Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

“Rosie’s at the police station.”

I glanced over at Henry. He stood where I’d left him, to the side of the line for David’s parents, arms crossed. I figured he’d planned on having me join him for what could pass for lunch at the buffet table. A pleasant enough thought, if I weren’t so busy.

Ben was less than twenty feet from the exit.

Back to Linda. “I’m glad to hear that, Linda, but I’m surprised Rosie skipped the service for David.”

“She didn’t have a choice. They picked her up in Miller’s parking lot as she was going into the mortuary.”

And Cheryl had seen the action, I realized. Her twisted metaphor had made no sense at the time.

My heart sank, my eyes focusing now on Henry, now on Ben, and back. “They arrested her?” I asked Linda.

“No handcuffs or anything,” Linda said. “She just got in an LPPD car.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know people.” We both laughed at the sinister implication. “I mean, there’s a lot of business between us and Miller’s.”

“Of course there is.” I pictured a large black van making not infrequent trips between the Mary Todd assisted living facility and Miller’s Mortuary.

“It’s awful, Gerry. What are you going to do?”

“It might not mean anything, if they weren’t arresting her. The most they can do is cite her for being uncooperative,” I said. I had to check that little detail in the police handbook, if there was one.

Ben closed in on the exit to the parking lot. I carried my phone with me as I followed him, keeping stragglers between us whenever possible.

He took his keys out.

I took mine out. What was I doing?

“I’m sure Rosie would like it if you went down to the station right away, Gerry.”

Ben approached a late-model sedan at the edge of the lot and got in.

I approached my Ion and got in.

I seemed to be on autopilot as I put my key in the ignition, turned on the engine, and started backing up. “I’ll get to the police station as soon as I can,” I told Linda, breaking the California hands-free law for a car in motion. “I have an errand to do first.”

I turned my head to look over my shoulder as I rolled out of the parking spot in reverse.

Henry Baker was standing in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his light summer jacket. I couldn’t see the details of his face, but his posture seemed dejected, as if he’d been given a brush-off, not that different from the one Rosie had experienced from David.

It couldn’t be helped, I told myself.

Miller’s Mortuary predated the row of stores on the east side of Springfield Boulevard. Its asphalt driveway was now wedged between a card shop and a do-it-yourself ceramics shop. I drove out, allowing about three car lengths between Ben and me. I was confident that he wouldn’t think it unusual that someone would leave the mortuary at about the same time that he did.

I pulled out onto Springfield and turned left, following the dark blue, ordinary-looking car. A Toyota? A Ford? I’d never been good at identifying a vehicle unless it was a limousine or a pickup truck.

I questioned my decision-making process. Faced with the choice of, one, comforting and aiding Rosie, who might be arrested at any moment; two, having an appealing repast with Henry, whom I was growing to appreciate as a friend; and three, tailing a man I thought might be a killer, I’d chosen the last. If nothing else, Ben Dobson was the only person in my recent history who’d shown a temper. And I’d elected to follow him to places unknown.

My only defense was that finding who killed David was the best thing I could do for my old friend; then I’d have time for new friends.

I’d hung up on Linda unceremoniously, telling her I’d call her right back, though the promise went out of my mind immediately. At almost noon on a workday, there wasn’t much traffic. This was a good thing in that I was not an experienced follower and might have lost my target, but a bad thing in that it might be obvious to Ben that he had an unwelcome visitor in his rearview mirror.

Ben took a right on Civic Drive, just past the site of the ALHS groundbreaking ceremony, and continued following the drive, looping around until he was headed for the parking lot that surrounded the gym behind the high school. A circuitous route.

There were easier ways to get to this spot from Miller’s Mortuary-by cutting into the gravel drive next to Bagels by Willie, or even circling behind Sadie’s Ice Cream Shop. I wondered if his choosing the long route meant that Ben was not a local boy.

I stayed a reasonable distance behind him as Ben drove to the far north end of the back ALHS lot and parked. Fortunately the high school held summer classes, making the area moderately busy and allowing me to blend in with the other red cars. (More than once, even in non-surveillance situations, I renewed my grudge against my son for talking me out of a bronze Taurus, and into a bright red Saturn Ion.)

I parked under a tree, behind Ben’s car, so that if he backed up far enough in a straight line, he’d ram his rear bumper directly into my front end. When Ben exited his car, I slumped down in the seat and watched him through the space in the steering wheel between the rim and the horn. I hoped I didn’t activate it now by accident.

Ben looked around, but I was fairly sure he hadn’t seen me. He had no reason to expect that he was being followed. He threw his jacket onto the backseat of his car, hitched up his pants, and walked straight ahead.

Into Joshua Speed Woods.

I felt my face flush and my arms slacken. I watched Ben walk deliberately down the trail that led into the woods known as a picnic grounds during the summer weekends, a teen lovers’ hideaway at night all year, and most recently, the place where David Bridges’s bludgeoned body had been found.

A repulsive image came to me, of David’s lips, glued together. Wasn’t glue a staple in a maintenance department? I couldn’t remember if Rosie used the very tough carpenter’s glue on her project. Many of us did, depending on the materials we were trying to fasten together. I doubted that every single container of a particular brand of glue was different. The rookie forensics person could have made a mistake when he thought he matched the glue from Rosie’s room box to… I shut out the image.

Ben walked slowly, head down, kicking the gravel now and then. He seemed to be searching for something, scanning the ground on both sides of the trail. I imagined he might be looking for evidence he thought he left behind, or for a place to plant a miniature tool, to further implicate Rosie.

I shuddered at the thought that Ben had seen me and was now scoping out where to drag my body once he silenced me. I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps Ben Dobson was doing nothing more than exhibiting morbid curiosity about where David’s body had been found or that he had a flower in his pocket to lay at the site.

Not long after Ben left my range of view, a minivan pulled up next to me and I started, as frightened as if Ben had materialized next to me, though I knew he couldn’t have made it back to the parking area so quickly. My fear was so real, I might have testified (had I lived) that he held a trophy high in the air over my head.

A noisy family of five exited the van. Three high-energy children screaming and laughing brought me back to the present moment. They juggled books, stuffed animals, and pieces of clothing, the way I was juggling all the clues and fears of my last three days.

It had been about thirty minutes since Ben disappeared into the woods. Very few people came into the lot during that time. At one point, I thought I saw Cheryl Mellace enter the lot in her black sports car. She passed close to me but seemed to deliberately turn away when she saw me. I wondered what her yearbook write-up said about her attitude.