Mourning In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  It was not a pretty sight—Rosie madly writing her hate message on the miniature lockers, then, with great concentration, gathering materials from hotel supplies and fashioning the tiny bottle.

  “Then you—what?—threw it away?” I was still trying to figure out how the police got hold of it. Rosie blew her nose and nodded at the same time. “I was on my way out and I started to feel so angry again. I just shoved it in the wastebasket in the room. Who needed it? I’m surprised it survived at all.”

  “Good glue comes through again, huh?” I said, wondering at what point the police got hold of it.

  A brief, thin, but welcome smile crept over Rosie’s face at my glue comment.

  Linda kept extra clothes in her locker at the Mary Todd, a storage place much more elegant than the rusted old gray ones that ALHS provided its students. Rosie was invited to borrow any of Linda’s pants and shirts, and she started to clean herself up. The easiest logistics would have been for Rosie to show up at the police station soon after I’d had a chance to talk to Skip.

  “If you leave here an hour after I do, that should do it,” I said.

  “Don’t let me go alone, Gerry,” Rosie said, reminding me of her plea before heading for David’s fictitious private party. “I’m not sure I’d be able to get there.”

  This time I held firm. I needed to reclaim my family life and spend some time with Maddie and Beverly. (Oh, and Nick.)

  “I’d rather not come all the way back here to get you. It might be good if you drive your own car to the station,” I said, thinking, It’s the grown-up thing to do.

  Rosie didn’t look happy about that arrangement but before she could speak, Linda rescued her. “I’ll take her,” she said.

  Usually moody and often disgruntled, Linda came through big-time when anyone appeared ill or needing help. I learned that firsthand when she dropped all extraneous life tasks and helped me care for Ken during the last weeks of his life.

  I gave Linda a smile that she probably thought was for only her present kindnesses.

  I had one more question for Rosie, a speciously easy one. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about your dad,” I said. “How’s he taking this?”

  “I haven’t talked to him. Isn’t that awful. But he never liked David back then because of, you know, the date.”

  “The date gone bad.” I had no idea exactly what had gone wrong but now was not the time to ask.

  Rosie took a seat on the bed. She had a pair of Linda’s elastic waist pants in her hands. If she tried to hang her head any lower, she’d have swept the floor with her hair. “Uh-huh.”

  “Your dad still works, I understand. For Callahan and Savage?” Just evaluating Henry Baker as a possible future source of information.

  “He consults for them, mostly. He prepares bids, things like that.”

  “Why are you asking about him now?” Linda asked. I knew she meant “on my time.”

  I patted Rosie’s head. “I’m just trying to get Rosie back to normal and remind her that many people love her.”

  Not bad for a quick cover story.

  Linda walked me to the front door, leaving Rosie to finish dressing in her clothes. Once we entered the main wing of the home, we ran into a few people I knew, mostly seniors who were enrolled in my crafts classes. We got away with a quick wave at Emma and Lizzie, veritable twins they were such close friends, and one of the best woodworkers I’d ever met, Mr. Mooney.

  Seeing the old man in his trim cardigan reminded me of Henry, my newest woodworker friend. I found myself planning a way to initiate another visit to his shop. So that I could see the apartment complex he’d built for his granddaughter, and so that Maddie and Taylor could play together. There was also that unresolved computer joke begun at brunch this morning in San Francisco: why did the witch need a computer? I was eager for the punch line.

  Those were the only reasons I could think of for contacting Henry Baker.

  “I have news from the front,” Linda said, sounding like a war correspondent from the forties. “I was chatting around while I was on the floor and found out the memorial service for David will be next Saturday at St. Bridget’s. Kind of funny, huh? I mean Bridges and Bridget?” Linda’s nervous laugh trailed off for lack of company. “What is it with me today, Gerry? You know me, I never make this kind of joke.”

  “We’re all a little off this weekend,” I said.

  “But there’s more,” Linda said. “His classmates have decided to have a memorial service tomorrow morning so people who came from a distance would have a chance to participate. They won’t have the . . . uh . . . deceased, of course, but his friends will be able to say good-bye. The announcement made the local news.”

  “It sounds like something not to be missed.”

  Linda put her hand on my shoulder to slow me down to her walking pace. “I’m not through. I heard that the Mellaces—really Cheryl, because Walter didn’t go to ALHS—are paying for everything.”

  “Nice of them.”

  “Plus they’re making a second donation to the new athletic field for a special plaque with David’s name.”

  Linda had truly become the eyes and ears of the world.

  “They already had a little program for David at the banquet and special mention of him at the groundbreaking,” I told her.

  She shrugged. “I guess when you’re a VIP in the class, you get as much attention when you’re dead as when you were alive.” Linda’s hand went to her mouth to stifle another shaky laugh. “Sorry,” she said.

  I patted her shoulder. “Rosie will be out of here soon,” I promised.

  Skip wasted no time getting the upper hand at our meeting. He slid a multipage printout across the newly polished table. The police building had only a skeleton crew on Sunday afternoon, so we appropriated the conference room for our tête-à-tête. Not that it was much more attractive than Skip’s cubicle. The no-frills space, with room for about eight people around the table, had the same muddy colors on its walls as the cubicles’ partitions. The big luxury was that the room had four walls and a door, and a working air-conditioning unit. Skip had also managed to have cans of ice tea available. Not as good as Linda’s concoction, but refreshing nonetheless.

  “What’s this?” I asked him, though the headings on the sheets said it all. RFPs. Bidders Awards. Names like Mellace Construction and Callahan and Savage Refrigeration stuck out as if they’d been written in a crafter’s glittery marker or puff paint.

  “A little something Maddie showed me. She doesn’t know what connection this all has to the Bridges case, and neither do I. It’s just a little something she printed out.”

  I couldn’t believe Maddie had . . . what . . . flipped on me? Gone over my head? There must be a popular term for what she’d done. Engaged in a little passive-aggressive attention getting? Gotten even with me for dumping her yet again at a pool, this time at Beverly’s?

  Given up on me and gotten her hooks into her uncle was probably a good-enough description.

  I didn’t know the connection of this information to David’s murder any more than Maddie or Skip did, but the links I did know made me uneasy. In my mind I saw a straight, incriminating line leading to lockup, with yours truly on the wrong side of the bars.

  I now realized what Maddie had done: my Internet search for Callahan and Savage was what had alerted her to my interest in them, and she’d probed further. Maybe this was what could be called hacking?

  The rest of the thread was unsettling. Working backward: my Internet search had been sparked by Walter Mellace’s near assault and outright accusation in the hallway, that I was representing Callahan and Savage when I was snooping around the late David Bridges’s suite.

  And said snooping had been a direct result of my pilfering of the Duns Scotus key card from Skip’s desk yesterday.

  If I answered the Google search question for Skip, it was a slippery slope back to a very bad decision on my part, in the office down the hall.

  I took a long dri
nk from my can of ice tea, aware of Skip’s gaze boring down on me. Technically (I was beginning to like that word), he hadn’t asked me a question and I didn’t have to talk.

  I wished I’d had a chance to look at Maddie’s data before now, but what was done was done. I wondered if I were strong enough to reduce the size of Maddie’s ice cream portion as an incentive never to do something like this again.

  As usual, Skip won the silence contest. I cleared my throat and answered a non-question. “I think there was some competition between Callahan and Savage and the Mellace Construction Company, and I was checking it out.”

  “What’s the connection with Bridges? Because I know you wouldn’t have been looking into this unless there was one.”

  “You don’t think I might just have been browsing, getting familiar with the World Wide Web?”

  Skip rolled his eyes. “Can’t we do this the easy way for once?”

  I took a breath. The easy way for Skip was the hard way for me. “Let’s look at the printout,” I said.

  “I guess the answer is no, we’re not taking the easy route.”

  “Bear with me,” I said, not knowing what that meant, other than a major stall tactic.

  The printout had a list of recent contract awards for major facilities, including several hotels and office buildings in San Francisco and in the East Bay. I scanned page after page titled Request For Proposals, with the project name, such as a remodel or an equipment overhaul. The forms gave the names of the primary companies bidding for the job, a reference to what the companies had offered by way of promised work and expected compensation, and a score for each company. The winning contractors and the dates of the awards were also indicated.

  “I did a quick review of these RFPs,” Skip said. “All of these are for works completed. Nothing newer than last spring.”

  “Where did Maddie get these?” I wondered aloud.

  “I’m guessing she went into the building commission’s site. Some of this has to be public information.”

  “She’s a whiz, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, I’m glad I’m not dealing with her right now.”

  I gave him an I’m-offended look. No need to prolong that topic, however.

  Skip had highlighted the Duns Scotus jobs in yellow. Some were small, for repairs and remodeling, others were large, like a complete overhaul of the hotel’s several dining facilities.

  I scanned the information on the highlighted jobs. “It looks like Mellace has received all the contracts for the Duns Scotus in the last five years, including all the refrigeration contracts that Callahan and Savage bid on.”

  “Right. We don’t know that these were all the projects, however.”

  “But even so, Callahan and Savage bid lower on the ones we have here and they still didn’t get the contracts,” I said. “I thought the low bidder always won.”

  “Not necessarily. First, not all corporations have the requirement for competitive bidding. Second, even if they do, the winning award has to do with the reputation of the company, the timeline, the staffing, what side benefits they’re offering. A lot of things.”

  “Which is what these scores are all about.” I may not have been a whiz, but I could be a fast learner.

  “There’s a cycle for this kind of thing. Sometimes RFPs go out to third parties, like brokers. The broker will solicit proposals from companies, then sift through all the applicants and try to match the needs of the buyer with the needs of the seller.”

  My head was dizzy. I wished I’d paid more attention when Ken talked about this part of his business. Not that he was a builder or an expert at trades himself, but as an architect he’d dealt with this network of people and forms over the years.

  It seemed that lately I’d been paying the consequences of inattention to things that would turn out to be useful. Like Rosie’s ramblings during crafts night and Ken’s humble opinions on contracts and subcontracts and sub-subcontracts.

  This printout said one thing—either Mellace was the absolute best contractor around, especially for the Duns Scotus, or the Duns Scotus would have no other. It was as fishy as the grading procedures of some ALHS teachers I knew during my career.

  “Who decides all this?”

  “Good question,” Skip said. “Might not hurt to find out.”

  And I had a good idea where to start. With Walter Mellace, if anyone could get to him. And with Rosie Norman, the daughter of a Callahan and Savage employee, if she would just show up.

  It was almost an hour since I’d left the Mary Todd. I expected Skip to get a call from the duty cop downstairs any minute, telling him one Rosie Norman wanted to see him.

  The phone in the conference room rang at that moment.

  Good timing, except I could tell from Skip’s end of the conversation that it wasn’t a Rosie alert.

  “Okay, I guess I know where I stand,” Skip said in a light tone. “Do I have to serve them ice tea?”

  A soft laugh and Skip hung up.

  “We have to move,” he said.

  “I’m not through with you,” I said.

  “Back at you. Can you wait for me in my office? It seems some bigwigs want the conference room. I’ll clean this up and be right there.”

  “No problem.”

  In truth, it had been my greatest wish to be alone in Skip’s office. Even as I walked past the empty cubicles I reached into my tote and pulled out the key card to David Bridges’s room. I fingered it all the way down the row of offices, my heart racing in time with my quick steps.

  I entered the dull orange-and-brown-felt cubicle, relieved to find Skip’s desk and extra chair cluttered as usual. I immediately knocked a stack of folders from his visitor’s chair. I made sure papers didn’t fly too far, just enough distance for me to have to gather them and place them on the corner of the desk, amid other stacks. And in pulling them together, I managed to slip the key card between who knew what case and who knew what other case.

  By the time Skip returned, I was settled on the chair. I’d taken out my notebook and pen and was making notes on the RFP review we’d just been through. Calm as can be.

  “Turns out the meeting’s not just for bigwigs. I need to be at it, Aunt Gerry. We’ll have to continue this later.”

  Another plus. Rosie hadn’t shown up yet and I was running out of delay tactics.

  I got up to leave. I tapped the stack of folders I’d knocked over and replaced on his desk. “Oh, I dropped some stuff when I moved things from the chair,” I said. “So this pile might be a little mixed up. Sorry.”

  I felt my homicide detective nephew could see right through me. But not directly, because I kept my eyes cast down the whole time I was talking.

  I expected repercussions at some time, but for now, he let me off the hook.

  Chapter 12

  My thin towels, with their faded blue stripes, some from the earliest years of our marriage, looked pitiful after the plush vanilla bath sheets at the Duns Scotus. Two nights at a San Francisco hotel made my house, and most of my belongings, look equally shabby. I wasn’t usually interested in flowery scents, but I rummaged for the fragrant soap I’d taken (not pilfered, as I do in cops’ offices) from room five sixty-eight and put it on my cosmetics shelf. A definite upgrade.

  I reminded myself of the trade-off for the hotel amenities: I’d been accosted in an elegantly appointed hallway and had had my purse stolen in their thickly verdant lobby. I resolved to go back someday when I wasn’t hanging out with murder suspects.

  I was in desperate need of some time at home, mediocre though it was, and of time with my family. I also needed to get to a miniature project soon to help me relax and gain perspective. Very often I solved a problem only when I stopped thinking hard about it and escaped to a different world for a while—a world where a small suction cup could be turned into a bathroom plunger or a bead from a broken necklace could be the base of a tiny lamp.

  Today, however, my safe world of miniatures was marred by visions of
Rosie’s trashed locker hallway. I had to keep reminding myself that the red in the I hate David scrawl was only lipstick and not David Bridges’s blood.

  I had about a half hour alone, enough for a quick shower and unpacking, before Beverly and Nick would be bringing Maddie back. The best of both worlds.

  Maddie called from Beverly’s as they were leaving.

  “Can I invite Taylor to come over tonight, Grandma?”

  “Of course.”

  I wondered who would drive Taylor to my house.

  On Sunday evening, my home was just the way I liked it—crowded with family and friends. Beverly and Nick had provided pizza for all and I’d phoned Sadie’s for a delivery of enough ice cream for a whole football team. The flavors included Maddie’s favorite triple chocolate, though I was still a bit put out about the way she’d wormed herself into the investigation without me.

  I needed a serious discussion with my granddaughter about the printout caper. It wasn’t clear why it bothered me so much that she’d delivered the material to Skip directly. Unless it meant that I was afraid she was growing apart from me. I waved my hand at an imaginary audience in my head. Ridiculous, I told myself, on both counts.

  June Chinn, Skip’s almost-fiancée, caught up with me in my pantry as I was searching for a new box of crackers. In faded denim shorts and a black tank top, June could have been a top model in the “short women” category. Her latest style statement was a tattoo on her lower back—the area that was universally visible now on young women as soon as they stretched or bent over. June had chosen a simple design, the Chinese symbol for peace.

  She’d brought a large salad with bean sprouts, which she’d prepared in her own kitchen, next door to mine.

  “I’m sorry about all that’s going on here,” she said. “But in a way, I’m glad Skip was called back before the funeral in Seattle. He doesn’t do well at that kind of thing. Well, nobody does, but you know what I mean.”