Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

“Have you called him, to thank him for the presents?” our polite, most senior citizen asked.

“Of course not,” Rosie said with a tense laugh. “Our meeting is supposed to be romantic and dramatic. And besides, girls don’t call boys, remember?”

“What if it doesn’t turn out the way you think, Rosie? What if he’s toying with your feelings?” Karen asked. “You said your first and only date didn’t go well. Maybe he’s setting you up for another fall.”

Rosie lifted her eyes from the tiny brush dripping with red paint from the last application of trim on the wall of the school hallway.

She gave us all a deathly serious look.

“Then I’ll kill him,” she said.

Silence washed over the room.

I forgot that Maddie was with us until I heard her small voice.

“What do you get when you drop a computer on your toes?” she asked. She waited a beat, then answered her own question. “Megahertz,” she said.

We all took a breath, followed by loud laughter. I didn’t dare look over to see if Rosie was amused.

The plan was that Maddie would stay with Beverly, my sister-in-law and best friend, for the weekend. For once, Maddie didn’t complain about being left behind. The arrangement would put her at the center of attention in yet another Lincoln Point household, with a surrogate grandmother whom she loved and ready access to her Uncle Skip. The better to nag him about giving her junior detective status with the LPPD.

Nick Marcus, Beverly’s companion for the last several months, had learned the rules early on: “Love me, love Maddie.” Not that that was hard to do, he told us, and he was welcomed immediately into our extended family.

On Thursday evening, Maddie and I were packing her new grown-up (non-pink) luggage for her trip across town when the phone rang.

“I can’t believe this, Gerry.” Beverly’s voice carried both sadness and disappointment. “Nick’s grandfather passed away up in Seattle and the services are this weekend. I’ve never met him, but I think I should be there for Nick.”

“How sad, Beverly. Of course you should go. Please give Nick my condolences,” I said, at the same time running down my list of usual alternatives to watch Maddie.

“Skip and June are coming up, too, so the families can all meet. Even though it won’t be under the best of circumstances.”

“I’m glad you’ll all be together,” I said, meaning it, but also mentally crossing two more people off my list.

Rosie Norman, another loyal backup, was de facto out of the picture. My friend Linda Reed was on call at the Mary Todd retirement home where she worked as a nurse, meaning she’d be sleeping in their nurses’ lounge over the weekend.

I could try to get Maddie to Tahoe where her parents were, four hours away even with no traffic, but that seemed like a lot of trouble for everyone.

“Gerry?” I wondered if Beverly had been talking the whole time. “I’ll bet you’re going through your list. I feel awful about this. I suppose we could take Maddie with us, but-”

“No, no. Don’t give it another thought. I’ll just take her along. You get ready and I’ll see you next week. And, again, please tell Nick I’m sorry for his loss.”

Why did I think I’d have trouble breaking the news to Maddie? She was always at least a step ahead of me. She’d figured it all out from my side of the conversation and was ready for me.

“Is it as hot in San Francisco as it is here?” she asked.

How quickly my granddaughter adjusted.

I thought of the quote often attributed to Mark Twain: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

“It’ll probably be freezing,” I said.

Rosie was a little less enthusiastic about the change of plans. “I thought we’d have some time together,” she said on the phone, her tone carrying an edge of disappointment.

Instead of sticking with our initial plan to ride and room together, I now preferred to drive myself with Maddie to have more flexibility. I had to admit that the idea of the hour’s drive to San Francisco talking to my granddaughter was much more appealing than having the love-struck Rosie by my side. I wasn’t sorry about missing excruciating details of a thirty-year-old high school crush. I’d had enough of that during my twenty-seven years of teaching.

“We can do something special another time,” I said. “Thanks for understanding.”

“You know, I’ll probably be busy with David, anyway,” she said.

I wondered if she believed that any more than I did. It wasn’t as though David had to fly across the country for the reunion; he lived in South San Francisco and could have taken her to dinner any night of the week. If he were really sincere about picking up their relationship (if there ever was one), why would he be going about it in such a dramatic way? Unless he was as immature now as he was then.

It occurred to me also that Rosie’s behavior was not her usual responsible, mature way of dealing with life. She had a degree in English literature, owned and operated a good-size bookstore, and had been on her own most of her adult life. But she seemed to have become a different person, acting starry-eyed and unrealistic, now that a potential boy-friend was in the picture.

I’d seen a lot of that also during my years with adolescents.

I picked up Maddie at Rutledge Center after her technology camp on Friday and drove straight up U.S. Route 101 to San Francisco. The weekend schedule called for shuttling back and forth to San Francisco for the cocktail party on Friday night, then back to Lincoln Point on Saturday afternoon for a groundbreaking event for the new ALHS sports stadium, then to San Francisco again for a banquet on Saturday night and a brunch on Sunday morning.

I got tired thinking about it.

The inconvenience of managing the disparate locations had been trumped by the desire of the powers that be to break ground for the new athletic field the same weekend as the reunion. I hoped thirty-year alums and their faculty would hold up. What had been a forty-minute drive between Lincoln Point and San Francisco thirty years ago now could take double that time in heavy traffic. When it wasn’t commute time holding us up, it was construction that closed a lane or two.

I hoped the payoff for all the driving stress would be worth it, especially for Rosie.

My old Saturn was loaded with Maddie’s laptop, videos, and enough snacks to make it easy to avoid the expensive refrigerated M &M’s in the hotel minibar.

“No computer jokes today?” I asked her.

“Nah. I have to stop that. When I get back to my regular school, no one will like me.”

“You mean you have to give up something you enjoy to fit in there?”

“No, no. Don’t get all worried. Forget I said it. My mom is already on me not to sell myself out. Or short. Or whatever.”

I’ll bet she was. Mary Lou Porter had softened a bit from her activist days at UC Berkeley, but she was still on the watch for signs of inequality wherever it might be. She’d won the battle to get Maddie admitted to this summer’s program even though she was younger than the minimum age of thirteen. All she’d needed to hear was that a ten-year-old boy with less computer experience than Maddie had been allowed to register.

“Knock, knock,” I said.

Maddie gave in to a little-girl giggle. “You’re not supposed to start the joke, Grandma. You don’t know any punch lines.”

“I tried.”

“We’re totally booked,” said the young woman in an unattractive navy power suit. Pinstripes in polyester seemed an oxymoron to me. I heard click, click, click as she worked the keyboard, conflicting with the clang, clang, clang of a cable car on Powell Street, right outside the door. “We’ve got a wedding and a reunion and a trade show and…” She threw up her hands. “It’s an old hotel, you know, with mostly single beds.”