Malice in Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  My daughter-in-law was one of only a handful of artists at work on this Sunday morning. Not everyone waited until the last minute, it seemed. I interrupted a delicate application of gray paint to an already fluffy cloud to give Mary Lou the lowdown on my chance meeting with Dirk, the computer scientist-cum-janitor.

  “I’m feeling a little lighthearted since I now have not only Nan Browne’s comment about the lack of connecting portals from the studio to here. I have corroboration from a disinterested professional as well.”

  “Why would Zoe lie about how she got in?”

  “Not only is that a mystery, but consider this. The studio is where Brad’s body was found, not this work area. If she never went into the studio, why would she say she did?”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  I agreed. “Maybe she thinks breaking and entering is a more serious charge than destroying a painting.”

  “Not to me.”

  “I knew that.”

  Mary Lou scratched her head with one end of a brush, the other end being filled (it seemed to me) with paint. I had the feeling it wasn’t the first time she’d made this move. “Then how did she get in?”

  It might have been the adrenaline rush generated by my fear that Mary Lou was going to spill paint on her hair and face, or just a random connection among pieces of the puzzle. Something put my brain in high gear. “I think I know.”

  I remembered how Ryan Colson had refused to answer the simple question, asked first by Maddie, of whether he’d been on duty the night of Brad’s murder.

  “I think Ryan Colson let Zoe in,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I’m convinced he did it.”

  “Well, all in all, you did better than I did today,” Mary Lou said. “I got all involved in my sky and forgot to snoop around.”

  A true artist. “You’re entitled,” I told her.

  Chapter 17

  A half hour later, Mary Lou and I climbed the stairs of city hall, on our way to the community center annex, where the debate would be held. The mural had been completed, and Mary Lou wanted to watch the stage crew set it up.

  The air of excitement around city hall was more electric than at Christmas, more exciting than at any sporting event—Abraham Lincoln happenings trumped them all. I noticed even our itinerant fiddler was wearing a top hat today, our resident artist was attempting a Lincoln portrait, a new entertainer, a mime, was decked out in a silver tux. I reached into my purse and pulled out bills for each of them. Their thank-you smiles were warm, their eyes distant. I wished my community service skills included more than tutoring.

  I would have thought the auditions for a (short, Democrat) Stephen A. Douglas and a (tall, Republican) Abraham Lincoln would have ended by now, but there were still hopefuls around the front of the building. To our right was a knot of Douglas wannabes in floppy bow ties and Lincoln hopefuls in stiff bow ties. Some Douglases had ineptly padded their stomachs, giving them a deformed torso; others looked the part naturally.

  Nearing the top step, four men in work clothes carried an enormous banner reading KNOX COLLEGE FOR LINCOLN, Knox College being the venue of the Galesburg debate.

  More debate snippets swirled around us. By now I felt I could take up Ryan Colson’s challenge and audition for a role myself (my physical appearance would qualify me as a Lincoln candidate). “I don’t mind admitting that I’ll be relieved when we’ve met for the last time,” bellowed a Douglas, and “. . . blowing out the moral lights around us when he maintains that anyone who wants slaves has a right to hold them,” a Lincoln chimed in.

  I wondered how many of the aspiring debaters were aware that the lines they’d memorized were by no means guaranteed to be authentic. None of the manuscripts of Lincoln’s prepresidential speeches had been preserved—neither Lincoln nor anyone else thought that to be important. What we had were transcripts that relied on newspaper accounts and notes by on-the-scene stenographers.

  Not that knowing that would lessen my enjoyment of the reenactment.

  Mary Lou had gone ahead of me. I saw her meet up with Ed Villard near the top of the steps and watched as the two of them moved on to the foyer where the mural would be arriving in pieces. I stayed behind to look out for one Douglas especially, and saw him a few steps above me, carrying a plastic bag full of bells for the audience to use in its simulation of the 1858 rally participants (by all accounts, they’d been a rowdy crowd, booing as loudly as they cheered).

  I rushed to catch up with Ryan and heard his latest debate excerpt.

  “If the people of Kansas had only agreed to become a slave-holding state—” he said, with a pompous air.

  “Ryan Colson,” I said, interrupting. “I see you’re still in the running.”

  “Oh, yeah. Great news, Mrs. Porter. I got a callback. This means I’m on the short list.” Ryan looped the handles of the plastic bag around his wrist and rubbed his hands together, gearing up for what was probably the last of the auditions.

  “That’s wonderful. Do you know how many are on the list?”

  “Not really, but other years they’re down to only two or three finalists by this time.” He gave me a thumbs-up. “I’m feeling like I have good karma today.”

  “Well, I wish you luck.” (Was luck necessary if one had karma?) I paused, Columbo-style, I’m embarrassed to say. “By the way, I have a question for you, Ryan, about last Monday night.”

  Ryan’s face fell, becoming thinner than Stephen Douglas’s ever was. He looked at his watch. “You know, I’m in a big rush right now. Like I told you, I got a callback.”

  “Oh, it can wait. I’m just curious about why you let Zoe Howard into the Rutledge Center around the time Brad Goodman was murdered.” Now his face was both fallen and pale. “You go on now, though. I’ll catch you at another time.” I glanced to the left, toward the police station. I couldn’t remember ever being this dramatic to make a point.

  Ryan moved three or four short steps along the wide tread we stood on, then came back. “Mrs. Porter, I could lose my job,” he said in a whisper.

  I whispered back. “I’m not trying to get you fired, Ryan. I simply want to know the circumstances under which you abused your position.” (Put that way, it did sound like I wanted him fired.)

  “Can we meet somewhere later? I promise I’ll tell you.”

  “When?”

  “Do you have a cell? Can I call you when the audition is over?”

  I gave him my number. His wig seemed lopsided now as a result of his nervous rubbing of his forehead. I felt bad that I’d probably thrown him off his Stephen Douglas persona. On the other hand, I had a murder to investigate.

  After a little more jostling on the steps, during which I learned even more about the debate over the conditions under which Kansas might be admitted to the Union as a state, I joined the crowd witnessing the setup of the multi-sectioned mural in the foyer. The elaborate collage had been done in giant panels depicting highlights of the seven original debates. Five panels stretched nearly floor to ceiling across each side of the large foyer, joined by a long narrow panel over the wide doorway in the middle. Each artist had worked in his or her own style, but the overall effect was one of admirable cohesion and complementarity. An eclectic project, and worthy of its subject.

  Throughout the mural were triangles and other shapes containing lettered quotes from all the Lincoln-Douglas debates, from the first one in Ottawa, Illinois, to the seventh and last in Alton, Illinois. Overlapping images represented indoor and outdoor settings and the two senatorial candidates themselves—Lincoln with his bony, drawn-in cheeks, Douglas with a knobby dark pompadour at the top of his round head.

  Mary Lou came up to me. “Isn’t it magnificent? I wish I’d been part of it.” As we watched a dozen artists erecting the mural, putting on finishing touches, making small repairs, Mary Lou looked almost wistful. “We used to work together on murals all the time in college. It can be more fun than doing your own individual painting.”

  Ed Villard approached
us at that moment, a palette in his hand. His jeans and loose white shirt looked stiff with paint. “That’s easy for you to say,” he muttered, as he walked by.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “As I mentioned before, Ed’s not the happiest artist I’ve ever met. But in all fairness, he’s the oldest of the group, as you can see. It’s kind of a tradition that young people would be involved in a group effort like this, but that once you’re older and established, you’d have your own painting in a show. Either that, or you’re Diego Rivera.”

  As scanty as my knowledge of art history was, even I knew the great muralist and his equally famous wife, Frida Kahlo. “I’ve seen his mural in San Francisco several times,” I said, thinking back to the stimulating trips Ken and I had made to the city.

  “The Pan American mural. That’s just one of many. He gave the world public art of the most amazing proportions and brilliance. But it seems sad, to wish you were Vuillard or Rivera or anyone else.”

  I agreed with Mary Lou. I was glad I had no aspirations that were so high I couldn’t achieve them.

  Mary Lou showed me the spot where her own watercolor of the Galesburg debate would be situated—in front of the five panels to the left of the doorway. On the other side would be a watercolor of Galesburg, Illinois, as it was today, a city said to have one of the largest railroad yards in the country.

  “Who’s doing the watercolor of contemporary Galesburg?” I asked.

  “That’s another sore point with Ed. The mayor’s daughter, Barbara Roberts, got the commission. She’s an art major in San Francisco. It’s not a bad painting, but you have to wonder about the objectivity of the committee who chose her. Poor Ed can’t catch a break.” Mary Lou pointed to the center doors. “Excuse me for a minute, Mom? I need to see that stagehand.”

  If my calculations were correct, there were four commissioned paintings for this year’s reenactment. The two watercolors outside the auditorium were by Mary Lou on one side, and the mayor’s daughter on the other. The two oil paintings inside were to have been the Buchanan and Harriet Lane portraits by the late Brad Goodman.

  I had a new worry—what if Brad was killed by someone who wanted to replace him and that someone still didn’t get the commission? Didn’t that put Mary Lou and Barbara Roberts at risk?

  I shook my head—no, no. It didn’t make sense that someone would just kill everyone in his way until he was the only one left to paint.

  That was silly.

  Wasn’t it?

  Leave it to me to think of the worst scenario. I went back to the spurned lover theory, which made me much more comfortable with respect to the safety of my family.

  Some cop I’d make.

  I wandered around, catching fragments of artist talk, and more orations on slave versus free states. I saw Ryan Colson in the crowd, heading for the community center annex, where auditions were being held. I wondered if or when he’d call me and what I would do about it in either case. Skip’s office was a stone’s throw from where I stood in the city hall foyer—one building over in the civic center complex. He wouldn’t necessarily be there on a Sunday, but the proximity of his workplace made me think I should tell him what I’d learned from the Rutledge Center janitor about Zoe’s story. I’d call him after I talked to Ryan, I decided.

  I took out my cell phone to check for messages. In all the noise of the foyer, I might not have heard the ring. I hoped to hear June’s voice or Ryan’s, but heard only “You have no new messages,” and then, a few seconds later, the melody of “As Time Goes By.”

  I saw Mary Lou’s ID and clicked my cell phone on to receive her call.

  “That was fast,” Mary Lou said, from somewhere in the crowd. I’d lost track of her petite frame in the throng. “It only rang once. Are you ready for an early lunch? I’m through here for now.”

  “I’ll meet you out front. I’m through, too,” I said.

  As soon as we were seated in Bagels by Willie, Mary Lou and I picked up our knives and checked out the handles, expecting to see the concentric, if not quite perfect circles Maddie had an eye for. We both laughed at the gesture, then frowned as we saw that the knives were devoid of any design or symbol.

  “These are not Willie’s usual knives. I think Lincoln PD has been here already,” Mary Lou said.

  “It looks that way,” I said and took the opportunity to ask Lourdes about it when she came to take our order.

  “Oh, yeah.” (She pronounced it jah, something we were working on since Lourdes was determined to lose her charming accent.) “That crazy lady in town? She took some of our knives, I heard. And today the police came by and took all the rest of them. Johnny, our supervisor, he had to go to the discount store and buy new ones.”

  “Why would they take them all?” Mary Lou addressed this to me. Was I the authority? Oh, dear.

  I shrugged, thinking of the many names of Rhonda Goodman. “Maybe for fingerprints, to see if she’s been in the shop touching all the knives?”

  We all shook our heads at that theory.

  I thought of my trip to the evidence room and the sink leaning against the wall. It gave me a clue to the real answer to Mary Lou’s question.

  “They took them because they can,” I said. “The police can take everything and the kitchen sink if they think it might matter to their investigation.”

  “Don’t get me started. Don’t even try to figure out how the police work,” Lourdes said. “I could tell you some stories.” From her expression I gathered the stories didn’t have happy endings. “Will I see you this afternoon, Mrs. Porter?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, though I’d temporarily forgotten our date. “In the library at three.”

  She went off to get our bagels with a wide smile on her face. If only my high school students had been as thrilled at the prospect of a class with me.

  “Here’s something,” Mary Lou said. “It’s been nagging at me, but it may be nothing.”

  I straightened up in my seat. I was ready for any morsel of information or informed opinion. “Let me be the judge.”

  “While I was in the foyer, I ran into Ed Villard again. He’d just gotten the word that Brad Goodman’s Harriet Lane commission is his.”

  “That’s good news. As you said, he can use a break.”

  “Yes, but get this. He told me he’s finished with the painting except for some final touches and the framing.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t care how good you are, it’s almost impossible to come up with a decent portrait in less than a week.”

  “He was highly motivated,” I said.

  She shook her head, a doubtful expression on her face. “Motivated or not, there’s a certain amount of time required. Portraits in oil take longer than almost any other medium, especially if you do them in the classical style, as Ed does. It’s not a matter of being a fast painter, you have to allow time for one layer to dry before you put the next one on. And then he said he already had sealant on it. That’s another whole layer.”

  “Could he have taken some shortcuts?” I wasn’t sure why I was working so hard to defend Ed, except that it was easy to feel sorry for a guy my age who “couldn’t catch a break.”

  “Well, there’s van Gogh. He had a different method. He just slapped on one thick layer, but he was impressionistic, not classical, and anyway—”

  “Ed Villard is no van Gogh,” I said, finishing Mary Lou’s sentence. (I hoped we wouldn’t have to go through all the major figures in art history with this nugget from political history.) “Did Ed have an explanation about why it didn’t take very long to come up with the replacement portrait?”

  “I did express surprise when he told me, and he backtracked. He said the canvas had already been prepped for another portrait and that he happened to have the appropriate palette ready for that project. He didn’t say the sealant was on it, but that he was going to put the sealant on it . . . but I’m not totally buying it.”

  We accepted our
identical lunch plates from Lourdes—toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese, fruit, and a side of potato salad.

  “I have an errand to run this afternoon,” I said, once I was fortified with a couple of hundred calories.

  “You mean tutoring Lourdes?”

  “That, too, but before that, I need to . . . uh, do something else,” I said, pretending to be chewing at the same time, to mask my words.

  “This is not Maddie you’re talking to, Mom. What are you up to?”

  “Well, when you put it that way . . . I need to find out more about Brad Goodman. What kind of person he was. What kind of relationship he had with Ed, for example, and with Ryan Colson.” I ticked off my questions. “How did he get along with the television crew that was taping the artists, for that matter? Or with Nan Browne? And what about our friendly crazy lady, allegedly Brad’s ex-wife? Was she always like that? And Brad’s gone, so I can’t ask him, so—”

  “You’re going back to jail.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  As I’d predicted, the afternoon was mild—sixty-five degrees (according to the reading on the bank’s electronic billboard). I’d made arrangements with Mary Lou for her to keep the car. I’d call when I was ready and either she or Richard would pick me up.

  I walked the few blocks along Springfield Boulevard back to the civic center. I passed Abe’s Hardware store, which had been in its location for three generations. In the window was a display featuring a log cabin kit for sale, surrounded by an assortment of tools needed to build it. I slowed down, tempted to buy the kit. But I didn’t need another dollhouse and I had business at the Lincoln Point jail. Just like every other grandmother, I mused.

  Looking ahead, I could see that the steps were sparsely populated compared to the way they’d been the last few days. It was possible that the latest Lincoln and Douglas had now been chosen. I wondered whether Ryan had made the grade.