Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

“I didn’t think you’d want to tuck me in tonight,” she said, a sheepish look on her adorable, freckled face. “I thought you might be mad at me.”

“Were you mad at me?” I asked, perched on the side of her bed. She always used her father’s old bedroom on her visits and had been sorry to see his original preteen bed go a couple of years ago when it became nothing more than a board and a few feathers.

“You mean, did I give Uncle Skip the printouts because I was mad at you?” Maddie asked. “Maybe a little.” She pouted. Still adorable. “You kept leaving me and going off to do interesting things.”

Like being run down and having my purse stolen. Maddie didn’t know about the former incident, and was only vaguely aware of the latter, since Duns Scotus’s gallant security man, Big Blue, had interrupted her sleep.

“I thought you were having a good time with Taylor and the other kids in the program. And you had a lot of homework to do on your laptop for camp.”

Something like “Pssshht” came out at the mention of homework. Apparently the little Porter genius could manage a lot more than homework on any given day.

“You know I love to investigate with you. Then even in Lincoln Point, you dropped me in a pool.” She hardly finished the sentence without breaking up in laughter.

“Sometimes it’s too dangerous, sweetheart. And I do tell you everything eventually.” Almost everything.

I could always tell when Maddie’s waking minutes were numbered. Her speech slurred a bit and her eyelids fluttered, as if she were trying valiantly not to miss anything. She looked now as though her time was about up. I kissed her forehead and got up to leave.

Early as it was for those of us who didn’t have school or camp in the morning, I was ready to turn in myself.

“Grandma?”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t give everything to Uncle Skip.”

I perked up. “What else do you have, sweetheart?”

But Maddie had nodded off for good, leaving me hanging.

Which was just as well, since I could hear my phone ringing in the other room.

A phone call this late at night wasn’t likely to be a casual “hi” or a quick chat to set up a lunch date. Or Cindy at Cooper’s in Benicia calling to tell me the miniature armoire and new brand of glue I’d ordered had come in. I’d already returned Richard and Mary Lou’s call. Who else was left?

I recognized Skip’s cell phone number, then his voice.

“Remember I told you I’d have more evidence soon?” he said. “Well, that’s what the meeting was about this afternoon. So, now I really need to see Rosie, and if you really don’t know where she is, I’ll have to put out a warrant to bring her in for questioning.”

My heart skipped. “What’s the new evidence, Skip?” “What does it matter?”

“Skip?”

He let out a loud sigh. “It’s about the glue.”

“The glue?” Was this, after all, a call from Cooper’s?

“We believe that the glue Rosie used on the things in the little box matches the glue used… elsewhere.”

Things in the little box? When this case was closed, I’d have to give Skip a refresher course on miniaturists’ jargon. “Elsewhere? You mean at the crime scene?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Something was off about my nephew’s communication skills tonight, but that conversation, too, would have to be put on hold. There were more pressing questions. “How in the world did you get that information so fast? You’re always reminding us how crime labs are understaffed and underfunded, how they don’t come up with results in a jiffy like on television or in crime fiction.”

“That’s absolutely true. Some of the fancy equipment you see doesn’t even exist, let alone in regular police labs. And the backlog is beyond anyone’s imagining.”

Uh-oh, I opened one of Skip’s favorite topics. I had to move fast. “So what happened here? It’s Sunday night, maybe forty-eight hours since David was murdered and you have a DNA match for glue?”

“Cute, Aunt Gerry. Glue DNA. But, hey, go figure. They train the lab rookies on weekends and this looked like a more interesting, quick little task than the other three hundred jobs in backup. That’s why it’s preliminary, but it’s enough to pick Rosie up for questioning. Now, do you or do you not know where she is?”

“I don’t, honestly. But…”

“But?”

I couldn’t take the chance that Rosie wouldn’t show up tomorrow afternoon as she promised. She wasn’t herself. “I know where she’ll be tomorrow,” I said. “And you probably do, too.”

“Why would I?”

“I assume you’re going to the memorial for David? I thought cops always went to memorial services, expecting the killer to show up. Or is that another myth like the modern crime lab with instant turnaround time?”

“The funeral’s not until Saturday.”

I told him about the special service on Monday, to give out-of-town classmates the chance to pay their respects.

“You’re going to earn a badge, yet,” Skip said.

“Not if it means working this late all the time.”

What grandmother takes advantage of a little girl?

Much as the idea appealed to me, I stopped short of withholding breakfast from Maddie if she didn’t tell me what it was she’d held back from her uncle Skip.

“Remember, just before you fell asleep you told me you discovered something else while you were searching the Internet?”

Maddie grinned, sedately, since her mouth was full of a very bad sugarcoated cereal that Mary Lou would never buy. “I was going to use it later.”

“You mean to strike a better bargain?” I asked, working my tickling magic on her skinny torso at the same time.

My finger work had the desired effect. Maddie went to her room and came back with a sheaf of papers that looked like e-mail printouts. A quick look showed they were all from David Bridges, to various contractors and subcontractors. I recognized some of the same names that were on the material she’d given to Skip. I tried not to show my disappointment that what Maddie had kept from Skip, to give to me, was just more of the same, except that it was correspondence about the contract awards.

I asked my routine question of the whiz kid. “How did you get these?”

Maddie shrugged. Just another day in the life of a young detective. “It was part of what was there, like official correspondence for the awards, I guess. I figured if I gave some to you and some to Uncle Skip, we’d all be working together,” she said. “That’s the only reason I didn’t give everything to the same person.”

Awkwardly put, but on further thought, I realized Maddie wasn’t trying to get even with me for dumping her at a pool every chance I had since Friday; she wanted to be seen as helpful to all.

The family that investigates together, stays together?

“Thanks, sweetheart,” I said. “This is very useful.”

I pulled out of the Rutledge Center at eight in the morning, after dropping Maddie off for day camp. She was excited about what she was learning, but vague about the details.

“We’re making up games. You’d be bored,” she’d said.

By which I guessed she meant I wouldn’t get it, as I’d demonstrated all month. I shuddered to think what she’d be able to pull off with even more computer knowledge.

My cell phone rang, throwing me into confusion about how to access the call. I had a new Bluetooth contraption on my ear and could never remember the sequence of pushing buttons to answer a call.

It had taken three tries to find a design that fit and I still couldn’t use it with the abandon I saw young people using it. The robot-like units on their ears seemed to survive stretching over the counter for their lattes or bending to pick up a dropped set of keys, whereas I could barely move my neck and still keep it on. But “hands free” was the California driving and calling law and I was nothing if not law-abiding.