Maddie continued her negotiating after we’d changed clothes and started work on our second cleanup of the day, June’s garbage.
“The case, Grandma?” she said, as if I were simply forgetful and not determined to get her mind off the crime.
“There’s only one policeman in this family,” I said. The declaration sounded hollow as I remembered my promise to June that I’d help Zoe. A somewhat coerced promise that I considered only partially binding.
“You know I like to help,” Maddie said, as if she were offering to set the table for dinner instead of hoping to help solve a murder case.
“You can help by putting that recycle container right side up.”
“I am.” She lifted the container using both arms and one foot. “See? But you know I can do other stuff, like on the computer.”
“I know and you’re very smart. But the police don’t need us right now.”
“Do you know what I found out today?” she asked.
I walked toward her with a broom. “I can’t wait to hear,” I said.
“Yuck, yuck,” Maddie yelled. I thought she’d merely thought my comment distasteful or insincere, but when I looked over she was scraping something off the sole of her shoe. Something that looked like blood. I dropped the broom and a bag of June’s garbage and ran over. Had she cut her foot on a piece of rusted metal? Punctured herself with some kind of dirty needle? In my mind I was already rushing her to the emergency room.
But the bloody problem was not with Maddie. A dead raccoon was lying half on June’s lawn, half on the sidewalk. It wasn’t all that unusual a sight, though I would have expected June to call animal control instead of stuffing the carcass in her trash.
I noticed Maddie had been holding her breath. She’d taken off her shoes and thrown them onto a pile of rubbish. She seemed to be breathing in spurts. I’d never seen such squeamish behavior in my granddaughter and planned to tease her about it later.
She was pointing to the raccoon, to the side that was not visible to me. I walked around for a better view and saw the cause of her panic attack.
The raccoon had a knife through its chest.
“I’m on my way,” Skip said on the phone.
I cut up a large plastic trash bag (no towel or other fabric that might pick up or leave fibers, I learned) and covered the messy corpse. Second best to the large piece of paper Skip had suggested, but which I did not have handy. I also sacrificed Maddie’s sneakers, putting them in my own trash. I had no delusions that this would erase the memory of the stabbed animal.
It wasn’t too hard to convince Maddie to wash up and throw her clothes in the washing machine while I waited for Skip. I paced the sidewalk between my house and June’s, thankful that no neighbors came along.
Within a few minutes, Skip arrived in an animal control truck, accompanied by a crime-scene technician. I assumed Lincoln Point didn’t have much call for a specialist in murdered animals and Skip had thrown together this ad hoc group for the occasion. For once, I didn’t argue when Skip sent me away while they did their jobs.
“How can you be so blasé about a stabbed animal in your girlfriend’s driveway?” I asked Skip, who’d rejected my idea that this might have something to do with Brad’s murder and Zoe’s arrest.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he asked, standing in my living room. “And I sent the knife to be tested for prints. But truthfully, I think this was just a random raccoon casualty or—”
“The raccoon didn’t fall on the knife, Skip.”
“. . . or a prank. You said yourself you thought at first it was some kids who knocked over the containers.”
I thought it would be obvious to my nephew that that was before I saw the knife. “You don’t think it’s too much of a coincidence that it’s June’s house, that there has never been a prank this creepy, that the animal was stabbed, just as Brad Goodman and all the paintings were stabbed?”
“Hi, Uncle Skip.”
A subdued Maddie, wrapped in her father’s baseball afghan, came into the living room. She smelled of strawberries and cream, meaning she’d actually taken a bath voluntarily. I was glad she’d learned some coping skills, like the value of a relaxing, aromatic bath.
She put her arms, as best she could without losing the afghan, around me, and then around Skip and took a seat on my rocker.
Skip knelt beside her and smoothed her wet curls. “How are you doing? That was a nasty scene, wasn’t it?” She opened her eyes wide and nodded. “How about some milk and cookies? Your grandma’s cookies got me through some hard times.”
“She just had ice cream,” I said, without thinking. In reality, I was prepared to spoon-feed her from a half gallon of any flavor.
She gave me the look I expected. “I lost most of it. You saw.”
Skip poured her a glass of milk and took two cookies from the jar on the counter.
“Was the ice cream good?” I asked her, hoping for a smile.
She obliged with a grin, on her way back to normalcy. “It was something to tell Devyn about. Black ice cream.”
“Black ice cream? No way,” Skip said, aiming his finger back and forth toward his mouth. “I’ll stick to caramel cashew.”
I thought we’d moved on from the issue of junior police investigators. But not quite.
“Uncle Skip, I can still help you, you know. I was just freaked out for a couple of minutes. Will you tell me if there’s anything I can do to help you investigate?”
Good news, bad news, I thought. I didn’t want her to remain “freaked out” but a little perspective would have been nice.
“Sure,” Skip said.
“I’m an outstanding researcher on the computer, my teacher says. She even lets me help the kids who are a little slower to learn.”
“Well, I can certainly use a computer expert on my side.”
“I found out something already today at the computer in the bookstore.”
I remembered Maddie’s announcement, just before she exposed the raccoon.
“What did you learn, sweetheart?” I asked.
“I found out that Mr. Goodman, the artist who was killed, won lots of awards for his paintings. He used to go to Santa Fe and he beat everyone there.”
I gulped. “Where did you see all that?”
“The Lincoln Point newspaper is online, Grandma,” she said, as if she were teaching a class called Online for Dummies. “Does that help you, Uncle Skip?”
“Good work,” Skip said. I knew he was as surprised as I was, but he covered it nicely.
“I can do more, you know.”
“That was a big help already. I’ll call you as soon as I need more from you, okay?”
“Promise?”
He hesitated. A promise made to Maddie was not to be taken lightly. After a moment of stalling, Skip found a way out. “If your mom and dad say it’s okay.”
“Nuts,” Maddie said.
I noticed Skip hadn’t included me in the approval loop.
The mailman had brought two postcards, one from Devyn from her home in Los Angeles and one from Beverly and Nick in Hawaii. They made a nice distraction from talk of crime and slain raccoons. I’d decided not to make too big a deal out of Maddie’s online research, either with her or with her parents. My best bet was to get Rosie at the bookstore to show me what Maddie had read.
Beverly’s card of the day had a photo of a whole pig looking very roasted, in an open barbecue, lying on a bed of wide lettuce leaves, with an apple in its mouth. Maddie read the greeting: “We went to a luau. That poor dissed pig! I’ll never eat ham again. Love, Bev and Nick.”
“Me, either,” said Maddie, who hadn’t eaten ham since she’d seen a video featuring a beloved pig named Babe.
Devyn’s card showed a daredevil ride at Disneyland, with log-shaped containers holding screaming young humans. Maddie read, “Mr. Pierson, the new math teacher, is a dorkface. You should be glad you’re not here.” She smiled as she showed me the rows of xoxoxoxox, then ran off to h
er desk with its own stash of Lincoln Point postcards.
I tried to erase the image of my own students possibly writing to pen pals about dorkface Mrs. Porter.
Our town cards were no match for those of Los Angeles or Maui, but there was a small collection for sale in Rosie’s bookstore. They were done by a local artist and featured such highlights as the buildings at civic center, the large redwood statue of Abraham Lincoln at the city limit, and a vineyard that no one could place. Maddie had nearly bought her out this month.
While Maddie was writing, I took the opportunity to have a cup of tea and think about my promise to June. My hopeful conclusion was that it was such an emotional time, she’d probably forgotten her impassioned plea or decided against it after our meeting at Willie’s. No need for me to do anything but let my capable nephew and his colleagues do their job. I should just be grateful that she hadn’t had to come home to her deadly trash. I made periodic visits to my patio door to check for signs of life around her property. It was clear that she’d spent the day on Zoe’s problem—visiting her in jail, picking up her things at Rutledge Center, meeting with me. I was tempted to add: antagonizing Skip. I thought she might be home now, or even stop in at my house, but I saw no sign of her or her car.
It was time to bring crafts to the fore and forget about the often unpleasant large-scale world.
Although we were both eager to build cinder-block book-cases for the Bronx apartment, Maddie and I decided to leave that for another time. For now, we had to get to the project with a deadline—the Lincoln-Douglas debate room box.
I realized with some glee that when Maddie left my home with her parents this time, she’d be traveling only ten miles away, not all the way to Southern California. This meant she’d be able to see the project through, from its humble, unpainted beginnings to its placement in the civic center foyer.
We’d made the box over the weekend. I’d taken the easy way out, starting with a ready-made picture frame. As I set it on the crafts table now, the doorbell rang.
“It’s Mrs. Reed,” Maddie said. “I see her car. I’ll open the door.”
Nuts, I thought, noting how handy Maddie’s expression was. Not that I didn’t enjoy a visit from my best (after Beverly) friend, but I knew as soon as Linda saw how I’d used the bought frame for the front of the room box, thus eliminating the toughest part of the job, she’d have something to say about it.
Linda walked directly to where I was, in the crafts area beyond my kitchen. This was meant to be a laundry room, but all that was left of that plan were the washer and dryer. The counters and cabinets, plus the tops of the appliances, were filled with crafts materials and tools.
“Caught red-handed,” I said, pointing with both index fingers to the box.
Linda gasped, clutching the front of one of her vast collection of oversize velour jogging outfits (not that she ever did any exercise beyond lifting pieces of wood to her table saw). An exaggerated effect, for Maddie’s benefit.
“You are setting such a bad example for your granddaughter,” said my only-from-scratch crafter friend. “It’s the equivalent of using that refrigerated dough for your ginger cookies.”
“Never,” I said.
Linda picked up the frame-cum-room box and inspected it. I’d used an eight-by-ten picture frame, choosing one with a fancy edge, since the scene was a depiction of an event in Victorian 1858. Right side up for the scene would be with the long side of the frame as “the ground.” I’d extended the whole frame eight inches out behind the glass, making the room box a foot along the front (counting the frame edges), eight inches deep, and ten inches high (again, an added two inches for the fancy frame). “I see what you did here.” She examined the edges of the box through the bottom lens of her bifocals. “Not bad.”
From Linda, that was high praise. She pitched in and helped us cut sandpaper to size for the ground and glue it to the floor of the box. An outdoor scene called for trees, and I had a box full of all sizes. We picked out trees suitable for rows along the back and side walls of the box. I’d already wallpapered the back section with a sky design I’d found in a scrapbooking store.
I knew Maddie would be daunted by the task of placing tree after tree along the sides of the box. She got bored, as I often did, with the rote aspects of crafts. It would take at least two dozen trees and bushes crowded together to give the scene a realistic appearance. Like me, Maddie enjoyed the creative part but easily tired of the repetitive cutting, painting, and gluing that some scenes required.
“I’d better go call Devyn before it gets too late,” she said, four trees into the task. It was barely four thirty in the afternoon—hardly late—but I had no desire to force her to stay for the grunt work. I was happy enough that she’d grown to enjoy my lifelong hobby.
As soon as Maddie left, Linda leaned her beehive hairdo toward my shoulder and whispered, “What about that murder, huh? Do you want to hear some gossip about the woman they arrested?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that Linda would have any inside information on this case. She worked as a nurse at the Mary Todd nursing home, an unlikely place to have run into Zoe or Brad. I wished she hadn’t used the word gossip. It gave my curiosity an air of sordidness. However, I wasn’t so put out that I’d pass on her scoop.
“You have some insight?” I asked.
She laughed. “Insight, yeah, that’s what it is. Well, anyway, Ms. Howard was a substitute teacher at the high school last year and Jason had her for English.”
I remembered Skip’s mentioning that Zoe’s fingerprints were on file with the Lincoln Point school district. I was retired from the district by then and had never run into her there.
“I guess it took her a little while to get back to her tech editing career when she first moved from Chicago,” I said.
“Maybe that’s why she wasn’t the best teacher, you know? Jason said Ms. Howard was called to the principal’s office more than he was that term, and you know how often Jason was there.”
Though Linda had brought it up, I wouldn’t dare comment on Jason’s problems in school, especially since he’d turned it around lately, even making the honor roll in the last term. Linda had the appropriately worded bumper sticker on her car, the kind that couldn’t be read in total unless you were at a very long red light.
More interesting were Zoe’s delinquency issues. “You don’t say.” I stated this hoping Linda would say more about Ms. Howard.
Linda was ready, appearing to relish her upper hand in the FYI department. “She yelled at the kids constantly, used questionable language, and got fired. Do you know why they had to let her go?”
I didn’t know she got fired. Another thing June forgot to mention.
If I wanted information, I had to accommodate Linda by playing her game. “Do tell.”
“She threw an eraser at one student and whacked another on the side of his head,” Linda said, not losing a beat in her “tree-planting” chore. “And, no, Jason was not one of them.”
While Linda was reporting, she had multitasked. She’d glued down two perfect rows of trees in the corner of the box, placing them diagonally to give the appearance of added depth. I was relegated to handing her the trees, one at a time. I loved when Linda took over my project. Everything was straighter, neater, more cleverly arranged than if I had done it. A heavy woman with relatively thick fingers, Linda was still able to manipulate tiny objects better than most of the women in our crafters circle.
I thought I’d better add my tidbit to the conversation before Linda embarrassed herself. “Did you know that Ms. Howard is June Chinn’s best friend?”
“Oops. Sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, but if she stops by, you might want to change the subject.”
Linda ran her thumb and index finger along her lips and indicated that was it for the gossip.
Zoe had a temper and had lashed out in class. That was Linda’s big news. It could mean nothing. Or everything.
Chap
ter 7
I noticed Maddie hang up the phone from her call to Devyn and go directly toward her room. Needing some time to herself, I supposed, as Devyn on the other end of the line probably also did. I’d met Devyn on my trips to Los Angeles. She was as sweet as Maddie, with long strawberry-blond curls and a generous sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She seemed as devoted to Maddie as Maddie was to her. But how long could two eleven-year-olds stay in touch? They would change in more ways than either of them would believe right now. I still had a few friends in the Bronx, but I’d been an adult when I left and the relationships were already mature.
I worried that in my happiness at having my son and his family close to me, I’d neglected to notice how the move might hurt my granddaughter. When Maddie came back to the ex-laundry area, I hugged her more tightly than usual. If she wondered why, she didn’t ask.
She did ask, “How come Mrs. Reed left already?”
“She just stopped by to chat.”
Maddie looked at the Lincoln-Douglas scene. “Wow, she did a lot of work, too.”
“How do you know I didn’t do that?”
She gave me a sheepish look. “Uh . . .”
Even my granddaughter recognized who was the better crafter.
We got to work on the fabric, one of my favorite parts of making a scene. Even small pieces of cloth brought a dollhouse or a miniature room to life, giving it dimension, texture, folds, and shadows. Maddie cut out long banners from flag-pattern fabric, being careful to have some red, white, and blue on every rectangle. We hung banners from the trees, much like those in Mary Lou’s painting. Though Linda would call it cheating, we used long party toothpicks with flags on the end as flagpoles scattered through the area.
Malice in Miniature Page 7
