Murder In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  Before we had the chance to chat in private, however, my landline rang.

  I excused myself and took the call in the kitchen. I stretched the cord to the back hallway, out of earshot. It was testimony to how involved I was in the case that I hoped it would be either Skip or Rosie.

  It was only my son. Richard and Mary Lou called from Lake Tahoe, elevation approximately seven thousand feet, to see how things were going in the lowlands.

  I was glad my call-waiting signal came before I passed the phone on to Maddie, who was prone to giving too much information to her parents.

  “Can we call you back, Mary Lou? I should take this other call,” I said. Not my usual telephone protocol, but once I recognized Rosie’s cell phone number, my son and daughter-in-law were immediately relegated to second place.

  “No problem,” Mary Lou said. “We’re in for the night.” I pictured their cozy retreat on the beautiful lake, far from the murky waters of Lincoln Point.

  I clicked the button on my phone and heard a cough and a sniffle.

  “I can’t do it, Gerry,” Rosie said. “Not until tomorrow afternoon.”

  I didn’t have to ask why she needed the extra time. Rosie wanted to attend the memorial for David and was worried that she’d be arrested if she went to the station today. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to pay her last respects first.

  “Where will you be until then?” I asked.

  “It’s probably better if you don’t know.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Linda stayed long enough for me to pull her aside and let her know that Rosie called. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I didn’t know how I was going to tell you that she escaped,” she said. She threw up her hands. “She’s wearing my clothes, Gerry.” As if that was the biggest problem in either of their lives.

  Beverly, Nick, and June followed soon after Linda departed. Linda did seem less tense than when she’d arrived with her burden of information about Rosie’s change of plan.

  It seemed strange not to be able to brainstorm with Beverly, but her life had changed for the better and I was happy for that. At the door, she leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Good luck,” she said, a slight nod in the direction of Henry, who was being led by Maddie and Taylor toward the crafts room.

  “No, no. It’s not like that,” I assured Beverly. I waved at Nick, waiting at the car, and at June, turning up her driveway. “Henry and I have a lot in common, and we might become friends,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, her grin spreading. “Well, let me know how that goes, okay?”

  I hoped my face would return to its normal color by the time I got to the crafts room.

  ***

  Maddie seemed to be doing well with her tour of my crafts room. I joined them and took in the utter disarray, with more works in progress than finished pieces. In one corner was a room box, newly painted in blue and gold, the colors of the University of California, Berkeley. (Richard, formerly a big fan of their football team, was now torn since he worked at Stanford, their great rival.) The scene was on its way to being a miniature dorm room. I hoped to have it finished for one of my GED students whose daughter would be starting at Cal as a freshman in a couple of weeks, the first in her family to go to college.

  My Christmas scene, the one I was working on for our Alasita project, stood pitiful and boring in the center of the table. Sure, the stockings hanging on the faux brick fireplace looked decent, especially after I’d nearly lost the tips of my fingers embroidering our names on the tops, and I’d started to add toys-a wagon and a large (relatively speaking) doll. But it needed something to make it different from the low-end greeting cards of the season, sold in all the chain card stores. I didn’t have any ideas about what that could be.

  Here and there on the work surfaces in my crafts room were tiny easy chairs piled with miniature books. Lamps, coat racks, teacups, and snacks were scattered around each chair, the raw material for separate scenes, about seven in all. My process was to add a rug or an afghan and other accessories to the centerpiece chairs and let the arrangements sit for a while before I committed to them. I liked to look at the various compositions over a period of days or weeks and see which combinations looked best. Once a particular design stood the test of time, I sealed it with glue, forever.

  With Henry standing next to me and Maddie prattling on about each scene, the unfinished room boxes looked even more pathetic. As did the chaotic assembly of pieces of yarn, toothpicks, body parts (of dolls), and fabric scraps.

  When Henry turned to address me, I wanted to close my ears against the remark.

  “I’ve never seen such a happy and creative workshop,” he said. I wished I had the presence of mind to say “thank you.”

  Henry fingered a small, white plastic cylinder, one of dozens on my table. “These silica gels are everywhere. They come with everything I purchase lately, even a pair of shoes. Are you collecting them?”

  In answer, I reached behind to my sparsely populated “finished” shelf and picked up three of the tiny cylinders, known formally as moisture absorbers. I’d printed food labels from an Internet site of “printies” and wrapped them around the cylinders. I painted the top gray to complete the fiction.

  “Presto. We have cans of diced tomatoes, sliced beets, and marinated peach halves,” I said, wondering why in the world I’d said “presto.” Henry’s presence seemed to bring out unusual responses in me. “I was determined to do something with these, so I’m collecting them to put on pantry shelves in my next general store or kitchen.”

  Henry shook his head. In admiration, it seemed. “I can’t wait to see that.”

  “Wow,” Taylor said.

  Maddie beamed, and I felt a little less ashamed of my crafts room.

  “I’ll tuck you in,” I told Maddie, who was sweet enough to let me use the phrase long after she’d outgrown it. Eleven o’clock bedtime was much too late for a “school” night, I knew, but I was a weak grandmother. Also a sneaky one. I’d conveniently waited until now to tell Maddie about her parents’ phone call. Buying time.

  “I didn’t think you’d want to tuck me in tonight,” she said, a sheepish look on her adorable, freckled face. “I thought you might be mad at me.”

  “Were you mad at me?” I asked, perched on the side of her bed. She always used her father’s old bedroom on her visits and had been sorry to see his original preteen bed go a couple of years ago when it became nothing more than a board and a few feathers.

  “You mean, did I give Uncle Skip the printouts because I was mad at you?” Maddie asked. “Maybe a little.” She pouted. Still adorable. “You kept leaving me and going off to do interesting things.”

  Like being run down and having my purse stolen. Maddie didn’t know about the former incident, and was only vaguely aware of the latter, since Duns Scotus’s gallant security man, Big Blue, had interrupted her sleep.

  “I thought you were having a good time with Taylor and the other kids in the program. And you had a lot of homework to do on your laptop for camp.”

  Something like “Pssshht” came out at the mention of homework. Apparently the little Porter genius could manage a lot more than homework on any given day.

  “You know I love to investigate with you. Then even in Lincoln Point, you dropped me in a pool.” She hardly finished the sentence without breaking up in laughter.

  “Sometimes it’s too dangerous, sweetheart. And I do tell you everything eventually.” Almost everything.

  I could always tell when Maddie’s waking minutes were numbered. Her speech slurred a bit and her eyelids fluttered, as if she were trying valiantly not to miss anything. She looked now as though her time was about up. I kissed her forehead and got up to leave.

  Early as it was for those of us who didn’t have school or camp in the morning, I was ready to turn in myself.

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t give everything to Uncle Skip.”<
br />
  I perked up. “What else do you have, sweetheart?”

  But Maddie had nodded off for good, leaving me hanging.

  Which was just as well, since I could hear my phone ringing in the other room.

  A phone call this late at night wasn’t likely to be a casual “hi” or a quick chat to set up a lunch date. Or Cindy at Cooper’s in Benicia calling to tell me the miniature armoire and new brand of glue I’d ordered had come in. I’d already returned Richard and Mary Lou’s call. Who else was left?

  I recognized Skip’s cell phone number, then his voice.

  “Remember I told you I’d have more evidence soon?” he said. “Well, that’s what the meeting was about this afternoon. So, now I really need to see Rosie, and if you really don’t know where she is, I’ll have to put out a warrant to bring her in for questioning.”

  My heart skipped. “What’s the new evidence, Skip?” “What does it matter?”

  “Skip?”

  He let out a loud sigh. “It’s about the glue.”

  “The glue?” Was this, after all, a call from Cooper’s?

  “We believe that the glue Rosie used on the things in the little box matches the glue used… elsewhere.”

  Things in the little box? When this case was closed, I’d have to give Skip a refresher course on miniaturists’ jargon. “Elsewhere? You mean at the crime scene?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Something was off about my nephew’s communication skills tonight, but that conversation, too, would have to be put on hold. There were more pressing questions. “How in the world did you get that information so fast? You’re always reminding us how crime labs are understaffed and underfunded, how they don’t come up with results in a jiffy like on television or in crime fiction.”

  “That’s absolutely true. Some of the fancy equipment you see doesn’t even exist, let alone in regular police labs. And the backlog is beyond anyone’s imagining.”

  Uh-oh, I opened one of Skip’s favorite topics. I had to move fast. “So what happened here? It’s Sunday night, maybe forty-eight hours since David was murdered and you have a DNA match for glue?”

  “Cute, Aunt Gerry. Glue DNA. But, hey, go figure. They train the lab rookies on weekends and this looked like a more interesting, quick little task than the other three hundred jobs in backup. That’s why it’s preliminary, but it’s enough to pick Rosie up for questioning. Now, do you or do you not know where she is?”

  “I don’t, honestly. But…”

  “But?”

  I couldn’t take the chance that Rosie wouldn’t show up tomorrow afternoon as she promised. She wasn’t herself. “I know where she’ll be tomorrow,” I said. “And you probably do, too.”

  “Why would I?”

  “I assume you’re going to the memorial for David? I thought cops always went to memorial services, expecting the killer to show up. Or is that another myth like the modern crime lab with instant turnaround time?”

  “The funeral’s not until Saturday.”

  I told him about the special service on Monday, to give out-of-town classmates the chance to pay their respects.

  “You’re going to earn a badge, yet,” Skip said.

  “Not if it means working this late all the time.”

  Chapter 13

  What grandmother takes advantage of a little girl?

  Much as the idea appealed to me, I stopped short of withholding breakfast from Maddie if she didn’t tell me what it was she’d held back from her uncle Skip.

  “Remember, just before you fell asleep you told me you discovered something else while you were searching the Internet?”

  Maddie grinned, sedately, since her mouth was full of a very bad sugarcoated cereal that Mary Lou would never buy. “I was going to use it later.”

  “You mean to strike a better bargain?” I asked, working my tickling magic on her skinny torso at the same time.

  My finger work had the desired effect. Maddie went to her room and came back with a sheaf of papers that looked like e-mail printouts. A quick look showed they were all from David Bridges, to various contractors and subcontractors. I recognized some of the same names that were on the material she’d given to Skip. I tried not to show my disappointment that what Maddie had kept from Skip, to give to me, was just more of the same, except that it was correspondence about the contract awards.

  I asked my routine question of the whiz kid. “How did you get these?”

  Maddie shrugged. Just another day in the life of a young detective. “It was part of what was there, like official correspondence for the awards, I guess. I figured if I gave some to you and some to Uncle Skip, we’d all be working together,” she said. “That’s the only reason I didn’t give everything to the same person.”

  Awkwardly put, but on further thought, I realized Maddie wasn’t trying to get even with me for dumping her at a pool every chance I had since Friday; she wanted to be seen as helpful to all.

  The family that investigates together, stays together?

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” I said. “This is very useful.”

  I pulled out of the Rutledge Center at eight in the morning, after dropping Maddie off for day camp. She was excited about what she was learning, but vague about the details.

  “We’re making up games. You’d be bored,” she’d said.

  By which I guessed she meant I wouldn’t get it, as I’d demonstrated all month. I shuddered to think what she’d be able to pull off with even more computer knowledge.

  My cell phone rang, throwing me into confusion about how to access the call. I had a new Bluetooth contraption on my ear and could never remember the sequence of pushing buttons to answer a call.

  It had taken three tries to find a design that fit and I still couldn’t use it with the abandon I saw young people using it. The robot-like units on their ears seemed to survive stretching over the counter for their lattes or bending to pick up a dropped set of keys, whereas I could barely move my neck and still keep it on. But “hands free” was the California driving and calling law and I was nothing if not law-abiding.

  Most of the time.

  I was pleased to hear Henry Baker’s voice, though any voice would have spelled my success at using the new technology.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you up,” he said.

  “Not at all. I’m downtown in my car.”

  “I was thinking-why don’t I pick you up and we can go to David’s service together?” Henry said. “I don’t have grandfather duty today and it seems silly for us to drive separately.”

  Which we’d been doing the last few decades, I thought. I liked the flexibility of having my own car, in case… well, in case something came up on The Case.

  “It’s a great idea, but I have some errands to do before and after,” I said. Errands. The term I used on Maddie. Maybe I should think of another term for adults.

  “Right,” Henry said, as if he didn’t believe me.

  “Otherwise, I’d love to,” I said. “Some other time.”

  He laughed. “Sure. Some other memorial service, okay?”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  We hung up on cordial terms but I had the feeling I’d disappointed him. Too late I remembered that it was Henry who’d first mentioned that Rosie’s father was a subcontractor with Callahan and Savage. Maybe he knew more. I was sorry I’d missed an opportunity to talk to him about that.

  And maybe other opportunities as well, but I was busy enough as it was.

  ***

  On the way home I did the one legitimate errand I had for today and drove through the Lincoln Point Library book drop station. I’d checked out several history and English books to review for Lourdes’s use and I wanted to return the ones I thought were inappropriate for her current level. It gave me some measure of satisfaction that I was doing my unquestionable duty for my GED student, as opposed to the wild physical and mental meanderings I’d been involved in, in an effort to free my friend from suspicion of
murder.

  I always craned my neck when I passed Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop. Even at this hour of the morning, milk shakes beckoned. Milk was a breakfast food, was it not? Sadie’s looked dark, however, as on most days before ten o’clock. I considered stopping and looking in the window. I knew from previous experiences of these off-hours cravings that, if she or Colleen were working in the back, there was a chance I could rouse them and gain admittance.

  I slowed down and pulled over to the right on Springfield Boulevard, across from Sadie’s, intending to cross the street and scan the shop for movement. This put me almost directly in front of Scrap’s, Lincoln Point’s worst fast-food restaurant. (You’d think if you were going to serve inferior foodstuff, you wouldn’t make it so obvious by the name of your establishment.)

  Scrap’s opened very early to serve the breakfast-bacon-to-go crowd, a few of whom were exiting now with white paper sacks. I could almost see the grease leaking through from where I sat in my car, exchanging glasses and gathering my purse.

  I was about to exit when a family group caught my eye. On closer inspection-not a family group, but Cheryl Mellace, Barry Cannon, and a little boy about four years old. I pulled my leg back in and snapped the visor down in front of my face.

  Was the woman who could buy and sell the entire town of Lincoln Point a closet junk-food junkie? Neither Cheryl nor Barry had a to-go sack, so they must have eaten inside the restaurant. Who could guess that Scrap’s was the in place for celebrity sighting?

  The group stopped only a few yards from my car. Cheryl and Barry, her husband’s CFO, were engaged in animated conversation, but not arguing, as far as I could make out. Cheryl held fast to the little boy’s hand. I’d read that her children were grown and figured this to be a grandson.

  I thought of rolling down my window but didn’t want to make the slightest noise, lest they see me. My plan for that contingency was to wave and pretend I’d just arrived. I was torn between clandestine observation and full-fledged interaction. Why wait until the service, almost two hours away?