Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

I gulped. “So it was Barry?”

“What? Is he married or something?”

I shook my head no, though I wasn’t positive. I closed the yearbook before she could verify his marital status.

“Sweet, huh? He’s cute. Did you guys date back then or something?” Samantha asked.

I couldn’t disappoint her. “Yes, it was a long time ago. I had no idea he still cared after all these years.”

“So maybe you’ll get back together now? Woo-hoo!”

“Thanks a lot, Samantha,” I said, packing up to leave. “You really helped a lot.”

“You made my day,” she said, in a convincing tone.

“I’m glad.”

I’d reached the threshold between the shop and the lobby when I heard Samantha’s voice again. “Hey, Mary Lou?” I almost blew my cover by not responding. “Go for it, okay?” she said.

I planned to.

I took a seat in a cozy corner in the lobby. I sat on a wide easy chair with my back to the tile bridge, the boulder, and most of the jungle area with their unpleasant associations. I needed to review everything I knew and try to make sense of it.

I had about a half hour before I should pick up Maddie and get ready to meet Henry and Taylor for brunch. I took out my small notepad and pen. I knew that most of my notes would be mere doodles as my brain worked over bits of information, but the physicality of the writing and scribbling helped me focus in situations like this.

I decided going backward would be the easiest process. I called up the image: Barry Cannon with a sports trophy, buying candy for Rosie and delivering it in David’s name. I thought it was a safe bet to believe Samantha, who had passed too many other tests to have made an error identifying Barry. And if nothing else, I had a sense that she was very good with people and faces.

First task: find out if Barry had ever won a sports trophy of his own (I doubted it) or if he’d been carrying David’s trophy, the murder weapon, into the shop. For now, I’d have to assume those two options were the only ones. I couldn’t remember whether there had been a trophy on the stage at the ALHS groundbreaking ceremony. Barry himself was small-framed, not an athlete, unless it was at a sport that got less attention at ALHS than the big three of football, basketball, and baseball.

At the very least, Barry seemed guilty of overseeing the delivery of the presents to Rosie, leading her to think David was courting her, with or without David’s knowledge. It was a slim motive, but a motive nonetheless, to think that David found out what Barry was up to and a fight ensued. Slim , I repeated to myself, but not zero.

I found Barry’s page in the yearbook to see what he’d been up to since his well-written Dickens paper. I did a quick read of the text and saw no mention of participation in sports. I moved on to Training and Education-it seemed Barry was a CPA. He now worked as the chief financial officer in the accounting office of Mellace Construction Company.

Small world, and not just for miniaturists. I filed the information under “what a coincidence” and moved on.

More accurately, I moved back, to my conversation with Skip, who had claimed to have more to share eventually. I had a sinking feeling that whatever it was, it wasn’t good news for Rosie. I had to decide whether to add to his arsenal by producing the tiny locker mirror I’d found in David’s room after the murder.

If I were a trained interrogator, as he was, I’d skirt around how I found the mirror and get him to tell me how and where he located the vandalized version of the miniature locker room Rosie had built.

I tried to weave in the loose ends-a disgruntled (based on one interaction) employee who quit the morning David’s body was found; Walter Mellace wanting something from David’s room. For a moment I considered that it might have been Walter who stole my purse, thinking I had that “something” he’d hassled me about on the eleventh-floor hallway, in my purse (could the something be that small?) or in my room. Given Walter’s heft, however, I guessed I’d still be unconscious in the Duns Scotus jungle if he’d been the one to bump into me on the bridge.

I had Callahan and Savage to fit into the scheme also. The only connection I could put my finger on was that both they and Walter Mellace were in professions associated with buildings. I thought of my crafts rooms. So was I, you could say.

Another loose end fluttered to the front of my mind, demanding attention. I remembered what Rosie had told me when we woke up in adjacent beds on Saturday morning. She’d come in at two, she said, after a workout at the hotel’s fitness center.

This one was easy. I didn’t even need Aaron or his equivalent. I went to the concierge’s desk and picked up a hotel brochure from a pile in the corner. I ran my finger down the list of amenities and hours of availability. Room service was offered twenty-four hours; same-day service laundry pickup was before seven in the morning; the fitness center-my heart sank-closed at midnight.

If I were the police, one lie would be enough to discredit Rosie completely. But I was her friend; I had to give her the benefit of the doubt in spite of the trashed locker room, the tiny mirror in David’s suite, and the failed alibi.

The concierge came back to his desk and I made one last stab at rescuing my faith in Rosie. “Is this brochure up-to-date?” I asked him.

Young enough to be Aaron’s twin, he scratched his stylishly bald head. “Yeah, pretty much. Something in particular you’re interested in?”

“What time does the fitness center close?”

“Midnight.”

A sigh escaped. “Thanks.”

“That do it for you?”

“I’m afraid so.”

I was in dire need of someone to talk to. That person had always been Ken’s younger sister Beverly, Skip’s mother. Now that she was “going steady” with a retired cop friend of Skip’s, I saw her less and hesitated to bother her.

“Nothing has to change,” she’d told me. “I’m always here for you.”

True theoretically, and I thought Beverly believed it, but in fact, much had changed. No more late-night tea klatches, no more last-minute taking care of Maddie. This weekend, for example, when she would have been an enormous help to me, she was in Seattle with Nick’s family.

What hadn’t changed was that we were a close family and wanted the best for each other. I had pangs of guilt over my selfish thoughts and was glad she wasn’t aware of them. I knew that if I really needed her and told her so straight out, Beverly would be at my side in a minute.

It was hard to ask for more.

The Duns Scotus brunch buffet was as lavish as any I’d ever seen outside of pictures of Victorian-era banquets. A beautiful table was spread with breads and fruit; at a separate station a chef made omelets to order; at another station one could be served slices from an enormous leg of lamb, roast pork, or a side (it seemed) of beef. As Ken would say at a feast like this, “Many a man would call it a meal.”

“Wow,” said Taylor and Maddie almost in unison as they saw the oversize éclairs. Taylor’s blond pixie cut was wet, as Maddie’s red curls were, from a quick after-swimming shower. The girls sent sprays of water drops onto their shoulders in their excitement.

The éclairs and other pastries could each feed a family of four. I made a note to leave room for a dessert or two and therefore skipped the carnivores’ table in favor of a mushroom-and-cheese omelet. Calorie for calorie, there probably wasn’t a lot of difference.

“Isn’t it funny?” Taylor asked Maddie. “Your grandma and my grandpa only live a few blocks away from each other in Lincoln Point, but we’re all hanging out in San Francisco.”