Murder In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  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, apparently) 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.

  Maddie and I each picked up a page for a closer look and read together, half out loud, half to ourselves. My first sheet was for an equipment upgrade on the heating and cooling system at the Duns Scotus in 2006. The RFP Issue Date was listed as February 6, 2006. The bids were submitted two months later.

  Maddie showed me a similar breakdown on her sheet, with an RFP going out on June 13, 2005, and bids coming in three months later. There were seven bidding companies, with Mellace’s bid the second highest. Once again, Mellace had an asterisk next to its name.

  “We’ve known this all along,” I said to Maddie (and myself), dejected.

  Skip had processed all this information already, and Barry had as much as confessed these irregularities. I’d been hoping that with a closer look, I’d be able to come up with more, something that tied David directly to fraud. Barry had mentioned an upcoming major remodeling project for the Duns Scotus, but either the RFP for that hadn’t gone out or the printouts we had were simply outdated.

  Reading these sheets, one could argue that Mellace Construction’s high bid was worth it because of their years of experience or excellent customer references. Or that Callahan and Savage’s low bid was balanced by poor qualifications of their staff or another criterion of which I had no clue. I had to resign myself to the fact that I’d come up with nothing new.

  “Let’s check the e-mails,” Maddie said, sweeping the RFP summaries to the side.

  We took our positions and focused.

  The correspondence was much easier to read, being word-based instead of number-based. Almost all the e-mails were from David Bridges to Mellace Construction, a few to other companies that had won a contract.

  “I guess it would look suspicious if Mellace got totally all the contracts,” Maddie said, at the same time that I was thinking it.

  The text of the e-mails was all the same, except for numbers filled in, for the amount of the contract and the agreed-to start and finish of the projects.

  I’d lost track of the number of dead ends in this case, while my friend was virtually a prisoner of an elaborate frame.

  “It’s hopeless,” I said.

  “Let’s not give up, Grandma. I’m not sure what we’re looking for exactly, but we might still be able to find it.”

  I was sorry that I’d expressed my despondency out loud. To humor my granddaughter I put a positive face on and said, “Okay, let’s try another approach. We could make up a time line, putting everything we have in chronological order, whether it’s an RFP summary or an e-mail. Can you do that while I see about something for dinner? You must be starving.”

  I was only half joking, since Maddie had been in a heavy-eating phase all summer, not that you could tell from her skinny body.

  “I’m starving for something good, like pizza.”

  “Ice cream sundae and brownies for lunch and pizza for dinner. I don’t think so. Try again.”

  “Then can you make tuna casserole?”

  Was Maddie the only contemporary eleven-year-old who even knew what tuna casserole was? “Tuna casserole it is.”

  “With no peas, and lots of potato chip crumbs on top.”

  “And you won’t tell your mom?”

  “Duh.”

  “Deal.”

  The best thing about tuna casserole was that I didn’t need to look at a recipe. I had my own variation, adjusted to Maddie’s taste at three years old right up to the present. No pimiento or almonds, and cream of celery instead of cream of mushroom soup. I did sneak in a better grade of cheese than the original recipe called for.

  I assembled the masterpiece and put it in the oven. In thirty-five minutes, we’d be set to go.

  “Something’s funny here,” Maddie called from one room away.

  I walked into the dining room and peered over her shoulder. “Show me.”

  “Okay, see this line on the RPFs?” I sa
w no value in correcting her. “It tells you when the bids were asked for. So, look at this one, Project Number 20988, for fixing the air-conditioning units in the hotel. It has the date January 10, 2005.” Maddie plucked an e-mail from the stack. “Then here’s the e-mail letter to the Mellace company saying congratulations, because they got the contract for Project Number 20988. That’s the same number. But the date is December 29, 2004. That’s why I was confused. I was trying to put January after December. Get it?”

  I certainly did get it. David Bridges informed Mellace of a winning bid and then sent out a request for bids ten days later. Was there a time warp due to New Year’s Eve 2004?

  There was no Callahan and Savage bid on Project 20988, and it was a small Duns Scotus project, thus showing that David spread the fraud around, among different size bids.

  “Are there any more pairs like this?” my voice carried an excitement that I know pleased Maddie.

  “I don’t know yet. Let’s look.”

  We created a most interesting time line, with three more cases of an RFP going out after Mellace was notified of the winning bid. I hoped what we’d put together constituted the kind of proof Larry Esterman had talked about, the kind that could put someone in jail, the kind that someone might kill for.

  Walter Mellace moved up a notch on my list of suspects. All the nice things Barry and Rosie had said and thought about David Bridges were taking their toll, and I envisioned David’s deciding to play it straight, something Mellace would not be happy about. I was sure the LPPD would be eager to know my conclusions.

  After I left a message at all of Skip’s numbers, Maddie and I sat across from each other over a steaming tuna casserole.

  Maddie was beside herself with agitation, trying to talk with large mouthfuls of noodles. “I can’t wait to tell Uncle Skip,” she said, though I know she had only the vaguest notion of the meaning of what she’d uncovered and understood only a fraction of the concept of fraud, as perpetrated by Mellace Construction and their coconspirators.