Mourning In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  The simple version might involve kickbacks. I played it out: David uses his influence on the hotel’s executive committee to give contracts to Mellace, no matter what the competition. When Barry finds out, he blackmails David, the meeting goes wrong, and David is killed. Lots of holes in this plot, thanks to my ignorance of the ways contracts could be manipulated.

  After this morning’s sighting at Scrap’s, I couldn’t rule out a coconspiracy between Barry and Cheryl. So they could take over Mellace Construction? I wondered if Maddie could use Google to find out what the insurance policy on the company looked like. If only she were an adult and I didn’t have to feel so guilty about these thoughts.

  I’d checked out Barry’s marital status in Rosie’s updated yearbook—he was a bachelor. It crossed my mind that he himself might have wanted to connect with Rosie and was too shy, so he used David’s name as an intermediary.

  I regretted that I had no brilliant suggestion as to who might be a good choice to take on the movie role of Barry Cannon.

  It was disheartening to think that my students of thirty years ago seemed stuck in high school, in terms of the dynamics of relationships.

  The logistics of David’s murder were still fuzzy in my mind. Did someone lug a cumbersome trophy to the murder scene, or did David carry it into the woods himself for some unknown reason? It was Barry who toted David’s trophy into the hotel gift shop. He was much more capable than Cheryl Mellace, for example, of transporting the heavy object and using it on David’s head. But why would he be walking around with something he intended to use as a murder weapon?

  I’d meant to ask Skip about David’s estranged wife and son. Didn’t investigators always focus on immediate family first? It was possible that either David’s wife or his son was in custody now. I hoped that if that were the case, my man inside the LPPD would certainly alert me and spare me a lot of trouble and anxiety.

  I thought of the other one hundred or so alumni who had gathered for the weekend, and the myriad of friends, relatives, and business contacts—Larry Esterman, Rosie’s father, and the rest of the personnel of Callahan and Savage, for example—that David had accumulated over the last thirty years. Any one of them could have had a better motive than those on my personal suspect list.

  The awful use of glue brought ugly images that I tried to shuck, but it was a clue that had to be accounted for and didn’t fit with any suspect other than my miniaturist friend.

  Here again, I’d have to leave something for the LPPD to do to earn their large salaries.

  Miller’s was old school from start to finish, the kind of mortuary I was used to seeing when I lived on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, but not in sunny California where funeral homes were as likely as not to have skylights. The building was set back from a row of stores along Springfield Boulevard.

  Stained-glass windows depicted pastoral scenes, and Gregorian chant from a hidden source greeted the guests as we took our places on Miller’s dark wood pews. Except for the absence of statuary and incense, the room could have passed for the interior of a Catholic church, like those I’d seen when Ken and I toured Italy.

  I chose a seat near the back of the room, the better to survey who came and went. Especially Rosie. I flopped my large purse next to me, to save her a seat, though the room could easily have held twice as many as the hundred or so people I estimated to be present.

  I admired the floral arrangements surrounding the lectern at the front and wished I’d thought of sending one myself. This was not the official funeral service, I remembered, and there was still time for me to contribute.

  I’d picked up a flyer, tasteful, but clearly done in a hurry, with a recent photograph of David Bridges, with his birth and death dates, juxtaposed with the original yearbook photograph and write-up for him: “Our own strong, handsome BMOC, sure to succeed in life as he has on Abraham Lincoln High’s football field.”

  A feeling of sadness overtook me, perhaps because of the simple prose or the dejected faces of David’s peers all around me, or because it dawned on me that I hadn’t taken any time to grieve for a former student who died a violent death in my own hometown.

  I’d been so busy trying to protect Rosie, first from the disdain of the living David and now from being named his killer, that I’d forgotten who was the real victim.

  I hung my head, reflecting and feeling the loss.

  During the forty-five-minute service, while I listened to eulogies and sang “Amazing Grace,” I scanned the crowd, looking for Rosie and the other, more worthy suspects.

  I spotted the Mellaces, hand in hand a few rows in front of me. It was impossible to tell from their body language that they were anything but a devoted couple. I supposed that Walter and Cheryl might indeed have a happy marriage—on Friday night on the eleventh floor of the Duns Scotus, Cheryl and David might have been playing a friendly game of chess, and today on the sidewalk in front of Scrap’s, Cheryl and Barry might have been talking over old times.

  How did Cheryl keep her men straight?

  After eulogies from principal Frank Thayer, Coach Robbins, and Barry, we were all invited to share memories of David. Walter Mellace was first up, though he wasn’t even a classmate. He talked about how lucky some of us were to have known David thirty years ago, and how he wished he’d known him.

  “So many people, including my wife, spoke so highly of David,” he told us from the lectern.

  Walter was brief and made no mention of doing business with David himself. I found the presentation odd, but thought maybe Cheryl asked him to represent the family. Her talents in oratory matched her skill at decorating, I recalled.

  We heard from other classmates, with the expected praise of David’s wonderful personality and great loyalty to ALHS even though he no longer lived in Lincoln Point.

  I was too far back to see the front row, where I imagined David’s parents were sitting, and perhaps his ex-wife and son. I doubted I’d recognize them but hoped I’d get a chance to offer condolences today or Saturday.

  I half expected Rosie to pop up in a front row to proclaim her love of the deceased. I sincerely hoped she wouldn’t.

  I didn’t see Skip or any LPPD presence in the hall. Either they were off Rosie’s tail or they’d sent someone I didn’t recognize.

  As the program came to a close, I listened for the sound of handcuffs but heard none.

  The reception following the service was in a room at the back of the mortuary, a brighter, more airy space with large windows opening onto a neatly manicured lawn.

  Miller’s employees were easy to pick out, even among so many men wearing black. They stood at the edges of the crowd, hands behind their backs, earpieces showing. I wondered if they’d been alerted that there might be an arrest on their property this morning.

  Barry and I arrived at the doorway together. I was ready.

  “How are you holding up, Barry?” I asked him. I expected him to tell me he had an upset stomach. His wouldn’t be the first Scrap’s casualty I’d heard of.

  “I’m doing okay, Mrs. Porter. I still can’t believe he’s gone.” Barry seemed genuinely upset, his shoulders slumped and his lips in a downward arc. That could have been from remorse as much as from the grief of an innocent man, I reminded myself. “We go way back, you know. All the way to grade school.”

  “And you still had business dealings with him, didn’t you?”

  “Sort of.”

  I feigned surprise. “I thought it was more than ‘sort of.’ You work for Mellace Construction, right?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve been there a long time.”

  “And your company has received a number of contracts lately for work at the Duns Scotus, hasn’t it?” Barry opened his mouth to answer, but I ran on, intending to provoke him if possible. “Networking with friends is always a plus, isn’t it? I mean, for mutual benefit.” I held back on winking, hoping the inflection in my voice carried the message.

  Barry squinted at me, as if he was having trouble making
the shift to the new topic and to the sarcastic tone of his former, reserved English teacher. “You’ll have to pardon me if business isn’t the first thing on my mind right now,” he said.

  “I understand, Barry. I just want to make sense of what happened to David and to figure out who could have done this terrible thing. I’m trying to think of why anyone might want to kill your friend and business colleague.”

  It seemed to take a minute for Barry to digest what I was saying. He straightened his shoulders, which kept him still shorter than me, however. “With all due respect, Mrs. Porter, this is probably not the best time for a conversation like this.”

  “You’re right. But I value your input, Barry. I wanted to get your opinion also on who might have been sending presents to Rosie Norman, using David’s name.”

  Barry’s lips tightened, in anger, I thought, not in sadness this time. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m referring to candy, flowers, a bracelet.” I let that sink in. “Can we set a time to meet?” I asked him.

  “I don’t think so.” Barry tugged on his suit jacket, gave his neck a brief roll, and walked away.

  On the whole, I wasn’t proud of my first interview. Barry’s response left me as suspicious of him as I had been since Samantha identified him from his updated yearbook photo.

  If one of David’s best friends was innocent, however, I’d just done a rude, heartless thing.

  The tables were turned during my second try at information gathering, this time with Cheryl Mellace. Walter had evidently had enough of me in San Francisco: as I approached, he turned his back and busied himself serving punch to guests who’d lined up.

  “I know how close you both were to David,” I said to Cheryl, with a tsk-tsk sound. It occurred to me that I’d already used that line on her, but if she was guilty it might just make her nervous, which might prove to be a good thing.

  Walter kept his back to me, ladling a very pink punch into glass cups, engaged in chatter with a couple I didn’t know but recognized from the cocktail party and banquet.

  Cheryl yanked on my arm with what felt curiously like a pinch, through my beige-and-white seersucker jacket. A mild pain ran along my upper arm. She pulled me to the side.

  “Listen, Mrs. Porter. You’re not my teacher anymore, okay? And I don’t need you sniffing around or whatever it is you’re doing.” Cheryl’s eyes darted from me to her husband, still working intensely, like hired help, at the punch bowl. “I know Rosie was always your favorite pet and you’re trying to pin this on someone else. But just face it. She did it. I saw that stupid little dollhouse thing she made. She had it while she was stalking David in the hallway on Friday night. And she all but confessed when she wrote all over that thing and destroyed it.”

  I bristled at “stupid little dollhouse thing,” but kept my cool. “I thought you were the one who destroyed it,” I said.

  “I’m not the one the police are questioning. The police have their ducks in a row; they pulled her out of a hat, not me.”

  Cheryl never was any good at figures of speech. By the time I untangled the message enough to ask what she meant, how she knew the police had questioned Rosie (had they?), she’d walked away, the sound of her high heels ringing out on the hardwood floor.

  I was left convinced that a woman who called a room box a “dollhouse thing” was capable of murder and deserved her high place on my list of prime suspects.

  Two lines had formed in the room, one for the buffet table and one that ended at a couple who looked bereaved enough to be David’s parents. I saw no sign of a man young enough to be David’s son, but perhaps he would make an appearance at St. Bridget’s on Saturday.

  I clicked my phone back on, in case there was breaking news from Rosie, Linda, or Skip. I was concerned that I hadn’t seen Rosie, though that didn’t mean she wasn’t present in the crowd.

  Before I could decide which line to join first, I saw another attraction—standing by himself looking as though he didn’t know anyone in the room, was Duns Scotus maintenance supervisor Ben Dobson. I was 95 percent certain it was Ben, especially when I caught him in profile. Ben had an unusually large, hooked nose, all the more pronounced on his small frame. I edged closer on the pretext of getting into the Bridgeses’ reception line. I needed another view of him to be sure this was the employee who’d argued with his boss, David Bridges, on the night before he was murdered.

  I moved ahead in the line of people waiting to offer sympathy to Mr. and Mrs. Bridges, all the while keeping my eyes on the man I was increasingly sure was Ben Dobson. When I left my house I knew it might come to this—disrespect of a solemn occasion for the sake of an investigation. I hoped it didn’t show.

  I was framing an opening line for Ben, hoping to do better than I had with my approach to Barry, when I heard, “May I join you?” I hadn’t noticed that Henry was several people ahead of me in line. He had left his place and walked back to greet me.

  I started to answer Henry when a call came in on my cell phone and Ben Dobson left his post. I almost lost track of Ben. My abilities were strained by the need to triple-task.

  “Hi, Henry,” I said, clicking on my phone and watching Ben over Henry’s shoulder. My height made it slightly easier to accomplish all of this.

  “Go ahead and take that call,” Henry said.

  “Do you mind? I’ll just step over here for a minute.”

  Henry left the line also and stood far enough away to give me privacy. “I’ll wait,” he said.

  I wished it were Ben who’d said he’d wait. I could see him survey the crowd, much the same way Rosie had at the cocktail party. Was he also looking for an old flame as she had been? I doubted it.

  Worse luck, Ben Dobson was now headed toward the exit door. I glanced at my caller ID. Linda. One of a very short list of people whose calls I felt necessary to answer today.

  I smiled at Henry, picked up Ben’s retreating back, and clicked my phone on.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt you during the service,” Linda said. “I hope I waited long enough.”

  “It’s over. What is it, Linda?” I kept my eyes on Ben. I hoped the urgency I put into my voice would be Linda’s clue not to give me her customary long lead-in to a status report.

  “Rosie’s at the police station.”

  I glanced over at Henry. He stood where I’d left him, to the side of the line for David’s parents, arms crossed. I figured he’d planned on having me join him for what could pass for lunch at the buffet table. A pleasant enough thought, if I weren’t so busy.

  Ben was less than twenty feet from the exit.

  Back to Linda. “I’m glad to hear that, Linda, but I’m surprised Rosie skipped the service for David.”

  “She didn’t have a choice. They picked her up in Miller’s parking lot as she was going into the mortuary.”

  And Cheryl had seen the action, I realized. Her twisted metaphor had made no sense at the time.

  My heart sank, my eyes focusing now on Henry, now on Ben, and back. “They arrested her?” I asked Linda.

  “No handcuffs or anything,” Linda said. “She just got in an LPPD car.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I know people.” We both laughed at the sinister implication. “I mean, there’s a lot of business between us and Miller’s.”

  “Of course there is.” I pictured a large black van making not infrequent trips between the Mary Todd assisted living facility and Miller’s Mortuary.

  “It’s awful, Gerry. What are you going to do?”

  “It might not mean anything, if they weren’t arresting her. The most they can do is cite her for being uncooperative,” I said. I had to check that little detail in the police handbook, if there was one.

  Ben closed in on the exit to the parking lot. I carried my phone with me as I followed him, keeping stragglers between us whenever possible.

  He took his keys out.

  I took mine out. What was I doing?

  “I’
m sure Rosie would like it if you went down to the station right away, Gerry.”

  Ben approached a late-model sedan at the edge of the lot and got in.

  I approached my Ion and got in.

  I seemed to be on autopilot as I put my key in the ignition, turned on the engine, and started backing up. “I’ll get to the police station as soon as I can,” I told Linda, breaking the California hands-free law for a car in motion. “I have an errand to do first.”

  I turned my head to look over my shoulder as I rolled out of the parking spot in reverse.

  Henry Baker was standing in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his light summer jacket. I couldn’t see the details of his face, but his posture seemed dejected, as if he’d been given a brush-off, not that different from the one Rosie had experienced from David.

  It couldn’t be helped, I told myself.

  Chapter 15

  Miller’s Mortuary predated the row of stores on the east side of Springfield Boulevard. Its asphalt driveway was now wedged between a card shop and a do-it-yourself ceramics shop. I drove out, allowing about three car lengths between Ben and me. I was confident that he wouldn’t think it unusual that someone would leave the mortuary at about the same time that he did.

  I pulled out onto Springfield and turned left, following the dark blue, ordinary-looking car. A Toyota? A Ford? I’d never been good at identifying a vehicle unless it was a limousine or a pickup truck.

  I questioned my decision-making process. Faced with the choice of, one, comforting and aiding Rosie, who might be arrested at any moment; two, having an appealing repast with Henry, whom I was growing to appreciate as a friend; and three, tailing a man I thought might be a killer, I’d chosen the last. If nothing else, Ben Dobson was the only person in my recent history who’d shown a temper. And I’d elected to follow him to places unknown.