Murder In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  And to ask him what he was doing in the Joshua Speed Woods after David’s memorial service. Maybe he was looking for more evidence of the fraud. Or maybe he hadn’t lied to me after all, about answering nature’s call.

  Chapter 24

  My cell phone rang, showing Skip’s caller ID. I didn’t think Rosie needed to hear even my side of the conversation, so I stepped outside to answer.

  A majestic set of steps led from the sidewalk to the plaza level of the police department building. From this vantage point, I could see the entire main shopping district of our town, and as far as Rutledge Center where I could picture Maddie working furiously on her project and looking forward to being where I was now.

  Fortunately, according to the oversize digital display in front of the civic center buildings, the temperature had dropped to a mere eighty-two degrees and I wasn’t too uncomfortable.

  “How come you’re being patient there in the waiting area and not beating down my door?” Skip asked.

  “How come you know where I am?” Or at least, where I’d been when he rang.

  “Duh,” he said, echoing Maddie. I needed to break down and adopt that handy syllable (I couldn’t call it a word) myself.

  “What can you tell me about Larry Esterman?” I asked.

  “He’s on his way downstairs now, but he’s wearing an ankle bracelet while we figure it all out.”

  “You think he’s a flight risk? I doubt the man has been out of town for decades.”

  “He did attempt to assault a man.”

  “Uh-huh. And with a deadly weapon, right?”

  “Not if it wasn’t loaded.”

  “What?”

  “Esterman claims the gun wasn’t loaded, that he doesn’t even own any bullets. In fact, we searched both his and Rosie’s houses and found no ammunition, or even a record that he’d ever bought any.”

  “He owned a gun but never loaded it?”

  “It appears that way. As I said, we’re sorting things out.”

  “So, you don’t think he killed David?” I whispered, though there was no one within earshot. The only people in the vicinity were three smokers who stood on the lower steps of the building in a tiny spot of shade that spilled over from a tree on the sidewalk.

  “You said you have a couple of things to share with me?” Skip said, leaving me hanging as to whether Larry was considered a suspect by the LPPD.

  Larry had dropped off my own private list. What killer marches over to confront another potential victim with an unloaded gun? Strangely, even before I knew the gun wasn’t loaded, I’d lost interest in Larry as a suspect-he seemed more like a desperate old man with the means and the motive, but not the will to do anything as horrible as commit murder.

  I imagined Larry devising a con, much like the one perpetrated on his daughter thirty years ago-let Barry think he was about to be shot, then say something like, “April Fool,” and walk away. Too bad Barry didn’t appreciate the turnabout.

  Now I was faced with a decision about talking to Skip without Maddie.

  He’d called me; he’d asked me to share. I ran through my defense to my granddaughter, who’d be getting out of class in a half hour.

  “I’ll be right up,” I said.

  I reentered the building by the side door on the east end of the plaza, to avoid Rosie and/or her father. I expected to hear repercussions later.

  On the way to Skip’s office, I called Beverly and asked if she could pick up Maddie at the Rutledge Center and bring her to the police station.

  “Absolutely,” she said, with more gusto than usual. I knew she’d been feeling bad that she’d let me down by not showing up for late night atrium visits. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her that for two nights in a row she’d been replaced by murder suspects.

  Skip was waiting for me at the head of the interior stairs and escorted me back to his cubicle.

  “No cookies, I suppose,” he said. I shot him a “naughty boy” look. “We need to get this case over with so you can get back on schedule.” I knew he was aware that his grin would soften me.

  “Your mom will be bringing Maddie by in about a half hour,” I said. “Your cousin once removed has some things she wants to tell you herself.”

  “No problem. And I have a big surprise for her. Lavana is going to give her a special tour of the building. How’s that?”

  “She’ll love it.”

  “So, just tell me everything and I’ll act surprised later, okay?”

  How could I do that to my granddaughter?

  Easily, it turned out.

  After Skip made a very brief trip to the cold-drink machine for both of us, I started my report on the interview with our Duns Scotus housekeeper, Marina. Maddie hadn’t been too involved in that aspect of my snooping, except to translate my overblown language into ordinary English.

  “You just happened to stop by a hotel in San Francisco two days after you’d checked out?”

  “We missed it. But, the point is, isn’t Cheryl’s story revealing?”

  “It is.”

  “And you’ll file it under ‘things that tend to clear Rosie Norman’?”

  “I will. What else?”

  I felt underappreciated. I’d uncovered the mystery of the anonymous caller who directed the police to the location of Rosie’s trashed scene. I expected more. But I wasn’t eleven years old, so I moved on.

  “There’s the matter of the RFP material and contract awards.” I told Skip what Maddie had uncovered, how David had been granting Mellace an award on one day, and asking for competitive bids the day after. “You may not even need all this if Barry has spelled it all out for you.”

  “Not true. We need something solid like this. Barry clammed up. My guess is that he thinks he can contain what he told you.”

  I didn’t mention Cheryl’s visit to my house. I did produce the folded sheet Larry Esterman had marked up, however, and wished him luck putting the whole case together.

  Not that we were any closer to determining who killed David Bridges. For that, I was hoping this evening with my crafters would settle the matter and we could put everything to rest by morning.

  Maddie bounded into Skip’s cubicle, nearly knocking over the partition. Behind her was Beverly, and behind her their escort, Officer Lavana Rollins, taller even than Beverly.

  Maddie gave me a suspicious look. “How long have you been here?”

  Skip spared me and took over. “Your grandmother has done nothing but go on and on about the cool work you did on this case,” he said, waiting for the beaming smile that followed. “She wanted to wait but I browbeat her”-he held his fists up, boxer style-“until she cracked.” He threw punches into the air and did surprisingly fancy footwork in the cramped quarters. “Bam, bam. Bam, bam.”

  Maddie laughed when the last “bam” landed on her nose. I doubted I’d have been able to smooth things over as easily.

  More kudos to Maddie as Skip spelled out how because of her work, a judge might now allow them to dig even deeper into all the finances of the bad guys. “If you hadn’t noticed that your grandmother Googled Callahan and Savage”-he threw up his hands-“I don’t know where we’d be.”

  Skip let Maddie explain how she kept digging into Callahan and Savage and then went on to a state business site and finally put everything together in order to construct the time line. She elaborated on how she quickly noticed the dates were off. Maddie’s story was somewhat embellished and quite creative in parts, but no one critiqued it out loud.

  Her summary was brilliant: “I’m sure I could do even better next time if I knew a little more about how a police department works.”

  “Let me think about it,” Skip said. He rose from the chair and snapped his fingers. “I’ve made my decision. Officer Rollins, would you be so kind as to take Ms. Porter on an insider’s tour of the building?”

  Beverly and I stood by. I knew she was marveling as I was, at the performance of the two best negotiators in the family.

 
Officer Rollins saluted, for probably the first time since her induction.

  “The jail, too,” Maddie said.

  “The jail, too, Ms. Porter,” Lavana Rollins said, scaring me. “Of course, it’s illegal for anyone under eighteen to be within the confines of the jail, but you’re eighteen, right?”

  Maddie screwed up her nose. “Not today,” she said.

  I didn’t care whether Lavana was stretching the truth, or outright lying, for that matter, as long as Maddie saw nothing that might give her nightmares.

  Back home, Maddie couldn’t stop talking about her tour. She told me about the fax machines, the meeting rooms, the records storage area, and the copiers. (ALHS had all of these, also, but I doubted she’d have been as impressed to see them in a school setting.)

  Not available at ALHS were many other highlights, however. “Officer Lavana has the coolest job, Grandma. She works with judges and lawyers and dogs,” she said.

  Officer Lavana had showed her the dispatch center with its enormous map of the city, the booking area, and the two kinds of interview rooms, one for suspects and one for witnesses.

  I took it all in, nodding pleasantly and uttering words and syllables of interest-uh-huh, hmmm, oh-having resolved not to pass judgment. The last thing I wanted was for Maddie to choose a career just because it wasn’t what her grandmother had in mind for her.

  “They took my picture,” she said, producing mug shots of her adorable face.

  She showed me the set: one in profile and one face front, a placard around her neck. I doubted any criminal who’d been photographed by the LPPD had such a wide smile for the camera. The sign around her neck had LINCOLN POINT POLICE DEPARTMENT in caps, today’s date, and a long string of numbers, not unlike that of a Swiss bank account. I hoped the number on the card was a made-up one and wouldn’t be entered into the system by mistake.

  Maddie placed the two mug-shot views on the table in the atrium where everyone who came into the house would see them. I tried to remember if she’d been this excited when she’d had her photograph taken with all the animals at Disneyland.

  I thought not.

  We had time for a crafts fix before dinner. I’d been eager to try something recommended by a woman I met at a dollhouse show last month. She’d taken seeds from a green bell pepper and dried them, simply by leaving them on a paper towel for a few days. She’d piled the seeds into a tiny wooden bowl, available in quantity at any crafts store, and, lo and behold, she had a bowl of potato chips. I’d put some seeds out a couple of days ago and Maddie and I finished the project this evening.

  “Do you think Mrs. Reed will like this, or would she want us to carve the chips out of real potatoes?”

  “Good one,” I said.

  My granddaughter had told a miniature joke, of sorts, giving me my thrill of the day.

  “That reminds me, we need to have a lunch or something with Taylor and her grandfather, so we can finish the witch joke. Remember: why does a witch need a computer?”

  “We’ll try to get together soon,” I said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “We’ll see. Don’t you have some homework to get done before the crafts group gets here?”

  “Yeah, I do. I have to fix my avatar. It has a wobbly head.”

  “I hope it doesn’t leave a scar.”

  “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.”