“Oh, it’s just gaming stuff. We’re learning how to make GUIs. That’s graphical user interfaces.” She said these words with great ease and familiarity. Was it that long ago that Maddie had a hard time pronouncing “Abraham Lincoln”?
“How interesting.”
“It’s okay, you can go, Grandma. I need to TM a few people in the class, too.”
I’d watched her nimble fingers all month, working the tiny pad on her cell phone, using abbreviations that were as new as the technology that spawned them. Besides the easily decipherable U8? I learned LSHMBH (laughing so hard my belly hurts),?4U (I have a question for you), 1DR (I wonder), and GGN (gotta go now).
It took me a while to figure out why ‹3 represented “heart,” or “love,” as in “I ‹3 U,” until I realized that, looked at from a ninety-degree angle, the sequence was heart-shaped.
“Duh,” as Maddie would say.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” I said since she let me off the hook. “GNG.”
“It’s GGN, Grandma.”
I could hear laughter as I closed the door, pulling it several times to be safe.
I got off on the eleventh floor and approached room eleven forty-three. The room was quite a distance from the elevator bank, down a long hallway, the carpet of which was a swirled pattern in shades of brown (dull, but, as even laypeople knew, the hallmark color of St. Francis). I passed the alcove that held the ice machine and a drink dispenser and another smaller nook with a table and a house phone. On the walls were many renderings of Duns Scotus and of St. Francis of Assisi himself, accompanied as always by birds and small wildlife.
I heard voices from several rooms as I all but tiptoed down the corridor. Otherwise, the hallway was quiet, the only sound that of a motor or generator doing I didn’t know what. The very busy Union Square with its shops and restaurants, just outside the door, might as well have been miles away.
As I rounded a corner I saw yellow-and-black tape, denoting a crime scene or construction (who was I fooling) across what had to be David’s room. I wondered if that meant he’d been murdered here in the hotel, or if the police were simply being thorough and checking where David spent his last night alive.
I closed the distance and stood in front of the door. I was surprised to see that the tape said simply Caution, not Crime Scene. Was it possible that the police hadn’t released the fact that David was murdered? This was the wrong place to be standing to ask Skip, so I deferred calling him until later.
If my possessing the key at all was questionable, entering the room crossed the line, so to speak. On the other hand, there was no officer guarding the room. For all the police knew, every guest who passed the room went inside for a look. I fingered the key card in my pants pocket. Probably not many other guests had the key, however. I took the key card out and oriented it for use. The face of the middle ages looked up at me. Was that disapproval I caught in Duns Scotus’s expression, or just the monk’s meditative state, full of gravitas?
I slipped the card in the slot.
Green light.
My heart skipped. Should I be doing this?
The green light went out.
I’d waited too long.
Another decision point. I could still turn around, pick up a San Francisco T-shirt for Maddie in the gift shop, and have committed only one transgression. I could always say that the key card must have gotten knocked off Skip’s desk and fallen into my pocket or my purse.
No one had entered or exited any room in the hallway since I arrived. There was no sign of housekeeping or maintenance personnel. I wouldn’t have minded running into a maid to get her scoop on Ben of jumpsuit fame, but I knew it was a long shot at this hour.
On the floor directly across from David’s room was a room service tray with a limp rose and two coffee mugs. A silver dome hid the remnants of what must have been late afternoon noshing.
I heard stirrings from the room service guests, as if they were about to leave. I had no choice now. I couldn’t be caught loitering.
Better to be trespassing. I inserted the key card. I’m not “breaking,” I told myself, just “entering.”
Green light.
I pushed down on the heavy metal handle, ducked under the loosely draped yellow tape, and entered the room.
I realized I hadn’t taken a breath in a while. I let out a long one. It dawned on me that the room might not be empty. Why hadn’t I thought of that a minute ago? What if someone else had the same idea I had? Someone like David’s killer.
I stood still in the dark entrance. The drapes were drawn across the large picture window. I noted again, as last night, that David’s accommodations were significantly more elaborate than ours. I thought of Maddie six floors below, unsuspecting of the risks her grandmother was taking. I couldn’t bear it if my actions were putting Maddie in danger. There could be a killer hiding in the closet of this suite, one who might go after my family after he finished me off.
I rocked back and forth, not moving my feet, turning my head in different directions, listening for signs of life. I sniffed the air for perfume or food smells.
Nothing.
I took a couple of steps, passing between the bathroom on the right and the closet on the left. If anyone were hiding, now would be the time he would jump out.
Nothing.
I wished I were anywhere but in David Bridges’s suite, the possible scene of the crime. I sniffed the air again, this time for the smell of blood.
Nothing.
The entry led to a large sitting area with a round table and chairs, a sectional sofa, and a television set. A doorway next to the television stand opened into a bedroom with two king-size beds. The drapes and comforters were more colorful than those in my room, but still unmistakably hotel décor. The bedroom drapes were open and I wished I had the time, and the right, to reflect on the magnificent view, looking northwest toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
I walked around, careful not to touch anything. There was no sign of life. Or death. The room was stripped bare, even the usual coffeemaker and basket of expensive snacks gone from the dresser.
I’d done something foolish, and indeed for nothing. I needed to get out as inconspicuously as I’d gotten in.
As I headed for the door, I saw a quick flash. A stream of light coming through a small opening in the otherwise closed drapes had hit a bright object. I traced the line of the reflection and found the object in the narrow space between the carpet and the wall in the entryway. I bent down and picked it up: a tiny oval mirror, about a half-inch long, with a thin gold rim.
A layperson might think of the item as a bauble loosened from a piece of jewelry, or a bit of broken glass. A miniaturist would know it was a mirror from a dollhouse dressing table set. A miniaturist in my crafts group would recognize it as a mirror from Rosie’s locker room.
I held the mirror by the gilt edges, between my thumb and index finger. It was impossible to see my reflection in the small area, but I knew my eyes looked weary, my face drawn, sad, and confused.
I dropped the mirror into the same pants pocket that held the key card. Did such a tiny article count as evidence? The police had obviously left it there. If a tree falls in the forest…
I almost laughed out loud. But another sound kept me in check.
A rattle! The doorknob was moving. Someone was trying to get in. Someone who also had the right key card?
I held my breath. I didn’t dare walk the two steps to the door and check the peephole. I had no confidence that those things worked only one way.
Tap, tap. Not too loud. A woman’s knock?
No one is here, I wanted to shout.
Another rattle, another knock, and he or she was gone.
I stepped to the door and looked out the peephole. This action unnerved me; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the nose of a gun pointed at me. Could a bullet penetrate a peephole lens? All was clear, however, except for the room service tray still in place across the hall, outside the door. No other
person or thing filled the cone of view.
I wished the room were closer to the elevator so I could hear a ding that would tell me when or if the knocker had left the floor.
I waited until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I opened the door a crack and looked up and down the corridor.
No sign of movement.
I slipped under the tape and walked as fast as I could toward the elevator. I kept my head high, my walk confident, as if I’d just exited a room that was legitimately mine.
In my pants pocket were a life-size key card and a miniature locker room mirror that made my face flush at the thought of them.
I came to the corner. One more lap to the bank of elevators. I felt more than saw another presence. A wave of fear came over me as I passed one door after another, staying as close to the center of the hallway as possible, lest I be easily dragged into a room on one side or the other.
I had only two more rooms to go when a door behind me opened and closed. I stepped up my pace. A tall hulk of a man passed me on the right, then turned, stood, and faced me, stopping me in my tracks. If he hadn’t been so well groomed and dressed to the nines, I might have fainted, instead of just freezing in place.
“Did you find it?” he asked. His sharp dark suit spoke of wealth and power; his heavy whisper carried authority and threat.
My heart pounded; the tiny mirror in my pants pocket seemed to be rendering the fabric transparent so that my accoster could see its outline. “What-?”
“I know you were in Bridges’s room. Did you find it?”
My gaze followed his right arm down to where his hand was hidden in a bulging pocket.
“Excuse me,” I said, moving to the left to pass him.
I knew he’d block my way. I thought this might give me an excuse to scream. He hadn’t touched me, but I felt as though he had me in a choke hold.
“Look, I know you’re from Callahan and Savage,” he said. “Tell them we’re looking for it, too.”
Wonderful. I took a breath. It was simply a case of mistaken identity. I could clear this up in no time.
“I’ve never heard of them. You have me confused with someone else. I’m here with the reunion. The Abraham Lincoln-”
“Listen,” he said, closing the already small gap between us. He gripped my arm.
I opened my mouth to scream.
Ding, ding.
The elevator doors opened and a crowd of teenagers came out. The group was loud and loaded down with packages and shopping bags. I was relieved when they headed in our direction, taking over the hallway with their different-size purchases. I looked at the red logo souvenir bags and translated the slogan to “I ‹3 SF.” I was delirious.
When the kids started up a chorus of the song I nearly joined them. They sang out, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
The thought of my granddaughter and her ‹3 symbol gave me a burst of energy. I rushed past the hulking man to the elevators and slipped into the car with its doors still open to accommodate a straggler who had dropped her bundles. Frantic, I edged the teen away from the doorway, slammed in the CLOSE DOORS button, and pushed the button for the third floor. (I hadn’t sat through James Bond movies with Richard and Ken for nothing-when being pursued, never choose your actual floor on the elevator panel.)
I got off at three, found the stairwell, and ran up two flights. I arrived breathless at the door to my fifth-floor room. I knocked, said, “It’s Grandma,” and searched for my key card, all at the same time.
Maddie opened the door, the ever-present white earbud wires around her neck.
“You’re out of breath, Grandma.” She laughed, as she always did before one of her own jokes. “Was someone chasing you?”
“Very funny, sweetheart. Let’s get ready for dinner.”
Chapter 7
I hoped dressing Maddie and myself for a banquet would take my mind off the near mugging (albeit by a designer-clad attacker) on the eleventh floor. The image of the man’s threatening eyes stayed with me, however, as did the specter of his no-neck strength.
There was one thing I could do that might put the matter to rest.
When Maddie went into the bathroom, I pulled her laptop toward me. I was a Luddite in many ways, but I knew how to Google.
It took me a while to cut through Maddie’s technology camp software and get to a clean, white Google page. I entered “Callahan and Savage” and pushed Google Search.
The first link on the list was for Callahan & Savage wholesale refrigeration equipment. After that, there were links that had Callahan and/or Savage in the description but not together, such as “Mary Callahan wrote a savage attack on the latest novel by…” I didn’t bother with those links. I’d learned a lot from Maddie.
I sat back. Refrigeration equipment. Why would a refrigeration company send me on a mission? Did I look like I needed more than one fridge? We’d considered buying an upright freezer for the garage in the days when Richard and his friends could put away several pounds of meat and a few loaves of bread in one sitting. But that was the extent of my involvement with refrigeration, other than keeping the freezer compartment cold enough for ice cream.
I felt a little better since my mission had nothing to do with wholesale or retail cooling and freezing. I was sure the hulk in fine clothing would find the Callahan and Savage representative he was so concerned about-somewhere else.
On the other hand, it nagged at me that he’d known I’d been in David’s room. If David had recent (and contentious) business with the hulk or with Callahan and Savage, or both, maybe the police should know. If a company representative hoped to find something in David’s room, after it was public knowledge that David was dead, maybe whatever he was looking for had something to do with that death.
On the other (third) hand, if one of them were the killer, why wouldn’t he have just taken the item at the same time? Aha, I answered, because he killed David in Lincoln Point and the item was still in the Duns Scotus suite.
Too many possibilities. I made a mental note to seek Skip’s input on the matter, in such a way that my trespassing wouldn’t be part of the exchange.
I’d tried Rosie’s cell and her shop phone off and on throughout the day and left messages but had no response. I looked over at her twin bed, still made up. The maid had folded Maddie’s roll-away cot and pushed it against the wall. I had a feeling we wouldn’t be needing it tonight.
***
We had a few minutes before our scheduled meeting with Henry and Taylor in the lobby. Maddie decided to check her e-mail once more, in case a boy named Doug had answered a question she had about something called “flash animation.” She’d mentioned Doug a lot in the last weeks. He was her camp lab partner, she’d explained.
“You seem to like Doug,” I said.
“Yeah, I like him because he gets my jokes, but I don’t like like him,” she said.
Strangely, I knew what she meant. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for the day when “like” became “like like” and the chance of hurt and disappointment hung inevitably in the air.
I’d taken the opportunity during Maddie’s shower for another look at the spiral-bound “yearbook” Rosie had produced for her reunion class. I hoped to be able to greet as many of my former students as possible by name, without looking at their badges.
Rosie had done an impressive job on the book, using fancy fonts and color graphics throughout. For each classmate, she’d juxtaposed a senior photo with a current one and added an updated biography, plus a space to “please share your funniest experience since high school.”
I flipped through the pages, stopping to read about students who no longer lived in Lincoln Point, which was a considerable percentage. Many entries brought a smile of recognition. The unfortunately named Mathis Berg, “Math Bird” to the C students, had survived the nerdy label and now taught math at a college in San Diego. Billy Anderson, who was the shortest guy in the class and suffered accordingly, now operated a chain of health clubs. F
ran Collins, voted Girl Most Likely to Succeed, ran a travel agency, her funniest experience being the European cruise she organized for single people and their pets.
I paused at David Bridges’s page. Rosie had already told us most of what it contained, especially his management successes. David used his anecdote section to describe his first day on the job as hotel manager-on-duty. He’d had to deal with hundreds of geeks (his term) in alien costumes, at a science fiction convention. One night the geeks descended upon the hotel pool, all of them nude, and David had to round them up and send them home.
“Funniest thing I’ll ever see in my life,” David wrote. My eyes teared up at how true that was. He’d never see anything again.
Cheryl Carroll Mellace’s page was lacking in much text, but included a half-page photo of her in an ALHS maroon-and-gold cheerleading outfit. She had married young, into the family of the locally famous Mellace Construction Company. The Mellaces lived on a villa-like estate on the outskirts of town. This wasn’t Rosie’s description of their residence, but my own interpretation of their home, which Ken and I had visited on a benefit tour. I’d never had the occasion to see the couple around town, and I imagined they did their shopping elsewhere.
I learned that the Mellaces had three children and that Cheryl had never worked outside the home but devoted a lot of time to charity. Besides the open houses for children’s causes, they were active in all manner of good works, from organizing blood drives to paying for a bookmobile for shut-ins. There was something good to be found in everyone, I guessed.
It was hard to reconcile the two Cheryls, the one who shared her wealth so generously and the one who displayed low-class rudeness on the other. I looked at her photo again, arms waving pom-poms in exhilaration. I couldn’t help turning her lovely smile of thirty years ago, one I’d seen often when she sat in my class, into the twisted face that ousted Rosie from David’s doorstep last night.
Rosie’s own page made no mention of her brief union with Ray Normano, a transient worker in the fields outside Lincoln Point whose principal method of communication was violence. The marriage was annulled, but she kept a shortened version of his name as her own. “I just want to keep some memory of him,” she’d said at the time.
Murder In Miniature Page 7
