“Uncle Ken?” I asked.
Skip brushed rye crumbs from his hands, then ran his long, freckled fingers through his hair. One half sandwich was down. “There’s nothing definite on this. I probably shouldn’t even bring it up.”
I’d reached my limit. “Skip.” My strongest voice, the one that had sent Richard or Skip to their rooms many a time.
“Okay, here it is. We took a pile of notebooks from Halbert’s apartment and we’re just starting to go through them. One notebook has a list of what Halbert labeled Potentials, which we take to mean persons or line items that he had in mind to investigate.”
“That’s the data? But you said the district attorney had the data.”
“No, I said the DA had Halbert’s testimony plus some data that Halbert claimed to have. Big difference.”
“But you found the data in Oliver’s notebooks?”
Skip made a so-so motion with his hands. “I’m not sure I’d call it data. We have some names, but no specifics. We already know a lot of the people on the list because they’ve been involved in questionable transactions in the past. Some of them are related to bribes; some are related to accidents where it wasn’t clear who was at fault, like at the factory fire. Things like that.”
“And?”
Skip sighed deeply. “Uncle Ken’s name was on the list.”
I tried to reach the arms of the couch, to lean on them. They were far away and I swayed so far to one side, with such a jerky motion, there might have been an earthquake with an epicenter under us. I felt my cheeks burn, my mouth go dry. “Oliver Halbert thought my Ken might have been involved in a bribery or some other unethical activity?”
“It looks that way,” Skip said in a voice I could barely hear. “Maybe.”
I sat up and forced a breath through my jaws. “Couldn’t Ken’s name have been on the list because he might have been able to help Oliver prove something against another party? Maybe Oliver didn’t know that Ken isn’t alive anymore. It hasn’t been that long.”
It didn’t seem long to me, for sure. Why wasn’t Ken here now, in fact? Walking through the doorway to the kitchen, eating the last of the ginger cookies, asking for another batch? Defending his reputation.
Skip flinched, just enough to tell me his next words would be suspect. “That’s right, Aunt Gerry. Maybe Uncle Ken was down as an expert witness, or—”
His expression told me something different. I shook my head. “No, no. Oliver Halbert thought Ken himself participated in some criminal act, didn’t he?”
“Maybe not criminal.”
I looked at my nephew. “What, then?”
“Suspicious?” He whispered the questionable word. “But that’s just a dim possibility, Aunt Gerry. We haven’t even begun to check out what the list really means, if anything.”
I put my hand on my forehead. I thought I might have a fever. Could tension bring on a fever? I’d held my breath for so long, I was light-headed. “You just told me that you saw the names of disreputable people on the list. You must know more than you’re telling me.”
Skip looked as miserable as I felt. “I don’t know what to tell you, Aunt Gerry. Uncle Ken was the architect on the new addition to the Fergusons’ factory. It was one of his last projects with Patrick Lynch before . . . you know . . . he got sick.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“There were some problems with the project. I think they were weather-related, or maybe labor, I don’t know. But the twins were on a deadline to produce some parts for a company in L.A., and they needed the capabilities of the new wing. There’s a good chance they shaved some safety features for the sake of speeding things up.”
“They shaved? Who?” I didn’t give Skip a chance to respond. “Why on earth would anyone suspect Ken Porter of doing something like that? He was the most honest man in the world. You know that.” I sounded like Maddie, who, in her innocence, thought everyone she loved was perfect.
Skip had firsthand knowledge of Ken, who’d stepped in when Skip’s father died in the first Gulf War. During periods when his mother, Ken’s sister, Beverly, was unable to cope, Skip slept in my son’s room more often than he did his own.
“Aunt Gerry, in my heart I know Uncle Ken couldn’t knowingly do anything wrong. I loved him. Who knows what I would have become without him?” Skip’s voice cracked. I was sorry I’d taken him back to a tough period in his young life. “But—”
I waved my hands in his face, now as flushed as mine felt. “No ‘buts.’ ”
“I debated about telling you this. In retrospect, I probably should have waited until things were more clear, but the guys gave me a heads-up when they saw Uncle Ken’s name pop up, and I thought I’d do the same for you. Now I think it wasn’t such a great idea.”
I couldn’t think of too many ideas that were worse. I blew out a long breath, trying to clear my head. “I’ll bet it’s a different Ken Porter. It’s a common enough name. I’ll bet Maddie will find a hundred of them if she Googles it. Or else you were just looking at someone’s Christmas card list.”
Skip nodded and made a weak thumbs-up motion. “That’s probably it.”
Not a convincing gesture, but one that I needed at that moment.
Skip’s phone rang. He read a message, clicked it shut, and stood to leave.
“We’re not finished, Skip.”
“I know, but I really do have to go, Aunt Gerry. I have a feeling my night is just beginning.”
“So is mine.”
I knew there wasn’t much hope of sleeping, so I took a cup of tea to my atrium. After the events of the evening, I seemed to be immune to any conditions of weather or comfort; I was neither too warm nor too cold, neither hungry nor full, neither tired nor fully awake. I counted on the lovely vegetation around the border of the large, skylit entryway, a special feature of my Eichler home, to take my nerves down a notch. My small dogwood, coleus, and hydrangea shrubs provided a pleasant view from wherever I sat.
I switched on the small table lamp by my rocker, and picked up my Dollhouse Miniatures magazine. On the cover, miniature pumpkins and ghosts danced around tiny coffins, and the text promised easy instructions for everything Halloween on page fifty-nine. Ordinarily I read every word, from letters to the editor to the frequent “printies” that accompanied some articles. Now I flipped through the pages but couldn’t concentrate on anything outside my own head.
Buzzz. Buzzz.
My doorbell rang soon after I tossed the magazine, along with my newest mini knitting project, into the basket by my rocker. I was hardly surprised that I had a visitor. I would have believed that weeks had passed, that it was already Halloween and trick-or-treaters had arrived to collect their candy.
I peeped through the hole and opened the door to a bedraggled Susan Giles. Usually impeccably groomed, Susan was known for wearing a ruffle somewhere on every outfit. She’d added ruffles at the neck and sleeves of most of her sweatshirts, at the bottoms of some of her jeans, and around the edges of her purses and totes. Her lovely handmade miniature dolls, between one and two inches in length, all sported ruffles on their tiny panties. The branding served her well at crafts fairs when all a customer had to do was ask which booth the ruffle lady was in.
Tonight Susan looked like an overwrought rag doll, her trademark ruffle limp and dingy on the neckline of a worn San Francisco sweatshirt. She wore a pitiful expression, never seen at our fairs.
“I’m sorry I didn’t finish baking the cake,” she said, as naturally as if it had simply slipped her mind due to an extra busy day doing errands in Lincoln Point. “I was just about to put it in the oven when . . .” She broke down in tears.
I finished the sentence, in my mind: when Skip appeared at her door. Was it only crafters or bakers who responded this way? Was it characteristic of women? Susan’s dear brother was dead, and she was concerned about an unfulfilled promise of a pecan praline pound cake.
Maybe for her own sanity, she had to think of t
he unfinished dessert.
I always thought it peculiar, what we worried about in times of grief or great stress. An insignificant task or a neglected responsibility could become the most important thing on our minds. While Ken was ill, I’d go for long periods of time not thinking of anything as mundane as grocery shopping or watering the lawn. Then out of nowhere I’d get a spurt of needing to do something routine and physically satisfying. I might scrub the tile in the shower, stock the pantry with new spices, pull up every weed in my garden, or reorganize my desk drawers. Once I found myself washing the laces from Ken’s tennis shoes, as if any of it mattered without Ken.
I pushed Susan’s deceased brother’s incriminating list to the back of my mind and hugged her until she calmed down.
“I’m so sorry” from me was all it took to bring her to tears again. Susan fell into my arms.
“You have to help me, Gerry,” she said, her voice choking.
I patted her back. “I’ll do anything I can,” I said, leading her to a comfortable chair in the living room.
She accepted an offer of tea. When I delivered it to her, I found her staring into space, seeming unaware of her surroundings.
Susan came to after a few sips of chamomile. “The police think Oliver committed suicide, Gerry. Can you imagine?” I wanted to remind her that I’d never met her brother and had no idea what he was capable of. This was not the time for facts or logic, however, and I let her go on. “He would never do that. Isn’t there something you can do? I know we’re always asking you to influence your nephew one way or the other, but this is so important, not like a traffic ticket. Oliver must have been murdered,” she said, breaking away from me, her voice strong and confident. “I know you can prove it.”
By “anything,” I’d meant cook her meals, run errands, help with funeral arrangements, contact relatives in Tennessee. Doing her laundry would not be out of the question, nor would finishing the room box she’d promised to donate to her church raffle.
Investigating her brother’s death was not on the list.
Within a few minutes, Susan settled down to the business at hand. It was as if she’d spent all the hours since Oliver’s death preparing a case for me to take charge of and solve. She reached into her tote and pulled out a photo album. She opened it at random and placed it on my coffee table.
As Susan turned the pages, I glanced at moments captured at birthday parties, vacations, graduations, and anniversaries. Several photos included Susan’s former husband, whom I’d met a couple of times before their divorce and who now lived in Florida near his parents. In nearly all the pictures, Oliver was present—smiling, bouncing a basketball, arms around people I took to be his friends or other family members.
“Look at this one,” Susan said. She pointed to a snapshot of four people in a raft, one of them Susan herself. The other two women matched the ages I knew his daughters, both out of college, to be. The fourth was Oliver.
“It looks like a happy time,” I said.
Practically every family I knew had a picture like this—usually mom, dad, and kids roughing it on a white-water rafting trip on the Russian River in northern California. Everyone wore red/orange vests. Their hair was wild; white foam roiled up around their raft; smiles were wide. If I lined up on my living room wall all the family rafting photos I’d seen, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
Except that this one included a person I’d just seen dead.
Susan tapped the photograph, aiming for her brother’s chest. “This was Oliver only a couple of months ago. Does this look like a guy about to kill himself? It was his Jeanine’s twenty-first birthday. He had just started looking at property; he was planning to move from his apartment into a house. He joined my church and didn’t brush me off when I suggested he join our singles’ club.”
I wanted to ask Susan how she could be so sure that her brother was happy, no matter what the outward signs were. Often we showed only our best faces to those we loved, not wanting to burden them with deep-rooted problems. I’d read that it was common for people to put things in order and be their most agreeable selves, in fact, just before taking their own lives. That was one of the many things it didn’t seem right to bring up, however.
“According to my nephew, the ME is leaning toward—”
“I know what the police think. They called me. With all due respect to the LPPD and the ME, Gerry, how could they determine that so quickly? Oliver didn’t own a gun. He hated them. And since when do the police act with such haste? They’re all involved in a cover-up. It’s no secret how powerful Patrick Lynch is and how he runs city hall and the police station. I’ll bet the ME is Lynch’s son or something.”
I got Susan’s point, deciding not to mention that her sweeping condemnation of the LPPD didn’t sit well with me or that Lincoln Point’s ME was female. There was time for that down the road.
“Anything is possible, Susan. But I think we need to take a breath and let a little time pass.” Not that I planned to do that regarding the new cloud over my husband’s reputation. That called for a different set of rules.
“The more time that passes, the worse it will be,” Susan said. “That’s what they all want, for us to relax and forget the whole thing.” She brushed her hand in the air, as if she were swatting a fly, nearly knocking the teacup from its saucer.
Susan had reverted to a southern accent this evening; “more” came out as two syllables—“mo-ah.”
“They did go through his apartment already, and they found some papers. I’m sure they’ll look into the situation,” I offered, regretting the choice of word to describe the horrible death of her brother. I was glad her own agenda was so critical that she didn’t notice. For me, it was hard enough to refer to Oliver’s papers without thinking of Ken. It seemed impossible that my friend’s deceased brother might be the route to the sullying of my husband’s reputation.
“Think about it, Gerry. Oliver was about to bring down that big, disgraceful developer, Patrick Lynch, and that nasty, crooked inspector for the city, Max Crowley. Oliver was accumulatin’ evidence against them, and he was going to testify. Then, suddenly he’s out of the picture. Doesn’t that smell like last week’s catfish gumbo?”
“It does seem . . . uh . . . fishy, Susan, but I’m not sure what I can do.”
“Can y’all at least look around Oliver’s house and office and”—she choked back tears—“and just see what y’all come up with.”
“Don’t you think the police will do all that? I told you, they started already.”
Susan gave me a look that asked how I could be so naïve. “Please, Gerry. You’re my only hope. I know how close you and Skip are, and if you could just make sure he has an open mind.”
Susan was grossly overestimating my ability to influence my nephew. “I’ll give it a try,” I said.
Susan leaned over and hugged me. “I knew you would.” She reached into her large tote, pulled out a key, and put it in my hand. She closed my fingers over it as if she were entrusting me with one of her special, newly minted miniature dolls. “This is the key to Oliver’s apartment. It’s right around the corner from where . . . from the Fergusons’.”
“This feels like more than talking to Skip, Susan.”
“I know, but it’s so important, Gerry.” She paused. “And, oh, I know this is going to seem so silly, but could you bring me back that little room box I made for him. Remember the one y’all helped me with in crafts group?”
At last, something I could accomplish. I recalled working on a miniature construction scene in which Susan had modeled the interior of a living room undergoing renovation, complete with tiny tools and home improvement supplies. Apparently, that had been one of Oliver’s previous professions.
I was so glad to have something easy and specific to do for Susan—return a treasured memento—I didn’t even question why she wouldn’t just go to Oliver’s apartment and retrieve it herself.
“I can do that,” I said, meaning, “That
might be all I can do.”
“Thank you so much, Gerry. I can’t tell you how much better I feel already.”
I wished I could have said the same. I wondered if I should tell Susan that I had a case of my own to solve, one that might or might not be connected to her brother’s death but was most definitely my top priority.
After Susan left, I stayed up awhile longer, going back and forth between two important lists I was compiling. One was of harmless reasons why Ken’s name was among those of nefarious Lincoln Point businessmen and -women, and the other was of people who benefited most with Oliver Halbert no longer among the living.
The lists seemed to merge, and I didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad thing.
When I finally went to bed, I had a fitful sleep at best. I found myself in a fantasy world where a miniature list of names came to life, the letters leaping off the tiny page, each name taking the shape of a nasty-looking man or woman who might have killed Oliver Halbert and smeared Ken Porter’s good name.
Chapter 5
“Is it okay if I play with Taylor today, Grandma?” Maddie asked at breakfast.
Taylor was Maddie’s new best friend forever, “BFF” in text-messaging language, and Henry Baker, her grandfather, was my (here I always paused) friend, I’d decided. If it were up to Maddie and Taylor, in their preteen wisdom, Henry and I would become BFFs and, along with Taylor’s and Maddie’s parents, we’d all live together happily ever after.
Though I wasn’t ready for a major change in lifestyle, the more temporary arrangement of placing Maddie in Henry and Taylor’s care was appealing. It would give me time to organize my thoughts and create a plan for putting Oliver Halbert’s apartment key to use. It seemed a long shot, but I hoped the key would unlock the mystery of Ken Porter’s place among Oliver’s “potential” investigations.
Monster in Miniature Page 5
