Mix-up in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  There was the final question of the sword handle fragment the police found in Paige’s dormitory room. It occurred to me that I should find out if there was a sign-in log in the building. I’d ask Skip if the police had thought to check. Couching the query in other, more flattering words, of course.

  I tried to picture the seventysomething Charles Quentin, in expensive tweeds and rich leather loafers, trying to fit in as he entered a college dorm. I saw him break into Paige’s room, and hide the murder weapon among her shoes. Then I saw myself taking a photo of a white-haired older gentleman and showing it to the sentry in the foyer of the dorm.

  “Have you seen this man?” I’d ask.

  I groaned at my inadequacy for the task of effective investigating. I knew there was a reason I’d spent a career teaching fiction and not writing it.

  —

  Thanks to the long-winded conversation I had with myself, it wasn’t until I reached the well-recorded intersection of Gettysburg and Springfield that I noticed the same car had been in my rearview mirror since soon after I left the estate driveway. A dark blue sedan with a sole male driver. I couldn’t see the whole license plate, but I could tell by the fact that it began with the number two that the car was an older model. The state of California was well past two as the initial number. Richard’s new car boasted a seven, in fact. The age of the vehicle didn’t tell me much except that it probably wasn’t Charles Quentin or a Rockwell following me. If anyone was actually following me.

  But if not, why did the car make a right as I did and continue up the road toward my Eichler neighborhood?

  Dum, ta da dum, ta da dum, ta da dum.

  I started at the sound. It was really the car behind me that rattled me, not the familiar marching tune of my cell phone. “Hello,” I said to my Bluetooth device.

  “Hey, Grandma, we’ve been home.”

  The friendly voice settled me. “And I’ve been what?”

  “Away So Long.” I heard the grin in her words. “Is your meeting over?”

  In more ways than one. “Yes, sweetheart, I’m on my way home now.” With no unwelcome company, I hope.

  “There’s nothing to do here.”

  Which I interpreted to mean, The grown-ups in my life won’t let me use the computer.

  “Maybe you and Uncle Henry can work on the new dollhouse.”

  “We did for a while, but we tried everything to find that room. Nuts. We even blew on everything, but I know Uncle Henry was just joking when he said we should do that. Maybe I was dreaming and there is no room.”

  Not a chance. “I think it will just take a little more time.”

  I told Maddie my brilliant idea to have my crafters group work on the secret-room project this evening. I didn’t mention the demolition derby approach that was my backup plan.

  “Nuts. I can’t believe I’m stuck. And now there’s nothing to do here.”

  I smiled, wishing I were there to tickle my granddaughter out of her punishment blues.

  I stopped at a small intersection. The set of traffic lights, which I passed through many times a week, marked the entrance to my Eichler neighborhood. This afternoon, however, the signals sent two messages to my brain. One said STOP; the other said HOLD DOWN THE RED CIRCLE.

  “Maddie, I think I have a clue about the secret room.” I recited the phrase from the note I believed to be from Varena’s brother Caleb. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Huh?”

  I didn’t think so. What made me think the phrase had to do with the dollhouse in the first place? I repeated the instruction anyway.

  “Hold down the red circle,” Maddie said, slowly.

  The way her voice rose at the end, I knew we’d done it.

  “Duh!” she said. “I gotta go, Grandma. I got it. I got it.”

  It was hard to obey the speed limit and all the red and green circles for the next mile.

  I forgot about the old sedan until I saw it behind me as I approached my house. Obviously I had nothing to worry about. It was my imagination that the car had slowed down before it passed me.

  —

  I didn’t know how long Maddie had been waiting, but there she was, sitting on the curb, shivering slightly, as I pulled up. She jumped to her feet when she saw me and ran to hug me even before the driver’s-side door slammed shut.

  My delight increased when she stepped back and pulled a white envelope out of the pocket of her hot pink down vest. Henry came out then, no doubt having wisely stood at the window, safe from the cold, and from Maddie’s unbridled energy, until he saw my car.

  “Here it is, Grandma,” Maddie said, waving the speciously ordinary-looking envelope in my face. The treasure hidden in the secret room was the same size and shape as the one I’d found on the Rockwell Estate garden bench. “We decided not to open it until you got here. What do you think it is? Huh? Huh? Maybe it’s a map for a buried treasure?”

  Did my granddaughter really want something else to hunt down? I was hoping for a confession, signed by Varena’s killer.

  The three of us had something close to a group hug and walked together toward the house, agreeing that we shouldn’t open the envelope in the middle of the street. Maddie talked nonstop in what we English teachers call run-on sentences.

  “I finally remembered how with my laptop and my iPod and everything, that you have to hold down the button, you don’t just press and let go, you have to hold, like a second, or two seconds, before it goes on, so I went around the dollhouse bedroom at all the red circles and counted, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi. The first time on Monday I must have accidentally just leaned on the spot for two seconds, and then when I was trying to get it back, I was just tapping because I didn’t know.”

  She finally took a breath as we entered my atrium and took seats around the dollhouse. Maddie had left the panel to the secret room open, not taking any more chances. The house seemed to be smiling, as if it had finally given birth after a long and painful labor during which its midwives were dumbfounded.

  We couldn’t have been grinning more broadly if we’d won a fully furnished dollhouse in a raffle.

  —

  What a disappointment. “There’s no note. It looks like ledger pages of some kind,” I said, handing the contents of the envelope to Henry.

  “I took it out right away this time, just in case,” said Maddie, who still seemed not to care about the boring contents of the envelope. If there was no buried treasure, no gift certificate to Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop, no special online credit card, it didn’t much matter what was in it.

  “Good work,” I told her, giving her skinny body another hug, topped with a quick head rub that sent her red curls flying.

  “I’m not too good at this kind of thing,” Henry said. “All I remember from a high school accounting class is debits on the left, credits on the right.”

  “Which is two things more than I know,” I said.

  Maddie had taken out her smartphone and showed us an almost hidden button along the top edge of the phone. She pressed it quickly and nothing happened.

  “See,” she said. “Nothing. Now watch.” She held it down, counting, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, and the device sprang to life with an alien-sounding groan. “Did you see that, Grandma? How it came on?”

  “Good work,” I repeated. I turned to Henry. “We should call Skip and get the ledger pages to him as soon as possible.”

  “I should have known right away,” Maddie said. “This is how a lot of electronic things work.”

  “While you call the station, I’ll start the water for tea,” Henry said.

  “Uncle Henry said it’s not just these new phones that work that way.” Maddie leaned across the small table and pulled on Henry’s sleeve. “Tell Grandma how old electrical switches run that way, too, Uncle Henry.”

  Unlike Alicia, Maddie didn’t usually interrupt so aggressively.

  I finally caught on. How negligent a grandmother could I be?

  Maddie had
done her job and was pleased with her performance. The payoff for her was that she’d found a secret room and then figured out how to find it again. At a time when she’d been beaten down for her poor judgment and punished for her bad behavior, she needed accolades for a task well done, and I hadn’t given her nearly enough.

  Fortunately, I knew exactly which cabinet drawer held leftover party decorations. I made a quick trip to the kitchen and returned to the atrium with a gold paper crown I’d made for one of Maddie’s early birthday parties, along with a few wrinkled but clean CONGRATULATIONS napkins from when Richard landed his current position.

  “Before we do anything else, I think ice cream and congratulations are in order,” I said.

  “Hear, hear,” Henry said.

  He began a rendition of “Congratulations to you…” while I crowned my brilliant princess.

  From the smile on Maddie’s face, I knew the little party would stave off any thoughts of grand-matricide.

  —

  Henry picked up Taylor and brought her to my house so the two BFFs could do homework and hang out. A combination study and play date. Not much had changed since I was in grade school except the vocabulary.

  Henry and I were free to do the boring stuff.

  Before we started in on the ledger pages, Henry took my phone from the counter, punched in Skip’s number, and handed the phone to me. Apparently he noticed I hadn’t made the call yet.

  If I didn’t know better I’d have thought he didn’t trust me to include the LPPD in my investigation.

  —

  In a sharing mood, I told Skip about the flimsiness of Mr. Sedonis’s statement, given his utter intimidation by his boss, and mentioned that he might want to check the sign-in log at Paige Taggart’s dormitory and show Charles’s photo around.

  “Thanks, Aunt Gerry,” he said. “If it weren’t for citizens like you—”

  “I get it. You know how to do your job.”

  While we waited for Skip, Henry and I spread out the ledger pages, creased from many foldings, on the dining room table. The four pages appeared to be from one continuous record.

  Neither of us could make much sense out of the pages, except to note that under the column labeled Memo was a list of people and companies that had either been paid or needed to be paid. I noted a “Reimbursement from Adam George” for four hundred ninety-five dollars, and an entry for Westbay Consultants, who were paid thirteen thousand dollars.

  “We’re assuming there’s something illegal or incriminating here, right?” Henry asked.

  I worked a half nod, half shrug with my head and shoulders. “This has to be what Caleb was talking about in his communications to Paige, what he wanted her to find. And if it’s money, it must be about Charles Quentin.”

  Henry mimicked my gesture. “And why else would he leave it on the bench for you?” he asked.

  “Along with a note to beware of CQ. I wish Caleb Swingle would stop speaking in riddles and come out of hiding himself.”

  In an attempt to educate ourselves, we looked in my old relic of a dictionary for a definition of embezzlement.

  “ ‘The unlawful taking of something from another that has been entrusted to you,” I read.

  Henry shook his head. “Sad.”

  I agreed.

  We bent our heads over the ledger sheets and stared at them, as if we’d come upon a strange, coded message, which in a way we had. The first page, which was numbered page six, had headings along the top: ROCKWELL ACCOUNTING—GENERAL LEDGER (DETAIL) with a range of dates from earlier in the year.

  “Let’s hope the LPPD has someone who can make sense out of this,” Henry said, turning away from the table.

  I pointed in the direction of Maddie’s room. “It’s pretty quiet down there,” I said. “Does Taylor know about Maddie’s computer restrictions?”

  “I thought I’d leave it up to Maddie to tell her.”

  “She’s had several conversations with her parents and she seems resigned, if not pleased, with the results. That is, even with all her negotiating skills, the imposed penalty is still in effect.”

  “That’s probably good.”

  “I think so, too. Shall we check on the girls or do you think they can handle things?”

  “They can handle it.”

  “Right.”

  A pause.

  “Let’s check,” we said at the same time.

  Grandparents will be grandparents.

  Chapter 21

  By five o’clock in the afternoon, the day’s excitement was over.

  Skip had come by but stayed only long enough to take a handful of cookies and the ledger pages with him. It had been anticlimactic for me simply to hand over the material that had been the subject of a search-and-rescue mission for what seemed like a long time.

  Henry and Taylor had gone home to get her ready for parents’ night at her school. Henry would be back for the crafts meeting, which he’d started to attend on a regular basis. His woodworking expertise was a great asset, for which my friends thanked me (and him).

  Tonight was Karen’s turn to provide our dessert, so my only task was to arrange the dining room table with plates and cutlery and set out the coffeemaker. Karen’s special dark chocolate truffle cake was a fine alternative to cognac ice cream, though I could imagine a perfect world where we’d have both.

  The bottom line: I didn’t have to bake tonight.

  Maddie was finishing her homework.

  The dollhouse’s secret had been unearthed and passed on to the LPPD.

  I was out of things to do.

  A dangerous situation for me.

  I checked the clock. Was there enough time for me to make a trip to Paige’s dorm and be back for the crafters meeting? I wanted to examine the sign-in sheet for Monday night. What were the chances that Charles Quentin had to sign in? What I knew of dormitory security from Richard’s college days wasn’t reassuring. A photo of Charles would be better. I wished I’d thought to sneak one with my cell phone.

  Not that I remembered how to use the camera in my cell phone. I’d have to get Maddie to show me, for the fifth time.

  I paced my house.

  The plan to visit Paige’s dorm room wouldn’t work, and it was too soon to call Skip and ask about the ledger pages. I finally thought of something useful. If I couldn’t get to Paige’s dorm, I could at least call and tell her we’d found the envelope Caleb had hidden. I did know how to use the call log in my phone and reached Paige quickly.

  “Hey, Mrs. Porter. Anything new?”

  “We found it,” I said.

  Paige seemed to know immediately what I meant, and like Maddie, didn’t sound as disappointed as I was by the contents of the envelope.

  “I’m not crazy!” she said. “Now maybe the police will leave me alone and go after who really took Varena away.”

  I hoped she was right. Though we didn’t find a signed confession, my guess was that we had found a serious motive for murder. “Paige, do you have a minute to answer a couple of questions?”

  “Sure. I’m home for the evening. Sad, huh?”

  I didn’t feel qualified to comment on Paige’s social life. “Does a visitor to your dorm have to sign in?”

  “Theoretically, yes. But these rent-a-cops aren’t the most reliable, believe me. They go out back for a smoke and forget to lock the front door all the time. A lot of kids do their homework in the foyer just to watch the door.”

  “Do you think Charles Quentin knows where your dorm room is?” I asked this although I had a hard time picturing the older gentleman lying in wait for building security to go lax.

  “Oh, my God, Mrs. Porter, do you think it was Mr. Quentin? I didn’t put it together when you said ledger pages were in the dollhouse. Mr. Quentin planted the sword handle piece in my room?”

  “I don’t know anything for sure. I’m just wondering who could get into your room. Would someone like Mr. Quentin be noticed if he entered the building and went upstairs?”

&n
bsp; “Like I said, anyone can sneak in, and Mr. Quentin looks like every kid’s grandfather. No one would be suspicious unless he was dressed like a scraggly old man. Oh, my God. Mr. Quentin.”

  I heard what I thought might be a shiver from Paige, probably remembering times when she might have stood or sat next to a murderer.

  Or was I projecting my own shivery feelings?

  “Has anyone else from the Rockwell Estate visited you there?” I asked.

  “Uh-uh. No one’s ever been up here. Once in a while Laura drives me home, when she’s in a good mood and not harping on me to stop wasting time on Varena’s dollhouses. Oh, another time, when I was really sick, Varena had the driver take me home.”

  “Would that be Mr. Sedonis?”

  “Yes, Roberto. But he didn’t come in or anything. No one from the estate has ever actually been in my room. Well, except for the guy who planted the weapon.”

  A little bell went off in my brain, signaling that something was off in what I was hearing, but as often happened, I couldn’t put my finger on the problem.

  Beep, beep.

  My call-waiting signal. Doris Ann Hartley was on the line. I signed off with Paige and prepared myself to face the music with Doris Ann. I wasn’t pleasing any of my pseudo-employers these days. Not Alicia, who wanted me to find a killer she didn’t share meals with. Not Doris Ann, who wanted me to find a dollhouse.

  Soon no one would trust me with important assignments. Maybe that was a good thing.

  “Gerry, I’m sure you know why I’m calling,” Doris Ann said.

  “I do, Doris Ann. I need another few—”

  “I’ll bet you had a lot to do with it.”

  I mumbled a syllable or two, hoping Doris Ann would continue without my input.

  “It’s such a coup for Lincoln Point’s little library. I’m thrilled that the ceremony will still go on as planned.”

  “Me, too.”

  “The head of the library association called me this afternoon to check on the arrangements. It’s very exciting.”

  “It certainly is. Any new details?” I asked. I wondered how long I could keep up my end of a conversation when I didn’t know the topic.

  “Just that it will now be called a Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to Varena Young, for her blah-blah-blah. I’m sure you had a lot to do with its not being canceled.”