Margaret Grace - Murder In Miniature

“I don’t know, Rosie. Maybe we can work it out if we talk for a while.”

I took her nod as permission to probe more into Rosie’s weekend. I started with something that had been nagging at me since Friday night. “Rosie, what did you and Barry talk about at the reunion cocktail party? You had your heads together for quite a while.”

“I suppose it’s hard to believe that we were chatting because he enjoyed my company.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said, though it had crossed my mind at the time. “It’s just that I don’t remember you two being especially friendly in high school and, as far as I know, you don’t see him regularly these days even though he lives in town.”

“As a matter of fact, Barry dropped in at the shop a couple of weeks ago, just to say hi.”

“He didn’t want anything in particular?” Another poorly worded question. I let out a frustrated breath. “I didn’t mean it that way this time, either, Rosie. I’m just trying to follow some leads here.”

“It’s okay. Barry didn’t buy any books, if that’s what you’re getting at. He did ask me if I’d heard from David, and it was right after that that the presents started coming. Let’s face it. I was always a wallflower, going back thirty years, and you know I haven’t changed much.”

“You make friends among your customers very easily, Rosie. They all love you.”

Rosie talked right past my compliment. “My parents were divorced at a time when it wasn’t so common. I was only nine years old. They had joint custody of me, so I had to shuttle back and forth between their houses and I always felt like an outsider. My teeth were crooked and there wasn’t any money to fix them. Remember the lisp I had for most of high school?”

“But look what you’ve done with your life. Your store, for one thing.”

“When my mom died my freshman year, I hid in books, I guess.”

“Lucky for Lincoln Point.”

“Thanks, Gerry.”

“Barry?” I asked.

“You’re right that it wasn’t what you would call a personal conversation at the cocktail party. There was no ‘let’s catch a movie sometime.’ Barry’s a bachelor, you know. He seemed more interested in my father’s business, what Dad was doing these days. As if he ever knew my father or cared about my family. It was weird.”

I’d been processing the weirdness as she talked. To me, interest in Larry Esterman, the petty thief, was interest in the company he consulted for, Callahan and Savage. Walter Mellace thought I represented Callahan and Savage and had found something Walter wanted. Why was the loser in so many recent major bids so popular? And why, other than a genetic disposition for stealing, had a Callahan and Savage consultant walked off with my precious bank record? I’d have to find a way to talk to Larry about that little trick.

For now, I had his daughter in front of me.

“Rosie, remember the box of chocolates you received at the hotel?”

“I was going to throw them away, but I thought you and Maddie might like them.”

I told her, as gently as possible, about the origin of the gift. I was ready to support my story with an affidavit from Samantha, the clerk in the hotel shop, if I needed to, but Rosie didn’t seem to need confirmation.

“Could it have been Barry who was sending you those gifts all along?”

“I suppose so. I know you and the girls on crafts night tried to tell me that something was not right. I just couldn’t listen at the time. But why would Barry send them using David’s initials?”

“You talked about, quote, a date gone bad. Are you willing to tell me more about it?”

Rosie bristled. She’d seemed to have matured in her outlook since Friday afternoon. Nothing like a murder to give one perspective. I hoped I hadn’t lost her with this question. She’d referred to the date several times, but it seemed the details of its failure were still hard to talk about.

“That was a long time ago,” she said.

“That’s what reunions are about. A long time ago.”

“Do you want some ice tea?” she asked me.

“I’d love some,” I said and followed her to her kitchen.

It took longer than it should have to brew two glasses of ice tea, during which time we chatted about decaf versus regular, whether the upcoming week would be as hot as last week, and a special shipment of book club choices Rosie expected on Wednesday. She’d closed Rosie’s Books early on Friday and, as far as I knew, hadn’t opened it since.

“In some ways, I’m dreading going to the shop tomorrow,” she said, once we were finally settled in the living room again.

“It will probably take you all of twenty minutes to get back in the swing of things. Once you see the boxes of books waiting to be opened and start to work on the details of the fall children’s program, you’ll be fine.”

“Fortunately, not too many of my classmates are customers. I guess we weren’t your best readers.”

“Except for you.”

Rosie’s smile was thin, but more than I’d seen for a few days. I felt a breakthrough coming.

“It was a Thursday, before the big Valentine’s Day dance. David came up to me in the hallway, where the lockers were.”

I knew that. My whole crafts group, including Maddie, knew that. I let Rosie take her time.

“Uh-huh. And then?”

“He kissed me and whispered in my ear that he wanted to go to the dance with me the next night.”

“It was pretty short notice, wasn’t it?”

Rosie uttered a bitter-sounding laugh. “So? It wasn’t as if I had other plans. I nearly fainted, I was so shocked and, of course, deliriously happy. On Friday I skipped classes and went shopping for a dress. I had to beg my father to help me pay for it, and money was very tight at the time. Business was slow and there were so many other expenses senior year.”

Rosie was talking so slowly I had time to speculate in between phrases. This time I jumped ahead and figured David stood Rosie up.

“I’m guessing something kept David from showing up.”

“It’s worse than that,” Rosie said. “He asked me to meet him in Joshua Speed Woods, where, you know, kids went to make out.”

More interesting. “Uh-huh.”

Rosie took several sips of tea, with deep breaths in between. I knew I could end her misery by calling off the question, but I kept my eye on the goal-to have as much information as possible.

“He said he’d meet me in the clearing. I knew where he meant.”

“Is that where…?”

“Yes, it’s where he was killed,” she said, without much emotion.

I expected that David’s murder had put an end to romantic assignations in the clearing for the near future. “Did you go to the clearing that night?” Not the night of the murder, I said to myself. That can’t be where this is heading.

Another nasty-sounding laugh. “I went all right, in my new red dress with these little sequin hearts all over it. I got my red heels, which were right out of the box, all dirty, walking down the path, but I didn’t care. I was going to meet David.”

A long pause. I became impatient. “And he didn’t show?”

“Worse than that,” Rosie said again. “Do you remember Mathis Berg? He was the school’s biggest nerd.”

I nodded. “Math Bird.”

“Well, when I got to the clearing, guess who was there?”

It started to fall into place. A prank perpetrated by the cool kids on the unwitting wallflowers of the class. “They’d set Mathis up, too? So instead of David, you met Mathis there?”

“Worse than that.”

One more time. Rosie knew how to spin a yarn. Too bad she was the victim in this one.

“They were all there to see it. It was dark, just the moonlight illuminating the clearing. Then, suddenly all these lights went on. They’d rigged them somehow to hang from the trees. I picked out the football team and the cheerleading squad, mostly, but it seemed like the whole senior class was there in the woods. Mathis and I were standing there, all lit up. He had on a tux and I remember the collar was so big for his skinny neck. We were both so mortified.”