7 Madness in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  As for me, I leaned against the wall by the bathroom door and thought about what we’d learned. It occurred to me that we could have gotten answers from Loretta without the tour, but what fun would that have been? We might not have been alerted to the fine point of the rubber feet on the inn’s alarm clocks. A deal breaker for Catherine’s alibi? Not if she’d brought her own travel alarm clock, which I always did. They tended to be smaller than standard-issue hotel clocks and one might easily have shaken and slid across the end table.

  It was Megan who seemed to have struck out. No coffeemaker, regular ice bucket, or glasses that could break. But several defenses came to mind. She might have brought her own coffeemaker. Loretta had no rule against it, and it was a common practice, either because of coffee snobbery or because some travelers needed coffee before saying “Good morning” to a stranger. As for the ice bucket, Megan might have seen the small container in the bathroom shake on the counter. The broken glass was a problem, however. I pictured Megan’s row on Maddie’s chart and also remembered two different versions of her earthquake experience. When I ran into Megan at the LPPD station, she’d told me that a glass broke; but she’d told Jeanine during our SuperKrafts chat that “things broke.” A glass and what else? Two glasses? How likely was it that she’d brought her own glass tumbler—tumblers?—and one or both fell to a tile floor during a three-point-one? I sighed, questioning my analysis of Megan’s remarks. My thoughts were sailing far beyond the question of east wall versus west wall. Megan wasn’t under oath when she was relating her first earthquake experience. Who didn’t elaborate on a story now and then? Only an English teacher or an editor would be literal and so picky. Or maybe a cop?

  Loretta had finished her white-glove test of Room 213. “Ready to go?” she asked, waving her hand in front of my eyes. Apparently she was aware that I’d virtually left the scene a few minutes ago.

  “One more question, if you don’t mind, Loretta? Would the housekeeper report a broken glass in the room?”

  “Well, as I said, there aren’t any glasses in the rooms. So, unless a guest brings her own, there’s no glass to break. And why would anyone bring a glass?”

  “What if some people would rather drink out of glass glasses?” Maddie suggested.

  Loretta shrugged. “To each his own. Do you want me to find out if Amelia found any broken glass-glass”—she winked at Maddie—“in the trash from this room?” she asked me.

  “From Megan Sutley’s room, please,” I said, having a hard time believing my luck. I’d have to send Loretta a thank-you gift, maybe a miniature of the KenTucky Inn lounge area. I couldn’t wait to rummage in my carpet samples drawer to find a piece that would match the burgundy hue I’d admired on the floor below.

  I had another thought. “Oh, and one more last-last question?” I asked, getting into the spirit of double words. “Do you know anything about envelopes that were hand-delivered to Catherine’s room? Slipped under her door?”

  “No, she asked us about that. I’m sorry to say our cameras don’t cover every inch of the property. We have keypads on the stairway doors and other measures in place, but certainly someone who was intent on getting up to the other levels could do it.”

  Hearing Loretta’s borderline-defensive tone, I decided to quit while we were still good friends. We walked back through the house in something close to companionable silence and reached the front door. Loretta invited us to stay for an early lunch, but even as a tempting aroma wafted from the kitchen, I declined.

  “I promised Beverly we’d go to lunch and shop for shoes,” I said.

  “Ah, the big wedding is coming up,” Loretta said. “Say, Gerry, it’s not too late. You can still talk Beverly and Nick into getting their list down to a manageable size so they can get married here.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” I looked out at the lovely property, richly landscaped, and remembered the perfectly prepared dinners and elegant decorations for events I’d attended. “Though to me it’s the perfect setting,” I said, before thinking through the many implications.

  Loretta gasped. She leaned in to whisper to me, out of Maddie’s earshot. “Gerry! You and Henry Baker? Are you ready to—”

  My gasp was louder than Loretta’s. “No, no, no,” I whispered back.

  Loretta’s laugh suggested that maybe I protested too much.

  * * *

  Maddie and I had a little time to stop at home before we were to meet Bev at a restaurant in San Jose, near a large retail center with many options, from high-end shops to outlet stores. Many weeks ago, I’d recommended that Bev buy white shoes and have them dyed to match her dress.

  “That’s what our mothers did,” she’d said. “I never liked the way they looked. You could always tell by the streaks in the satin that it was a fake color.”

  “They have new technology now,” I’d said, having no idea if there was anything new in the shoe-dyeing industry.

  “Well, anyway, I can’t even find any white shoes that I like,” she’d added, thus ending the conversation, but not the hunt for the perfect green wedding slipper.

  As soon as we got in the door, Maddie grabbed a handful of cookies and headed for her computer, her usual practice (though the snack varied), having nothing to do with the current situation regarding Taylor. I could never figure why it was necessary for a preteen to have an email account at all, or to check it so often, certainly more often than I checked mine. Were there job offers with a time value? Contracts to review? Bills to pay? Our ground mail, as we now called it in my circle, didn’t arrive until midafternoon, so we’d have to wait a while if Taylor chose to respond that way.

  In many ways I’d embraced the electronic age, but I decided to call Jeanine by old-fashioned landline and ask to meet with her. I sat in my atrium rocker and punched in her cell phone number.

  “Hey, Mrs. Porter,” she said. Uh-oh, I’d been hoping to leave a message. I wasn’t ready with a reasonable script. “Mrs. Porter?”

  “Hi, Jeanine.” Fortunately, I caught myself before saying, “This is Mrs. Porter,” and pulled myself together. “I was wondering if I could see you today, just briefly. There’s something I need to discuss with you.” I heard traffic noise in the background but no answer from Jeanine, so I rattled on. “I can stop by the store if that’s easier for you.” A heavy sigh came over the line, along with the honk of a horn. I hoped I wasn’t the cause of a rare bottleneck in downtown Lincoln Point. “Or I can wait until you’re off work.”

  Finally, Jeanine’s voice: “No, I can do it now. Are you home? I’m in my car on my way to do some errands but I can just go to your house.” Doubt filled my mind as I realized how unlikely it was that Jeanine was the author of the get-out-of-town notes slipped under the door of Catherine’s hotel room. I nearly withdrew my request to the young woman who’d been nothing but respectful and an enormous help to me the last few years—until I heard her final comment. “Let’s get it over with,” Jeanine said.

  My feelings exactly, except, sadly, now I thought I knew the outcome.

  * * *

  Just how patient and forbearing was my sister-in-law? I put the question to the test by calling Bev with yet another postponement.

  “Anyone would think you hated shopping for life-sized things, Gerry,” she said.

  I explained that I wouldn’t be asking for a rain check unless the meeting was truly important. I told her I really was looking forward to spending time with her, which was true even if it did involve going in and out of stores.

  “This is about the case, isn’t it?” Bev asked.

  “Are you channeling Maddie?” I asked, and we both chuckled.

  “I can’t imagine you’re sitting around while the specter of murder lingers and a former student and now coworker stands accused.”

  “When you put it that way… Any breakthroughs you can share, by the way? Or even any breakdowns?”

  “Nothing major, except they found some threatening notes in Catherine’s s
tuff and they’re trying to figure out who sent them.” I drew in my breath, but Bev didn’t seem to notice. “Hasn’t Skip talked to you yet? He was going to get in touch this morning, but then I saw him head for an interview room with that big guy from SuperKrafts.”

  Notes? Big guy? Too much all at once. “You mean the manager, Leo Murray, was there for an interview?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. You can’t miss him. He reeks of New York. Who wears suits in the summer around here? Not even the car salesmen. And believe me that was no car-salesman suit.”

  My curiosity was flaring. What did the police think of the notes? Why was Skip reinterviewing Leo? Unless it wasn’t Leo. There were a lot of tall guys in town. But not many who wore designer suits on ninety-degree days.

  “Do you know why he brought Leo in?”

  “No, but I do know that as soon as Catherine’s lawyer gets wind of it, he’s going to be clamoring to get her released. That is, unless Skip thinks this guy has some kind of evidence against her.”

  “And the notes? Any word on those?”

  “They’re back from analysis but I don’t know what the results are. Tell you what, Gerry, why don’t I pick up some lunch and bring it over and we can chat some more.”

  “What about your shoes?”

  “We can go later. We’ll see how it goes. Will you be free in about an hour?”

  “Perfect. Thanks. I don’t deserve you.”

  “What I always said.”

  Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz.

  My doorbell. “That’s my…” I began. What to call Jeanine? I looked at the clock. Almost noon. “My twelve o’clock is here,” I told Bev.

  I figured either Jeanine would be on her way out by one o’clock, with my profound apologies, or I’d be visiting her in jail later. Either way, I’d need a lunch.

  Chapter 16

  I led a very nervous Jeanine Larkin into my atrium. She wore a short, bolero-type sweater over a white tank top, with the outer garment pulled tight across her chest. She looked about ten years old. I hated to leave her, but I needed to check on Maddie, realizing she might not be able to wait until one o’clock for lunch. Besides that, my granddaughter had been silent and nonintrusive all through my phone call with Bev and even through the doorbell. Something was amiss.

  “Please have a seat, Jeanine,” I said. “I just have to check on Maddie. I’ll be right back.”

  Jeanine’s “Okay” was weak.

  I’d placed the paper with the poetry titles on the table and left it there for Jeanine to mull over. I steeled myself against her anguish and walked the few steps back to Maddie’s bedroom at the front of the house. I wasn’t prepared for what I found—I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Maddie crying. Not teary eyes or a sad face, but lie-on-the-bed, full-out sobbing. I went to her immediately, sat on the bed, and rolled her into my arms.

  “I’m here, sweetheart. What is it?” I fought back my own tears.

  “There’s nothing from Taylor. Or anybody else.”

  “The mail isn’t here yet.”

  “There’s no email and no phone calls.”

  “Is there someone else you’re waiting to hear from?”

  “Erica and Samantha, my friends in Palo Alto. They’re supposed to let me know about the bus we’re taking on the scouts’ museum trip.”

  “When is that trip?”

  “August tenth.”

  “That’s a long time from now, sweetheart.”

  Jeanine appeared in the doorway. “Is everything okay?” She knew my house very well from years of baby-sitting and could probably hear us from her seat in the atrium. She seemed to have shed her own anxiety in favor of concern over Maddie’s. A point in her favor, if I was keeping score.

  “We’re fine, thank you,” I said, shaking my head “no” as to whether she should come into Maddie’s bedroom. Jeanine nodded and turned away.

  Maddie buried her head on my shoulder. “You can go, Grandma,” she said, magnanimous.

  “Jeanine is here about the case,” I said. “Would you like to join us?” Was I really coaxing my granddaughter out of her depression with the promise of participation in a murder investigation?

  “No, that’s okay.” No? Now I was really worried. “I’m going to stay here in case I get an email,” she said.

  I took another minute to tell Maddie the good news about lunch being delivered by her Aunt Bev.

  She sat up. “I’m good now, Grandma. I just got, I don’t know, sad or something.”

  I thought of calling June and asking for more of her insights into preteen relationships, but in fact, even if my own social traumas were in the distant past, I’d been witness to enough similar experiences with my high school students—a girl misses a phone call from a guy she thought was her boyfriend; a guy isn’t invited to the coolest party of the term; a girl is left out when there’s a drastic regrouping at lunch. I knew Maddie would eventually forget the reason she cried today, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t suffering right now, and I considered it my job to help her out of it.

  It didn’t take much. Already, Maddie was drying her eyes and sitting up. “I’m fine, really, Grandma. I don’t know why I got this way.”

  “Maybe you didn’t take enough cookies. And did you notice the ice cream sandwiches in the freezer?” I figured I wasn’t the only grandmother who saw food as a cure for emotional distress.

  “You mean I can have one before lunch?” she asked, grinning now.

  “Absolutely.”

  She was out of my arms in a Lincoln Point minute.

  I wanted more than anything to call Henry to hear what was going on at his house. I’d had notification of a voice mail message from him on my way to my car from the inn, and wished I’d taken the time to return the call. Had Taylor been crying also? Or was she swimming again with the new girl that June had postulated? No time now, with Jeanine waiting. I left Maddie to her own devices at the freezer while I tended to a more serious problem in my atrium.

  * * *

  Jeanine was wandering around the entryway, pausing to look at the objects on my table and to fiddle with the leaves of my ficus. The slip of paper with titles of her boyfriend’s books of poetry was on the atrium table. When she saw me, she took a seat in front of the telltale note.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t even offer you a drink, Jeanine,” I said. “But you know where they are, right?”

  She nodded. “I’m good, Mrs. Porter.” She moved the paper toward me. “I’ll bet you don’t want to talk about Ethan’s poetry.”

  “I’ve seen this handwriting before, Jeanine. In a very unlikely place.”

  “I should have known better. I thought it was a strange thing to do, but she said it was just a prank.”

  “Who said what was a prank?”

  Jeanine’s breathing was labored, each word seeming to weigh on her, dragging her down. The sunlight coming through my atrium skylight, filtering through the ficus, did nothing to lighten her mood or soothe her, as she continued to hold her sweater closed tight around her.

  “Mrs. Mellon,” she said.

  “Bebe Mellon told you these notes were a prank?”

  Jeanine ran her fingers through her loose, long hair, tucked it behind her ears, then crossed her arms around her body again. “She told me she and Ms. Duncan were playing this game, sort of, like they were going back and forth with little pranks on each other. And she had this idea to write these notes and they were supposed to be part of the joke. But, she said Ms. Duncan would know her handwriting, so she asked me to write them and deliver them.”

  I sat back, trying to take in Jeanine’s story. Was she telling me the truth? If not, it was a tale worthy of a creative writing major. Why would a smart young woman engage in such a game, or joke, or prank or whatever it was? For that matter, why would a smart middle-aged woman talk her into it?

  “She offered me a lot of money,” Jeanine said, answering my unspoken question. “And all I had to do was this simple thing. Mrs. Mellon had the word
s all written out for me, and she wanted me to make the grammar mistakes just the way she wrote them.”

  “And you also delivered them?”

  Jeanine shook her head. “No, I was afraid to try to sneak into the inn the way Mrs. Mellon wanted me to. But I know Dana real well. We were cheerleaders together.” She looped a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. “I know, cheerleaders. Pretty silly, huh? But it was a big thing for us.” I was still trying to figure out who Dana was when Jeanine clarified. “Dana works at the KenTucky Inn, so she could just slide a note under any door at any time.”

  Sweet-looking Dana, who’d taken over Loretta’s desk duty today. Dana was in on the note game? One just never knew who was serving tea and pie.

  “I split the money with her,” Jeanine said, as if that made everything all right. “One hundred dollars each, for just that little bit of work. I wrote all four of the notes out at once and gave them to Dana, and she put them under Ms. Duncan’s door at the times Mrs. Mellon gave me. Oh, Mrs. Mellon doesn’t know that I got Dana to do the delivery. Are you going to tell her?”

  “Is that what matters to you?”

  “Well, she paid me to do both jobs. Do you know how many hours I’d have to work at SuperKrafts or baby-sitting to make that kind of money? Or how many hours Dana would have to put in at the inn?” Jeanine wiped her brow, as if to indicate the hard labor that would have been required to legally earn one hundred dollars.

  “It didn’t seem too easy to you? Two hundred dollars for a practical joke, when you must have known that Mrs. Mellon and Ms. Duncan didn’t get along? You didn’t wonder if maybe something was off?”

  “Well, sort of. But Mrs. Mellon seemed to be having fun, you know, not like her usual cranky mood. So, I thought, what the heck? But then Mrs. Mellon was arrested.” Brought in for questioning, I thought, but figured the fine point was not worth bringing up. “And we were going to go to the police, but she was released.”