Malice in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “By the way, have there been any breakthroughs in that murder investigation? I know your granddaughter’s first cousin once-removed”—he laughed at his wit—“is a homicide detective.”

  The question sounded strange coming from a man in faux nineteenth-century formal wear, an antique watch hanging from his vest pocket. Ryan had put his hand inside his jacket, Napoleon style, and I thought I detected a wig with graying sideburns. Apparently some props were needed even for accomplished actors.

  “I’m not privy to the inner workings of LPPD, I’m afraid. But I’m sure they’re doing all they can.”

  “Yeah, I’m still a little on edge, you know. I mean, I could have been in the studio when Goodman bought it. I mean, when the poor guy, you know . . .”

  At last. “Were you working that night?”

  “I, uh . . .” Ryan seemed caught off guard by what should have been a simple question.

  I felt an arm around my shoulder. “Hey, Aunt Gerry.”

  Of all the times for my nephew to interrupt a conversation. “Skip. You probably know Ryan. He was about to tell me—”

  But it was the moment Ryan needed. He all but sang out, “Gotta go,” and headed for the steps to the city hall, top hat and pillow in hand.

  “I changed my mind about the cafeteria,” Skip said. “It can be disgusting this late in the day when all they have is leftovers. The place reeks of mustard and old French fries.”

  Though he wasn’t aware of it, I forgave him for coming between me and another piece of the crime-scene puzzle. “I brought Willie’s cookies,” I said, holding up the bag.

  “Better than anything they’d ever have in the cafeteria. Let’s take a seat on one of the benches out here. You won’t be too cold, will you?”

  I assured him I wouldn’t be uncomfortable, sparing him my speech about how when you’ve lived through more than twenty Bronx winters, nothing in Lincoln Point, California, could compare.

  Skip pulled a chocolate chip cookie out of the bag and bit into it.

  “Let’s have it. You visited Zoe, you went to the evidence room. Now what? You want a badge?” His words sounded less harsh through a mouthful of chocolate chips.

  “I . . . uh . . . figured something out. You may already know this, but I had to tell you.”

  I described my visit to Zoe, giving him the gist of our conversation, and then the painting, ostensibly of Harriet Lane, but really of Rhonda Edgerton Goodman. I told him how Rhonda, aka Rita, had brushed by me in front of Drew Blackstone’s station in the jail.

  “Interesting,” Skip said, pulling the word from column A: words to use while thinking things through. It was a signal to those who knew him well that what you’d told him was new to him, an idea or fact he hadn’t heard before.

  I prodded. “I guess that makes Zoe look worse?”

  “Did Zoe know Rhonda before today?”

  “I imagine so. She told me Rhonda was the visitor just before me and that Rhonda threatened her life.”

  “And you saw Rhonda Edgerton today?”

  Was he missing my point? “Yes. This morning. In the jail. She signed in as Rita E. Gold, but I’m nearly one hundred percent sure it was Rhonda.”

  “Do you happen to know where she’s staying?”

  “No, I—”

  “Okay, then.”

  I knew better than to ask, “Okay what?” I took another tack. “Is the department convinced Zoe is guilty, by the way?”

  Skip looked at me. “These cookies are great”—he started on his second, this time peanut butter—“I guess they’re worth telling you at least as much as we’ll be releasing to the press.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “We’re not positive.” He turned serious. “We never are, you know, no matter what we tell you. It’s not that (a) Zoe gave a credible confession, or (b) that a reliable witness saw her do it.”

  “What about the security tape?”

  “It shows her back in the work area. And in fact, that’s just what it shows, her back is on the video. And Brad’s body was found in the television studio, not the work area. So . . .”

  The television studio, where I was going to be tomorrow afternoon. No need to bother my busy nephew with that boring detail.

  “And the knife?”

  “The one in the studio next to the body? There’s a problem getting an exact match between that knife and the wound.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “A statistical problem. We like a higher probability than they’re able to give us, but the lab is working on it. By the way, do you know that your friend Zoe still denies that she slashed the paintings?”

  “My friend?”

  “Last I heard she’s saying it was all some kind of conspiracy. Like someone dressed up as her and did it.”

  “Could that have happened?”

  “Only if the person has the same overall appearance and wears the same very unique jacket.”

  “Is ‘very unique’ more unique than ‘unique’?” I asked.

  “Huh? Oh, is this one of those distraction-by-grammar techniques?”

  “Sorry. What about the jacket?”

  “It’s black leather with a big Z in rhinestones on the back. Pretty unique . . . I mean, unique.”

  It wasn’t looking good for Zoe. I wished I’d known about the jacket before I visited Zoe. As it was, I gave Skip even more reason to think her guilty.

  I thought of my promise to June. Some help I’d been.

  As if he’d tuned into her name in my mind, Skip said, “June wants to break up. I talked her into waiting a few days at least, when things are more calm.”

  “You saw her?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “TM.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Text messaging. By cell phone. That’s how we do it these days. My buddy, Randy, proposed to his girlfriend by TM.”

  “How romantic. But let me tell you what I think—June is not going to be calm until her friend is out of jail and you apologize for arresting her.”

  Skip’s breath came out in a low whistle. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  I thought about what Beverly and I had talked about often, through all of Skip’s busy dating life. Neither of us had ever asked him, however. Now seemed the time.

  “Do you love her, Skip?”

  “I do. It’s the first time I’ve felt this way. Well, except for when I was nine.”

  “Mrs. Johnson.”

  We both laughed at the memory of Skip’s crush on his history teacher.

  “I keep thinking if I solve this case and it turns out that Zoe is innocent, June will be happy with me. But that can’t be the basis of our relationship.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  “Do you think you can talk to her?”

  Considering that his mother was three thousand miles away, I owed my nephew a surrogate. “I can try.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  A passing stray cat reminded me of a loose end. “Have you heard anything about the knife? I mean the raccoon murder weapon?”

  “Nothing yet. Things don’t happen as fast as they do on television cop shows, you know. The other day I took a box of evidence on another case to the lab and they looked at me as if I was crazy. ‘No way can we go through all that,’ the main tech told me. ‘You’re going to have to choose what you want most.’ Can you imagine? I have to pick and choose among pieces of evidence they’ll analyze. That’s how backed up they are.”

  I was sorry I’d reminded him of his favorite and very important issue—the sorry state of real crime laboratories, with understaffing and underfunding. “I didn’t think—”

  Skip looked at his watch and jumped up. “Oops, I better get to my next meeting. It’s ten to three.”

  My heart skipped. Ten to three? Not possible. I checked my watch. Ten to three. I checked the tower clock behind us. The enormous Roman numerals showed the same, or clo
se enough. Ten to three.

  I’d forgotten to pick up Maddie.

  At three o’clock, when I should have been sitting in my car across from Maddie’s school, I was stuck in traffic on the Bayshore Freeway.

  I had the school telephone number in my purse. I hadn’t wanted to take the time to dig out my little phone book before jumping into my car and heading north. Now crawling along 101, I felt it was safe enough to look up the number and call on my cell phone. Their answering machine kicked in. “You have reached the Angelican Hills school. Our office hours . . .” I clicked off.

  I couldn’t believe the time had gotten away from me like this. How could I have forgotten about Maddie? It served me right for laughing at her parents’ constant reminders. I wasn’t laughing now. The thought of Maddie, stranded, made me sick with worry. I hoped the school would take care of her until I got there. I was dismayed that I didn’t know the school policy on children who were abandoned.

  Here was a vote for getting Maddie her own cell phone. She’d joked about it the last time she asked her parents for one. “What if you forget to pick me up?” she’d argued.

  I called the school again and I heard, “You have reached . . .”

  I groaned. My poor granddaughter . . .

  When a black SUV cut me off for the second time, I leaned on my horn. Didn’t he and everyone else know that my granddaughter was standing out in the cold, waiting for me? I should have had a police escort, not people getting in my way. I imagined predators lying in wait for the last child on the sidewalk. Every child abduction case that I’d read about or seen on television flashed before me. I recalled reading a novel where a teenage girl was hauled away in a van while waiting outside school for a delinquent parent. I blocked those images, swung around, and cut off a green minvan.

  I growled when I realized I missed the traffic report on the radio. Maybe I should take an earlier exit and wind through the streets? I dialed the school again and hung up again when I got the recorded message.

  I checked the clock on my dashboard. Three twenty and I was at least three exits away, traveling in fifteen-mile-an-hour spurts. I gripped the steering wheel as if it were about to fly off, then banged it, a better release than banging my head.

  When the calming tones of “As Time Goes By” rang on the seat next to me, I thought it was the radio. I hadn’t had this new cell phone tune very long and wasn’t used to it. Add to that my frantic state and it’s a wonder I recovered in time to take the call.

  I clicked the phone on. In the few seconds it took me to say a weak “hello,” I imagined a call from a Palo Alto emergency room, a call from the police, and a call from monsters who were holding my precious Maddie for ransom.

  “Grandma? Where are you?” Maddie. Annoyed, but not hysterical or wounded, was my quick judgment.

  I allowed myself a breath. “Are you okay, sweetheart? Are you at school? Is someone with you?” Someone responsible, I meant.

  “Yeah, I’m in the counselor’s office.” My heart slowed, but it was still a long way from a normal rate. “This is where they take kids who don’t have cell phones when their parents are late picking them up.”

  I laughed in spite of the situation. I was glad to see she wasn’t so overwrought that she was off her stride.

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes, sweetheart. I’m stuck in traffic, but I’m getting close to your exit. I’m so sorry, Maddie.”

  “Were you investigating? Is that why you’re late?”

  Investigating (in all its inflections), case, solve—these had become my granddaughter’s favorite words of late.

  “I think there must have been an accident on 101.”

  “You got all caught up in helping June’s friend get out of jail and forgot me, huh?”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “I know June’s upset because Uncle Skip put her friend in jail, and now you’re snooping around.”

  “Can you stay in the school until I get there?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be in here with all the other kids—”

  “Who don’t have cell phones. I get it.”

  “So can I have one?”

  She had to know I’d have agreed to deliver the moon to her at that point. “We can bring it up again to your parents.”

  The traffic was loosening up ahead. I made my move to the right lane. I hated doing it one-handed, but the speedometer was creeping up to only twenty-five, so I didn’t feel unsafe. And just about every other driver I could see had a cell phone to his ear, so we’d all be punching for help at once if we did bump into each other.

  “And you’ll take my side?”

  I smiled and grew envious of the energy of an eleven-year-old negotiator. “We’ll talk about it when I see you. I’m exiting now.”

  I hung up and took the longest breath of the day.

  Chapter 12

  Maddie was standing in the school driveway with three other cell-phone-deprived children and one adult, or near adult, in her midtwenties, I guessed. Maddie gave me her wild, two-handed wave with her long, skinny arms and bounded down to the curb. I’d never been so happy to see her. “It’s my grandma,” she called back to the adult.

  She threw her backpack onto the backseat and jumped into the front passenger seat. Still taking advantage of the situation, I saw. At the edge of the requirements for backseat safety, Maddie had decided today was a good day to cross over the line. Maybe she thought her survival of being stood up earned her the right. In any case, this was her day to get all she could from the system that was keeping her behind.

  I let her stay up front. I straightened the hood of her sweatshirt behind her neck so she’d be more comfortable and patted her head. She really was safe in my car.

  “How was your day?” I asked, relieved that a boring, half hour wait was likely the most dramatic thing that had happened to her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. I had to say, it was easier to communicate with Maddie sitting up front than trying to manipulate the rearview mirror to catch her expressions. “Okay.”

  “You get off early tomorrow, right?” This Friday preceded a long weekend and the school districts added an extra afternoon.

  “Yeah. Are you going to pick me up on time?”

  “I promise.”

  It wasn’t like Maddie to be grouchy. I knew part of the reason was that she felt very isolated here at her new school. I wanted to ask if she was close to making a friend, but I didn’t want to nag. Maddie had entered Angelican Hills school in Palo Alto in January, halfway through sixth grade, the highest grade in the school. Groups and bonds had been forming for more than five years without her. When we’d all talked about this before the move, we figured Maddie would be fine for half a year. Then, in September, she’d enter junior high where many grammar schools came together and she’d be starting fresh like everyone else. No one had anticipated that this half year would be so tough on her.

  “Did you pass in your science report?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “When is the science fair? I’d like to come even though I can’t be a judge. You already know so much more science than I do.”

  “It’s okay. They have plenty of judges. Can we go for ice cream instead of popcorn like we planned?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can we investigate? Maybe I can figure out why someone killed that artist.”

  I could almost taste my desire to know how much Maddie had absorbed of the details surrounding Brad Goodman’s murder. We’d all tiptoed around the situation, straining our inventory of euphemisms, but short of standing over her shoulder twenty-four/seven, we had no control over what she could find out online.

  “How come you’re so interested in him?” I asked her.

  “I’m getting a head start for when I become a police-woman.”

  I snuck a look at her. A wide grin told me she was kidding.

  Sort of.

&nb
sp; We were both so full of Sadie’s enormous sundaes, we plopped on the living room chairs, shed our outer layers of clothing, and laughed at our overindulgence.

  “I really didn’t need that extra whipped cream,” I said.

  “I did,” Maddie said, rubbing her stomach and giggling.

  She didn’t giggle nearly enough these days. If all it took was fifty cents extra at Sadie’s, I was happy.

  Beverly’s daily postcards also brought smiles. Today Maddie got her own card, with a map of the islands. “Save this for a geography project,” was the message. My card had a close-up of the official patch of the Maui Police Department, with three amorphous shapes that probably represented the islands of Maui County. The message: “Nick says show this patch to Skip when he catches you investigating. Ha ha.”

  I tucked my card away. Not a good one to leave around. It occurred to me that Beverly didn’t know about Brad Goodman’s murder and its repercussions through our family. Skip and I had agreed not to bother his mother and Nick while they were on this trip and I felt sure he’d kept his part of that arrangement also.

  As for me, I missed talking everything over with Beverly, who was clearheaded and logical. If she were with me now, what would I ask her? I mused. What made a good motive for murder? would be one question I’d have liked to toss around with her. We all knew that betrayal in love was high on the list. But I had no right to assume that only Zoe and Rhonda fit this profile. Brad might have had a liaison with someone else. Stephanie? Even Ryan was a possibility. What about advancement in a career as a motive? I asked myself, in lieu of Beverly. That would apply to any of the artists who moved up a notch when Brad Goodman was out of the picture.

  I hoped Beverly was lying on the beach on one of the Hawaiian Islands. It would be a shame if no one in the family was able to relax at this moment.

  Maddie and I had planned to work on the Lincoln-Douglas set, which badly needed some color, in the form of mini posters, flags, and balloons. But I had only a few hours to get a demonstration ready for Channel 29, so that had to take precedence. At Sadie’s, I’d told Maddie about the project while we both struggled to scrape every sticky glob of chocolate sauce from our dishes.