Murder In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “I have to go,” Cheryl said. Looking at her expression-eyes glazed over, lips tightened into a thin line-I wondered if I should let her drive.

  I opened the door, hoping to see the LPPD escort that Barry had received.

  The street was clear except for Cheryl’s own low-riding sports car, its top down. I watched wide-eyed as she climbed over the driver’s side door to enter. It was as if she’d gone back thirty years and was trying out for the cheerleading squad. I couldn’t imagine what had put her over the edge, literally and figuratively.

  I mentally took out my grade book from the days of yore. As of this interview, my verdict for Barry Cannon was “not guilty,” for Walter Mellace, “guilty,” and Cheryl Mellace, “deadlocked.” It crossed my mind that Walter was suffering from not having knocked on my door for a late-night drink.

  In spite of the hour, I was wired from Cheryl’s visit and wished Skip would come by. I felt it would be disloyal to Maddie if I called him myself, but I’d be blameless if he showed up and asked me to share.

  Until I could unload all the little findings of the past day, I’d have trouble sleeping, I knew. Sometimes writing things down helped me let go, so I made a list of what I needed to tell Skip.

  I wrote my cryptic notes: room box journey from hotel to woods; e-mail chronology off; Larry? Cheryl?

  I surprised myself by putting Larry Esterman on my list. Rosie’s father, a murderer? I doubted it, but as more and more people told me how angry he was at the students who perpetrated the terrible humiliation on his daughter, I found it hard not to entertain the possibility. Carrying a grudge for thirty years could make anyone snap.

  The last, Cheryl? referred to a nagging bit, a possible clue I’d thought of while Cheryl was here. It might not even have had to do with her, but something that came to me by my looping, associative mind.

  I took the notes with me and put them on my night table.

  There. Now I could sleep and let some other force do its part.

  Chapter 23

  Maddie was torn between two good options on Wednesday morning.

  She swung her cereal spoon to her left. “I really want to go to class today because I have big things going on with my project.” She swung the spoon to her right. “But I don’t want to miss anything.” She aimed the spoon at me. “Do you promise not to go to Uncle Skip’s office before I’m out of school?”

  “I do.”

  She paused a minute. “Do you promise not to invite him here?”

  “I do.”

  More thinking. “Do you promise-”

  “Sweetheart, I promise to wait before I talk to Uncle Skip about what you and I, mostly you, figured out, until you are by my side.” That ought to cover it. It took fewer words for many legal procedures.

  “Okay,” she said. “I won’t crab anymore.”

  She kept her promise through breakfast and even on the short ride to the Rutledge Center.

  I was grateful for a cooler day in the forecast as I headed for the library. I much preferred to have all the windows open in my car to using the noisy, windy air conditioner. Maddie, on the other hand, wanted the air conditioner all year long, it seemed. You might have thought she grew up in the Bronx as I did, and hadn’t been cold since leaving the Grand Concourse.

  My morning would be taken up with a tutoring session at the library with Lourdes Pino. Otherwise, I’d have bitten my nails to the core waiting for permission from my granddaughter to contact my nephew.

  It never took me long to refocus when I met Lourdes Pino. Her enthusiasm and energy for studying was contagious. If she’d been in any of my high school English classes at ALHS, she might have inspired some of the duller students whom I was unable to reach.

  Although Lourdes had earned her GED last spring and was ready to start her first year of community college, she asked if we could continue our weekly sessions in the Lincoln Point Library.

  “I want a leg up,” she said, grinning. “Is that the right saying?”

  “You could have said, ‘I’m eager to pursue a course of study that will give me a competitive advantage over less zealous students.’”

  It was always good to start a session with a laugh.

  Lourdes showed me the catalog description of one of her classes, an English class that “integrates reading, critical thinking, and writing assignments.” It sounded good to me and we drafted a plan for me to work with her through the semester, helping her with homework as needed.

  Today Lourdes and I met in the new wing of the library, where small meeting rooms were perfect for tutoring sessions. We were glad for the sorely needed upgrade to the facility. Week after week, Lourdes and I had met in a tiny room that had also served as the mailroom and the office supply closet. It was now possible to have comfortable space available outside of regular library hours, for community meetings and educational programs such as Literacy for All, which had brought Lourdes and me together several years ago.

  The new room was nicely appointed, with poster-size photographs or drawings of literary giants on the walls. Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, among others, looked down at us.

  The wall directly beside us was devoted to a children’s project. A set of posters titled California Authors caught my eye. The young students had compiled a collage of photographs of famous west coast writers: William Saroyan, Robinson Jeffers, Jessica Mitford, Gertrude Stein, Eugene O’Neill, and many others, whom, I was sure, the children would appreciate only later in life.

  The photograph of Wallace Stegner seemed to have loosened from its backing. I looked closely and saw that many of the photos and clippings were coming undone. Another case of poor craftsmanship, like the posters at the thirty-year reunion, managed by Cheryl Mellace.

  A bell went off in my head, loud as the sound of the beginning of class. I raised my eyebrows in a silent aha moment. I knew what had been nagging at me.

  Lourdes picked up on my change of mood. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Porter? A spelling mistake on the poster?”

  I smiled. “Something like that. I hope you don’t mind, but I have to leave a little early, Lourdes.” I stood and packed my notes and books. “I’ll type up our schedule and drop it by Willie’s later today. Is that all right with you?”

  “Yes, yes, Mrs. Porter. You have something very important to do, I can tell.” Lourdes shot me an exaggerated wink. “For the police, yes?”

  I wished I weren’t so transparent.

  The Lincoln Point Library is only one building away from the police department. If it weren’t for my need to follow up on my flash of awareness, it would have taken all my willpower not to take a detour to the LPPD building and see if Skip was around. I’d been disappointed that he hadn’t called. I had to balance that with how pleased Maddie would be when we traveled together to talk to her uncle.

  With the promise of a breakthrough at the front of my mind, I headed home.

  For once my lack of organizational skills paid off-I hadn’t cleaned out my tote bag since the reunion weekend. I rummaged around in it now and hoped I still had the program.

  I breathed a long sigh when I found it between a package of glue gun sticks and a bag of M &M’s. More good luck: the program listed the decorations committee: Cheryl Mellace, chairperson, and, under her, Allison Parker.

  Allison, who still lived in town, was a customer of Rosie’s. I’d run into her several times in the bookshop, making it easy to approach her for a favor. I rushed to the bedroom to find the updated yearbook Rosie had produced, found Allison’s phone number, and called her.

  Another stroke of luck, when Allison picked up the call. “Hi, Mrs. Porter. I was sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the reunion. It was just crazy wild, and then that awful thing with David, it was so upsetting, I almost didn’t go to the banquet on Saturday night, because my husband was sick besides, but I figured David wouldn’t want everyone just to stay at home and not get together, which he was so looking forward to.”

  Now I r
emembered. Allison was a lot like Linda, with record-breaking run-on sentences and nonstop rambling. When Allison took a breath, I offered my few words, commiserating about the loss of David Bridges. It bothered me that I never seemed to take very long to grieve before wanting to get back to the investigation of his murder. I hoped that could be counted as respect for the dead.

  “I don’t remember seeing you at the groundbreaking,” I said. As if I’d been keeping track.

  “No, we didn’t make it. My husband and I were at San Francisco General Hospital from Friday night to Saturday morning. By the time we got out, it was already close to noon and we knew we couldn’t make it, but we stayed around anyway and waited for the banquet. Andy was sick right after the cocktail party, losing everything, you know, and we didn’t want to take a chance, being away from home and all, so we went to the ER and they said it was probably food poisoning. We thought of the shrimp immediately. I don’t know if you had a problem with it. I didn’t, but Andy has a sensitive digestive system. Anyway, they gave him something to calm his stomach down and he was okay, but by then it was too late to go back to Lincoln Point for the groundbreaking.”

  I thought it must have been my personal best at not interrupting a story I didn’t care about. Except, I did care in the sense that it gave Allison Parker an unsolicited alibi for the time of David’s death. In case anyone asked.

  During the story, I’d held the phone in the crook of my neck while I poured myself a glass of ice tea. “Allison, I wonder if you could do me a favor? Do you still have the posters that were on display in the hotel ballroom? The ones you helped Cheryl with?”

  “Yes, and I’m not sure what to do with them, to tell you the truth. I guess I’ve become the official archivist for my class, although-”

  “Do you mind if I take a look at them again?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  One of my pet peeves reared its head. “Sure” meant she did mind, when I knew the opposite was true. I hadn’t been in charge of Allison’s grammar lessons for many years, however, and I passed on the need to correct her.

  Though she didn’t ask, I felt I should explain, or rather, create a fictional explanation for why I wanted to see the posters.

  “I remember that some of the photographs showed students in the background whom I’ve been trying to reconnect with, and I’d like a closer look. Also, I thought you might be able to help me locate them.”

  “Oh, you’re so good, Mrs. Porter, keeping up with your students from so long ago like that. I always liked you.”

  I never forgot where my students fell on the grading curve. “That’s because you were such a good student, Allison.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Porter. Sometimes I wish I were back in high school when life was so simple.”

  Not for everyone, I thought. Not for Rosie. “Are you free now, by any chance? I wouldn’t need to see all the posters. The ones I’m interested in are the medium-size, about fifteen by twenty-four.” No sense in having the poor girl lug all that heavy cardboard for my sham research. “Can we meet downtown somewhere?”

  “Oh, gosh. I’m just leaving to pick up my grandson because his mother is tied up with a client. She’s in real estate. Is this evening okay? I could even swing by your house.

  You’re in the Eichler neighborhood on the upper west side, right?” Allison made our humble residential area sound like the real Upper West Side of Manhattan. I felt a pang of longing for my former, big city life, where I’d never been involved in a murder case.

  “This evening is fine, Allison. I have my crafts group, but I’ll certainly be able to take a break with you.”

  I gave Allison directions to my house and rejoiced in my luck. If Allison came through, my crafts group were exactly the people I’d need to consult with tonight.

  Nothing to do now but listen to my messages.

  There were three from the crafters, about this evening’s meeting. Linda wanted to know if she could use some pages of my large stack book instead of lugging hers to my house. Mabel needed a ride to my house since Jim was not feeling well. Susan alerted me to the fact that she would be bringing a sweet potato pie from her grandmother’s recipe, so I didn’t need to bake.

  The fourth message was from Rosie. “Gerry, I tried your cell but can’t reach you.” Uh-oh. I realized I’d turned the phone off while I was in the library with Lourdes, and hadn’t turned it back on. “Now they have my father, Gerry. He went over to Barry Cannon’s house and a fight started, and the police have him in custody. Can you come to the police station? Call me. Please. This is Rosie.”

  I wondered if Larry Esterman had been caught with a bank record clutched in his fist.

  I left quick messages to say “yes” to Linda and “thanks” to Susan and asked Susan to pick up Mabel, in case I was busy till the last minute. Instead of calling Rosie, I grabbed my keys and rushed to my car.

  I had no choice. I had to go to the LPPD, Maddie or no Maddie.

  ***

  This time Rosie was in the waiting area, and her father was inside the confines of the LPPD.

  Rosie sat in an uncomfortable police department chair, her hands in her lap, her eyes staring straight ahead. Anyone who didn’t know better would think she was relaxed. But it seemed a long time since I’d seen Rosie at ease or in good humor-behind the counter of her shop, bent over a new box of books, or scanning a bookshelf for a title. Now she was as tight as the bolts that held her bookcases to the wall for earthquake safety.

  I looked around the large room. Drew Blackstone was on duty. Did the man never get a day off, or did he show up just to accommodate me? I resolved to bring him a tin of cookies soon. For the first time in a while, I hoped I wouldn’t run into Skip.

  Rosie stood up when she saw me. “Gerry, where have you been?”

  When this was all over I was going to have to sit Rosie and Linda down and explain that I wasn’t required to be on call twenty-four/seven. They should have known that most of the time when they couldn’t get hold of me this past week, I was investigating a murder case, trying to clear Rosie, and that I had a life. Maybe not that last one.

  “Do you know what this is all about?” I asked Rosie.

  “As I told you in my message, the police are holding him for assault.”

  “On Barry Cannon? Barry must be thirty years younger. What was your dad thinking?”

  “He, uh, took a weapon with him.”

  I was stunned. Mild-mannered Larry Esterman with what? A gun? A knife? Another trophy?

  “A gun,” Rosie said, before I asked. “I didn’t even know he had one, but I guess he got it when his business was robbed a couple of times years ago. Some kids broke into his warehouse and took a lot of inventory. I’m sure he’d never use it. He just wanted to scare him.”

  I couldn’t tell whether Rosie was talking about the kids of long ago or the kid Barry Cannon, of the present. Probably both.

  As Rosie and I took seats, Drew and I exchanged waves and smiles across the wide room. I figured he was wondering when I was going to saunter over and ask for a favor.

  “Have you heard anything about what’s going on in there?” I asked Rosie, pointing past Drew to the innards of the police station.

  Rosie shook her head and sniffed. “No one’s come out to talk to me.”

  “Where did they pick him up?”

  “At my house. He didn’t do anything to Barry except wave the gun and yell at him. Then he came to my house. Barry must have called the police after he left. My dad’s gun is registered, Gerry.”

  “I’m sure they’ll take that into account.”

  Why was I saying something I didn’t believe in? Did we want everyone in town with a registered gun waving it in our faces when they wanted to settle a feud or make a point?

  The bigger question was, why hadn’t I been a better friend to Rosie? If I’d been stronger and not so afraid of alienating her, I might have helped her to be more realistic about the reunion in the first place. Then David wouldn�
��t have had the chance to rebuff her and Larry wouldn’t have been forced to relive a thirty-year-old humiliation. For all I knew, David would still be alive, though that connection wasn’t as clear to me.

  “Just before they took him away…” Rosie broke down, reacting as if she’d never see her father again. She pulled a wrinkled, folded piece of paper from her purse. “He handed this to me. He said you gave it to him?”

  I could tell immediately that it was the bank record he’d taken from my folder. I started to clarify for Rosie the manner by which Larry Esterman had acquired the page, but she didn’t need any more grief. (There it was again, that fear of bringing displeasure to anyone I cared about.)

  I unfolded the sheet. Larry had written all over it, in bold, possibly angry strokes. He’d circled a row of numbers on the top right of the page and written off-shore; he’d drawn a box around an alphanumeric code on the top left and written Cannon. A yellow highlighter marked large dollar amounts in the middle column.

  Apparently, Larry had done some research and had determined that not only David but Barry Cannon was also profiting from the fraudulent scheme.

  He could have just asked me, instead of stealing my property. Then he might not be in police custody.

  It must have galled Larry that the ringleaders of the terrible stunt his daughter had suffered from were raking in money, profiting from an illegal scheme that also caused his own employer to lose contracts. If David Bridges had been shot instead of bludgeoned to death, Larry would probably have been arrested instead of simply brought in for questioning.

  Rosie had been watching me as I perused the sheet of paper and speculated on its meaning.

  “Does it mean anything to you?” she asked me.

  “Not really,” I said.

  I’d given some thought in the past couple of days to the folder that had landed on the seat of my car. I was convinced that Ben Dobson, the ambitious Duns Scotus supervisor who worked for the late David Bridges, had put it there. I figured that even though his boss was dead by then, Ben had wanted to bring down everyone connected to the scheme, without having to get involved directly. I wondered who his Maddie-like hacker was. I wished I could contact him to tell him his work was likely the last straw of evidence needed to bring the perpetrators to justice.