Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

By the time Skip returned, I was settled on the chair. I’d taken out my notebook and pen and was making notes on the RFP review we’d just been through. Calm as can be.

“Turns out the meeting’s not just for bigwigs. I need to be at it, Aunt Gerry. We’ll have to continue this later.”

Another plus. Rosie hadn’t shown up yet and I was running out of delay tactics.

I got up to leave. I tapped the stack of folders I’d knocked over and replaced on his desk. “Oh, I dropped some stuff when I moved things from the chair,” I said. “So this pile might be a little mixed up. Sorry.”

I felt my homicide detective nephew could see right through me. But not directly, because I kept my eyes cast down the whole time I was talking.

I expected repercussions at some time, but for now, he let me off the hook.

My thin towels, with their faded blue stripes, some from the earliest years of our marriage, looked pitiful after the plush vanilla bath sheets at the Duns Scotus. Two nights at a San Francisco hotel made my house, and most of my belongings, look equally shabby. I wasn’t usually interested in flowery scents, but I rummaged for the fragrant soap I’d taken (not pilfered, as I do in cops’ offices) from room five sixty-eight and put it on my cosmetics shelf. A definite upgrade.

I reminded myself of the trade-off for the hotel amenities: I’d been accosted in an elegantly appointed hallway and had had my purse stolen in their thickly verdant lobby. I resolved to go back someday when I wasn’t hanging out with murder suspects.

I was in desperate need of some time at home, mediocre though it was, and of time with my family. I also needed to get to a miniature project soon to help me relax and gain perspective. Very often I solved a problem only when I stopped thinking hard about it and escaped to a different world for a while-a world where a small suction cup could be turned into a bathroom plunger or a bead from a broken necklace could be the base of a tiny lamp.

Today, however, my safe world of miniatures was marred by visions of Rosie’s trashed locker hallway. I had to keep reminding myself that the red in the I hate David scrawl was only lipstick and not David Bridges’s blood.

I had about a half hour alone, enough for a quick shower and unpacking, before Beverly and Nick would be bringing Maddie back. The best of both worlds.

Maddie called from Beverly’s as they were leaving.

“Can I invite Taylor to come over tonight, Grandma?”

“Of course.”

I wondered who would drive Taylor to my house.

On Sunday evening, my home was just the way I liked it-crowded with family and friends. Beverly and Nick had provided pizza for all and I’d phoned Sadie’s for a delivery of enough ice cream for a whole football team. The flavors included Maddie’s favorite triple chocolate, though I was still a bit put out about the way she’d wormed herself into the investigation without me.

I needed a serious discussion with my granddaughter about the printout caper. It wasn’t clear why it bothered me so much that she’d delivered the material to Skip directly. Unless it meant that I was afraid she was growing apart from me. I waved my hand at an imaginary audience in my head. Ridiculous, I told myself, on both counts.

June Chinn, Skip’s almost-fiancée, caught up with me in my pantry as I was searching for a new box of crackers. In faded denim shorts and a black tank top, June could have been a top model in the “short women” category. Her latest style statement was a tattoo on her lower back-the area that was universally visible now on young women as soon as they stretched or bent over. June had chosen a simple design, the Chinese symbol for peace.

She’d brought a large salad with bean sprouts, which she’d prepared in her own kitchen, next door to mine.

“I’m sorry about all that’s going on here,” she said. “But in a way, I’m glad Skip was called back before the funeral in Seattle. He doesn’t do well at that kind of thing. Well, nobody does, but you know what I mean.”

I did know. Skip went to his first funeral when he was Maddie’s age, for his father, who died in the first Gulf War. That seemed enough to ask of a guy.

“I’m glad you’re back,” I said, giving her a hug.

“Thanks, Gerry. Skip doesn’t talk much about cases with me, as you know, but the rumor going around is that people think your friend Rosie Norman murdered her old boy-friend?”

I took it as a good sign that June posed the idea as a question. I was sure all of Rosie’s customers would have an equally hard time believing something so horrible about the woman who loved books and reading enough to open her own shop in a small town. Rosie had reading groups for all ages and was tied into the Lincoln Point library’s literacy program, where I tutored GED subjects. I knew she lost money giving students generous discounts on any text related to the GED program.

The question remained, however-why hadn’t she presented herself to the police? To my nephew, in fact, which should have made it as easy as it could get.

And where was she now, anyway?

I’d left messages on Linda’s and Rosie’s cell phones inviting them to the impromptu party, presumably after Rosie talked to the police. I hadn’t heard from either of them. Nor from Skip, either, in the last couple of hours.

Were they all on the run?

Henry and Taylor were due to arrive any minute. I wasn’t eager to have Henry see my crafts room with its amateur miniature projects. He had shown no tendency toward being judgmental but I was conscious of the comparison between my crafts and his wonderfully artistic woodworking.

I decided my Bronx apartment might be an acceptable piece to show him. Ken had built the miniature structure, a replica of our first residence (a term that glorified the six-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot flat) and Maddie and I worked on the interior off and on. I was proudest of its lived-in look, with “clothes” peeking from the drawers of a messy dresser in the bedroom and a “dirty” towel hung over the bathtub. Maddie wanted cracker crumbs on the kitchen counter, so we’d found a way to model that, too.

Beverly caught me brushing my hair in my bedroom. Served me right for leaving the door open.

“I know what you’re going through,” she said, with a wide smile. Her red (augmented a bit by chemistry) Porter hair looked beautifully layered as usual. “Maddie told me about Henry Baker. I don’t think I ever met him. Which is a good start. It means he never got a traffic ticket, violated the seat belt law, or abandoned his car on a city street.”

I laughed at Beverly’s reference to her job as LPPD’s much-loved civilian volunteer. “What could Maddie have said? There’s nothing to tell.”

“Uh-huh,” Beverly said, stepping behind me and massaging my shoulders.

I didn’t know how much I needed it.

We’d all decided to give Nick plants to take home for his garden, in memory of his grandfather. Nick was an avid gardener and seemed genuinely moved by the gesture.

“This is just what I need,” Nick said, the sweep of his arms encompassing all of us and the plants, too. “The best comfort is another great family.”

Henry and Taylor had contributed to the array, arriving with two pots of orange and yellow marigolds, one for Nick’s garden, and one for mine.

“How did you know about our plan for Nick?” I asked him.

“You know how it is. Maddie told Taylor; Taylor told me.” He shrugged, as if every man was quick to pick up on social protocol.

It was so delightfully noisy as seven of us passed salad, pizza, and drinks around my large dining room table, I almost missed the doorbell.