Mourning In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  Maddie and I each picked up a page for a closer look and read together, half out loud, half to ourselves. My first sheet was for an equipment upgrade on the heating and cooling system at the Duns Scotus in 2006. The RFP Issue Date was listed as February 6, 2006. The bids were submitted two months later.

  Maddie showed me a similar breakdown on her sheet, with an RFP going out on June 13, 2005, and bids coming in three months later. There were seven bidding companies, with Mellace’s bid the second highest. Once again, Mellace had an asterisk next to its name.

  “We’ve known this all along,” I said to Maddie (and myself), dejected.

  Skip had processed all this information already, and Barry had as much as confessed these irregularities. I’d been hoping that with a closer look, I’d be able to come up with more, something that tied David directly to fraud. Barry had mentioned an upcoming major remodeling project for the Duns Scotus, but either the RFP for that hadn’t gone out or the printouts we had were simply outdated.

  Reading these sheets, one could argue that Mellace Construction’s high bid was worth it because of their years of experience or excellent customer references. Or that Callahan and Savage’s low bid was balanced by poor qualifications of their staff or another criterion of which I had no clue. I had to resign myself to the fact that I’d come up with nothing new.

  “Let’s check the e-mails,” Maddie said, sweeping the RFP summaries to the side.

  We took our positions and focused.

  The correspondence was much easier to read, being word-based instead of number-based. Almost all the e-mails were from David Bridges to Mellace Construction, a few to other companies that had won a contract.

  “I guess it would look suspicious if Mellace got totally all the contracts,” Maddie said, at the same time that I was thinking it.

  The text of the e-mails was all the same, except for numbers filled in, for the amount of the contract and the agreed-to start and finish of the projects.

  I’d lost track of the number of dead ends in this case, while my friend was virtually a prisoner of an elaborate frame.

  “It’s hopeless,” I said.

  “Let’s not give up, Grandma. I’m not sure what we’re looking for exactly, but we might still be able to find it.”

  I was sorry that I’d expressed my despondency out loud. To humor my granddaughter I put a positive face on and said, “Okay, let’s try another approach. We could make up a time line, putting everything we have in chronological order, whether it’s an RFP summary or an e-mail. Can you do that while I see about something for dinner? You must be starving.”

  I was only half joking, since Maddie had been in a heavy-eating phase all summer, not that you could tell from her skinny body.

  “I’m starving for something good, like pizza.”

  “Ice cream sundae and brownies for lunch and pizza for dinner. I don’t think so. Try again.”

  “Then can you make tuna casserole?”

  Was Maddie the only contemporary eleven-year-old who even knew what tuna casserole was? “Tuna casserole it is.”

  “With no peas, and lots of potato chip crumbs on top.”

  “And you won’t tell your mom?”

  “Duh.”

  “Deal.”

  The best thing about tuna casserole was that I didn’t need to look at a recipe. I had my own variation, adjusted to Maddie’s taste at three years old right up to the present. No pimiento or almonds, and cream of celery instead of cream of mushroom soup. I did sneak in a better grade of cheese than the original recipe called for.

  I assembled the masterpiece and put it in the oven. In thirty-five minutes, we’d be set to go.

  “Something’s funny here,” Maddie called from one room away.

  I walked into the dining room and peered over her shoulder. “Show me.”

  “Okay, see this line on the RPFs?” I saw no value in correcting her. “It tells you when the bids were asked for. So, look at this one, Project Number 20988, for fixing the air-conditioning units in the hotel. It has the date January 10, 2005.” Maddie plucked an e-mail from the stack. “Then here’s the e-mail letter to the Mellace company saying congratulations, because they got the contract for Project Number 20988. That’s the same number. But the date is December 29, 2004. That’s why I was confused. I was trying to put January after December. Get it?”

  I certainly did get it. David Bridges informed Mellace of a winning bid and then sent out a request for bids ten days later. Was there a time warp due to New Year’s Eve 2004?

  There was no Callahan and Savage bid on Project 20988, and it was a small Duns Scotus project, thus showing that David spread the fraud around, among different size bids.

  “Are there any more pairs like this?” my voice carried an excitement that I know pleased Maddie.

  “I don’t know yet. Let’s look.”

  We created a most interesting time line, with three more cases of an RFP going out after Mellace was notified of the winning bid. I hoped what we’d put together constituted the kind of proof Larry Esterman had talked about, the kind that could put someone in jail, the kind that someone might kill for.

  Walter Mellace moved up a notch on my list of suspects. All the nice things Barry and Rosie had said and thought about David Bridges were taking their toll, and I envisioned David’s deciding to play it straight, something Mellace would not be happy about. I was sure the LPPD would be eager to know my conclusions.

  After I left a message at all of Skip’s numbers, Maddie and I sat across from each other over a steaming tuna casserole.

  Maddie was beside herself with agitation, trying to talk with large mouthfuls of noodles. “I can’t wait to tell Uncle Skip,” she said, though I know she had only the vaguest notion of the meaning of what she’d uncovered and understood only a fraction of the concept of fraud, as perpetrated by Mellace Construction and their coconspirators.

  “I’ll make sure Uncle Skip knows who the detective was this evening,” I said.

  Maddie shrugged. “We’re a good team, right?”

  I gave her my biggest smile. “The best.”

  A callback from Skip came about halfway through the second helping for each of us.

  “I hope your news is better than mine,” he said.

  My first thought was that Rosie skipped town; my second, that there was more evidence against her. My second thought was correct.

  “Let me talk to him, let me talk to him,” Maddie said, nearly choking. She’d come to my side and was leaning in, trying to speak into the phone. I still had a height advantage, so I stood up and held the phone out of reach, almost knocking over my coffee mug. What was this? A spiraling back to an impatient toddler? Eleven was a tricky age.

  “It’s about something else,” I told her.

  “We got another call,” Skip said.

  “About that other call—” I wanted to rush in and tell him what I’d learned about the last anonymous tip he’d gotten—about the convenient location of Rosie’s locker room box, right at the crime scene. There I was spiraling back from middle age to impatient youth.

  Skip talked over me. “Someone who was staying across the hall on the eleventh floor of the Duns Scotus saw the whole scene that night.”

  “Friday night?”

  “Yeah, he says he needed ice, but he checked the peephole first because he was trying to avoid someone. He’d heard the voices, and then when he looked he saw and heard the exchange on the threshold of Bridges’s room. He said Rosie looked furious.”

  “He could tell what her expression was through a peephole?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “And he called Rosie by name?”

  “Not exactly. He said ‘one of the two women outside Bridges’s door’ and I figured it wasn’t you.”

  “What’s this man’s name?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Was he from the reunion class?” Silence, which I took for “yes.” “Was he on the football t
eam?” More silence, therefore, another “yes.” “Well, can you at least check to see whether he’s one of the gang who hung out with David and Barry?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Does this new alleged tip mean that you’re bringing Rosie back in?”

  “None of this is anything but circumstantial. Unless we can put her in the woods at the time of the murder, we can’t arrest her. Too bad those trees don’t have cameras. I mean, to catch whoever did it.”

  “I know a lot of parents who would like that idea.”

  “I just remembered, you left me a message everywhere. What’s up?”

  “I have a couple of ”—a poke from Maddie made me wince—“Maddie and I have some information for you. Can you stop by?”

  “Not till a lot later. We have some visiting politicians coming in this week and they’re making us rehearse a show-and-tell for them. You know, I’d rather ride my bike to your house.”

  “You hate to ride your bike.”

  “That’s my point. If you come by here, I’ll squeeze you in.”

  It was already after nine o’clock, and a school night of sorts. I’d had a late night with Barry, and a long day, with stressful driving to and from San Francisco. I had to decide whether presenting the evidence we’d dug up was urgent. I thought not. The police already had Barry. Our little revelation was just icing on the cake, more a thrill for Maddie than something that would be a breakthrough in proving fraud, but nothing to clinch the murder case.

  I felt another trick coming on, on Maddie, who, I knew, could be in the car and buckled up in a matter of seconds.

  “That’s too bad, Skip. We’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. Maddie was hanging on my every word, so I made a sad face for show.

  “You don’t want to give the little redhead a vote, do you?” Skip asked.

  “Uh-huh, thanks. You have a good night, too.”

  Maddie had returned to the last of her tuna casserole. She drained her glass of milk and heaved a big sigh for a little girl. “We have to wait, huh?” It pained me to have deliberately kept her away from her big moment. “It’s a good thing I have a lot of homework to keep me busy tonight,” she said.

  In an unusual turn of events, Maddie told me she wanted to do some computer work early this evening. It seemed too much to hope that an interesting school project had balanced out the disappointment of a delayed meeting with the police.

  “Are you late turning in an assignment?” I asked, though she’d never been one to cram at the last minute.

  “No, I’m just excited about the programming and I’m almost finished.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  We cleared off the last of dinner dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher.

  “It’s nothing. You’d be bored.”

  “I might be able to learn.”

  “Okay, I need to fix some things on my avatar.”

  “Never mind.”

  “I’ll show you later.”

  “Let me know when you’re ready to say good night.”

  Maddie was at the door to her room. “Grandma?”

  “Yes?”

  “Knock, knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Digital.”

  “You mean digital your mother you flunked math? Or digital your father you lost the game? Or—”

  “Okay, okay.” She entered her room and closed the door.

  Tomorrow I’d confess that we were telling that one before she was born. Except we were referring to our fingers.

  I’d already started Maddie’s Christmas present and was glad to have a chance to work on it without prying eyes. My idea was to replicate her father’s old bedroom, which was now essentially Maddie’s room.

  Maddie’s things had been slowly crowding out Richard’s, but she seemed reluctant to do this and often said she missed his baseball mitt, now stored in Richard’s attic, or some other object that had been prominent in the room. I had enough photographs (and a good memory) of Richard’s room the way he left it, and I thought it would be a nice surprise to give Maddie a miniature version. Then she’d be free to decorate the life-size room any way she wanted.

  One of the hardest items to reproduce in miniature was Richard’s baseball bedding. The ball and bat patterns on novelty fabric were usually large, with each graphic several inches in width or length—not suitable for a bed that was itself only six inches long.

  Thanks to the younger members in my crafters group, who kept up with modern technology, I now had a solution to the problem. I was able to purchase a package of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets that were a combination of plastic on one side and fabric on the other and would go through my printer. I’d simply have to scan a photo of Richard’s comforter, size it as I wished, print it on the sheet, and remove the plastic backing. Voila, I’d have the exact fabric I wanted.

  If I couldn’t do it by myself (these things were never as easy as they sounded), I knew I could call on Karen or Susan in the group, so I wouldn’t have to invoke Maddie’s help.

  Tonight’s project, phase one, was to sift through photo albums to find the right view of the comforter. While I was at it, I’d select a photograph of Maddie and me, as she’d requested.

  I sat in the cool atrium and turned page after page of history, starting with the books dedicated to Richard’s preteen years. I found a few good candidates for photos to use, but I didn’t stop. I kept going through later albums, caught up in the reverie until I’d gone through Madison Porter’s birth announcement, infant years, and early birthday parties.

  When she came out in her soccer pajamas and her eleven-year-old body, I was startled into the present.

  She may have wondered why I hugged her tighter and longer than usual.

  “I’m ready to sleep,” she said.

  “I’ll be right in.”

  After I take a minute to ponder the passing of the years.

  Maddie was in bed, ready for a brief recap of our favorite moments of the day and a good-night kiss. I brought her a snapshot I’d found from Richard’s birthday party in the spring. Maddie and I were sharing a happy moment eating multilayer cake.

  She looked closely at the photo. “This is perfect. Thanks, Grandma.”

  “I’ll take it back for now, then, and put it in a frame.”

  “It’s okay. It’s better like this,” she said, standing it against the base of her lamp.

  I noticed she’d already turned her computer off.

  “I thought you were going to show me your atavar.” She laughed. “It’s avatar, Grandma. I forgot and shut down. And I’m ready to sleep, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “There were too many favorite things, today, anyway, Grandma,” she said. “I could never pick. There was class and Ghirardelli and talking to Marina and tuna casserole and finding the date mix-up and . . .”

  She trailed off, exhausted from the long list of wonderful things that had happened to her today.

  I hoped life would always be that way for her.

  Chapter 22

  I started my work on the model of Richard’s bedroom by cheating. I’d bought a tiny baseball glove from an online hobbies and miniatures supply store. Linda would be so ashamed of me. She, and many of the other crafters I knew, would have been manipulating pairs of tweezers, stitching tiny pieces of leather together, to make the glove. If I took that approach to my hobby, I’d get one thing done a month, if that. I was much too impatient.

  At a miniature show in San Jose last fall, I’d met a woman who was displaying a four-inch-by-six-inch quilt made from 576 pieces. Each piece seemed no bigger than what fell from my nail clippers.

  For me the joy of miniatures was in the originality and personalization of the scenes I made, not in the craft of making pieces more easily bought, like mahogany four-poster beds, or stuffed easy chairs with hand-stitched upholstery. Or like the rocking chairs Henry Baker turned out, I mused.

  In my own defense, I did add two or three hand
made pieces to each room box, and I had a few from-scratch specialties that I prided myself on.

  One item I loved to make was the tiny pair of eyeglasses I put into my scenes. I made these with needle-nose pliers and fine-gauge wire of different colors. Any clear plastic, cut to size, served as a lens. When I was really ambitious, I added tiny beads to the rims and earpieces, for a Hollywood look. For sunglasses I dipped into my boxes of envelopes with photographs and negatives from the days before digital cameras. Small pieces cut from the edges of negatives made a convincing sunglass lens. I doubted the memory stick Maddie talked about, that was in her camera, would prove as useful in twenty years.

  By ten thirty, I was ready to turn in. While working on a tiny trophy—cut out from foam board and painted bronze—for Richard’s bedroom, I’d thought over the facts of the David Bridges murder case. I’d been doing well, putting it in the back of my mind, until I took out a new container of tacky glue, and an image of David’s lips came to me. Once Maddie and I talked to Skip tomorrow about our interview with Marina, and our new evidence of fraud, I was finished. The only curious loose end was why Larry had stolen the bank record from my tote. And, of course who had killed David.

  I packed up the work in progress and slipped the box on the floor under a crafts table where Maddie wouldn’t find it. I looked forward to reading in bed, finishing my book club’s selection, The House of Mirth. I’d have to brace myself for what I knew was a devastating ending. When it was my turn to choose a book in a couple of months I planned to offer several more upbeat titles. I had to admit, though, I was tempted to try decorating a room box with the costumes of the times portrayed in the book, perhaps a turn-of-the-century ladies’ shop. It had been a while since I’d made a feathery hat or a parasol. I pictured a hat and accessories shop, with a row of pancake-shaped chapeaux in different pastels and piles of necklaces (thin, broken chains from my jewelry box) on the counter.