and turned to leave.
“Don’t forget your shake, Steve,” Colleen said, winking at me.
Steve used his right hand to make a gun and shot Colleen with his index finger. He picked up his shake and was out the door.
I had a sudden burst of sympathy for Dolores Muniz and for the citizens of Lincoln Point.
“Don’t you feel like taking a shower now?” Colleen asked me, rubbing her hands on her pink-and-white butcher-style apron. She was about Skip’s age and a graduate student in political science. “When you have a minute, I’ll be happy to give you the cons about the Talley plan.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” I said.
“When she gets rid of me,” Maddie said, putting her head in position for a hair-ruffling.
Maddie had been fussing with Susan’s pint-size (literally) soda fountain. She’d wedged it between the napkin holder and the tip cup. I noticed she’d worked her magic on Colleen while I was bantering with Steve—she was now eating from a tiny tasting cup filled with strawberry ice cream.
“It’s made with real fruit,” Colleen said, a grin spreading over a face that was as Irish as her name.
With no cooperation from anyone in Lincoln Point, it was difficult indeed to watch over my granddaughter’s diet.
On the way to the Mary Todd in the car, Maddie and I talked about how much Colleen loved the little soda fountain and what we might order for lunch after my crafts class: hot fudge sundae for Maddie, and for me the chocolate malt shake I’d been craving for a week.
I had another agenda item for this short trip with just the two of us, however. I tried to make it sound casual. “I happened to notice that envelope you used to keep one of the ornaments safe,” I said to Maddie. “It was from the Stanford Medical Center. It’s only a few miles from here, remember?”
Mayhem in Miniature Page 7