“Gerry, let’s go have a chat. Just the two of us,” she said, her forced, louder-than-necessary communication causing raised eyebrows at the desk.
“You’re inviting suspicion, Linda,” I said, in a whisper that probably also did.
I had to admit I was no better than Linda at an undercover operation. Anyone listening would have wondered what we were up to. Fortunately the two at the front desk had gone back to paying more attention to each other than anything happening in the lobby.
Rosie had aged ten years. She was dressed in a nurse’s uniform, presumably Linda’s, a bad fit even though she and Linda were both on the chubby side. She’d exchanged her dressy black patent sandals for blue paper booties. The cocktail dress she’d worn on Friday night lay folded on a chair. I wasn’t proud of the fact that I wished I could surreptitiously check it for bloodstains.
A side table held several plastic containers that I was sure were from Linda’s cupboard. I was glad Rosie didn’t have to count on the vending machines for her nutrition.
The guest room itself was cheerless, only a cut above descriptions I’d read of thirteenth-century monks’ cells, minus a cross over the bed. Instead, a stern Mary Todd Lincoln, her hair tightly braided, looked down on the twin bed outfitted with white-only linens. There was a small bath and shower off the room, probably more than the medieval nuns and priests could say, but my guess was that the administrators of the home didn’t want the nonpaying guests to get too comfortable.
Linda had done her best, it was clear, to house, feed, and clothe her friend, but she could do nothing about the depression that caused Rosie’s face to sag, her eyes to be rimmed with red.
When Rosie saw me she gasped, then rushed to embrace me and cried softly. I let her stay as long as she needed to. She smelled of stale makeup. When she relaxed a bit, she said, “Someone killed David, Gerry.”
Only then did I realize I hadn’t seen Rosie since David’s body was discovered. We’d left the Duns Scotus in separate cars on Saturday morning—me for the ALHS groundbreaking ceremony, Rosie for . . . here, apparently.
I found myself questioning the timeline. What was the time of death for David? What time did Rosie arrive at the Mary Todd? Could Rosie’s case be so easily resolved—that she was still in San Francisco when he was killed? Nice thought, but I was sure Skip had checked that out. More important, why in the world was I giving any credence to the possibility that Rosie was guilty of murder? I was falling into the bad habit homicide detectives had of gathering evidence and alibis before making a decision on a suspect.
I needed all the information I could get, just to keep even with my nephew.
“What else do you know about David’s murder, Rosie?” I asked.
Rosie pushed herself away from me. I barely kept my balance. “I didn’t do it. How can you think such a thing?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper, a sad croak. “You know how I felt about him.”
“I only meant, what other news have you heard?” realizing too late that my question sounded like an accusation. You’d think a former English teacher would be more careful with words.
I chose not to remind her that great love was often the source of a crime of passion. And I did think that bludgeoning a man to death with his own trophy eminently qualified as a crime of passion and, if I weren’t such a highly moral person, as an example of poetic justice.
A pitcher of Linda’s special mix of ice tea and lemonade brought us a measure of refreshment. Just as we settled down to talk, Linda was called to a patient, which suited me very well. It saved me the trouble of finding a diplomatic way to get rid of Rosie’s protector and sole support.
“Let’s start from the beginning, Rosie,” I said, in the most comforting tone in my repertoire. “What did you do after you left David’s doorway?”
“I went down to the—”
“And please don’t tell me you stayed at the fitness center till two in the morning. They closed at midnight.” Not so comforting a tone, but I didn’t have a lot of time to waste. The police might be screaming down the street toward us with an arrest warrant, sirens blazing, right now. Or was that my vivid imagination after two nights on a busy street in San Francisco? And those sirens more likely came from fire engines, anyway.
“I’m so embarrassed to tell you, Gerry.”
We sat across from each other on uncomfortable straight-back chairs, making it easier for me to remain firm. “It won’t be as embarrassing as being carted off to jail, believe me.”
“You’re right.” Rosie took a long swallow of her lemony tea drink; I did the same. She worked the corner of a tissue around her eyes. I didn’t want to tell her it was a hopeless gesture if she meant to fix her makeup.
“Take your time,” I said, willing her to hurry. The small quarters were already beginning to close in on me. I wondered how Rosie had stood the cell-like room for a day and a half.
“I rode down to the lobby. I was going to go out, but I had on those uncomfortable heels and I wasn’t crazy about walking around the city alone. I’m sure it was safe, but I didn’t want to risk it. And anyway I wanted to see David. I went upstairs to eleven again and listened at David’s door. I could hear David and Cheryl. Not what they were saying or doing exactly, but I knew they were still together.” Another long swallow. “I figured since Cheryl had come to the reunion with her husband, sooner or later she’d have to leave and go back to her own room.”
I could believe that marriage to Walter Mellace would be a strong motivation to at least appear to be a faithful wife. Thinking of Cheryl’s eye patch—which might have come from a visit to her ophthalmologist, I realized—I wondered again if Mrs. Mellace had failed to pass the fidelity test.
Rosie had come to a halt, her eyes tearing up again. I tried to ignore it. Empathy would get us nowhere. I prodded. “And then?”
“Okay, you know where the ice and the vending machines are in the little alcove by the elevators?”
“You hid there?”
Full-out tears now as Rosie nodded. “I wanted to wait until Cheryl left. I had the thought that if I showed David the locker room, it might, you know, soften him and make him remember our first kiss and all.”
“You came into the room while Maddie and I were sleeping?”
She nodded and dabbed her face again. “Uh-huh. I forgot to tell you, I stopped in our room first. The room box was right on the corner of the dresser near the door, so I just slipped in and got it. I knew you wouldn’t have chained the door and locked me out.”
I had a hard time processing that Rosie had come and gone while we were sound asleep, but she had no reason to lie about that.
“Then?” I prodded.
“I went to the eleventh floor. It was almost one in the morning. I was so stupid, Gerry. My legs were cramped and every time someone came for ice, for real I had to pretend I was getting some ice myself, or a soda, or tossing a bag of trash. I hid the room box behind the big drink machine. One guy must have come in three times while I was there. Who knows what he thought. And Barry Cannon came in. He was in the room right across the hall from David’s. He . . . oh, never mind what he said.”
“Rosie, I’m so sorry you had to go through all this.”
“I thought, you know, maybe the reunion had reawakened feelings in David, and if I had a chance to talk to him alone and show him the lockers . . .” She shook her head, as if trying to get rid of silly dreams. “I can’t believe I was such a fool.”
“It’s not going to do any good to think that way, Rosie. We need to go on and cover the rest of your night.”
“Here’s the worst part.” Uh-oh. Did I want to hear this? “Cheryl came out for ice, right when I’d taken the room box out from its hiding place, to make sure it hadn’t gotten too dirty behind those machines. She was wearing a robe, one of those thick white hotel robes. I didn’t want to think about why. She laughed her head off, Gerry. She knew right away why I was there. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. She called me pitiful,
and she was right.”
Once again, I couldn’t disagree, so I simply uttered a sound between a cough and a grunt.
Rosie wasn’t finished reliving the traumatic episode. “Cheryl grabbed the room box from my hands. Roughly, Gerry. She started to pull at the pieces, but you know how carefully I attach everything. She was getting frustrated and finally she was strong enough to deflate that football I made out of leather.”
Linda came back with another pitcher of ice tea and lemonade, just in time to hear Rosie finish her story.
“I was so mad I hauled off and hit her in the face with my purse. I didn’t even care that the scene fell to the floor.”
Linda stopped in her tracks. “I guess I missed a lot.” An eye patch zoomed into focus on the white wall of the Mary Todd guest room. “Did you injure her?”
“She was bleeding, from her forehead, I think. I guess the heavy rhinestone buckle on my purse caught her in the wrong place. She started to scream, but we couldn’t exactly yell at each other in the middle of the night in the hotel hallway. She just whispered something very crude and ran back to David’s room.”
“And you?”
“I waited . . . not long . . . and finally decided it was no use. The great David Bridges didn’t care about me thirty years ago, and he never would.”
“The room box?”
“I just picked it up and took it back to our room. Some things were broken, but I didn’t care.”
Rosie seemed to collapse on the straight-back chair, as if she had just entered room five sixty-eight at the Duns Scotus and flopped on the bed next to me.
Was this the point where an LPPD interrogator would apply further pressure, taking advantage of her exhausted state?
I had question after question on the tip of my tongue. If she never entered David’s room, how did she explain the presence of the tiny oval mirror from the door of the locker? And what was the meaning of the trashed room box? Although Skip hadn’t told me where or how the police had found the piece, I knew the ugly changes—the graffiti and the bottle of poison—were certainly made by the hand of a miniaturist. I could simply ask Rosie where she thought the scene was now, but my mind was in a spin trying to figure out what to settle first.
I was eager to know if Rosie was aware that it had been Barry Cannon who sent her the chocolates, and probably all of the other presents, and not David. If so, did that make her angry? How angry?
A cop would know the right order to pursue these questions.
“Rosie, you need to talk to the police,” I said, not for the first time since I’d entered the room.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Here’s where I should deny the suspect water or a chance to visit the bathroom. I looked at my friend, ragged and vulnerable, and threw back my shoulders.
“Let’s take a break,” I said. “Have some more ice tea, Rosie.”
When Maddie’s call came in on my cell phone, I was alone in the tiny bedroom. Rosie was in the bathroom; Linda was back on the floor, as she termed it, with patients.
“Where are you, Grandma?” Maddie asked.
“I—”
“No, wait. Let me guess. You’re doing er-r-r-rrands.”
I smiled at the way she stretched out the word, rolling the r’s as if she were practicing a romance language. I couldn’t deny my overuse of the word, whenever I was looking into matters I thought too risky for Maddie’s involvement.
“Are you having a good time with Aunt Beverly?”
“Uh-huh. And with Uncle Nick.”
Nice for all. I was just getting used to Nick’s being part of the family. Beverly had met him in her work as a civilian volunteer for the LPPD and they now seemed to be inseparable. She’d been a widow much longer than I had, since Skip was only eleven years old. On days when I wasn’t completely selfish, I was happy for her.
“And Uncle Skip is here,” Maddie said.
Not so nice. I had a reaction similar to the one I’d have if I were cruising down the 101 and saw the black-and-white California Highway Patrol car in my rearview mirror, even if I wasn’t exceeding sixty-five miles an hour.
“How’s the pool?” I asked Maddie.
Maddie laughed. “No stalling around, Grandma. Uncle Skip wants to talk to you.”
The odds seemed stacked against me. My Nancy Drew granddaughter, my homicide detective nephew, and retired homicide detective Nick Marcus were all at the other end of the phone line. Not a line, exactly, since it was cell phone to cell phone. Maybe an electric wave of some kind.
In any case, this time I was speeding.
Chapter 11
In the approximately ten seconds it took for Skip to assume control of the phone at Beverly’s house, I ran through my options for truth or consequences. What if he asked whether I knew where Rosie was? How could I get around that? I could use his technique and ask another question. I could—
“Is Rosie Norman with you?” Skip asked, without prelude.
I swallowed hard. Then, aha! I heard water running in the bathroom, behind a closed door. “No,” I said, with the ease of the just.
“If you find her, will you advise her to come in immediately?”
“Of course,” I said with great confidence. No lies so far. If he’d phrased his question as “Do you know where she is?” I’d have been stuck. I couldn’t believe my luck. And it was my turn. “Is Rosie a fugitive from justice?”
“Technically, no.”
Whew. I was home free. “When can I talk to you?”
“Besides right now on the phone?”
“Yes.” (Because the water had stopped running and technically, I would be with Rosie in about one minute.)
“I’ll meet you at my office in ten,” he said.
“How about twenty? And, Skip, can you leave—”
“Without the redheaded squirt.”
“You mean the other redheaded squirt.”
I was glad we were a close family.
I knew the LPPD would be looking to make an arrest soon, partly to give David’s family some comfort as the time for his memorial approached. The sooner Rosie talked to them, the better.
My strategy with Rosie hadn’t worked so far; I had to try a new tack that I hoped wouldn’t upset Linda even more than she was already. Maddie’s term “freaked out” came to mind, and I had to say, though I admired and taught proper English, that some of my granddaughter’s current favorite expressions had more impact than the classics.
“Rosie, you know Linda’s job is on the line here, if not worse.” I didn’t mention that I was prepared to take the full blame, telling whoever needed to know that I’d forced Linda into this position, on threat of . . . something. I’d work it out.
As I feared, Linda gasped. She had a habit in times like this of grabbing the front of her uniform, already stretched across her full bosom, as if she were having a heart attack. Before she lost her composure completely, I told her that I had it on good authority that, technically, she was not harboring a fugitive.
“But you might be one soon, Rosie. The longer you put this off, the more guilty you look. I’m going downtown to talk to Skip, to clear the way for you, but you have to promise me that you’ll go to the station and talk to him before the day is over.”
Rosie nodded, her sad eyes drooping.
“Now, I have only a few minutes to clear up some things.” I dug in my tote and fished out the tiny mirror, which I’d wrapped in tissue, having thought of preserving fingerprints only after it was too late. “No beating around the bush, Rosie. I found this in David’s room on Saturday afternoon.”
Rosie took the mirror between her thumb and index finger. Neither she nor Linda asked what I’d been doing in the murdered man’s hotel suite. Apparently my friends took my investigative privileges for granted. Rosie peered closely at the mirror. The shiny gold edge seemed to blink on and off as it caught the late afternoon sun, now directly, now thro
ugh a waving tree branch. She squinted, missing her magnifier, I was sure. I had one in my tote but decided against offering it to her. Either Rosie knew where the mirror had come from or she didn’t. It didn’t take close scrutiny for her to figure it out.
Rosie looked confused. “It looks like one from the set I used in my room box, for the locker doors. But I swear I don’t know how this mirror got in David’s room, Gerry. I was never in there, just at the doorway, with you.”
And lurking in the hallway, I added, but not out loud. “You did take the scene to the hallway while you were waiting, though.”
“I told you, I thought it might take him back to high school, to those old hallway lockers, in a good way. Remember I told you how it was in front of the lockers when he kissed me and asked me out that one time? But, I never got to show it to him on Friday night.” She looked at the mirror again, as if in wonder. “The only time I actually laid eyes on David that night I was with you. Where would I have put the room box then? I had that tiny evening purse.”
“With a big buckle,” Linda said, reminding us she was there, with a slightly wrong-time, wrong-place joke. She cupped her hand over her mouth. Linda couldn’t know how relieved I was that she wasn’t still gasping in terror over the possibility of being arrested herself for her Good Samaritan gesture.
“One more thing, Rosie.” I took my time describing how the scene was trashed. I wrote out the words in the air between us: I hate David. I could tell from Rosie’s expression that she herself was the vandal. “Remember, no skirting the truth,” I reminded her.
“I trashed it. I was so angry, Gerry. I was in our room after you and Maddie left on Saturday morning. I’d shoved it in a drawer the night before. It was already broken in a lot of places. Everything was loose. I started to put the scene back into its carrier while I was packing up and I went nuts. I shaved a point on my lipstick and used it to write that graffiti and then I had this thought of making a bottle of poison. That part calmed me down in a strange way.”
Mourning In Miniature Page 12
