Mourning In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “If you take a laptop computer for a run, you could jog your memory.”

  “I give up,” I said, ceding the stand-up stage to my granddaughter.

  The crafts group, with Susan bearing the promised sweet potato pie, arrived around seven. Rosie was understandably missing. I hadn’t talked to her since she and her father left the police station with his newly acquired ankle jewelry. I predicted an eventual full recovery for both of them and hoped I’d be able to help make it shorter than thirty years.

  Karen had knit a yellow afghan for her nursery, big enough to fold in quarters and still be a substantial size (about two inches on a side). My afghans tended to be much smaller and not as perfectly bound as Karen’s. She’d be able to fold hers and drape it over the back of the miniature glide rocker in the nursery, meant for mother and child bonding.

  Mabel was eager to show us her nearly completed ship’s cabin, a replica of one she hoped to share with Jim on their cruise. We admired the highly polished walls and the tiny bathroom she’d constructed, much like that on an airplane.

  Linda, who’d missed last week, brought a new room box with a Halloween theme. (Another plus for our hobby: miniaturists celebrated all holidays all year.) I hoped the scene wouldn’t remind Maddie again of the witch joke. To my relief, her response to Linda’s scene was, “Do you want to see some potato chips to go with your candy?”

  I worked halfheartedly on my Christmas scene. Unless I had a brilliant flash of inspiration, there wasn’t much more I could do with it.

  I had one ear on the group chatter and one on the door, waiting for Allison to drop by with the posters. I was proud of my friends for not exchanging “I told you so’s” about Rosie’s misadventure, especially since she wasn’t present. The only references to Rosie and the ill-fated reunion weekend were in private, to me.

  Susan had made a second sweet potato pie for Rosie. She gave it to me in the kitchen. “You’re bound to see Rosie before I do,” she said. “Tell her I hope this sweetens her day.”

  Karen approached me soon after, with a small set of books she’d made for Rosie, who kept an ongoing project of a miniature bookshop in her own life-size one.

  I was glad to see that Susan and Karen, who’d been hardest on Rosie from the beginning, had both come through for her in the end.

  I hoped I could do so as well.

  When the doorbell rang, I was deep into embroidering Richard’s name on a Christmas stocking for my room box. I jumped, though it was the sound I’d been waiting for all evening. I’d already told the group that I was expecting company who would take a few minutes of my time. I excused myself now and left to open the door.

  “Hi, Mrs. Porter,” Allison said, juggling three posters that kept sliding against one another. “I came as soon as I could. I hope I’m not too late. My youngest needed to go to a parent-teacher conference and I forgot I said I’d babysit, but she’s back now.”

  “Perfect timing,” I said and ushered Allison through the atrium, open to the sky, to the dining room table.

  Allison had kept her schoolgirl figure, which was on the large, curvy side, not fit for jumping from the shoulders of classmates in uniform, as Cheryl Mellace’s could. In knee-length denim shorts and a white polo shirt, she was mercifully brief in her answers to my obligatory inquiries about her family. The logo on the shirt, it turned out, was a cardinal, the mascot of her middle grandson’s elementary school in nearby Cupertino. I hoped Allison wasn’t planning on getting even with me for my pop quizzes by springing one on me, covering all the trivia she doled out.

  We spread out the posters. “If the people you want aren’t on these, don’t worry. I stuck the rest in the trunk of my car, just in case.”

  How obliging. I felt worse and worse about this ruse to gather evidence for a murder case. It was the same old means-and-ends issue that I’d wrestled with daily over the past week.

  We looked at the posters, one by one. I played along with the “find the student” game, while really checking out the glue job on the project.

  I put my finger on a photograph that was particularly badly glued to the backing. “Isn’t this Marsha Lowe?” I asked, touching a figure in the background of a candid from the senior ski trip. “She seems to have dropped out of sight and I just learned we have a mutual friend and I wanted to get in touch with her.”

  I had to admit there was something to run-on sentences. They conveyed an excitement in and of themselves.

  “Yes, that’s Marsha. You’re right. She met someone on a ski trip to Switzerland and married him and stayed there, but she’s back now, in San Jose.”

  For the sake of credibility, I fingered two more students in the photographs. Allison knew them both and was excited to be able to give me information that I already knew. I decided to make her a batch of ginger cookies, soon, to distribute among all her above-average children and grandchildren.

  I owed food all over town, it seemed.

  “This is just what I wanted, Allison. Would you mind if I kept these photos? I’ll be very careful with them and I’ll be sure to return them.” If they don’t end up as a prosecutor’s exhibits in a trial.

  Allison waved her hand and clicked her tongue. “Of course, Mrs. Porter. Who’s going to miss them, huh?”

  I lifted the photographs from the poster, being careful to take the dried glue along with them.

  “Hmm. Some of these pictures weren’t glued down very well. What kind of adhesive did you use?” I asked.

  “Oh, Cheryl picked some up at one of those everything’s-a-dollar stores at the last minute. I guess it wasn’t a very good brand.”

  That was more good news for me. Cheryl may have had designer taste in clothes and cars, but not in adhesives.

  “Do you have the glue?” I asked. Allison gave me a curious look. “I like to compare different brands of glue for my crafts classes,” I added.

  That seemed to satisfy her. “Cheryl took all the unused supplies—the extra poster board, tape, and all. I could ask her exactly where she bought the glue, if you want.”

  “No, no. Thanks, Allison, but don’t bother.” I slipped the photos into an envelope. “You’ve already been a great help.”

  Allison didn’t stay long, since, as she explained, her cousin from Reno was driving in early tomorrow to attend a birthday party for a friend. More pop-quiz material.

  I couldn’t wait to look more closely at the back of the photos I’d stuffed in the envelope. A quick glance while Allison and I were at the dining room table confirmed what she had implied, that the glue was an inexpensive generic mucilage, not the kind sold in the better crafts stores.

  And not the kind a miniaturist would use for anything, not for gluing tiny pieces in place, and not for gluing together the lips of a murder victim.

  I didn’t think it would work, but I made an attempt to bypass my guest crafters and inspect the photographs under my large magnifier lamp in the corner of the crafts room. I had all of fifteen seconds before everyone crowded around me.

  “What’s that you’re doing?” Karen asked.

  I placed the photograph, upside down, directly under the light.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. “Then I’d like you all to take a look at this.”

  I looked through the magnifier at the top of the light and prodded the glue with toothpicks. The glue had congealed into hard brownish clumps. I pictured the source, with an orange rubber tip on the bottle and a slit for the syrupy glue to come out. I hadn’t seen the brand in years but I remembered it as a staple in the crafts rooms of my childhood.

  One by one, I had my crafter friends check out the glue, with and without the magnifying lens, with toothpicks, fingers, and noses all brought to bear.

  “Is that a glue Rosie would use?” I asked.

  “Not hardly,” said Mabel.

  “Nuh-uh, y’all,” said Susan.

  “No way, Jose,” said Karen.

  “Why does it matter?” Maddie asked.

  “I thin
k I know,” Linda said.

  Chapter 25

  I worked out the scenario in my head, over and over, after the group had left and Maddie was fast asleep.

  Skip had as much as admitted that the test for matching the glue on David’s dead lips to the glue on Rosie’s locker room box had been hurried and inconclusive. It had been done by a rookie, he’d said. Preliminary, he’d said.

  I was convinced that with this sample from Cheryl’s glue and a credible test, we’d have incontrovertible evidence that Cheryl had murdered David and then done everything she could to direct the police to Rosie. She’d even glued his lips together to indicate that a crafter had been at work. Her desire to humiliate Rosie, and even destroy her life, seemed to have no bounds.

  It had been a long day, starting with my meeting with Lourdes and ending with Allison (truthfully, ending with sweet potato pie), with a lot of stress at the LPPD in between.

  Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’d take the sample photographs to Skip. Then maybe I’d see about arranging a date to finish the witch joke with Henry and Taylor. I’d probably have to promise Henry that I’d never bother him again afterward.

  For now, I needed to sleep.

  My head couldn’t have been on the pillow more than a minute before a loud thumping noise startled me. It came from the direction of the atrium. June Chinn, next door, had been having problems with raccoons on her roof on a regular basis. Most of the Eichlers in our neighborhood were flat-roofed and easy for an animal to reach. Had the raccoons finally found my roof?

  I couldn’t remember whether I’d fully closed the skylight before coming to bed. What a nightmare it would be if an animal had climbed up and then jumped onto my atrium floor and was now trapped inside.

  A quick contingency plan formed in my mind, to call animal control if there was a raccoon or other creature in my home. The atrium was closed in, mostly by glass doors that led to the other parts of the house, which surrounded it. To let anyone into my house, I’d have to either enter the atrium and cross it, to the front door, or exit by the patio door from my bedroom and walk all around the side and use my key to let in an animal handler.

  I got up and trudged across my bedroom to the small hallway between the living room and the atrium. As soon as I rounded the corner I could tell that I’d left the roof open. The skylight cover was not transparent, but cast diffuse light into the area, with colorful patterns, due, I supposed, to the texture of the acrylic material. Tonight I could tell my house was open to the stars. And to other elements of nature.

  I looked through the heavy glass doors to the atrium, scanning carefully for unwelcome signs of life. All seemed quiet. I’d been lucky, but I needed to go out there and close the roof. No sense in tempting nature.

  I unlocked and pushed open the glass door. I tiptoed down one step onto the atrium floor. Maddie hadn’t been awakened by the original noise; I didn’t want to disturb her now.

  I headed for the button to slide the roof into the closed position.

  Wham!

  I was knocked to the floor, facedown. I felt my nose crack and I knew I’d broken it. The idea that I’d tripped on a loose piece of slate was short-lived.

  “You couldn’t let it go, could you, Gerry?”

  The feel of a heavy boot in the small of my back conflicted with the sound of a woman’s voice.

  Cheryl Mellace had jumped into my house.

  In spite of the pain as my face ground into the floor, I had to gather my wits.

  “The police know you killed David, Cheryl. It won’t do any good to hurt me.” I could barely understand my own words, coming as they were from lips scrunched together and twisted to the side, and a bloody nose that was throbbing painfully.

  “I was ready to give up my life for him.” Cheryl’s breath came in short spurts.

  I knew I was taller and heavier than Cheryl, but I had no idea whether she had a gun. I didn’t dare move. All I could do was look at my beautiful ferns, bamboo, and blooming begonias from a different angle than usual.

  I felt I could easily throw off Cheryl’s foot and tackle her, but what if she had a weapon? On the one hand—why would such a petite woman enter my home without one if her plan was to do me harm? On the other—she’d done a good job on David using only a weapon of convenience.

  “Cheryl—”

  “You’re not in front of the class, Gerry. This is my story. You’re like David. You think you’re the only one who calls the shots.”

  At this moment I didn’t want to be thought of as “like David.” I wondered what kind of magnetism he possessed that was lost on me—two women, at least one of them quite intelligent, were willing to throw themselves at him, one humiliating herself in the process, the other killing him.

  I shifted under Cheryl’s boot and tried to make out from her weak shadow whether she was holding anything. She pressed down harder on my back. My nose, already beating pulses of pain, took another hit.

  “Stay down,” she said. I smelled alcohol on her breath. I couldn’t decide whether that was good news or bad for me. Could she be more easily thrown off balance? I hoped so. I needed something to make up for the age difference between my attacker and me.

  Her voice was loud and my greatest fear was that Maddie would wake up. I tried to recall whether Cheryl had ever met Maddie, whether she knew Maddie was in the house. Cheryl might have seen Maddie at the groundbreaking ceremony or at the reunion banquet on Saturday night, but she’d have no way of knowing that she was staying with me. Maddie had been asleep when Cheryl came by last night. I could only hope that my granddaughter’s presence in the house tonight would never enter Cheryl’s mind.

  “Let me explain—”

  Another slam of her boot. If only I could get a word in, I’d let Cheryl know that my whole crafter’s group had seen the kind of glue she’d used on the posters, and Linda knew more—thanks to her EMT friend, Linda knew about the glue that sealed David’s lips.

  “After all we’d been through, David cared more about my husband’s money than I did,” Cheryl continued. “He’d rather give me up than get cut out of his little scam with Walter. We were supposed to be reliving our senior year at dawn in the woods on that Sunday, the day after David won his trophy.”

  Something was off. David had been killed at dawn on Saturday, not Sunday. I realized Cheryl had intertwined the events of thirty years ago with those of four days ago. A common occurrence among her classmates. Maybe I could take advantage of Cheryl’s confused state to best her.

  Physical combat was not in my skill set, but I had to do something or I’d bleed to death through my nose. I wriggled, but only slightly, not to upset Cheryl, to determine on which side I had more freedom of movement. I was glad for my lightweight summer pajamas, which were less likely to get tangled than one of my oversize winter nightgowns.

  My left side, toward the patio doors to the hallway, seemed my best shot. Mustering all my strength, leveraging my arms, I made a sudden turn, rolling to my left.

  Crash!

  One of my clay planters shattered on the floor next to me, where my head had been. Cheryl had missed, but recovered quickly, picking up another planter, this one with blooming mums. Again she hurled and missed.

  I stood up, finally, perspiration running down my back. My attention shifted to a shadow behind Cheryl, in the glass doorway to the hallway outside Maddie’s room. The crashing pot must have wakened Maddie.

  I panicked.

  Though I averted my eyes so Cheryl wouldn’t follow my gaze, I caught a flash of neon green. Maddie’s pajamas. I was sure she’d fled to summon help; I wasn’t sure I could last as long as it took for help to arrive.

  On my feet, I had the advantage now, unless Cheryl had an ace up the black sleeve of what looked like a Catwoman outfit.

  She did.

  She reached back and pulled a tire iron from my planter bed. Her tool, not mine. She came at me as if she were gathering momentum to jump on my shoulders. She held the tire iron like a
baton.

  Cheryl slipped a little while she swung the iron. More and more I had the sense that the effects of alcohol were working in my favor.

  We grappled with it for what seemed like ages, switching positions of advantage. Finally the iron flew across the slate floor, sending scraping sounds up into the night sky.

  The front of my pajama top was covered in blood pouring from my nose. Cheryl must have had some of it on her rappelling suit also. It was little comfort, but at least I knew a DNA match was possible should it come to that when Cheryl was tried for my murder.

  I took a needed but dangerous breath and saw Cheryl headed for me. She’d retrieved the tire iron and had gained amazing speed, given that she had less than twenty feet of runway. I waited until she was almost on top of me, then swung my body down and away from the attack.

  Cheryl hit the glass doors to my family room head-on. She lay crumpled, writhing in pain.

  I guessed she was used to having a formation stand in place while she jumped on them.

  The sound of sirens and the flashing of red-and-blue lights filled the open space in my atrium roof. I ran down the entryway and let in what seemed like a squadron of uniformed officers.

  Then I ran back and into Maddie’s bedroom. I held her shaking body and rocked her until Officer Lavana Rollins found us and joined us for a three-way hug.

  Chapter 26

  It took a couple of days for Maddie to leave my side. She was as concerned about me as I was about her. All there had been between Maddie and Cheryl was a locked glass door, which seemed entirely too flimsy to me. I hoped this was the closest she’d ever be again to the kind of ugliness that had taken place in my atrium. I finally got her to class the Monday after her dramatic rescue call. I worried that she wouldn’t finish her project, but she assured me she was way ahead and would be ready on Labor Day. One week from now, she’d demonstrate her masterpiece to the throngs who were due at my house for the annual barbecue.