Mourning In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  I wanted to be out of there before that happened. I had no business chasing a robber anyway. I should be grateful that he wasn’t interested in injuring me any more than he had. I went back up the stairs, my body smarting in new places. I made my way back down the tile path toward the front desk, where I planned to report the incident, once I caught my breath.

  I mentally cataloged everything that was in my purse. The only good news was that I’d been carrying my dressy evening bag and had left my thick wallet with most of my cash, my driver’s license, and all my credit cards in the room. I was ready to relegate the matter to the “no great loss” category. The sorry bandit was about to be treated to a lipstick, a fold-up hairbrush, a package of tissues, and about fifteen dollars in bills.

  And the key card to my room.

  I felt a wave of nausea. The room where Maddie was sleeping. The key cards didn’t have numbers on them, but it was possible that this was not a random pilferer, that the thief knew which room I was in, and he was headed to it right now. He simply had to board the elevator at the parking level and go up to five.

  I looked in panic at the bank of elevators, about thirty feet away to my left, and at the front desk about the same distance on the right. Counting time for waiting and the trip to the fifth floor, my best bet was the desk.

  I pushed my way in front of a family of travelers who were at the counter. (Where were they when I needed them?) “Sorry, this is an emergency,” I said, out of breath. “My purse was just stolen, and I’m worried that the thief will head for my room.” Everyone cleared out of my way, and I supposed by now, after sprinting down and up a flight of stairs and across a bridge through a jungle, with a tear in my pants, I looked like the kind of woman you’d make way for.

  I faced Aaron, the only one on duty now. I felt like the lady who cried wolf. If Mike had by any chance reported on my real reason for wanting to talk to maintenance, there was no way Aaron was going to believe this story.

  I plunged in anyway.

  “Aaron, did you hear me? Someone just knocked me over and took my purse. I’m in five sixty-eight. Can you send someone from security up there right now? I’ll meet him there.”

  Aaron shuffled some papers on the lower level of the registration desk. “I’ll have to fill out a report.”

  I looked at Aaron, this time with true urgency. “Please,” I said. “My little granddaughter is in that room and I think someone may be breaking in right now.”

  The man of the family group, who had no reason to doubt me, spoke up. “You know you can just have him change the code from here and then the guy won’t be able to get in.” I shot Aaron a questioning look. “Unless he’s already in the room,” the man added.

  Not comforting.

  Aaron picked up a phone and punched in a number. “But that means Mrs. Porter won’t be able to get in either, so if the guy is already in . . .”

  “Aaron!” I heard my voice reach an eight on the Richter scale.

  “I’m sending someone up there immediately,” he said.

  “Thank you, thank you.” I turned and darted back toward the elevators.

  “Don’t you think you should wait here for security?” Aaron called out.

  No, I did not.

  The fifth floor was quiet, except for my clomping down the hallway toward room five sixty-eight. Hotel security must have had its own elevator since, much to Aaron’s credit, a tall, husky man wearing a dark jacket with a patch on his sleeve approached my room from the other end of the corridor. Indistinct radio chatter echoed down the hallway. I pictured guests being awakened from sleep, making their way to the peephole to see what was causing the commotion.

  We arrived at the door at the same time.

  “Thank you so much for coming. Please open the door. Please.” I heard my voice crack, all composure abandoned.

  “Stand back,” the man said. He didn’t draw a gun, and a closer look at his face, with lines of maturity around his eyes, told me he was probably a retired policeman. He was fit enough to take care of himself, I hoped. And Maddie, too.

  He inserted his keycard, a passkey I assumed, into the slot and pushed open the door. Against his wise advice, I slipped past him. I’d left the desk lamp on so I saw Maddie immediately, snuggled in her bed. I went over to be sure she was breathing. Then I took a breath myself.

  Meanwhile, the security man—I needed to learn his name, to thank him for his speedy response—checked the bathroom and the closet, behind the heavy drapes, and even used his extra-long flashlight (which could double as a weapon, I noticed) to look under the beds.

  “All clear,” he said.

  “Thank you . . . ?”

  “They call me Big Blue,” he said, smiling and extending his hand.

  “Now I’m sure you were a cop,” I said.

  I slept only fitfully, though Big Blue had promised that the entry code for the room had already been changed and said he’d come around often during the night to be sure all was well. Still, I shoved the desk chair under the door handle, hoping to get to it before Maddie woke up and saw it. I didn’t need to worry her. About every hour I thought I heard the doorknob rattle and reached for the phone, only to determine that it had been a dream, or the door to the next room, or a noise from outside. Or nothing at all.

  Big Blue had given me the choice of going downstairs to file an incident report tonight, thus leaving Maddie again, or waiting until morning. I chose not to leave my granddaughter this time, even though he himself offered to stay with her.

  Maddie had awakened briefly and accepted the explanation that I’d stepped out of the room for a minute and forgotten my key, so the nice man from the hotel let me in. She’d dropped back on her pillow and seemed to be off to sleep in a minute.

  I wondered how many years before she wouldn’t be able to do that.

  It wasn’t hard to talk Maddie into one last hour at the pool with Taylor before we checked out. So far I’d been able to shield her from the events of last night and I planned to keep it that way.

  The interview with hotel security was brief and relatively useless. As luck (for the thief) would have it, not all the lights in the garage were working last night. Thus, the security camera had only the fuzziest image of someone exiting the stairwell and running across the garage floor within a half hour on each side of the time I specified. Other than that, no one could say what had happened to the robber.

  By the time I’d repeated my story three times, to different personnel, none of whom were SFPD, my purse had been located in a trash can outside the exit door from the garage. The shiny beads on the black silk purse, put there myself in a fit of macro-crafting one day, had caught the eye of a hotel custodian.

  The purse was empty. I imagined the thief, tossing my lipstick and sundries aside, frustrated when he found little cash and no credit cards. The other option was too hard to accept: that all he’d wanted in the first place was the key to my room. And that one of those middle-of-the-night rattles was not a dream.

  Chapter 9

  Knowing that I’d left Maddie at the pool for a supervised kids’ water ballet class with her BFF temporarily set my mind at ease.

  “Most of your body is in the water,” Taylor had explained to Maddie, and then Maddie to me. “It’s mostly just kicking your legs up and flopping your arms around, in tune with some music,” Taylor assured me, as if I were the one who needed to be talked into it.

  With not a lot of time to waste before checking out, I headed for the hotel gift shop. Walking through the quiet lobby, I had an uneasy feeling, which wasn’t surprising after last night’s ordeal. Again, I wondered where everyone was. I thought San Francisco was one of the most visited cities in the country. Not this weekend.

  I bypassed the tile bridge that ran through the faux jungle and took the longer route, through a seating area for the hotel’s coffee shop, called Friars Minor. Only low-level plants lined this wide-open area. No place for someone to hide. Or jump out from.

  I ap
proached the gift shop, hoping that an Aaron-like person had the early morning shift. It bode well for the success of my mission that there were no other customers at this hour.

  I knew as soon as I entered the shop that getting what I wanted from the bored-looking young woman filing her nails behind the counter would require only a small percent of my talents. I imagined her sitting at the back of a classroom, tapping her desk, longing for something interesting to come her way. I’d seen the likes of her many times over.

  From my tote, I pulled out the unopened box of chocolates and the updated “yearbook” Rosie had produced. “Hey,” I said. “I wonder if you can help me with some romantic detective work I’m doing.”

  She looked up from her nails (that was a start) and raised her eyebrows. “What’s up?” she said, sounding like Skip and the rest of the twenty-to-thirty crowd.

  “Well, I got this nice box of chocolates from your shop”—I placed the box on the counter—“and I think it’s from an old flame.” I flashed a coy grin. “But, you know, I’m going to be really embarrassed if I have the wrong guy.” I flopped the spiral-bound yearbook over the box and tapped the cover. “His picture would be in here.”

  “Yeah?” she said, brightening. “When did you get the candy?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I knew the box hadn’t been in the room when we checked in. I couldn’t remember if it was there after the cocktail party. I was sure Maddie would remember, however, and wished I’d asked her when it first appeared. But then, it was never possible to ask my granddaughter a question without giving her the background she’d insist on.

  “Sometime late Friday evening,” I said, which I felt was as good a guess as any. “I just opened my door and there it was. There was a message on a card, but no name.” I tried to fake a blush.

  “Mmm,” she said, rubbing her palms together. The young woman had rings on every finger except her ring fingers. A wide silver thumb ring with a large turquoise stone was especially eye-catching. “I was here from four to midnight on Friday. I have to do inventory after we close. You’re lucky because, you know, the guys that work here . . . She whooshed her hand over her head to indicate how clueless her male colleagues were. “Who do you think it is?”

  I’d already stuck a piece of hotel notepaper in page thirty-six, toward the back of the book, where the faculty photos were laid out. A random choice. I opened the book to the spot and pointed, again at random, to Joel Mullins, who’d taught history at ALHS during the eighties. As far as I knew, Joel and his wife were happily married and traveling the world together. “I think it might be Joel,” I said.

  She held up the book for a better view and shook her head. “Nuh-uh. I’ve never seen this guy.”

  Good sign. She’d passed the “trick question” test.

  A young couple in nearly matching sweats came through the door. I was worried that their presence would end our research session, but my new BFF, the clerk with spiffy nails, handled their transaction quickly, telling me, “Don’t go away, okay?”

  She was mine.

  As soon as the couple exited with newspapers and trail mix, the ringed clerk rushed over to me. “Let’s start from the beginning,” she said. She held out her hand. “I’m Samantha.”

  “Mary Lou,” I said. Maddie’s mother’s name was the first to come to my lips once I made the quick decision not to use my own. Just in case my real name was on a hotel watch list somewhere, or Skip was monitoring my activity.

  Samantha, whose morning I was salvaging, I knew, took the book from me and opened it on her lap. Apparently her “Let’s start from the beginning” meant not only a name exchange but going to page one of the yearbook.

  She flipped pages, uttering sounds like “nuh-uh” and “mmpft” now and then, while I stewed and hoped no one I knew came into the shop. I imagined Henry Baker coming in with “Good morning, Gerry.” Which reminded me—Maddie and I were due to meet him and Taylor for brunch at ten when the girls had finished swimming.

  “Bingo,” Samantha said.

  I came to the present. “You found him?”

  “Yup. Here he is. I remember because he was carrying this big trophy, like for football or basketball or something. And I stored it in back here for him while he looked around and made up his mind.” She folded her arms and stepped back to admire her work. “Yup, it’s him.”

  I was glad she didn’t feel it necessary to point out the age difference between me and my Romeo, found early in the reunion class pages. On second thought, as with Aaron, we probably all looked the same vintage to Samantha. I was glad it wasn’t someone whose name began with Z; the shop couldn’t stay empty too much longer.

  I turned the book around to see whom she’d fingered.

  “Barry Cannon,” she read, as I was processing the photograph and caption. “Wow. He was senior class president.”

  I gulped. “So it was Barry?”

  “What? Is he married or something?”

  I shook my head no, though I wasn’t positive. I closed the yearbook before she could verify his marital status.

  “Sweet, huh? He’s cute. Did you guys date back then or something?” Samantha asked.

  I couldn’t disappoint her. “Yes, it was a long time ago. I had no idea he still cared after all these years.”

  “So maybe you’ll get back together now? Woo-hoo!”

  “Thanks a lot, Samantha,” I said, packing up to leave. “You really helped a lot.”

  “You made my day,” she said, in a convincing tone.

  “I’m glad.”

  I’d reached the threshold between the shop and the lobby when I heard Samantha’s voice again. “Hey, Mary Lou?” I almost blew my cover by not responding. “Go for it, okay?” she said.

  I planned to.

  I took a seat in a cozy corner in the lobby. I sat on a wide easy chair with my back to the tile bridge, the boulder, and most of the jungle area with their unpleasant associations. I needed to review everything I knew and try to make sense of it.

  I had about a half hour before I should pick up Maddie and get ready to meet Henry and Taylor for brunch. I took out my small notepad and pen. I knew that most of my notes would be mere doodles as my brain worked over bits of information, but the physicality of the writing and scribbling helped me focus in situations like this.

  I decided going backward would be the easiest process. I called up the image: Barry Cannon with a sports trophy, buying candy for Rosie and delivering it in David’s name. I thought it was a safe bet to believe Samantha, who had passed too many other tests to have made an error identifying Barry. And if nothing else, I had a sense that she was very good with people and faces.

  First task: find out if Barry had ever won a sports trophy of his own (I doubted it) or if he’d been carrying David’s trophy, the murder weapon, into the shop. For now, I’d have to assume those two options were the only ones. I couldn’t remember whether there had been a trophy on the stage at the ALHS groundbreaking ceremony. Barry himself was small-framed, not an athlete, unless it was at a sport that got less attention at ALHS than the big three of football, basketball, and baseball.

  At the very least, Barry seemed guilty of overseeing the delivery of the presents to Rosie, leading her to think David was courting her, with or without David’s knowledge. It was a slim motive, but a motive nonetheless, to think that David found out what Barry was up to and a fight ensued. Slim, I repeated to myself, but not zero.

  I found Barry’s page in the yearbook to see what he’d been up to since his well-written Dickens paper. I did a quick read of the text and saw no mention of participation in sports. I moved on to Training and Education—it seemed Barry was a CPA. He now worked as the chief financial officer in the accounting office of Mellace Construction Company.

  Small world, and not just for miniaturists. I filed the information under “what a coincidence” and moved on.

  More accurately, I moved back, to my conversation with Skip, who had claimed to have more to share eventu
ally. I had a sinking feeling that whatever it was, it wasn’t good news for Rosie. I had to decide whether to add to his arsenal by producing the tiny locker mirror I’d found in David’s room after the murder.

  If I were a trained interrogator, as he was, I’d skirt around how I found the mirror and get him to tell me how and where he located the vandalized version of the miniature locker room Rosie had built.

  I tried to weave in the loose ends—a disgruntled (based on one interaction) employee who quit the morning David’s body was found; Walter Mellace wanting something from David’s room. For a moment I considered that it might have been Walter who stole my purse, thinking I had that “something” he’d hassled me about on the eleventh-floor hallway, in my purse (could the something be that small?) or in my room. Given Walter’s heft, however, I guessed I’d still be unconscious in the Duns Scotus jungle if he’d been the one to bump into me on the bridge.

  I had Callahan and Savage to fit into the scheme also. The only connection I could put my finger on was that both they and Walter Mellace were in professions associated with buildings. I thought of my crafts rooms. So was I, you could say.

  Another loose end fluttered to the front of my mind, demanding attention. I remembered what Rosie had told me when we woke up in adjacent beds on Saturday morning. She’d come in at two, she said, after a workout at the hotel’s fitness center.

  This one was easy. I didn’t even need Aaron or his equivalent. I went to the concierge’s desk and picked up a hotel brochure from a pile in the corner. I ran my finger down the list of amenities and hours of availability. Room service was offered twenty-four hours; same-day service laundry pickup was before seven in the morning; the fitness center—my heart sank—closed at midnight.