Living with Maddie was like having a word-a-day calendar with up-to-the-minute slang.
“Okay, fine,” I said and watched her drift off.
I had a feeling Skip would come by as soon as he thought Maddie was asleep. I’d already replenished the cookie plate and put on water for coffee (him) and tea (me) when the doorbell rang.
“I knew you’d be ready for me,” Skip said, stepping into my atrium and, three seconds later, popping a cookie into his mouth. “I was waiting until my little squirt would be asleep.”
Were all families this predictable? I wondered. Or was I just lucky?
“I can’t believe he was related to Susan Giles,” I said, as if there had been no interruption in our talk between the Sangamon River Road crime scene and my home many hours later. “Did you see Susan?”
“Yeah, I was the one to give her the news about her brother. She was getting ready to meet all her friends here for the ‘girls’ night in’ crafts session, and instead I had to bring her to tears. I hate doing that. It’s the worst part of the job, Aunt Gerry.”
His bright mood hadn’t lasted long tonight. His handsome young face took on a dispiriting look.
“I’m sure it is.”
We took our drinks to the living room since my atrium was too chilly for me this evening. As warm as fall days could be in the Bay Area, nights were always cool. Skip sat across from me on an ottoman, the better to reach the plate of cookies on my dusty mahogany coffee table. I wasn’t the only miniaturist who preferred keeping house on a one-inch scale.
I pictured Skip approaching Susan’s home, knowing she was one of my friends, preparing to deliver news that would change her life. I thought how good my sensitive nephew would be at a time of sorrow and crisis, as much as he dreaded the task.
Eleven years old—Maddie’s age—when his father died, Skip told his mother not to worry, that he would take care of the house from then on. He asked his uncle Ken, my husband, to teach him how to do basic plumbing, since that seemed to be at the heart of many breakdowns in his home, and to help him find a job. He never did master plumbing, but he became the neighborhood errand boy and problem solver.
Seeing him in my living room, in full detective mode, if not dress, I imagined how proud both his father and his uncle would be—he’d gone from serving and protecting his mother to doing the same for the whole Lincoln Point community.
“Where did you go, Aunt Gerry?” Skip asked, waving his hands in front of my face.
“To the nineties,” I said. “But I’m back.”
“I was asking if you even knew Susan had a brother, since you didn’t recognize him at the scene.”
“She talked about him and made a miniature for him in our group, but I’d never met him. Maybe the name Oliver should have struck a chord when I heard it from you, since it’s not that common, but with a different last name, I never made the connection. Oliver was her baby brother. He moved here a few years ago from Tennessee, after his divorce.”
“Yeah, Susan told me that. I guess those photographs in his wallet—the ones of a happy nuclear family—were from days gone by.”
“Susan said the breakup was hard on him. Their parents were gone, and Susan was out here.” I thought a minute. “And both his girls had come to the West Coast for college. I guess he wanted as much family around him as he could muster.”
“That would be why Susan is blaming herself,” Skip said. “She’s thinking that her brother would have been alive and well if she hadn’t moved here and lured the girls here, too.”
Poor Susan. Why was it that at any death there was someone taking the blame, usually not the right person? For a moment I found myself thinking, if Maddie and I hadn’t taken so long over our ice cream at Sadie’s, maybe we would have been at the Fergusons’ in time to save Oliver. How, I had no idea. Nor did I want to dwell on the notion that if we’d arrived at the wrong time, we might have suffered the same fate at the hands of a killer, if there was one.
“Do you know yet how Oliver died?” I asked. “I mean, other than a bullet hole to his head.”
“It’s too soon for an official report, but the ME at the scene said she couldn’t rule out suicide. I’m sure that will be hard for Susan to take.”
“No harder than murder,” I said.
“True enough.”
“Have you looked into anything that might suggest her brother was murdered, in case that’s the ruling?”
“Yeah, you know we drop everything, even sleep, when there’s a murder.”
I gave him a sympathetic look, knowing he was only half teasing. “Poor dear.”
“As long as you appreciate us. It’s only been a few hours, but we found a few things that raised some flags.”
“Anything of interest to the general public?” I asked. Skip gave me a crossways look. I rushed to reassure him. “I’m not going to get involved. Susan’s my friend and I’m curious.”
“Straight.”
“You, too? I thought that was for schoolkids.”
“The word’s making the rounds. It seems Oliver Halbert was the chief witness in the DA’s case against Patrick Lynch.”
“The big developer?”
Skip rubbed his palms together as if he were cold, though he usually preferred a little chill in the air. “The same. There’s talk that Lynch will be indicted for bribing a city inspector, the guy who had the job before Halbert. That would be Max Crowley, who’s also about to be indicted.”
I followed local news, but often didn’t remember specifics. I tried to be informed at voting time, but wouldn’t have wanted to take a quiz on the day-to-day political maneuverings unless they concerned me directly.
“And Oliver was going to testify against both of them?”
Skip nodded and took a deep, loud breath. He rubbed his hands together again, and I remembered the other trigger for that gesture: delivering unpleasant news. I studied his face. There was more to his visit than giving me an update on the body on the Fergusons’ porch.
“There’s something else you should know about, Aunt Gerry.”
My stomach clutched, for no reason other than I knew my nephew’s every “tell” and this one was as loud as the ALHS cafeteria on the day before a holiday.
“I’m listening.”
“We looked through Halbert’s papers. He dug up some stuff, going back a few years.”
“How many years?”
“Maybe five or six.”
A time period that would include when my husband worked on projects for the city.
Skip’s expression grew very serious. “It’s one of the main reasons I came over so late.”
Now I was really worried. I drew my own deep breath.
“Are all the people who put up buildings crooked?” The question came from a small voice in the hallway.
“Hey, look who’s up,” Skip said, scooping Maddie close for a hug. He got to her so quickly that I assumed he’d been on cop alert even though he looked relaxed in my living room. Either that, or he’d been hoping for a way to stall giving his announcement. “Were we too loud for you?”
“Nuh-uh,” Maddie said. “I just figured you’d be coming by, Uncle Skip, so I tried hard to stay awake. I fell asleep for a little bit, but”—she spread her arms and took a bow—“I’m up now.”
“So you are,” Skip said. “How did you know I’d be visiting?”
Maddie grinned. “The case and all.”
“Why are you asking about crooked builders?” I asked Maddie. Had she been following the local news more closely than I had? I was only peripherally aware of the potential indictments coming up.
“I heard you talking about a developer. He’s the person who builds houses and then sells them, right? Aren’t they never honest? My dad says you can’t trust them.”
Too many negatives, but I knew what she meant. Also, I’d have to have a talk with my son. Unrealistic as it was, I wished Richard would keep to happy talk with his daughter.
“What makes
you think that?” I asked Maddie. “Your grandfather was an architect, remember, and he worked with people who put up buildings.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Skip’s head drop to his chest. I swallowed hard. Did I want to know the answer to the question forming in my mind—what was the bad news signaled by Skip’s body language?
“I forgot about that. Grandpa was honest. I’ll bet he was the most honest person doing buildings.”
I thought Skip’s palms would smoke if he rubbed any harder.
“You’re right, Maddie. But please go back to bed, sweetheart. I need to talk to Uncle Skip,” I said, struggling for control of my voice.
“I need to talk to him, too. I want to show him my deep search techniques,” she said. “They might help with the case.”
I was used to Maddie’s wiggling herself into her uncle’s cases, offering her newly learned computer skills. Usually I let her and Skip work it out, but not tonight.
Skip sat back, waiting, I knew, to see who’d win. I had the feeling he was rooting for Maddie. I was surprised he hadn’t taken the opportunity to slip out of the house.
“Maddie.” I gave her a look that said I meant it. She probably hadn’t seen this look on my face since she was a toddler. “Maddie, please go back to bed.”
Maddie had been about three years old the last time I’d spoken to her so firmly. She’d nearly burned herself climbing up to the stove to investigate a pot of hot chocolate. I’d turned my back for only a moment and she’d made it all the way to the top step of a folding stool, to the counter, ready to dip her hands into the hot liquid. I scooped her up and told her never to do that again. My panic at the time had given my voice a rough tone and we’d both ended up in tears.
I felt the same tone creeping into my voice now. It broke my heart to see her skulk away, her expression disappointed and confused: What did I do wrong? What’s wrong with Grandma?
What was wrong was that Skip was about to deliver news that I didn’t want to hear.
I closed the door to Maddie’s room, having attempted to kiss away the scolding tone. Happily, she’d been tired enough to kiss me back and drift off to sleep.
I returned to my living room, where Skip sat tapping his feet. I took a seat and spoke in a low voice. “It’s about your uncle Ken, isn’t it?”
Skip’s nod sent a shiver through me. He spread his palms. “This can wait, Aunt Gerry,” he said.
“No, it can’t.”
I stiffened against the couch, my hands folded, an ominous shiver traveling the length of my spine.
Chapter 4
Skip walked into the kitchen and stood at my open refrigerator door with the energy of one who’d had no dinner. “Do you have anything good in here?” he asked.
I was sure he was hungry; I was also sure he was desperate to put off telling me what I needed to know.
“Skip,” I said, losing all patience.
“Please, Aunt Gerry. This is hard for me.” He gave me his pleading look, the expression I’d given into all his life.
I got up and pulled out a container of cold cuts and half a loaf of rye bread. I had to admit it felt good to be doing something useful. I spread butter on one slice of bread, spicy mustard on the other. The way Skip liked it. “You can talk while I work,” I said.
When his phone rang, I was convinced he’d managed to call himself. I gave my nephew two minutes to take the call, which he said was critical to the story he was about to tell. “Test results,” he said.
“At midnight?”
“When you care enough.”
“I’m not in the mood, Skip.”
He disappeared around the corner to the family room and came back to an aunt who was on edge but holding out a plate that was the base for a turkey sandwich with lettuce and a slice of Monterey Jack cheese.
“Let me start from the beginning, okay?” Skip asked, clearly sorry he’d opened the topic in the first place.
I looked at my nephew and spoke without a trace of patience or humor—there might as well have been a stranger, or a representative of another police force from a distant state in my living room. “As long as you get to the point.”
“I promise.” We moved back to the living room and sat down on the easy chairs at either end of the couch—about as far away from each other as we could be and still occupy the same room. Skip put his sandwich plate on the coffee table and tented his fingers. “Susan’s brother, Oliver Halbert, got this city inspector job a year or so ago. He replaced this guy, Max Crowley, that I mentioned. The short of it is that Crowley apparently took bribes from Patrick Lynch and other developers on a routine basis.”
“I already got that part.”
“The way it worked was Lynch and his guys would cut corners in building specs and Crowley would look the other way when he inspected the building.”
“What kind of specs?” I folded my hands, trying to guess where Ken fit in.
“You know, different things. It might be substituting substandard materials, just for a cost break, or not meeting safety regs, which would be worse, because a safety code violation could lead to an accident. Apparently, with the right amount of cash crossing his palm, Inspector Crowley could be counted on to give his blessing to a lot of sins. Or would that be sinners?”
Usually an appeal to a point of grammar would be enough to lure me into a lesson on correct usage or word choice, but not tonight.
“Is that why the inspector’s job came open for Oliver Halbert? Because Crowley lost his job when the bribes were uncovered?”
“No. You wish justice were that swift. Crowley had moved on to a bigger and better job.”
“He was promoted?”
“In a manner of speaking. After the scandal, he went to work as Lynch’s number one man. Only in America, huh? Back to Susan’s brother, Oliver Halbert. He was the one who uncovered the bribes. I guess Lynch expected the same service from Halbert that they all got from Crowley, but Halbert would have none of it. He started digging around and eventually the DA was able to make a solid case against Crowley and Lynch. With Halbert’s testimony and some data that Halbert claimed to have, the case was a shoo-in.”
“And now Halbert is out of the way.”
“Yeah, Halbert kills himself just in time to save their hides,” Skip said. “Convenient, huh? But that call I just got was from the ME’s lab. The preliminary result is that his death does look like a suicide.”
My mind was reeling with this background on the victim I’d seen only hours earlier, before I even knew he was Susan’s brother. I was torn between hearing how Ken’s name came up in this nasty picture and avoiding that subject all together. I chose a delay tactic.
“How do the Fergusons fit in? Whether it was suicide or murder, why would it happen at that house?”
“I don’t know exactly, except that the Ferguson twins are renters in one of the worst Lynch facilities, as far as building codes go. They have a small factory on the property, making airplane parts.”
I thought again about the Ferguson twins. The policy at ALHS was to separate siblings, so I’d had only one of the twins, Eliot, in my English class. I remembered how Eliot and Emory, both with identical heavy-framed glasses, would set up pranks, fooling classmates and teachers alike, filling in for each other whenever it suited them. Then Eliot had a skiing accident and never fully recovered: he walked with a slight limp. As much as everyone felt sorry for him, we considered ourselves lucky to have a way to tell the twins apart. I hadn’t seen either of them in a couple of years but assumed they still looked identical, and that Eliot still limped.
Enough history, I thought. I’d probably never again need to be able to distinguish the men from each other.
“What about the data?” I asked Skip. “You said the district attorney had Oliver’s testimony and some data.”
“Yeah, about the data.” Skip took a huge bite of his sandwich and made a show of chewing thoroughly, just as his mother and I had taught him.
I s
wallowed hard. “Skip, I need to know how Uncle Ken came up in this investigation. Is there some data that . . . that . . .” I seemed physically unable to keep my throat clear to finish the sentence.
He licked his lips and held up his index finger. “One more little thread first,” he said. “Since you asked about the Ferguson twins.” Another reprieve. I’d never felt so conflicted. “Remember that fire that broke out in their factory last year?”
The news had been full of the story, though I’d forgotten whose factory had been involved. “A janitor was killed, wasn’t he?”
“Right. The original ruling on the fire was ‘accidental,’ and the twins were cleared of any fault. But Halbert was on a path to a different theory. He was attempting to prove that the Fergusons, or their staff, had forgotten to turn the compressor off when they left the building for the night. Then, a weakness in the hose attached to it caused the hose to rupture, and of course, the compressor couldn’t keep up the pressure, so it burned out. The compressor was located under a wooden stairway, and”—Skip waved his hands in a gesture that suggested a burst of flames, losing a piece of lettuce from his sandwich in the process—“the stairs caught fire and burned half the building, plus the janitor who happened to be taking a nap break.”
“The twins claim they did not leave their compressor on. They say the problem was with a segment of electrical wiring that had no conduit. That would point the finger back at Halbert himself for not catching that oversight on the part of Lynch. So everyone’s blaming everyone else. If the twins weren’t so tight with Lynch, they’d probably be suing Lynch for cutting corners on the conduit specs. It’s a mess.”
“Is the factory so new that Halbert was the inspector, not Max Crowley?”
“Some sections of it are new and some are old, which is another part of the problem. So now the family of the dead janitor is at sixes and sevens, not knowing whom to sue. Exactly who was the negligent party?”
As sorry as I felt for the person who lost his life, I wondered if Skip gave me that complicated story because he wanted to beat around the Ken Porter bush as much as I did. But it was late and I’d waited long enough.
Monster in Miniature Page 4
