Murder In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “Do you think David was calling it off and she retaliated? Or she wanted to end the relationship and they struggled, and-”

  He shook his head. “I’ve talked to her. We had breakfast this morning.” I thought of scolding Barry for his bad taste in restaurants, but I’d impressed him enough with my extrasensory abilities. “She’s devastated over this. And you probably didn’t see the side of her this weekend that everyone sees all year. Cheryl’s the one behind all the charity giving the Mellaces do.”

  “That’s not an unusual division of labor for a wealthy couple.” I wasn’t ready to give Cheryl the benefit of the doubt.

  “Well, all I know is that Cheryl loved David. I think she was planning to leave Walter in fact. But that’s one thing David and I didn’t share-our love lives.”

  I had to be sure Barry wasn’t holding out on me. “I thought men friends shared that kind of thing.”

  Barry swallowed hard. Tears escaped and ran down his cheeks. “That’s the kind of guy David was. We made a kind of game of hinting at what was going on with women in both our lives, as if my life were as full as his. But really David knew I didn’t have much along those lines, and he did, and he didn’t want to lord it over me.”

  Another dead end. According to Barry, David and Cheryl were both candidates for sainthood.

  “I think I’m out of questions,” I said.

  “I’m not.” Barry’s frown and abrupt turnaround unnerved me. “What are you going to do with what I told you, Mrs. Porter? About the business.”

  “I don’t have to do anything, Barry. The police are already working on David’s financial records, and if everything we’ve discussed has crossed my mind before tonight, it has probably crossed theirs.”

  “Believe me, David knew how to cover his tracks.” He said this again as a matter of pride in his deceased friend.

  “It’s only a matter of time, Barry. Your best bet is to go to the police and tell them what you told me. Make it easy for them so they’ll be more inclined to go easy on you.”

  Not that he deserved it.

  Barry stood and walked with me to the door. “You may be right, but I’m not ready now, if ever, to go to the police. And anything we’ve said tonight… well, if anyone asks me, we just chatted about old times at ALHS.”

  I opened the door, and at the same moment the doors opened on a sedan parked outside my house. Three men got out. The street was quiet at this time of night, all residents’ cars safely tucked into garages. There could be only one reason for the unmarked car and its occupants.

  “You may not have to go to the police, Barry. I think they’ve come to you.”

  I was grateful that the LPPD didn’t pull out all the stops with sirens and spinning red-and-blue lights.

  Something told me that my nephew would be stopping by soon, to explain the quiet drama in front of my house, so instead of retiring my tired mind and body to my bedroom, I refilled the cookie plate and put more water on for tea.

  I sat in my chair and tried to put the new information in order. There wasn’t much that I hadn’t guessed before Barry’s visit, but I felt that I could cross Barry off my mental list of murder suspects. His affection for his lifelong friend was obvious, and he seemed as confused as I was about who might have killed David.

  Barry would be paying dearly enough for his other crimes. He hadn’t directly accused Walter Mellace of orchestrating the broadly applied scheme, but it might be another story once he was under police lights. I wondered if Walter Mellace had made contingency plans in case something like this happened.

  I thought of Larry Esterman and his stealing the records that had been left on my car seat, most likely by Ben. What could that mean? I narrowed it down to two possibilities: First that he was going to undertake his own investigation to clear his daughter, and second, that there was something on the sheet that incriminated him.

  Barry had confirmed what Rosie had told me earlier-that Larry had been perhaps more angry than Rosie about the so-called incident in Joshua Speed Woods. Could Larry have killed David after all these years? Why wait? It was possible that David’s compounding of the insult to his daughter by essentially stealing from Larry’s company might have put Larry over the edge.

  Fine, I thought, Barry is off the list and Larry is on.

  Not what you’d call progress.

  As predicted, the next face I saw through my peephole was Skip’s. I opened the door and enjoyed his smile when he heard the kettle whistling. “I hope there’s food to go with that,” he said.

  “Of course. But not before you tell me what that was all about.” I pointed in the direction of the sidewalk where LPPD plainclothesmen had been waiting for Barry Cannon.

  Skip waved one hand at me while the other took up a cookie. “Nothing new. And, I’m guessing, nothing you don’t already know. We had our guys look into the construction award records as far as they could without a warrant.” He laughed. “Sort of a Maddie approach.”

  “She’ll be thrilled to hear you call it that.”

  “I know. I get to tell her, okay? It’s not open-and-shut, but a little more digging is bound to uncover an illegal scheme to lock out Mellace’s competition. Since Barry is Mellace’s CFO, we figured he must have had a part in it.”

  “And you had a feeling he’d be here?” I called from the kitchen where I was attending to the tea.

  During the summer especially, I was thankful for a refrigerator that made ice automatically, but lately the process took on a new dimension-I wondered if some underhanded negotiations were involved in the purchase of my home refrigeration system. Had a big company ridden over a small one to get my service contract?

  As soon as this case is over, I mused, I really must pursue other interests.

  “We’ve been tailing Barry all day to see what plans he might make now that one of his partners is dead. Imagine my surprise… not… when Drew called in and said he’d tracked Barry to your house tonight.”

  “He just stopped by, honestly. I didn’t invite him. He probably thinks I called you to arrest him.”

  “Right now, we’ve just taken him in for questioning. I figure if he ended up here, he must be ready to confess.”

  I was honored that criminals preferred to bare their souls in my home instead of interview room number three at the LPPD.

  Larry Esterman’s name was on the tip of my tongue, but I hadn’t had a chance to look again at the package of e-mails Maddie had given me, and I didn’t want to put Rosie’s father in a bad light on the basis of a hunch. I considered telling Skip that the mystery of who mugged me in the Duns Scotus lobby had been solved, but I decided not to complicate matters.

  For now, I let it go and enjoyed tea and cookies with my nephew.

  I had about another half hour before I’d have to crawl into bed, no matter how warm and stuffy my bedroom was. When Skip left, I took out the e-mails. They were useless except as documentation of contract awards. Mostly boilerplate, such as pursuant to our determination and herewith we offer you. I needed the pages Maddie had given to Skip. I’d had only a glance at them in his office. On the other hand, I thought that even if they were in front of me now, I wouldn’t be able to focus. It was time to call it a day.

  I turned out all the lights on my way to my bedroom. Only then did I notice the little red light blinking on my answering machine. It was unusual that I wouldn’t have seen the light when we got home this afternoon, and even more amazing that Maddie didn’t notice it.

  Surely I could manage one more task before going to bed. I pushed the button.

  “Hi, this is Henry. Sorry we missed each other today, Gerry. Call me when you get in later if you wish.”

  Four strikes. Was there even a game that allowed that many?

  Chapter 20

  On Tuesday morning at breakfast, I had a treat for Maddie, besides the homemade strawberry preserves crafter Mabel Quinlan had distributed to the group last week.

  “How would you like to take a ride to S
an Francisco this afternoon and finally get a Ghirardelli sundae? I’ll pick you up at the Rutledge Center after class and we’ll drive right up.”

  Anyone listening in on our family life would have thought that our diet revolved around ice cream: chocolate malts, caramel cashew ice cream, hot fudge sundaes. They wouldn’t be far off.

  “That would be cool, Grandma. Do you have more errands to do at the hotel?”

  I ruffled her curls. “Why would you ask that?”

  ***

  I felt I was doing my duty as a good grandmother by at least starting our afternoon with the promised sundae.

  We drove directly to Ghirardelli Square and parked a few blocks away-the best we could do, even on a weekday afternoon. A shopping area at the end of a cable car line, the square offered one of the best views in the city. Using a guide we’d picked up at the Duns Scotus over the weekend, Maddie pointed out the hills of Marin County, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the maritime museum.

  For a chocolate lover, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, dating back to the nineteenth century, was the centerpiece of the shopping area. The entire square smelled of sweet, melting chocolate. On this warm summer day, people were lined up around the block on Larkin Street for a chance to eat an outrageously large sundae or soda in cramped quarters.

  I held our place in line while Maddie tossed a shiny penny into a fountain already full of coins, each one with a wish attached, I surmised. I never participated in such activities, even as a child. I could never isolate one wish and my parents weren’t about to have me toss in enough coins to cover them all.

  Today, I’d truly be at a loss to choose among my wishes. The list ran from a healthy, happy life for Maddie, her parents, and all my friends and relatives, to a solution to the David Bridges murder case. If there were coins left over, I’d wish for another trip to England to see Queen Mary’s dollhouse.

  We chose brownie sundaes, with enormous scoops of ice cream, chocolate sauce, and a large brownie stuck down the side of the bowl, in case the thousands of calories in the sundae weren’t enough. We immediately wrapped our brownies in napkins for later. We weren’t gluttons, after all.

  It was hard to think of much else in the presence of such delicious decadence. Sadie’s in Lincoln Point was an outstanding little shop, but the excitement of being in San Francisco and the refreshing, cool air by the bay made everything taste better.

  In spite of being in this legendary area, where Tony Ben-nett had left his heart, Maddie’s mind, like mine, drifted to the murder case.

  “Grandma, can we work on the information I downloaded about those contracts and things?”

  I stirred errant crumbs from the brownie into my ice cream. “We should put brownie crumbs on the counter in the Bronx house,” I said.

  “Grandma?”

  “I’d love to work on that information, but you gave the printout to Uncle Skip, remember?” So there.

  Maddie reached into her backpack. “I have copies,” she said, with a chocolate-rimmed grin.

  “I should have known.”

  “If you had the e-mails I gave you, we could work on everything right now,” she said.

  My turn. I reached down into my tote, on the floor by my feet. “I brought the e-mails with me.”

  “I should have known,” she said.

  I wondered if anyone could have been as proud of a grandchild as I was at that moment.

  We both wanted to work on the contract documents on the spot, but one look at our tiny marble-topped table, and another at the long line of customers waiting for their turn at overdosing on chocolate, and we knew that was a bad idea.

  “What about the hotel lobby?” I said. “You don’t have to be staying there to walk in and use the coffee tables and chairs. It will be as if we’re still registered,” I said.

  Maddie gave me a sideways look. “You’re not going to dump me in the pool, are you?”

  Between bouts of laughter, I made a promise to keep Maddie dry, and she accepted.

  I couldn’t remember ever being so full as I was driving back toward downtown San Francisco.

  “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.”
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br />   “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.”