Mourning In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “I’ll never eat again,” Maddie said, both hands on her fat-free belly, though we both knew that sentiment would barely last till dinnertime.

  While I drove around the ramps of the Duns Scotus parking garage, I organized my goals for the trip.

  I needed to establish the chain of custody for Rosie’s locker room scene, tracking its journey from the crafts room in my home to the hands of my LPPD nephew. If I believed Rosie, I could account for the scene up to its fate in room five sixty-eight of the Duns Scotus on Saturday morning, when Rosie unleashed thirty years of anger on it, then dumped it in the trash. The big question: who took the scene from there to the woods of Lincoln Point and then called it in?

  I also wanted to study the documents provided by Maddie’s Internet search. This task didn’t seem as important now that Barry Cannon had all but confessed the business fraud to me, and was in police custody, but I liked to be thorough.

  What to do first? I wasn’t eager to take Maddie with me on my mission to talk to housekeeping personnel about the locker scene. She had no idea what had happened to the cute room box she liked so much and I’d hoped to keep it that way. Since we were no longer registered at the hotel, we didn’t have access to any of the amenities (that is, I couldn’t dump her at the pool even if I’d wanted to).

  “How shall we do this?” I asked Maddie. We had the elevator to ourselves as we rode from the parking garage to the lobby floor.

  “Just take me with you everywhere and I’ll be very quiet, okay?”

  A promise was a promise.

  “Then, let’s say the first stop is the front desk.”

  Maddie uttered a loud “Whew,” which, I guessed, expressed her relief that I had no plans to toss her in the water.

  I had to find Aaron. I was prepared to wait a long time if necessary, but good fortune smiled on us, and he was on duty.

  Maddie and I joined a short line waiting to check in or out, though I assumed that unlike me, most people checked out through their television sets. I didn’t think I’d ever have the confidence in technology that it took to trust a remote control with my credit card.

  “Hi, Aaron,” I said. “It’s Mrs. Porter, remember?”

  Aaron’s eyes widened, as if he expected an emergency. “Mrs. Porter, I thought you checked out.”

  Impressive that Aaron would have that data at his fingertips. But then, I knew I’d been a memorable guest, what with maintenance problems and attracting petty crime in the lobby.

  “I did check out, Aaron, and it was a wonderful stay,” I said.

  From a spot down and to my left came another voice, that I didn’t expect. “I hope you got our evaluation card,” Maddie said. “We wrote nice things about everyone.”

  I uttered a quick prayer that Aaron’s department was completely separate from the evaluation department and that he would have no idea whether we’d filled out the card (I hadn’t) or not.

  Aaron gave Maddie a big smile. “Thanks, honey.” He might have been the only person of his generation to call anyone “honey.”

  I cleared my throat, preparing for the big push. “Aaron, you’ve done so much for us already, and now I need just one more little favor. I need to find the person who cleaned room five sixty-eight on Saturday.”

  “Did you leave something behind? I can call lost and found.”

  Aaron was ever the optimist, trying to shunt me off to another department. When would the young man realize that I was a special case? Even when I’d needed an electrician and a plumber it was for a different reason than most hotel guests had.

  “I didn’t exactly leave anything behind. See, my granddaughter and I left the hotel on Saturday morning for a while, then our other roommate, Rosie Norman, checked out of the room sometime later.” I used my fingers to tick off the timeline. “Then, my granddaughter and I came back in the afternoon, and in between the room was cleaned.”

  “It was very neat when we got back,” Maddie said. Was this what she’d meant by being “very quiet”? We’d have to talk.

  “I need to speak to that person,” I told Aaron.

  “Was there a problem?” he asked.

  Was that the only question Duns Scotus employees were taught? And Maddie had already answered it.

  “Everything was fine, as my granddaughter said. I just need to see her.” I leaned farther over the counter. Aaron stepped back slightly. “Actually, I have a present for her. She did such a good job. I was a little embarrassed to tell you, because I don’t have something for everyone.”

  Fortunately, I’d picked up a couple of attractive chocolate gifts at the Ghirardelli shop, meaning to give them to Linda and Beverly for taking care of Maddie, but this use would be even better. I could make it up to my babysitters some other way.

  I heard a small gasp from Maddie. I leaned down. “We’ll still have the one you picked out for Taylor,” I whispered.

  “You can leave it here for your maid. I’ll make sure she gets it,” Aaron said.

  I hated to do it, but it was time to bring out my school-teacher voice. It seemed I’d used it more in the last few days than in all the intervening years since Rosie and her classmates graduated.

  “Aaron, I need to see the housekeeper who cleaned room five sixty-eight last Saturday.”

  His Adam’s apple made a complete trip up and down his windpipe. “Okay, let me call down. You can wait—”

  I nodded, gave Aaron a big smile, and Maddie and I headed for the couch.

  I’d been avoiding looking at the tile bridge and the jungle it ran through. The setting, meant to be inviting, began a few yards from the front desk. I took a seat on the couch facing Maddie, with my back to the dark trees and bushes. Even so, the green paisley print of the U-shaped sectional took on the look of the jungle.

  “That was a good idea, mentioning the evaluation card,” I said to Maddie. “I hope he doesn’t go looking for it.”

  Maddie gave me a quizzical look. “But I did fill it out,” she said. “I wouldn’t lie.”

  I patted her knee. “Of course you wouldn’t, sweetheart. I meant it might be hard for him to trace it to our room.”

  “I wrote the room number on the card.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You know, I’m a little tense and not thinking straight.”

  She smiled, then returned the favor and patted my knee.

  I wasn’t lying about being tense, but the reason was the close call in leading Maddie to believe I would have approved of a lie.

  I had a lot to learn before I could be proud of myself as a grandmother.

  I’d put the talk with Maddie off long enough. Our cleaning person might show up any minute. We’d made an emergency trip to my car to pick up the Ghirardelli present when I realized I’d better produce it in case Aaron was keeping watch. The candy was allegedly my reason for wanting to meet our housekeeper.

  We were now settled back on the waiting couch, as I thought of what to say.

  “Maddie, do you know why I need to talk to the woman from housekeeping?” I asked.

  “Not really. I just figured it must be about a clue.”

  She shuffled through a stack of leaflets she’d taken from the rack by the concierge’s desk. Photographs and flashes of color passed in front of me: the green of the wine country a few miles north, the red of the double-decker tour bus that roamed downtown, the stark white of the majestic civic center buildings where the city hall was more ornate than the opera house.

  “It’s sort of about a clue. Remember Mrs. Norman’s locker room scene?” Of course she did; I didn’t need her nod. “Well, she mistakenly threw it in the trash and now we want it back.”

  One of these days I’d stop getting myself into situations where shading the truth, that is, lying, was a necessary part of my communication with my family.

  “Oh,” Maddie said. She hadn’t stopped leafing through the brochures.

  “Do you see any place you’d like to go?” I asked, happy to be rid of the touchy (for me, only, app
arently) topic.

  “Maybe this one.”

  Her grin told me I was in for a laugh. I took the leaflet and read. For only thirty-six dollars, twenty-six for children, we could take the Alcatraz day tour, which included a ferry ride to and from the former federal prison of movie fame and an award-winning audio guide.

  I stuffed the leaflet in my purse. “Some other time,” I said with a smile.

  An attractive middle-aged woman in a brown housekeeper’s uniform, came up to us. I couldn’t recall ever seeing housekeepers in brown at other hotels—the Duns Scotus had gone out of its way to keep the monks’ robes theme. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a hemp sash around her waist.

  We rose from the couch as she extended her hand. “Marina,” she said. “Like the neighborhood by the bay. But I don’t live there, though.”

  “That’s where the World Series earthquake hit,” Maddie said.

  I vaguely remembered the popular term for the 1989 quake along the San Andreas Fault. It was the worst in my memory and had been seen around the world because it occurred during a telecast of one of the baseball games in the series. The Marina District had suffered extensive damage, including several fatalities.

  Marina addressed Maddie with affection. “You are too little. How do you remember the earthquake?”

  “We learned about it in California History class. And I’ve seen videos of the cars that were crushed and the houses that just fell over.”

  It was strange to think that Maddie knew of the Loma Prieta earthquake, its official name, only as a fact of history, since it happened nearly ten years before she was born.

  Marina seemed very nice and I felt ashamed that I hadn’t left her a gift when I wasn’t trying to bribe her. Too late now.

  I handed over one of the Ghirardelli items—a small cable car, about seven inches long, filled with assorted chocolates. “This is for you,” I said.

  Her thank-you was so sincere, I hated to go on, but there was work to be done.

  “Marina, do you remember seeing a little box with a scene in it? It was in the wastebasket in room five sixty-eight on Saturday morning.”

  Marina gave me a confused look and a slow shake of her head.

  “There were miniature lockers all along one side of it,” I explained, not willing to give up.

  Another head shake. “No, I’m sorry, missus.” Marina’s accent sounded a lot like that of my GED student, Lourdes Pino, and I guessed she had the same Hispanic heritage.

  “It was like a little dollhouse,” Maddie said, using her hands to indicate the size.

  “Ah, now I remember. Yes, yes. A tiny dollhouse with benches and cabinets.”

  That would be it. The child came through again, with a jargon-free description.

  “Do you remember what you did with it?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes. It was in the wastebasket by the door and it was broken, so I put it in my cart.”

  I pictured a large rolling cart (brown?) piled with soft vanilla towels and washcloths, sweet-smelling soap, tiny boxes containing shower caps and shoeshine cloths—and a trashed locker hallway scene with a hate message scrawled in bright red lipstick.

  I held my breath. “Where did you take the cart, Marina?”

  “I take the cart every day to the basement and we sort out the laundry and replace the little bottles and the other things for the bathroom, and throw away the rubbish.”

  I didn’t think I could take another dead end. “That’s it?”

  Marina nodded. “Yes, every day. But on Saturday a woman came by while I was outside that room on the fifth floor and she sees the little dollhouse.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Very small, with dark hair. And she had a patch over one eye.” Marina covered her own right eye with her hand to illustrate.

  A petite brunette with a patch on her eye. How many of those do you see in a day?

  “What did the lady want?” I asked, nearly choking from holding my breath.

  “She wanted to take the dollhouse. She said it was hers and she threw it away by mistake.” Marina appeared to have a moment of realization. She gasped. “Oh, I’m sorry, missus, I let her take it. Was that a wrong thing to do? Was it yours?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry about it.”

  Marina seemed unduly upset. “You think I took the money, but I didn’t take it, the money, I swear.”

  “She offered you money?”

  “Yes, she had money for me, but I said no, it was hers in the first place. Now I see it wasn’t hers. You won’t tell my boss?”

  “Of course not, Marina. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’ve been a huge help to me. Can you answer just one more question?”

  “Yes, I try.”

  “Do you remember what time it was on Saturday that the woman with the patch on her eye came by?”

  Marina smiled and nodded. This one was going to be easy. “I come on for my shift at seven o’clock in the morning and I have my first break at quarter to ten. The lady came just before my break.”

  Maddie was taking no chances on my remembering the times. I watched her write them down on the edge of one of the San Francisco tour leaflets. I saw Sally Baxter, Girl Reporter, added to her résumé.

  “Thank you so much, Marina.” I reached into my tote. “I have another cable car. Maybe you have a child or a friend who might like it?”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell Marina not to leave town since she might be called to testify in a murder trial.

  We stayed on the couch for a while after Marina left. I called upon my usual hand-waving techniques to explain to Maddie what we’d just learned—that a woman in Rosie’s high school class took the broken locker scene from the hotel room and put it where the man was who had passed away, so it would look like Rosie was guilty.

  “A woman with an eye patch framed Mrs. Norman?”

  “That’s another way to say it, yes.”

  I reminded myself that I couldn’t infer much more—that most likely it was Cheryl who planted the scene and then pointed the police in its direction to frame Rosie. It didn’t mean it was she who had killed David. She was probably outside room five sixty-eight in the first place in order to plant something that would further incriminate Rosie. Seeing the locker room in Marina’s cart must have been serendipity.

  Her motivation didn’t have to be to cover up her own guilt, but simply to carry out her vendetta against her competition. Why the beautiful, rich Cheryl Mellace would consider Rosie Norman a threat was beyond me.

  I’d quickly worked out the time line in my head. The window for David’s death was between four in the morning and seven thirty when his body was discovered. Cheryl could have done the deed on the early side and still had plenty of time to come back to the Duns Scotus to retrieve the locker room scene.

  Now that I thought of it, I’d seen Cheryl coming into the Duns Scotus garage around eight that morning as Maddie and I were leaving. Why else would she have been reentering the hotel? In my mind, I heard her defense attorney ticking off the possible reasons.

  Still, all in all, the whole exercise allowed me to keep Cheryl on my list of suspects.

  Chapter 21

  Neither of us wanted to leave San Francisco. On our way from downtown to the bay and back we’d seen a wide variety of architectural choices—Victorian houses, art deco office buildings, and a few modern structures. The international flavor was apparent in the different ethnic groups staying at the hotel, and the many languages we heard at Ghirardelli Square, rivaling what we might have heard on a world cruise.

  Most of the time, I loved living in our small, Abraham Lincoln-obsessed town (every day-care child started out learning that he was the tallest president in history, and it took off from there), but once in a while I needed a break and our trips to San Francisco had served the purpose. It wasn’t the city’s fault that the reunion weekend had been marred by tragedy.

  So, it was with some reluctance that Maddie and I decided to go home
where we could spread out the printouts and talk in private. Using words like “fraud,” “murder,” and “payola” in a public place seemed unnecessarily awkward.

  Maddie followed her recently established “hot day in Lincoln Point” routine: as soon as we got in the door, she pushed the button to retract the atrium skylight. She was so enamored of the technology, I feared I’d have to rein her in from opening my house to the cold and rain come the winter (such as it was in this part of the state).

  Once we were both in lighter clothing, Maddie nibbled on one of the brownies we’d taken from Ghirardelli’s, while I arranged the printouts on the dining room table.

  “I can’t believe you’re hungry,” I said.

  “I didn’t eat all my sundae.”

  “You mean you didn’t lick the bowl?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Sheets of paper filled with charts and numbers were my least favorite thing to read, let alone study. My need to procrastinate was so great that I ate a snack of crackers and cheese myself.

  Finally, we settled ourselves side by side at the table, Maddie perched on a stool so she could see the whole area. It had been a while since I’d had a glance at Skip’s copy of the material. He’d highlighted areas of interest, which made it easier to focus. We were starting from scratch.

  I started with the headings on the columns. At the top of each sheet was the designation RFP Summary, followed by the name of the project.

  At the bottom of each page was a boilerplate statement:

  Reference numbers are to documents on file, specifying timeline for job completion. Proposals will be evaluated based on previous experience with similar projects, quality of previous work, time to completion, and cost. Scores will be assigned accordingly and the bidder with the highest score will be the awardee.

  I also noted, in fine print, a statement advising vendors that they could appeal a decision within fifteen days of notification of rejection. I wondered if anyone had ever taken advantage of that right, especially Callahan and Savage.